As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, one of the finest blessings our Founders gave our nation stands out with particular clarity: the system of free enterprise. That system did not merely enable liberty and prosperity in the abstract.
It unleashed the human ingenuity, risk-taking, and capital allocation that turned America into the world’s unrivaled energy superpower.
From the coal age that fueled the Industrial Revolution, through the oil age that powered the 20th century, to the LNG age we now dominate, American free enterprise has repeatedly delivered technological leadership and abundance. No central planner designed these revolutions.
Entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors did, operating in a system that rewards results above political connections.
Today that legacy is unmistakable. The United States leads the world by a wide margin in the production of both oil and natural gas. We have also become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, shipping reliable energy to allies across Europe and Asia who once relied on less friendly suppliers.
While some critics like to call this an accident of geology, they’re wrong. America’s LNG dominance is the direct result of the shale revolution, advanced drilling techniques, and a policy environment that, when properly structured, lets markets work.
America once held a similar commanding position in nuclear power. We built the world’s first commercial reactor and led in reactor technology for decades. Then came the 1979 Three Mile Island incident. Irrational fears, amplified by media and activists, led to a bureaucratic paralysis in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which stalled new construction for two generations. Promising projects died in paperwork as existing plants faced endless regulatory hurdles. America fell behind while other nations pressed forward.
Today, that era is ending. The Trump administration is delivering a major push to revitalize America’s nuclear power industry. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have announced major project milestones in recent weeks, including new loan programs to support large-scale reactors and breakthroughs on advanced designs such as microreactors that have already achieved criticality.
These steps signal a return to regulatory sanity and a recognition that abundant, reliable, carbon-free baseload power is essential for both economic growth and national security.
Wind and solar have also established a robust presence on every major U.S. regional grid. These intermittent sources now deliver meaningful power to homes and businesses when the weather cooperates. American companies and workers have built real expertise and infrastructure in these sectors. Yet the United States remains far behind China in manufacturing scale and deployment speed, and subservient to the Chinese Communist Party for the raw materials that make them work.
As Secretary Wright posted on X this week, the massive Biden-era subsidies that distorted markets and enriched foreign supply chains begin phasing out this month. That transition will test the true competitiveness of these technologies without artificial support. Their future contribution will depend on genuine cost reductions and technological improvement, not ever-rising subsidies from taxpayers and ratepayers.
America’s dominant position across fossil fuels, its returning strength in nuclear power, and its established role in renewables together form an unmatched energy portfolio. This abundance has been no small factor in making the United States the world’s dominant geopolitical power. Reliable, affordable energy underpins manufacturing resurgence, data-center growth, and an enduring military edge that deters adversaries. It keeps our economy the envy of the world, with lower energy costs than most competitors and the flexibility to adapt to new demands.
Most importantly, energy dominance sustains the God-endowed freedoms our Founders secured. Cheap, reliable power frees families from energy poverty. It powers the innovations that improve daily life. It supports the industries that create the jobs and wealth that let individuals and communities flourish according to their own lights rather than government dictates.
On this 250th anniversary, we should give thanks not only for the Declaration of Independence and the visionaries who created it, but for the practical system of ordered liberty that turned a resource-rich continent into the engine of global progress.
Free enterprise did not merely discover America’s energy wealth. It developed it, refined it, and continues to expand it. That is a blessing worth celebrating not just this weekend, but every day.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
For many Christians, a large ethical question looms over America’s 250th birthday: biblically speaking, should America ever have come to be? Was it right for the Founding Fathers to rebel against the British crown and establish an independent nation? Or did their actions run afoul of what Romans 13 states about submitting to governing authorities?
I’ve been repeatedly asked whether it was right for the Founding Fathers to rebel against Britain and establish the United States of America. Was this country founded in an unbiblical way? If the founders were truly following Scripture, would they have ever started this nation, or would they have willingly paid the taxes, submitted to the British government, and remained part of the United Kingdom?
