American Federation of Teachers president Randy Weingarten rants about Trump
Foreign.
Jenna Ellis: Welcome to On Demand with Jenna Ellis. This is our AFR exclusive podcast where we do a deep dive into issues that, we can't cover the extent of it on radio, on the radio side. So these are issues, of course, that we need to cover from guests that you need to hear from. And today I'm so excited to talk about this because it's just one of our favorite topics. that is the Persona and the ridiculous, absolute absurdity of Randy Weingarten, who is the American Federation of Teachers president. And this headline coming from Fox News is a watch. And they posted this video. Weingarten gestures wildly during anti Trump rant, later said he drives her to drink. The teachers union boss, that Trump's volume of endeavors drives her to drink vodka and urged members to vote in the midterms. And, you know, she's, she's really getting into some of these, you know, crazy lady territories. Maybe she can join Rosie o' Donnell in Ireland or something if she's really, you know, that, has that much Trump derangement syndrome. But, the, the American Federation of Teachers conference, actually had some really crazy resolutions that they passed as well. So. Joining me for this deep dive discussion is Corrie DeAngelis, who is the host of Education Frontlines for, Real Truth Media and the executive director at the Educational Freedom Institute, also a senior fel for Americans for Fair Treatment. So, Corrie, thanks so much. And, yeah. What a display of ridiculousness from Weingarten.
Corey DeAngelis: Yeah, I mean, it's par for the course for Randy, but I think she took it over the top this year. She puts the wine in wine garden, I guess, or maybe she's just too drunk on power. She admitted to everybody that Trump drives her to drink because, we're winning on the education freedom side so much. We're almost getting tired of winning. But, no, we're not done yet. But Randy Weingarten, look, she was jumping around. Looks like she was on a mini trampoline behind the podium, because he was just totally insane. I listened to the entire conference. I listened to her keynote. Obviously, it sounded like a, political speech. It was a political rally. It didn't have anything to do with improving educational outcomes. And when you go into their resolutions that they passed, it was more. They want more money, obviously. But they also called to abolish immigration enforcement. They called for free housing, set asides for union members. They called for free child care. They want government employees, staffing those child care facilities. They called to mobilize for the 2026 elections. and they also called for, to make May 1st a day of civic action where they use students. It says this in the resolution for, quote, marches and rallies and quote, political education. They want to indoctrinate your kids and then use them pawns, to go do these political demonstrations. And they kind of had a test case this year. They did this on May 1st this year. And this was a resolution that was, bubbled up from the Chicago Teachers Union where they, they did this, this, this year on May 1st. They, they had all these anti Trump lessons in school for half a day, and then the rest of the day they used the school buses, district resources, paid by taxpayers to bust those kids to the Capitol to go lobby to abolish immigration enforcement and other just nonsense. I also looked through their curriculum for May Day, and they compared Trump to fascist. They had an exit, slipped in order to get out of class that day. You had to fill out a commitment to social justice causes. And they compared policing and prisons to slavery. I mean, it's just dripping with far left propaganda in the schools. And I'd say it's free advertising for homeschooling. You should get your kids away from these unhinged lunatics. And one last thing I'll say, Jenna, is that they. You looked at their other speakers. They had Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in Congress, in the House. They had Raphael Warnock, a Democrat senator from Georgia, and they had Wes Moore, the Democrat governor of, of Maryland. And they were all political speeches. They're like, you guys need to help us win Congress in November. And they all cheered. It was a political, event. It's just. And then when you follow the money, you see the unions are spending most of their money on politics as well. They're not just, talking about it.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, I mean, it's very clear that the American Federation of Teachers, well, it's called that is functioning primarily as a political advocacy organization, not education. And so this tells us very clearly what their priorities are. And they're attempting to weaponize, the, the students in their care to go along with their political priorities. And somehow, no one other, I mean you are, but no one, within education, itself is really calling them out on this and actually putting a stop to it. what are we doing at all legislatively on, on these things? Because that seems like that goes against a lot of parents wishes.
