Free Republic

When you think of an ideal teachers union president, perhaps what comes to mind is someone who cares deeply about children, learning, and improving the lives of educators. But if you're American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, you care more about inserting yourself into the far-left political sphere and constantly spewing out inflammatory rhetoric. Why a teachers union boss feels the need to weigh in on the Israel-Hamas war is beyond me, but there was Weingarten on social media Sunday, essentially blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the Hamas killings of six hostages, including 23-year-old Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin....

American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten has been ripped as an “unhinged lunatic” after she delivered a wild, political rally-style speech suggesting that former President Donald Trump was an “existential threat” to democracy. The teachers’ union president screamed and shouted at her members as she warned of looming violence and fascism if Trump wins the 2024 election when she took the stage during the AFT’s annual convention in Houston, Texas, 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...

Randi Weingarten's American Federation of Teachers defends pro-Hamas campus occupations as 'peacefully demonstrating' The American Federation of Teachers led by Randi Weingarten claimed that anti-Israel protesters on college campuses were simply "peacefully demonstrating." The American Federation of Teachers led by Randi Weingarten claimed that anti-Israel protesters on college campuses were simply “peacefully demonstrating.” The Tuesday statement from the AFT came in response to a hearing last week from the House Education and the Workforce Committee where leaders of Northwestern University, Rutgers University, and the University of California, Los Angeles, were grilled regarding their response to campus anti-Israel encampments. ”AFT members...

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) PresidentRandi Weingarten was slapped with an X community note after asking where the “women” were during an all-male Jewish prayer service. Weingarten, who said in 2010 she considers herself to be a “deeply religious” Jew, quoted Jewish conservative commentator Mark Levin’s video footage of the minyan — a quorum of Jewish adults, traditionally male, required for certain religious observances — outside the White House. “Where are the women?” Weingarten asked in the post, which has its comments section limited to Weingarten’s followers. The post garnered a response from Levin as well as a community note...

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said she was "spitting mad" over the staffing cuts at the Department of Education, describing it as an "evisceration by a thousand cuts." "So what it does is that it levels the playing field, so all kids can have opportunity, and that it was they are cutting, and when they cut half the people, it's like evisceration by a thousand cuts," Weingarten said, listing the Department of Education's duties. The Department of Education announced on Tuesday that it would be shrinking its workforce from around 4,133 to around 2,183 employees. Remaining workers impacted...

American Federation of Teachers honcho Randi Weingarten’s sudden outrage over Team Trump’s plan to abolish the federal Department of Education is simply about losing her own power and influence — not any risk to the kids. America’s “competitors — and adversaries — are no doubt cheering President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education,” Weingarten asserts in an MSNBC column, pretending the DOE “helps give all children in the United States access to the great public school education they deserve.” Nonsense: Few kids in America have “access” to “great public school education”; we lag our peers badly...

Teachers' union boss Randi Weingarten said during a recent podcast appearance that she is fearful President Donald Trump's plans to terminate the Department of Education will mean more funding for school choice vouchers, which she decried as a "tax credit" for wealthy families already sending their kids to private school. Weingarten's comments came during a podcast interview with Molly Jong-Fast, who spoke with her about the implications of Trump's spending reforms, particularly his plan to terminate the Department of Education. Weingarten stated that cutting the department's roughly $100 billion in funding will primarily benefit tax cuts for the wealthy or...

grants. -$81.7 million of that went to employee compensation -15 officers received compensation between $178k and $344k for a total of $2.8 million -$4.1 million on office expenses -$13.7 million on travel -$4.2 million on conferences, conventions, & meetings Its mission statement? "To work in partnership around the world to strengthen and safeguard democratic institutions, processes, norms, and values to secure a better quality of life for all."

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten recently said that school choice “undermines democracy.” In a video of her remarks, Weingarten slammed former White House Education Secretary Betsy Devos, City Journal journalist Christopher Rufo, and prominent school choice activist Corey DeAngelis. “[School choice proponents] have not one thing that they offer as a solution other than privatizing or voucherizing schools, which is about undermining democracy and undermining civil discourse and undermining pluralism, because 90 percent of our kids goes to public schools still. They just divided. Divided, divide, divide, divide,” Weingarten claimed. “What did Rufo say? Rufo, DeAngelis, Devos,...

The leader of one of the nation's largest teachers unions was seen in a viral video saying that school choice "undermines democracy." American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten made the remarks at the "Network for Public Education Action" national conference in October. A clip of her remarks blasting methods of school choice was shared on X and went viral on social media this week. In the video, Weingarten took aim at former White House Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo, and American Federation For Children Senior Fellow Corey DeAngelis for advocating for school choice measures. "They...

