Lisa Everett, a Dysart Unified School District Governing Board candidate who describes herself as a Republican activist, has recently drawn attention for criticizing conservative candidates, including Arizona Corporation Commission nominee Ralph Heap, and the conservative groups that supported his campaign.
Everett has filed two campaign-finance complaints against Heap, one with the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission and one with the Secretary of State’s Office while publicly defending his primary rivals, Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers. She has also repeatedly called on Heap to withdraw from the race, even after he advanced to the general election over Myers.
Everett’s public support for the two Republican incumbents Heap challenged predates the complaints. In her June 1 “Patriotnheels” newsletter, Everett published a section titled “Truth vs. Lies: The Record of Arizona Corporation Commissioners Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers.” The newsletter summarized Thompson and Myers’ defenses of their records on renewable-energy mandates, President Donald Trump’s energy agenda, utility rate mechanisms, and grid reliability.
Heap challenged Thompson and Myers for one of two Republican nominations to the Corporation Commission. In the July 21 primary, Thompson finished first with 35.8% of the vote, Heap finished second with 33%, and Myers finished third with 31.2%. Thompson and Heap advanced to the November general election.
After the primary, Everett escalated her public opposition to Heap. She announced her Secretary of State complaint, publicly thanked Clean Elections when commissioners denied Heap’s request to leave the public-financing program, and subsequently urged Republicans to call for Heap’s withdrawal. She has continued publishing updates about the campaign-finance proceedings through her Patriotnheels account.
Heap entered the Corporation Commission race with support from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and Turning Point Action. Everett has previously criticized Turning Point’s influence in Arizona Republican primaries. In May, she told the Arizona Capitol Times that Turning Point “puts their money behind people, and that machine rolls, but it turns off the independent voters.”
Everett has also directly criticized the Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s involvement in Corporation Commission races. In a post to X on August 4 she wrote, “Some have asked me why I am pursuing this. – Accountability. Some are concerned a Democrat could get elected. My prayer is Heap removes himself from the ballot and the Party appoints a great candidate. If we lose this seat the blame lays at the feet of Arizona Free Enterprise Club and their partners. They ran candidates against two great incumbents simply because the incumbents could not be controlled. The blame also lies at the feet of Heap for violating campaign finance laws. This is truly a case of don’t blame the messenger.”
Some have asked me why I am pursuing this. – Accountability. Some are concerned a Democrat could get elected. My prayer is Heap removes himself from the ballot and the Party appoints a great candidate. If we lose this seat the blame lays at the feet of Arizona Free Enterprise… pic.twitter.com/VbzS6qRbhH
In an August 7 reply on X, she added, “Arizona Free Enterprise Club continues to recruit candidates that know nothing about utilities. They do this because they want a puppet at the ACC. Nick and Kevin follow statutes and understand the issues.”
Everett describes herself as a conservative Republican. Her Patriotnheels website identifies her as a longtime Republican organizer and describes the outlet as a West Valley platform that promotes conservative viewpoints and candidates. The same site also features an essay written by Everett titled, “The Republican Party Is Still A Big Tent — Let’s Start Acting Like It.” In that piece, she criticized Republican “purists” and “RINO” labeling and argued against isolating “McCain Republicans” and “moderate Republicans.” She also urged Republicans to engage with political opponents rather than limit their political activity to people who already agree with them.
Everett has applied that argument to disputes over Republican political figures as well. During an August 7 discussion on X over whether former Mesa Mayor John Giles (now the running mate for Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs) should be described as a leftist, Everett wrote, “The far right does not understand that concept. If you fail their purity test – you are a leftist.”
The far right does not understand that concept. If you fail their purity test – you are a leftist.
Everett drew attention for that approach in 2025 while serving as chair of the Legislative District 29 Republican Committee. In April of that year, Everett organized Republican counter-protests against Northwest Valley Indivisible demonstrations targeting President Donald Trump and Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ-08). Everett told AZ Free News at the time that she organized supporters after seeing the anti-Hamadeh demonstrations and said the Republican participants supported the Trump administration’s agenda.