Christians have answered this question many ways. Some argue that the United States should never have rebelled against Britain and that the reasons given were not biblically justified. We need to ask what the Bible says about this situation. The American Revolution was a unique circumstance in history: an unprecedented effort to overthrow a government and establish a new nation that has ultimately thrived in independence for 250 years.
When we think about biblical teaching on submission to government, passages like Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 are primarily addressed to individuals. As individuals, we are to submit to governing authorities. I do not have the right to decide that I will not honor the authorities God has established over me, whether in my own nation or one I visit. As a Christian, I am obligated to obey the authorities God has established, honor those over me, obey laws insofar as they do not contradict Scripture, and pay taxes because God has established these authorities.
The question is different when it comes to the founding of the United States. Was July 4, 1776, the same as if I, as an individual, said, “I’m going to rebel against the government and start my own state or country”? No. The founding was not a collection of individuals choosing anarchy. It was a different set of circumstances. The founders were steeped in literature, philosophy, theology, and, in many cases, Scripture. They derived much of their theory of government from what the Bible teaches about government, governing authorities, and their role. In the circumstances with Great Britain and the colonies, they recognized an important biblical principle: government is established by God.
Biblically speaking, however, government is designed to exist by the consent of the governed—and we see this throughout Scripture. We can especially see this truth in a place we might least expect it: the establishment of the monarchy in Israel when King Saul arose to power and God anointed him to be king. Saul did not become king by imposing his power tyrannically over the people. Instead, God gathered the people together, and the Israelites recognized Saul as the rightful king. Saul was king by divine appointment, but he was also king by the consent of the governed.
In other words, God’s plan brings both realities together as complementary; it is not one or the other. A properly established government is designed to function in both ways: God ordains the authorities, and those under the authorities recognize them as God-ordained and submit.
We see this truth as well with King David. For seven years, he was king only over Judah while the northern tribes still recognized Saul’s line. David did not simply dominate the north and say, “I’m the rightful king.” Rather, over time it became apparent David was God’s anointed ruler. Then all Israel gathered to recognize him as the king God had ordained. David first reigned over Judah with the consent of the governed, and then for the remaining 33 years over all Israel with that same consent.
As our Founding Fathers thought about a biblical philosophy of government—how government should function and who the rightful leaders should be—they recognized both realities coming together in Scripture. A government functioning as God designed does so under His authority and with the consent of the governed, who recognize it as the rightful government. They also recognized Britain was acting in a tyrannical and unjust way toward them, violating the governmental contract, as it were, between the governed and the government.
It’s important to understand the American Revolution was not merely individuals throwing off the British crown. The participants formed a counter-government. Our founders established the Continental Congress, a standing army, and the structures necessary to form a nation under the consent of the governed in the colonies. Those residents who recognized British tyranny no longer consented to be governed by Britain; instead, they consented to a newly established American government. This was very different from guerilla warfare or people taking matters into their own hands because they disliked their rulers.
We can see the difference by contrasting the American Revolution with the French Revolution. The American Revolution recognized the consent of the governed, established a functioning government before independence, and then signed the Declaration of Independence to mark that reality. The French Revolution, by contrast, did not create a unified counter-government with the consent of the people. It became a struggle among factions and led to totalitarianism, dictatorship, and great loss of life. The difference shows the importance of applying biblical principles to a theology and philosophy of government.
When we look at this country’s founding, I believe one reason it worked—and one reason God blessed it—was that it was done in a biblical way. The founding of the United States was not a violation of Romans 13 or 1 Peter 2. It was not simply a group of people saying, “We’re sick of this government. We don’t like our leaders. We’re going to get rid of them.” No, they did something positive. They created a new nation and a new government. Then the people of the United States said, “This is now our government.” They came together as one nation to establish a government that would replace the one previously over them under the British crown.
