In a unanimous decision, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has dismissed its lawsuit against Grand Canyon University (GCU) and its CEO, Brian Mueller, bringing an end to years of coordinated lawfare by former Biden administration officials targeting the university.
The lawsuit, previously dismissed by the United States District Court of Arizona on jurisdictional grounds, was fully resolved through a joint Stipulation of Dismissal with Prejudice.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, joined by Commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Mark Meador, issued a statement citing recent developments that influenced the decision.
The statement reads:
“This case, which we inherited from the previous administration, was filed nearly two years ago and has suffered losses in two motions to dismiss. These losses are compounded by recent events: Grand Canyon secured a victory over the Department of Education in a related matter before the Ninth Circuit; the Department of Education rescinded a massive fine levied on related grounds; and the Internal Revenue Service confirmed that Grand Canyon University is properly claiming 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation designation. In its reduced form, this case presents consumers very little upside relative to the cost of pursuing it to completion, especially given the developments chronicled above. We view it as imprudent to continue expending Commission resources on a lost cause. Because we have a duty to maximize consumers’ return on their tax-dollars investment, we have decided against pursuing this matter any further.”
GCU President Brian Mueller expressed gratitude for the FTC’s objective review, noting that multiple agencies and courts have consistently ruled in GCU’s favor.
“They threw everything they had at us for four years, and yet, despite every unjust accusation leveled against us, we have not only survived but have continued to thrive as a university,” President Mueller said. “That is a testament, first and foremost, to the strength and dedication of our faculty, staff, students, and their families. Above all, it speaks to our unwavering belief that the truth would ultimately prevail.”
On National Nonprofit Day, August 17, the Arizona Department of Revenue (ADOR) urged nonprofit organizations across the state to check whether they had unclaimed property waiting to be recovered.
ADOR officials noted that many nonprofits may not have realized they were entitled to unclaimed assets such as forgotten bank accounts, uncashed checks, or insurance proceeds. Recovering those funds, the department emphasized, could provide a valuable boost to organizations that serve Arizona communities.
“Every dollar returned to a nonprofit is a dollar that can support the essential work they perform,” the agency stated.
The search process is free, simple, and takes only a few minutes. Nonprofits are encouraged to visit ADOR’s unclaimed property website at azdor.gov/unclaimed-property to see if funds are available. Organizations can search by their nonprofit name and any states in which they operated. Claim forms and filing instructions were also available online. Nonprofits were also encouraged to use the nationwide database missingmoney.com for a broader search.
ADOR says the effort aims to help nonprofits reconnect with resources that belong to them, strengthening their ability to continue providing services across Arizona.
Jonathan Eberle is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Arizona businesses are taking on some of the nation’s largest loans, according to a new study that analyzed Small Business Administration (SBA) lending data from 2021 through 2024.
The report, compiled by Fleysher Law Bankruptcy & Debt Attorneys, found that companies in Arizona borrowed an average of $699,343 per loan, placing the state sixth highest nationwide. In total, 5,293 SBA loans worth more than $3.7 billion were approved in Arizona during the study period.
Georgia topped the list, with businesses borrowing an average of $795,216 per loan across 8,099 approvals, amounting to $6.4 billion. Texas and California followed, averaging $770,887 and $765,968 per loan respectively. California led all states in both total approvals (31,610) and overall loan value ($24.2 billion).
Other high-borrowing states included Alaska ($725,285), North Carolina ($722,981), Louisiana ($663,950), Nevada ($647,991), Alabama ($637,609), and Utah ($630,412). Maine ranked lowest, with businesses averaging just $272,290 per loan.
The study highlights wide regional differences in borrowing patterns, particularly with Southern states recording higher average loans. Analysts note that while large loans may suggest increased financial obligations, they are often a sign of investment rather than distress.
“This data shows clear differences in how businesses across the country access financing,” a spokesperson from Fleysher Law said. “Though large loans mean that the company needs money, it doesn’t automatically signal financial trouble. Many businesses borrow for working capital, equipment purchases, or product development.”
The report reviewed three types of SBA loans:
7(a) Loans, which provide flexible funding for a variety of business needs.
504 Loans, designed for fixed assets such as real estate, buildings, or large equipment.
Microloans, offering up to $50,000 for smaller businesses or startups.
The findings underscore how companies across the U.S. are leveraging federal loan programs to finance operations and growth. With economic pressures continuing, access to capital remains a critical factor in business sustainability.
Jonathan Eberle is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Following a post on X mourning the reported buyouts of Arizona Republic writers and reporters, Arizona Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes received a harsh rebuke for her participation in a 2000 stock trading scandal. Mayes acknowledged being a party in a 2003 article after resigning from the newspaper.
