Harris Would Empower Unions, Not Parents

Since claiming the Democrat Party’s nomination from her boss, Vice President Kamala Harris has been unable to explain how she will be better than the current administration that bears her name, she’s answered almost no questions while campaigning, and given zero media interviews.

With so little information to go on, voters must make their own assumptions about her priorities by looking at the few choices she has made since being crowned the nominee.

And those priorities should concern every American parent.

A mere 24 hours after President Joe Biden bowed out of the 2024 Election, the American Federation of Teachers, one of the most radical labor unions in the country, became the first to endorse Kamala Harris for president.

The Democrat Party was still reeling from the news that they had to switch up their ticket, some presidential hopefuls were weighing options about their own candidacy, and the corporate media hadn’t yet landed on their official talking points – but AFT president Randi Weingarten was ready to begin campaigning for Kamala.

Remember, it was Randi Weingarten who threatened school “safety strikes” in blue states and other union strongholds in July 2020, just months before the previous presidential election.

Randi Weingarten also negotiated directly with then-CDC director Rochelle Walensky in the early days of the new Biden-Harris administration to re-write school COVID guidelines that kept millions of students out of school long after children in red states had already returned to full-time, in-person education.

Desperate parents across America sensed that prolonged school closures could inflict very real damage on their children. They begged their state and local leaders to re-open the schools. The lucky ones who could find alternate educational options got their kids out of the union-dominated schools.

Sadly, children who couldn’t escape Randi Weingarten’s school closures suffered in a variety of ways.

Isolation turned to depression. Language and reading delays increased as masks were required for younger students still learning their ABCs, and advanced math applications proved difficult during online “Zoom Schools”.

The learning loss was devastating, and parents’ intuition that their children were being harmed is now borne out in the research.

The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or the “Nation’s Report Card”, revealed in 2023 that students experienced a four-point drop in reading scores and a nine-point drop in math scores from their pre-COVID testing.

These test scores represent a crushing lifetime impact on the futures of American school children – including academic achievement, career opportunities and financial earnings, as well as emotional development and even behavioral issues prevalent in schools today.

In fact, America will be paying for these school closures for decades to come, but the long-term effects on American society couldn’t compete with the political power sought by Randi Weingarten, state and local teachers’ union presidents, and the politicians they supported.

Some of these union stronghold school districts, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, continued to stage “COVID” strikes long after nearly every other industry had figured out how to get back to work.

This brings us to Kamala Harris’ second major decision since launching her presidential campaign: choosing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate.

Gov. Walz kowtowed to the teachers’ union demands, allowing schools to remain closed and revising educational standards that increased focus on racial- and gender-based curriculum.

Since Walz entered the governor’s mansion in 2019, reading proficiency fell among Minnesota students by nearly 10 percentage points, down from 59.2 percent to 49.9 percent in 2023. Similarly, math scores sank from 55 percent in 2019 to just 45.5 percent during the same time.

And yet, when asked about the effects of school closures on students’ academic performance, Walz said of remote learning, “These kids learned resiliency…these kids learned problem-solving. They had to figure out how to get online and do this.”

Gov. Walz is proud to tout his former teaching career and is supported both by the teachers’ unions in his state and at the national level. These are the same people who held millions of children’s academic futures hostage to their cynical, political goals and do not believe parents should have a say in their own kids’ education.

Remember that Virginia elected Gov. Glenn Youngkin over former political powerhouse Terry McAuliffe after McAuliffe famously admitted, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

McAuliffe’s closing campaign rally highlighted Randi Weingarten, and many later claimed it was also the final nail in the coffin of his political career.

2021 wasn’t all that long ago, and Randi Weingarten hasn’t changed her politics.

So it shouldn’t be overlooked that America’s most radically activist teachers’ union leader moved quickly to endorse Kamala Harris for president.

VP Harris used her first major speech to tell the teachers’ union leader, “Randi, thank you for your friendship – your long-standing friendship. As we all know, Randi is a force. And she has been an incredible friend and adviser to the president and me. And I want to thank you on behalf of the president and me and our country for all that you are.”

Any parent reading this should be terrified of handing Randi Weingarten and Tim Walz more power over American children.