the american federation of teachers, randi weingarten, testifieon the impact that school closures had ostudents and educators during the pandemic. and her own role in the cdc's covid 19 school reopeng guidance. held by the house select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. watch live at 2 pm eastern on c-span three. you can also watch on our free mobile video app, c-span now. or online at c-span.org. >> c-span now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what is happening in washington, live and on demand. keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress, white house events, the courts, campaigns and more from the world of politics. all educator tips. also stay current with the latest episodes of washington journal and find scheduling

information for c-span tv networks and c-span radio. plus, a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the apple store and google play. download it for free today. c-span now, your front row seat to washington. anytime. anywhere. , >> and i'm next, we are joined by aaron with, who's the chief executive officer with the freedom foundation. he's here to talk with us about that hearing in particular coming up today about the covid school closures and the impact of closures on students across the country. good morning and welcome to washington journal. >> good morning. thank you for having me on. >> tell us about your organization, the freedom foundation. what is its mission and how are you funded? >> short. the freedom foundation's mission is to advance and virtual liberty, free enterprise, and-limited accountable government. we believe that the freedom foundation that there is no path to doing that that does not involve removing the

influence of government unions from politics. government unions, the problem with government unions, is that they extort billions of dollars each year from your everyday teachers, your everyday state, county and city employees, and they use that money for a largely political agenda. this is wrong. when they spent that money in politics, they spend it on people, mentally liberal politicians that go into our business, and they agreed to raise taxes on the private sector, on taxpayers, to then grow the size of government, to get more union members. there is no skin like this in america that exists and has created the biggest political lobby in america, which is these government unions. >> at the head of one of the largest unions, randi weingarten, is testifying. she's the head of the american confederation of teachers. she is their president. she will be testifying today on capitol hill on the select committee, subcommittee, on the coronavirus pandemic. and the effect of the pandemic on schools. what is your organization's interest in this hearing?

>> the freedom foundations interest in this hearing is that i don't want the public to forget what randi weingarten and the teachers union did to our kids. i put the blame fully on the teachers unions for keeping schools shut, forcing our kids to wear masks, and all of the other stuff, all the other crazy stuff that they did during covid. i blame the teachers unions for it. during that time, which i've tried to forget about a lot, what we saw was randy weingarten damage our kids education, our kids mental health, by keeping schools shut. and what we saw across america as a result of this was parents started to take their kids out of public schools. those students of course then went to charter schools, in some cases private schools. voters voted out teachers unions candidates at the school board level in particular. all the way up to the governors level when you look at the virginia governor's race.

and then most importantly, teachers started to leave their unions in droves. more than 3% of teachers have left their unions in the last couple of years, and it's primarily down to what the teachers unions have done and the response to covid. >> why do you think that the american federation of teachers was so influential and policy when it comes to masks and school closures? >> at the federal level, that was obvious when we found the records that coordinated the cdc's guidelines. randi weingarten and the aft, the american federation of teachers, basically wrote those guidelines to say that if communities bread was up to a certain point that we would keep schools closed. that language that the cdc advised, they used that as coverage to shut down schools all across america. while at the same time, we have republican governors who are ignoring this language from the

cdc. they were opening schools that were being free states. what you saw was the damage done to kids in those liberal states was far worse than what is happening in conservative states. we had a divide across the country in our education, and it was down to randy weingarten. >> the response from homeland security committee in the u.s. senate strikes a different tone. i want to get rection to it. they look at the broader problem of school sure. the sy problem saying that f thproblems identifi part of the initial al rponse are long-standing and remain unaddressed for decades. insufficient funding across multiple administrations as impaired federal agencies readiness and response capabilities, reducing sustainable investments in public health preparedness. >> yeah. this isn't a federal issue. this issue is that the state level. states reacted differently to covid. we saw a drastic split between liberal states.

