SubX.News®Corruption Report Aug 29, 2026
When Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced a historic legal settlement with Meta, he did not announce a school funding bill.
He announced a child safety case.
Raoul called the deal “a monumental victory for online safety that will affect an entire generation of young people,” punishing tech platforms for “decades of putting profits before the health and wellness of children.”
Illinois’ share of the settlement is massive, up to nearly $768 million, and the legal claims resolved were narrowly focused on youth harm:
- Addictive platform design
- Young users facing mental health crises
- Data stripped from children under 13
Instead of directing that money toward healing traumatized children, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and its parent organization, the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), immediately swooped in to grab the cash.
Union leaders demanded the entire tech windfall be diverted to patch school-funding gaps, launching a PR campaign against “corporate greed” while staking their own claim to the pot.
Such a moral lecture collapses under the weight of leadership’s financial reality.
It is difficult to take a teachers union seriously on “greed” when its top executive holds two full-time executive jobs, stacks dual salaries, and uses a public retirement system to lock in a massive personal payout.
Hijacking Children’s Mental Health Cash
Safety reforms were the point of the case. Under the agreement, Meta must implement:
- Combined two hour daily cap across Instagram and Facebook
- Mandatory pauses at 15, 60, and 90 minutes to break endless scrolling
- Night blocks from midnight to 6am
- Stronger age checks and hidden like counts
- Total ban on school day push notifications between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Data backs the urgency.
Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer sciences at Northeastern University who researches social media safety, has noted that several of these mandates are especially promising, particularly hard time limits and friction for autoplay.
Her June research found that nearly 60 percent of current industry “safety features” fail young users in practice, allowing addictive loops to continue. Failure on that scale is brutal in context:
Gallup data shows about half of U.S. teens already spend four or more hours a day on social media, a habit strongly tied to poor mental and physical health.
Raoul took a clear injury to court: kids trapped in engineered addiction loops, losing sleep, mental health, and basic boundaries online.
Union Rewrites the Settlement as a Cash Machine
Officials did not argue any of that. They simply issued a revenue memo.
IFT’s headline declared: “Landmark Settlement with Meta Can Fund Statewide Education Gap.”
Its subhead claimed the $768 million “can fill the gap of every school district and higher education institution in the state.”
IFT’s demand was clear: steer the Meta cash into higher education and school budgets, not crisis teams, not phone free schools, and not the independent auditor’s enforcement Raoul just won.
In its formal statement, IFT completed the rhetorical rewrite, treating a child harm settlement as interchangeable budget cash:
“The Governor has said he supports more funding for education but didn’t know where it would come from.
The settlement with Meta just made that answer even easier. Schools from Peoria to Belleville to Chicago are counting on the Governor and the General Assembly to prioritize students the way we’ve seen them prioritize big tech and billionaire stadium owners.”
“Students” is the brand. The inventory list is political: the 2017 funding formula, Mayor Johnson’s TIF package, and roughly four billion dollars’ worth of leftover tax ideas.
If union leaders were truly loyal to the generation Raoul named, their first demand would have followed the injury:
Screen time, sleep, school hours, eating disorder feeds, and enforcement.
Demanding the whole pot to close institutional budget gaps proves student safety is not the priority.
Narrative comes first: “funding crisis” at the front of the line, child mental health a distant second.
Pritzker Shuts Down the Cash Grab
Union efforts to raid the child safety fund hit a wall almost immediately.
Governor JB Pritzker flatly rejected the swap, refusing to treat a youth safety settlement as a permanent piggy bank for recurring deficits.
Pritzker poured cold water on the plan:
“One time money should really be used for one time needs.”
Chicago’s school shortfall is structural and ongoing, not a one-time cost.
CPS already made that mistake once, using temporary COVID relief dollars to expand permanent salaries and programs that outlived the federal aid.
Seeking the Meta money repeats the same temptation in a new wrapper, just blessed with a “for the kids” label.
On the agreement, C.J. Mahoney, Chief Legal Officer at Meta
Leveraging Tech Cash to Spike a Pension
While demanding ultimate financial accountability from the state, IFT’s top executive operates with a blatant double standard.
Davis Gates sits in two executive chairs at once, serving as president of the IFT while refusing to step down as head of the CTU.
Running a massive local union is a full time executive job. Leading a statewide federation is also a full time executive job.
By occupying both seats, leadership is executing the same corporate behavior it condemns:
Consolidating executive power and pulling multiple salary streams from member dues.
Dual job arrangements are engineered to maximize personal wealth through the retirement system.
Because both executive salaries feed into a single retirement fund, the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund (CTPF), the maneuver skirts the technical definition of public “pension dipping.”
But its payoff is far more lucrative than a simple double dip.
Stacking local CTU executive pay with a statewide IFT presidential salary artificially inflates the “final average salary.”
Public pensions are calculated from the highest consecutive earning years. Two full-time executive roles at once lock in an oversized lifetime payout.
Union leadership is actively using the system to build a corporate sized retirement nest egg.
