Turns out Randi Weingarten’s self-promoting ‘guide’ – Latest News
Teacher union honcho Randi Weingarten’s 2025 vainness guide “Why Fascists Fear Teachers” isn’t simply a self-promoting, self-glorifying soliloquy: The unreadable screed additionally served as a useful money conduit for Weingarten and her associates to make bank on the back of academics’ union dues.
Weingarten’s guide was one thing of a “group project”; a Freedom Foundation evaluation of the American Federation of Teacher’s federal filings reveals that it laid out large bucks in help of this collaborative effort.
Teachers ought to ask for a refund.
The guide’s acknowledgements reward erstwhile CNN host Sally Kohn — now a “Writer,” “Media Strategist + Trainer” along with “Activist,” in accordance with her X profile — as “indispensable as a day-to-day thought partner and collaborator.”
Whatever a “thought partner” is — call it a fancy solution to say “ghostwriter,” per the report — it sure pays effectively.
The AFT handed Kohn over $400,000 within the yr main up to publication of “Why Fascists Fear Teachers.”
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That’s more than triple what Kohn was usually paid for her union consulting work.
Kohn’s not the one one to stroll away with a tidy haul, in accordance with the report.
Tony Powell is the photog credited with the dust-jacket back flap shot of Weingarten. He’s a well-known social butterfly on the DC scene, and was known as a “21st Century Renaissance Man” by The Washington Post.
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Powell is listed within the AFT’s filings as netting more than 5 grand for “Union Administration.”
That’s a dear headshot!
Emily Krieger was paid $6,000 by the AFT for fact-checking the guide.
But the true money, as ever, went to the legal professionals.
Weingarten thanks legal professional Charles Moerdler — a supremely linked lawyer who has been neck deep in New York politics since his days as Mayor John V. Lindsay’s housing adviser — for his “legal review” of her guide.
Moerdler’s firm is listed within the AFT’s newest filings as receiving close to a million {dollars} within the earlier yr, together with $140,000 for “Union Administration.”
Some of that million bucks was possible for typical lawyer work, however a healthy chunk seems to have been associated to the guide. (Though Weingarten claims he helped with the guide on a professional bono foundation.)
Finally, Weingarten promised that royalties from the sale of the guide would go to the union and associated nonprofits. But $125,000 of the proceeds went to an LLC known as “Teachers Want What Kids Need.”
Weingartern now admits she is splitting royalties with the union.
Maybe fascists do worry academics, although the argument in her guide is often lame.
What’s sure is that folks and taxpayers, ought to worry academics unions.
Especially after they siphon off a lot public money funneled by means of union dues to pay for gross propaganda like “Why Fascists Fear Teachers.”
