Idaho did something wild this week. They passed a law that says if the teachers’ union wants to operate in the state, they have to operate on their own dime.
Crazy, right? Next thing you know, they’ll be asking the plumber’s union to buy their own trucks.
Here’s what actually happened. Idaho’s new law — which just took effect — bars the use of any public funds, any public resources, any public anything, to support teachers’ union activity. No more taxpayer-subsidized “release time.” No more dues collection running through the state payroll system. No more school district employees doing union paperwork on the taxpayer clock.
If you’ve never heard of “release time,” buckle up. Release time is the mind-bending practice of a teacher being paid a full teacher’s salary — by you, the taxpayer — to not teach. To instead sit in a union office and do union things. Organize. Lobby. Run political campaigns. Write press releases attacking the parents who are paying that same teacher’s salary to be there writing press releases attacking them.
This has been the scam for decades. We pay teachers. The teachers pay the union. The union pays the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party tells us we need to pay more teachers. It’s the most elegant little circle of money laundering anyone has ever invented, and they did it right in front of us, for fifty years, and half the country cheered.
Idaho said no more.
And the reaction from Randi Weingarten’s traveling circus of grievance — the American Federation of Teachers — has been exactly what you’d expect. You’d think Idaho just banned books. (They didn’t. They banned taxpayer-funded sabbaticals for people whose full-time job is attacking the taxpayers.) The legal challenges are already lining up. The union lawyers are calling it “anti-worker.” The same union that just poured seventy million dollars into electing Democrats is suddenly very concerned about workers.
Let’s be honest about what’s been happening in every blue state in America.
In a typical school district, the union contract comes with a clause that says a certain number of teachers can be granted “release time” to conduct union business. Sometimes it’s a few hours a week. Sometimes it’s half-time. Sometimes — and you’ll want to sit down for this — it’s full-time, permanent. The teacher never sees a classroom. Ever. They collect the teacher’s paycheck. They collect teacher’s benefits. They accumulate teacher’s pension credits. And they spend every workday running union operations against the school board that signs their checks.
Who pays for all of it? You. The guy whose property tax went up eleven percent last year. The single mom working two jobs. The retiree on a fixed income. All of us. Every one of us.
Then on top of that, the district’s payroll office — also funded by you — is used to automatically deduct union dues out of every teacher’s paycheck and hand the money directly to the union. Saves the union the trouble of actually having to ask members to write a check. Because imagine asking teachers to voluntarily fund the union. Imagine the panic if every teacher had to consciously decide every month, “Yes, I affirmatively support Randi Weingarten flying first-class to Davos to lecture me about my carbon footprint.”
The union doesn’t want that. Nobody would survive it.
Idaho cut all of it off. Not the unions themselves — they can still exist. They can still organize. They can still complain. They can still endorse whichever socialist they want in 2028. They just have to do it on their own dollar. Collect their own dues. Pay their own organizers. Fund their own political operation. Like every other private organization in America.
This is not radical. This is not extreme. This is not “attacking workers.” This is a government deciding that its own employees, on government time, using government resources, should probably be doing the government’s work — which, in a school, last time anyone checked, is teaching children to read.
Weird concept. Revolutionary stuff.
And it’s catching on. Florida did something similar. Tennessee’s working on it. Iowa passed its own version. Arkansas is drafting one. A dozen red states are running the same play because a dozen red state legislatures finally figured out what the unions have been quietly doing to them since the Carter administration.
Here’s the thing that really stings the union crowd, though. And this is the part they’re trying very hard not to say out loud.
If the work they do is as valuable as they claim, members will gladly pay for it. If release time produces amazing educational outcomes, schools will gladly contract for it directly. If the union is indispensable, losing a few government perks won’t hurt them at all.
It’s going to hurt them a lot. They know it’s going to hurt them a lot. That’s the whole game. The minute these unions have to survive on actual voluntary dues from actual voluntary members doing actual voluntary work, the whole operation shrinks to about a tenth of its current size. Because very few teachers, when you ask them straight, want eighty dollars a month coming out of their paycheck so a national union president can show up at a drag event during Pride month and call parents “domestic terrorists.”
The unions have always known this. That’s why they’ve been so desperately clinging to every little piece of government plumbing. Automatic dues. Release time. Access to school email systems. Mandatory orientations for new hires. Every one of those pipes runs in one direction only: from your wallet, through the teacher, through the union, to the Democrat Party.
Idaho just cut the pipes.
And the best part? It’s already working. The union is openly panicked. Their members are going to have to start writing actual checks. Their leaders are going to have to start fundraising the hard way. Their political operation is going to have to compete for dollars like every other advocacy group in the country.
Good. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
To every red state legislator watching Idaho right now: keep going. Do it faster. If Idaho can do it, you can do it. Cut the cord. Make the unions pay their own bills. Let teachers decide for themselves, one paycheck at a time, whether the union is actually earning it.
And to the union? If your work is so valuable, prove it. Convince your members to fund you voluntarily. Stand on your own two feet for once. Go earn your keep like everyone else in America has to.
Or don’t. That works too.
We’ll be over here, watching the taxpayer money finally stay with the taxpayers, where it always should have been.