Four months later, Everett joined Brent Peak, co-chair of Northwest Valley Indivisible, in advocating for Peoria-area restaurant owner Lai Kuen “Kelly” Yu after Yu was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. AZ Free News reported in August 2025 that Everett and Peak were working on Yu’s behalf even as Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, along with Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ-04), also supported Yu. Everett told The Center Square that Yu came to the United States while pregnant, sought asylum, and became active in the Peoria community. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Yu had entered the country illegally in 2004 and had exhausted her legal avenues to remain. Court records cited by AZ Free News showed the Ninth Circuit denied Yu’s asylum appeal in 2016.
The Maricopa County Republican Committee subsequently censured Everett by a 23-6 vote over her advocacy for Yu and her work with Peak. It also called for her resignation from her district leadership position. Everett defended her actions and later wrote on X that the county party was increasingly controlled by people she considered extremists, describing them as “so far right they are turning left.”
MCRC Censures LD29 Chairwoman Lisa Everett
Last night, the Maricopa County Republican Committee voted to censure me, Lisa Everett, Chairwoman of LD29. With that vote, my name is now listed alongside an ever-growing roster of Republicans who have been censured by MCRC: County… pic.twitter.com/5hvdhA5iTZ
Everett is now campaigning for the Dysart Unified School District Governing Board, where her campaign lists protecting the district’s A rating, supporting teachers and staff, and maintaining facilities among her priorities.
Heap and Thompson will appear on the Nov. 3 Corporation Commission ballot alongside Democrats Clara Pratte and Jonathon Hill and Green Party candidate Mike Cease.
The Protect Education Act is projected to fall more than 10,000 valid signatures short of the number required to qualify for Arizona’s November ballot after a court challenge removed thousands of petition signatures and county recorders completed their validity reviews.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) announced Monday that applying the trial court’s rulings and county signature-validity rates leaves the initiative with approximately 245,000 valid signatures. Arizona law required the campaign to produce 255,949 valid signatures.
The calculation follows an expedited ruling Thursday from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David McDowell in Clark v. Fontes, the lawsuit challenging the petitions submitted by Protect Education, Accountability Now, the political committee behind the initiative.
At the time of McDowell’s ruling, the final outcome remained unresolved because Maricopa and Apache counties had not yet completed their reviews. The Arizona Capitol Timesreported that the Secretary of State’s initial review had reduced the campaign’s submitted total to 389,376 signatures before the court considered challenges to individual circulators, petition sheets, and duplicate signatures.
🚨 BREAKING: “PROTECT EDUCATION ACT” FALLS SHORT
Based on the trial court’s ruling in Clark (@ClarkRimsza) v Fontes and county signature validity rates, the union-backed anti-ESA initiative does not have enough valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
McDowell’s ruling left 348,269 signatures presumptively valid before application of the counties’ random-sample validity rates. The court also addressed 24,369 duplicate signatures and challenges involving more than 110 petition circulators.
“The court agrees that it is conceivable that a double count could occur, but the court cannot make a decision based upon a hypothetical double counting of duplicate signatures,” McDowell wrote.
The initiative’s supporters submitted 421,451 signatures on July 2. Save Our Schools Arizona and the Arizona Education Association were among the organizations backing the campaign.
The Goldwater Institute filed its challenge July 20, alleging that tens of thousands of the submitted signatures should be rejected because of duplicate entries, defects in circulator registrations, and petitions collected by people who were legally ineligible to circulate them.
The amended complaint raised more than 73,300 objections. Those included allegations involving unregistered paid circulators, signatures collected before circulator registration, inaccurate addresses or contact information, identification problems, and circulators whose felony convictions or other legal circumstances allegedly made them ineligible.
McDowell ultimately invalidated signatures collected by several circulators. Four circulators were disqualified because of criminal histories. The judge also invalidated several thousand signatures collected by circulator Tyrone Crispell after finding his denial that he misrepresented the initiative to prospective signers was not credible.
AFEC said Monday that nearly 70,000 signatures were disqualified through the challenge, including duplicates and signatures gathered by legally ineligible circulators.
“This is a major victory for Arizona parents, students, and the integrity of our elections,” AFEC President Scot Mussi said. “This anti-school choice initiative and its union backers spent more than $7 million dollars trying to dismantle school choice in our state, but they still could not collect enough lawful, valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.”
