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randi weingarten
Trump's GOP Blamed as Rural Health Clinics Begin to Fall Under Crushing Weight of Big, Ugly Bill
A Virginia healthcare company said it was closing three rural clinics as part of its "ongoing response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act."
Sep 23, 2025
Hospitals and healthcare clinics across the US have been announcing layoffs, service cuts, and closures in the weeks since Republicans passed a budget law that's estimated to slash spending on Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.
Monday reporting by CNN highlighted that Augusta Medical Group is closing three of its rural clinics in Virginia. The company said in a statement earlier this month that the closures were "part of Augusta Health’s ongoing response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the resulting realities for healthcare delivery."
The CNN report noted that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger recently campaigned in Buena Vista, one of the rural communities that will be losing its clinic, to make the case that the cuts in the GOP's budget law should be reversed.
Tim Layton, an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia, told CNN that rural areas figure to be particularly vulnerable to the Medicaid cuts given their lower population densities.
"You can expect those places to be impacted by now having people who don’t even have Medicaid,” he said. “With fewer people to spread fixed costs across, it becomes harder and harder to stay open."
Layton also dismissed Republicans' claims to have created protections for rural hospitals with a $50 billion rural health fund, as he described it as a "short-term patch" that will "go pretty quick." KFF earlier this year estimated that rural Medicaid spending would fall by $137 billion as a result of the GOP law, which is nearly triple the money allocated by the health fund.
Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for Virginia attorney general, seized on the CNN report and used it to tie incumbent Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares to the national Republican Party's policy agenda under President Donald Trump.
"The Big Bill causing three rural clinics in Virginia to close is just the tip of the iceberg," he wrote in a social media post. "And it's happening because Jason Miyares is too scared to fight against Trump’s Medicaid cuts that will throw nearly 300,000 Virginians off their healthcare."
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten also ripped the GOP for passing Medicaid cuts that are hurting the communities they represent.
"Hundreds of healthcare providers in rural areas depend on Medicaid funding to keep doors open and care for patients," she wrote. "But Trump’s Big Ugly Bill cuts millions from Medicaid, leaving these healthcare providers in jeopardy."
Leor Tal, campaign director for Unrig Our Economy, said that the cuts to Medicaid looked particularly bad politically for Republicans when contrasted to the tax cuts that disproportionately benefit high-income Americans.
“These closures are the congressional Republican agenda in action: cuts to healthcare for rural moms and families, tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires,” Tal said. “These closures are not an accident—they are the direct result of a law written to serve the wealthy and leave working people behind, and unless Republicans in Congress reverse course, more working-class Americans will be left behind while the rich get even richer.”
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'We'd Rather Be a Free Country': Bernie Sanders Shreds Trump for Latest 'Dictator' Rant
"Actually, Mr. Trump, 'a lot of people' say that millions of Americans fought and died to defeat dictators," argued Sanders.
Aug 27, 2025
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday once again mused about the benefits of being a "dictator," and drew a quick rebuke from Sen. Bernie Sanders and other critics.
During a cabinet meeting, Trump responded to criticism that his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC to stop a fictitious crime wave against the wishes of local officials was dictatorial in nature.
"So the line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime," Trump said. "So a lot of people said, you know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator."
Trump then insisted that he wasn't a dictator but was rather just someone who "knows how to stop crime." The president also said during the meeting that "I can do anything I want" because "I'm the president of the United States."
Trump: "The line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, 'You know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator.'" pic.twitter.com/YZlFDZs9lq
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 26, 2025
The comments followed similar remarks from the president on Monday in which he claimed, "A lot of people are saying, 'Maybe we like a dictator.'"
Sanders took to social media and ripped the president for suggesting that a dictatorship would be acceptable.
"Actually, Mr. Trump, 'a lot of people' say that millions of Americans fought and died to DEFEAT dictators," he wrote. "Ask anybody. We'd rather be a free country."
In a separate post, Sanders laid out Trump's authoritarian ambitions and challenged other lawmakers to stand up to him.
"Trump threatens and investigates his political opponents—Democrats and Republicans," he said. "He says, in violation of the Constitution, that he has 'the right to do anything [he] wants.' Is there one Republican who has the guts to stand up to this rapid movement toward authoritarianism?"
Progressive veterans organization VoteVets made a similar point in its own criticism of Trump.
"Millions of Americans have worn the uniform and sworn an oath to defend the Constitution, not one man's ego," the organization wrote. "Trump is spitting on that sacrifice and shredding the values we served to defend."
Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, however, warned that far too many of Trump's supporters appear to be on board with making him their president for life, based on polling.
"That so many Americans who voted for Trump actually WANT a dictator, an authoritarian, a strongman to rule over them and rule over this country has never surprised me," he argued. "Because for years, his voters have told me they wanted this. Yes, it's hugely disappointing, but not at all surprising."