at the time i live in washington state. my wife was a public school teacher in that state. she could not go into school and teach her kids at the same time, idaho you could teach kids in person without a mask. getting all the mental health benefits of that. that wasn't happening in illiberal states across america. as much as we want to make this a federal issue, it really wasn't. randi weingarten used the cdc as coverage for liberal governors so they could justify shutting down schools. but really, the real damage was done at the state level. not at the federal level. >> aaron withe is ceo of the freedom foundation. welcome your calls and comments on this topic at 202-748-8001 for republicans. 202-748-8000 for democrats. and for independents and others, 202-748-8002. what about the health implications, the results of

the health implications, of schools that decided to stay open, more open in those states that you talked about, versus the ones that were closed? what do we know if that? what does your organization say about that? >> every study that we have seen so far, i think this is going to be measured for years to come frankly, shows that there was very little to non disparity between schools that were closed versus open in terms of kids contracting covid or having serious illness or even dying of covid. there was no correlation there that existed. and that, by the way, that's the reason why randy one garden is now going to go up and testify today and say that she was lobbying for schools to be open. it's a total lie, but she's going to use that because she realizes that the science and data now clearly states what we said back then. which was that kids were not at risk of covid, and that the damage done to their mental health had their education would be far worse than if we

were to leave schools open and have them there really. >> by the way, i want to remind our viewers and our listeners that we will be covering that hearing of the select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. randy one garden will be testifying this afternoon. we will have live coverage beginning at 2:00 eastern, and you can follow that on the c-span now mobile app. it's also available on c-span three. we have some calls waiting for you. we will go to our first color for aaron withe in lebanon worth, kansas. maxine in 11 worth, you are on. >> thank you for taking my call. i think this guest of yours is misleading about who decided to close the schools during covid. i didn't care, my governor is our brown, and that's where the decision was made to decide to close the school. brandywine garden was not

involved in that decision. i think it's unfair for this guy to say that it was strictly her decision to close the schools during covid because it wasn't. governors of each state and the school district decided whether or not the schools were going to be close. and also the trump administration, that is when the schools were being closed, it was during his administration. and it is -- administration, at the governors of each state, decided whether or not their school would be closed during covid. it wasn't randi weingarten who was telling everybody in the united states, every school district, every governor, to close the schools. >> all right, maxine. we will get a response from our guest. >> maxine, that's a great point. it's an important distinction that you made. yes, when covid first started we saw basically schools across all 50 states, republican or

democrat, and i think the reason that was was because we didn't really know the effects of covid at that time. we didn't know that if we send school -- kids to schools, that that would play this damaging role on our kids education and mental health. what we did realize is within four weeks, i would say, that we started to see that this was going to be a longer term play. that is when republican governors started to realize that they could open schools. they were the ones who started to reopen faster. the liberal governors, those are the ones that kept schools closed after the fact at the behest of randi weingarten and the teachers unions. so when we look at studies, the university of nevada just released a study a couple of weeks ago, and they basically showed that the school reopening plan that was a direct correlation between the influence of teachers unions and schools that continue to remain shut. so yes, you are right, what we are talking about here is not schools closing at the beginning, but schools reopening faster.

>> we will go to patty next up in atlantic city, new jersey. on the independent line. patty, go ahead. >> hello. good morning. thank you for taking my call. i just want to say hindsight is 2020. i think it's very disingenuous of the guest to just blame one person. it seems like you're just trying to blame one person. it was a very complicated situation during the pandemic. also, a lot of people died, and it was a new virus. you know, it's just very on compassionate and disingenuous of youth blame randy one garden, who like the previous caller said, it was the trump administration that had all of these policies in place. so i wish, and my question is,

so you want to blame one person? the holding of your foundation. what are you going to do now? what are you suggesting for the tragedy that happened to the children, and it is a tragedy that they are like a year behind? >> all right, patty. >> great question. thank you for that. what do we do next? we make sure that the public does not forget the power of the teachers unions during these time. we should hold them accountable and not let this ever happen again to our kids. this was one special interest group that effectively shut down all the schools in liberal states in america. they damaged the kids education. you are right, this was a total tragedy, and to say that we should basically let randi off the hook because we weren't sure of the science at the time. i'm sorry, color, i call that bs. because the august time, september time, six, eight, nine months into this thing, a year into this thing, we knew the damage that it was doing to kids. randy one garden new.

i've said it on television. i said it in many interviews, in the press and writing, on the radio. she ignored us. she ignored anyone who said otherwise. she used this for her own political gain. she kept schools closed for her own political gain. you look at what -- the demands she had in los angeles. she wanted to defund the police. she wanted to shut down charter schools. these were all leveraged while schools were closed for her political gain. >> in terms of what is next, i want to follow up with her point about students learning loss. the wall street journal article released a couple of weeks ago says the pandemic learning loss could cost students $17,000 in a lifetime earnings. bosses are projected to total 28 trillion over the rest of the century. if the learning losses are not recovered, k through 12 students on average will go into less educated, lower

