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b'When the former secretary of state and C.I.A. director Mike Pompeo, a man who had dealt firsthand with autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, described Randi Weingarten as \\u201cthe most dangerous person in the world\\u201d last November, it seemed as though he couldn\\u2019t possibly be serious.\\n\\nWeingarten is 65 and just over five feet tall. She is Jewish and openly gay \\u2014 she\\u2019s married to a rabbi \\u2014 and lives in Upper Manhattan. She is the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, which is not even the country\\u2019s biggest union of public school educators. The A.F.T. did give in excess of $26 million to Democratic candidates and causes in the 2022 election cycle, but the Carpenters and Joiners union gave more than twice as much.\\n\\nThe public education system may not be very popular right now, but both Democrats and Republicans tend to like their local schools and their children\\u2019s teachers. The unions that represent those teachers, however, are more polarizing. One reason for this is that they are actively involved in partisan politics and, more specifically, are closely aligned with the Democrats, a reality powerfully driven home during the pandemic. In some ways, Randi Weingarten and the A.F.T. \\u2014 the union \\u201cboss\\u201d and \\u201cbig labor\\u201d \\u2014 are a logical, even inevitable target for the G.O.P.'