Teachers Union Funds Marxist Radicalization of American Public Schools
The NEA funneled $1.4 million to an activist group now training protesters to stage anti-ICE walk-ins on school grounds during class time — without parental consent.
America's largest teachers union has funneled $1.4 million since 2020 to an activist group now training protesters to stage anti-ICE demonstrations at public schools — walking onto campus during instructional time and recruiting parents, educators, and students into coordinated political action. That's the finding of an exclusive Washington Examiner investigation into the National Education Association's ties to Midwest Academy, a Chicago-based organizer wrapping up its "Four Weeks of Power" training series April 30, days before planned May 1 actions target school grounds nationwide.
American public schools, critics argue, have been captured by Marxist radicals exploiting taxpayer-funded union infrastructure to draw children into ideological campaigns. The May Day Strong coalition coordinating these actions counts the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers, and numerous Democratic Socialists of America chapters among its members. More than 500 organizations participate in what organizers themselves bill as a general strike against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The tactics are brazen and deliberate. Planning materials document 30-to-45-minute rallies followed by coordinated walk-ins where activists enter school grounds en masse. The coalition promotes "no work, no school, no shopping" as the campaign's animating slogan. Children are already bearing the consequences: five Quakertown Community High School students in Pennsylvania were arrested during a Feb. 20 protest, and dozens of Lincoln High School students in Manitowoc, Wis., walked out April 8.
"This is yet another example of how activists and teachers unions view schools as a tool to advance their political agenda," said Rhyen Staley, director of research at Defending Education. "Putting children's education and safety at risk for political gain is unethical and immoral."
The $1.4 million in NEA funding to Midwest Academy is, by the union's own scale, a rounding error. Analysis of LM-2 filings by Illinois Policy shows the NEA spent $460,000 on Midwest Academy in 2025 alone — part of approximately $175 million in political activities that year. Only 10 percent of the NEA's $450 million 2025 budget went to representational activities for the teachers it ostensibly serves, while nearly 39 percent flowed to political and political-adjacent spending.
Forced union dues bankroll all of it, without member consent. The NEA published its own "May Day 2026 Solidarity Toolkit" with event-planning guidance, yet did not respond to Washington Examiner requests asking whether it officially endorses student truancy for May Day protests. Midwest Academy, for its part, states its goal plainly: to "build a broader, stronger base of parents, educators and students taking action to defend and transform public schools."
For critics, the word "transform" is doing a great deal of work. "Congress should revoke the NEA's federal charter or at least bar them from engaging in political activity altogether," said Corey DeAngelis, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation Center for Education Policy. "These radicals are providing free advertising for homeschooling, showing us exactly who they are, and parents need to pull their kids out of these institutions."
The walk-out strategy raises urgent questions about parental consent — questions the coalition's planning materials do not answer. Students are encouraged to skip class for political purposes with no clear mechanism for parental notification or approval. "When unanticipated cancellations occur, working parents must scramble to make arrangements for child care, students are deprived of a day of learning, and districts' hourly workers are robbed of a day's wages," said Terry Stoops, director of state affairs at Defending Education.
The coalition's demands reach far beyond any single immigration debate. May Day organizers call for "ICE Out" and describe the agency as "no private army serving authoritarian power" in their planning toolkit. National Nurses United Executive Director Mary Turner goes further still: "May Day won't just focus on domestic issues, but also slam Trump's war on Iran, his military aid to Israel for its murderous war on Gaza, his kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and his continuing embargo of Cuba. And we need to abolish ICE."
Turner's words make the scope of the campaign unmistakable. The protests extend well beyond immigration enforcement to a sweeping indictment of President Trump's foreign policy, border decisions, and executive authority — all channeled through the institutional machinery of America's public school system. These are not spontaneous student uprisings. They are organized, union-funded, and carefully timed.
The real stakes here are parental authority and the integrity of the classroom. When a union devotes nearly 39 percent of its half-billion-dollar budget to politics while training outside activists to walk onto school grounds uninvited, the children caught in the middle aren't participants — they're props. Parents who send their children to school on May 1 deserve to know what, and who, may be waiting for them there.