The National Education Association (NEA) conducted a training session comprised of leftist messaging, according to the watchdog group Defending Education.
The event, which took place last month, was advertised as an “Advocacy and Free Speech Rights for K-12 Educators” training, Fox News reports. The training declared that the Department of Education is “now actively committed to violating civil rights,” and tasked educators with protecting “vulnerable students.”
According to the slide presentation obtained by the watchdog, the NEA believes that “Democracy itself is at stake” due to an “unprecedented push to criminalize speech and political opposition.” In another slide, the NEA declared that those behind the alleged issues in education are “not just the Trump Administration…it’s Red State governments as well.”
On a slide discussing religious liberty, the NEA said the Supreme Court is “increasingly willing to allow religious opt-outs,” which the union warns could eventually apply to pronoun policies for transgender students. “But maybe similar arguments could be used to resist anti-trans pronoun laws that would require educators to act in conflict with religiously liberal principles?” the NEA says.
The NEA has also been vocal in its criticism of immigration enforcement activities, and has promoted student walkouts and anti-ICE messaging.
Last year, the teachers’ union American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education over its policy that withholds federal funds from schools with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Discussing a letter sent by the Education Department warning of potential funding losses, the lawsuit says the message suggests that “a wide variety of core instruction, activities, and programs that schools, from pre-kindergarten through post-graduate education, use to teach and support their students now constitute illegal discrimination.”
