North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, bizarrely declared a “state of emergency” on Monday as Republicans were moving to pass a school choice bill.
“It’s time to declare a State of Emergency for public education in North Carolina. There’s no Executive Order like with a hurricane or the pandemic, but it’s no less important,” Cooper stated in a video, per Fox News Digital.
While he was the one to declare the emergency, which appears entirely political, he suggested that Republicans were the extremists because they dared to provide school choices for North Carolina parents.
“It’s clear that the Republican legislature is aiming to choke the life out of public education. I’m declaring this state of emergency because you need to know what’s happening. If you care about public schools in North Carolina, it’s time to take immediate action and tell them to stop the damage that will set back our schools for a generation,” Cooper said.
Needless to say, the declaration drew a heaping amount of criticism on social media.
The Blaze columnist Auron MacIntyre tweeted, “Executive governing in the permanent state of exception to save democracy.”
“Neutering the abuse of emergency power by the executive branch should be priority number 1 for every state,” Conservative account “PoliMath” tweeted, according to Fox News Digital.
Corey DeAngelis, a school choice advocate, wrote, “[T]hey’re losing control over the minds of other people’s children. good. cry harder, @RoyCooperNC.”
Some suggested that Cooper was a “hypocrite” for being able to afford to send his kids to private schools — a form of school choice — while seeking to prevent North Carolina parents from being able to do the same thing.
“What a hypocrite. Public schools aren’t good enough for his kids, but they are for yours,” Independent Women’s Forum senior policy analyst Kelsey Bolar railed.
Purple Strategies partner Rory Cooper added: “If I *were* the Governor of NC, I would’ve been declaring a state of emergency when the state was in the bottom third of states reopening schools and depriving children of the education they needed. Not once parents got involved and demanded something better for their kids.”
“A ‘state of emergency’ over a bill passed by the legislature. Very serious,” Americans for Prosperity vice president Casey Mattox quipped.
In Republican legislators in the state unveiled initiatives to advance education reform through the introduction of bills advocating for school choice. Among these measures is a proposed bill that seeks to allocate equal funding to students attending charter schools in addition to those attending public schools. Detractors, including Cooper, argue that the bill primarily aims to reduce funding for public schools.
The measures by state Republicans came after the announcement by ttate Rep. Tricia Cotham that she would be defecting from the Democratic Party to join the GOP, primarily over the issue of school choice.
“On issues like school choice, like charters, we have to evolve,” Cotham said. “One-size-fits-all in education is wrong for children … [Democrats] didn’t really want to talk about children. They had talking points from adults and adult organizations.”
