The nation’s largest teacher’s union held its annual lunatic show earlier this month, a.k.a. the 2025 NEA Representative Assembly (RA). In its familiar partisan fashion, union leadership ranted against President Trump and his administration, openly stating as its priority “fighting Trump” over improving the nation’s dismal student achievement in nearly every subject.

Fox News reported that a teacher who tried to engage others in exploring how to improve students’ reading and writing scores at the convention was told: “We don’t have time for that. We’ve got to fight Trump....”

Again this year, NEA President Becky Pringle did not disappoint the union’s radical progressive wing in her raucous address to attendees, a rant that could at times be described as irrational. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion,” she screamed at one point.... “Say the words, say the words, say the words! You are powerful, you are the NEA! Ohhhhhh freedom! Ohhhhhh freedom! Hold your head high!”

Instead of teaching academics, approved NEA New Business Items (NBI) pledged “support for and participation in mass anti-Trump protests,” “opposing ICE ‘kidnapping’ student leaders,” “opposing ‘illegal’ efforts to eliminate the Department of Education,” “ensuring our message reaches communities affected by Trump’s policies,” among others. These efforts have nothing to do with educating children in the basic skills critical for their future success in the workplace and in life.

Fox pointed out that the $3 billion collected annually by the NEA and the AFT from teacher dues “does not go to teachers who are educating; anything but....” Rather, the union intends “to prioritize the 2026 local, state, and federal elections as a pivotal moment for our democracy....” The NEA intends to explore programs such as “funding 10 locals with full-time organizers who apply in each state, up to $100,000 per local to run campaigns in alignment with the union’s fight for democracy.”

Lawyer and Fox News pundit, Emily Campagno, told host Harris Faulkner: “If you were to read [the above] in a vacuum, you would think it was a massively political PAC or a grassroots organization demanding something ridiculous. But that it’s [a teachers’ union] actually aligned with the education of our youth in the public schools when none of the students can read their own name, is mind-boggling. It’s the tone-deaf arena they live in ... it’s absolute theft of our taxpayer dollars.”

Faulkner agreed, lamenting the fact that the NEA’s money is all going to politics and “doesn’t help one child in America.”

Egg on its face

In its over-the-top demonstration of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) throughout the convention, the NEA managed to make an embarrassing mistake in one of its NBIs. The Western Journal reprinted a post on X by school-choice advocate Corey DeAngelis, which displayed a photo of an NBI that read:

• NEA pledges to defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism by using the term facism [sic] in NEA materials to correctly characterize Donald Trump’s program and actions. The members and meraisl resources of NEA must be committed to the defense of the democratic and educational conditions required by our hopes for a just society and the survival of civilization itself by stating the truth.

This NBI requires an additional $3,500 to implement, according to NEA. The embarrassing post has since been removed from X, but can still be found in The Western Journal’s op-ed, about which author Samuel Short asked: “How does this happen in 2025 when spellcheck is on every smartphone, computer, and tablet? How does this happen amongst educators?”

He went on to question “how many leftists have actually read Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism? How many could define the word and point to specific examples of actions taken by Trump that meet that definition? ... The answer to both is probably very few to none.”

Short observed that words such as “fascist and nazi have lost all meaning in political discourse.... As for the NEA who represents public school teachers, these are the people left alone in a classroom with your children.... Homeschooling doesn’t sound so crazy if an NEA union member is the alternative.”

Of course, the NEA does not represent all public-school teachers, many of whom sincerely wish to teach, but the union’s policies and politics infect the entire U.S. education system and force otherwise resistant teachers to go along. But the union’s brazen extremism may yet prove its undoing.

Lawmakers move to revoke NEA’s federal charter

Shortly after the NEA’s annual display adjourned, Congressman Mark Harris, a Republican representing North Carolina’s 8th District, introduced H.R. 4450, the National Education Association Charter Repeal Act. A companion measure in the Senate was to be introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). A summary of the bill is yet to be posted online.

The Daily Caller explained on July 15 that the intent of the act is “to sever the union from its congressional ties.” The NEA received its charter from Congress in 1906, and is the only union to have such an arrangement. At least 10 additional representatives joined Harris in sponsoring the bill.

Rep. Harris said in a statement that “the NEA has abandoned its mission to support America’s teachers and strengthen our schools on behalf of a radical agenda.” He continued: “From branding President Trump a fascist to embracing divisive gender ideology and walking away from efforts to fight antisemitism, the NEA has become nothing more than a partisan advocacy group. Since the NEA is clearly not prioritizing students, parents, or even teachers, it’s time to remove Congress’ seal of approval from this rogue organization.”

Moms For Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich said in an interview with Fox News that “there is no reason a teachers’ union embracing such radical ideologies and pushing them into our classrooms should have any access to federal support.” Her organization quoted Congressman Harris on its website as saying: “The NEA was created to champion America’s teachers and serve our schools, but it has spiraled into a partisan machine that’s more about radical ideology than education.”

Descovich told Fox News that only a third of American 4th graders can read at grade level, “and you can see why when the teachers come together at their annual conference, the largest teachers’ union. They don’t vote on anything that has to do with education, and they haven’t for quite some time.... It’s not just this year or last year that they decided to become radical. They’ve been doing this for a very long time.”

And she is exactly right. For decades, Education Reporter has described how the tone of the annual NEA convention has become increasingly strident and extreme as have its NBIs and Resolutions, fewer and fewer of which have anything to do with education. This past year, the union directed over 97.4 percent of its political donations to Democrat candidates.

(For more information on past NEA convention mischief, click on this link, and also visit Education Reporter Online and type NEA Convention in the search box.)

More bad news for the unions

In another favorable ruling for the Trump Administration, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the president to proceed with downsizing the Education Department, and 1,378 employees have already received pink slips. An article in The Federalist by John and Andy Schlafly interprets this ruling to mean “President Trump has kept another campaign promise: death to the DOE.”

The Supreme Court’s decision was a win for Missouri attorney D. John Sauer, who argued successfully in this case (Linda McMahon v. New York) that, “For the second time in three months, the same district court has thwarted the Executive Branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education despite lacking jurisdiction to second-guess the Executive’s internal management decisions.” The high court held in Sauer’s favor and authorized Trump to proceed as he had promised voters he would do.

According to a July 10 Fox News opinion piece by Corey DeAngelis, a resolution proposed at this year’s NEA convention “labeled any move to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education as an ‘illegal, anti-democratic, and racist attempt to destroy public education and privatize it in the interests of the billionaires.’”

DeAngelis made the salient point that “Calling the abolition of a federal bureaucracy ‘racist’ is absurd, especially when the Department of Education’s track record has failed low-income minority students for decades. If anything, the department’s one-size-fits-all approach has entrenched disparities, trapping kids in failing schools based on their ZIP codes.”

Despite the NEA’s hysterical, across-the-board condemnation of President Trump, including his attempts to return education to its rightful place at the state and local levels, his agenda is winning, and parents and students will reap the benefits in the long run.

As DeAngelis’s op-ed noted, the NEA’s radical agenda “is free advertising for school choice and homeschooling. Parents are rightly alarmed by a union that sees their children as ‘hostages’ to its cause.”

He adds: “Since 2019, there has been a mass exodus from union-controlled public schools, with over a million families opting for charter schools, private schools, or homeschooling. The NEA’s Portland convention only accelerates this trend, as parents seek educational options that prioritize learning over politics.”

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