By Jimmy Cloutier for OpenSecrets.
Broadcast version by Roz Brown for Texas News Service reporting for the OpenSecrets-Public News Service Collaboration

The American Federation for Children, a leading school choice advocacy group, intends to spend $10 million on state elections in 2024. Its first targets: 15 Texas Republicans who opposed a school voucher program championed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

AFC Victory Fund, the group’s main super PAC, has spent nearly $461,000 on mailers and digital ads ahead of Texas’ March 5 primary elections, attacking GOP state legislators who last year blocked the Republican governor’s plan to allow families to spend taxpayer dollars on their children’s private schooling. 

Thus far, AFC Victory Fund appears to be focused entirely on Texas. But the American Federation for Children plans to spend millions on legislative races nationwide in 2024 to support state candidates who prioritize school choice — education policies that give parents the option of enrolling their children in private, religious and other alternatives to public school using state funds. 

Texas’ primary elections next week will test the organization’s political clout and messaging. The American Federation for Children said its affiliates and allies spent $9 million on state elections in 2022, winning 277 out of 368 races and defeating 40 incumbents. Forty-four states hold legislative races this year. 

According to campaign finance reports covering election spending through Jan. 25, most of the super PAC’s money — about $64,000 — has been levied at Rep. Glenn Rogers (R-Graford), a three-term House Republican representing a district west of Fort Worth, Texas. AFC Victory Fund also spent roughly $42,000 each against Reps. Travis Clardy (R-Nacogdoches) and DeWayne Burns (R-Cleburne). 

The super PAC attacked lawmakers over their stance on school vouchers, but also sought to tie them to the crisis at the southern border and paint them as “too liberal for Texas.”

AFC Victory Fund, which officially launched in September, entered 2024 with $4.3 million in cash and reported raising about $4.6 million from half a dozen donors last year, including $3.5 million from billionaire investor Jeff Yass and $1 million from former U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick DeVos. Betsy DeVos, who chaired the American Federation for Children before joining former President Donald Trump's administration in 2017, has been a longtime crusader in the school choice movement.

According to campaign finance reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission on Feb. 5, AFC Victory Fund received an additional $1.5 million in January, including $1 million from Dick Uihlein, the billionaire founder of Uline. Another $250,000 came from Future of Education LLC, a limited-liability company incorporated in 2023, one day before it donated $1 million to Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's gubernatorial PAC. The LLC has no website or online presence, but the Texas Observer traced it to Mackenzie Price, an education reformer and the founder of a private school.

Texas would have become the latest — and largest — state to embrace universal school vouchers, but Abbott wasn’t able to win over holdouts in his party who preferred a scaled-back program limited to disadvantaged students. According to The Texas Tribune, the governor refused to compromise on a program open to all students. Twenty-one lawmakers eventually voted against the plan. 

Notwithstanding the setback in Texas, the movement to unlock public funding for private and religious schools has gained momentum in recent years. 

School choice programs come in different forms but typically involve tax credits or taxpayer-subsidized education savings accounts, also known as ESAs, that are available to parents who withdraw their children from public schools.

Similar programs have existed in some states since the 1990s, but were mostly available to certain students, such as those with disabilities or from poor families. Groups like American Federation for Children have been pushing states to embrace so-called "universal school choice" legislation open to all students. 

West Virginia became the first state to do so in 2021, when the GOP-led state legislature approved an ESA program eligible to nearly every student, regardless of household income. Arizona followed suit in 2022, eliminating restrictions to its voucher program that limited eligibility to students with disabilities and those in the foster care system, attending low-performing public schools or living on Native American reservations. Five other states approved similarly expansive programs in 2023: North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, Iowa and Utah.

Many more states are poised to create their own voucher programs or expand existing schemes.

Last week, the Alabama state House advanced a school voucher program that would be limited to students with disabilities and low-income households until 2027, at which time it would be open to all students. Idaho lawmakers have introduced a "parental choice tax credit" program that would unlock $50 million in state funding for private education. And in Kentucky, there is an effort underway to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to remove barriers blocking the state from enacting school voucher programs. The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that taxpayer dollars must be spent on "common schools" and cannot be diverted to private education.

Critics argue that these programs largely subsidize affluent families who already send their children to private school, while siphoning money from public education. Research from around the country also shows that voucher programs have delivered mixed academic results, and recent reports raise concerns about their costs to taxpayers.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, has called the state's new voucher program, which was expanded under her Republican predecessor, "unsustainable." Last year, her office estimated that the program, initially expected to cost $65 million, could cost the state $943 million in 2024, with over 53% of all new K-12 education spending going towards only 8% of Arizona students. The state could face a $320 million shortfall over the next year. 

The Texas Legislative Budget Board projected that the cost of Abbott’s voucher program would have ballooned to more than $2 billion annually by 2028. 