Therefore, when we look at the founding of the United States, we can thank God for it. We can recognize how the Founding Fathers sought to apply biblical principles. Obviously, they did not do so perfectly, and not all were Christians; but they sought to establish government in a way that aligned with Scripture’s teachings about how it ought to be established and its right to rule over those it governs. We see the fruit of this biblically sound founding to this day. That is also a good lesson for us as individual Christians: Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 still apply to us. We are to submit to our governing authorities, pray for them, thank God for them, and honor them. It is not our obligation or right to rebel against our governing authorities. Instead, we should recognize they are duly established by God.
These truths should shape how we think about government and voting. With an election coming up, we should seek to elect officials who understand a biblical philosophy of government and uphold the principles this nation was founded upon, governing with the consent of the governed. When that does not happen, tyranny follows. God has given us the responsibility to vote wisely for those who will preserve the principles given in His Word and reflected in this country’s founding.
I’m thankful for America as it turns 250. I hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating this country as a great gift from God to us and the world. We pray God will continue to use this nation, and especially the church within, to advance His kingdom. God bless, and happy 4th of July!
Dr. Robb Brunansky is the Pastor-Teacher of Desert Hills Bible Church in Glendale, Arizona. Follow him on Twitter at @RobbBrunansky.
The Fourth of July is undoubtedly a special time for every American. It is an opportunity to reflect on the meaning and origin of American freedom. It is a day full of picnics, parades, barbecues, and fireworks. It is a highlight of patriotism and a celebration of proud sovereignty and independence.
250 years ago, July 4 wasn’t marked by the festivities we experience today. July 4, 1776, was mired in a time of uncertainty, sacrifice, fear, and desperation. Yet through all this, bravery, courage, and perseverance persisted, and a nation was born.
There is no way we can put ourselves in the shoes of the American colonists, nor will there likely be a time in our lifetimes where we engage in a violent revolution for the inherent right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is both a blessing and a curse.
Americans are a blessed people, and our birthrights are coveted by countless people around the world. Sadly, we take our blessings for granted all too often and forget the great sacrifices that have been fought on behalf of freedom. New generations of Americans are dulled by apathy and are content to surrender their country’s sovereignty to the international community.
How can we fight this surrender of American greatness? On July 4, we can start by remembering the stories of the American Revolution that gave birth to a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Three such stories stand out to me.
The first is Washington crossing the Delaware River for a Christmas week attack on a band of Hessians. General Washington led men who were weary and unfit to fight against the greatest army in the world at that time. He knew that this surprise attack had a high chance of failure, but he knew that success in this battle would mark a turning point in the war.
His gamble paid off. The American army scored a partial victory, boosting the spirits and resolves of war-weary colonists around the eastern seaboard of North America. Without a successful outcome in this battle, history would have likely been drastically altered. American success here, though, was a steppingstone to independence.
The second story is that of Cesar Rodney from Delaware. Rodney was a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was a marked man – both by Britain and by cancer, which had begun to ravage his body. He was not present for the initial voting for independence, yet his vote became (arguably) the most sought-after in world history when Delaware needed to break a tie to ratify the Declaration of Independence. When summoned, Rodney, very sick, traveled 80 miles, exposed to fierce elements, to break the tie. Without his vote, the results from the states would not have been unanimous, and the Declaration of Independence may have been left unsigned.
The third and final story is that of Robert Morris. Morris is one of the most forgotten men of the Revolution, yet he was one of the most influential. Initially, Morris was opposed to the war; however, when the fight for independence became the objective, Morris’ abilities to finance the efforts became invaluable to the colonists.
These stories – and many more – demonstrate how close America was to losing the war and remaining under a tyrannical British rule. They are linked together by a miraculous undercurrent that no one could start to explain.
What if Washington had decided not to cross the Delaware?
What if Cesar Rodney had not made his ride?
What if Robert Morris had not come around to support a long-shot effort for independence?
Thankfully, those “what-if’s” became reality. Because of heroism and commitment to independence, our children can walk in freedom.
With this freedom, though, comes great responsibility. Former President Ronald Reagan once said that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” He was right then – and even more so today.
So, on this Independence Day, let us resolve to remember the patriotism of our American forefathers and do our own unique parts to keep the flame of liberty burning brightly for all the world to see. We should do no less for the country that gives us the opportunities and license to live the American dream.
