A key reporting deadline for Arizona schools is being extended.
Earlier this week, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne announced “an extension of the deadline to February 23 for schools to report their compliance with the current law that requires Holocaust education in public schools.”
Superintendent Horne is extending the deadline for schools to show they are following Arizona law that requires teaching about the Holocaust. #EducationForAllhttps://t.co/LQPY0C1bQe
— Arizona Department of Education (@azedschools) February 6, 2024
The law “requires students to receive instruction in the Holocaust and other genocides at least once in middle school and once in high school.”
In a statement to accompany the announcement, Horne said, “Since we first requested that schools attest to their compliance with the state mandate for Holocaust education for middle and high school students, we have received many responses, but not all districts and charters have replied. Arizona law is clear that this is a requirement for middle and high school students. As Superintendent, I have the legal authority to make sure that laws pertaining to education in Arizona are being followed. Therefore, my enforcement action will be that for the online ADE School Report Card we will indicate in red letters any school’s failure to respond to the Holocaust education verification by February 23.”
Not only is Horne extending the deadline for schools to report compliance with the law, but he is hoping state legislators and the governor are able to strengthen the statute for future students. His press release noted that two lawmakers – Representatives David Marshall and Alma Hernandez – have embarked on a bipartisan mission to pass a bill that would “require students in grades 7-12 to twice complete a three-day program on the Holocaust and other genocides.”
Horne also addressed this development in his release, saying, “After the horrific events of October 7, there was a one-sided pro-Hamas presentation at Desert Mountain High School that produced antisemitism among students and made Jewish students uncomfortable and fearful. If Holocaust studies are presented, students will be less gullible to antisemitic presentations and this legislation will strengthen that effort. I am grateful to Representatives Hernandez and Marshall for their bipartisan work to strengthen this law.”
The law giving the state’s schools chief authority to require the information from Arizona schools was HB 2241, which was passed by the legislature and signed into law by then-Governor Doug Ducey in 2021. The bill was sponsored by Alma Hernandez, a Democrat. It passed both chambers with almost unanimous support. Ducey, in his letter to then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, informed her that he was signing the legislation to “ensure that we continue to teach our students the history of past atrocities, which in return will instill greater compassion, critical thinking, societal awareness, and educational growth in our students.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Arizona House Republicans are working to protect the sovereignty of state lands.
On Tuesday, the Arizona State House of Representatives Republican Caucus announced that a handful of its members had “introduced measures to push back against Democrat President Joe Biden’s abuse of power and control over lands in Arizona.”
House Concurrent Memorial 2007, sponsored by House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci. The legislation “urges the President to repeal the recent designation of the Grand Canyon Footprints National Monument in Northern Arizona and oppose any such designation in the state of Arizona in the future.”
Biasiucci said, “If allowed to stand (Biden’s Grand Canyon Footprints National Monument), it will forever close this area to new uranium production and will continue America’s reliance on uranium supplied from foreign nations.”
House Concurrent Memorial 2005, sponsored by Representative Austin Smith. The legislation would “push back against President Biden’s ‘30×30’ agenda, which seeks to take 30 percent of all federal lands out of economic production (such as mining, energy, and agriculture) and, thereby, reduce our ability to provide for national food security and energy and mineral independence.”
Smith said, “The federal government is the largest landowner in the United States, controlling almost one-third of the entire land in the country. Over 90 percent of this land is in Western States. Under the equal footing doctrine of the U.S. Constitution, this land should have been given to their respective Western States upon statehood.”
House Concurrent Memorial 2008, sponsored by Representative John Gillette. The legislation “calls for the Antiquities Act of 1906 to be repealed or amended to reaffirm that entire landscapes, animate life, such as birds and mammals, and common plants and vegetation are not considered ‘landmarks, structures, or objects’ under federal law.”
Gillette said, “The Act, which was intended to preserve only historic landmarks, structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest, has been repeatedly misused to set aside vast parcels of real property.”
House Concurrent Memorial 2006, sponsored by Representative Gail Griffin. The legislation would “call for Congress to enact legislation that requires the express authorization of Congress, the state, and each county affected before any additional federal land grabs may be declared in Arizona.”
Griffin said, “The intrusion and overreach of the federal government, including President Biden’s economically harmful 30×30 initiative, pose the greatest threat to Arizona’s lands, further preventing the state from deciding what is best for its citizens.”
House Concurrent Memorial 2004, sponsored by Representative Austin Smith. The legislation would “urge Congress to promptly enact legislation requiring the federal government to give to an affected state or county one acre of federal land for every acre the federal government removes or withdraws from the respective state or county.”
