OneLouisville logo

The vote to merge LEDA and GLI was described as a pep rally. LEDA was the Louisville Economic Development Alliance, formed in September 2024; for background on GLI, see here.

Who wants to merge these two (words to that effect) ?! Raise your hand! It was an ecstatic approval. Hooray! The vote was described on the city website as follows:

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg today announced the boards of directors of the Louisville Economic Development Alliance (LEDA) and Greater Louisville Inc. (GLI) have approved the transfer of their organizational assets into a new, combined organization: One Louisville. One Louisville will unify economic development, talent attraction, member services, and advocacy under a single structure designed to strengthen competitiveness across the Louisville region.

Grok says:

‘One Louisville is a public-private partnership (PPP). It is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization formed on March 1, 2026, through the merger of the Louisville Economic Development Alliance (LEDA) and Greater Louisville Inc. (GLI). It serves as the primary regional economic development organization and chamber of commerce for the Louisville, Kentucky metropolitan area, focusing on economic development, talent attraction/retention, member services, and advocacy.’

Grok is a generative AI chatbot developed by xAI, launched by Elon Musk in November 2023.

3P or P3, either way OneLouisville (OL) uses a lot of tax dollars

LEDA was a 3P— a Public-Private Partnership and 501(c)(6). Of its first year, $5.6 million budget, $1.5 million came from the city’s 2024-2025 budget, about $2 million came from salaries tied to the “leased” government positions, and about $2 million stemmed from board member dues.

GLI was not a 3P, but an independent, private non-profit 501(c)(6) organization governed by a volunteer Board of Directors and funded through private investment, dues, sponsorships and grants rather than direct public funding.

About one-third (32%) of OL's funding will come from taxes. [ ibid ]

Here are some questions we asked Brave AI and Grok on X.com

The questions were generated by a human, not selected from AI suggestions.

What happens to ordinary family businesses when public-private partnerships become prominent in a city's business contracts?
Brave: Ordinary family businesses often face increased competition and marginalization when public-private partnerships (P3s) become prominent, as these large-scale deals frequently favor major corporations with the capital to bid on complex infrastructure projects.

While P3s aim to leverage private capital and expertise, smaller local firms may struggle to compete against the financial resources and specialized capabilities of the large international or national firms typically selected for these multi-billion dollar contracts.

The nature of P3 agreements can also create an "accountability gap" where private partners prioritize shareholder returns over local community needs, potentially leading to higher costs or lower quality services that disproportionately affect ordinary families if public funds are diverted or if services become less accessible.

However, some P3 models attempt to include local subcontracting opportunities or joint ventures to foster local private sector capabilities, though this is not guaranteed and depends heavily on the specific contract terms and government objectives.

Ultimately, the shift toward P3s can exacerbate economic inequality if the resulting economic growth is not evenly distributed, as the bulk of profits and control often remain with the large private entities rather than trickling down to small, family-owned enterprises.

Does OL serve more counties than Jefferson County KY?
Grok: Yes, OneLouisville serves far more than just Jefferson County, KY. It is the regional economic development and chamber of commerce organization for the entire Greater Louisville Region, which spans a 15-county bi-state area across Kentucky and Southern Indiana.

This includes Jefferson County (the core of Louisville Metro) plus 14 additional counties. The full list of counties served, as stated directly on OneLouisville’s official site (onelouisville.org and greaterlouisville.com), comprises:

Kentucky Counties (10)

• Bullitt County
• Hardin County
• Henry County
• Jefferson County (Louisville Metro)
• Meade County
• Nelson County
• Oldham County
• Shelby County
• Spencer County
• Trimble County

Indiana Counties (5)

• Clark County
• Floyd County
• Harrison County
• Scott County
• Washington County

OneLouisville explicitly describes its service area as “the Greater Louisville Region… represented by 15 counties within Kentucky and Indiana,” home to more than 1.4 million people and over 58,000 businesses.

Do all counties provide the tax base for the operation of OneLouisville?
Grok: No, not all 15 counties provide the tax base for OneLouisville’s operations.

OneLouisville (formed March 2026 via the merger of LEDA and GLI) operates as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit with a public-private funding model. Approximately one-third (~32–33%) of its budget comes from the public sector, and the remainder comes from private sources (business membership dues, sponsorships, events, and other revenue-generating activities).

Public funding (tax base) details

• The public portion comes exclusively from Louisville Metro Government (Jefferson County, KY).
• This includes direct allocations from the Louisville Metro budget (e.g., LEDA, the direct predecessor, received $1.5 million in one-time startup funding from the city in FY25, with ongoing support continuing post-merger).
• Louisville Metro’s FY 2025–2026 approved budget references support for LEDA as a public-private partnership and a modest allocation to Greater Louisville Inc. (GLI), but no funding is allocated from or through any of the other 14 counties.
• Descriptions of LEDA (and by extension OneLouisville) consistently tie it to “Louisville-Jefferson County” and note that core staff transitioned from Louisville Metro Government.

Private funding (covers the other ~2/3)

• This comes from business/investor dues, sponsorships, events, and grants across the full 15-county region.
• GLI (the predecessor chamber) was funded entirely this way and explicitly served all 15 counties; OneLouisville inherited that private-side model.

Why the other counties do not contribute tax dollars

The 14 counties outside Jefferson (Bullitt, Hardin, Henry, Meade, Nelson, Oldham, Shelby, Spencer, Trimble in KY; Clark, Floyd, Harrison, Scott, Washington in IN) benefit from OneLouisville’s regional economic development, talent attraction, and business services.

