Randi Weingarten locked schoolchildren out of classrooms for two years and called it science.
Now a federal watchdog says she's been steering taxpayer-funded pension money into her radical political agenda.
The Department of Labor just received a formal demand to investigate – and your tax dollars are directly in the crosshairs.
How Randi Weingarten Embedded AFT Trustees Inside Public Pension Funds
Teachers contribute to their pensions out of every paycheck. School districts match those contributions with public funds. States manage the money.
Those funds are supposed to be run by fiduciaries with one job: maximize returns for the teachers depending on them for retirement.
American Federal of Teachers head Randi Weingarten had a different idea.
A formal letter landed on acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling's desk from Consumers' Research, a national consumer watchdog, demanding a federal investigation into the American Federation of Teachers.
The charge: AFT has been using its influence over public pension trustees to run political pressure campaigns – fossil fuel divestments, DEI boycotts, anti-ICE activism – on the taxpayer's dime.
The mechanism is damning. While AFT doesn't directly control public pension funds, over 50 AFT-affiliated trustees sit on 27 public pension funds across the country, according to the letter. That's Weingarten's political network, embedded inside retirement accounts built with your money.
"Teachers spend their entire careers trusting that their retirement savings are being managed so they can retire without financial worries," Consumers' Research Executive Director Will Hild told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "Instead of focusing on maximizing returns, the AFT and its President Randi Weingarten have chosen to focus on woke agendas."
What those trustees did with that access is the story.
Starting in 2022, AFT pushed public retirement funds – including the Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York – to dump their fossil fuel holdings entirely and redirect the money into "workers and communities."
The investment returns those funds owe to retirees came second to Weingarten's green agenda.
Then came Target. AFT passed a resolution in March 2026 calling for a consumer boycott over the retailer's retreat from DEI commitments. They launched a second boycott after Target's CEO "failed to take a stand against Immigration and Customs Enforcement's occupation of the community in which Target is headquartered."
Public pension funds own almost 7 million shares of Target stock, according to an AFT press release Weingarten issued in February. She was threatening to torch an asset taxpayers helped build.
Hild was direct: Weingarten "has used her influence to push for boycotts of fossil fuel producers, firearm manufacturers, and retailers who do not conform to her woke priorities, even if these boycotts may negatively impact pensioners."
And when politically driven investment decisions cause public pension funds to underperform, taxpayers don't just lose the money already contributed – they're legally obligated to make up the shortfall.
Public pensions are guaranteed benefits. If the fund can't pay out, state and local governments cover the gap. That means tax increases, service cuts, or both.
Weingarten's agenda isn't just bad investing. It's a potential bill sent directly to every taxpayer in the states where her trustees operate.
AFT's ESG Agenda Has Ignored Federal Fiduciary Law Since 2007
Conservatives have been sounding this alarm for years.
The Department of Labor has long held that federal retirement law prohibits plan fiduciaries from using pension trusts to promote political agendas unrelated to financial returns. Weingarten ignored it.
AFT is one of the most politically active unions in America, funneling the overwhelming majority of its political donations to Democrat candidates and causes.
That money comes from union dues. The pension scheme is the same operation run through a different account – except this time the source is taxpayer money, not voluntary membership fees.
Alleigh Marré, executive director of the American Parents Coalition, connected the dots: "Randi Weingarten has proven over and over again her priorities are advancing a radical political agenda at the expense of children.”
“Parents have watched Weingarten use AFT as a political machine for years, pushing activist curriculum into classrooms and keeping schools closed longer than necessary, which led to devastating learning loss. It is not surprising that Weingarten is also prioritizing this political agenda at the expense of teachers and retirees."
Department of Labor Investigation Could Be the End of Weingarten's Pension Scheme
The Trump administration's Department of Labor is now in position to do what the Biden administration would never touch – hold Weingarten accountable for burning her own members' retirement security on her political agenda.
Consumers' Research is asking DOL to review whether AFT-affiliated trustees are breaching their fiduciary duties by subordinating financial returns to union politics.
Federal retirement law is clear: pension trustees exist to maximize returns for beneficiaries, not to advance the ideological priorities of whoever placed them in those seats.
Acting Secretary Sonderling has the letter. The evidence is documented. Fifty-plus trustees, 27 pension funds, years of boycott campaigns and divestment schemes executed with money that came out of Americans' tax bills.
Taxpayers didn't vote to fund Weingarten's crusade. She took their money and ran the operation anyway.
Sources:
- Spencer Lombardo, "SCOOP: Teachers Union Head Under Fire For Trying To Use Pension Funds For Left-Wing Political Goals," Daily Caller, June 11, 2026.
- "Outrageous! Taxpayers Will Pay Randi Weingarten a Pension Because of Government's Special Deals With Unions," Fox News.
- "Why Is the Teachers' Union Targeting ICE, Not Education?" The Heritage Foundation, May 9, 2026.
- "Examiner Editorial: Teachers Union Strong-Arms the Financial Community," Washington Examiner, November 1, 2023.
