Why Are Billionaires Messing With Public Education? Part 2

Transcript

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Alyssa (00:03):

If you don't know where a talking point is coming from, then you can't know ultimately what the goal is behind that talking point. So I think it's really important for people to stand up and pay attention.

Natieka (00:13):

Hello and welcome to School Me, the National Education Association's podcast dedicated to helping educators thrive at every stage of their careers. I'm your host, Natieka Samuels. In part two of our series on billionaires in public education, we're zooming in on the current moment and the rise of new well-funded activist groups targeting school boards, banning books and attacking everything from diversity initiatives to trans students' rights. Who's behind groups like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education. What is dark money and how does it quietly reshape local and national education policy? And who is Leonard Leo and why is he so influential in this fight? Joining us is Alyssa Bowen, Deputy Executive Director of True North Research and the Director of True North's Equality Project. Her work focuses on the special interest groups attacking our rights, freedoms and democratic institutions. Thanks for joining us today, Alyssa.

Alyssa (01:05):

Thank you so much for having me.

Natieka (01:06):

Let's start off with a little bit about you. Can you tell me a bit about your current position and what you're working on?

Alyssa (01:13):

I am a PhD in history and I am deputy executive director of True North Research, and we look at the bad actors attacking our rights, freedoms, democracy, all those things currently under attack right now.

Natieka (01:29):

We hear a lot about dark money, and that sounds really sinister, but it's not necessarily clear what that is. So what is dark money for our purposes and why is it so powerful in politics and specifically related to education?

Alyssa (01:47):

Dark money sounds sinister because it is kind of sinister. Dark money groups are groups that take money from sources, whether it be people, foundations, groups, corporations, other special interests that they keep secret from the public and that means that the public is unaware of who's funding these groups. Donors essentially get special tax-exempt status, special tax benefits from donating to these groups. And then regular folks like you and I don't know what the donor's agenda is really behind the scenes. So for example, Moms for Liberty, which has taken in millions in a year and revenue, only a small fraction of that is known by the public in terms of who's funding. So that means the great majority of their funding is unknown. We don't know what the identity obviously of these funders, but we also don't know what their agenda is. Do they get benefits financially? For example, we do know one small funder was a foundation that is a private for-profit entity that only supports private schools, so that means that they could conceivably benefit financially from donating to Moms for Liberty or other groups that attack public schools and public school teachers.

Natieka (03:07):

Are there other examples of these types of groups that maybe people would've heard of and how do they present themselves to the public? So if people hear about this group and we would say, "Okay, they're a dark money group and they have nefarious goals," but how are they publicly presenting themselves and the work that they do and is it legal what they do?

Alyssa (03:28):

What they do as far as we know unfortunately is legal. There doesn't seem to be any indication that there's something that's not above board, but what they are doing is essentially tricking the public or they're representing themselves as concerned moms, concerned parents, as if that's a politically neutral thing. When we know that the politics of motherhood and parenthood is complicated and has darker history, going back to the integration of public schools, and these groups are really fringe groups presenting themselves as parents. They're often far right groups like Moms for Liberty, Moms for America, there's endless amounts of these groups, Parents Defending Education, and they use their identity as parents to push this far right agenda.

(04:16):

It's really at the expense of students, at the expense of parents who just want their kids to get an education that is quality, that promotes equity, that promotes justice. There's this group called Independent Women's Forum, and their 501(c)(4) is independent women's voice, and they even use attacks on public schools to influence elections to go into local communities and sort of agitate in a way that undermines people's trust in public schools. But it's sort of a deeply cynical project at its root.

Natieka (04:49):

Does this exist on the left? Essentially, I think I've definitely heard people talk about dark money on both sides, but I don't really hear about dark money groups that exist that support public schools and support libraries and all of the books and all of the kids. So is this just a far right convention?

Alyssa (05:10):

Oh, that's such a good question. There are nonprofits that support public schools. They exist to a much smaller degree than the groups designed to attack public schools. And I think that they are genuinely funded more at the grassroots level. They tend to be funded more at the grassroots level than these other groups who have, for example, Charles Koch, one of the richest men in the world behind them. And I do think there are groups that exist to support public schools. One that I love is Red Wine and Blue, and they really try to galvanize parents that are pro democracy, actually pro-freedom in the way that the majority of people understand freedom and rights versus a far-right group that kind of appropriates that term. There are groups fighting back to support public schools for sure.