Corey DeAngelis: Yeah, I mean, Congress has a bill to revoke the National Education Association. Association's Federal charter. They, the AFT doesn't have one, but the nea, the bigger union, does have the backing of Congress, from over 100 years ago. They were granted a federal charter, which gives them this kind of false sense of legitimacy, gives them some special tax perks and financial benefits. And they're the only union that has that special privilege. They should have that revoked at a bare minimum. And when you look at where they're spending their political 99.9% of the NEA and the AFT political funding goes to Democrats every election cycle. It's a one sided money laundering operation for the left and we should crack down on that. But a lot of the pushback from Republicans has been at the state level. Actually Congress, you know, is slow to do anything and you know, school choice is one way to fight back against the union. So at least your kids aren't trapped in schools with them. With the far left brainwashing. That's step one. We need teacher choice as well. A lot of teachers are leaving the union. In fact, I was at a conference last week called the Teacher Freedom Summit. There was hundreds of teachers in the audience. And over the past year this group, Teacher Freedom alliance, has had over 16,000 teachers join their group. it's a drop in the ocean, but it is a good start because the unions have millions of members. But the NEA, for example, they've lost about 200,000 members over the past, eight or so years. So we're moving in the right direction. The Supreme Court has cleared the way to defund the unions by having teachers leave them. And it's up to us to convince teachers to do so, let them know what their rights are. Because now no teacher, whether you're in a red state or blue state, can be compelled to pay union dues as a condition of employment. So a lot of the teachers who are in blue states like Illinois, they thought that they were trapped. But now there's these alternatives where you can get your liability insurance. You go to optout today.com, click on your state and figure out how to opt out. But other states like Idaho, they've gone a step further.
Florida legislature passed bills this year to defund teachers unions, political activity
Florida too, where they passed bills this year to defund, the teachers unions. No more taxpayer money for teachers unions, political activity. And that should be a no brainer. It's like, why were we spending money on this in the first place? And I will say Randy Weingarten at this convention just got reelected. but only the delegates voted. it was like 3,000 delegates. the individual members on the ground, the boots on the ground do not vote on whether Randi Weingarten, continues. But she's already been there for 18 years as president since 2008. And she's just won reelection for another two year term. Which puts Randy Weingarten as president of AFT, overseeing the failure of the government school system in America for two decades. She has an incumbent advantage, obviously, the nea. I didn't know NEA has term limits. You can serve two terms, three years each. That's why Becky Pringle's out after this this year. But Randi Weingarten's basically, she does a lot of these no Kings protests, but she sure likes to be the queen of the union. Randy Weingarten is actually being investigated by Congress right now. And that she's got a letter and she basically admitted some form of wrongdoing in her response. But she has a book that came out and she copied my book cover. Mine's called the Parent Revolution, and hers she basically calls conservative fascist. And well, the Freedom foundation just found out. They looked at their public LM2 reports of the union. They did a little bit of digging. I did some digging as well last year and we found out that there were line items of money going from the union to people who helped her with her book. One was Feldman Strategies, the PR firm. There was $170,000 that went to them over the past year. And they were bragging on Facebook about how they promoted her book and helped her, hit the NewSong York Times best sellers list. And while the Freedman foundation went down the rabbit hole and found that, well, it wasn't just $170,000. It appears to be over $1.4 million in teachers paychecks out of their union dues going to promote Randi Weingarten's Vanity Project, her book. And so, there's a congressional investigation into it now. And I think that should just be the tip of the iceberg because Randi Weingarten was also on a live stream with her union members. And she bragged about how she leveraged the pension funds, that go into the teacher's retirement to bully Target, you know, the retailer, the one, you know, they sell clothes and stuff, they're based in Minneapolis. And she said to Target executives, she admitted this herself, that, you know, she pressured them by saying, we own 7% of your stock, Target. And, you know, since we own 7% of your stock, you should come out against immigration enforcement. We might Just pull our funding. If you don't, that sounds like a breach of fiduciary duty, in some way or the other. Because, when you're managing these pension funds, the only decision making process should be how do you maximize retirement for teachers, how do you make them better off in the long run? It shouldn't be used as a political cudgel against your opponents. like Target, to try to bully them to do what you want politically. The NEA had their annual convention in Denver last week as well, where Becky Pringle was also screaming, stomping all over the place. And they passed insane resolutions as well. And it seemed like they copied one another. They were each considering resolutions. Get this. To remove President Trump from office, and to do a march on Washington. The NEA resolution they called to use $5.2 million in teach teachers dues to fund. This sounds like an insurrection. To go march on Washington to remove President Trump from office. I also mentioned that a lot of teachers are leaving the union because of this kind of crap. And there was a resolution before Randy Weingarten's union this past week in Washington, D.C. they only do this every two years, by the way. And one of them specifically targeted groups like Freedom foundation and Americans for Fair Treatment, where I'm a senior fellow, and they said, look, oh, they're trying to get teachers to opt out of the union. We should start an information campaign to, basically label our groups as evil people to try to prevent teachers from leaving the union. So if you're catching plaque, you're over the target. They're starting to feel the heat because they are bleeding members. No member wants to see their money go to Randy Weingarten's book. I mean, let's be real. Even if they agree with the book, no member even, especially if you're conservative. There's a lot of conservative teachers. They don't want to see their money going into Democrat campaign coffers. that's being taken out of their paychecks either. And a lot of them don't even know it. And that's why Randy Weingarten's union considered this resolution. they don't want teachers knowing what's going on because teachers have a hard job. They're focusing on the basics. They're trying to get kids to learn. And so that's, you know, that's, that's what they're focused on. And when, when they get information from the Freedom foundation and Americans for Fair Treatment, a lot of times they say oh, why in the world would I stay in this union if I have a choice, to leave? Randy Weingarten, Jeannie also considered a resolution to cut the military budget by 50%. And you