Blue State Teachers Union’s $40,000,000 Spending Spree On Dem Gubernatorial Race Falls Flat
'Strength of the NJEA will be questioned'
Federal Judge Takes Swipe At Judicial Coup In Opinion Dismissing Teachers Union Suit Against Trump Admin
The federal judge may be one of the first in the country to address the problem of her colleagues attempting to usurp the power of the president head-on.Democratic Party's collapse continues: Teachers' union boss Randi Weingarten ditches DNC after 23 years
The Democratic Party is deeply unpopular, at odds with most of the electorate on several key issues, estranged from the working class, and roiled by infighting. It's becoming increasingly clear from recent personnel changes that hatred for President Donald Trump is not enough to hold the party together.
American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten, the childless leftist who helped undermine the mental and physical health of a generation of kids by fighting to keep them out of the classroom during the pandemic, has announced that she is leaving the Democratic National Committee.
Like David Hogg — the gun-grab activist who announced Wednesday that he was not running again for the DNC vice chair position seemingly stolen from him by Democratic election deniers — Weingarten appears to have an issue with DNC Chairman Ken Martin and the current state of play within the party.
Weeks before her hysterical speech at the No Kings rally in Philadelphia, Weingarten noted in a June 5 letter to Martin obtained by Politico that she is honored to have served as an at-large member of the DNC since 2002, on its rules and bylaws committee for the past 15 years, and as a delegate to each of the Democratic conventions for the past three decades.
'It’s flabbergasting to me that a senior DNC member, much less one as supposedly committed as Randi, would take the moment to make it all about her.'
"While I am proud to be a Democrat, I appear to be out of step with the leadership you are forging, and I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more and more of our communities," wrote the lesbian union boss, who collects an annual salary of well over $450,000.
She concluded her letter by emphasizing that the AFT will be "especially engaged in the 2025-26 elections."
RELATED: Democrats are just noticing a long, deep-running problem
Blaze News reached out to Weingarten for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Martin, the longest-serving chairman in the history of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, campaigned on disabusing Americans of the understanding that "the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites" and uniting "families across, age, background and class."
Weingarten, under whose leadership the AFT has championed divisive race-obsessive initiatives and narratives, backed one of the losers in Martin's DNC chairmanship race, Ben Wikler. The AFT boss lauded Wikler in a joint statement for his "inclusive leadership" and for his "ability to unite the party during a tumultuous time."
RELATED: American kids' worsening reading skills signal continued fallout from school closures
The union boss' issue with Martin may be a lot more personal than his victory over Wikler. After becoming DNC chair, Martin kicked Weingarten out of her position on the DNC's rules and bylaws committee.
A longtime Democratic strategist complained to The Hill about the timing of Weingarten's resignation ahead of the No Kings demonstrations held across the country on Saturday.
"Especially when the country just showed up by the millions across all demographic and geographic boundaries to take on Trump grassroots-style, it’s flabbergasting to me that a senior DNC member, much less one as supposedly committed as Randi, would take the moment to make it all about her," said the strategist.
Lee Saunders, the leftist president of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also declined his nomination to remain on the DNC, telling the New York Times in a statement that the decision "comes after deep reflection and deliberate conversation about the path forward for our union and the working people we represent."
The news of Weingarten and Saunders' departures comes on the heels of David Hogg's unceremonious removal as DNC vice chair.
Hogg, who enjoyed backing from Weingarten, was elected the Democratic Party's youngest vice chairman on Feb. 1. Since the immutable characteristics of the winners of the February election were apparently undesirable, party elites declared Hogg's election null and void, then removed him last week through a virtual vote of 294 to 99.
In a long-winded thread explaining why he would not run again for the position just stolen from him, Hogg bashed the Democratic Party, claiming that Democratic leaders suffer a "serious lack of vision" and are "asleep at the wheel," and said that if Democrats "don't show our country how we are dramatically changing and provide an alternative vision for the future as a party, we will continue to lose."
He also alluded to his "fundamental disagreement about the role" of vice chair with Martin, who reportedly subjected the 25-year-old leftist to a tongue-lashing ahead of his removal.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
A teacher’s choice: Fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine
When COVID hit in 2020, New York City was one of the last places you’d have wanted to be if you valued your medical freedom.
Michael Kane, a public school special education teacher with over 13 years of experience, was employed in the city — before he was fired for refusing to take the experimental shot.
“I was fired for declining the shot, I’ve been suing ever since. Thank God for Bobby Kennedy and Children’s Health Defense. They picked up my lawsuits who are still suing today in a case called Kane vs. De Blasio, as well as New Yorkers for Religious Liberty vs. the City of New York and many, many, other cases,” Kane tells Nicole Shanahan on “Back to the People.”
Kane, who founded Teachers for Choice — which is a group of educators that opposes forced medical mandates — also very publicly left the teachers' union after seeing how weaponized it became during COVID.
