Tag: teacher's union

Days After Charlie Kirk Assassination, Randi Weingarten Calls Conservatives ‘Fascists,’ Compares to ‘Nazis’

The head of one of the nation’s largest teachers unions is back to calling conservatives “fascists” and “authoritarians” and making comparisons to “nazis” just days after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated. 

President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Randi Weingarten ran an excerpt of her new book “WHY FASCISTS FEAR TEACHERS: Public Education and the Future of Democracy” in Rolling Stone on Tuesday. The article airs her often trot-out claims painting concerned parents and conservatives as fascists for cracking down on DEI materials, gender ideology indoctrination, and pornography in schools.  

Here are a few lines from her book, per Rolling Stone: 

“Democracy is people power. But fascists want one leader or a small group of elites to have all the power. And that is what’s happening in the United States right now — with billionaire Trump having enabled his shadow governing partner Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, to act as his co-president.”

“Authoritarians actively attack truth, knowledge, and critical thinking because an uninformed public is easier to control. Degrading public education and critical thinking skills may only prime more Americans to not recognize disinformation and misinformation and take authoritarian leaders like Trump at their word.”

“In other words, those inclined to support authoritarianism exhibit a general avoidance of or allergy to critical thinking. And authoritarians like it that way.”

“It makes me wonder whether far-right extremists are trying to deliberately inculcate an anti-critical thinking, pro-authoritarian disposition by undermining public education.”

“And what do fascists do when they’re worried that students might learn about the truth on their own? They ban books. Book bans are a very old and deeply disturbing tactic that, frankly, I never thought we’d see with such horrifying scope and scale in our country…This has profoundly disturbing precedents. In March 1933, an election consolidated Hitler’s power. Two months later, Nazis ransacked the Institute for Sexual Science, a pioneering medical center that studied gender and sexuality. The institute advocated for queer rights. Nazis removed all of the books from the institute — 20,000 books in total — for the first book burning in the Nazi regime. Book burning is part of a broader fascist pattern of attacking knowledge, freedom of information, and critical thinking.”

Weingarten’s article was published as far-left Democrats continue to essentially victim-blame conservatives for the horrific shooting death of 31-year-old Kirk, calling for divisive rhetoric to be turned down, even as people on the left cheer for his murder in droves and suggest Kirk deserved his fate.

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Teachers’ Union Chief Randi Weingarten Accidentally Makes the Case for Defunding Unions in Awkward Video

Randi Weingarten, the head of the largest teacher union in the country, accidentally made the case for defunding teachers’ unions in a recent social media post.

While Weingarten whined, she awkwardly bounced around.  Perhaps she was trying to convey passion, but instead, she just looked unhinged.

“We elect leaders to help working families thrive,” she said. “Our members do that every day.”

“But this Congress and this President have tried to pass a big, yes, it’s big, but very ugly bill that attacks our public schools and our health care.”

“Public education funding shouldn’t be used as a piggy bank for the wealthy. It’s wrong.”

“Our families deserve leaders who work for us, not against us.”

If only teachers’ unions would follow Randi’s advice.

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Andrew Cuomo’s pandering to the vile teachers union sets a record for shamelessness

Even in a state packed with shameless politicians, ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo has long stood out — but his gyrations in wooing the United Federation of Teachers as he runs for mayor are still a marvel to behold.

To be clear: We’ve long had the impression that Cuomo privately despises New York’s teachers unions, whether on personal grounds or (conceivably!) the principled objections we share; it’s one of his most attractive qualities.

And he took on all the state’s teachers unions early in his first back term as governor, first by championing charter schools against an assault by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and then by pushing for a rigorous-sounding statewide public-schoolteacher-evaluation process — a drive for which he declared himself “the students’ lobbyist.”

The unions hate charters, but saw the evaluations as an existential threat, since the point of them was to get incompetent teachers fired; they fought back, and beat him soundly.

But now the UFT could derail his comeback run, so Cuomo’s desperate to jump if he even thinks the union might’ve said “frog!”

At a cozy sitdown with UFT boss Michael Mulgrew and union activists last weekend, the ex-gov attacked his own past support for teacher evaluations and disowned the money-saving “Tier 6” public pension reforms he pushed through as gov.

