Well, A, what misinformation are they talking about? And B, how can a state pass a law preventing you or anyone else from speaking? Don't you have First Amendment rights?

Yeah, exactly.

So their claim was that, uh, the Freedom Foundation was pretending to be union employees, impersonate union employees, to convince union members to leave their union.

So they call these bills, uh, union impersonation bills.

Uh, but their argument is completely illogical.

They claim that, you know, we're pretending to be union employees to convince somebody to leave the union.

It makes complete nonsense.

And now Democrats who control these state governments in Oregon and New York are trying to stop you from telling people, "Here are what your protected constitutional rights are." Now, I hear a lot of people screaming about fascism and dictatorships and authoritarianism and democracy these days, but this sounds like the opposite of that, Aaron, I gotta tell you.

Well, A, what misinformation are they talking about? And B, how can a state pass a law preventing you or anyone else from speaking? Don't you have First Amendment rights?

Yeah, exactly.

So their claim was that the Freedom Foundation was pretending to be union employees, impersonate union employees to convince union members to leave their union.

So they call these bills union impersonation bills, but their argument is completely illogical.

They claim that we're pretending to be union employees.

to convince somebody to leave the union.

It makes complete nonsense.

But this sounds like the opposite of that, Aaron, I got to tell you.

So could you just fill us in a little bit about the Janus case and why it's so important?

Yes, so prior to the Janus decision, in states like New York and Connecticut, public employees were required to pay union dues.

They were required to pay dues to a union, even if they didn't want to be members.

The Janus decision, Mark Janus was a public employee who disagreed with this.

He sued his union, AFS, in the state of Illinois, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that he could not be forced to pay union dues.

So now that that decision has come down, every public employee in America now has the ability to opt out of their unions and stop paying union dues.

So people like Mark weren't forced to pay for the union's political agenda.

So what's going on now in New York?

What precedent does that set? What does that mean for teachers going forward that we did this officially, unions listen up, we're declaring independence?

Well, yeah, I love that the teachers did that.

Ryan can give you some of the backstory for it.

But that came from the teachers.

That was their idea.

I love it.

As we celebrate America's 250th anniversary and we look at the founding of this country, the teachers' unions are the exact opposite.

With the vibe of the Teacher Freedom Summit happening right now as a whole, do y'all feel optimistic about where education and where opt-outs and the conversation around unions are going?