“We were certainly pushed out and punished for having anything that wasn’t, you know, Faucian or dogmatic. You really needed to walk that line, so there’s definitely a target on me,” Kane explains, noting that while he doesn’t believe teachers' unions shouldn’t exist, “national and now international unions are a plague.”
And a plague that’s heavily infested with political corruption.
“Randi Weingarten and the head of the American Federation of Teachers went to the Ukraine on a mission. Why is the head of the teachers' union going to Ukraine? I’ll tell you why, because she’s really good friends with Joe and Jill Biden,” Kane tells Shanahan.
“That politicization is extremely, extremely dangerous,” he says. “I respect the institution of unions, but they’ve been horribly corrupted with politics that goes way beyond their membership, and when COVID came, it was clear they were not representing their members at all.”
“It ended up being Randi Weingarten going on ‘Meet the Press’ in August of 2021 and saying, ‘It’s time to mandate our members.’ And that was it. From that moment, then-Mayor Bill De Blasio did the mandate, because the truth is, Randy Weingarten’s more powerful than him,” Kane explains.
“So at the time, when things went down with COVID, I did leave the union, I saw no other option. I saw no one supporting us, and I led kind of a movement in New York City, at least at that time, that did that. And we got fired, and then we had to fight in the courts, and we lost our jobs, and we didn’t come back, and we’re still fighting in the courts,” he continues.
A year and a half later, Kane and around 60 other fired workers, mostly teachers, went to the union Labor Day rally in New York City — where they protested Weingarten.
“We chanted, ‘End all mandates, let us work,’ and we did that a couple of times, and all the rank and file cheered. All of them,” Kane recalls. “Randi ran away from me, she wouldn’t talk to me, but it forced her into a situation where she came on my show.”
“‘Here’s this dude, Mike Kane, that’s fired, and my members are cheering for him right now. That’s an issue,’” he continues. “Even if we didn’t have all the national cameras on it, that’s an issue internally for her.”
While Kane is proud of the major steps made toward a better system in New York City, he’s not convinced what goes on behind the scenes has been rectified quite yet.
“We’ll see what happens in the internal New York City politics,” he says.
Want more from Nicole Shanahan?
To enjoy more of Nicole's compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
The Democratic Party is not dying — it’s evolving
Let’s cut through the wishful thinking.
Contrary to what you may hear on Fox News or from conservative pundits, the Democratic Party isn’t imploding. The happy talk about a collapse may feel good, but it doesn’t reflect political reality. Yes, the party’s popularity has cratered in the polls — down to 27% according to some surveys. Yes, Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Jasmine Crockett of Texas are sideshow acts. And yes, elected officials like Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka allegedly physically assaulted ICE agents at a detention facility in New Jersey.
The sooner the Republican National Committee realizes it’s running from behind in 2026, the better.
But don’t assume any of that will cost Democrats elections.
Democratic voters have shown time and again that they either don’t mind obscene behavior from their leaders or they flat-out enjoy it. Don’t expect outrage over arrests or outbursts to suddenly translate into ballot-box blowback. Polls may show the party in a deep slump, but that doesn’t automatically translate into lost races. Voters often treat parties as abstractions but candidates as individuals.
That distinction matters. Case in point: Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.).
Spanberger, a liberal Democrat, is running away in her race for Virginia governor — despite the Democratic Party’s poor national standing. Unless she commits an unforced error (and even then, the media will likely run interference), she’s on track to succeed Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Her GOP opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, is a Marine Corps veteran, a devout Christian, and a compelling conservative voice. She’s also black. But in modern Virginia politics, don’t expect her race to break through the stronghold of the overwhelmingly left-wing black vote — or the white, college-educated suburban women who reliably side with Democrats.
Don’t confuse collapsing party approval with electoral collapse. The left may be unpopular, but it’s still powerful — and that matters more than the polls.
Spanberger may not wave the woke banner, but she’s every bit as culturally left as the rest of her party. Unlike the loudest activists, she avoids the firebrand persona and leans hard into buzzwords like “unity” and “bringing people together.” If elected, expect her to govern just like Ralph Northam (D) — minus the public enthusiasm for post-birth abortion.
Spanberger isn’t unique. Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro (D) follows the same playbook. He speaks calmly, claims to support Israel, and talks about “solving problems,” all while quietly pushing a radical social agenda. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) has also mastered the performance. His folksy demeanor wins voters in a red state, even though his positions align with the likes of Tampon Tim Walz and Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He talks like Andy Griffith while voting like Bernie Sanders.
Don’t confuse presentation with moderation.
The Democratic Party hasn’t lost its grip on blue America. It hasn’t even flinched.
RELATED: Red-state rot: How GOP governors are handing power to the left
Just look at Philadelphia, where radical District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) just won his primary in a landslide — beating a supposedly more moderate Democrat with over two-thirds of the vote. In New York City, Democrat prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s far-left prosecutions and anti-Trump theatrics haven’t dented his popularity.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for a Republican breakthrough in the deep-blue states. Democrats still dominate Illinois, hold Minnesota, and likely have an edge in Michigan and Wisconsin.
