Democrats Urged to Cut Ties With Randi Weingarten Over School Closure Fallout

In a striking rebuke that highlights the deep fractures within the Democratic Party, former Kamala Harris campaign aide Ben Austin is calling on Democrats to cut ties with American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten. In a powerful op-ed, Austin didn’t hold back, accusing Weingarten of gaslighting the party and helping to destroy its credibility with parents across the country.

"Democratic leaders should thank Weingarten for her service, then lock the door behind her as she makes her way out," Austin wrote. That’s not coming from a conservative firebrand it’s from a progressive education advocate who once worked for Harris. The backlash against Weingarten is no longer just a right-wing talking point; it’s bleeding into the heart of the Democratic establishment.

Austin didn’t mince words:

• He accused Weingarten of leading a campaign to squash school choice, refusing to offer even the illusion of alternatives for struggling families.

• He called out United Teachers Los Angeles an AFT affiliate for its role in indefinitely trapping students at home during the COVID lockdowns.

• He revealed that parents organizing for school reopenings, many of them progressive, became so disillusioned they started voting for Trump.

"Weingarten’s affiliate initially opposed teaching over Zoom," Austin noted. "And while United Teachers Los Angeles trapped LAUSD students at home indefinitely, cut off from learning, they rooted their opposition to reopening schools in bizarre racial ideology, not science." That’s a brutal truth the mainstream media has long ignored and one that many American parents lived firsthand.

It’s not just about policy. It’s about betrayal. Millions of families were abandoned during the pandemic, and Weingarten’s union allies were the ones boarding up the classroom doors. The data doesn’t lie: according to a report from the National Center for Education Statistics, math and reading scores dropped to their lowest levels in decades after extended school closures. The very children Democrats claim to champion suffered the most.

Austin also took aim at the Democratic Party’s consistent outsourcing of education policy to unions. "Democrats became the party of public education because they had the courage to fight for it," he said. "That courage is needed again today to challenge failed leaders, stand with parents, take back power and fight for democracy."

He’s not wrong. The party has become so beholden to union power that even talking about school reform has become taboo. It’s why Kamala Harris never mentioned education during her campaign it would have risked upsetting the very unions she relied on for political support.

Randi Weingarten’s reign has been a disaster for America’s children. She helped engineer a system that kept classrooms closed, blocked meaningful reform, and vilified parents who dared to question union mandates. Her legacy is one of division, decline, and lost futures.

It’s time Democrats face reality: siding with the teachers unions over American families is a losing strategy and even their own insiders are starting to say so.

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