Nat'l Ed Assoc NEA / AFT
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see teachers union
SEE RANDI W AFT kicks ass --> target
see public/government schools
see public sector union
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RWW
08/18/2026
by
Dominionist and MAGA activist Jim Garlow devoted his World Prayer Network call Sunday night to an attack on public education. One of the speakers, Liberty University Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Alliances Rev. Glenn Clary, described how Liberty is planning to take advantage of a provision in the Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” designed to funnel tax dollars into Christian schools.
Hostility toward public education is a defining characteristic of the Christian right political movement, which has fought for years to funnel public education funds into religious schools and the conservative-dominated homeschooling movement.
Televangelist Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University, wrote in 1979, “I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”
Garlow began Sunday’s broadcast by telling his prayer warriors, “We want to help you understand why you've got to help your children, your nephews, your nieces, and your grandkids get out of the public school.” He described public education as “rotten to the core,” and said 75 to 80 percent of students raised in the church lose their faith when they go to college because they had not been “properly grounded.”
Clary, the Liberty vice president and a former chair of the Alaska GOP, described public schools as “anti-God indoctrination centers.” He claimed that public schools are controlled by the National Education Association, an educators’ union that he said he calls the “National Evil Association,” adding, “And so I just think that we need to get the kids out of these public schools.”
An important background to this story is the history of Liberty’s rise to become a billion-dollar behemoth in among conservative Christian colleges. That wasn’t achieved by founder Falwell, but by his now-discredited son Jerry Jr., who saw early on the potential financial windfall of online education, which allowed Liberty to take tuition dollars—much of it funded by taxpayers indirectly through federal student loans—from a huge number of students that didn’t require a lot of physical infrastructure. Liberty devoted millions to high-pressure call centers to recruit tens of thousands of online students.
Liberty University Online Academy, which Clary was promoting on Garlow’s call, is the university’s online K-12 school. Clary says more than 75,000 students have gone through its program. Clary described his current mission as recruiting pastors to turn their church’s used space during the week into classrooms for students taking (and paying for) Liberty’s online classes. It’s a way, he said, for churches to create Christian schools without having to worry about hiring and managing teachers. Students who graduate from the online high school can get 50 percent off their tuition if they become a residential college student at Liberty.
For pastors who might be asking, “How would I pay for this?” Clary suggested that parents and grandparents can contribute. B
The 2025 legislation set up a scheme that allows any taxpayer to get a dollar-for-dollar reduction in taxes for any contribution up to $1,700 to a scholarship granting organization (SGO) beginning on Jan.1, 2027. The SGO in turn can use those dollars to provide “scholarships” or vouchers to pay for tuition at a private school. There is no cap on the program, which the National Center for Public Education has noted could direct “tens of billions of dollars annually towards private school education.”
Clary was enthusiastic about what this could mean for money flowing into Christian schools like Liberty's online academy:
So if you and your wife did your taxes and you owe $2,000 and you contributed $1,700 to an SGO, scholarship granting organization, you could take that $1,700 off your tax bill and you would pay $300 to the government and you have directed your tax dollars to a Christian school organization in order for a child to have a Christian education.
Clary said that Liberty is going to “stand up” its own SGO. “Liberty is going to have this and make it available to the students that come to Liberty and any of the pastors that stand up affiliate schools,” he said.
It’s worth noting that earlier this year, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) introduced the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act, legislation that would repeal the SGO tax credit, which is essentially a federal private school voucher program. The bill was co-sponsored by 28 other Democratic senators.
After Clary spoke, Garlow turned to his next guest, Dr. Lisa Dunne, who has a similar contempt for the “anti-Christian” public education system, calling it “anti-faith, anti-family, anti-freedom—a system that hates our God, hates us, and hates our nation.”
We say education is formation and unfortunately, as you heard from Doctor Clary and you heard from Doctor Garlow, we're wasting a lot of time in the in the educational systems today forming children in a non-biblical worldview. I would say we're raising up atheist armies, and I would say that is not an--that's not hyperbolistic, that’s not an exaggeration in any way.
Dunne, who founded a Christian college and network of Christian schools, is pursuing her vision of replacing public education with church-run schools:
We've done the stats in California, and if 75% of our churches in the state of California would open their doors to 250 students, we would shut down the dysfunctional public school system in our state.