This is the anthesis of JFK’s book “Profiles In Courage.” This is about how The Teachers’ Union and Randi Weingarten are fascilitating a collapse in math scores in US schools. Weingarten, who was instrumental in shutting down schools during the Covid epidemic, and the national Teachers’ Union are the existential threat to democracy, not global warming. Why? Randi and The Teachers’ Union have led America down the drain in the area of mathematics, an important subject in the global economy. American students scored an all-time low in math on a major international exam, which provided the first comparison of global...

Want to have some ability to choose where your child goes to school? Well, then you’re a racist. So says Randi Weingarten, leader of the American Federation of Teachers. Words like “school choice” or “parental rights,” she maintains, are the “same kinds of words” used by segregationists, so if you use them too, you’re one of them. Predictably, Weingarten is now furiously backpedaling, claiming that she was just making an innocent comment about “language” rather than actually accusing anyone of being racist, but this isn’t the first time she’s beat this drum. In 2017, she called school-choice programs the “only...

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claimed Friday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that people are “getting really angry” at the education policies of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “I want to come back to the other policy which is I think the most unpopular of all in sort of this new mom’s group and the polling that’s out is the book bans.” Weingarten said, “Two things are unpopular, the book bans and also why you would get rid of social emotional learning when we have a mental health crisis? We have to make sure that kids feel...

Despite only spending a few years in the classroom, taxpayers could end up shelling out over $200,000 in a public pension for AFT president Randi Weingarten.Randi Weingarten has spent only a small portion of her career in the classroom despite leading the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest national teachers union in the United States. Trained as a lawyer, Weingarten taught full-time for just three years and was a substitute teacher for three more. However, according to a report by Freedom Foundation, a think tank, she will collect over 15 years' worth of public pension when she retires. That...

There is a reason why you know who Randi Weingarten, the leader of the second-largest teachers union in the country, is. She’s the one who threatened to strike if schools did not close in 2020. She is the one who said that school closures were not that big of a deal because “kids are resilient." She is the one who influenced the CDC to change its COVID-19 guidelines using almost her exact language. She is the one who introduced a campaign to bring Ibram X. Kendi’s simplistic ideas on race into “every classroom.” In other words, you know who Randi...

There are many reasons why so many US public schools remained persistently closed for well over a year, but at the top of the list is Randi Weingarten. She is the President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and served as the self-appointed and media-anointed spokesperson for teachers’ unions throughout the pandemic. Weingarten appeared regularly across national media outlets for well over two years, relentlessly touting the dangers of public schools and the risk to teachers from in-person instruction. She also painted anyone who advocated for schools to open as heartless and cruel. Now that it’s become clear what...

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was hit with a Twitter fact-check on Monday after she claimed she tried to get students back into the classroom during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Weingarten made the hyperbolic claims in a tweet on Monday, acknowledging a post from Kyle Belokopisky — the executive director of the New York State Congress of Parents and Teachers — on the supposed 3-year anniversary of planning to reopen New York schools. “We worked together 3 years ago to get our kids back to in person schooling in a way that was safe for...

Chicago voters lost Lightfoot, or perhaps better put, Lightfoot lost Chicago voters. The failure to keep children in schools and in effective learning environments undoubtedly played a big role in her political collapse, the worst in recent memory for Chicago mayors. Lightfoot herself counts that as a significant part of the “anger bubble” that pushed her out of office, and that also threatens to end the careers of other mayors of the COVID era. CNN’s Poppy Harlow points out this morning that Lightfoot went “head to head with the teacher’s union” over school shutdowns. Now Randi Weingarten wants to rewrite...

When President Donald Trump made his speech to a joint session of Congress last night, a number of female Democratic members of Congress wore pink to protest the Trump administration’s policies they say negatively impact women and families. “Pink is a color of power and protest,” New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, who chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus, told Time prior to the speech. “It’s time to rev up the opposition and come at Trump loud and clear.” Pink ― a color archetypically associated with femininity ― also calls to mind the “pink pussy hat” era: After Trump was elected...

President Donald Trump’s executive order on foreigners who “support designated foreign terrorists” could be the start of a previously promised crackdown on radical pro-Palestinian students on American college campuses. The Monday directive from Trump orders the U.S. government to deport foreigners who “bear hostile attitudes toward [American] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” That could describe plenty of foreign students advocating for Hamas and other terrorist groups at American universities, an analyst told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If a student...