Have a safe and happy Fourth of July!
Rep. Andy Biggs serves Arizona’s Fifth District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is currently running for Governor of Arizona in the 2026 election.
I have to admit that I laughed out loud – almost spewing coffee on my keyboard – Friday morning when I read this headline from a competing platform’s energy-related newsletter: “SOLAR DOESN’T USE MUCH FARMLAND: Solar occupies less than 1% of farmland in the U.S., according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.”
To paraphrase from former President Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony, that depends on what the meaning of “much” is. Curious about the subject, I decided to research the question, accessing a wealth of public information easily available to anyone, including those in the solar industry. The answer I found might surprise the folks at the Solar Energy Industries Association. Or maybe it wouldn’t, which might explain why they choose to couch the answer in such a misleading way.
The salient question: How many acres make up 1% of U.S. farmlands?
According to the USDA’s most recent data, the 2025 total land in farms is 873.95 million acres (down slightly from prior years). Earlier years were a bit higher (e.g., ~900 million in 2017), but the total has been gradually declining. One percent of 873.95 million acres = 8.74 million acres.
Farmland here generally refers to “land in farms” per USDA definitions (including cropland, pasture, woodland, etc., on farms). Figures can vary slightly by source or definition (e.g., cropland-only vs. all agricultural land), but the ~874 million acre range is the standard benchmark from official USDA reports.
Now, for some context. The King Ranch in South Texas is arguably the largest and most celebrated big farming and ranching operation in U.S. history. Established in 1854 by pioneering rancher Richard King, the ranch at its peak consisted of 1.2 million acres.
Thus, the solar power industry itself admits that its wind arrays currently occupy an area of fertile farmlands that is roughly 8 times the size of the biggest farming and ranching operation in United States history. That is a stunning number, yet the authors of that referenced newsletter characterize it as being “not much.”
Being a guy who grew up in a farming and ranching family, that sure seems like “much” to me. It also most likely seems like “much” to experts whose own studies find that placing solar arrays atop farmlands robs the land of crucial nutrients and renders it more vulnerable to erosion. Disturbingly, unless radical changes are quickly made, the industry plans to cover up many more King Ranch-sized swaths of fertile land in the coming years.
A 2024 report by the Institute for Energy Research finds that, despite these warnings by experts in the field, the vast majority of new solar projects are targeting farmland to house their industrial projects in the coming years. “The target for solar operations is increasingly in the Midwest, where government handouts to solar allow them to pay more to rent land than the farmers providing food for the nation,” the report says, adding, “Farmland preservation groups believe 83 percent of new solar installations will come from farm and ranch lands with half of these installations on the richest land for food and crops.”
Fortunately, the big federal subsidies which drove the recent huge solar expansion are scheduled to begin expiring in July. But with hundreds of new solar projects already in the queue, millions more acres of fertile farmlands will be removed from the food system in the years to come even as a fertilizer shortage threatens to disrupt global food supplies. All to create unreliable, unpredictable, intermittent electricity for a few hours a day that could be provided by an array of more reliable power sources which occupy a fraction of the land, none of which intentionally target farmlands as their homes.
It’s a completely irrational misallocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in capital brought to us directly by the Biden autopen presidency and its Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act. You could never make this stuff up if it weren’t already happening before your very eyes. Watch it and weep.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Arizona lawmakers may soon be summoned back to the Capitol for a special session to consider a “grand bargain” on Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs). If so, they should put the interests of ESA families first.
Under one version of the deal, the Arizona Education Association (AEA) and its allies would drop their ballot initiative restricting ESAs. In exchange, the legislature would abandon three measures it referred to the ballot this session — protections for military families’ scholarships, payroll reform for teachers’ unions, and a mandate that districts spend 60 percent of their budgets on instruction — and would enact most of the ESA provisions debated this session in House Bill 2142. (There’s one important exception: the unnecessary testing mandate would be dropped.)