Many religious-right activists have adopted part of the worldview taught by Christian Reconstructionists that there is no biblical basis for public education because God assigned that responsibility to the family and church. Dunne made the same claim, citing Kevin Novak, a right-wing attorney who promotes the abolition of the “civil government school system,” which he calls a “tyrannical mechanism that commands our youth to think in anti-Christian terms.” Dunne called Novak a friend and said he is about to start at her Chula Vista Christian University.
And he goes through biblically, he goes through all of the Word and shows that the government, the secular pagan government, has no jurisdiction to educate our children. None. Zero. The mantle of responsibility is on our shoulders as parents. Now we can choose to partner with a trusted agency like our local church, but it is our responsibility. We will stand before the Lord for how we raised or did not raise our children.
While some religious-right activists call for the abandonment of the public school system, others are using political muscle to try to turn public schools into places to proselytize students or use charter school systems to promote taxpayer funded religious indoctrination.
And while anti-public education religious-right voices may have bigger media platforms, it’s also important to recognize that there are many Christian teachers and administrators in public schools, and many pastors and Christian parents who support the mission of public education.
On the Watchlist
Jim Garlow
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7 26 misgender spk = child abuse
multicultural tick box oppressed minority
parental rights
red card ~ ICE rights; tcher union organized student walkouts ~ICE
students pawns in govt school, danger in traffic
Education advocate Corey DeAngelis joins PragerU CEO Marissa Streit to discuss the National Education Association’s 2026 agenda and what it reveals about America’s largest teachers union. Instead of focusing on academic excellence, the NEA is prioritizing progressive activism, including efforts to impeach President Trump, oppose ICE, defend anti-Israel activism, and support trans legal services. Together, they break down how the NEA is built to influence your children, with an agenda that flows into book publishers to teacher training to the lesson plans in your child’s classroom.
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an 3 26
Indystar reports Indiana’s Gov. Mike Braun has signed a new bill forcing state colleges and universities to include a “classics-based” examination embraced by religious colleges in Republican states.
For decades, the ACT and the SAT have been the gatekeepers and the standard-bearer of college admissions to measure a student's aptitude in core subjects like math, science and reading. But proponents said the test “would better assess students who received a classical education, typically offered to homeschooled students or at private or charter classical schools,” according to the IndyStar.
The newly required Classical Learning Test aims to promote the "Western intellectual tradition" that right-wing supporters claim has been abandoned by existing standardized tests.
The change stems from a legislative bill that also “requires schools to teach a 2000s-era anti-poverty theory involving waiting until marriage to have kids as part of schools' good citizenship instruction,” reports IndyStar. “It passed mostly along party lines amid criticism that the CLT could disadvantage students who are less accustomed to Western ideas.”
"It has baked-in prejudices that would make students who come from less diverse backgrounds appear to have done better than students from more diverse backgrounds," said Joel Hand, a lobbyist for the American Federation of Teachers for Indiana, during Senate committee testimony in January.
Classic Learning Test creator Jeremy Tate applauded the bill's passage in Indiana in an X post Feb. 24.
“While Tate has said the test is not partisan, his company's expansive Board of Academic Advisors include administrators from religious colleges and right-wing figures like Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation and PragerU CEO Marissa Streit,” reports IndyStar. “It's also been promoted by Sen. Jim Banks, who called it the "standard for academic excellence."
PragerU is not a university, but a conservative nonprofit known for producing wildly inaccurate educational videos. One PragerU videofrom its history series depicts abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass arguing that the founders’ decision not to abolish U.S. slavery was worth it because it helped convince the Southern colonies to join the Union.
“Our system is wonderful, and the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. We just need to convince enough Americans to be true to it,” the video depicts Douglass saying.
Teachers' unions and academics also doubt the value of the Classic Learning Test considering its concepts and biased arguments.
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an 9 25
Florida Attorney GeneralJames Uthmeier (R) has announced the launch of a new tool for members of the public to report “acts or threats of political violence" as well as social media posts of public school teachers, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Uthmeier, chairman of the ironically named far-right "Florida Freedom Fund" political action committee associated with Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), has the backing of Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, who, recently sent a letter to public school superintendents threatening teachers who publicly express negative opinions about deceased far-right activist Charlie Kirk.
In a statement attached to Uthmeier's announcement, Kamoutsas said that “any educator who makes vile, despicable comments celebrating and encouraging violence in schools will be investigated and held accountable.”
According to The Tallahassee Democrat, Uthmeier said that "while the First Amendment will be upheld, threats of violence won’t be tolerated."
In the wake of Kirk's death, several Florida public school teachers have lost their jobs and status or been put on leave, including Karen Leader, an associate art history professor at Florida Atlantic University, placed on leave for posting about the right-wing podcaster's history of hate speech.
