Week in Review: Raging Turmoil? America’s Promise Still Stands Strong

Banking crises are raging. Indictment rumors are swirling. Economic uncertainty is lingering. Political parties are at each other’s throats. But even amid the turmoil, this nation’s founding principles—ideals that have lifted millions out of poverty and freed them to pursue their own American Dream—stand strong.

Look no further than what happened this past week in Miami, where Cuban baseball player Ivan Prieto Gonzalez of the Cuban national team defected from the communist dictatorship to the U.S. during the World Baseball Classic. To the downtrodden people of the world suffering under tyranny, America still shines as a beacon of liberty—a place worth escaping to, even if that means risking it all. It’s a country where you can speak freely, with no fear of retribution from your leaders. It’s a land of opportunity, where anyone can succeed if they work hard, no matter their beginnings. It’s a nation where everyone—rich and poor—is equal under the law.

Those precious ideals guide our work at the Goldwater Institute, but today, they’re under attack from statist forces working inside our own country to undermine our freedoms. But in courtrooms and capitols across the country, Goldwater will never stop fighting back to defend those freedoms, so that the flame of liberty never goes out.

Parents Stand Up to Activist Educators

In state after state, public schools are deliberately keeping parents in the dark about everything from what their children are learning to their kids’ health. But a groundswell of parents is standing up to activist educators’ power grab—and the Goldwater Institute is standing right alongside them.

In Massachusetts, a mom and dad were blindsided when they learned that middle school officials had been referring to their two pre-teens by different names and pronouns—and actively concealing this from both parents in accordance with the school’s ”gender identity” policy. Now, Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri are suing Ludlow Public Schools in federal court for violating their constitutional parental rights, and Goldwater filed a brief this week to support their claim.

The Supreme Court has consistently held that parents have a fundamental right to control and direct the education, upbringing, and healthcare decisions of their children. But parents cannot meaningfully exercise this right if the government hides vital information from them. That’s why Goldwater is challenging school district secrecy on behalf of concerned parents in states like Maine, Texas, and Rhode Island—and it’s why we’ll continue working nationwide to empower moms and dads to make decisions that best meet their children’s needs.

Read more from Goldwater Institute Staff Attorney Adam Shelton at In Defense of Liberty. 

The Dark Side of Historic Preservation

Imagine the government forces you to pay $23,000 to find out if your single-story, coin-operated laundromat is actually a historical landmark—all because you want to develop the property into an apartment building amid a housing crisis.

What the government did to San Francisco business owner Robert Tillman highlights the dark side of historic preservation mandates, Goldwater Vice President for Legal Affairs Timothy Sandefur writes at Discourse Magazine. “Without legal checks and balances, historic preservation cannot only stifle new building and improvement, but even obstruct the goal of preservation itself,” he explains. Bureaucrats often deem structures “historic” to manipulate what people do with their own private property, blocking worthy innovation and necessary development in the process. Moreover, historic preservation laws can backfire when property owners hesitate to maintain or upgrade old buildings for fear of running afoul of some vague regulation.

The Goldwater Institute is promoting its Permit Freedom Act around the nation to protect citizens’ due process and private property rights whenever the government imposes permit requirements. As Sandefur concludes, “There’s no reason historic preservation cannot be served by clear and objective rules that tell people what’s allowed and what’s prohibited.”

Read more at Discourse Magazine.