In one of the most disturbing events in recent history, a generation of American schoolchildren was forced out of the classroom for months, in many places, years, by adults who ignored available facts and abused public trust regarding COVID-19. These children lost irreplaceable time learning, socializing, and developing. Many still have not recovered, and some never will.
Anthony Fauci may be the one making headlines now, and for good reason. But amid the fervor, we cannot forget the person bearing equal responsibility for this catastrophe when it comes to American children: Randi Weingarten.
Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), can keep insisting, “<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/04/dont-let-them-rewrite-the-pandemic/">We</a><a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/04/dont-let-them-rewrite-the-pandemic/"> spent every day from February on trying to get schools open</a>,” just as Fauci can keep demanding, “<a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/25/fauci-absolves-himself-of-responsibility-for-lockdowns-in-testy-interview/">Show </a><a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/25/fauci-absolves-himself-of-responsibility-for-lockdowns-in-testy-interview/">me a school that I shut down</a>,” but parents remember what happened. Their children were the collateral damage of a reckless alliance in which Weingarten weaponized Fauci’s rhetoric and recommendations as scientific cover to exercise enormous control over when, how, and whether schools reopened.
Fauci did little to help his own case by invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times as senators asked him under oath to explain his COVID-era decisions. That alone carried obvious implications of wrongdoing, or at least an effort to conceal the full extent of his role in the damage that followed. And now, thanks to his newly released diaries, we know that in private he practically bragged about his influence over initial school closures and early reopening decisions that would set the course for the rest of the country.
Whatever justification existed for that initial caution disappeared by the summer of 2020, when <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6914e4.htm">evidence </a>increasingly showed that children faced far lower risks of hospitalization and death than adults, and early reports from reopened schools suggested that classrooms were not major drivers of community transmission. By May, <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/05/25/10-key-education-recommendations-for-reopening-the-k-12-classroom/?_gl=1*1ydi0ty*_gcl_au*MzQzMzgyMTgzLjE3ODY1NTYzODE.*_ga*NjQ5NDA4OTQ5LjE3ODY1NTYzODE.*_ga_W14BT6YQ87*czE3ODY1NTYzODAkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODY1NTYzODAkajYwJGwwJGgw">organizations </a>such as the Heritage Foundation released guidance on how schools could reopen safely, with states prioritizing a back-to-school plan that had students physically present, since closures were already harming children.
That should have been the end of the shutdown debate. Weingarten, however, made sure it was not. She capitalized on Fauci’s public words, using his authority to legitimize an ever-expanding list of union demands that kept her members home for as long as possible, children be damned.
In July 2020, the AFT threatened lawsuits and “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/28/aft-strikes-school-reopening-384133">safety </a><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/28/aft-strikes-school-reopening-384133">strikes</a>” against reopening plans, declaring that “nothing is off the table” in its fight to keep schools closed. It then demanded community positivity below 5%, transmission below 1%, surveillance and contact tracing, accommodations for high-risk employees, and authority to close schools again if their conditions were not met.
That same month, Weingarten brought Fauci before the AFT’s convention, where he warned educators that if they returned to their classrooms, they would become “<a href="https://www.aft.org/news/dr-anthony-fauci-calls-safety-paramount-reopening-schools">part </a><a href="https://www.aft.org/news/dr-anthony-fauci-calls-safety-paramount-reopening-schools">of the experiment</a>” in determining what would happen. With the country’s most recognizable public-health figure validating her “caution,” Weingarten could present the AFT’s growing list of demands as reliably rooted in science.
By February 2021, the AFT, a labor union with no scientific or public-health authority, was actively shaping federal reopening policy behind closed doors. In the weeks before the CDC released its February 2021 guidance, Weingarten and other AFT officials <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/06/02/texts-reveal-exchange-between-cdc-director-teachers-union-boss-before-school-reopening-memo/">spoke </a><a href="https://nypost.com/2023/06/02/texts-reveal-exchange-between-cdc-director-teachers-union-boss-before-school-reopening-memo/">repeatedly</a> with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on her direct phone line, persuading the agency to adopt two proposed changes that gave unions and school districts more grounds to delay full reopening or close classrooms again. They thanked the CDC for treating the union as a “<a href="https://californiapolicycenter.org/science-with-the-union-label/">thought </a><a href="https://californiapolicycenter.org/science-with-the-union-label/">partner</a>.”  
Through it all, the AFT dismissed the documented academic, developmental, and psychological <a href="https://abcnews.com/US/school-closures-put-children-risk/story?id=70329613">damage </a>inflicted on children by prolonged school closures. They simply did not care.
Weingarten would not call for schools to reopen fully, five days a week, until May 2021. By then, millions of children had already lost more than a year of learning and social development they could never get back.
And for more than six years now, parents have been forced to watch the consequences of Weingarten’s selfish and baseless decisions play out in our own children’s academic struggles, mental health challenges, and delayed development.
The 2022 Nation’s Report Card recorded some of the largest declines in student achievement ever measured. Four years later, national reading and math scores still <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/teens-reading-and-math-scores-have-stagnated-us-test-results-show">remain </a>below pre-pandemic levels. As of 2025, more than <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/658100/pandemic-hurt-children-social-skills-mental-health.aspx">one </a><a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/658100/pandemic-hurt-children-social-skills-mental-health.aspx">in five parents</a> said the damage to their children’s mental health or social development still had not gone away.
Fauci may be the one invoking the Fifth now, but it was Weingarten who used his warnings as cover to hold school reopenings hostage to her union’s demands. Millions of families are still dealing with the ramifications of her influence. Her unscientific, entirely political power plays must not go unanswered, and Weingarten needs to be held accountable for continuing to prioritize political agendas over children.
***
Alleigh Marré is the executive director of American Parents Coalition and a mother of four.