A retired University of Florida professor lost his honorary title after posting about Kirk, “I did not want him to die. I reserve that wish for Trump," and other professors' posts are under investigation by the state along with teachers at several K-12 schools throughout the state.
“I didn’t say anything or do anything that encouraged violence at all,” Leader told Hyperallergic.“I did not say or do anything that celebrated his death, that said he deserved it, that in any way, shape or form, condoned violence.”
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mma
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5 25 email
the AFT, along with AFT-Maryland, the American Sociological Association and Eugene (Ore.) School District 4J, has won a temporary pause on the Trump administration’s threat to take funding away from universities and school districts that teach lessons referencing race and racism, or provide support to students through diversity, equity and inclusion programming. The preliminary injunction addresses a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education that required institutions to demonstrate compliance or lose funding. Read more here.
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gmail 9 24 ~ coup
Eight months into President Donald Trump’s second term, it’s clear that public education and our democracy are in peril. Trump and his allies are abolishing the US Department of Education and gutting funding for programs that public schools rely on—and the big ugly budget bill (which Trump signed into law in July) creates a nationwide voucher program, even though we know vouchers harm students. This administration has abandoned the nearly 90 percent of American students who attend public schools, and it has continued the far-right campaign to demonize teachers, from claiming they indoctrinate kids in woke ideology to calling them groomers.
Why? That’s the question I aim to answer in my new book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers. I wrote this book to expose the coherent, well-funded strategy behind the vilification of teachers and the war on knowledge. And I wrote it to lift up teachers. My book is a love letter to teachers and to all that teachers do to help kids thrive.
This issue of American Educator opens with an excerpt in which I explain that authoritarian leaders smear teachers because they don’t want children to learn to think critically. They want to erase truth, knowledge and history and to fracture society. They fear critical thinking. And they fear the other thing teachers do so well: creating a safe and welcoming environment for all kids. As Vladimir Putin has said, “Wars are won by teachers.”
The peril we face is even more evident when we look at this moment from historical and global perspectives. This issue of American Educator has articles by the historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who explains that Trump’s attacks on knowledge, science, medicine and children are in keeping with authoritarians from the past 100 years, and by the political scientists Eli G. Rau and Susan Stokes, who show that around the world, as income inequality rises, so does the probability of democratic decline.
One of the most troubling symptoms of that decline is the recent increase in political violence. Let’s be clear: Violence is never the answer. Never. Not on January 6, and not the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It is antithetical to democracy and to our values as a union of professionals that fights for a better life for all.
Weaponizing this moment is also antithetical to democracy. Of course, no one should celebrate another person’s murder. But using this tragedy to encourage the doxxing, censorship and firing of people for their opinions—including educators’ private opinions shared during their personal time—is wrong.
In our communities and our national rhetoric, it’s time to come together, to de-escalate and to condemn all forms of violence. But it’s not time to stay silent. We can end the hate and the smears while recommiting to the right to civil discourse, to critical thinking, to open inquiry, to some of the founding principles of our nation.
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and George Washington championed public education as a public good. Our public schools are where we create opportunity and community for all, not just for some. We must not let the likes of the current president abandon public education, and with it the underpinnings of our democracy.
In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President
Fall 2025American Educator
Strengthen, Don’t Abandon, Public Schools
By Randi Weingarten
Union Highlights: Resolved to Fight for a Better Life
Why Do Fascists Fear Teachers? Because We Teach Critical Thinking
By Randi Weingarten
The Trump Administration Is Trying to Wreck Our Democracy: We Can Fight Back
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Economic Inequality Threatens Democracy
By Eli G. Rau and Susan Stokes
Standing Up and Standing Out: AFT Members Are Fighting Back to Protect Their Students...
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same week randi vicious &
AA woman young renta zz: AMALA EKPUNOBI (GUEST): It is truly unbelievable to see some of the resources that the NEA has at their disposal for young children here and the NEA is really public enemy number one when it comes to American children. We're talking about an organization that has allowed for kids to be out of school for two years during the pandemic and then when they returned to what should be a normal, wholesome American education, they're getting inundated with, like Sean said, critical race theory and gender theory. It is ridiculous the things that these teachers unions are endorsing.
new fox target?
**Laura Ingraham** is the latest on the far right to attack a bedrock institution of American society: public schools. The Fox News propagandist on Thursday called to “defund government education” and wrongly implied the National Education Association, a labor union, was responsible for establishing education standards and curricula, which is the responsibility of government agencies.