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Teachers’ Unions Put Their Own Interests Over Students Futures! Union Boss Randi Weingarten Threatens Lawsuit After President Trump’s Order Dismantling the Incompetent Board of Education!

In a move that should outrage every parent in America, teachers union boss Randi Weingarten is threatening legal action to stop President Trump’s executive order dismantling the Department of Education.

Instead of supporting a plan that puts more money and control in the hands of parents and states, Weingarten and her union are fighting to keep the corrupt failing D.C. bureaucracy intact—prioritizing their own power over the success of America’s children.

For decades, the Department of Education has spent over $3 trillion while test scores have plummeted, in including Democrat-run cities where students are trapped in failing schools. Nearly three-quarters of eighth graders can’t do basic math, and seven-in-ten struggle to read. But instead of fixing this disaster, Weingarten and her union (American Federation of Teachers) is focused on keeping their political machine running—blocking reforms, protecting bad teachers at the expense of students, and demanding more taxpayer money with nothing to show for it EXCEPT BAD RESULTS.

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Teacher’s Union Sues to Stop New York Congestion Pricing Plan

When the New York Legislature first approved a plan to toll drivers entering congested lower Manhattan in 2019, interest groups scrambled to get their own special exemptions to the forthcoming tolls.

Now, with all the exemptions handed out, the toll schedules set, and final implementation just around the corner, everyone who didn’t get their requested carve-out is suing to halt the whole congestion pricing scheme.

On Thursday, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which represents teachers in New York City’s public school system, along with Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella and individual teachers filed a federal lawsuit accusing federal and New York transportation officials of failing to conduct an adequate environmental review of its congestion pricing program. Their lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

“Federal, state and city transportation authorities conducted a rushed and hurried approval process for the congestion pricing plan,” said the union on X (formerly Twitter). “The current plan would not eliminate air and noise pollution or traffic, but would simply shift that pollution and traffic to the surrounding areas.”

The teachers’ lawsuit follows New Jersey’s earlier environmental lawsuit challenging congestion pricing filed last summer. Both argue that federal highway officials greenlit New York’s tolling program without conducting a thorough enough environmental analysis, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

NEPA requires that federal officials study the environmental effects of decisions they make—whether those are big decisions (like funding a new highway) or small ones (like approving a new vape device).

In New York’s case, federal sign-off of congestion pricing was required before the state could impose tolls on federally funded highways entering Manhattan.

Because NEPA allows third parties to sue over allegedly inadequate environmental studies, it’s become a favorite tool of environmentalists, slow growth activists, and garden variety NIMBY (not in my backyard) trying to stop or delay infrastructure projects.

To head off these legal challenges, federal agencies and their state partners will produce voluminous “litigation-proof” documents that attempt to leave no impact unexamined.

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Chicago Teachers Union Boss Sends Son to Private School

The head of the Chicago Teachers Union who has described school choice as “the choice of racists” sends her son to a private school. 

Stacy Davis Gates, who was elected as president of the Chicago Teachers Union in 2022, has long derided school choice—a wide range of policies that make it easier for parents to send their children to schools other than their local public school, often by getting back some of the government funding that would have followed their child to public school—as inherently racist.

“*School choice* was actually the choice of racists,” Gates tweeted in August 2022. “It was created to avoid integrating schools with Black children. Now it’s the civil rights struggle of our generation?”

In a letter she wrote earlier this month, Gates explained her decision to enroll her son in a private school while her other two children remained in Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

Chicago classrooms are “struggling to recover from waves of school closings and disinvestment under previous mayors. Public and charter high schools in our Black and Brown neighborhoods are living and breathing examples of inequality,” she wrote. “For my husband and me, it forced us to send our son, after years of attending a public school, to a private high school so he could live out his dream of being a soccer player while also having a curriculum that can meet his social and emotional needs.”

This excuse misses key context. While Gates is right that school systems across the nation, including in Chicago, are still reeling from pandemic-era setbacks, she herself led the charge to keep Chicago Public Schools closed sporadically as late as early 2022. When CPS announced a two-week shutdown in January 2022, Gates told The New York Times that the closure was necessary for schools to “get themselves together.”

Gates also frames CPS as underfunded, describing “decades of systemic underinvestment in marginalized communities.” However, over the past five academic years, CPS’ operating budget has actually skyrocketed—increasing from $5.92 billion to $8.49 billion, despite enrollment dropping by nearly 40,000 students over the same period. 