Florida Schools Prepare To Open

The Generational Toll Of Randi Weingarten’s Pandemic Politics

American Federation of Teachers

Anthony Fauci

COVID-19

DW Opinion

Randi Weingarten

School closures

Anthony Fauci sat before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 29 and declined to answer more than 100 questions. He invoked the Fifth Amendment. On Thursday, the committee voted 8-5 to hold him in contempt of Congress, setting up a referral to the Justice Department.
Millions of American schoolchildren got no hearing, no appeal, and no protection of any kind when the public health establishment he personified locked them out of their classrooms.
The people responsible are counting on you to move on. I refuse.
Fauci was the face of that establishment. The paper trail on school closures runs through two other addresses: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
In December 2024, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its final report after a two-year investigation. Its findings on schools should have ended careers. The Biden administration&#8217;s CDC broke precedent by giving a political labor organization privileged access to its supposedly scientific reopening guidance. The agency solicited edits from the AFT and accepted them.
Read that again. A federal health agency let Randi Weingarten&#8217;s operation help write the document that decided whether your child sat in a classroom or stared at a laptop in a bedroom.
The subcommittee found that the AFT opposed reopening and conditioned its cooperation on demands with no scientific footing, including an automatic closure &#8220;trigger&#8221; that could shutter buildings on command. Investigators concluded schools remained closed longer than necessary because of union interference. They also confirmed what millions of parents had already worked out on their own: children faced little risk of severe illness, and the evidence never justified keeping doors locked for a year or more.
The guidance was corrupted. The closures dragged on. The wreckage is measurable.
The 2024 Nation&#8217;s Report Card delivered the verdict. Reading scores for fourth- and eighth-graders are five points below where they stood in 2019. A third of eighth graders perform beneath the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Basic level, the largest share ever recorded. High school seniors posted an average reading score 10 points below the first assessment in 1992, and 45% of them landed below Basic in math weeks before walking across the graduation stage. Congress spent $189.5 billion on school relief. Achievement fell anyway.
The human cost runs past any test. During a four-week stretch of early 2021, emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts among girls ages 12 to 17 ran 50.6% above the same weeks in 2019. Stanford economist Eric Hanushek estimates pandemic-era learning loss will drain roughly $31 trillion in lifetime earnings across this century, with individual students forfeiting between 2 and 9% of their income depending on how long their state kept buildings dark.
Kids who learned to read over Zoom will still be paying in 2070. The adults who made that happen will be comfortably retired.
Not one of them has faced a consequence.
Weingarten certainly hasn&#8217;t. Last month delegates at the AFT&#8217;s 89th convention in Washington re-elected her to another two-year term atop a union of 1.875 million members. She spends her days promoting a book called “Why Fascists Fear Teachers.” The leader whose organization helped shape the guidance that emptied American classrooms now casts herself as democracy&#8217;s last defender. The audacity is remarkable. The impunity is worse.
Here is the lesson we cannot let fade. Health guidance was handed down as decree. A union with a direct stake shaped that decree behind closed doors. Parents who objected were branded enemies of science. School board meetings filled with mothers and fathers pleading for their children, and officials waved them off. The National School Boards Association wrote the White House, suggesting confrontations with parents might qualify as domestic terrorism. The group apologized weeks later. Attorney General Merrick Garland had already ordered the FBI to get involved.
That is how power gets used against children. Quietly, through email chains and edited drafts, by officials who never face a ballot.
Accountability has to mean more than one contempt vote. Congress should subpoena all communications between federal health agencies and teachers unions from 2020 through 2022 and publish them all. State legislatures should bar any agency from handing unions a seat at the table on closure policy. Governors should pull that authority from bureaucrats and give it to officials who answer to voters.
Families should keep the exits open too. Every state that expanded education savings accounts, charter access, or open enrollment after 2021 gave parents something no committee can hand down: the power to walk away from a system that failed them.
Fauci has lawyers, a presidential pardon, and the right to say nothing. The class of 2033 has none of it. Those students carry gaps in reading and arithmetic that grown men and women chose to inflict on them, and they are owed the truth about who made the call.
We are not going to forget. We will keep saying their names.
***
Ryan Walters is the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance and former State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Oklahoma.

Coronavirus Pandemic Causes Climate Of Anxiety And Changing Routines In America

Fauci Took The Fifth. America’s Kids Never Got That Option.

COVID

The largest teachers’ unions and associations in the country are now using their massive reach to pressure tech companies to integrate Left-wing political ideologies into AI tools before K-12 schools adopt them.
In a new groundbreaking <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https://defendinged.org/investigations/dei-in-ai-unions-and-associations/___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6Y2IyNDU4YTIzNzJlOWZjNjBhMDc0ZGQ2NDhmZDYzNjA6NzowNWM2Ojg0OGU4YWMzNmI4NzgyNjE5ZTNmNDA1ZjY4YzY2Y2IwNmEyZjYwMmNhMjZiOTgyODhhOGM4Zjg5ODMwNjE0YjQ6cDpUOkY">report</a>, Defending Education found that the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and several other associations are actively promoting the idea that AI tools are created predominantly by white and Asian men, and as a result, provide students and educators with biased answers and solutions from this specific worldview. The teachers’ organizations often refer to this idea as “algorithmic bias.”
The integration of AI into America’s K-12 schools is not a matter of if but when. These organizations understand that whoever shapes AI today will influence what the nation’s students learn in the future. Schools will soon use AI to assist teachers in creating their lesson plans and even grading tests and essays. This is the next battleground in education, and these groups understand that.
The NEA has a sample school board policy that districts can adopt, mandating that tech companies integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives into their AI programs before schools can even consider using them. This is a direct warning to tech vendors that they will not receive a school district’s business unless they embed DEI in their products.
When considering the business a tech company can lose from being blackballed by the largest school districts, such as those in Los Angeles or Chicago, most of these AI vendors will likely cave without a second thought, and the NEA is very well aware.
The AFT’s National Academy for AI Instruction is potentially even more dangerous in this regard. This so-called academy prioritizes the idea that AI can “perpetuate bias” and “undermine educational equity” unless“proper guardrails” are in place to prevent those perceived issues. The goal of this academy is to “provide training and support” to educators in AI usage.
The National Academy for AI Instruction is backed by $23 million in funding and is supported by partnering companies Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. These are three of the largest corporations building AI on a global scale, and their systems are already used by many school districts.
The troubling reality is that these giant corporations are involved in this endeavor knowing that the end goal is to politicize their AI tools before schools fully adopt them, and they appear to be complicit partners in this initiative. Unfortunately, that is the sway these teachers’ unions, with millions of members, have over corporations.
Most classrooms will adopt AI, in one form or another, within the next few years. These groups intend to shape this new technology before that happens. They intend to make DEI a core pillar before AI inevitably becomes institutionalized in our nation’s schools.
These organizations have spent years attempting to embed left-wing ideology into classrooms, and they see AI as the latest Trojan horse to accomplish that goal. This problem will be much harder to fix if we do not stop it now, while modern AI is still in its infancy.
For better or worse, artificial intelligence will revolutionize the way our schools educate children in approaches that we have not even considered yet. It will become one of the most influential educational tools ever created.
Concerned parents and families must pay attention as their schools begin to adopt AI into their children’s classrooms and school infrastructure. They must follow these issues and speak up before schools agree to integrate AI into their classrooms. Parents still have the power to influence AI during this watershed moment. It is imperative that they provide input now and help shape AI while there is still time.
***
Casey Ryan is a writer and investigative reporter at Defending Education.