Campaign-finance figures compiled by Transparency USA from Arizona disclosure records show the Protect Education, Accountability Now committee had reported more than $7.5 million in total expenditures through July 30. The National Education Association accounted for approximately $6.57 million in cash and in-kind contributions, while the Arizona Education Association contributed another $810,000.
The Protect Education Act, designated Proposition 212 during the ballot-review process, would make several changes to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program. The measure would generally limit eligibility to families earning $150,000 or less, with exceptions including students with disabilities, certain military families, and students assigned to poorly performing public schools.
The proposal would also establish additional requirements for participating private schools and tutors, restrict certain ESA expenditures, and generally require unused annual ESA funds to be returned to the state.
The signature dispute is separate from litigation over how Proposition 212 would be described to voters. Last week, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Julie Ann Mata ordered Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to rewrite portions of the proposition’s descriptive title and “yes” and “no” statements after finding that the existing language omitted significant provisions of the measure. Judge Daniel Martin separately ordered revisions to the Arizona Legislative Council’s publicity-pamphlet analysis.
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ordered Arizona election officials Tuesday to rewrite the descriptive title and “yes” and “no” statements for Proposition 212. The judge found that the current version omits substantial changes to enforcement and government oversight and misleadingly describes Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program as a “school voucher program.”
Judge Julie Ann Mata enjoined Secretary of State Adrian Fontes from using the current language on the official ballot or in the publicity pamphlet. She also issued a writ directing Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes to revise the language in accordance with state law and her ruling.
The court left the exact wording to Fontes and Mayes under their statutory drafting and approval authority. Mata declined to order the state to adopt replacement language proposed by the plaintiffs and denied their request for attorneys’ fees and costs.
Daryl Groves and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) filed the case against Mayes and Fontes on July 28. Protect Education, Accountability Now, the political committee sponsoring Proposition 212, participated as a friend of the court in support of the challenged language. The defendants argued that the wording fairly summarized the measure and complied with A.R.S. § 19-125(D).
AFEC called the order a “major victory for Arizona school choice” and said, “Arizona voters deserve the truth.”
BREAKING NEWS: MAJOR VICTORY FOR ARIZONA SCHOOL CHOICE
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club has won at the trial court in our lawsuit challenging the misleading ballot language drafted for Proposition 212: the union-backed initiative targeting Arizona’s ESA program.
Mata wrote that the court’s review addressed the accuracy of the ballot language and left the policy merits of Proposition 212 to voters.
The version posted by the Secretary of State before the ruling states that Proposition 212 would limit ESA eligibility to families earning $150,000 or less per year, with specified exceptions; prohibit spending on noneducational and luxury items; impose qualifications on tutors; require accreditation or testing for participating schools; and generally return unspent annual ESA allocations to the state.
The full initiative also gives the sponsoring committee or its designee standing to initiate or intervene in litigation to enforce or defend the measure. Mata found that authority to be a substantial change that the ballot title or description must disclose. She found that the existing phrase “other rules and restrictions” failed to adequately inform voters about it.
Mata also found that the “yes” statement omitted a substantial change to two existing statutory limits on government control or supervision of nonpublic schools and homeschools. Proposition 212 would amend those provisions to permit control or supervision provided elsewhere in the ESA chapter for schools and homeschools receiving ESA funds. The court did not rule on the constitutionality of that proposed change.
The judge separately found the phrase “school voucher program” misleading. She cited Arizona decisions that invalidated two voucher programs and later upheld the ESA program under a different legal structure. Mata wrote that using the phrase could lead voters to treat the legally distinct programs as equivalent.
The court rejected one of AFEC’s arguments. The group argued that describing the $150,000 income limit as “adjusted for inflation” could mislead voters because the initiative caps the annual adjustment at the lower of 2% or the change in the gross domestic product price deflator. Mata found the existing wording provided appropriate information and held that omitting the precise formula was not misleading.
In a separate decision, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Daniel Martin also ordered changes Tuesday to a separate piece of voter information concerning Proposition 212. The judge directed the Arizona Legislative Council to revise its analysis for the publicity pamphlet by Aug. 21.
Martin found the Council’s statement that the initiative committee would have “the power to sue the families and private schools that participate in the program for any violations of the proposition” sufficiently partisan to violate state law. He ordered the Council to strike or revise the language by Aug. 21. The Council’s adopted three-page analysis is governed by a separate law requiring an impartial explanation for the publicity pamphlet.