Ingraham hosted Terry Stoops of the right-wing think tank The John Locke Foundation, which Accountable.US has said “repeatedly alleged Democrats conspired to allow widespread voter fraud.”
Stoops complained that Twitter took action against him after he posted what allegedly were proposed agenda items from the National Education Association’s annual meeting. Ingraham showed excerpts saying the NEA will support the right to abortion, LGBTQ rights, and other mainstream positions, which Ingraham attacked as “whackpot declarations.”
Reading some of the proposed items, Ingraham mocked them, saying, “Reading, writing, and abortion.”
Stoops berated the NEA’s discussion of critical issues facing America, suggesting the group, America’s largest labor union and not a think tank or government education agency, was advancing an “insane agenda.”
Ingraham jumped in, calling for an end to public schools, and saying taxpayer funds should be diverted to private education.
As Media Matters reports, Ingraham said the NEA’s annual meeting “is more like a political rally for the far left.”
READ MORE: How can community schools rescue a ‘troubled’ district?
“I mean, it’s kind of a combination of Human Rights Campaign, BLM, you know, Earth Justice League, whatever it is,” Ingraham continued, conflating a union agenda with a government agency’s work.
“But what it’s not about is education and this is why I think, Terry, a lot of people are saying it’s time to defund government education or at least defund it by giving vouchers to parents so they can say, ‘No, we’re not doing this anymore.’ And I think that just has to happen. We have to stop funding this madness.”
Since colonial times in America public schools, supported by taxes, have existed. In the mid-1800s states began to make public education mandatory. But as the religious right has grown in power, conservatives have tried to steer tax dollars away from public schools and into private and religious schools.
Watch below or at this link:
see michael chamberlain devos ppt
422
apparently an aggregator, but RW slat
LaborUnionNews.com
Amazon Objects To Union Threatening Employees If They Voted Against ALU And Bribing Employees With Pot
Amazon objects to union’s Staten Island victory, reuters/ny post
alleges NLRB interference
Forbes Staff
SUBSCRIBE TO LABOR UNION NEWS’ DAILY DIGEST
{{denver gazette?
30 East Pikes Peak Ave., Suite 100 Colorado Springs, CO
Publisher: Christopher P. Reen
303-569-5804
chris.reen@gazette.com
Largest teachers union spent twice as much on politics as on member needs
Jeremiah Poff, Washington Examiner Apr 7, 2022
Largest teachers union spent twice as much on politics as on member needs
EXCLUSIVE — The National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, spent more than twice as much money on politics-related expenditures than on its membership, an analysis of the union's filings shows.
The data, compiled by the right-to-work nonprofit organization Americans for Fair Treatment, shows the teachers union donated $66 million to political activities and another $117 million to "contributions, gifts, and grants" that were primarily political donations.
The data reviewed by Americans for Fair Treatment, which was provided exclusively to the Washington Examiner, showed that the political activities donations totaled 18% of the union's $374 million budget for 2020-2021. The "contributions, gifts, and grants" totaled 32% of expenditures.
BIDEN RULE COULD FORCE CHARTER SCHOOLS TO CLOSE, FORMER EDUCATION OFFICIAL WARNS
Meanwhile, only 9% of the NEA's budget was spent on direct assistance to its members, who pay an annual fee of $200 to maintain their membership in the union.
"The National Education Association's political and charitable spending in 2020-2021 makes the NEA look more like a political organization than a membership organization," Americans for Fair Treatment told the Washington Examiner. "The union spent $2 on politics for every $1 it spent on representing its members."
The largest beneficiary of the NEA's political spending was its own political action committee, the NEA Advocacy Fund, which received $15.7 million from the union in the 2020-2021 school year.
Other donations included $6.7 million to the State Engagement Fund, which funnels donations to left-wing political groups and Democratic candidates. A similar organization, the Strategic Victory Fund, received $1.85 million from the union.
Donations to both organizations were counted among the union's "contributions, gifts, and grants" expenditures rather than as political activities. The union also designated as a contribution a $1 million donation to Future Forward USA Action, a political action committee that backed then-candidate Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
The political donations by the NEA dwarfed the $48.8 million in political activities and $5.9 million in contributions spent by the nation's second-largest teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, according to Americans for Fair Treatment. The combined total of the AFT's political spending was less than 30% of its 2020-2021 expenses, as opposed to the nearly 50% spent by the NEA.
"Those numbers show where [the NEA's] priorities lie," said Americans for Fair Treatment CEO David Osborne.