Presentation of the AI chatbot “Telli” at a school in Bremen

Teachers’ Unions Push For AI Tools To Integrate DEI In Schools

National Academy for AI Instruction

National Education Association

Teachers Unions

A teachers&#8217; union boss said during a keynote speech at an American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conference that President Donald Trump makes her reach for the alcohol.
Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten, the president of AFT, routinely — and publicly — disagrees with Trump and many other top Republicans, and she said as much in her keynote speech.
After welcoming the crowd, she mocked the White House’s Independence Day celebration, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/weingarten-gestures-wildly-anti-trump-rant-later-says-drives-her-drink">according</a> to Fox News. “While you missed the UFC cage fight on the White House lawn, it’s not too late to check out the tire marks in the Reflecting Pool,” Weingarten said.
During the following <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNWaPpSIm5o">panel discussion</a>, Weingarten asked what keeps them up at night with the many things “confronting the country.”
“Because part of what authoritarians do — and also part of what Donald Trump does — whether you consider him an authoritarian or not, is the throwing out of so much stuff that people just throw up their hands and say: ‘Oh no, what are we going to do? All I want to do is stay home and’ — for those of us who drink — ‘have a glass of wine’ — or for me, some vodka,” she said.
Weingarten became progressively more upset as she ranted about Trump and “oligarchs” such as Elon Musk.
“But this is what they don’t have: the power of the people,” she said, becoming increasingly animated.
“That is not a mere slogan. It is the potential to work together, to bargain together, to protest together, to vote together, to act together, to bring about change — real, lasting, life-improving change,” Weingarten said.
“That is the power and potential of our movement and of the A – F – T,” she said, lengthening the organization’s acronym dramatically as she claimed that the AFT could work for “good” against “corruption.”
Weingarten went on to say that she wants an America built where “the trans nurse, the Palestinian teacher, the Jewish student, and every person, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or place of origin, feel welcome, safe, and valued.”
“And one more thing: We get sh*t done,” Weingarten said. “My apologies to the children.”

Teachers Union Boss’s Trump Confession? Pass The Vodka

Alcohol

Donald Trump

Education

Politics

On June 2, Karen Bass emerged from the Los Angeles primary having secured <a href="https://www.foxla.com/news/la-mayoral-race-raman-closes-gap-spencer-pratt">roughly 34% of the vote</a>. The math is damning: two-thirds of Angelenos essentially voted to fire their mayor. Yet, the machine delivered a runoff regardless. 
This November, Bass will square off against Nithya Raman, a councilwoman deeply aligned with the city&#8217;s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) bloc. Spencer Pratt, the Palisades fire survivor who campaigned as the authentic outsider, was relegated to third place and is out of the running. This outcome was no statistical quirk. It was the calculated result of a teachers&#8217; union political operation that has spent years colonizing every tier of L.A.’s government and is now poised to seize the final office it does not yet control. 
 
The mechanics are not complicated. The L.A. County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, which represents 800,000 workers across 300 unions and counts United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the American Federation of Teachers&#8217; (AFT) L.A. affiliate, among its members, <a href="https://thelafed.org/news/los-angeles-labor-movement-endorses-mayor-karen-bass-for-re-election/">formally endorsed Bass for re-election in November 2025</a>. 
UTLA&#8217;s own 2026 endorsement slate skipped the mayor&#8217;s race and built out the rest of City Hall around her. Council picks Hugo Soto-Martinez, Eunisses Hernandez, and Estuardo Mazariegos, <a href="https://utla.net/campaigns/2026-endorsements/">all listed on UTLA&#8217;s official endorsement page</a>, belong to the same DSA-aligned bloc reshaping the city. The fix was in months ago. 
 
What did the union have to fear from Spencer Pratt? Look at what he told Bill Maher on his podcast in May. Maher asked whether Pratt was strong enough to &#8220;buck the unions.&#8221; Pratt answered that union leadership was running &#8220;a scam&#8221; on its own members and pledged to push back. &#8220;You had me at hello,&#8221; Maher <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/you-had-me-at-hello-bill-maher-fawns-over-authentic-spencer-pratt-in-podcast-appearance/">told</a> him. 
Pratt was the only candidate in the field who promised to take on the racket controlling California schools and run it into the ground. He was the candidate the union needed to be gone. On June 8, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/los-angeles-mayor-election-bass-raman-pratt-2026/">CBS News</a> called the runoff for Raman over Pratt. Within days, Pratt acknowledged defeat. The union got the November matchup it wanted. 
 
The union&#8217;s political project does not stop at L.A.’s city limits, and it is not abstract. A new Defending Education <a href="https://defendinged.org/investigations/diverted-state-and-local-teachers-unions-spending/">report</a> finds that state and local teachers union affiliates have funneled $336 million to left-wing groups and political action committees since 2015. 
UTLA itself has spent more than $7 million on this kind of activity. The California Teachers Association&#8217;s PACs have spent over $106 million. None of that went to teaching kids to read. It went to elections, ballot measures, and ideological allies. Some of it went directly to anti-ICE organizing. The union is not even pretending the money is for classrooms anymore. 
 
