Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is adding an infamous and controversial union boss to his agency’s Academic Partnership Council.
Best known in recent years for pushing severe Covid mandates on our nation’s schoolchildren, Randi Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest teachers union in America. It’s a position she’s held since 2009, and she’s an exemplar of the organization’s co-founder, John Dewey.
Weingarten’s Mentor
AFT celebrated its centenary anniversary in 2016, and Dewey’s background sheds light on the nefarious aims of the union’s leadership.
Dewey traveled to Russia in 1928 to help implement a Marxist system of education, and returned to the United States to become president of the ultra-left National Education Association.
Considered the “Father of Modern Education,” Dewey was an avowed atheist and secular humanist. In the 1930s, he signed the Humanist Manifesto, a diabolical document that denies God’s existence and claims that the universe is “self-existing and not created.” It states that the goal of life is (not eternal salvation, but) the “complete realization of human personality.” Dewey’s vision culminated in the 1962 U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on Bible reading and prayer in public schools.
From UFT to AFT
Weingarten rose to her powerful position with AFT by serving from 1998 through 2008 as president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). It is the New York affiliate of the American Federation, and is one of the largest local unions in the country.
Founded in 1960, UFT traces its origins to the 1912 progressivist journal The American Teacher. Among its priorities today are initiatives to promote abortion, labor disputes, and radical environmental policies.
While with UFT, Weingarten co-chaired the 2000 U.S. Senate campaign of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.
According to City Journal, under Weingarten’s leadership, UFT became one of the largest funders of the Democratic Party of New York, even providing office space for the State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee.
Payoff
It seems all her hard work for the party will now pay off. Weingarten will be one of 30 advisors on the Department of Homeland Security’s Academic Partnership Council. These individuals influence matters involving school safety, research, and partnership opportunities, according to an agency statement announcing the appointment of Weingarten and 19 other academicians, most of whom hail from equally leftist backgrounds.
An outspoken Biden supporter, Weingarten is a darling of the Left. The Times of Israel reported in 2018 on her so-called marriage to Sharon Kleinbaum, rabbi of the leading synagogue for LGBT Jews in New York. The article relates that “their union at a downtown Manhattan restaurant, La Marina, was featured in the Weddings section of The New York Times.”
Report Card
On the education front, Weingarten has a dismal track record.
Karol Markowicz of the New York Post complained on Monday about historically low test scores in America’s already shamefully lacking educational system. She referenced the latest reports of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or “the nation’s report card,” and credited “the repercussions of absolutely atrocious pandemic-era policies that targeted” schoolchildren.
“The biggest villain for children of the pandemic,” she writes, is Randi Weingarten, who “continues to fall upward.” Here’s how Markowicz explained it:
[Weingarten] is still holding the gasoline and lighter at the scene of the fire, yet Team Biden and the media treat her like a firefighter instead of an arsonist.
Schools under her control stayed closed the longest.
She pushed to keep schools shut for the entire 2020-21 year, well after everyone knew they weren’t COVID spreaders.
Lately, she’s attempted to rewrite her role during that time, and the media has tried to help her.
Reaction
Case in point: Announcing her latest appointment, The Hill described her as “invested in academia” and scoffed at Republicans for lashing out.
However, at a press conference last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters that Weingarten “should not be in any position of authority,” blaming much of the Covid damage in America’s schools on her leadership and promising to clean things up should he land in the White House in 2024.
Republican Congressman Ronny Jackson of Texas tweeted, “Randi Weingarten being appointed to a DHS council on school safety is DESPICABLE. She caused irreparable damage to our kids. She is NOT a good person!! She should be banned from anything to do with government or our kids!”
