The MeidasTouch Podcast
Meidas Health: Dr. Gupta’s Deep Dive with AFT President Randi Weingarten
10 Nov 2025
One of the nation’s most influential labor leaders, Randi Weingarten, joins Dr. Vin Gupta of Meidas Health to discuss the ongoing government shutdown, its impact on healthcare access for everyday Americans, and the timely release of her new book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Midas Mighty, welcome to another episode of Midas Health. Really excited to have our next guest, Randy Weingarten, join us. Randy, I've gotten to know Randy over the course of the last several years, especially during COVID and ever since. And she needs no introduction. She's one of the nation's leading public sector officials.
I mean, she leads one of the most influential, if not the most influential labor union in the country. It touches public school teachers. They represent doctors and nurses across the spectrum. It doesn't get more influential than Mandy Weingarten. And she's going to be talking to us about her new book. why fascists fear teachers. So her perspective's there.
And there's broadly so much happening right now in healthcare, healthcare policy, to get her take. Again, she represents the interests of nurses and doctors across the country. So there's no better voice. But without further ado, I'm going to bring Randi on to stage. Randi, thanks so much for joining Minus Health.
I am so glad to be with you. Thank you, Vin. And I am so, again, I'm so sorry about the passing of your mom.
Well, you know, for our listeners, my beloved mom passed away unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and she was a neonatologist. And there's so much I want to say, and one day I will say, but one thing she did tell my brother and I was, I mentioned this to Randy, is that if anything happened to her, she said to continue with your work after taking a week off, which is why I'm here with Randy.
Randy, there's so much that you and I, I know we talk about a lot, but for the Midas Touch audience, I want to first talk about your book and why fascists fear teachers. Why did you write it?
And I don't even have a copy with me. I normally use it, lift it up, have a copy of it. I'll see if I can get it before the end of this session. I wrote it for two reasons. I wrote it as a warning. I think that in the last several weeks, as we've seen the Trump administration disappear people, this last couple of days, there was a teacher in Chicago who
who was just taken by ICE, but the disappearing of people by these mass men, this indictment of enemies, the militarization of streets, all of this... is what happens in countries that are not democratic. Millions of people on the street basically protesting and saying, no kings, Prop 50 just passing in California. I mean, so I wrote it when I wrote it a year ago.
I was warning about the backsliding of democracy and issues around or descriptions of fascistic behavior. I had hoped we would never get to this point, but that was number one. And I watched in the election leading up to November 2024,
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