Teacher union honcho Randi Weingarten’s 2025 vanity book “Why Fascists Fear Teachers” isn’t just a self-promoting, self-glorifying soliloquy: The unreadable screed also served as a helpful cash conduit for Weingarten and her friends to make bank on the back of teachers’ union dues.   

Weingarten’s book was something of a “group project”; a Freedom Foundation analysis of the American Federation of Teacher’s federal filings reveals that it laid out big bucks in support of this collaborative effort.

Teachers should ask for a refund.

The book’s acknowledgements praise erstwhile CNN host Sally Kohn — now a “Writer,” “Media Strategist + Trainer” in addition to “Activist,” according to her X profile — as “indispensable as a day-to-day thought partner and collaborator.”

Whatever a “thought partner” is — call it a fancy way to say “ghostwriter,” per the report — it sure pays well.

The AFT handed Kohn over $400,000 in the year leading up to publication of “Why Fascists Fear Teachers.”

That’s more than triple what Kohn was typically paid for her union consulting work.

Kohn’s not the only one to walk away with a tidy haul, according to the report.

Tony Powell is the photog credited with the dust-jacket back flap shot of Weingarten. He’s a well-known social butterfly on the DC scene, and was called a “21^st Century Renaissance Man” by The Washington Post.

Powell is listed in the AFT’s filings as netting more than five grand for “Union Administration.”

That’s a pricey headshot!

Emily Krieger was paid $6,000 by the AFT for fact-checking the book.

But the real money, as ever, went to the lawyers.

Weingarten thanks attorney Charles Moerdler — a supremely connected lawyer who has been neck deep in New York politics since his days as Mayor John V. Lindsay’s housing adviser — for his “legal review” of her book.

Moerdler’s firm is listed in the AFT’s latest filings as receiving close to a million dollars in the previous year, including $140,000 for “Union Administration.”

Some of that million bucks was likely for typical lawyer work, but a healthy chunk appears to have been related to the book. (Though Weingarten claims he helped with the book on a pro bono basis.)

Finally, Weingarten promised that royalties from the sale of the book would go to the union and related nonprofits. But $125,000 of the proceeds went to an LLC called “Teachers Want What Kids Need.”

Weingartern now admits she is splitting royalties with the union.

Maybe fascists do fear teachers, though the argument in her book is typically lame.

What’s certain is that parents and taxpayers, should fear teachers unions.

Especially when they siphon off so much public money funneled through union dues to pay for gross propaganda like “Why Fascists Fear Teachers.”