“The creation of universal public school distrust” is how AFT President Randi Weingarten describes the right-wing endgame of voucher politics. That line captures why attacks on teachers have moved beyond ordinary debate into efforts to dismantle schools themselves. The Trump administration’s goal is not improvement but failure, stripping billions from budgets until public education collapses. Teachers end up scapegoated even as classrooms remain the last place many kids find safety, opportunity, and belonging.
That’s why Randi wrote her new book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy, which just came out on Sept. 16.
Randi warns that the rhetoric driving all these attacks is rooted in a fear of pluralism. “Create distrust for community, for broad-based pluralism,” she recalls from one of the architects of the movement. Book bans, fear campaigns over DEI, and accusations of teachers as groomers all serve this larger purpose. Public schools are dangerous to authoritarians because they foster critical thinking. And kids encounter difference there and still see each other as human.
The same strategy explains Trump’s push to dismantle the Department of Education. “The Department of Education does not run schools,” Randi stresses, reminding that its role is to enforce civil rights and fund opportunities kids can’t get otherwise. Ending that mission means no meals, no special education support, no smaller classes, and no libraries. Against that backdrop, her reminder that “nobody can do everything, but every one of us can do something” lands as both warning and call to action.
Tune in for this conversation with and Randi Weingarten — an urgent conversation on why public schools are democracy’s most valuable asset.
EXCLUSIVE: The Insider Account of Education's Collapse under Trump
Jason Cottrell worked at the Department of Education for years because he believed that his work made the lives of kids — and their families —better. When he and at least a thousand of his colleagues were walked out, whatever doubts he had that Trump was trying to kill the Dept. were erased.