Smith said, “Imposing federal preservation management on Arizona lands obstructs our state’s land management objectives and reduces rural communities’ ability to provide local public services. Arizona has been damaged by the inordinate cost and substantial uncertainty regarding the national government’s infringement on Arizona’s sovereign control of federally controlled lands within its borders.”
The measures from the Arizona lawmakers follow a similar legal fight from Senate President and House Speaker Warren Petersen last fall, when they filed an amicus curiae in the case of Garfield County v. Biden. The case, led by Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, involves President Joe Biden’s “unilateral move in 2021 of declaring more than 3 million acres of land in the southern part of the state now representing two ‘national monuments.’” Arizona’s leaders are supporting the State of Utah’s position that the president’s action here violates the Antiquities Act. After a District Court Judge sided with the White House, Utah appealed the decision, leading to additional briefing.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: President @votewarren Encourages U.S. Court of Appeals to Weigh in on Biden's Abuse of Power with Land Seizures ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/guTO2XYJ4R
At the time of his filing, Petersen said, “It is time for the courts to weigh in and stop this federal corruption. Joe Biden’s unlawful maneuvers in both Utah and Arizona promise to wreak havoc on our local economies, the livelihoods of our citizens, and our national security. His end goal is to pander to radical environmentalists by ending mining, ranching and other local uses of federal lands. This has nothing to do with protecting actual artifacts.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Last week, the Arizona Women of Action presented Christine Accurso with the 2024 Fearless and Free Award. The award honored Accurso for her “outstanding courage to stand for American freedoms.”
In a post on “X,” Accurso thanked the state organization for the award.
Arizona Women of Action responded, “Arizona and AZWOA are blessed to have you, Christine Accurso! Your work to protect ESAs and in the pro-life community, including Decline to Sign AZ Abortion, has been monumental.”
The East Valley conservative activist has been one of the state’s leading voices for conservative values for many years, but she has risen above greater challenges in recent months. After Arizona passed its historic universal expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) in 2022, special interest groups attempted to refer the program to the ballot in order to delay or stop the benefits for Arizona families who were seeking enhanced choices and opportunities for their children’s education. Accurso organized hundreds of men and women around the state to educate potential signers of the petition about the consequences of their decisions.
Because of Accurso’s counterefforts, the special interest group failed to acquire the minimum number of signatures needed to refer the initiative to the ballot. Shortly after her success in keeping universal ESAs intact, Accurso wrote a piece for FoxNews.com, detailing how her army of parents had done what many thought was unthinkable. Accurso shared that she often went online to track the group responsible for trying to refer ESAs to the ballot, then deployed herself and other parents to the locations where signature gatherers were posted to offer an opposing viewpoint to Arizona voters. She wrote, “I quickly found that voters would look through the legislation, which was attached to the petitions, after hearing my arguments to find out for themselves what was inside this legislation.”
After these efforts, Accurso found herself drafted into the new Republican administration at the Arizona Department of Education, when Tom Horne won his election contest in November 2022. Horne named Accurso as the Director of the ESA Department and tasked her with bringing the program under compliance with state law and eliminating the significant backlog of requests left by the previous Superintendent of Public Instruction – a Democrat. Thanks to the continued existence of universal ESAs, tens of thousands of students have joined the program since the expanded portion went into effect.
Accurso resigned her position in July 2023, expressing her grateful heart “to have had the opportunity to get the ESA program back on track and functioning well.” She added, “I achieved much of what I set out to accomplish, but it is time for me to move on and pursue opportunities to engage citizens, especially parents, to fight for school choice and the other issues they believe in, for the future of our state and of our nation.”
While Accurso recently has been focused on mostly educational efforts with the ESA program, most of her activities over her grassroots career of activism and advocacy have centered around pro-life causes, helping to enlarge Arizona’s standing as one of the top states in the country for life and family values. With the threat of a pro-abortion constitutional amendment on the horizon, Accurso is now attempting to motivate conservative moms and dads to oppose this emerging campaign and safeguard the state’s pro-life protections for the future.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
The number of illegal immigrants apprehended during Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House is adding up.
Last month, the Missouri Freedom Caucus shared a graphic, showing state populations versus the number of illegal immigrants encountered by border officials since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. The number of illegal immigrants during this time frame was 8,500,000, which would make it the 13th-most populated U.S. state.
By comparison, Arizona has a population of 7,431,344.
The 8.5 million figure includes an estimate of over 1.7 million ‘gotaways’ who have escaped detection from law enforcement. Some experts, including border officials, believe that this number could be on the low end of the actual number of illegal immigrants sneaking past agents.