What has all that buying bought? Ask Bass. In April 2026, UTLA threatened a massive strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District. Bass personally jumped into the talks. &#8220;I stepped into negotiations to make sure that every effort was made to find an agreement,&#8221;<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/los-angeles-schools-open-negotiations-labor-deal/"> she said afterward</a>, citing her concern about disruption to kids and parents. Within days, UTLA had a tentative two-year contract with an <a href="https://laist.com/brief/news/education/la-unified-school-district-reaches-tentative-labor-deal-with-teachers">11.65% raise and a $77,000 starting salary</a>. Two months later, the union helped deliver Bass her runoff slot. Call that a coincidence if you want. The union didn&#8217;t. 
 
For Angelenos, the November ballot is a runoff with no real choice. Bass and Raman are both progressive Democrats. Raman ran to Bass&#8217;s left as a DSA ally and gained ground in the count precisely because the city&#8217;s most committed left-wing activists turned out for her. 
The roughly two-thirds of LA voters who picked someone other than Bass wanted accountability for the coalition that delivered Bass to a runoff against an even further-left challenger. In both cities, the candidate who threatened to break the union&#8217;s hold lost. The Teacher Freedom Alliance was founded because teachers should never be conscripted into politics they did not choose. Voters should not be either. 
 
AFT president Randi Weingarten has spent the last several months touring bookstores promoting a manifesto her members paid for. Her local affiliates have used the same months to hand themselves their next mayor. They have until November 3 to make it stick. Same machine, same playbook, and the same political casualty: anyone who tried to compete with the union for the right to govern an American city. 
 
L.A. didn&#8217;t pick its mayor on June 2. UTLA did. November is the formality.
*** 
 
Ryan Walters is the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance and former State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Oklahoma.

Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman hold mayoral election forum

How Teachers’ Unions Torpedoed Spencer Pratt And Picked L.A.’s Mayor

Democratic Socialists Of America

Karen Bass

L.A. mayoral election

Nithya Raman

Spencer Pratt

United Teachers Los Angeles

The school year is over, report cards are coming home, and parents are asking the same questions they ask at the end of every school year: Is my child learning? Are they better prepared for the future?
For far too many families, the honest answer is no. According to the <a href="https://www.nagb.gov/news-and-events/news-releases/2025/declines-in-8th-grade-science-and-12th-grade-math-and-reading.html">National Assessment of Educational Progress</a>, fewer than one in three American students can read at grade level, fewer than one in three eighth graders are proficient in science, and only 22% of high school seniors are proficient in math. Yet public school spending is approaching $1 trillion a year, nearly 60% higher than in 2013, when student performance was significantly stronger.
New York City, for example, spends roughly $44,000 per student each year, about 30% more than other large school districts without producing better outcomes. The disconnect has become so absurd that even Jeff Bezos recently <a href="https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/2059358911480709283">weighed in</a>. As Bezos <a href="https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/2059358911480709283">put it</a>, if Amazon operated the same way, “packages would take six weeks to arrive, we would charge you a $100 delivery fee, and when the package did finally arrive, it would have the wrong item.”
Parents and taxpayers have every right to wonder where all that money is going.
If you follow the dollars, the answer leads straight to Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Parents are constantly told that teachers’ unions exist to support educators and improve schools. A closer look at how the union spends its money and exercises its influence, however, tells a very different story.
According to federal filings analyzed by the Illinois Policy Institute, AFT spent more than $277 million in fiscal year 2024. Only $100.7 million of that, barely 36 cents on the dollar, went toward representing teachers, the union’s supposed core function. The rest flowed into politics, administration, and union leadership priorities. That includes $38 million in political activities and lobbying alone. The Better Business Bureau recommends nonprofits devote at least 65% of their resources to their core mission. By that standard, the AFT falls dramatically short. Meanwhile, Weingarten herself collected more than $500,000 in salary and reportable compensation in FY2024, while the average teacher earns around $72,000.
When those factors are combined with the union’s overwhelmingly one-sided political spending, the picture becomes even more troubling. During the 2024 election cycle, 99.89% of AFT Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions went to Democrats and allied causes. In fact, the union’s PAC spent $15.6 million supporting Kamala Harris and Democratic congressional candidates.
That may come as a surprise to the millions of Americans who still assume teachers’ unions are primarily focused on improving schools and supporting educators. Then again, consider how Weingarten uses her platform.
She called Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act a “gross political attack” because it gave parents a clearer view of what young children are taught about gender and sexuality. She welcomed the Biden administration’s effort to rewrite Title IX in ways that allowed biological males to compete in girls’ sports and access private female spaces. At the 2024 AFT Convention, she invoked the specter of fascism to warn members about the consequences of the “wrong” election outcome. As American Enterprise Institute scholar Robert Pondiscio put it, her social media is “a litany of hot takes on politics and current events. Effective teaching? Barely a whisper.”
More recently, an investigation by Defending Education uncovered an AFT affiliate connected to a Minnesota network that promoted parent-alert systems designed to counter ICE operations. Separate research found DEI provisions embedded in AFT-affiliated union contracts nationwide, including race-conscious programming and ideological trainings unrelated to pay, benefits, or classroom conditions.
As parents, we have been told to stay in our lane. We’ve been told that questioning curriculum is book-banning, that wanting a say in our children’s education is extremism, and that the union knows best.
All the while, academic performance continues to deteriorate across nearly every subject and grade level, even as one of the most powerful organizations in American education pours millions of dollars, countless hours, and enormous political influence into elections, activism, and ideological causes that have little to do with helping students learn.
Parents have every right to expect better.
***
Alleigh Marré is the executive director of American Parents Coalition and a mother of four.