know, even if you agree with that, why in the world they need to stay in their lane? Why in the world would, the teachers unions be involved in cutting the military? I mean, they don't just want to destroy our education system. They want to destroy, our national defense as well. They had all these resolutions about Iran and wanting to get out of the Iran war. They even admitted in that one that, Iran is an authoritarian regime. they also, one of the resolutions I thought was a, saving grace. I thought that they were doing the right thing in one of them. It was, it was titled recommitting to early reading Instruction. Like, oh, they want to get back to the science of reading. this sounds like too good to be true, right? It was too good to be true. because we all know phonics based instruction is the way for, it's the way to teach kids to read. It's much more effective than whole language learning which the lefties have pushed for so long. And in states like Mississippi, that's behind the secret sauce of the Mississippi miracle. School choice is obviously part of it too. And competition, being the rising tide that lifts all boats. But very simple early literacy reforms catapulted Mississippi so much that even though they're spending a lot less than the national average, black students in Mississippi are now four times as likely to be able to read at grade level relative to black students in California. And Gavin Newsom, in his infinite wisdom, went on to X and bragged about how well in California, under his watch, they increased public school spending to about 30,000 a kid. So you're, they're squandering taxpayer resources. The kids can't read. And he thought that that was something to brag about. I'd say it was a glorious self own where you have kids in Mississippi, they're spending a third of the amount and they're knocking it out of the park academically. Same thing in Tennessee and Indiana as well. These are some of the only states that had gains on the nation's report card. Well, you dig into Randy Weingarten's resolution on early reading instruction. Well, it's it's more than meets, than meets the eye.
Corey Lewis: The union's priorities are clearly political
You read the fine print and they're calling for universal government preschool and to have taxpayers to pay for daycare for everybody they're calling for. they say, oh, well, we're going to have better reading outcomes, but you can't test us to figure it out because, quote, the testing harms come from, quote, systemic racism and disinvestment. They also say that they don't want any, quote, punitive accountability measures. So in plain English, what they're saying is we want to improve academic outcomes, but you can't hold us accountable in any way. You can't even look at whether we've improved anything. Oh, and by the way, give us more money. It seems like, a farce.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, yeah. I mean, and this is just, you know, utterly ridiculous that they're asking for all of this money that should go to actual education, but really their priorities are, are clearly political. And and so what is, you know, overall the the resistance to performance based evaluation for teachers? Because, you know, this reminds me, Corrie, of, you know, when you're, you're talking earlier about Randy, Weingarten, just the delegates are voting for her and she's had this like 18 year tenure. And it's not actually the boots on the ground teachers that reminds me exactly of what everyone's problem in the Republican Party was for. Just the delegates who vote for the national chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel at the time and why everybody says, you know, this is basically not an accurate representation of, of the voters and the people who want to see some change in the regime. so why hasn't there been some kind of overhaul from within if this is ultimately, you know, this corrupt system and or at least some external pressures like performance based evaluation.
Corey DeAngelis: Yeah, I mean for all the preaching about democracy, Randy, Weingarten actually doesn't really believe in it all that much. And you know, for the everyday teacher, the union's not helping them. you look at the teacher salaries over time, even if you just want to look at the average and not, you know, performance based pay. Since 1970, per student spending has gone up by 170% in real terms after adjusting for inflation. But teacher salaries, they've been flat. They've only increased a whopping 3. So where's all the money going? It goes towards hiring more people, it goes towards administrative bloat. And you might say, oh, doesn't that help the people who are getting hired? Well, there's opportunity cost. What about the teachers who are already there? That means less money for them. So you can't spend that money in the classroom. It just goes towards creating more political foot Soldiers. Because the union, at the end of the day, it is a group that is pushing a political agenda. So they want more people, they want a larger voting block and they want more dues paying members to maximize the revenue to the union that ultimately end up in their Democrat buddies campaign coffers. So it's that, that is the calculus for them. And so the best teachers, what do they do? They look at this, they shrug their shoulders and leave. After a few years, the math teacher who's making no money, they leave and they go become an engineer. And the best teachers who aren't getting a performance boost, they say, you know what, the guy across the hall, he's sitting there twiddling his thumbs, watching videos with the kids each day. And they're not actually doing direct instruction. They're making more than just because they've been in the system longer. That's not a fair system. And so you create this kind of perverse incentive for the worst people to stay in the system. That doesn't mean the people who are still, there are bad people. M. I'm just saying that on average at the margins at least, the better teachers are the ones that are going to be more likely to want to get out of that system. And the union, they fight for the lowest common denominator. They're just fighting to protect the worst actors. And so when they're using all their capital to do that and on political agendas, you have nothing left for the good teachers. And one last thing I'll say on where the money goes is that the nea, they have LMT reports that are publicly available. You don't have to take my word for this. their own reporting, and you know, it might even be biased, in a direction of saying the union does good things. Their own reporting shows that only 9% of their total revenues go towards representing teachers. If that doesn't tell you the whole story, I don't know what will. And so why would you want 90% of your dues money going not towards representing you? That's why so many teachers are leaving the unions. They see it's an abusive relationship.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and I think that's absolutely right to characterize it that way. And you know, I've heard a few people even here in my home state of Florida, from, you know, some teachers who don't want to, to see, the appropriations go away from other schools because there's kind of this assumption that tax dollars that are given to state funded institutions are actually going toward education. What can be Done more to dispuse, the, the average taxpayer that you know there are, that any of this funding, that's being driven away from some of these non priorities aren't actually hurting the students, it's making sure that parents actually have valid alternative choices.
