New Hampshire’s slogan is “Live Free or Die,” and the state has lived up to its legacy of liberty by joining the Goldwater Institute’s growing national movement to free workers to pursue their American Dream!
As dozens of other states reap the benefits of Goldwater’s universal recognition of occupational licenses reform, New Hampshire just passed a law to help new arrivals get to work faster.
Universal recognition, which the Goldwater Institute first enacted in Arizona in 2019, streamlines occupational licensing across dozens of professions by allowing skilled professionals to use their out-of-state experience to quickly obtain a license to work in their new state. And it has tangible results: in Arizona alone, more than 6,500 professionals have been granted licenses under the reform. Universal recognition is also projected to increase employment in Arizona by nearly 16,000 workers over a decade, as well as raise the state’s GDP by at least $1.5 billion.
So it’s no wonder that Goldwater has been able to pass universal recognition in more than half the states in the nation. And we’ll continue working to implement universal recognition so that more people have an opportunity to pursue their American Dream.
Read more about universal recognition here.
In Seward County, Nebraska, government officials give drivers passing through an ultimatum: sign away your hard-earned money or property…or risk jail time.
It’s legal under civil asset forfeiture, a system that allows law enforcement to seize property they allege to be involved in a crime, even if the property owner isn’t accused of doing anything wrong. In fact, governments across the country use civil asset forfeiture to seize billions of dollars’ worth of property each year.
But the Goldwater Institute is leading the nation in fighting government theft. We’ve won numerous innocent Americans their property back after the government unjustly seized it—thanks to our extensive American Freedom Network of pro bono attorneys in all 50 states. Moreover, Goldwater is successfully advocating for and passing common-sense reforms, like requiring the government to obtain a criminal conviction before seizing property and banning roadside waivers. And just last week, we filed a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider civil asset forfeiture.
“Our legal system promises at least a basic minimum of fairness for those who’ve committed crimes,” Goldwater Vice President for Legal Affairs Timothy Sandefur writes at Townhall, “and those who haven’t…deserve no less.”
Read the latest about our work to fight civil asset forfeiture at In Defense of Liberty.
In a victory that’s continuing to garner national attention, the Goldwater Institute just dealt a deathblow to the leftist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) regime in Texas’ higher education system.
But passing our landmark law to decimate DEI in Texas is only the beginning.
“This legislation in Texas really sets the bar nationally,” Goldwater Director of Education Policy Matt Beienburg said in a national TV interview this week on Salem News Channel’s Wilkow! program. “I think we’re going to see a lot of other states continuing to push back on a lot of this overreach.”
It’s the same story at countless government-run colleges and universities across the country: “woke” administrators waste millions of taxpayer dollars on race- and gender-based DEI programming that uses identity politics to pit students against each other. Speak out, and you risk facing the wrath of a DEI bureaucracy that wants to punish you for “wrongthink.”
But not in Texas, where Goldwater’s first-in-the-nation law completely defunds the bloated bureaucracy of DEI administrators. And crucially, our victory in the nation’s second-most populous state shows other states exactly how to rein in radical DEI.
As Beienburg said, colleges should be “ground zero for intellectual diversity.” And Goldwater won’t stop until they are.
Watch Beienburg’s interview here.
