Week in Review: Honor the Heroes

Here’s how we can honor America’s fallen heroes, Goldwater Institute Vice President for Litigation Jon Riches, a Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve, writes this Memorial Day weekend:

This Memorial Day weekend, with humble gratitude, we thank the men and women who paid the ultimate price for liberty.

As President Reagan reminded us, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” And without the incredible sacrifices made by American forces—over centuries and throughout the world—freedom would have been extinct long ago.

So, this weekend we have the privilege of paying special gratitude to those who fought and died for our nation. We do so by living free and full lives and by enjoying the many blessings of liberty. And while our sacrifice will never match their sacrifice, we also pay tribute by fighting to ensure that a nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to its preservation, endures.

Please join me in remembering America’s fallen heroes and in honoring their legacy.

Victory! Texas Mom Beats Bureaucrat Bullies

Are public schools keeping children safe? A Texas school district demanded a concerned mom fork over more than $7,000 to find out—but the Goldwater Institute fought back and helped her get the answers she deserves.

Terrie Chumchal’s son had been viciously harassed by other students for two years, so she filed a public records request to see how widespread the district’s bullying issues were. District officials said simple numerical data would cost a whopping $7,111.12 in public records fees, but they had no choice but to back down after Goldwater’s American Freedom Network (AFN) of pro bono attorneys challenged the excessive demand.

Across the country, Goldwater is exposing school district secrecy by standing up for parents like Terrie. Goldwater’s Ask Your School Now website gives parents the tools they need to file effective public records requests, and AFN attorneys stand ready to help parents in every state access the information they’re entitled to see.

Read more at In Defense of Liberty. 

A State of Emergency…over School Choice? 

Left-leaning North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper just issued a state of emergency over legislation that he claimed “will set back our schools for a generation.” His sticking point? North Carolina conservative legislators are about to pass a statewide expansion of school choice so that every family in the state can access private educational opportunities for their children—and lawmakers are going to do it with veto-proof majorities.

Never mind that Gov. Cooper didn’t see fit to declare an “emergency” over the fact that nearly 40 percent of North Carolina fourth-graders are scoring “below basic” achievement levels in reading. Never mind that there’s zero evidence for his claim that offering families a way out of the one-size-fits-all education system will gut public school funding. Never mind that tens of thousands of families around the country are already reaping the benefits thanks to the Goldwater Institute—who first created education savings accounts (ESAs) in Arizona in 2011 and expanded them statewide last year—thrusting open the doors of universal school choice in five more states (and counting) in 2023.

Victory in the fight to empower parents is within grasp—and there’s nothing that apologists for the public education apparatus like Gov. Cooper can do about it.

Read more at In Defense of Liberty.