However, there are no interlocal agreements, tax-sharing arrangements, or budget allocations documented from those counties’ local governments to OneLouisville.

Public funding remains anchored in Jefferson County / Louisville Metro taxes, consistent with how LEDA was structured as the “principal economic development entity for Louisville-Jefferson County.”

In summary: Only Jefferson County (via Louisville Metro Government taxes) supplies the public/tax-funded portion of OneLouisville’s budget. The other counties participate on the private side through business membership but do not contribute to the tax base that supports the organization’s operations. This hybrid structure is typical for U.S. regional economic development groups, allowing a core public investment from the largest jurisdiction while serving a broader multi-county area.

This hardly seems fair. (Grok did not say this.)

Method to the madness?

Will the overall population of the 15 counties help OneLouisville to win government contracts?
Grok: Yes, the overall population of the 15-county Greater Louisville Region (approximately 1.4 million people) helps position OneLouisville more competitively to win government grants and contracts.

OneLouisville (and its predecessor organizations LEDA and GLI) operates as the designated regional economic development entity for this bi-state area. Government funding opportunities—particularly federal grants from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA), Department of Labor workforce programs, or state-level economic development incentives—frequently evaluate proposals based on scale of impact, including the size of the population and economy served. A larger regional base strengthens applications in several concrete ways:

• Broader demonstrated impact: Grant scoring criteria (e.g., in EDA programs) reward projects that affect more residents, workers, and businesses. OneLouisville can credibly claim reach across 1.4+ million people and 58,000+ businesses, rather than being limited to Jefferson County alone. This makes proposals for workforce training, site development, talent attraction, or business expansion more competitive.
• Eligibility for regional/multi-jurisdictional funding: Many federal and state grants prioritize or require collaboration across counties or states. OneLouisville’s 15-county footprint (10 in Kentucky, 5 in Indiana) qualifies it for these “regional” pots of money that single-county organizations often cannot access at the same scale. Pre-merger GLI/LEDA already leveraged this in advocacy for federal priorities and in partnerships that secured funding (e.g., with JCPS and local/state/federal partners).
• Stronger talent, market, and economic arguments: Population size directly supports claims about labor force availability, consumer markets, and growth potential—key factors when applying for incentives, grants, or contracts tied to job creation or economic resilience. GLI historically used regional population and growth data in reports to advocate for investment and to attract companies. OneLouisville continues this approach as the unified organization.

Practical examples of how this plays out

• OneLouisville helps companies navigate and access state and local incentives, tax increment financing, workforce grants, and federal programs. The regional scope makes these offerings more attractive to relocating or expanding firms, which in turn can involve government contracts or funding flows that the organization facilitates or co-administers.
• As a 501(c)(6) nonprofit and public-private partnership, OneLouisville itself can pursue operating grants, program-specific contracts, or technical assistance funding (common for regional ED organizations). The 15-county population base is a core part of their branding and value proposition when making the case for public investment.

In short, the larger population is not just a statistic—it is a strategic advantage that OneLouisville actively uses to compete more effectively for government funding opportunities. This is standard practice for U.S. regional economic development organizations and has been part of Greater Louisville’s approach for years. While the organization is still early in its post-merger phase (launched March 2026), its regional mandate is explicitly designed to maximize access to these resources.

So, thanks Louisville taxpayers. (Grok did not say this.)

Who is responsible for this?

Grok: Other than the board members, Mayor Craig Greenberg is a primary influencer of LEDA's strategic decisions.

As the board chair and the driving force behind its creation, he initiated the "Growing Louisville Together" plan that led to LEDA's formation and now to OneLouisville.

Small business services of OL

Grok did not score highly on describing the advantages OL offers for small businesses. It pointed to the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) and SCORE, neither of which is an OL service, and OL’s METCO loans that seem to favor minority-owned businesses.

To be an ‘investor’ in OL, join in, for $595. You can attend events free. Of course, there may be a fee if a meal is involved.

Maria Rodriguez, Republican candidate for Third Congressional District

A search on the Courier-Journal on April 9, 2026, for information about Maria Rodriguez, a Republican candidate for the Third Congressional District seat, brought up strange results.

Clicking to the first page of the search results, the name ‘Maria’ was found twice.

Maria wears her hospital scrubs when she speaks to groups. She wants to be identified as a working American. She explains that her work as a trauma nurse at UofL Hospital proves that the crime rate in Louisville is not down; it is up.

She describes gangs dumping bodies out of cars at the door of the emergency room. It is the job of the medical staff to save their lives. The cars just speed off. These body dumps are never mentioned in the news.

She is concerned about the wave of socialism that is washing or flooding over the communities of America. Louisville’s approximately 65,000 Cubans know first-hand the lies that are spread to whitewash the truth— even those who have emigrated to undermine the USA, and some have.

She would like to debate Morgan McGarvey to challenge his knowledge of the opinions he espouses. He has no concept what he is helping to establish here.

Maria entered the US legally with her family. It took them 11 years of waiting for all the channels and paperwork to facilitate their immigration. She demands that all immigrants learn to speak English.

She loves America and has adjusted her work schedule to accommodate her run for Congress.

In Cuba she and her family were called ‘worms’ because they were members of the opposition. She was not allowed educational opportunities and her family was very poor. All that changed in the USA which she calls The Greatest Country on Earth.

