Teachers’ Unions Are Still Singing the Same Song

By Christian Schneider

Thursday, August 28, 2025

 

As unlikely as it seems, the music and political worlds share the same rhythms. In each case, big hits from the past keep reemerging from the generation before, having been forgotten or never learned by the kids today.

 

For instance, Chappell Roan fans are likely unbothered that the songstress is effectively recycling Lady Gaga’s act from 15 years ago (which was largely lifted from Madonna’s controversial work in the 1980s). Some forgotten Beatles recording or a new documentary drops every few years, reminding people of the band’s greatness and setting off a new round of Beatlemania. You can set your watch by how often a punk band emerges and “revives” the work of the Ramones. And what is Olivia Rodrigo if not the Gen Z Alanis Morissette?

 

In the same way, politics operates on the backs of people who have forgotten the big fads of a decade ago or are too young to have learned them at the time. It’s why New Yorkers are poised to elect a mayor promising government-owned grocery stores, frozen rents, and free child care and bus service. There is hardly a public policy issue that has been studied more than the New York City rent controls implemented in the 1970s, which proved to be a greater disaster than the Cracker Barrel redesign.

 

But as George Will has noted (himself echoing Mencken), we need a Zohran Mamdani every now and then to give the voters what they want, good and hard. Will celebrates the tutorial that Mamdani’s socialist plans are about to foist on America. “Socialism in a circumscribed but conspicuous jurisdiction can occasionally be a valuable reminder of toxic political temptations,” he writes.

 

And this week saw another revival of one of the greatest hits, this time from the early 21st century. The group Defending Education issued a report reminding us that since 2022, America’s largest teachers’ unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — have collected over $43 million from their members, a sum that was then funneled back to organizations supporting Democratic politicians and left-wing causes. Some of these contributions were made to places like the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation ($100,000), MoveOn.org Political Action ($250,000), and Protect Constitutional Abortion Rights ($100,000).

 

Those who can remember all the way back to the 2010 Wisconsin protests over public-sector union benefits can simply shrug and say, “Yeah, we know.” When then-Governor Scott Walker exposed the corruption of the system involving public school teachers and unions, the state erupted in protest, with liberal teachers walking out of their classrooms to bang drums and blow horns in an effort to maintain their political clout.

 

The system was poisonous. Teachers were compelled to join a union, which then took a piece of their salaries to fund Democratic politicians. It was a government-sanctioned advantage for liberal politicians; the teachers’ unions were routinely the heaviest spenders in every election cycle around the state.

 

A portion of every teacher’s salary was thus taken to support political candidates, whether they agreed with their politics or not. And it meant that the unions were pumping millions of dollars into campaigns to elect the very officials who would negotiate their contracts — a breathtaking conflict of interest in which the politicians and unions found themselves on the same side of the negotiating table.

 

(The unions claimed their members could opt out of having their dues used for politics, but money is fungible — a dollar of dues money used to pay for union office space is a dollar freed up to buy a Democratic politician.)

 

Since Walker’s victory over public-sector bargaining, public unionization has been weakened even further by Supreme Court cases like Janus v. AFSCME, in which the court barred mandatory fees for public-employee unions. But the Defending Education report suggests that the pipeline of public union money is still flowing, sending millions of dollars to groups supporting Democratic candidates (Senate Majority PAC, House Majority PAC, etc.). And this doesn’t even count the portion of funds that unions spend independently on anti-Republican campaign advertisements.

 

Perhaps in the grand scheme of campaign finance, $40 million isn’t all that much for a couple of national unions to spend. And after the Walker triumph and the Janus case, it looks like public-sector unionization is on the run.

 

But this is 2025, when long-disproven economics is making a comeback. And it’s not just among Democrats. Republicans are embracing tariffs and government investment in private companies more tightly than Travis embraces Taylor. It is clear that GOP politicians will quickly scrap any previously held position in support of free markets to stay in the good graces of their president.

 

And that includes flirting with unions — consider that the president of the Teamsters Union was one of the prime-time speakers at the Republican National Convention last summer. In recasting the GOP as the party of the “working class,” the march toward progressivism continues apace.

 

So whether it’s pop stars dusting off Janet Jackson’s moves for Gen Z or politicians recycling the same union-fueled schemes that once sparked street protests, the beat goes on. The kids might think it’s new, some of the voters might think it’s bold, but anyone with a memory longer than a TikTok scroll knows the tune — and the scam — by heart. Music and politics teach the same cruel lesson: What’s “fresh” is often just last decade’s hit on shuffle, and the real question isn’t whether we recognize it, but whether we’re foolish enough to start dancing again.