Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) will introduce legislation on Thursday requiring the National Education Association to expand its federal charter to prohibit the nation’s largest teachers’ union from “engaging in electoral politics or lobbying” in response to the group’s proposal to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Insider has learned. 

Lummis began working on the STUDENT Act in response to the NEA’s representative assembly, the union’s governing body, voting earlier this month at an annual leadership conference to adopt a measure barring teachers from using, endorsing or publicizing any materials from the ADL. The NEA’s board of directors announced on Friday it would not implement the contentious resolution after determining that it “would not further NEA’s commitment to academic freedom, our membership or our goals.”

In addition to the moratorium on involvement in political causes, the bill would add language to the NEA charter banning the “promotion of antisemitic beliefs, including harmful stereotypes about Jewish people, Holocaust denial or minimization, and hatred based on Jewish identity or connection to Israel,” according to a readout from Lummis’ office. It would also bar the organization from “promoting or requiring adherence to critical race theory concepts,” eliminate the union’s tax-exempt status in Washington, prevent them from “calling strikes or work stoppages” and require “all NEA officers to be U.S. citizens.”

Lummis said in a statement on the bill that the NEA had “exploited its federal charter to advance a radical political agenda that puts ideology before education.”

“Federal charters should be reserved for organizations that serve patriotic, charitable, historical, or educational purposes — not for unions that push divisive and antisemitic ideologies,” Lumis said.

Lummis told JI she found the NEA’s original decision on the ADL “to be completely ridiculous and misguided.”

“The fact that such a resolution passed the representative assembly — made up of thousands of NEA members — was reason enough for me to be concerned. Our educational institutions should be strengthening their partnerships with organizations committed to protecting Jewish Americans and combating hatred, not severing these important ties,” Lummis explained, referencing the more than 6,000 union delegates who took part in the three voice votes that were ultimately called in favor of the measure. 

The Wyoming senator said the developments prompted her “to examine the NEA’s charter more closely, which revealed how significantly the organization has deviated from its original mission and misused its federally granted charter privileges.”

“It’s evident that the NEA lacks the leadership and vision necessary for self-correction, which is why I’m proposing this legislation. We cannot allow the NEA and other federally chartered organizations to slide toward antisemitic positions,” she told JI. 

Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) cosponsored the bill. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) is working on companion legislation on the House side.

“The NEA long ago transformed from an educational association into a political machine, pushing a progressive agenda that puts activists ahead of students’ needs. The STUDENT Act reins in NEA’s federal charter, restores accountability, and demands a return to its original purpose: educating, not indoctrinating, American children,” Fitzgerald said in a statement.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a far-left anti-Israel advocacy group that has built a growing profile in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, is pivoting to a new organizational structure that will soon allow it to engage more forcefully in electoral politics.

The group recently began the process of consolidating its membership and organizing in an affiliated but lesser-known political nonprofit called Jewish Voice for Peace Action, devoting the bulk of its resources to lobbying and political activities, such as supporting and opposing candidates that had not traditionally been a part of its core focus.

As a nonpartisan tax-exempt group, JVP, which has been at the forefront of campus anti-Israel protests and promotes efforts to divest from Israel, has been legally prohibited from taking sides in campaigns — a limitation the new structural change is designed to address.

The shift comes as the activist left has felt newly emboldened by Zohran Mamdani’s shocking victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in June, fueling debates over the ideological direction of the party as it gears up for next year’s midterms.

JVP Action, which recently changed its public name to Jewish Voice for Peace to match its sister organization, was an early supporter of Mamdani and has cited his outspoken opposition to Israel as a sign of evolving voter attitudes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

“There is unprecedented, mass support for Palestinians. Our movement has already grown larger, and more quickly, than many of us thought possible. But it’s clear we have not begun to tap our full potential,” JVP writes in a detailed new page on its website about the decision-making behind its shift. “The U.S. government has not budged from its commitment to sponsor Israel’s genocide. Public polling and public displays of opposition alone will not shift U.S. policy. Our movement must contend for real power.”

JVP, which until now had been the primary home for the group’s organizing work, will become a “supporter-based” rather than a “membership-based” organization renamed JVP Leadership & Culture Lab — with a focus on educational training and arts and culture programming to help promote “anti-Zionist Jewish” advocacy, according to its tentative mission statement.