Corey DeAngelis: Yeah, I think you just need to educate the taxpayers and say look, I mean, so education, next did a survey on this and they've done it a few times and the results pretty much the same every time they redo it. And when you ask people how much they think we spend on education, they usually say about half of what we actually spent. So the census bureau data, the latest data is probably higher now, but shows that in 2024 we spent over $21,000 a kid on average. In the public school system, when you ask people, they spend like, I think there has been surveys where they think we spend actually 8,000 a kid. And so just informing the public, we have social media, we have other forms of communication where we can get the word out. I think people change their tune. NewSong York City, they're spending over 40,000 a kid. I mean just, just in perspective, for a 13 year K12 education, that's well over half a million dollars. Do you think your kid would be better off with half a million dollars and have the parent figure it out or do you think they would be better off in the school system in NewSong York City where they have 43% of kids, in institutions that are classified as failing? I think the answer is pretty obvious. And you know, no one wants to see their public schools deteriorate even worse, even if their kids don't go there. That's why with school choice programs, for example, only about half the money actually does follow the kids. So if you think about NewSong York City spending, 40 a kid, what if just 20 a kid followed them? Some went back to the taxpayer, some goes back to the public school system, which means, they could use that to adjust. And if they're losing the full cost of the student, but they're not losing all the money, I'd say they're in a good position. Imagine if you left Walmart to go to Trader Joe's or Safeway and Walmart got to keep, you know, half of your grocery funding every week, that would be a good deal for Walmart. I'd say this is a good deal for the public schools. And at the end of the day competition improves the public schools. When people have a say, when they can walk and take money with Them, the school board starts to listen. The public schools start to up their game in response to competition. So it's a, it's a win, win scenario. It's good for the teachers, it's good for the students, obviously good for the parents as well. And I think at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. When people get school choice, they fight really hard to keep it. In places like Florida, they now have over half a million kids using private school choice programs and many, many more using charter schools. And the public schools in Florida have only gotten better since then. So we can coexist and families can have options that align with their values, and teachers can be in a place that align with their values as well, and they can be in a place that values them instead of union bosses like Randy Weingarten shrieking all over the place.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, the less, Weingarten we can get ranting and railing about her vodka, the better. So. Absolutely. And this is why school choice matters. as regular listeners know, I'm a huge advocate for, homeschooling for, that option for the families that, that works for. As a product of homeschool, ah, myself, that was the greatest blessing that my parents ever gave, to me was that, ability to be discipled by my parents. Not have to go and, you know, hear conflicting messages, from, you know, these activists, these political activists before, you know, you even reach high school or college. And so, this is so important. I so appreciate your work, Cory DeAngelis. And, for those who want more information about maybe, you know, the legislation that's going on in their state, where we're at with school choice, what are the best resources that, ah, you can point them to?
Corey DeAngelis: Yeah, you can follow me on X. It's at D. Angeluscorey.
You can go to optouttoday. com to get out of the union
You can see my work at the Heritage foundation as well. And if you're a teacher and you're like, man, Corrie's right. I shouldn't be in this abusive relationship with the union bosses anymore. You can go to optouttoday.com so you can get out. You click on your state, you figure it out. No matter what state you're in, it'll tell you how to get out of the union and what alternatives you have for protection. That's optout today. Calm.
Corey DeAngelis posts great updates on school choice on X.net
Jenna Ellis: All right, amazing. Well, Corrie DeAngelis, really appreciate it and, do follow him on X. That's where I get a lot of, my news on school choice. From following him, he posts amazing updates and commentary there. And as always, if you have a topic, that you'd like us to cover, on the, these deep dives, or a guest that you'd like, to hear from, then you can always reach me and my team, Jenna, @afr.net and I will see you next week.
