Does America’s Largest Teachers’ Union Still Deserve Its Congressional Charter?

A new Senate report scrutinizes the NEA’s far-left political activism.

The National Education Association (NEA) holds a rare congressional charter granted to select private nonprofit organizations “deemed to serve important public purposes.” But a damning new Senate report suggests the massive teachers’ union is operating outside the terms of that charter by engaging in political activism, partnering with communist groups, and pushing away Jewish members with anti-Israel rhetoric.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) is calling for a review of the NEA’s charter.

The NEA and its state and local affiliates spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to influence what happens in classrooms around the nation. Now the NEA congressional charter is under review after a Senate report just exposed its ties to dangerous communist groups.

The NEA, the nation’s largest union, has widespread influence, with local affiliates in more than 14,000 cities and counties across the nation.

Every year, local and state NEA affiliates, called “education associations,” are at the polls, passing out literature for the union’s endorsed candidates. Their misleading claim often made to voters is “these are the candidates teachers want.” Only a small portion of teachers are NEA members, but the union has a broad reach through political activism and partnerships with other leftist groups—including dangerous communist organizations.

A September 2026 report published by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) exposes the NEA’s ties to such groups, along with its promotion of political extremism in schools and allegations of antisemitism within its ranks. The revelations prompted Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the committee’s chairman, to call for a review of the union’s congressional charter.

Corrupting Our Classrooms

Congress can grant federal charters to nonprofit organizations that are “deemed to serve important public purposes and advance interests that benefit the United States.” The NEA received its federal charter in 1906 “to elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching; and to promote the cause of education in the United States.”

The Senate report—titled Corrupting Our Classrooms, How America’s Teachers’ Unions Are Failing Our Students—reveals that the NEA has drifted far from its original purpose into pushing dangerous political ideology in classrooms and undermining parental rights.

“Children are struggling to read and to do basic math,” Cassidy, the HELP Committee chairman, said in a press release. “Instead of helping students succeed, teachers’ unions are injecting a dangerous, anti-American agenda into our classrooms. Parents deserve to send their children to school without worrying that they will be indoctrinated with DEI and taught that Americans have ‘misplaced faith’ in our institutions.”

The HELP report findings are shocking.

Finding I: Political and Ideological Advocacy Beyond Core Educational Functions

The report outlines many of the same issues Restoration News previously raised concerning the NEA, including the union's partnership with the Marxist Zinn Education Project and other ideological activist groups. It also highlights the NEA’s involvement with the nationwide May Day protests, which sought to “bring activism into the classroom” and targeted children as young as 3 years old.

The HELP Committee further exposed how the NEA is subverting parental rights by giving teachers resources to work around the Supreme Court’s Mahmoud v. Taylor ruling. The 2025 decision requires schools to allow parents to opt their children out of LGBT-themed instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs.

The NEA has even collaborated with CODEPINK—identified by the U.S. State Department as a Chinese Communist Party influence operation.

Finding II: Antisemitism, Hostility Toward Jewish Members, and Organizational Response

According to the report, Jewish NEA members alleged they were “cornered, shunned, and singled out” throughout the union’s July 2025 Representative Assembly. Some union members reportedly “laughed and clapped when a speaker referenced the death of 82-year-old Holocaust survivor Karen Diamond who was burned alive by a Molotov cocktail” at a protest in Colorado.

The NEA also sent a mass email in 2025 to nearly 3 million members with a “Native Land” map of “land we occupy” highlighting an area listed as “Palestine.” The area included all of modern-day Israel and failed to acknowledge historical Jewish ties to the land. The report notes that the map offered “an incomplete picture of the region’s history [and] sidestepped the historical basis for the legitimacy of a Jewish state in Israel.”

The NEA partners with a leftist group called Education International, for which NEA President Becky Pringle serves on the executive board. Just one week after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, Education International issued a rebuke for Israeli retaliation in Gaza. During a trip to Palestinian territories, Pringle met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, a “self-proclaimed member of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement,” which takes pride in “initiating the first shot, the first bullet” against Israel. While there, Pringle met with leaders of the General Union of Palestinian Teachers, a group with close ties to terrorist organizations.

Finding III: Irresponsible Financial Stewardship and Misuse of Member Dues

The HELP report found that “Only a small portion of union member dues go towards activities that tangibly benefit or directly represent teachers, while substantial sums flow into political activism and outside organizations.”

Only 10 percent of the NEA’s annual budget goes toward representational activities. The report highlights that the vast majority of union money funds political activities. In 2025, the NEA gave its political action committee, the NEA Advocacy Fund, $8.6 million. It has also distributed millions of dollars to other leftist political organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, Sixteen Thirty Fund, and the George Soros-linked Tides Foundation.

The HELP report calls for Congress to evaluate whether the NEA’s current activities “remain consistent with the purposes of its federal charter and whether additional transparency or governance measures are necessary.”

A congressional charter is supposed to mark an organization that serves an important public purpose. The Senate report asks a simple question: Does the NEA still meet that test? Congress must quickly answer that question to stop dangerous ideologies from infiltrating America’s classrooms.

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