Mata’s case concerned the shorter ballot title and “yes” and “no” statements prepared by the Secretary of State and approved by the Attorney General.
Proposition 212’s ballot qualification remains the subject of separate litigation over petition circulators and signatures. That case, Clark v. Fontes, is a Goldwater Institute and AFEC-backed challenge to the initiative’s petition circulators and signatures. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David McDowell is expected to rule on the matter by the end of the week. The amended complaint seeks to prevent the initiative from appearing on the November ballot.
Arizona Democrat’s nominee for the 6th Congressional District refused to elaborate this week on why she opposes a measure that would prevent males from entering female-only spaces and sports.
JoAnna Mendoza ignored public questioning when asked about her opposition to Proposition 318, a ballot initiative that would require schools and athletic associations to restrict individuals to private spaces and sports teams designated for their biological sex.
The proposition, titled “Require Schools and Athletic Associations to Restrict Use of Restrooms, Locker Rooms, and Other Privates Spaces Based on Sex,” would also define sex as the biological status as male or female recorded at birth on the original birth certificate.
Yesterday, YES on Prop. 318 – Protect Girls Sports released a new video entitled "Pretending.” Please watch and share.
The opposition's website copies the YES on Prop. 318 website- violating Arizona election law, as well as, consumer protection and copyright laws.
Mendoza indicated in a statement to American Journal News last month that she opposed the proposition. Mendoza implied that the question shouldn’t be decided by a ballot vote but should instead be decided by parents, coaches, and sports associations.
“As a mom, I know that parents just want to protect their kids on the playing fields and across Arizona,” said Mendoza. “Rules about keeping sports fair and safe for young people should be made by the people who know the most — parents, coaches, and sports associations — not politicians.”
Mendoza is running for the 6th Congressional District to unseat its Republican incumbent, Rep. Juan Ciscomani.
Mendoza had previously stated during the 2020 campaign for the state legislature that legislation requiring strict biological gender adherence for sports teams was “toxic” and non-inclusive. In deleted interview footage, Mendoza said public schools and sports needed to be inclusive of transgenderism.
“And I believe that we need to ensure that our students from all backgrounds from the LGBTQ community should feel accepted and safe in their environments and at school,” said Mendoza.
The National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Ben Petersen said Mendoza was a “far-left lobbyist” that has strategically toned down her rhetoric on these politicized issues.
“Lobbyist Mendoza called concerned parents ‘toxic’ for wanting to protect girls’ sports, and now she won’t even explain why she opposes this common sense ballot initiative,” said Petersen.
It was also during her 2020 campaign that Mendoza advocated for legalizing prostitution, especially for transgender women of color and other communities she characterized as marginalized.
Mendoza has received backing from major Democratic donors.
Mendoza raised more than $7.3 million. Some of her biggest single contributors have been the House Victory Project 2026, JStreetPAC, New Politics Next Mission Fund, Dem Rising 2026, Emily’s List, Invest to Elect Illinois Battleground Support 2026, and VoteVets Hellcat Victory.
Mendoza also received funding from the Soros family via George Soros’ son Jonathan Soros.
In recent weeks, Mendoza has faced questions over her campaign salary and financial disclosures changes. In her 2026 candidate financial disclosure filed last month, Mendoza reported receiving a salary of more than $35,000. Other campaign finance filings reflecting regular payroll payments to Mendoza indicated that she was compensated much higher: approximately $102,000 annually before taxes.
OpenPolitical’s federal campaign finance data reflected that Mendoza’s campaign reported nearly $300,000 in payroll-related expenditures.
Ciscomani has raised more than $6.1 million. His biggest single contributors so far have been the Ciscomani Victory Fund, Grow the Majority, Defend Our Majority, and Emmer Majority Builders.
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The campaign supporting Proposition 318 filed a campaign finance complaint with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes on Monday, alleging an opposition website copied its name and visual presentation while failing to disclose who paid for the site.
The two-page complaint accuses the unidentified operators of ProtectGirlsSportsAZ.vote of violating Arizona campaign disclosure requirements and attempting to mislead voters about the November ballot measure.
