Week in Review: ‘I’m Going to Die. It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way’

Elijah Stacy was diagnosed with a fatal disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy at age 6. He lost his ability to walk at age 11. At 15, he decided to do something about it. “I thought about how I could be dead in the next 10 years,” Elijah says in a new Goldwater Institute video. “I took that as a challenge.”

Today, Elijah is an author, the founder of a non-profit, and is fighting for his life—and for all of those who are desperate for a cure. That’s why he’s advocating for Goldwater’s Right to Try for Individualized Treatments. This state-level reform—already law in six states—creates a pathway for Americans to access groundbreaking, individualized treatments that have not yet received approval from the FDA. As Elijah explains: “If the patient wants it, if the company’s willing to give it, and most importantly, in my opinion, the physician agrees with it, it’s something that makes sense.”

Watch Elijah tell his story here and be sure to sign up for Goldwater’s free webinar on February 27, “Fighting for His Life” featuring Elijah Stacy, here.

Only the First Step

The fight is only beginning. President Donald Trump’s executive orders demolishing federal subsidies for radical “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programming are just the first step in defeating DEI, Goldwater’s Timothy K. Minella writes in The Federalist.

“As a former professor, I would like to believe that universities themselves will … take steps to reform these flawed curricula by eliminating DEI requirements,” adds Minella, who previously taught at the University of Kentucky. “Unfortunately, I know better.”

Progressives are using mandatory DEI courses in public higher education to force-feed anti-American ideas in colleges—at a cost of billions of dollars and millions of hours of students’ time. That’s why Goldwater is working in numerous states to enact our landmark Freedom From Indoctrination Act, which prohibits public universities from requiring DEI courses.

It’s time to complete the counterattack against DEI.

Read more here.

Goldwater Pressure Forces Tax Bureaucrats to Return Stolen Millions

 The government stole $90 million from taxpayers in Pinal County, Ariz., and held onto the money for years after the Arizona Supreme Court struck down the county’s illegal tax. They might have held onto it for good, too—if not for the Goldwater Institute.

Pinal County’s illegal sales tax primarily hurt lower- and middle-income taxpayers—so Goldwater sued and won. But officials still wouldn’t return the money until Goldwater went back to court to make sure they did.

Now, taxpayers are finally getting their money back—$32.7 million and counting so far.

Across the country, government keeps trying to illegally take Americans’ money—but Goldwater has scored many monumental wins for taxpayers. After all, government has no right to keep money that it had no right to take in the first place.

Read more here.