America's Talking - Inquiry Into Teachers Unions Influence Over School COVID Closures Ramps Up

Episode Date: July 1, 2023

The U.S. House Committee tasked with reviewing the federal pandemic response is ramping up its investigation into what influence teachers unions had over federal rules that kept schools closed. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, sent a letter to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky demanding all records and communications between her and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today as he does most every week when he's not taking his month-long vacations in Europe is the Center Square, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey, we're recording this on Friday, June 30th. Casey, we're three and a half years removed from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet we cannot stop talking about it, stop writing about it. And for good reason, this week, You wrote at the centers square.com about a congressional investigation into teachers' unions and their influence over COVID school closures during the height of the pandemic. What's going on here? Yeah, this has been a story we've been following, as you said, for a while now. And it began when we looked into the donations that teachers unions had been giving and started to connect the dots that teachers unions had given about $20 million to Democrats. And what had happened in the last, you know, the 2020 campaign.

and what happened, you know, right after that in regards to COVID. Well, we're learning more and more from, you know, testimony and from emails and investigations that teachers unions, especially the American Federation of Teachers, which is led by Randy Weingard. AFT, for example, had a lot of influence over federal recommendations for when schools should reopen, right? So one, there's a question of should they have had so much influence, had basically a direct line. And Weingard had basically a direct line to Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director. And they were talking on the phone pretty regularly. So why is a teacher's union rep, which is basically a political wing, a soft wing of the Democratic Party,

and me giving funneling millions of dollars to Democratic candidates, almost nothing to Republican candidates? And they have no health expertise. How are they involved in working so closely with health officials on school reopening guidance? So it's kind of a question of influence, money, and politics there. And then the other thing that we've learned even, which is more. tragic really. It's just a severe learning lost in. I mean, we've written about this also at the sooner square.com. But closing schools during COVID, I mean, we won't get into all the hell things of why or why not that was done. And it did vary based on state to state. But the numbers are

in and it shows that closing these schools had devastating learning effects on kids. Kids cannot just sit at home on their computer and still learn. I mean, if there was ever any doubt about that, anyone who has kids or younger siblings or cousins or would know that a eight-year-old can't sit on a computer all day without being in a classroom and being forced to learn. But I'll give you a quick stat and then pass it off to you. Average scores for nine-year-old students in 2022 declined by five points in reading and seven points in mathematics compared to 2022. That's the largest score decline in reading in decades since 1990. So we saw the biggest score decline in decades because of closing schools. And why did we close schools? Well, the federal government says it

was for health reasons, but we're learning more and more. It may have been because teachers unions, the teachers in them were so scared of COVID that they didn't want to go back to work. And they kind of wielded their political influence to the tune of $20 million to keep schools closed longer. That's kind of the theory that lawmakers are now increasingly investigating, in particular, that relationship between Wine Garden and Rochelle Walensky. What's really concerning about what you just said a moment ago, this latest school report card assessment of schools nationwide, there was hope that we all know about the learning

loss. There was definitely significant learning loss during school. closures in the pandemic. But here we are now in 2023, and the latest, the latest data is showing student scores continue to decline. So there hasn't been any kind of post-pandemic recovery, even though there's been in-person learning now, for the most part, for well over a year, a couple years, things aren't turning around there. So that is kind of scary. So what's next with this? I mean, what does Congress hope to accomplish with this investigation? You know, in some sense, the damage is already done, right? I mean, I think that's kind of what you're getting at. These numbers are

really bad. I mean, it's not surprising to me. These 10-year-olds can't do it. I mean, kids don't want to, kids want to run around and play and watch TV. They don't want to, you know, do this kind of thing. So it shouldn't be shocking. Kids have to be in school. But what's going to happen now? Well, we're kind of in this giant autopsy of what happened in COVID. In honor, one of our other podcasts, we're going to talk about how much money was lost, hundreds of billions of dollars was lost. I mean, COVID-era spending. So I think We're just looking at how does our federal government respond to emergencies, and it's not a good look, and how can we in the future respond better next time there is a crisis? Maybe we don't shut down everything, keep kids out of school, spend trillions of dollars that then, you know, nearly 20% of which is, in some cases, is lost to waste, fraud, and abuse. I mean, we've got to just try to, I think, do the best we can to learn from our mistakes from this crisis, so we don't repeat them.

So, Casey, you want to stay on COVID, but briefly segue to another. other congressional investigation related to the origins of COVID. You wrote about it this week at the CenterSquare.com. Don't have a ton of time. What's going on with this investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci and the possible federal government's suppression of the origin theory that it came from the Wuhan lab? Yeah, this is a really great example of the autopsy. How did the federal government handle information?

Because we know they suppressed a lot of information around the vaccine, around the Wuhan lab, and then a lot of the concerns about both those things turned out to be more valid than was originally said. So in the case of Fauci, we know that Fauci did several interviews where he just said the Wuhan Lab League theory, the idea that Chinese scientists may have inadvertently created and released the COVID-19 virus was just ridiculous. The mainstream media, in part because of Fauci's insistence, said it was basically a conspiracy theory, a myth. Washington Post called a French theory. And they just blew that horn. And even if at that time, if you had written something on social media, you could have got censored or taken down or

at least just mocked as an idiot for saying something like this. And now the FBI is saying that the lab leak is the most likely. We've seen more and more evidence seemingly almost every month that it was more and more likely that it came from a Wuhan lab. So the question is, how could Dr. Fauci suppress this information? What grounds did he have to say that the lab leak was not the origin of COVID? And then the last thing, which I'm not sure we'll ever get to the bottom of, but lawmakers really want to, is what financial interests could Fauci have had in this in the sense that the U.S. government was funding this lab, right? So it seems very possible that the U.S. government funded the lab that created COVID. Now, we weren't the only one funding it,

and there's a question of, were we funding these specific research in this question here? You know, you can fund different parts of research at a lab, and it was a Chinese lab. So, of course, they were funding a lot of it too. But I think there's a kind of culpability, was Fauci and the federal research grants somehow responsible for what happened? I don't know if that will ever get a firm definitive answer to this. You know, where did COVID-19 start? It sounds like the preponderance of evidence, or at least most now are leaning towards the Wuhan lab. But I think because of this, essentially the story that was told to the American people during the height of the pandemic by Dr. Anthony Fauci and others, Congress needs to continue its investigation into this. But Casey,

we are out of time to our listeners. You can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKalep. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.