Other Cubans at the meeting agreed and warned that there is no other country on earth like the USA, so there is nowhere to run; we must fight the communists here, and win. These patriots plan to make known to the Cuban community which Metro Council members and political candidates are voting socialism into Louisville.

If Maria can rally her fellow Cubans, she has a formidable voting bloc. Her campaign website is MariaForUScongress.com.

WHAS Interview

UPDATE: On Jan. 21, 2026, Children's Health Defense accused the American Academy of Pediatrics of running a decades-long racketeering scheme to defraud American families about the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule. Read more.

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by Children’s Health Defense Team | December 8, 2022 | ChildrensHealthDefense.org

As of 2019, roughly 72,000 physicians were actively working in pediatrics or pediatric subspecialties in the U.S., many of them members of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Nominally, the AAP is a professional medical association (PMA), but more often than not, it functions as a corporate and government mouthpiece, including issuing policy guidance to its members stating that it is an “acceptable option to pediatric care clinicians to dismiss families who refuse vaccines.”

With total “revenue, gains and other support” amounting in 2022 to nearly $127 million — supporting a staff of 475 and a self-described role as the “#1 publisher of pediatric titles in the world” — the deep-pocketed AAP’s ability to broadcast policies desired by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and tout the wares of drug, vaccine and formula manufacturers is significant.

That the AAP’s megaphone is one-sided has long attracted the notice of critics, who point to the organization’s “preference for fashionable political positions over evidence-based medicine” and its pattern of “play[ing] both sides of the street” — with its “‘trusted’ medical advice” issued in the context of generous funding from agenda-setting foundations, corporations and government agencies.

Even in a study that the AAP itself published, which examined pediatric PMA transparency and compliance with best practice guidelines, the AAP got middling marks for both, despite benefiting from “a significantly higher average budget” compared to sister organizations that earned better scores.

Currently, the AAP is using its bully pulpit to hammer home messages about vaccination — especially COVID-19 shots — and about an AAP-fashioned children’s mental health crisis.

Plainly, both issues have the potential to be highly profitable for the drug companies that festoon the AAP’s list of top-tier donors. But the organization also appears to be on board with a more subterranean aim — weaponizing vaccination and mental health to achieve more “brave new world” control over children’s bodies and minds.

Presidential grandstanding

Throughout 2022, the AAP’s soon-to-be-outgoing president, UCLA professor Dr. Moira Szilagyi, Ph.D., was an obedient foot soldier on both the vaccination and mental health fronts.

Szilagyi was voted the AAP’s 2022 president-elect in June 2020, and throughout the pandemic, she shamelessly brandished her status as a grandmother to peddle pediatric COVID-19 shots.

In October 2021 — not long before stepping into the AAP presidency — Szilagyi opined in a CNN piece titled “Pediatrician: What I want this Covid vaccine to do for my grandchildren” that the data from the vaccine clinical trials in younger children were “very reassuring.”

But, she confessed, she felt an “undercurrent of anxiety” over the fact that her masked grandchildren, at ages 5 and 8, did not yet have access to “the best protection of all: vaccination.”

Barely a month later, the CDC’s advisors overrode concerns about Pfizer’s clinical data to unanimously endorse the jab for Szilagyi’s grandchildren and others in their age group.

In June 2022, under Szilagyi’s stewardship, the AAP issued an enthusiastic press release applauding the CDC’s recommendation of “safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines” for babies as young as 6 months old.

In October, Szilagyi even wrote to White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha to plead for reducing “the burdens of administering COVID-19 vaccines” to children, stating, “The nation’s pediatricians need to be supported as we attempt to vaccinate our nation’s youngest citizens against COVID-19.”

In that letter, Szilagyi — seemingly oblivious to the thousands of injuries and dozens of deaths already reported in children and adolescents who received COVID-19 jabs — expressed gratitude for babies’ and toddlers’ “access” to the shots and celebrated the imminent authorization of bivalent booster shots for kids.

In November, Szilagyi again took to CNN — this time trotting out her “heartbroken” feelings about crowded pediatric hospital wards and offering parents “reassurance” and the “advice” to get the whole family vaccinated for both influenza and COVID-19, “including boosters.”

Her actions over the past year also illustrated the AAP’s servile and co-dependent relationship with the CDC in other ways.

In 2017, BMJ editor Peter Doshi reported that the CDC is one of the AAP’s “steady funders”; from 2009 through 2016, the CDC shoveled $20 million in the AAP’s direction.

Returning the favor, Szilagyi testified in May 2022 before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, making a case for more than $746 million in new CDC and Health Resources and Services Administration funding for the AAP’s pet causes — not all of which even concern American children.

For example, lamenting “pandemic-related disruptions” to routine childhood vaccination overseas, Szilagyi called for nearly half (48%) of the proposed funding ($356 million) to be routed to the CDC’s Global Immunization division.

Szilagyi lobbied for another hefty $205 million (28%) for the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD), the center that is supposed to be “search[ing] for the causes of autism” but which consistently denies any vaccine-autism connection.

CDC’s current NCBDDD director, Karen Remley, was a recent AAP CEO (2015-2018). Her predecessor at the NCBDDD’s helm (until retiring in January 2020) was Coleen Boyle, known for her early-career cover-up of Agent Orange and dioxin toxicity and later, for helping cement the fiction that vaccines have nothing to do with developmental disabilities.

Also on Szilagyi’s funding priorities list was a smaller request ($12 million) to study “sudden unexpected” infant and childhood deaths, another outcome with a probable — though AAP- and CDC-denied — link to vaccination.

