A conservative watchdog group is attacking President Biden in a million-dollar ad blitz, accusing him of choosing teacher unions’ interests over students on the issue of school reopenings.
The $1 million ad campaign by Americans for Public Trust will run nationally and in Washington, D.C., over three weeks on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to the group.
“We know schools are safe,” said a narrator in the 30-second ad. “But Biden and his [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] secretly worked with the teachers’ unions to keep schools closed.”
The narrator continued, “Sacrificing kids, keeping them out of school to pay back liberal dark-money groups. Teachers’ unions gave him a record amount of money. Science? No, with Biden it’s always about dark money.
The ad flashes a news article on-screen involving the American Federation of Teachers lobbying the CDC. That teachers’ union’s president, Randi Weingarten defended her union’s action in an editorial last week arguing that her team was simply reaching out to the Biden administration for “science-based guidance” as the union had with the previous Trump administration.
“Just because ’Americans for Public Trust’ deal in dark money and disinformation, they must assume others do too,” said Ms. Weingarten in a statement. “All you have to do is read my speech last week to know how public we’ve been about reopening schools safely and keeping them open. And we’re glad that this administration, unlike the previous one, is doing the work to make it happen.”
The words “dark money” refer to groups that are not required to disclose their donors.
The acrimonious politics of school reopenings has made Mr. Biden’s pandemic response a target of conservatives and parents urging school reopenings.
Americans for Public Trust outside counsel Adam Laxalt, former Nevada attorney general and a Republican, has labeled Mr. Biden “the dark money president” for doing the work of the American Federation of Teachers.
“Biden is putting the interests of dark money special interests over those of parents, students, and teachers,” Mr. Laxalt said in a statement “The dark money groups pull the strings, and the American people are suffering the consequences.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.