Randi Weingarten Lies About Wanting Schools Open, Blames Republicans Again

Randi Weingarten, head of one of the largest teachers unions in America, cemented herself throughout COVID as one of the pandemic's biggest villains. 

Weingarten and her political partners in the Biden White House and CDC, along with Democrat Party allies in state leadership across the country, helped keep schools in blue cities and states closed for well over a year. Sensing an opportunity to grab more money for her union while demonstrating her fearless commitment to pseudoscience and political activism, Weingarten helped set back a generation of children with her disregard for the importance of education.

But as is so often the case in 2025, as attitudes around the pandemic change and more people realize that mandates and Follow The Science expert worship was wrong, COVID extremists are walking it all back. And Weingarten during a recent interview lied, spectacularly, about what she said during the early part of the pandemic.

WASHINGTON, DC - Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks during a March for Our Lives rally against gun violence on the National Mall June 11, 2022. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Randi Weingarten Tells Whopper Of A Lie About Schools

Weingarten appeared on one of her many partner CNN shows this week to defend herself against reality, with zero pushback from a sympathetic answer, of course. In an effort to blame Republicans for the disastrous drops in educational achievement in recent years, Weingarten hilariously said that she was actually fighting to get schools open in April 2020. 

"COVID was a terrible time for us and as you know, because I was on our show a lot and other shows, I wanted schools to be reopened as early as April 2020, the issue was the fear and the issue was the safety issues," Weingarten said. "COVID has really hurt in so many ways. But this has been a Republican talking point for a long time and in fact, during in the last couple of years, it was routinely put up in the Congress and 60 Republicans voted against it the last time it was put up. The real issue is how do we make sure that kids have the funding that they need and make sure that every single kid has a safe and welcoming environment and is one that is engaging and relevant."

It's hard to find the words to describe Reingarten's statements here. Gaslighting comes to mind. Disinformation. Disingenuous. Lying. Purposefully inaccurate. Unbelievable. Remarkable. Take your pick.

As just one example of how inaccurate this is, media site grabien in 2023 put out a video demonstrating Weingarten's commitment to keeping schools closed.

She ferociously posted, repeatedly, criticism of the Trump administration's urgent plan to reopen schools in the summer of 2020. Teachers in Florida accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of murder, staging fake deaths while saying that reopening schools was "wholly unacceptable and irresponsible." 

"The reckless endangerment of our children across Florida is wholly unacceptable and irresponsible," as a teachers union representative in Florida, Adora Obi Nweze, said in 2020. "We must send a message to Gov. DeSantis that we will not allow children, families and communities to be unnecessarily exposed to Covid-19."

This was, of course, well after it was clear that schools were safe. That COVID posed virtually zero threat to children or teachers. And that countries in Europe, including Sweden where schools never closed, had operated safely.

Weingarten also spoke out in 2021 against the CDC for saying that it was safe for children to return to schools. And because Biden's CDC was focused on Democrat Party politics first and science second, they immediately acquiesced to her demand to keep nonsensical, unsupported "social distancing" metrics in place for school reopening. Making it all but impossible to get classrooms back open.

Then even when her left-wing partners did open schools, sometimes over a year and a half later, they forced children to wear masks. Despite overwhelming evidence that masks don't work. 

This is all recorded history. We know it happened. Yet Weingarten chooses to lie about it anyway. Now she has the gall to act as though children and education are her top priority. 

In a new town hall with House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA), Weingarten went off on another rant against President Trump and Elon Musk, while railing against changes to the Department of Education. 

"So at the end of the day, we are fighting it because we are fighting to ensure that all kids have the opportunity to thrive, that all kids are in a safe and welcoming environment every single day, and that all kids end up having what they need to ensure that they have relevant, engaging curriculum," Weingarten said.

Incredibly, she claimed funding cuts would, "go to pay for tax cuts for Elon Musk."

Sounds about right.

Weingarten is lying, plain and simple. It's on tape. We know what she did, and the damage she caused. Her actions were and are indefensible. She acted as a political activist first, and educator second. Because that's exactly who she is. Now that the public has turned against her and her party, she's denying reality and denying the record. And she's not going to get away with it.