For midterm elections, teachers union leader eager to whitewash role in COVID overreach
Teachers unions were opposed to lifting mandates and returning students to the classroom
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Is it somehow possible Randi Weingarten – or, far more likely, whoever has the unenviable task of cleaning up the carnage left in her wake – has finally realized less than a week before the 2022 midterm election just how toxic she’s become?
Less than a year ago Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers’ bumptious, bombastic president, demanded to share the stage with Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe at the final speaking event of his 2021 campaign.
And having relied heavily on AFT money to get that far, he was in no position to decline her generous offer.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten speaking on Capitol Hill. (Reuters/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo)
As you may have heard, McAuliffe was subsequently handed a 2-percentage-point loss in a state Joe Biden had won by 10 points just a year earlier, and the previous Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, had won by nine points in 2017.
Rather than pulling him over the finish line, Weingarten’s appearance might well have cost him the election.
Given the voters’ outrage over the introduction of the critical race theory curriculum in public school classrooms – fueled in no small measure by McAuliffe’s pronouncement that, "I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach" – AFT’s blowhard leader had about as much business at the rally as an arsonist at a five-alarm fire.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin debate during the gubernatorial election at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, on Sept. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
Now flash ahead to this past week, when Weingarten was so enamored of an Oct. 31 article about the COVID episode published by The Atlantic that she couldn’t resist tweeting it out to her legions of propaganda-starved followers on Twitter.
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The article’s author argues for what she calls "pandemic amnesty," asserting that blue-state governors, politicized health officials and media talking heads shouldn’t be blamed for the now-apparent damage caused by what most recognize as a massive, calculated overreaction to COVID.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}And in fairness, during the early days of the COVID scare in the spring of 2020, when what little information we had about the virus was coming from highly dubious sources in China, erring on the side of caution seemed the prudent course.
Left-leaning states like New York and California proceeded to go all in, ordering mandatory masking, social distancing and vaccines. Power-hungry governors even went so far as to keep students out of school and throwing thousands out of work by closing (often permanently) businesses they deemed nonessential.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Not coincidentally, their prescription also included relying solely on mail-in ballots for the presidential election coming in November – even though by the summer of 2020 researchers were already cautiously optimistic the outlook for the pandemic wasn’t nearly as grave as originally feared.
Following the best available science, governors in conservative states like Florida and Texas quickly began phasing out mask guidelines, reopening businesses and restoring in-class learning.
Teachers’ unions, however, were universally opposed to lifting mandates in general and returning students to the classroom in particular.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"There’s no way that you’re going to have full-time schools for all the kids and all the teachers the way we used to have it," Weingarten actually said in July 2020.
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A month later, when the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraged schools to reopen for classes in fall 2020, Weingarten opposed then-U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ vow to reopen schools.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Weingarten consolidated her power in January 2021, when union sock puppet Joe Biden moved into the White House. That May, in fact, Weingarten’s union actually shown to have suggested language for the Centers for Disease Control’s school-reopening guidance released in February that resulted in schools staying remote longer into the 2020-2021 school year.
Randi Weingarten joins members of Congress and others at a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 21, 2021. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for MomsRising Together)
By December 2021 – perhaps chastened by her role in McAuliffe’s election defeat a month earlier – she’d changed her tune and was trying to position herself as having supported keeping schools open.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A puff piece published in the New York Times cooed, "Rather than championing shutdowns, (Weingarten has) spent much of her energy, both in public and behind the scenes, trying to get schools open."
Americans know better.
Tigers don’t change their stripes, and Randi Weingarten hasn’t suddenly started caring more for students – or even the teachers her union claims to represent – than she does the radically liberal political agenda she’s desperately hoping she hasn’t sabotaged once again.
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