Week in Review: Parent’s Plea Gets National Attention

A parent’s plea for her daughter and an innovative healthcare reform caught the eye of national media this week when The Washington Times said “other states should follow” Arizona’s lead in passing the Goldwater Institute’s Right to Try for Individualized Treatments (Right to Try 2.0).

As the Times notes, the reform is supported by patient advocates like the Riley family of Ahwatukee, Arizona, who had to move to Italy to save their infant daughter Keira’s life after she was diagnosed with a rare brain disease. Right to Try 2.0, which Goldwater is now working to pass in states across the country, protects patients’ right to access personalized treatments—like the gene therapy that saved Keira—that have not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It builds on the success of our original Right to Try law, which is saving and improving countless lives after Goldwater passed it at the federal level in 2018. “I was really blown away that it was our family’s story that kind of jump-started this reform, but blessed and honored to be a part of it, and hopefully…it passes in other states and then federally so that other families like ours can benefit,” Keira’s mom, Kendra, told Wake Up! Tucson on KVOI this week.

“Every American who is facing death from a rare disease deserves the opportunity to pursue whatever cutting-edge technology is available—and shouldn’t have to travel overseas to do so,” the Times writes. “It’s unconscionable that bureaucrats in Washington or in the state legislature would deny anyone potentially life-saving treatments.”

Read the full Washington Times editorial here.

Taxpayer $$$ Isn’t Candy: Goldwater Fights Sweetheart Gov’t Giveaways

In crony scheme after crony scheme, governments across the country are handing out taxpayer dollars like candy. Goldwater is leading the nationwide fight against these government giveaways, and this week we filed a lawsuit on behalf of two Phoenix taxpayers to stop a property tax shell game in one of America’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas.

The city hatched a plot that allows a private real-estate developer to evade property taxes on its new downtown high-rise for eight years while hardworking Arizona taxpayers shoulder the $7 million difference. The city should have known better: Government approval for this tax break came just months after Goldwater beat a nearly identical scheme when an Arizona judge struck down a subsidy for another Phoenix high-rise. And the city’s actions also fly in the face of a blockbuster 2021 Arizona Supreme Court ruling in another lawsuit brought by Goldwater that reinforced the state Constitution’s Gift Clause edict—taxpayer dollars must be spent for the benefit of the public.

Around the nation—whether it’s Foxconn in Wisconsin or Amazon’s “HQ2” in New York City—massive government giveaways have a long history of failure. They’re also the last thing Americans need, especially as hardworking taxpayers face skyrocketing inflation and cost of living. But Goldwater is hard at work beating illegal subsidies, and we’re showing the rest of the nation how to win.

Read more about our new lawsuit at In Defense of Liberty. 

Fixing Public Schools’ Politicization Problem

“Can you teach about systemic oppression and stuff like that and social justice?”

“Yes, we can. We’ve been careful around the wording…But we still use the word ‘oppression.’”

“So we just relabel it and we can still do it?”

“Yeah, that’s the game.”

That disturbing exchange between Iowa public school administrators underscores a disturbing truth, Goldwater’s Matt Beienburg, Director of the Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy and Director of Education Policy, writes for Discourse Magazine: “The educational establishment both knows about and actively promotes a [Critical Race Theory]-aligned agenda in schools.”

The solution is Goldwater’s Academic Transparency Act, which empowers parents to find out what their kids are being taught by requiring public schools to post their learning materials online. “Rather than springing on families politicized content like The New York Times’ 1619 Project…schools would be required to take responsibility for their selection of materials by publicly disclosing it up front,” Beienburg adds. “Parents will be able to evaluate nearby schools based on the actual appropriateness and caliber of resources used—not simply left to guess.”

Read the rest of the op-ed at Discourse Magazine.