A watchdog group is sounding the alarm after Microsoft handed control of its artificial intelligence educational tools to one of the country’s most partisan groups.
The technology giant announced last week that it partnered with the American Federation of Teachers, one of the country’s largest unions, on a legally enforceable agreement overseeing safety and privacy standards for using Microsoft AI in the classroom. The agreement, championed by leftist Randi Weingarten, includes an “equity” and “inclusion” provision that products “must be accessible and fair.”
Conservative research organization the Fair Election Fund on Tuesday urged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to exercise oversight over the scope of the agreement and the potential impact on millions of students, according to a letter obtained by The Daily Wire.
“The company is once again using its reach in American classrooms to advance a partisan agenda, shaping how the next generation thinks, what they trust, and how they vote,” the Fair Election Fund wrote to Cruz. “It is doing so through a partner whose record of politicizing children’s education should disqualify her and the organization she runs from any seat at this table.”
The letter argued that the American Federation of Teachers, led by Weingarten, is too partisan to oversee the rollout of AI in the classroom. Throughout the COVID pandemic, Weingarten consistently lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to keep schools closed.
“The partner Microsoft has chosen for this arrangement is the same person who kept schools closed during COVID-19 — lobbying the CDC behind closed doors, with AFT officials suggesting language that was incorporated into the CDC’s February 2021 reopening guidance,” the Fair Election Fund said.
The union’s political spending also shows massive partisan bias toward Democrats. In the past 20 years, the vast majority of the union’s political donations have gone to Democrats.
In announcing the agreement, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the partnership “sets a high bar for child privacy and AI safety, and we’ll extend this agreement to every school district across the country.”
The Fair Election Fund asked Cruz to investigate the partnership and whether the agreement grants the American Federation of Teachers or Microsoft any ‘editorial or content’ discretion. The letter accused the groups of attempting to bypass AI guidance from the White House “to entrench their own ideological standards in American classrooms.”
Last year, Cruz pushed Microsoft over its promotion of NewsGuard, an organization known for targeting conservative websites in its rankings of news-outlet reliability. Despite publicly distancing itself from NewsGuard in February 2025, Microsoft only scrubbed all references from its website months later, after it continued to recommend the company as a trusted “fact-checker” for students.
“A corporation that has already lied to Congress and partnered with a union president who has consistently weaponized her position for political ends should not be trusted to set the terms for how AI shapes young American minds and influences elections,” the Fair Election Fund said.
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