Four in ten American fourth graders cannot read at a basic level. Their largest teachers' union in America just voted to spend $5.2 million demanding the president's impeachment. Make it make sense.
The National Education Association, representing 3 million members, just passed a resolution demanding the impeachment, conviction, and removal of a President Trump. The price tag on that particular agenda item: $5,236,193.
They also allocated $219,000 to print multilingual cards that teach illegal immigrants how to refuse entry to ICE agents. These are public school teachers. Funded by your property taxes.
The NEA's annual convention wrapped with a stack of new business items that read less like an education agenda and more like the platform of a party that lost the last election and hasn't gotten over it.
Item 10, backed by 50 California delegates, calls for organizing a mass march on Washington before the November 2026 midterms to demand Trump's removal. Item 46 directs the union to distribute "Red Cards" — multilingual instruction cards designed to help educators and families block ICE agents from entering homes or workplaces. The cards explain, in multiple languages, that the holder does not consent to a search.
So a teachers union is now in the business of printing legal obstruction guides for people who aren't supposed to be here. With money extracted from teachers' paychecks. Who are paid by taxpayers. Who voted for the immigration enforcement these cards are designed to obstruct.
That's a funding chain worth following.
Item 24 instructs the NEA president to lobby the Congressional Black Caucus for "Educational Reparations" — a package that would eliminate student loan debt, increase funding for HBCUs, and restructure the property-tax-based school funding model that has been the bedrock of local education control for a century.
Item 85 allocates $222,000 for the NEA's magazine to publish articles defending teachers who teach about "genocide in Palestine." Item 42 spends $314,000 building a "Culturally Responsive Teaching" library emphasizing gender equity and multilingual instruction. Item 78 funds state-by-state legal risk maps for transgender people and promotes a "Trans Youth in Sports Conversation Guide" for $12,500. Item 20 rewrites family emergency planning guides to include transgender legal name changes and healthcare resources.
The combined cost of these proposals exceeds $6 million.
Nowhere in the published resolutions is there a line item for improving reading scores, reducing class sizes, or addressing the teacher shortage that the NEA itself has called a crisis. The word "literacy" does not appear in the convention's new business items. "Math" doesn't either.
The NEA's defense of these priorities is predictable: educators care about the whole child, and social justice is inseparable from education. That framing works until you look at the numbers. According to the latest Nation's Report Card — the federal government's own benchmark — fewer than one in three American students are proficient in reading at either fourth or eighth grade. Four in ten fourth graders can't reach even the Basic level, the worst rate since 2002. A third of eighth graders fail to clear even the Basic benchmark — the worst percentage ever recorded. Eighth grade math scores are still nearly a full grade level below pre-pandemic levels and have barely budged in two years. These aren't COVID anomalies anymore. They are the new baseline.
The union that represents the teachers responsible for those numbers just voted to spend $5.2 million marching on Washington and $219,000 on ICE evasion cards.
Three million members pay dues to this organization. Those dues fund a political operation that now openly advocates for helping people evade federal law enforcement, restructuring school funding along racial lines, and removing a democratically elected president — all while the students those members teach fall further behind every year.
The budget tells you what an organization actually values. The NEA's budget doesn't mention reading.