In addition to supporting political action committees backing Democratic candidates, the NEA also made sizable donations to liberal advocacy groups, including a $125,000 donation to the nonprofit organization Project 2043, which helps "companies and nonprofit organizations achieve their Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility goals."
The project's website includes multiple phrases and verbiage often associated with critical race theory, which says U.S. institutions and culture are systemically racist and oppressive to racial minorities.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The NEA has previously supported the use of critical race theory in developing classroom curricula, even as Democratic politicians and liberal pundits have claimed the theory is not taught in public schools.
The NEA did not respond to a request for comment.
Original Location: Largest teachers union spent twice as much on politics as on member needs
Washington Examiner Videos}}
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/merrick-garland-investigation/
no lnx
former Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller's legal group is demanding the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General launch an investigation into Attorney General Merrick Garland's memo that directs the FBI to discuss threats against school board officials.
The Garland memo is exceptionally weak, stating: "I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to to convene meetings with federal state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders" to "facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats."
Nothing more.
After months of coaching and training of "grassroots" activists by right wing groups, including parents across the country, the nation has witnessed countless threats against school board officials and education professionals by parents whose anger is falsely ginned up by Fox news and other right wing media claims over critical race theory, masks, and vaccines.
Miller sees it differently, claiming his group is "demanding an investigation into AG Garland's memo unleashing federal law enforcement against parents fighting racism/CRT.Letter includes shocking info on origins of the memo."
Here is a copy of the letter America First Legal sent the DOJ Inspector General demanding an investigation into AG… https://t.co/T1aqGPokAW
— Stephen Miller (@Stephen Miller) 1634069778.0
Look at that language: "unleashing," "parents fighting racism," "shocking info" – all designed to create outrage.
(Also, parents who oppose CRT are not "fighting racism.")
As NCRM has previously reported, school board members and educators in at least nine states this year have been targeted with threats, death threats, and often racist death threats, including in Virginia, Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Vermont, according to local news reports.
According to Miller, who was one of the architects of Donald Trump's child separation policy, parents engaging in these threats should not be subjected to legal investigation, but protection.
Miller's Senior Counselor Reed Rubinsteinclaims that "the nationwide protests by parents against public school policies and practices—regardingCritical Race Theory indoctrination; anti-religious and anti-family gender ideology; and/or forced online education and mask mandates—are entitled to the most robust federal constitutional protection."
Rubinstein claims that "the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and others, have combined to oppress, threaten, and intimidate parents to chill and prevent them from exercising the rights or privileges secured by the Constitution," offering no reason why they would do this, especially given they have not done it before.
He also claims, again, offering no proof, that in "early September, Biden Administration stakeholders held discussions regarding avenues for potential federal action against parents with a key Biden Domestic Policy Council official (Jane Doe #1) and White House staff (John Doe #1). Stakeholders also held discussions with senior department officials, including at least one political appointee in the department's Civil Rights Division (Jane Doe #2). Jane Doe #1, John Doe #1, and others in the White House separately expressed concern regarding the potential partisan political impact of parent mobilization and organization around school issues in the upcoming midterm elections."
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/erik-prince-recruited-ex-spies-to-help-infiltrate-activist-groups-hostile-to-trump-agenda-report/
OMFG
no lnx
Erik Prince recruited ex-spies to help infiltrate activist groups ‘hostile’ to Trump agenda: report
Written by Common Dreams March 8, 2020
An explosive New York Times report revealed Saturday thatnotorious war profiteer Erik Prince recruited former American and British spies to work with the right-wing group Project Veritas to infiltrate at least one Democratic congressional campaign and organizations “considered hostile” to President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“Secretary DeVos’ brother was directly involved in a spying scheme in her home state against a teachers’ union she’s been hostile with for years. If this doesn’t clear the bar for an immediate Congressional investigation, nothing does.”
—Derek Martin, Allied Progress
Prince is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater. Through a spokesperson, he declined the Times‘ request for comment on the piece, which is based on interviews and documents obtained by the newspaper, including internal Project Veritas emails.
“Both Project Veritas and Mr. Prince have ties to President Trump’s aides and family,” the Times noted. “Whether any Trump administration officials or advisers to the president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear. But the effort is a glimpse of a vigorous private campaign to try to undermine political groups or individuals perceived to be in opposition to Mr. Trump’s agenda.”
