As the new year begins, left-wing unions and their pals are already ruffling feathers left and right. Here is a short list of the issues Americans are re-discovering in 2025:
The “undue influence” teachers unions had on school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic is exposed in a Jan 2. Frontier Centre article. Spoiler alert: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is remembered as the hot mess she is and was.
A Jan 3. survey in Campus Reform shows the obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is in a freefall, with students of all ages challenging the agenda and states starting to take aim at legislation to ban it from classrooms. A Dec. 27 article in the same publication also noted this downward trend on college campuses and the target that incoming president Donald Trump’s new administration has pinned to the Department of Education’s back, thanks to its reckless spending habits.
The Center Square reminds readers in a Dec. 27 article that soon-to-be-ex-President Joe Biden’s administration in 2023 took down a U.S. Office of Personnel Management web page tracking the number of hours public employees spent working on union business instead of the duties for which they are paid by the taxpayers. Despite assurances that the site was only undergoing maintenance and would be back up shortly, it seems clear now that it never was or will be. So much for accountability.
Freedom Foundation director of research and government affairs Maxford Nelsen, who originally broke the story, is quoted often in the article.
The teachers unions’ relentless push for irresponsible changes to the American education system is notorious in a Jan 3. Campus Safety article. Apparently, potential educators in New Jersey are no longer required to pass a basic reading, writing and arithmetic test, and school regulators in New York, California and Arizona are poised to follow suit. According to the National Education Association (NEA), standardized testing creates a barrier to teaching.
Isn’t the whole point of having standards, to construct barriers that prevent unqualified people from becoming teachers? Then again, if you aren’t going to insist students meet minimum standards to graduate, why expect more of teachers?
Finally, the National Review on Dec. 31 published a laundry list of upsetting leftist actions taken in blue states during 2024. Brace yourself.
It includes a reference to Oregon’s SEIU 503 affiliates, and a workaround they created that would allow a complete disregard the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Harris v Quinn, which recognized the right of Medicaid-compensated homecare providers to decline union membership and dues. Essentially, SEIU 503’s attempt to pull the rug out from under us.
Freedom Foundation West Coast Director Jason Dudash is quoted in the article, describing this deception as “disgusting.”