Kamala Harris – Teachers Convention

Another School Year, Another Teachers’ Union Cash Grab To Pet Political Causes

Perhaps no person more frequently represents themselves as the spokesperson for educators than Randi Weingarten, the infamous president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
With her tenure at the helm of the nation’s second-largest teachers union approaching two decades and no term limits for AFT officers, Weingarten has had ample opportunity to entrench herself as a key player in the progressive media and political apparatus.
But as can occur in the classroom — or any institution, for that matter — lengthy tenure untethered from performance and accountability breeds hubris and entitlement. And the greater the power, the greater the opportunity to abuse it.
To that end, two new reports released this week provide fresh evidence of Weingarten using her perch at AFT to leverage members’ dues for her own personal benefit.
The <a href="https://www.freedomfoundation.com/national/sparing-no-expense-how-aft-members-unknowingly-financed-randi-weingartens-literary-vanity-project/">first analysis</a>, produced by my organization and first <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/05/19/us-news/aft-boss-randi-weingarten-tapped-union-resources-worth-over-1-4m-to-write-manifesto-book/">reported on</a> by the New York Post, examined AFT’s most recent annual financial disclosure to the U.S. Department of Labor and discovered that the union appears to have financed the production, publication, and promotion of Weingarten’s recent book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers (WFFT), entirely with members’ dues.
Among other things, AFT footed the bill for Weingarten’s apparent ghostwriter — progressive commentator and communications consultant Sally Kohn — who received more than $400,000 from AFT during the year Weingarten’s book was in production.
In response to inquiries from the New York Post, AFT argued that not all the payments to Kohn were related to WFFT. That may be technically true, but the most Kohn had previously been paid by the union in a year was only $125,000, and Weingarten herself described Kohn in her book’s acknowledgments as “indispensable as a day-to-day thought partner and collaborator.”
Other payments associated with WFFT were beyond even such minor quibbles.
AFT did not dispute paying $6,000 to an editor in Montana to fact-check WFFT, nor did it deny paying $5,200 to a Juilliard-trained celebrity photographer for the black-and-white author photo appearing on the inside dust jacket at the back of Weingarten’s book.
The union’s members also unwittingly funded $64,000 in payments to Weingarten’s literary agent, to say nothing of the untold thousands of dollars expended on her cross-country book tour, or the time invested by dozens of AFT personnel in assisting in Weingarten’s literary pursuits.
That AFT members were not asked whether they wanted to underwrite Weingarten’s self-promotional work of antifascist political commentary in the first place is bad enough. But the real kicker is what happened to the proceeds.
In past comments, Weingarten emphasized that half of the royalties from WFFT would be donated to two AFT charities under Weingarten’s control, but never indicated she would benefit financially from the book sales.
In reality, the $375,000 in advance royalties from the book were divided into thirds among AFT, two Weingarten-controlled charities, and an opaque Delaware-registered LLC. When pressed by the Post about the Freedom Foundation’s analysis, AFT <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/05/19/us-news/aft-boss-randi-weingarten-tapped-union-resources-worth-over-1-4m-to-write-manifesto-book/">admitted</a> that the LLC served as a conduit for payments to Weingarten herself.
Weingarten already receives a compensation package worth <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/360725240/202501219349302720/full">nearly $600,000</a>, and it’s not clear how leveraging members’ dues for Weingarten’s personal pecuniary benefit aligns with AFT officers’ <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/501">legal obligation</a> to hold the union’s “money and property solely for the benefit of the organization and its members.”
Similarly, a second <a href="https://networkcontagion.us/reports/mission-aborted-a-report-on-institutional-governance-financial-transparency-and-policy-influence-in-major-teachers-unions/">report</a> released this week documenting the pervasive progressive political advocacy of the AFT and its larger counterpart, the National Education Association, flagged a $10,000 contribution by AFT to Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which it describes as “a New York-based synagogue led by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum (now Rabbi Emerita), Randi Weingarten’s wife.”
Taxpayers have also been left holding the bag for Weingarten’s union activism.
In 2023, the Freedom Foundation <a href="https://www.freedomfoundation.com/labor/aft-president-randi-weingarten-qualified-for-public-pension-for-years-spent-out-of-the-classroom-on-union-leave/">documented</a> that Weingarten’s time as a New York City public school teacher — which she often hearkens back to in her writing and speeches — amounted to a grand total of three years full-time and three years as a substitute.
Her limited classroom tenure was not enough to qualify her for pension benefits, but thanks to a sweetheart deal with the city, her 11 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers were credited toward her pension seniority, securing her a taxpayer-funded retirement potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Weingarten may want to pose as the champion of American educators, but unfortunately, her track record at AFT starkly illustrates the need to empower educators with alternatives to her corrupt enterprise.
Through projects like <a href="https://www.optouttoday.com/">OptOutToday.com</a>, teachers can take steps to cancel their membership in far-left unions like the AFT and the NEA. Conservative educators seeking support can turn to non-union professional associations such as the <a href="https://www.teacherfreedomalliance.com/">Teacher Freedom Alliance</a>.
For their part, policymakers should follow the example of states like Idaho, which recently <a href="https://www.freedomfoundation.com/press-release/idaho-ends-taxpayer-support-for-teachers-unions/">adopted legislation</a> prohibiting direct and indirect taxpayer support for teachers&#8217; unions.
Until union executives like Weingarten and the organizations they steer face meaningful accountability, it should be no surprise that they continue to exploit their members and taxpayers alike.
***
Maxford Nelsen is director of research and government affairs at the Freedom Foundation.

How Randi Weingarten Wrote Herself A Fat Paycheck And Left Taxpayers With The Bill

