(PartiallyPolitics.com) – On Monday, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency following the plans of the Republican legislature to pass school choice legislation.
In a video announcement Cooper, who is using the state of emergency to potentially block the school choice bill from passing, stated that a public education emergency is as much of an emergency as anything else. He proceeded to state that there was “no Executive Order” as there would be in the case of a natural disaster or pandemic but that did not mean that the situation was any less important.
He added that it was evident that the Republican legislature was looking to “choke the life out of public education” but that he was declaring a state of emergency so that people would be aware of what was going on. He added that if people care about what will happen to public schools in the state, then now was the time to take action and block any damage from occurring.
Cooper received a lot of backlash on Twitter for this decision, with many claiming that this was an overreach of government power.
The Blaze columnist Auron MacIntyre slammed Cooper by writing, “Executive governing in the permanent state of exception to save democracy.”
Casey Mattox, the Americans for Prosperity vice President also jokingly wrote that declaring a state of emergency for a bill was “Very serious.”
In April, Republican lawmakers in North Carolina announced that they would be pushing forward an education reform bill that would promote school choice. This would also allow for equal funding to be given to charter school students and public schools. However, Cooper has argued that this bill is just reducing the funding available to public schools.
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