The mental health dragnet

Szilagyi has a lengthy history of engagement with “vulnerable children” in the U.S.’s corrupt and dysfunctional foster care system and likes to reference those credentials.

In June, after the AAP called for mental health screening for all children from birth through age 21, medical reporter Martha Rosenberg noted in The Defender that children in foster care (and other marginalized kids) are precisely the youth most at risk of overmedication with “lucrative and dangerous psychiatric drugs — some of which can cause suicide, especially in children.”

Additional risks of across-the-board depression screening, pointed out by psychiatric experts quoted by Rosenberg, include overdiagnosis, medicalization of the “normal” and “carelessly applied labels” that, once entered into databases, become impossible to shed.

Other critics, skeptical of the “supposed” mental health crisis in young people, agree on the need to “take care in widening the net of psychiatric surveillance” and argue for the promotion of resilience rather than the celebration of vulnerability.

They also point out how the “language of harm and trauma” can be harnessed for “political motives,” including using it to censor “undesirable ideas.”

Spelling out psychiatry’s long history of “acting as an instrument for psychological, social and political control,” psychiatrist Peter Breggin has noted:

“The contemporary widespread diagnosing of children is a subtler form of social control that suppresses children rather than providing them with what they need to fulfill their basic needs in the home, school and family. Instead of reforming our educational system and improving family life, we drug our children into more docile states.”

Mental health is lucrative, however. For example, in September, the AAP earned a cool $2 million from the mental health branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop resources focused on “social media and mental wellness.”

And in October, the AAP joined 100-plus other organizations in writing to the Biden administration to urge a “National Emergency Declaration in children’s mental health,” no doubt hoping for more millions to be sent their way to address the “emergency.”

In July, Szilagyi and co-authors laid some of the conceptual groundwork for a mental health dragnet in a paper published in the influential journal Health Affairs, titled “Combating A Crisis By Integrating Mental Health Services And Primary Care.”

Cloaking their arguments in the veneer of “whole-person care,” the authors made a case for more integration of “behavioral health” into primary care — claiming that up to half of “behavioral health disorders begin by age 14.”

Describing barriers to this approach, they noted the current difficulty of sharing patient information “across integrated care team members,” criticizing “overly restrictive interpretations of federal laws and regulations.”

Perhaps that is why the AAP’s president-elect for 2023 is a health informatics expert.

Dr. Sandy Chung, like Szilagyi, is bullish on mental health, framing it as a “long-simmering” problem that the pandemic merely helped catapult into the spotlight.

Chung’s curriculum vitae and professional biographies list her work in the areas of mental health, electronic health records, “data integration” and the creation of “a national registry of child health data” as some of her primary achievements, suggesting that she is on board for the type of pervasive mental health tracking and surveillance that is giving other child health experts the heebie-jeebies.

Unfilled positions and unfulfilled pediatricians

A June 2021 article in the AAP’s own journal Pediatrics outlined a somewhat dire outlook for the pediatric profession, noting, ironically, large vacancies in “developmental and behavioral pediatrics and adolescent and child psychiatry” as well as child neurology.

The author also noted fewer applicants and more unfilled pediatric residency positions, suggesting that “strategies to strengthen the pediatric applicant pool must include … understanding factors that impact the career decisions of trainees.”

Although a large proportion of pediatricians currently in practice appears to be generally copacetic with AAP policy positions — with half of pediatric offices reporting “a policy of dismissing families who won’t vaccinate their children” — that still leaves others whose opinion differs.

In fact, in a December 2020 article in Pediatrics, apparently published to let off a little steam, a trio of university-based authors scolded the AAP and its adherents for their stance on this issue, noting, “it is wrong for clinicians not to accept vaccine refusers because they want only compliant families” and characterizing this approach as “excessively paternalistic and inconsistent with patient- and family-centered care.”

A decade ago — cited by journalist Richard Gale in CounterPunch — pediatrician Ken Stoller described the CDC’s and AAP’s all-too-effective “propagandizing” on the topic of thimerosal in vaccines:

“Now we have a generation of pediatricians … who actually need to be deprogrammed to understand what the true nature of all the neuro-behavioral problems are that they confront without any understanding of etiology or potential interventions.”

Unfortunately, ominous trends like California’s recent legislation to take away the licenses of doctors who don’t toe the party line, and similar witch hunts against independent-thinking doctors in other states, do not bode well for future medical independence.

Nor can children and their parents hope for any help from the AAP, beholden as it is not just to Big Pharma and next-generation biopharmaceutical and “gene therapy” companies, but also to population-control-oriented foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, infant formula companies like the disgraced Abbott Nutrition and National Security Agency surveillance partner AT&T.

Gale’s 2012 conclusion still holds: The AAP “has failed to protect children from their greatest enemy — the pharmaceutical and chemical industrial complex. … [W]hen addressing the prevention of diseases that directly affect the medical industry, the AAP’s record is dismal.”

Democratic Socialists display signs at ICE protest on January 8, 2026

ICE agents are tasked to arrest criminal illegals and to enforce customs law. Their work to stop illegal arms deals and drug trafficking helps America have secure, safe cities.

So, why do the rioters and protestors avoid any mention or concern for ICE’s work to get drugs and illegal weapons off the street? In news conferences, ICE officials repeatedly state they are targeting criminals, not other illegals.

Nevertheless, protesters proclaim that they do not want the undocumented immigrants to be deported. ‘Let’s Be Kind.’ And by maintaining a single focus, they are relieved of analyzing pro-ICE arguments.

