Republicans expose ‘uncommon’ CDC, teachers’ union ties on COVID school reopening guidance in report

EXCLUSIVE: Republican lawmakers who sit on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis are releasing a report Wednesday revealing a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official’s testimony claiming that the agency coordinated with teachers’ unions at an extraordinary level in crafting its schools reopening guidance, despite the agency’s earlier claims that such coordination was routine and nonpolitical. 

In the interim report, exclusively reviewed by Fox News Digital, Republicans wrote that emails between the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the White House, and the CDC showed that the AFT’s “cozy relationship with the Biden administration’s political leadership at the CDC positioned the union to impose line-by-line edits” to the reopening guidance, despite the CDC’s “past practice to keep draft guidance confidential.”

TEACHERS UNION INFLUENCED LAST-MINUTE CDC SCHOOL GUIDANCE RECEIVED COPIES BEFORE PUBLIC RELEASE, EMAILS SHOW

Fox News previously reported in October on emails that showed the AFT and the National Education Association, the two largest teachers unions in the U.S., received a copy of the guidance before the CDC released it to the public. 

On Feb. 11, 2021 one day before the CDC publicly posted the guidance, AFT’s senior director of health issues, Kelly Trautner, emailed CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky asking her to insert the line: “In the event high-community transmission results from a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, a new update of these guidelines may be necessary.”

The emails revealed that Walensky forwarded the email to Dr. Henry Walke, director of the CDC’s Center…