If the Democratic Party were truly in its death throes, it wouldn’t be holding its ground so confidently in the places that matter most.
Winning elections in the United States means collecting the most officially recognized votes. A national party can lag in overall popularity and still dominate the game. Democrats understand that — and play to win, by hook or by crook. Whether through ballot harvesting, lawfare, or machine politics, they know the courts won’t stop them and the legacy media won’t question them.
Their ground game runs deep. Teachers’ unions, public sector workers, black activists, LGBT groups, and college-educated white women fight for them like their paychecks depend on it — because they often do.
Democrats also enjoy bountiful donations from most of those at the top of the income curve, who don’t confuse the crony capitalism from which they benefit with real socialism. Even if the Democrats claim to be fighting plutocracy, they are being swamped with megabucks from the very rich.
Let’s also stop pretending Democrats lack a unified message. Their priorities are crystal clear: DEI, trans ideology, unlimited abortion, open borders, and tax hikes to fund their coalition. Millions of Americans support all or most of this agenda, or at least don’t mind it enough to vote against it.
Fox News may roll its eyes at the clowns in Congress, but those clowns aren’t trying to impress us — or the Fox All-Stars. They’re mobilizing their base, and the base likes what it hears.
The sooner the Republican National Committee realizes it’s running from behind in 2026, the better. Because that’s exactly what it’s doing.
Forcing Lawyers To Join Leftist Bar Associations Violates Basic First Amendment Freedoms
This legal battle is about preserving the fundamental right of all Americans to choose which organizations and causes they support.The ‘education establishment’ always resorts to fearmongering
If the U.S. Department of Education suddenly went away, what would change for local families and communities? Not much.
For starters, the Department of Education doesn’t “educate” anyone. It’s a middleman. Americans send their taxes to Washington, D.C., the bureaucracy takes a big chunk of it to pay staff and overhead, and the rest is sent to states and local communities with a bunch of red tape. Reducing that bureaucracy should save money, which means schools could actually receive more funding.
Parents are better at making decisions for their children than federal bureaucrats.
Furthermore, there’s no evidence that the federal involvement has improved education. Since the department was created in 1980, federal per-pupil spending has skyrocketed, but results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — also known as the Nation’s Report Card — have been largely stagnant.
Yet a recent Fast Company article declared that ending the Department of Education “would be disastrous for Title I schools,” with a special emphasis on Greater Johnstown Public Schools in Pennsylvania. And who is making that claim? Not surprisingly, it’s largely people who benefit from the current system, including the head of the local and state teachers’ unions, the director of the law firm that’s led efforts to increase school taxes, and the director of a policy center that has historically received substantial funding from unions.
When your only arguments are nothing more than fearmongering, you’ve ceded the debate.
Title I will remain
For better or worse, ending the Department of Education would not end Title I funding, which is supposed to help low-income students. Title I existed before the Department of Education and would likely be administered through a different department if the agency were shuttered.
As with other federal involvement, we have no evidence that Title I has been effective overall. For example, the Nation’s Report Card has for decades shown a consistent achievement gap between economically disadvantaged and non-economically-disadvantaged students.
There has been talk of changing how Title I is distributed to improve its effectiveness. One option is converting the funding to block grants that states could administer with fewer strings. This would put decision-making power closer to the students who are impacted by these decisions and enable state leaders to direct funds where they see the most need. It would be an improvement over the current Washington-based system.
Better still would be to bypass the states and convert the funding to scholarships, enabling parents to choose the educational support that their children need. Ultimately, there’s no constitutional role for the federal government when it comes to education, which makes sense given the impossibility of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., knowing what’s best for children in, say, Pennsylvania.
One of us was formerly a teacher and principal in Johnstown public schools and is now the principal of Bishop McCort Catholic School, also in Johnstown. He has dealt with Title I firsthand in both environments and seen the problems caused by the red tape and lack of flexibility with the funding. He’s confident that dismantling the Department of Education — and making any federal funds portable so parents could choose the best environment for their children — is the best way to support the students served by Title I.
Parents over bureaucracy
And that’s the bottom line when it comes to education. Parents are better at making decisions for their children than federal bureaucrats. Pennsylvania public schools spent nearly $22,000 per student in 2022-23 (the latest data available). In the Greater Johnstown School District, per-pupil spending was more than $23,000. Yet 82% of students scored below proficient in math, and 77% scored below proficient in English. Imagine what parents could do if they could direct even half of that funding to the educational option that worked better for their kids.
Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education will not destroy education, but it may put a dent in the public schooling bureaucracy. Despite the fearmongering of people who work in the system, less bureaucracy and more freedom for parents and students are good things.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPennsylvania and made available via RealClearWire.
Today's top stories
www.theblaze.com