Would true kindness not include helping police and ICE agents who are committed to keep us safe? Shouldn't we care about the youth and drug addicts who are easy prey for the drug cartels and for all in the path of bullets from illegal weapons on the street?

Why would anyone not favor the arrest and imprisonment of illegal immigrants who are pedophiles, murderers, thieves —those who cruelly exploit women, damage property, and devastate retail merchants?

Wrong question

The rioters and protestors, socialists and idealists, paid or volunteer, accuse Christians, and demand to know, ‘If you are a Christian, why are you not helping immigrants?’

In fact, CHURCHES —Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian (Disciples of Christ) etc., have aggressively helped to establish all immigrants in this city and across the nation. And they share their humanitarian concern with taxpayers, among them Christians who, of course, pay for many immigrants’ care and shelter.

Good question

Are these protesters being used by the international cartels that do not want the illegal drug and weapons trade to end? What is the real agenda?

In some cities, the protests are leading to anarchy.

Support police

American goals in 2026

Howard Lutnick: We are in Davos at the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the Trump administration and myself, we are here to make a very clear point: Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America. It's a failed policy. It is what the WEF has stood for --which is export offshore -- find the cheapest labor in the world-- and the world is a better place for it.

The fact is, it has left America behind. It has left the American workers behind, and what we are here to say is that America-first is a different model. One that we encourage other countries to consider, which is that our workers come first. We can have policies that impact our workers. Sovereignty is your borders. You're entitled to have borders. You shouldn't offshore your medicine. You shouldn't offshore your semiconductors. You shouldn't offshore your entire industrial base and have it be hollowed out beneath you. You should not be dependent for that which is fundamental to your sovereignty on any other nation.

And if you're going to be dependent on someone, it darn well better be your best allies. Okay? And so, that is a different way of thinking. It is completely different than the WEF. I viewed the WEF as not a flag pole in the middle, but in fact, they are the flag, whichever way the wind blew.— You should have solar. You should have wind.

Why are you going to do solar and wind? Why would Europe agree to be NetZero in 2030 when they don't make a battery? They don't make a battery. So, if they go by 2030, they are deciding to be subservient to China who makes the batteries. Why would you do that?

Why would the United States of America which has oil and natural gas, try to convert to all electricity? China does not have oil and natural gas. Electricity and electric cars make perfect sense to them. That is practical and logical. So the point I want to make and I want people to think about, is, that America-first is the job of our government-- to take care of our workers, to make sure their lives are better for it, and then, don't be America alone, right? But be America-first.

And I would suggest that policy is something for other countries to deeply consider to take care of their own, and then we will work out wonderful relationships between us. But I want to point out when America shines, the world shines. Close your eyes and think of a world without America in it. It becomes pretty dark pretty darn quickly without America, right?

And everyone said, "Oh, you're going to do all these tariffs. They are going to destroy the world." The world's stock markets are up. Which ones of them? All of them.

Can I bring you back to Greenland? No. It's unnecessary. --The Western Hemisphere is vital for the United States of America. Our national security people are on it and they care about it. And I'm going to leave it to them to address with our allies, with our friends, and with everyone, how they work it out. But the Western Hemisphere matters to the United States of America. And the United States of America, as I've just articulated, really, really matters to the world.

When America shines, the world shines, because they all need to make sure America is strong and powerful to take care of them, God forbid. And so, I think America and the Western Hemisphere are vital to America. And I'm going to leave that to my national security people to address.

Moderator: Right. The rest of us, I think, are finding it harder to make that kind of separation clearly. And I would be curious to know how, um, the representatives of the UK and Canada might want to think about these issues. Do you see them as starkly divided as Secretary Lutnick would like us to have them? Does this logic of what's good for America is good for the world convince in this extraordinarily strong, extremely eloquent expression that we've just heard? You go first. Thank you. Thanks France. Lovely...

...

Lutnick: Clearly, I'd like the UK— who was our great friend and ally, to be aligned with us. Right? That's clear. Uh, with respect to interest rates in America, there's been a classic policy that when the US economy does well, raise rates and put breaks on it. When the US economy is doing poorly, cut rates and add gas to it. Both basically define mediocrity, one way or the other. And President Trump thinks quite differently. We have the best credit in the world. Why are we paying a higher rate than all the other credits of the world? It makes no sense. Our rates are too high. It's just binary.

Our rate should be much lower so that our economy can finally flourish. I think we're going to grow more than five percent GDP this quarter. And that's for the $30 trillion US economy. And if rates were lower, you would see us hit six percent. What is holding us back is ourselves. Okay? We are going to align our economy and our industrial policy with growth and success, and we hope to export that. I hope the UK follows our energy policy, follows our digital policy, so that our great tech companies can invest in the UK, can invest in Canada, can invest in Europe.

But they can't if they have the digital services act, the digital markets act, the digital this, the digital that. Europe has taxed our companies with fines and regulatory attacks more than they've earned in taxes on their own technology companies.

Instead of saying, Come and build and grow and build data centers here, they tax the heck out of them with fines and regulations that harm them. It's illogical. There's a reason the United States has $18 trillion dollars of economic power coming in. You just watch. I couldn't say five percent and I couldn't say I think six percent if we cut interest rates is in the cards unless that $18 trillion comes to America to build. And let me give you a hint. It's coming and it's coming fast.

