America’s Largest Teachers Union Sues To Keep ‘Stranglehold’ On Failed Education Deep State
The National Education Association (NEA) joined forces with other left-wing organizations to sue the Trump administration for dismantling the federal Department of Education and returning education decisions to states and localities.
The NEA filed a lawsuit on Monday alongside the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Maryland Council 3, and others to try to stop the Trump administration from taking steps to prepare the department for closure.
“Instead of focusing on the facts and offering helpful solutions to improve student outcomes, the union is once again misleading the American public to keep their stranglehold on the American education bureaucracy,” Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Department of Education, told The Federalist. “The union is also forcing the Department to waste resources on litigation instead of the programs the union claims to care about and the kids this Administration is fighting for.”
“As President Trump and Secretary McMahon have made clear, sunsetting the Department of Education will be done in partnership with Congress and national and state leaders to ensure all statutorily required programs are managed responsibly and where they best serve students and families. To date, no action has been taken to move federally mandated programs out of the Department of Education,” Biedermann added. “The U.S. Department of Education continues to deliver on all programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including vigilantly enforcing federal civil rights laws in schools and ensuring students with special needs and disabilities have access to critical resources.”
As The Federalist reported, President Donald Trump signed an executive order last Thursday directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of dismantling the department in order to help improve an education system that produces some of the worst outcomes in the developed world. Trump said on Friday that some of the department’s duties would be transferred to other agencies as part of that process.
America’s education establishment, like teachers unions and their friends in the race-grifter world, has benefitted greatly from control over the federal education bureaucracy since its inception (the department itself came as a gift from President Jimmy Carter after teachers unions endorsed him).
Groups like the NEA and NAACP are only suing because they are losing that control, but, in standard practice for them, they are using schools, teachers, and students as fodder to get their way.
“The NEA and NAACP have done nothing to advance the educational outcomes of America’s students and the latest NAEP scores prove that,” Harrison Fields, special assistant to the president and principal deputy press secretary, told The Federalist in a statement. “Instead of playing politics with baseless lawsuits, these groups should ditch the courtroom and work with the Trump administration and states on improving the classroom.”
NEA president Becky Pringle insists that shuttering the failed department “will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, making higher education more out of reach, taking away special education services for students with disabilities, and gutting student civil rights protections.” She also said that “gaps in education,” which are already extremely wide due in many ways to the NEA and other similar organizations, will “widen.”
The lawsuit claims that the steps taken by the Trump administration are a “de facto dismantling of the Department by executive fiat” and says that Congress would need to approve any dismantling. However, as Biedermann pointed out, nothing has been done to eliminate the statutorily required functions of the department, which would need congressional approval. Actions taken by the Trump administration have been focused on getting rid of unneeded or harmful programs and grants, left-wing indoctrination schemes, and unnecessary staff.
The NEA claims in its press release that “millions of vulnerable students” will be put “at risk” and “400,000 educator jobs” will be “jeopardize[d].” It said that Trump’s overhaul of the department “threatens support for 7.5 million students with disabilities,” “leaves millions of students vulnerable to discrimination,” and will affect Pell Grants and student loans. But the department, McMahon, and Trump have repeatedly made clear that none of that is true.
“I wish they would have shown this much passion when outcomes for students began to plummet to all-time lows and female athletes started losing podium spots to their male peers,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education (PDE), told The Federalist. “It’s curious that they went to the mat to keep schools closed and are now going to the mat to keep a massive bureaucracy open. Their priorities are not in doubt.”
However, as Sanzi pointed out, “This lawsuit was inevitable. Everything that the new administration does is going to be challenged in court and if you scan the list of plaintiffs, most are entities that have long wielded power and influence in the Department of Education.”
And it is not just Trump’s Department of Education changes that are being challenged, it is entire swathes of actions, from deporting violent gang members and alleged terrorists to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse out of the government. Friendly left-wing judges appear more than happy to stand in the way of genuine reform and conduct a judicial coup from their low court appointments.
It is unclear if yet another left-wing judge will halt the actions regarding the Education Department.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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