Demanding Transparency While Shielding the Books
Stark irony surrounds a teachers union demanding immediate distribution of a tech settlement while running an organization defined by secrecy.
CTU fell four straight years behind on releasing its mandatory independent financial audits to its own members.
When a member lawsuit finally forced the books open, independent auditors concluded the union’s financial statements were materially misstated.
Organizational opacity mirrors personal financial double standards.
Its top executive pulls in roughly $289,000 in combined compensation while having previously been caught taking an unentitled property tax exemption and falling thousands of dollars behind on local utility bills.
Chicago Flips Red protested CTU headquarters in 2026.
CTU sought emergency workplace protective orders against group leaders.
Members of the group say they then filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against the union.
In a separate case, the group accuses local officials of viewpoint discrimination after members were blocked from public-comment sessions.
CTU has also sued the Illinois Policy Institute and Liberty Justice Center for defamation over audit reporting.
Member dues finance the legal campaign.
Bottom Line
Meta’s settlement was explicitly written to put children’s mental health and online safety “at the forefront.”
It was never intended to serve as an emergency piggy bank for a teachers union that recast a child harm victory into an operational funding fix within hours of its announcement.
As long as the union operates under double salaried executives maximizing future pension payouts behind shielded books, its sermons on “greed” read like a case study in projection.
Equity means giving someone else a chance, not hoarding the work, the titles and the money.
Meta’s legal reckoning was supposed to protect kids from platforms that put profits over children.
Union leaders took one look at that settlement and did the same thing.
It is greed, plain and simple, just with a lesson plan attached.
References
Attorney General Raoul Announces Bipartisan Settlement With Meta (26 August 26) Illinois Attorney General https://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/news/story/attorney-general-raoul-announces-bipartisan-settlement-with-meta
Chicago Teachers Union Sues Its Critics
It accuses a think tank of defamation. Yeah, that will help the children (23 Aug 26) Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/chicago-teachers-union-sues-defamation-illinois-policy-institute-764b4b1f
CPS proposes to hire hundreds of new teachers while Ron Huberman says he has to prepare to cut thousands of jobs because of a near billion dollar ‘deficit’ ( 08 Mar 10) John Kugler Substance News
https://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1237
CPS sends Starsky and Hutch after teachers (26 Mar 14) Ben Joravsky the Chicago Reader https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/cps-sends-starsky-and-hutch-after-teachers/
CTU president defends sending her son to private school (07 Sept 23) Sarah Karp WBEZ https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2023/9/7/23863532/ctu-president-defends-sending-her-son-private-school-result-unfair-choices-south-side-families
From Tragedy to farce in the Chicago Teacher’s Union (31 May 10) by Hyde Park Johnny
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2010/5/31/869987/community/From-Tragedy-to-farce-in-the-Chicago-Teacher-s-Union/
IFT: Landmark Settlement With Meta Can Fund Statewide Education Gap (26 August 26) Illinois Federation of Teachers https://www.ift-aft.org/post/ift-landmark-settlement-with-meta-can-fund-statewide-education-gap
Meta Settlement Not the Answer to State’s Education Funding Crisis (28 August 26) Chicago Sun-Times https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2026/08/28/meta-settlement-education-funding-illinois-federation-chicago-teachers-union-rich-miller
More ‘Ghost Student’ Fraud Emerges At CPS ( 23 April 10) Dave Savini CBS2 Chicago Orginal link http://cbs2chicago.com/investigations/CPS.attendance.cheating.2.1651287.html archived video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHuKur_Ygw8
Our Agreement With Bipartisan Attorneys General (26 August 26) Meta https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/agreement-with-state-attorneys-general-supporting-teens/
Pritzker Pours Cold Water on Using Meta Windfall for Chicago Schools Funding (27 August 26) Capitol News Illinois https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/pritzker-pours-cold-water-on-using-meta-windfall-for-chicago-schools-funding/
Rooftop Revelations: ‘Union prioritizes politics over education,’ former Chicago Teachers Union employee says … Chicago Teachers Union must purge leadership former employee says (24 Mar 22) Eli Steele Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/rooftop-revelations-union-prioritizes-politics-over-education-former-chicago-teachers-union-employee-says
Union President Slapped for Threatening Workers
NLRB punishes Chicago Teachers Union for violating staffer’s rights (21 Dec 18) Bill McMorris Free Beacon https://freebeacon.com/issues/union-president-slapped-for-threatening-workers/
About the Author
John Kugler, editor of SubX.News®, is a licensed Illinois educator who worked as a carpentry teacher at Hyde Park Career Academy and later as a Chicago Teachers Union Business Agent.
https://www.classroom20.com/profile/JohnKugler
He holds a current Illinois State Board of Education credential No 2003464 with a PhD in K–12 Leadership and has reported on school corruption for more than 20 years under the mentorship of the late George Schmidt of Substance News.
https://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=7169
Image Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates Speaks During a News Conference at CTU Headquarters in Chicago (14 April 2025) Associated Press Photo by Nam Y. Huh
https://www.peoplesworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/CTU-press-conference.png
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