Chicago Teachers Union got last-second funding from the Biden EPA

Published March 10, 2025 1:41pm ET



Just days before then-President-elect Donald Trump was set to take office, President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency wired $100,000 to an arm of the Chicago Teachers Union to train public school children in environmental advocacy.

The payment, which the EPA disbursed to the Chicago Teachers Union Foundation 12 days before Trump’s inauguration, is earmarked to fund a two-week-long “Environmental Justice Freedom School,” where public school students will be taught how to engage in environmental activism, federal records show. Chicago’s teachers union has a long history of financially supporting the Democratic Party, using money collected from its members to shower Democratic lawmakers with cash and pouring millions of dollars into supporting Chicago Democrats. In 2023, for instance, the union ran a deficit after spending over $2 million backing the mayoral bid of former Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson, a Democrat. 

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