The Biden administration imposed its draconian masking guidance for schoolchildren after the powerful National Education Association threatened to embarrass the CDC with a harsh public statement, Fox News reported on Wednesday.
The liberal teacher’s union sent a draft statement to White House officials on May 14 that criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new masking guidance, seeking clarification before they released it, according to the emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
On May 13, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated Americans could stop wearing masks indoors and outside, sparking angst from the pro-mask zealots at the NEA.
The teachers union ultimately published a statement with a much softer tone, Fox reported, after the CDC clarified its guidance to indicate that everyone should be masked in schools regardless of vaccination status.
The new emails show further coordination between the White House and teachers unions just months after reports highlighted the extent the unions had influenced the administration’s messaging on school reopenings. The watchdog group Americans for Public Trust obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to Fox News.
The emails show that on May 14, Erika Dinkel-Smith, the White House director of labor engagement, said she stopped the NEA from releasing the statement that had called for immediate clarification.
“Would you know when Dr. Wolensky(sic) would be able to call NEA-Pres. Becky Pringle?” Dinkel-Smith wrote in the email. “They’ve gotten significant incoming and are getting targeted for a response from the media. I’ve gotten them to hold on their statement calling for clarification.”
The NEA’s draft statement read:
“We appreciate the developing nature of the science and its implications for guidance, but releasing the guidance without accompanying school-related updates creates confusion and fuels the internal politicization of this basic health and safety issue,” the draft statement read. “CDC has consistently said, and studies support, that mitigation measures, including to protect the most vulnerable, remain necessary in schools and institutions of higher education – particularly because no elementary or middle school students, and few high school students, have been vaccinated.”
“This will also make it hard for school boards and leaders of institutions of higher education to do the right thing by maintaining mitigation measures,” it continued. “We need CDC clarification right away.”
Following discussion and coordination with the Biden White House, the NEA released a statement with a much less critical tone.
The emails also show the White House and the CDC had extensive contact with union leadership.
On May 14, Dinkel-Smith asked CDC chief of staff Sherri Berger to connect NEA President Becky Pringle with the CDC director. Berger responded to the request by writing “will do” and that the CDC director was “connecting w/ Becky now.”
Less than 30 minutes later, Berger sent an update saying she had spoken with Pringle and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
The next day, on May 15, the CDC updated its masking guidance to indicate that all people should wear a mask at school regardless of vaccination status.
“This batch of emails came just weeks after we already exposed the teachers unions influenced the CDC on school openings,” Americans for Public Trust Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News. “Lo and behold, less than two weeks later, they’re at it again, but this time in relation to mask guidance.”
Earlier this year, the New York Post reported on emails Americans for Public Trust obtained showing coordination between the Biden White House and left-wing teachers unions on school reopenings.
In at least two instances, suggestions offered by the American Federation of Teachers were “adopted nearly verbatim” in the final text of a CDC document on reopening guidance released in February, according to the Post.
Numerous randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and analysis of RCT studies show that masks and respirators don’t do much to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses which are believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles that are too fine to be blocked.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), a former White House physician, and Navy vet, blasted the Biden administration on Twitter for allowing itself to be influenced by “corrupt TEACHERS UNIONS” rather than doing what is in the best interest of the children.
“There’s is nothing scientific about forcing kids to wear masks!” he tweeted.
WOW! The news that Biden’s CDC has been taking orders from corrupt TEACHERS UNIONS on mask mandates is EXTREMELY disturbing. They aren’t “following the science” like they claim, just politics and LIES. There is NOTHING scientific about FORCING kids to wear masks!
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) September 8, 2021
A Democrat teacher who has spent years advocating for an educational system that gives children the “opportunity to engage in joyful educational activities,” recently wrote in Forbes that he believes forcing masks on children induces trauma.
“The phrase I hear repeated over and over again to justify masks is: ‘kids are resilient,'” Zak Ringelstein wrote. “But as an elementary school educator and Ph.D. student at Columbia University trained in trauma-informed instruction, I am concerned that this statement is overly simplistic and misleading. What we should be saying is: ‘masks and social distancing induce trauma and trauma at a young age is developmentally dangerous, especially for children who are experiencing trauma in other parts of their lives.'”
That article was reportedly deleted after it went viral, but an archived version is still available here.