Jimmy Cloutier wrote this story for OpenSecrets.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.


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Voting-rights advocates continue their push to restore these rights for formerly incarcerated Mississippians after lawmakers failed to act.

House Bill 1609, which died in the state Senate last week, would have automatically reinstated voting rights for people who complete their sentences and remain felony-free for five years.

Nsombi Lambright-Haynes, executive director of One Voice, said nearly 60 voting-rights bills were introduced during the legislative session, but fewer than 10 survived.

"Those eight that have passed the Senate now go to the governor's desk," he said, "and he can sign them or not sign them and they become law, and those people have their voting rights back. Or he can choose to veto those."

One in ten Mississippians does not have a voice at the ballot box because of a prior felony conviction.

Lambright-Haynes said the campaign is also working to overturn a 134-year-old Mississippi lifetime voting ban law that prevents people convicted of certain crimes from casting a ballot.

It is a difficult process to get voting rights restored in Mississippi, Lambright-Haynes said. Formerly incarcerated persons must hire an attorney to have their record expunged, and then get a pardon from the governor - or they can seek help from state lawmakers.

"You can get your representatives to introduce a bill on your behalf," he said, "and that bill is introduced in whatever house that representative is a part of, either the House or the Senate, and it's voted on."

State Rep. Otis Anthony, D-Indianola, said the folks re-entering society should be granted the right to fully participate in all aspects of life.

"These are human beings who have families," he said. "These are people who have been convicted, they've been incarcerated, they've paid their debt to society. And yet, we're not allowing them to be fully restored. Let's not take the human side out of the equation."

The bill would need two-thirds approval of the House and Senate. The Fifth Circuit Court heard arguments in a lawsuit challenging the lifetime voting ban in January, but has not yet ruled in the case.


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New York groups are providing student protesters with resources to help sustain demonstrations safely and peacefully, as the war between Israel and Hamas wears on.

In the weeks since they began, student protesters have faced arrests, rubber bullets, and other crowd-breaking tactics by law enforcement. Students want universities and colleges to divest from Israel amid the country's ongoing war with Hamas. Others have shown support for Israel.

Kalaya'an Mendoza, director of mutual protection for the group Nonviolent Peaceforce, said there are many ways to remain safe when protesting.

"If you're going to any protest, action, or demonstration, always make sure you have a buddy and always make sure that someone else knows where you are at and when you plan to be home safe," Mendoza urged. "Number two, practice situational awareness. Situational awareness is essentially understanding what's happening around you."

Mendoza emphasized protesters should also pay attention to exit points, be aware of threats, be prepared with water, a snack and necessary meds, and carry a mask in case of tear gas. For bystanders and others, he pointed out basic situational awareness can help them navigate protests and encampments.

Students aren't the only ones causing the ruckus. The New York City Police Department reported more than half of the 170 people arrested at a City College protest were not students, and 29% of the 112 arrested at Columbia were not either.

Mendoza stressed administrators should do the opposite of what they have been doing.

"School administrators should be meeting with students and should not escalate to this point," Mendoza argued. "These students are unarmed, they are engaged in practicing peaceful non-violent protest, which is a fundamental human right."

He asserted the primary source of violence has been police escalation at encampments. A report from the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project showed a majority of student protests occurring since last October when the war in Gaza began have been peaceful. New York has seen the most pro-Israel and pro-Palestine demonstrations with California running a close second.

South Dakota's June 4 primary will be the first national election here since ballot dropboxes were banned in 2023.

It is one of 12 states to ban using dropboxes to cast votes, although no state election offices using the boxes in 2020 found a connection to voter fraud or stolen ballots, according to an Associated Press survey. The change is more likely to impact rural and tribal voters, who already face barriers to voting.

Sen. Shawn Bordeaux, D-Mission, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said although Native voter turnout for tribal elections is good, turnout for statewide elections is lower. He said dropboxes helped.

"It was something that a lot of people utilized on our reservation communities, where you might have to travel 70 miles to go vote," Bordeaux explained.

A 2022 federal report on Native American voting rights encourages local officials to provide sites for voter registration, polling and mail ballot collection in places convenient for Native voters.

Early voting is still possible with a mail-in absentee ballot. But Bordeaux pointed out it can be complicated on reservations, where most homes do not have street addresses. The state's voter registration form allows applicants to describe or draw a map of where they live, but they cannot use post office box numbers.

"I can't get UPS or the typical person to find my house on a map," Bordeaux noted. "It makes it even more difficult for me to figure out how to get our tribal membership so that they can vote, you know, without the P.O. box number."

Plus, South Dakota does not accept tribal ID cards for voter registration. Bordeaux sponsored a bill to change the rule in the last legislative session, but he said it was pulled from the House floor by a different sponsor who predicted it wouldn't pass. The deadline for voter registration is May 20.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.