In her August 13th post, Mayes wrote, “The buyouts at the Arizona Republic are devastating. Losing legendary reporters like @maryjpitzl means less accountability and less transparency for the public. And it’s bad news for democracy. As a former Republic reporter it breaks my heart to see the state of the paper today.“
Brian Anderson, Founder of the Saguaro Group and Arizona Capitol Oversight, quoted the post from Mayes the following day. His post included a newspaper clipping dating to the 2003 Arizona Republic story that revealed Mayes’ participation in purchasing stock from Central Newspapers Inc. (CNI) shortly before the sale of the Arizona Republic to Gannett Co., Inc.. The stock trade netted the then-beat reporter approximately $5,000, according to Mayes.
Anderson wrote, “When @KrisMayes was a ‘journo’ at @azcentral, she was investigated for insider trading and then suddenly resigned.”
According to a 2022 article in the Republic, when the scandal came to light again in Mayes’ campaign for the AG Office, the Democrat defended the purchase of CNI stock. No charges against Mayes or the other nine members of the Republic newsroom were brought at the time.
However, as the Republic noted, a letter to readers in the newspaper in 2000 from then-Executive Editor Pam Johnson announced the scandal, informing readers that 10 of its “newsroom staff” were flagged by the company after purchasing CNI stock through their 401(k) accounts.
Johnson, who passed away at the age of 74 in 2021, openly chided her staffers, including Mayes, for violating the Republic’s ethics policy. She wrote, “Republic journalists should never attempt to gain from information the general public does not have access to.”
She told readers:
“In this case, we investigated all of those involved and concluded that no one had what securities regulators would consider ‘insider information.’ That is to say, they had no concrete evidence that the company was going to be put up for sale. And therefore, there were no legal implications. They acted on gossip. Still, they heard or saw things that the general public couldn’t.”
“Many of our staff members heard or saw those same things and did not act. As one said: ‘I didn’t know if it was illegal, but I knew it wasn’t right.’ We agree,” she added.
According to AZCentral, the punishments handed down in the incident included suspensions without pay for four supervisors and formal letters placed in the personnel files of six reporters, including Mayes. The Attorney General has maintained that her subsequent resignation was planned in advance so that she could attend law school.
Have you heard the charge that Arizona families are using Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) for babysitting? Or that ESA families are sitting on millions of dollars that they’re using for expensive, overseas vacations? Or that the ESAs only benefit wealthy families who live in high-performing school districts?
These claims range from “lacking key context” to “lacking any evidence whatsoever.” The main source of these and other horror stories that school-choice opponents tell is reliably left-leaning Arizona media outlets such as Channel 12 and the Arizona Republic.
It’s no surprise. Reporters at these outlets, such as Craig Harris, have a history of inaccurate agenda-driven “reporting” on Arizona’s school choice policies. Recent articles and “news” segments from these and other outlets are in keeping with this history.
Award-Winning Errors
In 2018, the Republic released a series criticizing Arizona’s charter schools. The series won the paper a Polk Award. The only problem is that it was riddled with errors.
For example, the Republic claimed that Arizona’s traditional district schools outperformed the state’s charter schools as measured by the state’s A-F school grading system and graduation rates. Both these claims were demonstrably false, but the Republic never ran a correction.
Matthew Beienburg of the Goldwater Institute detailed at length the numerous errors the Republic made to reach those incorrect conclusions, describing the story as “astonishingly deceptive.” For example, they counted one charter school as having a graduation rate of 0% when the school only offered instruction through 9th grade. Two more schools that supposedly had 0% graduation rates had closed years earlier. Another charter school with a low graduation rate was an alternative school that operated under the Yuma County Juvenile Justice Center—hardly an apples-to-apples comparison for typical district schools.
In 2019, the Republic released an above-the-fold, front-page story claiming that 100 of Arizona’s then 544 charter schools were in imminent danger of closure. The report said it was a “near certainty” that at least 50 would close “in the near future.” You’d think such a sensational claim would warrant a healthy dose of skepticism, but the Republic was more than happy to breathlessly repeat the claims nearly unchallenged.
Six years later, 580 charters operate in the state, defying predictions of a mass extinction. In fact, on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, Arizona’s charter school students scored over two grade levels higher than district students on 8th grade mathematics and by almost two grade levels on 8th grade reading. The state’s charter school students also scored higher than any other statewide average on both subjects.
You won’t see those facts reported by Arizona’s legacy media.
Journalism’s Credibility Crisis
For careful journalists concerned with their personal credibility and the declining credibility of their profession with the American public, these embarrassing errors might have sparked some self-reflection upon their sources and practices. For the Republic, it was merely a warmup for more of the same.