Natieka (05:58):

And so what would you say is an important difference between nonprofits, even a labor union like the NEA, we are not a nonprofit, but we do have interest in certain policies and ways of doing things, but it sounds like even a large union like us doesn't have quite as much power as some of these dark money groups? And how would you characterize the difference between nonprofits and other NGOs as we talk about them and these dark money groups?

Alyssa (06:27):

I think I think of it in terms of power, and I think the far right dark money groups have so much more weight behind them because they have so much more money seemingly behind them. Like I said, you have Charles Koch, a billionaire, one of the richest men in the world, and his oil fortune behind him. We have Betsy DeVos and the Prince Family, again, like some of the richest folks in the world who are trying to undermine public education. And then you might have smaller foundations, liberal foundations and labor unions behind. But from my perspective, that's different in terms of people power. There are actually grassroots people and workers who are behind efforts to protect public schools versus the dark money groups on the right who are trying to undermine using sheer monetary force to kind of shove attacks and school privatization down people's throats. To me, that's the fundamental difference between what folks like NEA and AFT and these other far-right pro privatization groups are.

Natieka (07:32):

So it sounds like part of it is that the strength of nonprofits sometimes comes from how many small monthly donations that they get from the average person, and in the case of unions, the people who join and are members and get the benefits of that, whereas these groups are gatherings of few very rich people with an agenda as opposed to a collection of a lot of average people with a dream, let's say.

Alyssa (08:01):

Yeah, I think that's a really good characterization.

Natieka (08:03):

I think Moms for Liberty is probably the biggest household name of these groups. I think we hear about [inaudible 00:08:09], but then we also hear about Moms for Liberty. I think those are the two groups that I've heard of even before having these conversations. So who is Moms for Liberty? Who funds them and what's their agenda?

Alyssa (08:22):

Moms for Liberty started during COVID by two right wing school board members from Florida, like you said, talking about NEA members with the dream. Well, these Moms for Liberty members with the dream were really backed by groups like Leadership Institute, which has received Coke funding, and they kind of popped up seemingly out of nowhere with a ton of money to spend on agitating against public schools. And this is at the same time as a lot of other already existing groups are really going hard against public schools and pushing a lot of pro-privatization schemes. So groups like I mentioned, Independent Women's Forum, Independent Women's Voice, Parents Defending Education was a new one that also popped up at the same time as Moms for Liberty. And these groups really were taking advantage of the COVID epidemic, sort of a shock doctrine like Naomi Klein talks about type attack where they're using a huge global catastrophe to basically extract wealth from the middle and lower classes and funnel it to the top.

(09:29):

And COVID was a perfect opportunity because of folks being upset, understandably upset about the difficulties of sending their children to public education during a global pandemic. And of course, I wouldn't blame the public school teachers or administrators. I think there were in a really tough spot, but I do think this was sort of a perfect opportunity for some of the new and already existing school privatization entities to come and demonize public school teachers and public school curricula. So Moms For Liberty, like I said, we don't really know a ton of who funds them, but we do know some. So Heritage Foundation, which is the group that was behind the Project 2025 Trump Policy Playbook that is now being implemented as well as Leadership Institute is deeply tied to Moms for Liberty. And that's like I mentioned, has been co-funded. And so I said a lot of their agenda or the agenda of the groups behind them is unknown because they're a dark money entity.

Natieka (10:31):

And we don't know who funds them because they're not nonprofits, right?

Alyssa (10:35):

Unfortunately they are nonprofits, so they're tax-exempt. So that tax benefits for donating, but we have inadequate disclosure policies, which is something we really need to change. Basically, through tax filings groups do need to disclose who they fund, but not who funds them. So it's kind of a fun game like tracing what we can through tax filings about who funds who.

Natieka (11:03):

And so how large is Moms for Liberty? Is it a group of 50 people or is it an entire nationwide network of folks?