The leaders of America&#8217;s two largest teachers unions, which fought to keep public schools closed during <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/covid" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID</a> and have pushed to bring radical leftist ideology to the classroom, spoke at the final night of the Democratic National Convention Thursday.
American Federation For Teachers president Randi Weingarten <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6_mEFVYca0">claimed</a> that former President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance &#8220;can&#8217;t claim they&#8217;re pro-child while gutting funding for public schools,&#8221; and that &#8220;being pro-family means we support access to good union jobs, affordable housing, health care, and higher education.&#8221;
Weingarten, who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/teachers-union-boss-randi-weingarten-mocked-for-unhinged-politicized-speech-warning-of-fascism">claimed</a> last month that Trump was an &#8220;existential threat to democracy,&#8221; heads the nation&#8217;s second-largest teachers union. The labor leader has come under fire in recent months for asserting that she fought to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/randi-weingarten-is-gaslighting-us-she-fought-to-keep-schools-closed-not-open">keep schools open</a> during the coronavirus pandemic, when in fact she did the exact opposite. Weingarten in 2020 called the Trump administration&#8217;s push to reopen schools “reckless,” “callous,” and “cruel.”
Though research showed as early as 2020 that children could safely return to the classroom, teachers unions fought to keep schools closed. School closures caused significant learning loss across the country, studies have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/teachers-union-exec-suggests-learning-loss-made-us-all-equal">shown</a>.
Joining Weingarten on stage was National Education Association President Becky Pringle, who told the crowd in Chicago that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the best hope for American students.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1723831707612000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0pyrv88A5nsmWM2F2Wr9As">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a>
&#8220;They will strengthen our schools, support our educators, and help our students live into their brilliance,&#8221; Pringle said, hours before the vice president is slated to officially accept the Democratic presidential nomination. &#8220;Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are not just wrong — they&#8217;re dangerous,&#8221; Pringle said.
Pringle last month was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/teachers-union-head-mocked-for-totally-unhinged-speech">slammed</a> for delivering a &#8220;totally unhinged speech&#8221; in which she said &#8220;we have to transform&#8221; the public education system &#8220;into something it was never designed to be — a racially and socially just and equitable system that prepares every student!&#8221; A known partisan, Pringle heads the nation&#8217;s largest teachers union, which in 2022 gave <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nations-largest-teachers-unions-dump-at-least-2-25-million-on-michigan-gov-whitmer-re-election-campaign">$1 million</a> to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer&#8217;s (D) re-election campaign.
Whitmer was one of several Democratic governors who pushed to keep schools closed during COVID. She was joined in those efforts by Walz, who as Minnesota governor instituted some of the nation&#8217;s strictest COVID lockdowns.
Walz, who in March 2020 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/flashback-walz-implemented-covid-hotline-to-snitch-on-neighbors">established</a> a hotline and encouraged Minnesotans to snitch on neighbors who violated lockdowns by attending worship services, kept schools closed and mandated students wear masks well into the COVID pandemic. Critics <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walzs-covid-emergency-powers-were-challenged-as-overreaching">challenged</a> those restrictions in court, though the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled they were constitutional.
Pringle pointed to Walz&#8217;s work as a public school teacher to underscore her claim that the Harris-Walz ticket is the best thing for American students.
The Daily Wire reported this week that Walz has made <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tim-walzs-misleading-claims-about-winning-teaching-awards">misleading claims</a> about winning &#8220;teacher of the year awards,&#8221; just days after he caught flak for making similarly misleading claims about his military service and his wife&#8217;s use of in vitro fertilization.
The Harris campaign has emphasized Walz&#8217;s work as a teacher, though his positions on education as governor have come under scrutiny. As governor, Walz signed legislation requiring that Minnesota public schools put <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/did-tim-walz-really-put-tampons-in-the-boys-bathroom">tampon dispensers</a> in boys bathrooms, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-public-teacher-walz-attacked-school-choice-schemes-that-leaves-our-teachers-in-the-short">slammed school choice</a> as a &#8220;scheme&#8221; that &#8220;leaves our teachers in the lurch.&#8221;

Teachers Union Heads Who Fought To Keep Schools Closed During COVID Speak At DNC

Democratic National Convention

Elections

Kamala Harris

The American Federation of Teachers&#8217; 88th National Convention centered not on workplace conditions or the resolution of deep issues rampant throughout the nation’s classrooms but underscored the union’s longstanding devotion to progressive politics, culminating in a resounding endorsement of presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
The convention, which hosts AFT delegates from across the nation to vote on resolutions which guide the union’s internal operations for the year ahead, was markedly partisan as the infamously progressive union preps its members for election season.
Resolutions passed by this year’s delegates covered a swath of hot button political issues:
“The AFT <a href="https://www.aft.org/resolution/committing-end-lifetime-alert-physical-and-psychological-violence-against-lgbtqia-youth" target="_blank" rel="noopener">will</a> recommit resources,” for example, to “support LGBTQIA+ affirming and inclusive school environments and curriculum,” according to a resolution regarding “physical and psychological violence” against queer youth.
Another <a href="https://www.aft.org/resolution/opposing-overreach-us-supreme-court" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resolution</a>, “Opposing the Overreach of the U.S. Supreme Court,” details the union’s commitment to “reverse the decisions” of those Justices AFT accuses of “eliminating guarantees of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the American people.”
According to a <a href="https://www.aft.org/resolution/what-stake-2024-elections-democratic-republic-committed-liberty-and-justice-all" target="_blank" rel="noopener">third</a>, “the basic institutions and principles of U.S. democracy…are under attack” by “Donald Trump and the ultra-right MAGA faction.” In addition to democracy, AFT writes, Republicans have attacked public education through “voucher schemes,” reproductive freedom through “draconian anti-abortion laws,” and “the very humanity of marginalized and stigmatized communities.”
But the key <a href="https://www.aft.org/resolution/endorsement-kamala-harris-president" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resolution</a> passed by the AFT was the union’s “Endorsement of Kamala Harris for President.”
“Kamala Harris has a clear record under the Biden-Harris administration to compare with Donald Trump’s, offering voters a stark choice,” AFT explained. The union pledges to mobilize its members in support of Harris’s presidential campaign, plus join the rest of Big Labor in its “collective effort to elect Kamala Harris.”
Amid talk of a variety of progressive topics, AFT’s support for Harris was constant.
Before delegates arrived in Houston, the union’s executive council preemptively <a href="https://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-executive-council-unanimously-endorses-kamala-harris-president" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pushed</a> a unanimous call on AFT members to ratify its endorsement of Harris for the American presidency.
AFT President Randi Weingarten’s keynote address amplified strong support for Harris, through which “progress is possible.” “But so is the eradication of the rights and progress we hold dear,” continued Weingarten, through former President Donald Trump, who poses an “existential threat to democracy and freedom.”
Throughout the convention, among the <a href="https://www.aft.org/news/convention-sneak-peek-were-fighting-better-life-all" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speakers</a> who addressed the union in support of Harris included United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Harris, whose address was the convention’s grand finale, again emphasized the responsibility of educators to vote in support of her dedication to “freedom, compassion, and rule of law,” in opposition to Right-wing “chaos, fear, and hate.”
A vote against her campaign, Harris emphasized, would “return America to a dark past.”
AFT’s longstanding devotion to progressive causes and candidates is nothing new. For years, the union has <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/teachers-unions-spend-big-democrats-ahead-midterm-elections" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transferred</a> millions directly from the pockets of dues-paying teachers to its Democratic friends.
Though American teachers continue to <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/teachers-union-membership-drops-by-59000-across-the-nation/#:~:text=The%20National%20Education%20Association%20and,member%20loss%20the%20previous%20year." target="_blank" rel="noopener">flee</a> AFT in search of refuge from the progressive agenda included in membership, this year’s convention emphasizes that the union’s loyalty to the left-wing will not fade anytime soon.
According to a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/04/04/teachers-views-on-the-state-of-public-k-12-education/#:~:text=A%20majority%20of%20public%20K,or%20lean%20toward%20the%20GOP." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pew Research survey</a> of over 2,500 public K-12 school teachers, a significant percentage of teachers presumably disagree with their union’s endorsement. The AFT, however, couldn’t care less.
For the AFT, it seems as though disregarding the inconvenient interests of teachers unsupportive of union ideology is a worthy sacrifice in pursuit of the political agenda that continues to dominate Big Labor’s priorities across the board.
* * * 
Aaron Withe is Chief Executive Officer of the Freedom Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.