The complaint compares the opposition site with the Yes campaign’s ProtectGirlsSportsInAZ.vote, including screenshots showing similar turquoise, pink, black, and white branding and versions of the phrase “Protect Girls’ Sports in Arizona.” La Sota alleged the opposition site copied the Yes campaign’s “trade dress” and selected a web address closely resembling the campaign’s own domain.
“In addition, the website address itself is meant to mislead,” La Sota wrote in the complaint.
According to the complaint, the opposition site uses ProtectGirlsSportsAZ.vote, while ProtectGirlsSportsAZ.com redirects visitors to the same website. The Yes campaign operates ProtectGirlsSportsInAZ.vote.
“The group I chair has existed since June,” La Sota wrote. “What these fraudsters obviously did was go to our website and copy our trade dress and even our name, and intentionally found a website address that was as close to ours as possible.”
The complaint alleges that the opposition website does not identify a person or organization that paid for it.
Under A.R.S. § 16-925, a person other than an individual who makes an expenditure for an advertisement or fundraising solicitation must include the words “paid for by” followed by the name of the person making the expenditure. Electronically delivered advertisements are required to make the disclosure clearly readable.
Arizona campaign finance law defines an “advertisement” as information or materials, excluding nonpaid social media messages, that are published, displayed or otherwise placed in a communication medium for the purpose of influencing an election. A “ballot measure expenditure” is an expenditure that expressly advocates support for or opposition to an identified ballot measure.
“The only conceivable way that there would be no disclosure requirement would be if a single individual person was behind this shameful effort,” La Sota wrote. He added that publicly available registration information did not reveal the identity of the person who registered the domain.
Whether the website violates state campaign finance law has not been determined. The identity of its operator and the amount spent to create or maintain the site were not established in the complaint.
La Sota also cited A.R.S. § 16-905, writing that registration and campaign finance reporting requirements could apply depending on how much money has been spent on the effort.
Arizona law requires an entity to register as a political action committee when its primary purpose is influencing an election, and it crosses the applicable contribution or expenditure threshold. The Secretary of State lists the adjusted threshold for the 2025-2026 election cycle at $1,500.
The complaint also cites A.R.S. § 16-1006, which makes it unlawful to use specified corrupt means to influence an elector and prohibits deceiving an elector into voting for a different measure than the voter intended. A violation is a class 5 felony.
La Sota acknowledged in the complaint that the Secretary of State does not have criminal enforcement authority and cautioned against broad application of the statute because of its potential effect on protected political speech.
“Obviously this statute must be used with the utmost caution because it could easily be turned into a weapon against protected speech,” La Sota wrote. “But this is about as compelling a case under this statute as I have seen given the obvious attempt to defraud voters.”
The Yes campaign separately said it is asking Attorney General Kris Mayes to investigate whether the opposition website violates state consumer protection laws. The campaign did not include a separate Attorney General complaint among the materials provided to AZ Free News. Its Monday press release described the campaign finance complaint as filed with the Secretary of State and said the campaign was “asking the Attorney General to investigate.”
The campaign announced the complaint during an event at the Arizona State Capitol, where it also named Christine Jones and former Arizona State Treasurer Jeff DeWit as honorary co-chairs of the Yes on 318 campaign. State Senate President and Republican Attorney General nominee Warren Petersen, Republican gubernatorial nominee Rep. Andy Biggs, and Republican Secretary of State nominee state Rep. Alex Kolodin also voiced support for the measure in the campaign announcement.
“Arizona parents should not have to wonder whether a political website is deliberately deceiving them or who is hiding behind it,” Petersen said. “Attorney General Kris Mayes must immediately investigate these allegations and determine whether Arizona’s campaign finance and consumer protection laws were violated.”
The campaign also released a 39-second advertisement titled “Pretending”, which places screenshots of the Yes and No websites side by side and draws a comparison between the dispute over the opposition site and the campaign’s arguments concerning transgender participation in female sports. The advertisement ends with a disclosure stating that it was paid for by Protect Girls Sports in Arizona, received zero percent of its funding from out-of-state contributors and was not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.
Glad to see my bill to protect girls’ sports and female spaces has been given a title and is now known as Prop 318. But now seeing a disgraceful trick by the opponents to copy our official website – Protect Girls’ Sports in Arizona. With look-alike graphics and no “Paid for”… pic.twitter.com/zHqIGDiZty
Proposition 318, referred to voters by the Legislature as HCR 2003, would amend Arizona law governing student athletics.
