A new book by the teacher union leader is completely off the mark.
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten has written Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy, a book she claims will empower us and give us hope. The problem is that every word coming from the union boss’s mouth is nonfactual lefty claptrap.
You don’t need to buy the book to understand what I mean. In an interview with a sycophant at The Progressive, a far-left magazine that covers politics and culture, Weingarten claims that “the undermining of public education is an intentional strategy of the right; they favor school privatization.”
Wrong. The reason most conservatives, and yes, increasing numbers of Democrats, favor parental choice is because the Government School/Union Industrial Complex is failing at its mission. On the most recent NAEP, a record-high percentage of high school seniors scored at “below basic” levels in math and reading compared to all previous assessments. So it’s not surprising that, in a recent poll, 63% of Hispanics and 68% of Blacks—typically Democrats—voiced support for a private option.
Weingarten nonsensically avers that people on the right, whom she pointedly refers to as fascists, support book bans, don’t want young people to think for themselves, and maintains that “unions are at the forefront of expanding economic prosperity and strengthening democracy.”
It’s worth noting that there’s really nothing new here. Over the years, she has made equally fallacious comments. During a brief rant to a newsman in 2018, she bizarrely assertedthat unions “actually make communities safer and…the right-wing is threatened by that.” She also said, “(school) privatization and disinvestment are only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.”
In reality, many Americans have come to mistrust teachers’ unions whose leadership is blatantly leftist, even though teachers are mixed politically. In July, National Education Association president Becky Pringle acknowledged that the NEA’s membership is nearly evenly split between Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
You might then assume that teacher union spending would be proportional, but you’d be wrong. Very wrong. As Open Secrets discloses, in 2024, NEA spent $22,744,023 on politics, with 98.24% going to Democrats and a paltry 1.76% going to Republicans.
The AFT is even more one-sided. In “Total Contributions by Party of Recipient,” Weingarten’s organization in 2024 gave $3,069,063 (99.89%) to Democrats and a scant $3,323 (0.11%) to Republicans.
Most recently, a report by Defending Ed, a parents’ rights group, revealed multiple details about teacher union political spending, stating that left-wing philanthropic giants like the Tides Network, New Venture Fund, Sixteen-Thirty Fund, and Future Forward—the latter being the leading Super PAC supporting Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign after former President Joe Biden dropped out—received nearly $1.5 million combined from teachers’ unions.
The unions also contributed large sums of money to groups that support left-wing candidates for public office, such as the Democratic Governors Association, Democrats’ House Majority, and Senate Majority PACs.
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