Vice President Kamala Harris Delivers A Keynote At The American Federation of Teachers’ 88th National Convention In Houston

‘Democracy Under Attack’: Teachers Union Convention Backs Progressivism, Endorses Kamala Harris

'Democracy Under Attack': Teachers Union Convention Backs Progressivism, Endorses Kamala Harris

Houston

LGBTQ

Opinion

Progressivism

The president of the nation&#8217;s second-largest teachers union went on a politicized rant about &#8220;violence&#8221; and &#8220;fascism&#8221; just days after the head of the largest teachers union was mocked for doing the same thing.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), was mocked for her &#8220;unhinged&#8221; keynote address at her union&#8217;s annual convention in Houston on Monday.
“The November elections will determine which path we take as a nation. Progress is indeed possible, but so is the eradication of the rights and freedoms we hold dear,” Weingarten <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xux0jNAHqEI" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> at the event.
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Randi Weingarten says Trump is an &quot;existential threat to democracy&quot;:
&quot;The November elections will determine which path we take.. it is seldom a dramatic event or attack that lets fascism in the door. The violence comes later, after they are voted in.&quot;
Unhinged lunatic. <a href="https://t.co/87K6mYDhKP">pic.twitter.com/87K6mYDhKP</a>
&mdash; Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) <a href="https://twitter.com/DeAngelisCorey/status/1815456591682187465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 22, 2024</a></blockquote>
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It’s official! <a href="https://twitter.com/AFTunion?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@aftunion</a> delegates just voted to endorse <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@kamalaharris</a>. I spoke in support of the resolution—for our students, our patients, our families, our communities, our democracy and ourselves! Let’s win this! <a href="https://t.co/O2CeFULlBT">pic.twitter.com/O2CeFULlBT</a>
&mdash; Randi Weingarten 🇺🇸💪🏿👩‍🎓🟣🌴🥥 (@rweingarten) <a href="https://twitter.com/rweingarten/status/1815446063849013286?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 22, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Imagine a country where hate has no harbor and freedom rings, the freedom to vote, to live, to breathe, the freedom to marry, the freedom for families to make reproductive choices, the freedom to read, the freedom to teach, and the freedom to join a union!&#8221; the union boss shouted.
As she neared the end of her speech, Weingarten waved her arms and appeared to be jumping up and down behind the podium.
&#8220;Historians &#8230; who study threats to democracy and how fascists come to power conclude that it is seldom a dramatic event or attack that lets fascism in the door,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The violence comes later after they are voted in. Voting is still our best defense against tyranny and fascism, and it&#8217;s our best offense to create the better future we dream of and march for.&#8221;
The union boss went on to suggest former President Donald Trump is an &#8220;existential threat to democracy&#8221; and urged her members to vote against him.
&#8220;When the history books are written about this moment, let them record that we the people, united, mobilized, and voted down this existential threat to democracy and freedom, that we continued the march for progress, that we laid the foundation for our better future, and that we sought to create a more perfect union! Progress is possible! Keep marching!&#8221; Weingarten shouted as the crowd of union members erupted into applause.
Also on Monday, Weingarten touted that AFT union delegates had voted to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
&#8220;Let’s win this!&#8221; she <a href="https://x.com/rweingarten/status/1815446063849013286">posted</a> on X.
School choice activist Corey DeAngelis <a href="https://x.com/DeAngelisCorey/status/1815456591682187465">called</a> Weingarten an &#8220;unhinged lunatic&#8221; after her speech.
&#8220;Randi Weingarten just gave a 4,000 word keynote speech to her teachers union. She didn’t mention learning loss a single time,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/nickineily/status/1815745937060278772" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Nicki Neily, founder and president of Parents Defending Education, a nonprofit &#8220;working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas.&#8221;
&#8220;Just days after he was shot in an attempted ass*ss*nat*on, Randi Weingarten suggests Trump is an &#8216;existential threat to democracy and freedom&#8217; and that he&#8217;s a violent, tyrannical, fascist. Is this what &#8216;toning it down&#8217; looks like? Deranged,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1815464697036247312">posted</a> the X account Libs of TikTok.
Earlier this month, the president of the country’s largest teachers union was also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/teachers-union-head-mocked-for-totally-unhinged-speech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mocked</a> for a &#8220;totally unhinged&#8221; speech in which she shouted about winning “all the things.”
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA), banged on the podium, waved her arms, and laughed out loud as she <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2ifRgiOOJ8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shouted</a> about social justice at the union’s Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly in Philadelphia.
“We have to transform it into something it was never designed to be — a racially and socially just and equitable system that prepares every student! Every student! Every student! Every one! With conviction and commitment,” Pringle said.
Pringle also railed against Trump and what she called a “stacked” Supreme Court.
“We worked hard to rid ourselves of a tyrannical, deceitful, and corrupt White House. We did. But the reality is that the seeds that were sown during that horrible season continue to germinate,” Pringle said.