A much better deal, proposed by Republican gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs, would offer “one for one,” with the legislature dropping the payroll ballot measure in return for the AEA dropping its ballot measure. The legislative GOP caucus is behind the Biggs deal—the question is just how desperate the AEA is to avoid going to the ballot. But if the “grand bargain” requires some reforms to the ESA program, legislators should hold out for a better deal than the original proposal.
The AEA-backed initiative is not a modest accountability measure; it is a serious threat to the ESA program, imposing a host of harmful regulations, including a restrictive income cap that would kick tens of thousands of students off the program, blocking parents from buying basic school supplies, and confiscating funds that families had saved for their children’s education. If Democrats balk at the Biggs proposal, trading away three referred measures and a handful of program restrictions to make that threat disappear is a defensible trade.
But as Arizona’s ESA defenders take yes for an answer, they should be honest about what they’re doing and minimize harm to ESA families. The HB2142-based “grand bargain” is not, as the American Federation for Children (AFC) has suggested, a set of “commonsense reforms” that simply tidy up the program. It is a series of concessions — real costs imposed on real families — that ESA supporters are accepting because the alternative is worse. Calling it “commonsense” or a “fix” obscures this. It allows the organization to claim credit for “saving” the ESA program without ever having to explain to the families of more than 100,000 students who rely on it what its own proposed changes will actually do to their accounts.
In the wake of the HB2142-based proposal, I solicited feedback about it on a social network page for ESA families. I received nearly 400 comments from ESA parents who overwhelmingly opposed the proposed regulations. They explained in detail how the supposedly “commonsense” restrictions would hamper their ability to provide their children with an education that works best for them.
Here is what the three central provisions of the HB2142-based proposal would actually do — and why each of them, even if ultimately worth swallowing in some form, makes the program worse for the families it serves.
Capping Rollover Funds
A key feature of ESAs that distinguishes them from a traditional voucher is that families can save unspent funds from year to year rather than being forced to spend a lump sum on a single school by a single deadline. This matters because families spend their own money more efficiently than bureaucrats spend other people’s money. The ability to save and re-deploy funds gives families both the incentive to economize and the flexibility to plan for expenses that don’t arrive on a tidy nine-month school-year schedule. A voucher must be spent now, at one school, or it will be lost. ESA funds can be banked for next year’s therapy bill, a multi-year curriculum purchase, or a future tuition increase.
The deal under discussion would cap how much families can carry forward — $50,000 for students with disabilities, $24,000 for everyone else — with the excess confiscated and deposited into the state general fund each year. That won’t matter for most families who spend close to their full allotment annually. But for the families who most need the flexibility ESAs were designed to provide, particularly families of students with special needs, it will be a bitter pill to swallow.
Families saving toward a multi-year placement at a specialized school, parents stockpiling funds for a major piece of assistive technology, or families anticipating a more expensive placement as a child with a disability ages into more intensive services — these are exactly the families a cap punishes.
The rollover cap is a “solution” in search of a problem. The rollover cap creates a perverse “use it or lose it” incentive that won’t save money; it will only encourage wasteful spending. If lawmakers proceed with a cap, the least they should do is exempt students with disabilities entirely. The case for forced spend-down is weakest exactly where the case for flexibility is strongest: students whose educational and therapeutic needs are least predictable and most expensive over time.
Fingerprinting Mandate
The deal would require fingerprint clearance cards — the same background-check credential used for school district and charter school employees — for individuals providing tutoring or teaching services paid for with ESA funds, as well as for staff at qualified private schools. For an institution — a school, a learning center, a tutoring company with a storefront and rotating staff — this is a reasonable extension of an existing framework, as schools are already required to fingerprint their teachers.
But the bill does not stop at institutions. As drafted, it would also sweep in independent tutors — the retired teacher down the street who tutors a handful of children at a family’s kitchen table, the local college student who helps with algebra twice a week. This is a fundamentally different relationship from a teacher supervising a classroom of other people’s children at an institution. A tutor working in a family’s own home, under that family’s direct supervision and invited in by that family’s own judgment, is not analogous to a stranger left alone with a building full of students.