But I ask you about the principle of independence: Who gets to decide whether they should be higher or lower? Whether your right should be independent or should you and the president get to decide that? Well, thank you for putting me in it. It has nothing to do with me, but thank you. Uh, the president of the United States gets to pick the members of the board of governors. He will pick the governors that he thinks are the best and therefore the outcome will be set by the governors. That is set. The president has clearly set what he thinks the right answer is, which is lower rates based on our credit, not based on some other nonsense. But he will pick the governors and the outcomes will be set by the Fed governors.

Moderator: That I find illuminating in the sense that it's the sheer drama of your vision of potential American growth that helps us better understand the stakes in the struggle over the Fed. I think that is actually for me quite an illuminating answer. It segues very well with the AI discourse as well about the urgency of the current moment and the coincidence of the AI boom with the first year of the Trump presidency. As a historian, I think we'll look back on as a hugely powerful moment. We had a bunch of really other interesting questions...

...

Question from Press: ... What about the sovereignty of other nations, and this is linked to your role, because the threats on Greenland are no longer hypothetical. You're already proposing economic warfare against uh eight European countries. So how does this add up? Does sovereignty matter or not?

Lutnick: So, I'll try to start on this side which is when we launched our tariff regime. On April 2nd the world was a flutter with all of these kind of comments. But since then if you check at the end of 2025 you will see all of the key indicators are up. The UK stock market's up. Europe's stock market is up. Japan is up. Korea is up. They are all up because, as it turns out, there is much more stability in a strong America and a natural and long-term relationship between two countries.

I think with respect to the tariff policy, the president uses tariff policy to make sure people are talking and paying attention and not just acting. You have seen him use tariff policy again and again to have outcomes that are reasonable and appropriate. So the fact that he doesn't want things to be done without discussion and without consideration, is a way for him to say, "Hey, you know, you need to talk to us. If you're our great ally, you need to talk to us."

Do I think the trade deals that we've set with Europe, with the UK, are they durable? I absolutely do. I do not see a model where Europe would decide -- I want to blow up the tariff I have on automobiles or on pharmaceuticals or on semiconductors. I'd like to just go back to the way it was in April-- I just don't see that happening. What I see happening is diplomacy and talking and at the table rather than action, which is something I think the president cares about and is important to the president.

And I said I will leave that to my national security people. But the president is clear minded and clear of thought. He feels and he's talked about this for 30 years. He has felt that the industrial policy of the United States allowed it to be hollowed out. And that that would be true of Britain and that would be true of Europe. That all of this has moved to Asia, right? Where they make everything and we just buy it and that has got to end. We need to produce things in America. We need to produce things and we encourage the UK to do the same. Right? And you agree.

It's not as if we disagree. So that's the history. And sovereignty for America says we need to have our own steel. We need to have aluminum. We can have it with great allies. But we cannot have it where we rely on other people -that -maybe like we've seen- in critical minerals. And make no mistake about it, the critical mineral issue was with us a year ago.

Everybody was sleeping through it. Donald Trump ripped the band-aid off and the whole world said, "Oh my god." And that is the intuition and power of Donald Trump's presidency is that he's teaching the world what is wrong. And now the world is working together with respect to critical minerals to fix it. Right? But there are all sorts of things that need to be fixed. One of which is a modification of industrial policy,that the United States of America should be a place where you build things. And I would encourage the UK to do the same.

Granted, it can't be everything to everyone, but there are a lot of things. Same for Canada, same for all our allies. And what happens if Europe retaliates with tariffs of its own? Well, then we'll be back to a 'tit for tat,' which is how we began, and it will end in a very positive conversation between Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen, which is what happened last time. So, you can start with a kerfuffle, but in the end, right, the United States and Europe are great allies. The United States and the UK are great allies. These are great allies, right?

We are great allies with Canada. We are great allies. It doesn't mean you don't have an argument. It doesn't mean you don't disagree, but it doesn't change the fundamentals of the United States knows who our allies are. And if we're going to have a kerfuffle, so be it. But we know where it's going to end. It's going to end in a reasonable manner. That— In our view, prior to Donald Trump taking the helm of the United States of America, the world was taking the piss on us, right? And we were exporting the power of our economy to the rest of the world.

In one year of change, I just said my expectation is GDP of the United States of America is over five percent in the first quarter of 2026. That's just my opinion. But so far in the first quarter, if you saw what I said, I said I thought the United States would grow four percent. And the whole world said, "You got to be kidding me." Four-point-three percent in the third quarter. You're going to see plus five percent from the United States of America, the $30 trillion economy winning, and that's good for the world.

Are you aware that the top two vote-getters in the May primary will run against each other in November? It will not matter which party they represent.

In 2024 the KY Legislature signed into law HB388, ‘AN ACT relating to local government and declaring an emergency.’ As part of this extensive bill sponsored by seven Jefferson Co. Republicans, metro council and mayoral elections— in a consolidated local government— must be nonpartisan.

Interestingly, later in 2024, Jefferson Co. Republicans made history when three Democrat seats on the Metro Council were flipped red. The Democrat majority slipped to 14-12. Who would have thought the citizens would wake up and choose a new direction? The partisan labels helped!

On top of nonpartisan labels, in Kentucky and in Jefferson County, turnout for Primaries is typically low, from the low teens to as much as 30% in some years. If Republicans sit this one out, they may find their choice for mayor in the general election will be limited to Democrats.