The results of the Times‘ investigation were described by readers on social media as “chilling,” “stunning,” and “insane.” Jacobin magazine assistant editor Alex Press declared, “My paranoid fantasies are all true!” In response to a tweet about the reporting, author and activist Naomi Klein simply wrote, “Read.”
The consumer watchdog group Allied Progressresponded with a statement Saturday night, calling on the House Oversight Committee to conduct an immediate investigation into what DeVos knew about Prince’s activities.
“There’s not a lot of dots to connect here,” said Allied Progress director Derek Martin. “Secretary DeVos’ brother was directly involved in a spying scheme in her home state against a teachers’ union she’s been hostile with for years. If this doesn’t clear the bar for an immediate Congressional investigation, nothing does.”
“We already know Secretary DeVos is no friend of public education, but if she gave the go-ahead to enlist former intelligence officers to steal documents from public education advocates that she disagrees with, it steps well beyond policy disagreement and into criminal territory,” Martin added. “If Secretary DeVos was in any way involved, it will confirm that she stops at nothing to undermine public schools.”
According to the Times:
One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.
Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former CIA officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her.
Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians, and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon’s role in the teachers’ union operation—detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union—has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince’s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group’s activities.
The Times reported that it is unclear whether Seddon was involved in the Spanberger operation and the former British intelligence officer—who is married to American diplomat Alice Seddon—did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment.
James O’Keefe of Project Veritas told the Times that his group is a “proud independent news organization” and “no one tells Project Veritas who or what to investigate.” Although he declined to discuss the details of the report, he also claimed that various sources are “providing confidential documents, insights into internal processes, and wearing hidden cameras to expose corruption and misconduct.”
Past targets of Project Veritas have included the nonprofit healthcare organization Planned Parenthood, the political group Disrupt J20, and recently, David Wright, a 20-year veteran political correspondent at ABC News. Project Veritas has also recorded undercover video of a Times editor and approached the Washington Post with a false story about Roy Moore, a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama.
The Project Veritas operative inside AFT Michigan was Liberty University graduate Marisa Jorge, according to the Times. O’Keefe and Seddon used the code name “LibertyU” for Jorge when discussing the operation over email. Jorge, who also reportedly infiltrated the Spanberger campaign by posing as a volunteer, did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment. The federal lawsuit that AFT Michigan brought against Project Veritas is scheduled to go to trial later this year.
In a statement to the Times, AFT president Randi Weingartensaid: “Let’s be clear who the wrongdoer is here: Project Veritas used a fake intern to lie her way into our Michigan office, to steal documents and to spy—and they got caught. We’re just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage.”
Weingarten added on Twitter Saturday, “They didn’t succeed in their attempt to hurt our union but note what the right wing will do to try to eliminate workers’ voice.”
The Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill—who released the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army in 2007—wrote on Twitter Saturday that with this piece, the Times “pushes the 2017 story from [The Intercept‘s Matthew Cole]? forward about Erik Prince attempts to infiltrate liberal groups via Project Veritas.”
Last year, Cole published an article for The Intercept titled “The Complete Mercenary: How Erik Prince Used the Rise of Trump to Make an Improbable Comeback.”
Noting that Trump gave Project Veritas thousands of dollars through his foundation and met with O’Keefe shortly after announcing his run for president, Cole reported:
It is unclear if Trump’s support of Project Veritas spurred Prince’s interest in the group, but in late 2015 or early 2016, Prince arranged for O’Keefe and Project Veritas to receive training in intelligence and elicitation techniques from a retired military intelligence operative named Euripides Rubio Jr. According to a former Trump White House official who discussed the Veritas training with Rubio, the former special operative quit after several weeks of training, complaining that the Veritas group wasn’t capable of learning. Rubio did not respond to requests for comment.
In the winter of 2017, Prince arranged for a former British MI6 officer to provide more surveillance and elicitation training for Veritas at his family’s Wyoming ranch, according to a person with direct knowledge of the effort. Prince was trying to turn O’Keefe and his group into domestic spies. For his part, O’Keefe posted photos on Instagram and Twitter from the Prince family ranch of himself holding a handgun with a silencer attached and wearing pseudo-military clothing. He described the ranch as a “classified location” where he was learning “spying and self-defense,” in an effort to make Project Veritas “the next great intelligence agency.”
“Erik was weaponizing a group that had close ties to the Trump White House,” said the former White House official familiar with Prince’s relationship with O’Keefe and Project Veritas.
Cole acknowledged the Times reporting on Twitter Saturday and highlighted a summary of it tweeted by The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer:
Currently, the Times noted, “Prince is under investigation by the Justice Department over whether he lied to a congressional committee examining Russian interference in the 2016 election, and for possible violations of American export laws.”
