Why are the teacher's union trying to influence children to be democratic and agansit ICE
Executive summary
Teachers’ unions are major political actors that spend money, endorse candidates, and mobilize voters to shape education policy; their preferences tend to align with Democratic positions because of overlapping policy priorities and institutional incentives, not because unions have a documented, systematic program to “influence children” to back any party or specific agency like ICE (the reporting reviewed does not show unions running programs that explicitly indoctrinate students for partisan ends) [1] [2] [3].
1. Unions as political machines: resources, endorsements, and local power
National and local teachers’ unions have dramatically increased political spending and use endorsements, PAC activity, and local organizing to influence school-board and other elections; OpenSecrets documents large growth in donations and the central roles of NEA and AFT in electoral giving [1], and scholarship shows union endorsements substantially raise the probability of winning local school board contests, conferring a “teachers’ union premium” on preferred candidates [2] [4].
2. Where union political energy comes from: protecting labor interests that often align with Democrats
Union political action flows from routine labor priorities—collective bargaining, pensions, staffing, and school-resourcing—that intersect with broad Democratic positions on public spending, public-sector unions, and workers’ rights; analyses tracing how modern teacher unions became potent political actors point to state laws and institutional incentives that pushed educators into electoral engagement, producing natural alignment with parties that support collective bargaining and public education funding [5] [3].
3. Why critics see “agenda-pushing” and why supporters dispute that framing
Conservative outlets and commentators argue unions use dues and electoral muscle to push a far-left agenda and to protect underperforming teachers, presenting unions as special-interest actors [6] [7]; union advocates counter that teacher-led political activity brings classroom expertise into policy debates and that defending teacher workplace conditions usually benefits students because teacher working conditions are learning conditions [8] [4]. Both perspectives are documented in the literature, and empirical work finds mixed effects of union influence on student achievement, making simple partisan explanations incomplete [5] [2].
4. The question of “influencing children” and positions on immigration/ICE: what the sources do and do not show
None of the reviewed reporting establishes that teachers’ unions run systematic programs aimed at converting students into Democratic voters or that they are coordinating anti-ICE civic indoctrination in classrooms; academic and policy sources focus on unions’ electoral spending, endorsements, and policy lobbying rather than curricular brainwashing [9] [1] [2]. That said, unions and many education groups have publicly supported policies protecting immigrant students’ rights in school settings and opposed punitive immigration enforcement practices that they argue disrupt learning and harm children—positions that naturally put them at odds with restrictive immigration enforcement but which the sources here do not document as “influencing children” to adopt partisan views (reporting limitation: no direct evidence in supplied sources).
5. Strategy and incentives: why unions might speak out on immigration or ICE-related issues
When unions engage on issues like immigration enforcement, the motivation documented in reporting and scholarship is strategic and instrumental: protecting vulnerable students and families to safeguard attendance, well-being, and school stability, and advancing broader labor and public-education interests that track with Democratic policy platforms; these are political choices that use union power to shape the policy environment rather than explicit programs to convert children into partisan supporters [9] [8] [3].
6. Bottom line and alternative explanations
The most defensible reading of the evidence is that teachers’ unions pursue political influence to protect members’ labor interests and to shape education policy—activities that often coincide with Democratic policy positions and with advocacy for immigrant-friendly school practices—but the supplied sources do not substantiate a claim that unions are systematically trying to indoctrinate children to be Democrats or explicitly mobilize them against ICE, and critics’ claims about “far-left agendas” reflect partisan interpretation of the unions’ institutional tactics and priorities [1] [6] [7].