Of eleven candidates who will be on the ballot for Mayor:

• One, Bill Wells, is unknown at this writing—no information in sight
• Two, Douglas Lattimore and Jody Hurt, are independents who got .1% of the vote— Hurt for a JCPS Board of Education election in 2024 and Lattimore when he ran for mayor in 2018.
• Three are Democrats— incumbent Greenburg, Metro Council member- D3, Shameka Parrish-Wright, and Matthew Bailey, a 21-year-old with political aspirations
• Five are Republicans:
  • Tina Burnell, founder of Louisville Metro Watchdog Alliance
  • Bob DeVore, frequent candidate for political offices
  • Lisa M. Harris - Portland resident, conservative activist
  • Jeffrey Yocum - ‘Christian, Vet, Patriot, Husband, Father’ from his X.com page
  • Steve “The D” Dattilo - 2022 candidate for Metro Council D2, got 21.6% of the vote (no website yet)

Unfortunate facts

Shameka is backed by Emerge Kentucky, a left-leaning group that provides candidate training and has a strong record for success. Some of its alumnae are Jefferson County Democrats:

• Sen. Cassie Armstrong (D-19),
• Rep. Pamela Stevenson (D-43) and
• Sen. Karen Berg (D-26).

Berg got 57% of the vote in a 2020 special election, running against Republican Bill Ferko in a northeast area of Jefferson Co., that had been held by Republican Ernie Harris for 25 years. Harris retired early, and Ferko had only a few months to campaign. Here, the partisan label did not help, but of course, neither did the unanticipated special election. It did not seem to come as a surprise to the Democrats.

The Courier-Journal (C-J) provided special coverage for Shameka in a recent article:

In 2022 Parrish-Wright secured 21.6% of the votes for mayor in the Democratic primary, which was nearly 20 points shy of Greenberg in that race. She also beat out Jefferson Circuit Court Clerk David Nicholson as well as fellow racial justice protest leader Tim Findley. Then following that loss, she ran for an open District 3 Metro Council seat and won 89.5% of the vote in 2023.

In 2020, the C-J reported that Shameka is ‘a vocal, longstanding critic of Louisville Metro Police, and she was arrested alongside then-state Rep. Attica Scott during a September 2020 protest. Parrish-Wright was charged with felony-level rioting as well as two misdemeanors, and those charges were eventually dropped.’ She was head of Louisville's Bail Project.

Fastzone on Substack has covered Shameka’s efforts to bring in federal control of the LMPD. In the below picture taken in January 2026, it looks like Shameka was in the ICE protest. Do you see her?

Democratic Socialists at the January 2026 ICE protest in downtown Louisville

The Primary is less than four months out. The Jefferson Co. Republican Party does not fund candidates until they win a primary.

Conservatives must get out the vote! And ask: What can I do to help?

A recent e-news blast from the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health reminded parents or prospective ones to be sure their newborn gets the hepatitis B vaccine. (Screenshot from e-news)

However, in September, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) determined that vaccination should be based on ‘individual-based-decision-making’ that in turn is based on whether the vaccine is known to be beneficial for those at increased risk of disease. They tabled a vote on whether to recommend delaying the first HepB vaccine until age 1 month.

Most recently, on December 5, 2025, the ACIP voted 8 to 3 , to end the long-standing universal recommendation for administering the hepatitis B vaccine to all newborns within 24 hours of birth. Under the new guidance, infants born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B surface antigen are no longer automatically advised to receive the birth dose but to discuss the decision with their healthcare provider. For these infants, if vaccination is delayed, the first dose should be administered no earlier than 2 months of age. The recommendation remains unchanged for infants born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B or whose status is unknown.

The ChildrensHealthDefense.org website addresses the rationale for the HepB vaccine for newborns:

But is it really “crucial” for all children to be so vaccinated? To highlight the rationality and importance of this question, consider the example of the CDC’s recommendation that all newborn babies receive a hepatitis B (HepB) vaccine, typically on their very first day of life. Many parents naturally wonder why it is considered so necessary to vaccinate their baby against a virus that is primarily transmitted sexually or through sharing of needles among injection drug users. The hepatitis B virus (HBV) can also be transmitted to infants at birth if the mother is a carrier, but screening to identify infected pregnant women is done routinely, and an alternative effective treatment has long been available for infants born to carriers. So is the HepB vaccine really necessary for all infants? Why does the CDC treat this vaccine as a one-size-fits-all solution when the vast majority of infants are not at significant risk of infection?

To answer this question, we need look no further than the CDC’s own stated rationale for this policy, which was adopted in 1991. Close examination of the CDC’s reasoning and the evolution of this policy illustrates that, far from being based on science, the decision by the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee to adopt this policy was faith-based and concerned primarily not with the health of infants, but with the agency’s overriding goal of achieving high vaccination rates. Comparing the policy with the science reveals that parents are right to be concerned because the policy unnecessarily puts children who are not at risk of infection at risk of harm from the vaccine.

Where to find information on vaccine dangers?

1. NIVC.org — The National Vaccine Information Center

• Learn about the risks and complications of infectious diseases and vaccines.
• See Selected NVIC Statements & Commentaries related to Hepatitis B or Hepatitis B Vaccine
• A ‘blast from the past’ - Hepatitis B Vaccine: The Untold Story

2. SoundChoice.org — Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute

• Website of Dr. Theresa Deisher, Ph.D., inventor on over 47 patents
• MISSION: End human trafficking and exploitation for the purposes of biomedical research and commercial products.
• Research showed that aborted fetal cells that contain residual DNA —when used in vaccines— can cause autism. Current vaccines in circulation which were manufactured using aborted fetal material include HepB. (This is disputed in some web searches.)