CNN reporter Aaron Blake backed up Walsh's contention with polling data showing that 44% of Republican voters surveyed this year don't think courts should even be allowed to review the president's policies, while 36% of GOP voters said they wouldn't mind if Trump tried to "suspend some laws and constitutional provisions to go after political enemies."
"Trump is more or less right that many people seem to want a dictator," Blake commented. "They're his people."
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, argued that a strong public education system is one of the best defenses against tyranny in the United States.
"As Donald Trump throws around the word dictator, it's a good reminder that the founding fathers warned about kings and dictators," she argued. "In fact, they believed that public education was essential to a functioning democracy."
Weingarten then posted a video in which she read from her upcoming book, called "Why Fascists Fear Teachers," that features quotes from America's founders about the crucial role education plays in guarding against dictatorship.
"Thomas Jefferson was an early advocate of free public education, and wrote, 'Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty,'" said Weingarten. "Democracy and public education have been linked every since. You cannot have a country of, by, and for the people without a means for the public to prepare, not just for the privilege of that democracy, but the duties as well."
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Oklahoma Screening Teachers From California, New York for 'Radical Leftist Ideology'
"This MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage," said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.
Aug 20, 2025
Teachers from California and New York seeking work in Oklahoma will be required to pass an "America First Test" designed to weed out applicants espousing "radical leftist ideology," the state's public schools chief affirmed Monday.
Oklahoma—which has a severe teacher shortage, persistently high turnover, and some of the nation's worst educational outcomes—will compel prospective public school educators from the nation's two largest "blue" states to submit to the exam in a bid to combat what Superintendent for Public Instruction Ryan Walters calls "woke indoctrination."
"As long as I am superintendent, Oklahoma classrooms will be safeguarded from the radical leftist ideology fostered in places like California and New York," Walters said in a statement Monday.
Walters told USA Today that the test is necessary to vet teachers from states where educators "are teaching things that are antithetical to our standards" and ensure they "are not coming into our classrooms and indoctrinating kids."
However, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten warned in a statement Monday that "this MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage."
The exam will be administered by Prager University—also known as PragerU—a right-wing nonprofit group which, despite its name, is not an academic institution and does not confer degrees.
While all of the test's 50 questions have not been made public, the ones that have been published run the gamut from insultingly basic—such as, "What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?"—to ideologically fraught queries regarding the "biological differences between females and males."
PragerU's "educational" materials are rife with false or misleading information regarding slavery, racism, immigration, the history of fascism, and the climate emergency. Critics note that the nonprofit has received millions of dollars in funding from fossil fuel billionaires.
PragerU materials also promote creation mythology over scientific evolution and attack LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender individuals, calling lifesaving gender-affirming healthcare "barbaric" while likening its proponents to "monsters."
In one animated PragerU video, two children travel back in time to ask the genocidal explorer Christopher Columbus why he is so hated today. Columbus replies by asserting the superiority of Europeans over Indigenous "cannibals" and attempting to justify the enslavement of Native Americans by arguing that "being taken as a slave is better than being killed."
Closer to home, PragerU's curriculum aligns with so-called "white discomfort" legislation passed in Oklahoma and other Republican-controlled states that critics say prevents honest lessons on slavery, the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, and enduring systemic racism.
The law has had a chilling effect on teachers' lessons on historical topics including the 1921 Tulsa massacre, in which a white supremacist mob backed armed by city officials destroyed more than 35 city blocks of Greenwood, the "Black Wall Street," murdering hundreds of Black men, women, and children in what the US Justice Department this year called a "coordinated, military-style attack."
Responding to Oklahoma's new policy, University of Pennsylvania history professor Jonathan Zimmerman told The Associated Press that "instead of Prager simply being a resource that you can draw in an optional way, Prager has become institutionalized as part of the state system."
"There's no other way to describe it," he said, adding, "I think what we're now seeing in Oklahoma is something different, which is actually empowering Prager as a kind of gatekeeper for future teachers."
Oklahoma is not the only state incorporating PragerU materials into its curriculum. Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and Texas have also done so to varying degrees.
Weingarten noted Walters' previous push to revise Oklahoma's curriculum standards to include baseless conspiracy theories pushed by President Donald Trump that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. Walters also ordered all public schools to teach the Bible, a directive temporarily blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in March. The court also recently ruled against the establishment of the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school.
"His priority should be educating students, but instead, it's getting Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians to notice him," Weingrarten said in her statement.
Cari Elledge, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, called the new testing requirement "a political stunt to grab attention" and a distraction "from real issues in Oklahoma."
"When political ideology plays into whether or not you can teach in any place, that might be a deterrent to quality educators attempting to get a job," she added. "We think it's intentional to make educators fearful and confused."
California Teachers' Association president David Goldberg told USA Today that "this almost seems like satire and so far removed from my research around what Oklahoma educators need and deserve."
"I can't see how this isn't some kind of hyper-political grandstanding that doesn't serve any of those needs," he added.
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