Former FBI assistant director and current NBC News national security contributor Frank Figliuzzi shared the Times report on Twitter Saturday and commented that “there are likely numerous criminal violations here.”
==
dcrept
Carleton Varney of Massachusetts and Charles Wickser Banta of New York are relative unknowns in the arts world. Varney, a world-renowned hotel interior designer, is certainly the popular rich kid of the bunch, especially when he brags to a reporter about making a scarf for his powerful friend Melania Trump.
“Carleton’s phone rings,” Carly Simpson wrote in MyNorth, a travel and leisure magazine. “ ‘Let me see if it’s Melania,’ he laughs. He’s joking. Well, sort of. He’s working on a scarf for her.”
Simpson wrote that Varney “knows people by color,” describing his flair and work styling the homes of the rich and famous, including a long list of presidents and first ladies. You can see him pitching to the hoi polloi, too, peddling his colorful beddings on the HSN, the Home Shopping Network.
Varney also owns Dorothy Draper & Company, which calls itself “America’s first and most acclaimed design firm. Since 1925, we have been creating designs for interiors, furnishings, accessories, and fabrics that excite and delight.” And they don’t decorate hotels and homes, but “Landmark Hotels” and “Grand Residences.”
Varney’s audiences are have-mores who can afford to decorate their guest bedrooms. Like meerkats, his audience immediately perks up when he writes, “Summertime is peony time!” to kick off a seasonal decorating project . Only time will tell how his good taste translates to an advocacy role for all sectors of the arts world.
https://XXXtheguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/15/rightwing-thinktanks-secret-plot-against-unions
Rightwing activists are launching a nationwide drive to persuade public-sector trade union members to tear up their membership cards and stop paying dues, posing a direct threat to the progressive movement in America.
Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal that a network of radical conservative thinktanks spanning all 50 states is planning direct marketing campaigns targeted personally at union members to encourage them to quit. The secret push, the group hopes, could cost unions up to a fifth of their 7 million members, lead to the loss of millions of dollars in income and undermine a cornerstone of US progressive politics.
“Well run opt-out campaigns can cause public-sector unions to experience 5 to 20% declines in membership,costing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in dues money. This can affect the resources and attention available for union leaders to devote to political action campaigns,” the internal documents say.
The anti-union marketing drive is the brainchild of the State Policy Network (SPN), a coast-to-coast alliance of 66 rightwing thinktanks that has an $80m war chest to promote Donald Trump-friendly regressive policies such as low taxes and small government. The group is funded by such billionaire conservative donors as the Koch brothers and the Walton Family Foundation that stems from the Walmart fortune. ...exposed by the Guardian has revealed the political motives behind the network’s attacks on unions. It aims to “defund and defang” public sector unions as a means to “reverse the failed policies of the American left”.
The goal, the group said, was “permanently depriving the left from access to millions of dollars in dues extracted from unwilling union members every election cycle”.
The Guardian has now obtained what SPN is calling a “toolkit” of advice to its followers on how to go about fomenting “union reform” – a euphemism for draining unions of members and cash. The “toolkit” sets out four “tactics” for depleting their power – “effective union reform”, in its language.
“To get employees to opt-out of their union,” the documents say, “they first need to know they have a choice. A direct marketing campaign to union represented public employees that combines mail and digital outreach helps raise awareness and raise opt-out rates.”One of those tactics is the opt-out campaign.
The SPN blueprint sets out how to acquire the private details of union members through state freedom of information laws so that opt-out propaganda can be targeted directly at them. It says: “Access to lists of union members is essential to this project. The most common means of obtaining lists is through requests made under state public records laws.”
The toolkit is being circulated at a vital moment for public sector trade unions. The wave of school teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere has reinvigorated the labor movement as a key part of the resistance to stagnating wages, waning resources and a hostile White House.
More perilously, the US supreme court is poised to deliver its ruling any day in Janus v AFSCME, one of the most important trade union cases in recent times. If the five conservative justices on the highest court vote in favor of the anti-union plaintiff, as many expect, they would deal a severe blow to organized labor by giving employees the right to opt-out of paying their share of the costs of collective bargaining even though they benefit from negotiated higher wages and improved conditions.
That in turn would give the green light to conservative groups like SPN to step up their efforts to encourage mass resignations of union members. As a clear statement of intent, SPN invited Mark Janus, a child support worker in Illinois who is the named plaintiff at the center of the supreme court case, to speak at its annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, last August.