Alyssa (11:12):

I'd have to look at their 990 to see how many employees they currently have, although it's lagged by two years. So I could only tell you from 2023. They claim to have broader membership, I think, than they may actually have. So a lot of groups, they will just say anytime any person has attended an event, they consider them a member or something. So it's hard to tell how exactly wide support or membership for their organization is. They do have groups in many states across the country, official groups that have secretaries and heads of their chapters, but it would still consider very much a fringe group of parents that don't represent the general support for public education that we see in polling.

Natieka (12:01):

Right. Just because they have an event planned doesn't mean that many people went to it.

Alyssa (12:05):

Yeah, exactly.

Natieka (12:06):

Okay. And so we talked a little bit about COVID and the opportunity that that posed for the proliferation of these ideas. So can you talk a little bit more about how COVID changed the landscape for these groups and gave them an opening into the social consciousness and our everyday lives?

Alyssa (12:24):

Schools in some ways are a perfect attack vector for the far right. I mean because of how strong, first of all, NEA, AFT, other unions are in this space because it allows groups to attack unions, it allows groups like Christian authoritarian and religious authoritarian groups who are seeking public funding to come after public schools. There's so called libertarians who want to destroy any kind of social program or social safety net, just generally public schools are a perfect target for a confluence of these groups. I think because of everything going on during COVID where things were uncertain and different schools had different policies in regard to vaccines and masks, distance learning and things like that to keep staff and their students safe, it became a target for all of these groups that I mentioned.

(13:24):

And you saw every day these groups on their far right platforms attacking the teachers unions, attacking teachers, attacking administrators, and it went from there, right? So critical race theory then entered public consciousness and became a sort of a factor for all the things that the far right dislikes. It really was a sort of entree for these groups to broadly attack schools and push private alternatives as well, like homeschooling and pods, et cetera.

Natieka (14:00):

Parents Defending Education is another group that's been involved in lawsuits and policy fights across the country. Can you talk a little bit about this group and they're trying to accomplish?

Alyssa (14:10):

Parents Defending Education is run by Nikki Neely, who also runs another group that focuses on attacking universities, which is called Speech First. She is sort of a longtime Coke land operative. Speech First also has ties to Ed Bloom, who is the man behind the attack on affirmative action a couple years ago at Harvard NUNC. She's very much a longstanding pro-privatization actor. Parents Defending Education is sort of the legal arm of this far right anti-public school operation. So they file a lot of complaints against public schools for inclusive curricula and policies. They file lawsuits against schools sometimes they are also producing, quote, research that they use to attack schools, for example, trying to draw connections between China and public schools. So basically the legal arm, the litigation arm of this whole movement. And it's less out in the open than groups like Moms for Liberty because they aren't as grassroots, but they do take in dues from some members, but they're largely behind the scenes, more acting before the courts.

Natieka (15:30):

Thanks for listening to School Me and a quick thank you to all of the NEA members listening. If you're not an NEA member yet, visit nea.org/whyjoin to learn more about member benefits. And a name that keeps coming up in these discussions and some of the research that I've done before this episode is Leonard Leo, who is this person and why do they keep coming up in discussions about dark money and education and why does it matter?

Alyssa (16:00):

Leonard Leo is a good one for everyone to know. Ideally, this would be a household name because he's such a powerful actor, even though right now there's a tiff between Trump and him. And so folks are like, "Oh, maybe Leonard Leo's not as influential," but this man has created an entire ecosystem for Christian authoritarians who want to impose their religious agenda on all of us through binding law. He is co-chair of the Federalist Society, which creates a pipeline to power for far-right lawyers and helps install them in powerful judgeships and other attorneys general positions, et cetera. Some have called him Trump's Judge Whisperer. He created the short list from which Trump chose Amy Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch to install on the court, and he also helped get the other far-right members of the Supreme Court confirmed.

(16:59):

So he's a very powerful player. He also, a few years ago, took in $1.6 billion from an anti-apportion billionaire called Barre Seid. And so he has made it clear and articulated that his goal is to turn back our rights to the pre new deal era, and there are various institutions that he seeks to take over. He's already succeeded largely in controlling the Supreme Court. He also tries to influence state court elections, but he also is coming for other key institutions, cultural institutions, education, journalism and media entertainment even. So he's got a lot of money and he is wielding that money in terrifyingly effective ways to control key pillars of our democracy.

