Day: June 22, 2022

Center for Arizona Policy Reacts to SCOTUS Opinion That Upholds Parental and Religious School Rights

Neil Jones

Cathi Herrod, policy president of the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), released a statement Tuesday following the Supreme Court’s opinion that said not including religious schools in taxpayer tuition assistance funds was unconstitutional.

“In a victory upholding for parents and private religious schools, the U.S. Supreme Court has, again, stymied attempts to chip away at American’s right to freely practice their religion. The Court affirms that a state cannot offer financial programs to students attending secular schools, while refusing to offer those same programs to students attending religious schools,” Herrod said in a statement.

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Teachers’ Unions Condemn Supreme Court Decision Upholding Religious Freedom and School Choice

Susan Berry, PhD

National and state teachers’ unions condemned the Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday that held a Maine tuition assistance program that bars families from using the taxpayer funds for religious schools is in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Union officials denounced the ruling as one that “attacks public schools,” “erodes democracy,” “harms students,” and undermines “the separation of church and state.”

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Supreme Court Rules Maine Law Excluding Religious Schools from Tuition Assistance Is Unconstitutional

Susan Berry, PhD

In a major decision for religious freedom and school choice, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a Maine law that barred taxpayer tuition assistance funds from families choosing religious schools.

The Court ruled, 6-3, in Carson v. Makin, the Maine law that governs its tuition program’s exclusion of religious schools, while accepting other private schools, is a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and is, therefore, unconstitutional.

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Commentary: Biden Administration Must Enforce Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act

RealClearWire

Slavery has been illegal in the United States for nearly 160 years. And yet, over the past two decades, American businesses and consumers have once again begun to benefit from the horrific practice.

It’s an extremely uncomfortable truth, and for most Americans, it likely comes as a surprise. Until recently, they probably had no idea that the clothes they wear, the phones they cannot put down, and the solar panels on their roofs were made, in part, by slaves. The same cannot be said of the companies that eagerly ship jobs overseas to China and source materials from concentration camps.

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New Ad from Senator Mark Kelly Claims He Is ‘Taking on His Own Party’ to Combat Inflation

Cooper Moran

Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) released a new ad that will air in Phoenix and Tucson, claiming to be “taking on his own party” to combat inflation.

Kelly, a self-proclaimed individual focused on “independent leadership,” acknowledged the spike in consumer prices under President Joe Biden.

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U.S. Relies on Russia for Key Materials in Defense Production

Arizona Sun Times Staff

The U.S. depends on Russia to supply key minerals used in technology and defense industries, but the Russia-Ukraine war and Western economic punishment of Russia have suppressed supply lines, according to a report from Defense News.

Russia and Ukraine supply a large percentage of minerals like neon and aluminum that the U.S. uses in civilian and military applications, Deborah Rosenblum, a Pentagon acting spokesperson who works on industrial base policy, told Defense News. Sanctions levied on Russian companies and a war-related drop in mineral production have put these supply chains in jeopardy, she said.

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Commentary: Justice for J16

Arizona Sun Times Staff

An already overworked grand jury in Washington, D.C., presumably will be very busy in the days to come.

For nearly 18 months, at the behest of Joe Biden’s Justice Department, grand juries in the nation’s capital have issued a nonstop flood of criminal indictments against Americans who protested Joe Biden’s election on January 6, 2021; hundreds of people who peacefully entered the building as police stood by face serious felony charges punishable by decades in prison. Even those accused of low-level misdemeanors such as “parading” in the Capitol have been sentenced to months in jail.

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Peer-Reviewed Paper Shows Significant Fertility Risks for Men Who Get the Pfizer COVID Vaccine

Arizona Sun Times Staff

A peer-reviewed paper released on Friday shows large decreases in sperm counts among men after the second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine, with the decline continuing for over five months in many cases.

The study, published in the medical journal Andrology, confirms that the mRNA shots have significant fertility risks for men, independent journalist Alex Berenson reported on his Unreported Truths Substack.

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Biden Is Still Trying to Ban Federal Oil, Gas Leasing

Arizona Sun Times Staff

The Biden administration asked a federal court this week to uphold its ban on new federal oil and gas leasing, according to Department of Justice (DOJ) court filings.

The administration argued the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana should toss an April 29 motion from more than a dozen states asking the presiding judge to permanently nix the leasing ban, according to the Monday filings. The Louisiana court placed an injunction on the ban in June 2021, forcing the federal government to hold oil and gas lease sales until a final ruling was issued in the case.

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Survey: Nearly 25 Percent of American Expatriates Have Considered Renouncing Citizenship Due to Tax Burden

Arizona Sun Times Staff

Close to one in four American expatriates living abroad have considered renouncing their U.S. citizenship, with a large plurality of those citing the burdensome U.S. tax system as their primary justification.

The survey, conducted by Greenback Expat Tax Services, found that, of Americans living in other countries, 20 percent were “seriously considering” renouncing their citizenship, while six percent were “planning” to do so.

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Texas’ Top Law Enforcement Officer Calls Police Response to Uvalde School Massacre ‘Abject Failure’

Arizona Sun Times Staff

Texas’ top law enforcement officer on Tuesday called the police response to the Uvalde school shooting last month an “abject failure.”

Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, made the comment when testifying at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the May 24 mass shooting in which 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed.

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Brnovich Files Lawsuit Against the Scottsdale Unified School District for Violating the Open Meeting Law

Neil Jones
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit on Monday against the entire Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) and current school board member, former board president Jann-Michael Greenburg.

“SUSD manipulated public input and silenced the voices of parents in order to advance its own agenda,” Brnovich said. “This type of bad school behavior demands expulsion.”

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