{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.schmitt.senate.gov/media/press-releases/senator-schmitt-calls-on-trump-administration-to-investigate-teachers-unions-woke-investment-practices/", "Senator Schmitt Calls on Trump Administration to Investigate Teachers Union\u2019s Woke Investment Practices", "2026-07-09", "2026", "2026-07", "Republican", "Senate", "MO", "Eric Schmitt", "S001227", "www.schmitt.senate.gov", "schmitt", "https://www.schmitt.senate.gov/media/press-releases/", "scraper", "U.S. SENATE \u2014 Today, U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) wrote to the Department of Labor (DOL) requesting that the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) initiate an investigation into whether the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) coordinated with any Employee Retirement Income Security Act(ERISA)-covered plans, fiduciaries, investment managers, or proxy-voting to use plan assets or shareholder rights for political or ideological environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-based objectives.\n\n\u201cAFT operates through affiliated state and local unions that form constituent parts of the AFT national organization structure. AFT and its affiliates\u2019 membership includes not only public-school teachers, but also private-sector healthcare workers, private higher-education employees, other non-governmental employees, and AFT\u2019s own employees.\n\n\u201cAccordingly, many dues-paying AFT members participate in ERISA-covered retirement or employee-benefit plans. So to the extent AFT-affiliated ERISA plans maintain invested assets, those responsible for managing the plans\u2019 assets are subject to ERISA\u2019s duties of prudence and loyalty. Federal law thus prohibits AFT-affiliated plan fiduciaries from violating those duties of loyalty and prudence by subordinating participants\u2019 financial interests to collateral political, social, or ideological objectives.\n\n\u201cYet AFT leadership\u2019s repeated claims that it will leverage plan assets for political purposes suggest it may be coordinating with plan fiduciaries to engage in precisely the type of political and ideological investment activities prohibited by ERISA\u2019s duty of loyalty. For example, AFT\u2019s President Randi Weingarten recently sent a letter to Target Corporation threatening to leverage members\u2019 retirement-fund and benefit-plan holdings to pressure the company into adopting specific political stances. Additionally, members of AFT\u2019s leadership also appear to serve as fiduciaries of ERISA-covered plans, raising concern that AFT leadership has the means to effectuate its stated desire for politicized investment activities.\n\n\u201cThis potential political weaponization of plan assets puts workers\u2019 retirements and benefits funds at risk and distorts capital markets. And if AFT and plan managers coordinated to take investment activities based on politics and ideology rather than financial considerations, then they may have violated ERISA\u2019s duties of prudence and loyalty.\n\n\u201cA Department and EBSA investigation into whether plan managers violated their fiduciary duties to plan beneficiaries by engaging in impermissible political and ideological activism with plan funds is therefore necessary.\n\n\u201cI thank both the Department and EBSA for continued engagement on this issue. In accordance with that prior work, I encourage the Department and EBSA to investigate whether plan fiduciaries have breached their duties by coordinating with AFT to subordinate plan beneficiaries\u2019 financial well-being to unrelated political or ideological objectives in their shareholder and investment activities.\u201d wrote Senator Schmitt.\n\nRead the full letterHERE.\n\nBackground:\n\nAFT\u2019s President Randi Weingarten sent a letter to Target threatening to leverage the union members\u2019 pension and benefits funds, worth billions and representing over 1.8 million members, to coerce Target into publicly opposing ICE enforcement operations and re-adopting DEI initiatives.\n\nERISA\u2019s fiduciary duty of loyalty requires retirement-and benefits-plan managers to take investment actions solely based on financial and pecuniary considerations to maximize the value of plan assets and secure Americans\u2019 retirements and benefits. Fiduciaries violate that duty of loyalty when they allow non-pecuniary interests, such as political or ideological objectives, to influence their investment activities.\n\n###", 1, "2026-07-11T07:10:48Z", "2026-07-11T07:14:29Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.schmitt.senate.gov/media/press-releases/senator-schmitt-calls-on-trump-administration-to-investigate-teachers-unions-woke-investment-practices/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8509370964020491, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}