Politifact has decided to weigh in on the veracity of Randi Weingarten’s claims that she was always for reopening schools. And it does so with the usual level of cluelessness we’ve all come to expect. Here’s the argument boiled down to a tweet.
Teachers union President Randi Weingarten advocated for reopening schools with pandemic safety measures. She criticized the Trump administration’s 2020 calls to reopen schools fully, but it’s misleading to claim that she opposed reopening at all.
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) May 3, 2023
The piece itself is an article so it doesn’t fact-check any particular point. There’s no rating of true or false. It just sort of offers an opinion. Specifically, the opinion offered by Madison Czopek is that “it’s misleading to suggest that [Weingarten] didn’t want to pursue reopening schools at all.”
Honestly, this is so dumb that it’s a bit painful. Just to briefly step away from the hot-button issue of schools for a moment, imagine the Pentagon wants to launch several new submarines but there is one general with a lot of pull who announces “We need to launch these submarines, but not until they are all fitted with screen doors for safety.”
At this point there could be months of arguing about the utility of screen doors on submarines. Many people say they’re unnecessary but this one general just keeps demanding they be added so it’s safe for crews return to their subs.
Looking back on this controversy two years later, the general is a bit embarrassed. Instead of just admitting he was a dummy he decides to argue that he always said he wanted to launch those subs and he releases a video of himself saying “We need to launch these submarines…” And it’s true he did say that. But the more important point is that he made himself an obstacle by insisting on conditions that had to be met first.
That’s exactly what Randi Weingarten has been doing. As Politifact notes, she released this supercut of herself saying how much she wanted to reopen schools.
Republicans on the House Covid subcommittee want you to think I wanted to keep schools closed. Here’s what I actually said… over & over again. pic.twitter.com/TTWuYgC5nN
— Randi Weingarten 🇺🇦🇺🇸💪🏿👩🎓 (@rweingarten) April 26, 2023
But as Politifact also points out, Weingarten isn’t being completely truthful. The section in bold is the section in her video. Notice what got left out:
“Listen, I agree with you. We’ve been trying to get kids back into school throughout the country, and we worked with New York City to do it, but we have to get community spread down now.”
We’re trying to open schools but…something else needs to happen first and until it happens the union won’t cooperate. She’s a yes on reopening but only if her demands are met. Effectively she’s an obstacle.
Tom Elliott put together this helpful clip showing what Weingarten was really calling for and that was delays, remote learning, testing, mask mandates, physical distancing, mitigation strategies, mandated vaccines, etc. It was an endless litany of shifting excuses for why schools couldn’t reopen yet.
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SUPERCUT!
Don’t let @rweingarten rewrite history. Here’s proof she orchestrated the developmental destruction of a generation of kids. pic.twitter.com/vFChQsZ7vj
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 2, 2023
In the grand scheme of things there were basically two sides to this debate. One side wanted to reopen schools quickly and the other side wanted to explain why it wasn’t safe to do so. Randi Weingarten was always in that latter camp. Her claims that she was eager to reopen schools were always just a preface to all her reasons why we couldn’t do it yet because it wasn’t safe for her union members.
If Politifact weren’t such a wretched hive of partisan hackery, it would have fact checked her video and just pointed out that she’s lying by omission. Instead they presented this muddle in which Weingarten’s demands for screen doors on submarines gets whitewashed.
Update: PoliMath has a good Twitter thread responding to Politifact. He highlights some of Weingarten’s own tweets on the subject of reopening.
Here is Weingarten advocating for the closure of 80 schools in New York City
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) May 3, 2023
Here is Weingarten advocating that Florida teachers sue the state in order to close down schools
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) May 3, 2023
The only appropriate way to approach this story in a non-partisan way is to say:
“Randi Weingarten said she wanted schools to be open but consistently advocated for the closure of schools well into fall of 2020.”
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) May 3, 2023