Carrie Conko, SPN’s vice president of communications, said that “workers should be able to decide for themselves if payment of union dues and fees is a good use of their hard-earned money or if their money is better spent elsewhere”. SPN’s aim was not political, rather it was “simply about protecting free speech”.
Public-sector unions had created a problem for themselves, Conko said, by leaving some workers to feel they were being used. The Janus case might actually help government unions improve their standing with members as “they will need to prove their worth by providing better representation to earn the voluntary dues”.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the Guardian documents revealed the extent of secret planning by rightwing groups in advance of the supreme court’s Janus ruling. “These documents make clear that Janus v AFSCME is not a case brought by individuals trying to have a voice, it’s a case brought by wealthy forces to eliminate worker voice and power.”
She added that rightwing billionaires such as the Kochs “know working families only have power through their unity as a union, and they will stop at nothing to destroy that. But we have seen unprecedented support for our unions and the opportunities they enable for a better life – when the Janus decision day comes, we will stand united, ready to act and fight back against the forces that want to silence workers.”
One of the SPN thinktanks, the Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington state,has already begun campaigning and fundraising on the back of a Janus ruling that goes against the unions. It has been mailing out to supporters in which it says “we are gearing up in a major way to launch an extensive education and activation campaign to take full advantage of a favorable ruling in this historic case”.
The foundation goes on to say: “The consequences of a favorable ruling are huge. Imagine tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars currently used to push damaging leftwing causes and candidates … vanishing.”
In 2016 the Freedom Foundation ran a brazen campaign in Washington and Oregon in which it went knocking on the doors of more than 10,000 childcare and home care workers telling them that under a previous US supreme court ruling they could opt out of paying union dues. In the document obtained by the Guardian, SPN boasts that the foundation’s operation cost the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in those states $8.8m in lost dues and legal fees.
note berman attacks, crc
some smart person put attack on teachers as part of trumpian revolt against elite, which teacher reps at micro level, an authority figure (woman?) who knows more than you.
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Mark R, Levin, head of the Landmark Legal Foundation has been doing more than giving speeches about challenging federal funding of liberal non-profit groups. During the first week in February, Landmark announced the formation of its"501-C Project" which intends to "ensure that liberal non-profit organizations that lobby against presidential appointments comply with U.S. tax and lobbying laws."
The Unification Church-owned Washington Times reported that Landmark has asked the Internal Revenue Service "to investigateaccusations that several civil rights groups and other nonprofit organizations violated their federal tax-exempt status by participating in lobbying efforts against the nomination of JohnAshcroftas attorney general."
According to Levin: "Published reports reveal that scores of liberal, 501(c) tax-exempt groups spent the last month, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, in a well-coordinated and highly organized lobbying campaign against the Ashcroft nomination. They have also announced that they will lobby against future nominees who they consider too conservative. The IRS must look at these activities very carefully to ensure that these organizations are not skirting the law or failing to pay their taxes."
Levin pointed to a January 9 meeting of organizations opposed to Ashcroft's nomination, held at the headquarters of the American Association of University Women.Called by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, among the groups Levin identified as present were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Education Association and the National Black Women's Health Project.
This was one of several complaints with federal agencies that Landmark has filed during the past few months. They filed a complaint with the IRS and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against one of the right's perennial targets, the National Education Association. Over the years, Landmark has butted heads with the NEA particularly around the issue of school vouchers in Wisconsin, where Landmark provided legal support for pro-voucher organizations.
Levin claims the teachers union is using millions of dollars in unreported tax-exempt funds to influence the outcome of political races. According to its website www.landmarklegal.org, [3] the complaint, part of the its Quality Schools 2001 initiative, claims that "the last several NEA Form 990 federal tax returns, submitted to the IRS under penalty of perjury, disclose no political expenditures whatsoever. The NEA and several of its affiliates have also failed to disclose the full extent of their political activities to the Federal Election Commission (FEC)."
Landmark is asking these government agencies to "initiate comprehensive investigations of the NEA's political activities and expenditures to determine whether it has violated federal tax and campaign laws. Landmark is also asking the IRS to consider whether the NEA's tax-exempt status should be revoked, and whether the IRS and the FEC should impose fines and penalties on the NEA."
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In 2002, the Times published a story accusing the National Educational Association (NEA), the largest teachers' union in the United States, of promoting teaching students that the policies of the United States government were partly to blame for the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.[42] This was denied by the NEA and by other commentators.[43][44]