According to the Secretary of State’s official ballot language, the measure would require public schools, private schools and athletic associations to designate athletic teams as male, female, or coed based on biological sex as recorded at birth and would prohibit males from participating on female teams. It would also prohibit schools and athletic associations from authorizing individuals to use private spaces, including restrooms, that are not designated for that individual’s sex.
Current Arizona law applies the athletic-team designation requirements to public schools and private schools whose teams compete against public schools. Proposition 318 would broaden the statute to additional schools and athletic associations and expressly add restrictions governing restrooms, locker rooms, shower rooms, and other private athletic spaces.
A “yes” vote would enact those changes beginning Jan. 1, 2027, while a “no” vote would maintain current Arizona student-athletics law, according to the Secretary of State.
“Today we celebrate sports for all, as we begin the campaign to protect both girls’ sports and the right for everyone to participate,” Jones said Monday. “Prop 318, the Protect Girls Sports in Arizona Act will designate sports Male – Female – Co-Ed, ensuring fairness for females, and the opportunity for everyone to play.”
The complaint urges Fontes to take action on the alleged disclosure violations and ensure transparency surrounding the opposition website. La Sota asked the secretary to give the matter his “utmost attention,” writing that voters should not “unwittingly lose their vote on this ballot measure.” As of publication, no determination that a campaign finance violation occurred had been announced.
The Democratic nominee for Superintendent of Public Instruction, Teresa Leyba Ruiz, says Arizona’s school choice funds should be reverted back to the public schools.
Ruiz, the former president of Glendale Community College, told “The Mike Broomhead Show” on KTAR that Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) funds should be converted to public school funding under her administration of the Arizona Department of Education (ADE).
Ruiz said that she would like to use ESA funds to pay for a literacy coach in every single classroom. Ruiz said if Arizona spent more on its schools, parents would be “fighting” to stay in public schools instead of leaving.
“Right now, in Arizona, there’s over $350 million dollars being stockpiled for future use, for college perhaps. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we took that money and invested it in our schools?” said Ruiz. “If we just invested in our schools — remember this is 50 years of underfunding and not prioritizing our public schools.”
The state spent more than $13.4 billion on public schools in the past fiscal year, an increase of $300 million from the prior fiscal year. Per-pupil spending was more than $12,000, and the average teacher salary was more than $65,600.
Instructional spending declined for the third consecutive year to 52%, the lowest rate since state monitoring began in 2001.
Ruiz also told KTAR on the “AZ Political” podcast that ADE would save money by creating an automated denial system for ESA funds.
“Over $650 million of our taxpayer dollars have flown out the door, unchecked and unchallenged. No oversight on the front end, and that’s something we would put an end to,” said Ruiz. “We’re talking about having a modern, automated system that can quickly process transactions that are appropriate and flag and stop inappropriate transactions.”
According to the current superintendent, Tom Horne, ADE automatically approved expenditures under $2,000 due to lack of staffing. Problematic expenditures under that cap would be subject to review post-approval.
Ruiz said it was for a lack of leadership that Horne had that problem. She claimed that ADE could have shifted resources from one aspect of the department to another to make up for understaffing within the ESA expenditure approval team.
Ruiz served on President Joe Biden’s Advisory Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics, specifically the committee for Advancing Higher Education and Hispanic Serving Institutions. The commission was part of the Biden administration’s reestablishment of the Hispanic-Serving Institution programming, which used federal funding to incentivize higher education institutions to intentionally prioritize Hispanic students within admissions.
Ruiz’s commission resulted in the July 2024 creation of the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence and Economic Opportunity Through Hispanic-Serving Institutions, which formally prioritized Hispanic-serving institutions through federal recruitment, federal resources, and federal funding.
The commission also successfully convinced the Biden administration to expand federal TRIO programming to illegal alien students classified as Dreamers; TRIO programming has historically provided low-income American citizens with support services such as college campus visits, tutoring, and assistance with college and financial aid applications.
Ruiz also served in the Aspen Institute’s 2018-2019 Presidential Fellows Program; as reported previously, the Aspen Institute played a major role in covering up the Hunter Biden laptop scandal ahead of the 2020 election.
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