State Policy Network Hosts Annual Meeting, Former Attorney General Jason Miyares Speaks on Federal Overreach

ORLANDO, Fla.—This week, State Policy Network is hosting its annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, gathering leaders and experts in state policy, nonprofits, and industries to share ideas and consider answers to problems that American citizens face.

With over 100 sessions and more than 350 organizations represented at the conference, the meeting seeks to create opportunities for attendees to discover solutions that create opportunities for Americans to flourish. The meeting attracts professionals from each state in the country, allowing space and opportunity for them to network and share best practices for their states.

Tuesday’s schedule of events featured various well-known speakers.

Dr. J. Robert McClure, president and CEO of The James Madison Institute, a nonpartisan, public policy research organization based in Florida, offered hope to the largely conservative audience by reminding them that the Sunshine State used to be a politically blue state but now is a red state—due in part to groups like State Policy Network.

“Today, [Florida is] a red state, and it’s getting more and more red,” he said. “So, I tell you that to give you hope. Whether you’re in a small state, a large state, red, purple, or blue—keep fighting, keep working.”

“Together, we can continue to advance freedom and liberty, and do it together at the state level, and ultimately in Washington as well.”

Miyares on Biden Administration, Federal Overreach

Later in the afternoon, former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares gave a keynote speech at an event titled “Federalism and the Power of States.”

He began by noting that his family fled communist Cuba to come to the United States to find freedom. He recounted that his uncle was arrested in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs Invasion and went through “the humiliation of a mock execution” along with other political prisoners.

“I remember, as a child, telling him, ‘I don’t understand.'”

His uncle answered, “Well, you don’t understand because you were born here [in the United States], and we have laws.”

Miyares then spoke on the importance of federalism, the system of government where power is divided between a central national government and individual state governments. After highlighting his personal reasons for accepting a role in public service, he told the audience, “I think federalism is the great tool of liberty that too often is left in the toolbox.”

“The [State Policy Network’s] Center for Practical Federalism gets it right, where it is talking to legislators and leaders in the 50 states, to explain that you have to choose to fight back,” Miyares said.

He went on to describe his role as attorney general and the work he did to fight back against overreaches by the Biden administration.

“In the four years of the Biden administration, if you look at all of the laws and rules and [regulations] imposed on the American people, we calculated 95.8% of every law, rule, and regulation imposed on the American people was not an act of Congress,” Miyares said.

As one example in Virginia, he recalled that fellow attorneys working in his office urged him to sue the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a new regulation related to the reduced school lunch program. A federal update from the Biden administration required schools receiving federal nutrition and school lunch assistance to include sexual orientation and gender identity in their anti-discrimination policies.

The attorneys told Miyares that if a school district is “accepting a single dime of federal money to provide reduced lunches for your children, as a catch to that, if you accept this federal money, you also have to accept the Biden administration’s redefinition of what sex is under Title IX … [therefore] allowing trans athletes into your schools, your teams, and your locker rooms.”

So, in 2022, Miyares and more than 20 other Republican state attorneys general sued the Biden administration and the USDA.

“[That] radical redefinition … would affect over 90% of the school districts in some states across the country,” Miyares said.

He ended his address by saying that states must use federalism to push back against the federal government.

“Federalism is the great tool of liberty available to us,” he concluded.

The annual meeting runs through Thursday, Aug. 27.