Parents already vet who comes into their homes; that is what parental choice means. Mandating a state-administered background-check bureaucracy on top of that judgment does not make children safer — it makes it harder and more expensive to find a tutor at all, particularly in the specialized subjects and therapeutic disciplines where the pool of qualified providers is already thin.
The fix here is narrow and obvious: limit the fingerprinting requirement to qualified schools and institutional tutoring providers, and exempt individual tutors providing services in a student’s own home. That preserves the child-safety rationale where it actually applies — institutional settings with unsupervised access to multiple children — without taxing the much more common, much more easily supervised arrangement of one family hiring one tutor.
Spending Restrictions
The deal under consideration also adds a long, explicit list of disallowed expenses. Most of this list is theater. Jewelry, lingerie, hot tubs, bounce houses, and gift cards were never allowable ESA expenses in the first place. Codifying their prohibition changes nothing about what families can actually buy. It exists to give legislators something to point to — a list that sounds tough — rather than to solve an actual problem in the program. That is itself a tell about how this provision came to be.
But a few items on the list are genuinely new restrictions, and those deserve scrutiny on the merits. Barring out-of-state and international museums and excursions, for instance, would forbid spending ESA funds on precisely the kind of experiential, field-based learning that homeschooling and hybrid-schooling families have used for years — a trip to a Civil War battlefield, a national museum in Washington, D.C., a language-immersion excursion across the border. These are not luxuries dressed up as education — for many families building a curriculum outside a traditional classroom, they are the curriculum. Banning them doesn’t close a loophole. It closes off a category of legitimate, well-documented educational practice that happens to be easy to caricature in a press release.
Hotel stays, meals, plane tickets and other travel expenses are already properly forbidden, but there’s no good reason to prevent families from purchasing tickets to a museum outside Arizona that would be allowed if it were in Arizona. Any grand bargain should restore legitimate educational purchases to the allowable-uses list.
Why AFC Is Getting This Wrong
None of these three provisions emerged from a serious conversation with ESA families about what they need. They emerged from a desire to manage headlines. Rather than designing ESA policy in the best interests of ESA families, AFC’s strategy would let school-choice opponents dictate the policy agenda. Chief among them is school-choice opponent Craig Harris at Channel 12, who has spent the better part of a year manufacturing alarm about ESA account balances and fraud rates that bear little resemblance to reality. The Arizona Department of Education has confirmed that flagged fraudulent or egregious spending amounts to roughly 0.3 percent of total ESA spending — a rate that would be the envy of nearly any government program. Harris has claimed fraud rates many times higher, and signature gatherers for the AEA-backed and AFC-backed ballot campaigns alike have been caught on camera spreading those falsehoods to voters.
The right response to false claims is to correct them. Instead, AFC has chosen to give ESA opponents a say in how to regulate the program — an approach that has repeatedly proven disastrous for ESA families. Instead of proposing rollover caps because Harris made an issue of high account balances, school-choice proponents should explain to Arizona voters why families save those balances in the first place — often precisely because they have a child with disabilities whose needs are expensive and unpredictable.
AFC’s approach sets a dangerous precedent: when an activist-journalist manufactures a talking point, AFC’s policy response is to regulate around it rather than to defend the program based on the facts.
Arizona’s ESA families were not asked whether they would trade their ability to save for a child’s future needs, or their ability to hire a trusted neighbor as a tutor, for a quieter news cycle. They deserve a coalition that designs policy around what actually serves them — not one that lets their loudest opponents write the rules by proxy, then dresses up the result as “commonsense.”
The next time AFC or any other organization in this space asks Arizona families to accept a “commonsense reform,” someone should ask the obvious question: commonsense according to whom, and at whose expense? If the goal is just to keep Craig Harris’s headlines at bay, it’s a fool’s errand — he and his ilk will continue manufacturing anti-ESA headlines so long as there’s an ESA program.