Author Amanda Ripley, interviewed for a book she wrote on deep problems of journalism, noted the “strange and insular world of journalism prizes,” which encourage simplistic “us versus them” stories. “This adversarial model that we’ve got going in education, journalism, and politics no longer serves us. There’s a good guy and a bad guy and everything’s super clear, it just breaks down. And we keep awarding prizes in that model. But 99 percent of stories are not that clear-cut,” Ripley noted.
In other words, as if journalism did not have enough problems amid a pronounced decline in public confidence, journalism awards—like the Polk Award given to the Republic team for their inaccurate and ideological anti-charter school series—encourage advocacy-style journalism.
There Is No Evidence Families Used ESAs for Babysitting
Channel 12’s recent anti-choice crusade involves a series of clumsy attacks on Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program.
One myth Channel 12 has been attempting to spread is the notion that participants in the ESA program are using their accounts to pay for “babysitting.” In fairness, this claim is based upon a since-corrected misstatement by a representative of the Arizona Treasurer’s Office. The ESA program, however, has a list of allowable uses for accounts, and babysitting is not now—nor has it ever been—an allowable use.
Despite the correction by the Treasurer’s Office, some in the media are still spreading the claim. Asked about this on KTAR days after the correction, reporter Craig Harris of Channel 12 (who authored or co-authored the erroneous Republic articles described above) artfully claimed that the Arizona Department of Education’s use of risk-based auditing on low-dollar purchases means that we really don’t know whether parents are using ESA accounts for babysitting or not.
We can likewise state that we really don’t know whether any random person has cheated on his or her federal income taxes. After all, the IRS does not audit every single income tax return—instead they use a technique known as “risk-based auditing” to detect and deter fraud. This is the same technique that Arizona law established to ensure accountability in the ESA program, as recommended by the Arizona Auditor General, and it is used by numerous government agencies.
Journalists have no evidence that anyone has ever used the ESA program for babysitting. But if it happened and they were caught, just like the hypothetical tax cheat, the hypothetical ESA offender would face fines or even jail time. The combination of risk-based auditing and consequences for fraud is why the United States has one of the highest tax compliance rates in the world.
ESA Parents Are Not Really “Subsidizing Vacations”
Channel 12 is likewise playing fast-and-loose with the facts when they claim that Arizona parents are “using education tax dollars to subsidize their vacations.” That phrasing gives the impression that ESA funds are being used for flights, food, or hotel stays—none of which are allowable expenses under the ESA statute.
The reality is that families are using ESA funds to buy tickets to museums, zoos, aquariums, and other educational venues that are—appropriately—allowable expenses under the ESA statute, and which public schools regularly purchase as well.
ESAs Expand Educational Opportunity
Stories from the same outlets also claim the ESA is “hurting high-performing public districts.” Even setting aside that such statements treat children as mere funding units for district schools, reporters’ use of the term “high-performing” is out of step with what most parents think it should mean.
The article notes that the “top five school districts losing students who left for [ESAs] are: Mesa, Deer Valley, Chandler, Peoria and Scottsdale,” and that all these districts received an “A” letter grade from the state except for Mesa, which received a “B.”
But are Arizona’s school letter grades a reliable indicator of quality? Absolutely not.
In the 2023-24 academic year, Arizona awarded 677 schools “A” grades, while only four schools “F” grades—yet only a third of Arizona students passed the state math exam.
By contrast, GreatSchools is a much harsher grader than state bureaucrats. In Maricopa County, the state awarded 325 “A” grades and only two “F” grades, while GreatSchools gave 49 “A” ratings and 111 “F” ratings. For obvious reasons, parents trust GreatSchools more than they trust state bureaucrats.
In the five districts that parents are fleeing most for ESAs, the percentage of students scoring “proficient” or higher on the state math test ranges from 30% in Mesa to 58% in Chandler. Fewer than half of students scored proficient in Deer Valley and Peoria as well.
Reporters who are hostile to parental choice in education might call that “high performing,” but most parents don’t.
Arizona families deserve accurate reporting on education policy, not sensationalized narratives built on flimsy foundations. Arizona media’s pattern of misrepresenting school choice programs—from the error-ridden charter school series to unfounded attacks on ESAs—undermines the public’s understanding of legitimate educational options.
While parents increasingly turn to alternatives like ESAs and charter schools that demonstrably outperform traditional districts, journalists have a responsibility to report these developments fairly, not perpetuate myths that serve no one except those invested in maintaining the status quo. Arizona’s children benefit when families have genuine choice in education, and they deserve journalism that illuminates rather than obscures the facts about their options.
Matthew Ladner is a Senior Advisor for education policy implementation and Jason Bedrick is a Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