Further, in consistently framing school choice advocates as racist, Gates also ignores the fact that minority parents are often the strongest supporters of school choice. According to a RealClear Opinion Research poll from earlier this summer, 73 percent of black respondents supported school choice, the highest of any demographic group. At least 70 percent of other demographic groups also support school choice policies.

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Oops! Teachers’ union chief admits sharing fake list of ‘banned’ books

A teachers’ union chief who worked aggressively to keep public schools closed during the COVID pandemic now has admitted to sharing a list of “banned” books that was a fake.

The response from Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, to her mistake? “My bad”

Fox News explained Weingarten had posted on social media the list of so-called “banned” books.

The but list, originally posted online by “Freesus Patriot,” said Florida has banned classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “A Wrinkle in Time,” which it hasn’t.

Weingarten explained, “I should have double checked before I retweeted this list. My bad. Looks like some of the books weren’t banned. Book bans are very real & dangerous.”

The issue of banned books has been triggered by the extreme leftist agenda being adopted by some public school districts, promoting transgenderism for children while concealing that ideology from parents, Critical Race Theory which teaches America is racist and to get rid of that racism more racism is needed, and more. Those theories often are promoted by books that leftist districts install in their libraries and are handed out to children.

Many parents with traditional moral and educational values would prefer that their tax-funded public schools not teach extremes like those. So the issue of what books are available – and promoted – to children becomes significant

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$190,000 payout for Antifa-supporting teacher to resign has critics fuming over union clout

Reports that a California school teacher who was aligned with Antifa was paid $190,000 to resign this year are sparking outrage, leading critics to say it reveals the strength of California’s teacher unions on public education in the state.

Information obtained by the Sacramento Bee revealed that former Inderkum High School teacher Gabriel Gipe was paid $190,000 to resign from his post. According to the Bee, the payout was taxed, and the final check totaled $100,000.

Gipe, an AP Government teacher, was secretly recorded saying he had 180 days to turn his students into “revolutionaries,” as revealed in a Project Veritas video released in September 2021. The conservative organization’s video release sparked intense backlash, and the district announced that it planned to fire Gipe within a few days of the video’s release and started compiling a dossier outlining evidence against him, according to multiple news reports at that time.

The school’s investigation revealed that Gipe rejected the regular AP Government curriculum and “instead led freewheeling lectures about communism,” the Bee reported.

School district Superintendent Chris Evans told the Bee that the decision to pay Gipe came down to “basic math.”

“California is not an easy place to fire a teacher,” Evans told the Bee. “I think everyone knows that.”

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NEA teachers union spending $140K for ‘enemies list’ opposition research of groups turning up heat on schools

The National Education Association passed a resolution during their annual Representative Assembly in Chicago that would allocate thousands of dollars to conduct opposition research on 25 organizations that are supposedly attacking gender identity and sexual orientation freedoms in public schools. 

“NEA shall compile research to create fact sheets about the largest 25 organizations that are actively working to diminish a students’ right to honesty in education, freedom of sexual and gender identify, and teacher autonomy,” the resolution said. NEA’s resolutions are called new business items (NBI) and represent the teachers’ union’s opinions and beliefs. They also open the door to funding.

The cost for compiling the list and for the research would amount to $140,625, NBI 15 said. The research will include probing into groups’ funding sources, the leaders of the organizations, “connections to known entities that are seeking to dismantle public education, organization headquarters and chapter locations.”

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Woke National Teachers Union Agenda Includes Mandatory Masks, Vaccines and Banning the Words Mother and Father

The National Education Association’s (NEA) annual conference is underway in Chicago, and the group is calling for a national policy of mandatory masking, mandatory vaccinations, and rejecting the words “mother” and “father.”

The NEA is the largest labor group in the U.S., with more than three million members, including Jill Biden. Its president is Becky Pringle.

The Chicago conference is chock-full of woke agenda items called New Business Initiatives (NBI). They include progressive language involving issues that seem to have little to do with proper education. NBIs are proposals that delegates must vote on in order to pass. 

Terry Stoops, a conservative education expert in North Carolina, exposed this year’s NBIs in a lengthy post on Twitter.

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