PowerUp & Build Back Better With Care

Teachers Union Boss Randi Weingarten Mocked For ‘Unhinged’ Politicized Speech Warning Of ‘Fascism’

Teachers Union Boss Randi Weingarten Mocked For 'Unhinged' Politicized Speech Warning Of 'Fascism'

Labor Unions

Public Schools

Republican Sen. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/tim-scott" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tim Scott</a> of South Carolina blasted a teachers union boss on Wednesday for comparing the parental rights movement to proponents of segregation.
American Federation of Teachers President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/randi-weingarten" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Randi Weingarten</a> took a shot at the parental rights movement, which emphasizes a parent’s authority over a child’s education, in an interview aired Tuesday. Weingarten compared those parents frustrated largely with public school officials to parents who resisted desegregation on the basis of race.
Scott said the union boss was spreading “liberal lies” that harken “back to a day that no longer exists.”
“There might not be anyone that’s done more damage recently than Randi Weingarten to the kids living in distressed communities, especially like the ones where I grew up,” Scott told <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tim-scott-slams-randi-weingarten-for-comparing-parental-rights-to-segregation.amp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fox News</a>.
“I’m so sick and tired of liberals &#8212; too many of them happen to be white &#8212; crying racism every single time they&#8217;re losing an argument,” he continued. “I can’t think of anything more actually racist than trapping poor black kids in the failing schools in these big blue cities dominated by a super-majority of radical progressives who are running the cities and destroying the schools.”
Scott, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, said Weingarten and the teachers union are two of the chief hurdles to a child’s education today.
“They’re the ones, with their teachers unions, standing in the doorway of the schoolhouse, trapping poor kids in as if the house is on fire, but they won’t let a single soul out,” the senator from South Carolina said. “It’s really frustrating, and it’s one of the reasons why I think we have no choice but to break the backs of these teachers’ unions. They’re the problem. They’re literally destroying the future of millions of kids.”
Weingarten attacked the parental rights movement in an appearance on the podcast Power At Work, produced by the Burnes Center for Social Change. The union boss said she was made aware of a connection between the parents’ rights movement and segregationists from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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“Those same words that you heard in terms of wanting segregation post-Brown v. Board of Education, those same words you hear today,” Weingarten said.
“I was kind of gobsmacked when I was talking to Southern Poverty Law Center, and they showed me the same words, ‘choice,’ ‘parental rights,’ and an attempt to divide parents versus teachers,” she added. “At that point, it was white parents versus other parents, but it’s the same kind of words.”
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🚨NEW: <a href="https://twitter.com/AFTunion?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AFTunion</a> President <a href="https://twitter.com/rweingarten?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@rweingarten</a> smears the parental rights movement👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 as some sort of new Segregation. Her source?🤔 A far-left smear factory notorious for putting conservatives on a &quot;hate map&quot; with the KKK. <a href="https://t.co/TIeeTvTdhl">https://t.co/TIeeTvTdhl</a> <a href="https://t.co/nZxPgTDEOz">pic.twitter.com/nZxPgTDEOz</a>
&mdash; Tyler O&#39;Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) <a href="https://twitter.com/Tyler2ONeil/status/1702101457594388800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Tim Scott

Tim Scott Smacks Teachers Union Boss For Comparing Parental Rights To Segregation

Lawmakers investigating the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID pandemic</a> have again requested phone call records between <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/far-left-teachers-union-boss-randi-weingarten-to-join-council-to-advise-homeland-security" target="_blank" rel="noopener">teacher’s union boss Randi Weingarten</a> and outgoing CDC Director <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/dr-rochelle-walensky" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rochelle Walensky</a> over concerns of “political interference.” 
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) sent a <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2023.06.28-BRW-Letter-to-CDC-Re.-Texts.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> to Walensky on Wednesday, just two days before her scheduled departure from the CDC, requesting her phone records and texts with Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. 
“During an April hearing with AFT president Weingarten, the Select Subcommittee learned — for the first time — that Ms. Weingarten had a direct telephone line to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Preserving all phone calls and text messages between the two officials will ensure accountability for any political interference,” the subcommittee <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/wenstrup-calls-for-phone-records-between-cdc-director-rochelle-walensky-and-teachers-union-president-randi-weingarten/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a press release. 
Wenstrup’s letter also accused the Department of Health and Human Services of failing to produce records in a timely manner, and only producing select documents that could be acquired through a freedom of information request. The CDC <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/cio.htm#:~:text=CDC%20is%20one%20of%20the,of%20Health%20and%20Human%20Services." target="_blank" rel="noopener">is</a> a “major operating component” of HHS. 
“The Department of Health and Human Services is continuing its pattern of obstructing Congress by apparently only producing documents already made publicly available via the FOIA. As a reminder, FOIA does not apply to Congress,” Wenstrup said in the letter to Walensky. 
Text <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/texts-show-teachers-union-working-with-cdc-director-to-keep-schools-closed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">messages previously obtained</a> by the Fairfax Parent’s Association appear to show a close relationship between Weingarten and Walensky and seem to show Weingarten impacting CDC policy on school closure policy. 
Weingarten texted Walensky in February 2021 saying that she had heard a “leak” from The New York Times about what was in the CDC’s upcoming guidance for school re-opening, and expressed concern that it was “at odds with [their] discussion.”
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“They are running with a full speed ahead angle” for reopening schools, Weingarten wrote. She said the Times sent her a copy of the internal draft guidance that said, “At any level of community transmission, all schools can provide in-person instruction.”
“Hmmm. Argh,” Walensky wrote to Weingarten. 
Following the texts from Weingarten, the CDC released guidance that was different. It said, “All schools have options to provide in-person instruction.” This guideline allowed school districts to stay closed while still saying they were following CDC guidelines. “Middle and high schools in virtual only instruction unless they can strictly implement all mitigation strategies and have few cases,” the guidance added.
Wenstrup requested call logs and texts between Walensky and Weingarten on the CDC’s director&#8217;s personal and professional phones by July 12.

Top Health Officials Testify Before Senate Hearing

House Republicans Move To Obtain COVID Phone Records Between Walensky And Weingarten

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