House Republicans are set to release a report on Wednesday that outlines to what level the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) worked with teachers’ unions.
Republicans say that the coordination between the two was “unprecedented” while crafting their school reopening guidances. The CDC had previously claimed that coordination between the two were non-political.
The report will be released by GOP lawmakers, though the information has been revealed to Fox News ahead of its release.
The report by Republican lawmakers states that emails between the American Federation of Teachers (ATF), the Biden Administration, and the CDC, showed a “cozy relationship with the Biden administration’s political leadership at the CDC positioned the union to impose line-by-line edits” in regards to reopening guidances.
The Biden administration allegedly gave the teachers unions an unprecedented amount of power in their creation of reopening guidances.
“Documents and testimony show, however, that Director Walensky downplayed the degree to which CDC departed from past practice to allow AFT to affect the policymaking process. In fact, CDC allowed AFT to insert language into the Operational Guidance that made it more likely schools across the country would remain closed after February 2021,” says the report.
“As part of long-standing best practices, CDC has traditionally engaged with organizations and groups that are impacted by guidance and recommendations issued by the agency,” they wrote.
The report also contains testimony from CDC’s Center for Preparedness and Response Dr. Henry Walke wherein he highlights the “uncommon” nature of the level of communication between the unions and the CDC.
“When Republican staff asked Dr. Walke questions to that effect, a Biden Administration lawyer instructed him not to answer,” says the report. “Because lawyers for the Biden Administration prevented a key witness from explaining why the CDC allowed AFT to write key portions of its guidance for re-opening schools, there are still several unanswered questions. This matter should be investigated further.”
“The facts are clear: Biden’s CDC overrode routine practice to allow a radical teachers union that donated millions of dollars to Democrat campaigns to bypass scientific norms and rewrite official agency guidance,” Republican Reps. Steve Scalise and James Comer wrote in a statement to Fox News.
“The damaging edits by union bosses effectively kept thousands of schools shuttered across the country, locking millions of children out of their classrooms,” they said. “The Biden Administration abandoned medical science and replaced it with political science to reward one of their largest donors, harming millions of children in the process. They bypassed the science to put union bosses ahead of children.”
“Millions of Americans are still outraged at what these Washington Democrats put their children through, and all because union bosses demanded they keep schools closed longer,” they continued.
“America’s children are suffering, academically and mentally, because of the Biden Administration enabled school closures. Republicans will not rest until we uncover all the facts and hold everyone accountable who was involved in holding back millions of children from having equal opportunity to achieve the American Dream,” they concluded.
