AFT’s Weingarten Reacts to News of Antonio Gracias’ Departure from DOGE

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten responded after Valor Equity Partners admitted that CEO Antonio Gracias had resigned from his position working 80 hours a week for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

A Valor spokesperson stated that Gracias was no longer freelancing for the U.S. government, one day after Weingarten sent a letter to nine public pension funds in which her members’ retirements are invested, requesting they review their funds’ dealings with Valor.     

“It’s amazing what shining a spotlight can reveal,” Weingarten said. “While we are encouraged that Gracias has abandoned DOGE and seems to now be taking his core business seriously, it’s disappointing it apparently took letters from his investors to finally flush out the truth.”

AFT members’ deferred wages are invested in pension funds totaling an estimated $4 trillion, which includes $1.8 billion invested in Valor.

The letter was sent to some of the nation’s largest public pension funds, including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System. It stated that Gracias and other Valor employees have effectively abandoned their role as company stewards to instead work 80 hours a week for DOGE. Gracias appeared on stage with Elon Musk in March and made the debunked claim that millions of dead people were receiving Social Security checks.

The letter detailed how Gracias’ and other staff’s freelancing with the United States government may constructively trigger a pension fund’s rights under “key person” provisions of its limited partner agreements, potentially entitling funds to cash payouts.

The letter also questioned the use of extensive private jet travel by Valor employees to and from the Washington, D.C., area since the beginning of March 2025, ostensibly to facilitate work for DOGE.

It stated that Gracias and his associates’ stoking of instability in the Social Security and Medicare systems may harm funds’ beneficiaries directly: from pension fund staff having to respond to beneficiaries’ fears over the status of these programs, to demands from beneficiaries to increase benefits to compensate for perceived or actual threats to Social Security.

In the letter, Weingarten proposed a list of 12 questions for fiduciaries to pose to pension fund staff and outside professionals to weigh their funds’ ongoing relationship with Valor.

The letter came on the heels of a scathing AFL-CIO report, released last month, that found that Valor’s recent funds have not yet made any distributions and have below-median performance on distributions to paid-in capital, according to data from Preqin Ltd.

For over a decade, the AFT has supported pension trustees with tools and resources, including AFT asset manager reports, which evaluate investments in companies with reputational risk such as gun manufacturers and private prisons, and guides to help trustees assess investments in private equity.

The AFT Trustee Council is made up of 40 AFT members who serve as trustees on 20 public pension funds—including some of the largest in the country: CalSTRS, NYSTRS, the Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York and the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois.