Week in Review: A Bottomless Pit

The figures are staggering. Homelessness rose 92% in Phoenix—despite the city pouring at least $180 million into the spiraling crisis, with almost zero transparency and accountability. It’s nearly the same story in Tucson. Yet even as these local governments look to throw more cash down this bottomless pit, they don’t say where the money is going.

So, we did their job for them. The Goldwater Institute conducted a lengthy investigation—one that’s garnering national headlines—to determine how much funding is going toward homelessness in Phoenix and Tucson, where it’s coming from, and where it’s going. After all, taxpayers are entitled to a clear and accurate accounting of how their government is spending money to fight this epidemic spreading pollution, disease, and violent crime through our cities.

Read the report here. 

Anti-Bug Bigotry

$140,000 to learn to “live like a bug” by “walking around with tissue paper ‘wings’” so you can better understand the experience of “marginalized” groups?

A just-released Goldwater policy report reveals the University of Arizona (UA) mandates academically unserious, politicized “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) courses like this one just to earn a degree—yet fails to ensure students learn about the Constitution or the Civil War. UA isn’t alone. According to one estimate, more than two-thirds of major universities mandate racially discriminatory DEI courses in their general education programs.

The good news is…

…DEI Is on the Defensive

Bloated DEI bureaucracies are withering under the sunlight of public scrutiny, with Goldwater already achieving victories over this toxic ideology in 10 states. “Now, policymakers can defeat this scourge of discrimination in public higher education by ending DEI indoctrination in the classroom,” Goldwater Senior Constitutionalism Fellow Timothy K. Minella writes in the Washington Times.

They can do it by advancing Goldwater’s Freedom from Indoctrination Act, a commonsense reform prohibiting public universities from forcing students to take DEI courses—like UA’s “bug bigotry” class—to graduate. Public universities have a responsibility to provide their students with rigorous instruction that prepares them for responsible citizenship.

Read more here.