“Avoiding bad headlines” is not a serious approach to policymaking and certainly not in the interests of ESA families. Arizona’s ESA families deserve better.
Consider the Deal — With Open Eyes
None of this is an argument against the special-session deal. The AEA-backed initiative would do far more damage to far more families than a rollover cap or a fingerprinting mandate ever could, and trading three referred ballot measures plus some unnecessary or even harmful ESA restrictions to take that threat off the table is a trade worth considering. Dropping the testing mandate from the deal is itself a meaningful win, preserving the central insight of school choice: families, not state-mandated exams, are the accountability mechanism.
Taking the HB2142-based deal might be a necessary evil, but it’s certainly not a victory. At best, it would be a retreat to a more politically defensible position, not a “commonsense” fix or policy advance. If there is a special session, lawmakers who support the ESA should do everything in their power to minimize the harm to ESA families. That would entail supporting the Biggs proposal or, at the very least, holding out for revisions to HB2142 that seriously consider the impact on ESA families.
Jason Bedrick is a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
The government’s first responsibility is to protect its citizens. Public safety is the foundation of every successful society; without it, all else becomes secondary.
Families cannot thrive if they fear for their safety. Businesses cannot grow if crime and disorder dominate communities. Places of worship cannot serve their congregations if worshippers worry about violence. Schools cannot educate effectively if students and teachers feel unsafe.
Unfortunately, America has witnessed an alarming rise in political violence, intimidation, and threats in recent years. What was once considered beyond the pale has become increasingly common. Americans are growing accustomed to hearing about attacks on elected officials, threats against judges, vandalism targeting political opponents, violence directed at law enforcement officers, and harassment aimed at individuals simply because of their political beliefs.
This trend should concern every American, regardless of party affiliation. Political violence has no place in a constitutional republic.
The strength of the United States has always been rooted in our ability to settle disagreements through debate, elections, and the rule of law. Americans have never agreed on everything. Our nation’s history is filled with fierce political disagreements. Yet our system has endured because we recognized that ballots, not bullets, determine the future of our country.
There can be no double standards when it comes to condemning violence. Whether the victim is a Republican, Democrat, Independent, law enforcement officer, journalist, religious leader, or private citizen, violence must be rejected unequivocally. Too often, political actors excuse misconduct when it is committed by individuals they view as allies. That mindset only fuels further division and instability.
Americans deserve better. The overwhelming majority of citizens simply want safe communities where they can raise their families, operate businesses, attend school, practice their faith, and participate in civic life without fear. These are not extraordinary demands; they are basic expectations in a free and civilized society.
Law and order are fundamental values to me, not matters of controversy. Supporting law enforcement is a personal conviction, which is why I am proud to stand with our men and women on the thin blue line.
Yet in recent years, we have seen efforts to undermine respect for law enforcement, excuse criminal behavior, and politicize public safety. While constructive discussions about improving institutions are important, we must never lose sight of the indispensable role that police officers, deputies, federal agents, and first responders play in protecting our communities.
Every day, men and women in uniform put themselves in harm’s way to keep Americans safe. They deserve our gratitude, respect, and support.
At the federal level, we must continue providing law enforcement agencies with the resources necessary to combat violent crime, secure our borders, disrupt criminal organizations, and prevent acts of domestic and international terrorism. We must also ensure that prosecutors aggressively pursue those who commit violent offenses and that the justice system holds offenders accountable.
As Americans, we are blessed to live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. Our freedoms, opportunities, and constitutional system are the envy of countless people around the globe. But those blessings cannot be taken for granted.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, we should recommit ourselves to the principles that have sustained America for nearly two and a half centuries: respect for the Constitution, respect for the rule of law, respect for one another, and an unwavering commitment to peaceful civic engagement.
Political disagreements will always exist. That is part of democracy; violence is not.
The American people deserve safe streets, secure communities, and confidence that their government will protect them. Public safety is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue; it is an American issue, and it is time for all of us to treat it as an America First issue.