Natieka (17:49):

You mentioned the Supreme Court. So how do all of these groups that we've talked about tie into attacks from the Supreme Court on affirmative action, diversity programs, trans students' rights, all of the things that we're talking about today?

Alyssa (18:03):

The courts are pretty illustrative example of this takeover or attempted takeover of key institutions, but this has sort of been the first line for them. There's a whole infrastructure designed to get cases decided in the way that they want, and there's so many cases that have been brought before the Supreme Court and other lower courts and state courts to push this agenda in terms of education. So recently we've had Carson V. Makin, which was the case that the Supreme Court decided that tax funded tuition programs had to include also religious schools despite the intention of our founders to keep public and private designations. And then there's Kennedy V. Bremerton, if you remember that one that was recently decided by the Supreme Court where the far right faction of the court decided that a football coach could compel his student players to pray on the field before a game, and this is a public school that this is happening at.

(19:04):

And then that coach then left straight after. So the case was clearly not about this coach having the ability to pray. It was sort of one of many cases that was manufactured by this far right ecosystem in order to impose an agenda. So there's a lot of devastating cases that have come out in recent court terms now that there's a far right majority on the Supreme Court, and I think unfortunately we can expect that to continue.

Natieka (19:32):

Beyond national news there's a local side to all of this. So what does all of this look like locally? What kind of influence do these groups have locally and when we're hyper local to school board meetings and individual school district policies, how are they influencing all of that?

Alyssa (19:52):

So I think that they've tried, and in some cases they've succeeded to impose these kind of regressive policies, but I think those are largely in places that already had that inclination already. That doesn't mean that it's not impacting students who happen to belong to minority communities or the LGBTQ+ community, but I do think that the bright side is there has been so much pushback to this because sometimes it's seemingly coming out of nowhere.

(20:20):

There will be all of a sudden a Moms for Liberty chapter pop up and then school board meetings start to become more divisive and parents are wondering where this came from, and they do a little investigating and they realize this isn't really a local grassroots campaign. It's run by these national political players. And I think folks have been really good at responding to this at the local level. And when there's all these campaigns, we can, I think, see this because during, especially local elections like school board elections, there's sometimes, it doesn't sound like a lot, but thousands, tens of thousands of dollars thrown into local school board elections by these national far right groups like 1776 Project or even Moms for Liberty.

(21:08):

But largely, if you actually look at the numbers of the campaigns that they've supported versus wins, it's pretty 50/50 winning, losing. So they're throwing all this money and folks I think really don't like these national political actors coming to their communities and trying to stir up trouble. And polling shows too that folks like their public schools and parents like their public schools. I think there's more folks that support public schools, but people on their right, especially in rural communities, don't want their public schools to go away. They're pillars of the community and pillars of community for folks. So to me, it's heartening to see that there's been so much pushback at the local level.

Natieka (21:54):

Why should everyday educators, parents, community members care about these groups and where the money is coming from?

Alyssa (22:02):

I think they should care about these groups because they have real-life effects on folks. They have real-life effects on your neighbor with a trans student in the schools. They have a real impact on what their kids are learning while they're pushing all these anti-DEI and anti honestly truth in history and in current events in terms of what teachers can teach and what they can't teach. I think that people should not ignore that. I think that the reason why we've had such pushback at the school board election level and beyond is because folks have informed themselves and done the hard work of connecting with groups like True North, Court Accountability, a Center for Media and Democracy, other groups that are doing the hard investigative work about these groups. And if you don't know where a talking point is coming from, then you can't know ultimately what the goal is behind that talking point. So I think it's really important for people to stand up and pay attention.

Natieka (23:05):

You spend a lot of time thinking about this, reading about this, investigating this. I hope you have a good self-care routine. I'm wondering for you as someone who's steeped in it, what do you think is the most disturbing part of all of this?