skilled, and less productive adults, and they will earn 5.6% less over the course of their lives. and students educated just before the pandemic -- so mr. withe, what should states be doing to fill that gap? to bring their students back up to speed? >> i think the first responsibility is in the hands of the pants. i think that, yes, if you are sending your kids to public schools, of course the public schools should be doing their part, but i think we need to look at summer classes for some of our students. that is certainly what i would be doing if i were a part of a school aged kid. i think that is the first step. i think we need to improve our educational standards. i think we need to do that by making charter schools more easy to get into across america. there are a lot of states that still make it very difficult for kids to get into charter schools and higher performing schools. a lot of public schools are failing, especially in the inner cities, and that was

amplified during covid. we need to make it so that school choices are more widely accessible prepares across america, so that they can send their students, send their kids, to higher performing charter schools or other public schools if they find those. >> let's go to john on the republican line enticement, urging. >> yes. good morning. i totally agree with the guest on your show. i am an arab american myself. i'm college educated. i totally agree with the guest on your show. i think he's telling it exactly the way it is. you know, public schools are not held accountable. the teachers are not held accountable. we pay all of these taxes for the teachers, for their salaries, but there is no accountability. i think school choice creates accountability. that is how capitalism works. there has to be accountability. otherwise, the quality of education will never improve and going back to randi

weingarten, she was one of the primary figures, but there were many figures. all of them on the democratic party side. who were pushing this agenda. it's all about control and submission, that is what it's all about. controlling the population. and sadly, unfortunately, the vast majority of women in this country vote democrat because they are emotional. they are not logical. they vote with the motions. they don't vote at all with logic. that is why they were not allowed to vote 100 years ago. because it was not based on logic. it was based on just pure emotion. >> erin with your response to his comments. >> well, i think what you are going to see today's randi weingarten trying to get up and testify and remind people, i'm sorry, and try to convince people that she was not the one to try to shut down schools. it would be like the cookie monster saying that he didn't like cookies. it's like, no, you do. you do, randy, you do like

school shutdowns. that is exactly what you did. people have memories. there's this thing called the internet. what she did during that time spread all over there. i just read an article yesterday from putin's 21 that showed that she was asking teachers to strike for safety. safety strikes. this was in 2021. i mean this was a year into this pandemic and she was going out and asking this. what you will see today i think is total hypocrisy. i think you will also see a lot of attacks at trump and davis -- they both. i think those decisions were happening at the state level, not at the federal level, which is where randy and the teachers union has the most power. >> next is -- from connecticut. democrat line. >> i.

good morning. i would like to respond to mr. whites -- mr. withe's claims of damages to the case. i realize you can't go to -- through a worldwide pandemic without having damage to the kids. we have to acknowledge that. i would like to see some of these studies that he's quoting from, that explains the damage to the kids, exactly what it is. there can't be any studies done about what would've been if the children were in school all the time. another point for trump has absolutely no leadership in keeping schools open or closed, and protecting the children. he passed everything off to the states and then down to the local level. i thought it was very smart move using the measurement and local area to covid incidences. if they went above a certain point, to close the school so that it would not spread more within the school. he can't measure how many kids lives were saved because the schools were closed. you can't measure how many kids

don't have long term covid because of the schools being closed. he doesn't know how many families were spared the spread of covid because the schools were closed. these are statistics that he can't quote that have never been studied and cannot possibly be study financially because they are all what it. he does have some sort of statistics, some sort of studies, which i would like to hear which ones they are saying what happened to children because the schools were closed. i realize he has a personal beef with randy weingarten, but she's not the one that's demanding all schools be closed. it was determined at a local level. if we had more leadership from the president, more leadership from federal level, perhaps things would have been different. >> thank you for the call. erin withe? >> the first study we looked to is from stanford. it basically shows that the difference between schools and

kids that were educated and conservative states that were open, and a liberal states that were closed, there's a wide disparity in the education levels between those kids. you can see it more in big cities and particular. there was also a study done by the university of nevada that was quoted by the wall street journal bit showed the unions influence -- that the young iranians directly had influence over those schools being closed, versus the schools that were allowed to be open. those are the two studies that i'm looking at right now. i think you are right, this will be studied for years to come. to say that i don't have compassion for what happened during world wide pandemic is totally the opposite. i have total compassion for our kids. i saw the damage that school shutdowns did to people like lee. if you go on the freedom foundation website, liam is a student out of portland. he has a severe disability and illness. the damage done to people like

