Wall Street Journal editorial board member William McGurn pushed back Tuesday on American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten after she slammed an op-ed critical of her school reopening recommendations.
As the New York Post reported earlier this month, emails gleaned through a FOIA request showed that the AFT lobbied the CDC and further “suggested language for [its] school-reopening guidance released in February.”
The Post then reported Tuesday that Weingarten admitted the Biden White House asked the AFT for “language” to contribute to CDC school-reopening guidance.
McGurn told “The Story” he didn’t personally write the op-ed – “Randi Weingarten Sees The Light” – published May 15 in the Wall Street Journal, but that he nonetheless defended it:
“I think that’s what we call in our business a direct hit. I didn’t write the editorial. I’m very proud of it,” he told host Martha MacCallum.
In the op-ed, the Journal board wrote that with all teachers being able to get vaccinated, and the expectation youth will soon be able to as well, it will be difficult for unions to defend keeping schools closed for in-person learning.
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“Hence Ms. Weingarten on Thursday pivoted to calling for reducing class sizes and adding more building space for ‘social distancing.’ Both will require hiring more teachers—i.e., more dues-paying members. Cha-ching.”
On a recent C-SPAN interview, Weingarten fired back at the Journal’s post:
“I’m going to call bull—t when I see it,” she said, going on to accuse the Journal of being part of a “misinformation campaign” and being “flatly wrong.”
“Anyone that knows educators in America know that we want to be in school,” she told C-SPAN.
“Look,” McGurn later added on “The Story,” “The teachers unions were one of the biggest obstacles to getting back [in the classroom]. She calls it misinformation, but the truth is that a lot of unions prevented the schools from opening or kept them in the half-baked, half-remote situation as lot longer – while Catholic schools in a lot of places did open up.”
“It shows that you can minimize the risk from COVID with the right protocols.”
MacCallum asked McGurn to further react to whether Weingarten’s recent remarks “ring true” to him, specifically when she said she did not know the CDC would loosen masking restrictions last Thursday:
“I don’t know. We know the CDC solicited their advice on other things and the CDC walked back a little bit of what they’re going to do,” he said.
“I don’t know why the CDC would be asking the teacher’s unions. I’m not fully aware of Mrs. Weingarten’s credentials, but I don’t believe there’s an endocrinology degree in there: It’s political,” McGurn added.
“This is why people don’t trust the information that they get from our authorities. So much is polluted by politics.”
In the same interview, civil rights attorney Leo Terrell, a former Los Angeles-area civics teacher, largely agreed, adding that the Weingarten “hates Republicans.”
“She said in that interview that Joe Biden is the perfect president. He’s doing everything right. We all know that is not true,” said Terrell.
“The schools are being held back as a form of Democratic control – what is happening in a school in San Francisco? It opened one day to pick up $25 million of grant money. It’s all about the money,” Terrell continued.
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He added that the unions and Democratic officials are not “following the science” as they claim, pointing to Texas and Florida, which have largely ignored federal lockdown recommendations.
“They have not suffered. Follow the science? The problem is not in the schools,” he said, alleging that unions are using this time to “build a war chest” to fund Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterm elections “at the expense of the kids.”