Alyssa (23:20):

I used to consider these dark money groups fringe, and I used to scream into the void and or it felt like I was sometimes drawing those kind of conspiracy theory clues to connect the dots, even though they're unfortunately truth. But now I won't say my job's irrelevant. I think it's very much relevant still in terms of drawing these connections and bringing things to light that aren't already known. But what's frightening to me is now we have an administration that has a playbook that was written by these groups, and so the administration is already imposing a lot of that policy playbook wishlist that was written by Heritage, which actually just hired one of Moms for Liberty's co-founders to run its school privatization entity.

(24:10)

Moms for Liberty is a partner in writing that project 2025 playbook. To me, what's most terrifying is that these fringe groups now have a lot of power in the government and not just the captured Supreme Court because I think most folks know that the Supreme Court is captured, but also basically in all three branches of government. It's not a sort of secret plan by a few billionaires who have been working for decades to impose their agenda, but it's actually in the hands of politicians and judges with a lot of power to make those changes happen.

Natieka (24:48):

Project 2025 is something that it feels like one of those things where it was like the boogeyman of the election, and maybe there's some people who knew about it before then, but it seemed maybe to some people, like almost a conspiracy theory. There's this group that has this list and this plan of what they want to get done by this year and Trump is going to help it happen. And now despite his initial denial of being involved, there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. So how does Project 2025 and these groups that we've been talking about, how do they come together and how are they supporting one another?

Alyssa (25:29):

That is a very good question, and I'm not sure I'm fully equipped to answer because I think there's a lot of nuances within the Project 2025 policy platform that I'm not exactly familiar with. But I do know that Project 2025 wanted to, for example, disempower the NEA and the AFT and other unions, and that's something that Trump is really working towards. I do know that Trump wanted to implement a voucher program in all 50 states that would effectively begin to defund public schools that Trump and his Congress are in the process of considering. I do know that Project 2025 had a lot of attacks on LGBTQ+ students in terms of what could be taught in terms of how teachers and ministers could protect trans students especially.

(26:26):

And those are all currently under attack as well. And parental rights as a federal law is something also that they wanted to implement. And I hope folks know that parental rights is just a PR talking point by these groups that want to essentially control what all of our children and students learn in school. And if that's implemented, I think they get to decide how to define that, and that's a terrifying prospect. I think that also is something that they'll be working towards soon in terms of education, a privatization agenda, especially in terms of funneling money to private entities, privately administrated entities is something that we have to be really concerned about with this administration.

Natieka (27:10):

For anyone listening who might feel a little overwhelmed or intimidated, concerned about what we've talked about today and seeing how coordinated and organized these efforts are, what are some concrete real steps that people can take to push back, get involved and encounter these attacks on both the local and national level?

Alyssa (27:35):

First of all, staying informed. So it's impossible unless you have my job, I think to follow everything that's going on, especially when there's so many things under attack at the same time right now. But I do think that there are groups like ours, True North, and our partner organization, Court Accountability, that really track these things and try to make them palatable for folks. Judd Legum's Popular Info Substack is really great, Center for Media and Democracy does excellent work. I already mentioned Red Wine and Blue is amazing. If you're interested in the court's, Democracy Docket is a really great resource. So I think first just staying informed about who is implementing these attacks. Also, I think don't cede their language. So I think it's really important to go to school board meetings and kind of keep track of what the far-right talking points on education are.

(28:30):

And then if you hear them in school board meetings or wherever in your children's schools, I think making sure to push back and ask, "What do you mean by that?" Or say, "Are you in touch with Moms for Liberty? Are you in touch with parents of any education? Who taught you to say that," kind of thing is really important. Don't cede their language and also just be there for your public schools. Go up your school board meetings and attend these important local events. And then I think really supporting policies that encourage accountability and more transparency in political spending and nonprofit spending is really important. I think the most important is being involved in your public schools and going to those monthly or however often they meet meetings to stay involved in local politics.

Natieka (29:20):

Thank you so much for joining us today, Alyssa. I learned a lot and I hope everybody listening did as well.

Alyssa (29:26):

Thank you so much. Excited to hear it when it's out.

Natieka (29:29):

Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of School Me. And take a minute to rate the show and leave a review. It really helps us out and it makes it easier for more educators to find us. For more tips to help you bring the best to your students, text pod, that's P-O-D, to 48744.