The escalating border crisis has taken center stage of many political discussions over the past year – especially in Arizona, where a divided government remains at odds with how to attack the grave problems from a state level. Arizona Republicans, who control both chambers of the state legislature, were active throughout 2023 in introducing proposals to combat the border crisis and to raise awareness for the issues faced by law enforcement and members of their communities alike.
Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs also took some action through her Office and her rhetoric has recently intensified against the federal government’s handling of the situation on the ground in her state.
At the start of the new legislative session, Republican leaders invited Arizona border sheriffs to come speak before a joint session in the State House of Representatives. After that event, Senate President Warren Petersen said, “Folks, we have a huge national security problem on our hands, and the federal government is nowhere to be found. Sheriff Mark Dannels described the invasion as the ugliest he’s ever seen it. Over the past 24 months, his deputies booked nearly 3,000 individuals for border crimes, engaged in more than 400 felony high-speed chases, and have been forced to release more than 30,000 illegals into our communities. Sheriff Wilmot showed disturbing images of the death and destruction his deputies are encountering in our communities from the cartel and human smugglers.”
Petersen also addressed the changing tone from Hobbs, writing, “While our Democrat Governor is speaking out against Biden’s handling of the border, we need her actions to match her words. She vetoed three good border bills last year. Governor, sign our border legislation.”
Arizona legislative Republicans also introduced new legislation this past month to mitigate the effects of the crisis at the southern border, holding a press conference to announce their proposals to “provide law enforcement with the support they need to defend our citizens against these threats.” One of the bills Republicans will seek to pass through the legislature, the Arizona Border Invasion Act, is sponsored by Senator Janae Shamp. The other bill highlighted by the Party was Senator David Gowan’s Aggravated Unlawful Flight Act.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Late last month, Representative Jennifer Longdon transmitted a letter to House Speaker Ben Toma, informing him that she would be resigning her seat on Friday, January 26.
In the letter, Longdon said, “I am grateful for the trust and support bestowed upon me by the constituents of Legislative District 5. Serving Arizona as a member of Arizona’s legislature has been a profound honor. I take pride in the collaborative efforts that transcended party lines, resulting in meaningful bipartisan accomplishments. I remain humbled by the trust placed in me by the Office of the Speaker in naming me as Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Abuse and Neglect of Vulnerable Adults. I am proud of the accomplishments we have been able to achieve thus far.”
It’s been my absolute honor to serve the people of Arizona and work with the members & staff of the Arizona State Legislature. Thank YOU for your service! I’m proud of the work that we’ve done together. There is much more to do. I hope to talk about my new role very soon. pic.twitter.com/tz6KOvMLX2
On her last day, Longdon shared a picture of her on the House floor, writing, “Clearing out and saying goodbye. I’ll leave a piece of my heart (and hope) here. Thank you all!”
Clearing out and saying goodbye. I’ll leave a piece of my heart (and hope) here. Thank you all!! #AzLegpic.twitter.com/kmqNbgMJut
Governor Katie Hobbs made sure to recognize Longdon’s exit from the Legislature, stating, “I’m sending my best wishes to Representative Longdon as she moves to her next chapter. Her dedication to fighting for the people of Arizona is an inspiration. I know she’ll bring that same passion & dedication to her next role. Good luck, Jennifer Longdon!”
I'm sending my best wishes to Representative Longdon as she moves to her next chapter. Her dedication to fighting for the people of Arizona is an inspiration. I know she'll bring that same passion & dedication to her next role. Good luck, @JenLongdon!
Arizona House Democratic Leaders also released a statement to mark Longdon’s service and resignation. They said, “Representative Longdon has been one of Arizona’s most effective and compassionate leaders, both inside and outside the Legislature. On the issues of gun violence prevention and advocating for the rights of those living with disabilities, there is no stronger voice. On behalf of our caucus and the constituents she has served so well, we are grateful for her work and the lives she has impacted. We will miss her presence but we also know that her work will continue and that great things lie ahead.”
PRESS RELEASE: Democratic Leaders express gratitude for Rep. Jennifer Longdon's service after resignation announcement #azlegpic.twitter.com/uP1Q0PgGzn
Longdon served long enough this session to see her bill HB 2595 receive approval from the House Government Committee. This bill would “authorize a memorial in Wesley Bolin Plaza dedicated to investigative reporter Don Bolles, who was murdered in 1976.”
Representative @JenLongdon's HB2595 passed through the Government Committee again this morning – last session, the bill didn't make it to the finish line in the Senate. The importance is still the same. #azlegpic.twitter.com/E0dIG64NKG