The change was approved in a recent membership vote and will be implemented by Oct. 15, according to a lengthy agenda from a virtual meeting last week shared with Jewish Insider.

JVP Action’s board, for its part, had already voted to change its name and structure independently of the recent all-members meeting, in anticipation of the organizational inversion.

During the meeting, a recording of which was reviewed by JI, one member raised a concern that the change could “lead to a deemphasis” on JVP’s involvement in “mobilizing of protests and direct action” in favor of “electoralism and support for progressive Democrats.” The member was reassured by leadership that such approaches are complementary and that electoral work is a “key tactic inside a set of tools” including “civil disobedience” and divestment campaigns.

In moving to now operate primarily as a political nonprofit, “the barriers between the work of JVP and JVP Action organizations will be removed,” JVP further explains on its website.

“This has long been a challenge, creating silos and firewalls in our respective work that keep us from drawing clear connections between the political, electoral, cultural and financial forces that uphold the U.S.-Israeli relationship,” the group adds.

JVP, which is closely aligned with American Muslims for Palestine, a leading pro-Palestinian advocacy group that has faced legal scrutiny for alleged ties to terror organizations such as Hamas, has significantly bolstered its fundraising in recent years. 

The organization raised a record $11 million in revenue from July 2023 to June 2024, according to its latest tax filing, far outpacing previous figures. It is not required to share the names of its donors as a 501(c)(3) to which contributions are tax-deductible.

As a so-called “dark money” group, JVP Action, a 501(c)(4) that is not tax-exempt, can also shield its contributors from the public, even as it engages in elections — unlike political action committees that must disclose their donors. 

JVP Action pulled in $800,000 in revenue from July 2022 to June 2023, its most recent tax filing shows, marking its strongest showing since it was established in 2020.

A smaller PAC affiliated with JVP raised only $133,000 last election cycle and does not seem to be part of the new restructuring. The Anti-Defamation League filed a complaint last year accusing the PAC of engaging in a pattern of misrepresentations that violate federal campaign finance law. 

In its efforts to stake out a more prominent role in elections, JVP Action is borrowing a page from one of its primary adversaries, the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, which launched a super PAC as well as a political action committee in 2021 to wield its more considerable resources in congressional races where divisions over Israel have drawn significant outside spending.

“For a century, our opposition — the American Zionist establishment — has employed a long-term multipronged strategy to build U.S. support for Zionism and genocide and they have used all the tactics in the book,” JVP says in its recent meeting agenda. “They have a cultural strategy, an electoral strategy, a lobbying arm, youth organizations, mass movement organizations and funding vehicles.”

But the group argues that its opponents are “now experiencing a crack in their power.”

JVP Action, which has previously endorsed a range of Squad members in the House, has not indicated how it plans to approach the upcoming midterms in its more streamlined role.

The group did not return a request for comment on Wednesday, nor did JVP.

A poll released in February by The Jewish Majority, a pro-Israel research group in Washington, showed most Jewish Americans oppose the confrontational protest tactics used by JVP and regard anti-Zionist movements as antisemitic, among other findings.

Jonathan Schulman, the executive director of The Jewish Majority, said that JVP’s “decision to more vigorously engage in electoral politics signals their growing ambition to influence policy in ways that undermine Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state.”

“As they pursue this goal,” Schulman said in a statement to JI on Wednesday, “the pro-Israel community must make it clear to both the public and policymakers that the rhetoric and tactics of anti-Zionism undermine any prospects for a peaceful resolution to the conflict and contribute to the rise in violent attacks against Jews in America. JVP seeks to disprove any connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. We must expose that anti-Zionism is fundamentally opposed to peace.”

But with Mamdani’s resounding win over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had touted his staunch support for Israel and opposition to rising antisemitism in the primary, JVP now claims to see evidence its “movement work” is gaining traction.

“It is no longer popular for the U.S. to be sending endless weapons and funding to Israel,” the group said in its meeting agenda. “People are questioning the U.S.’ support for genocide and violence against the Palestinian people. Our movement is growing! And we still have a long way to go to break open this crack and end U.S. support for Israel.”