Week in Review: Gov. Newsom’s Blank Check for Tyranny

First, California Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down the state with a series of “emergency” executive orders amid the COVID pandemic. Then he announced a set of complicated rules governing how and when residents could resume their lives.

Where were state lawmakers? Missing in action. A group of California business owners is suing Gov. Newsom for illegally bypassing legislators to essentially make his own law, and this week, the Goldwater Institute filed a brief urging the California Supreme Court to strike down this tyrannical overreach.

Now the state’s high court will have to decide whether the constitutional principle of separation of powers still has any meaning or not.

Read more here.

Arizona AG’s Illegal Attack on ESA Families

Parents shouldn’t need a permission slip to buy their children an Abraham Lincoln biography or a copy of The Federalist Papers.

But the Goldwater Institute has uncovered that under Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ latest illegal attack on Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) families, such materials constitute educational purchases only if a parent can produce a “curriculum” explicitly calling for their specific use. The Arizona legislature, though, has repeatedly made clear that the ESA program is intended to broadly support “supplementary” education materials.

Tens of thousands of children are getting the education they deserve after Goldwater expanded ESAs statewide in 2022. Anti-school choice progressives want to take away these new opportunities—but we won’t let them.

Read more here. 

Taxpayers on the Hook

Should Arizona school districts be spending taxpayer dollars to send school board members to attend out-of-state conferences for social-justice training in topics like “Immigrant Justice” and “Governing While Black”?

It sounds outrageous, but public records obtained by the Goldwater Institute reveal that the Phoenix Elementary School District Governing Board tried to do just that—only to cancel the trip after this wasteful expenditure came under the Institute’s scrutiny. Of course, taxpayers should never have to pay for school board members to be taught how to implement left-wing dogmas in their districts. That’s why Goldwater is committed to keeping radical politics out of the classroom—and to ensuring that school board members aren’t radicalized on the taxpayers’ dime.

Read more here.