liam from school shutdowns was far more significant than what covid would've done to kids. what we saw across the board from conservative states that were open, to liberal states that were closed, where that kids were not affected by covid. that it became obvious after just a few months of the pandemic, which is why we started to see schools and -- and conservative states reopen. by the way, federalism is a great thing. this decision should have been made at the state level -- not -- at the school board a level, but those elected officials should have figured out pretty quickly that it was best to have our schools open. this became a political issue from the unions. the democrats responded to it by keeping schools closed. >> there's a new book coming out today called the lessons from the cold war. the headline in usa today, interviewing a couple of the authors from that report, u.s. should learn its mistakes in fighting covid-19. one of the authors of a group that tailed some 300 interviews across the country on the effect of the covid pandemic is

former 9/11 executive director philippe zealot. in that interview with usa today, he says that the route, the center for disease control and prevention was asked to make very practical judgments including weighing costs and benefits about school closures that it was utterly and suited to make. do you agree with that? >> -- yeah, i think these decisions should have been made at the local level. the cdc was working basically from randi weingarten one releasing its guidelines to reopen schools, which basically meant to keep schools closed. the state with conservative governors looked pretty quickly as they could operator schools and do in-person learning. what was also obvious is the damage being done to our kids by keeping schools closed. they ignored that science to promote a narrative that suited them. >> let's hear from richard calling from arkansas. hi there. >> good morning.

i would just like to find out during this pandemic, the school associations, whatever you want to call them, they've got 1 million dollar treasury here just sitting on it. it's supposed to be fixing things for the pandemic, cleaning up the air supply, cleaning up the schools. what happened to that money? this narrative has been coming for years. back in the 80s in high school, they stopped the kids from eating out at the flagpole certain days of the week to reset the lords prayer and things like that. it's just been one thing after another. now, they are trying to make customer. everybody should be on the same level. our smart kids need to get dumber to meet up with the dummies that don't want to do the right thing. i just don't understand it.

you know -- >> all right. we lost that color. we will go on to dennis to see if we can get one more call in. this is from crosby, texas. the republican line. dennis, you are on. >> good morning. thank you for taking my call. i think one big key word here that a lot of people are missing, and aaron has said it, is the hypocrisy. every time we turn around it to as i say, not as i do. we've got to stop this. your one caller from connecticut was saying that we have no data. we've got schools that stayed in school the entire time of the pandemic. and for them to say that there is no way we can check this? that's crazy. we do have the tools. we do have the people to do it. but the problem is i think our government does not want to know what the results are. so i'm sorry, i don't have a

dog in this fight. my kids are all grown, but i do have grandchildren and i sat back and watched that and it just hurt my heart. >> all right, erin withe? >> yeah, my wife is a public school teacher as well and it hurt our hearts to see the kids that we no longer know where the heck they are because they never returned to schools. it hurt to hear the stories of children that dealt with mental illness during this time of school closures. it hurt to see the kids when they came back to school, the behaviors that the teachers are dealing with right now. because of these school shutdowns, i believe, is completely devastating to our education system. i think if the teachers unions want to help, they would take responsibility for this. they would actually help our teachers to control some of these behaviors. they promote summer learning. they promote all the things

that would help get our kids education back on par with what was lost during that time. but you are not going to see that today on the stand. you are going to see randi weingarten stand up and testify, she's going to dodge responsibility, she's going to attack trump, she's going to attack betsy doubles. she's not going to take responsibility for anything. if i could have one which today, it would be that she takes responsibility for what she did to our kids and their education. and if she did, frankly, she would resign, but we are certainly not going to see that either. >> let's hear from ellsworth coming from georgia. the democrat line. >> good morning. first of all, this guy has an agenda for charter schools. it is not being truthful because i don't see one person can be responsible for shutting down the whole united states public school system. and he's not presenting any kind of evidence or anything to

back up what he is saying. so his motive is obvious. his prejudice against public schools -- my grandkids go to public schools. they do well in public schools. i'm telling, is -- he's so transparently falls on what he's seeing. and i wish c-span would screen these people and not bring on this propaganda on so that we can -- for us to consume. >> aaron, do you care to respond? some final thoughts on the conversation? >> my wife is a public school teacher! i completely support our public schools, but i want the public schools to work. i want them to educate our children. i don't want them to be failing. charter schools provides accountability to that. meaning that you can have schools that compete against the public schools and parents can take their kids to the best school. is there a problem with that? is there something wrong with us wanting our kids to go out and get a better education? it cannot hold one person accountable for it?

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