3. ChildrensHealthDefense.org — Litigation—Education—Science—Advocacy

• CHD was launched in response to growing concerns about the sharp rise in chronic health conditions among children.
• Unites parents, scientists, medical professionals, attorneys, and advocates to challenge the systems and policies that compromise public health.
• CHD shines a light on issues that are often overlooked or misrepresented
• A testimonial on the CHD website—

Learn what the current recommendations are

• Read here about Kentucky LAW on vaccines and immunization.
• CDC advice- NOT YET UPDATED.
• Cleveland Clinic

Troubling disclosure under oath

In a HighWire video on X.com, the world’s leading vaccine expert is asked during a deposition whether the Hep B vaccine was tested for only 5 days prior to its use on newborns. He states that this is true. Use of the HepB vaccine on newborns has resulted in neurological damage, hypersensitivity syndrome, autoimmune disease, and more. The deficient clinical trials are the basis for the long-term recommendation for newborns to be immunized for Hep B.

ASIDE:

Robert F. Kennedy, currently Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has come under intense attacks from the American Medical Assoc., American Academy of Pediatrics, America College of Physicians, and American Public Health Assoc., for his efforts to replace the members of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and to reform the vaccine industry. He was appointed by President Trump to Make America Healthy Again. The growth of Autism Spectrum Disorder from 2 in 10,000 children in 1960 to the 2022 incidence of 1 in 31 is cause for alarm. This is only one in many examples of red flags in American healthcare.

His leadership was recently questioned by Democratic Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan who filed articles of impeachment against him on December 10, 2025. So far no vote has occurred and her action is not likely to advance to a Senate trial. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia are suing RFK and HHS for plans to prevent government payments for transgender treatments.

Kennedy has long been involved in vaccine research and helping parents whose children have been harmed by mandated immunizations. Mothers whose children had become autistic after vaccinations sought him out because of his track record as an attorney who understood mercury poisoning from his environmental legal work. Mercury has been a component of vaccines as a preservative. The ChildrensHealthDefense.org website was founded by RFK, who co-founded its predecessor, the World Mercury Project.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has been cited by RFK for its role in insisting on vaccinations for newborns and others. See this article.

A Kentucky legislature bill that became law in 2025 included the AAP and other pro-choice medical associations' endorsements to lend credibility. This was hard to understand considering that KY is considered to be a pro-life state. In an article on LPM.org there is a reference to AAPLOG, the pro-life association for Ob/Gyns, that may offer some explanation on this.

The Epoch Times News reported on January 1, 2026, that RFK has stopped mandating health care providers report the immunization status of patients. Change is ongoing, so stay tuned to this topic!

The hidden force behind the HIRE Act

By Amanda Bartolotta | December 8, 2025 | WND.com

For more than a decade, a powerful, foreign-aligned organization has operated largely out of public view while quietly reshaping America’s immigration system to serve its own economic interests. That organization, ITServe Alliance, is a consortium of more than 2,200 outsourcing and labor-brokerage companies tied overwhelmingly to India's IT services pipeline. Though it presents itself to lawmakers as a domestic business association promoting innovation and high-skilled talent, its internal statements, litigation campaigns and foreign partnerships tell a very different story.

Today, ITServe stands as the primary force behind the deceptively branded High-skilled Immigration Reform for Employment (HIRE) Act legislation, marketed as modernization, but engineered to inject an even larger volume of foreign labor into the U.S. workforce.

Read more.

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Foreign-aligned group is radically reshaping America's immigration system

By Amanda Bartolotta | December 10, 2025 | WND.com

For years, ITServe Alliance, a powerful, foreign-aligned organization operating largely out of public view while quietly reshaping America's immigration system, has crafted a gleaming narrative about what it is and who and what it represents...

That polished narrative was on full display during the group's 5th annual Capitol Hill Day where Sateesh Nagilla, ITServe's director of policy advocacy and immigration, invoked sweeping national stakes. America, he said, faces a "skills gap," and only by importing the "brightest minds from all over the world" can U.S. innovation survive...

But beneath that carefully crafted facade lies a record that tells a very different story. And once it is seen for what it is, the High-skilled Immigration Reform for Employment (HIRE Act), the immigration bill now pending in Congress and which ITServe aggressively wrote, shaped and championed, looks far less like a STEM bill and far more like a profit-expansion tool for a foreign-aligned labor machine.

Read more.

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Huge India-aligned group sued to dismantle U.S. worker protections

By Amanda Bartolotta | December 19, 2025 | WND.com

For years, ITServe Alliance – made up of more than 2,200 outsourcing and labor-brokerage companies tied overwhelmingly to India's IT service pipeline – has portrayed itself as a defender of "local employment" while quietly waging an aggressive legal and lobbying campaign to dismantle safeguards designed to protect American workers from displacement and wage undercutting.

Through lawsuits, negotiated settlements and direct pressure on federal agencies, ITServe successfully forced rollbacks of enforcement tools that once limited third-party staffing abuse, curtailed misuse of OPT (Optional Practical Training, a controversial temporary employment program for foreign students) and required proof of legitimate employer-employee relationships. Those victories were framed as administrative corrections, but newly compiled evidence suggests the organization and its member companies used those wins not to comply with the law, but to evade it.

Read more.

Protesters at the NO KINGS protest on June 14 illegally marched in the street, blocking traffic. Council member Crystal Bast said:

“While the actions of the group did not escalate into violence or property destruction, their decision to become a moving parade— impeding traffic as they marched through downtown— was not conducted in accordance with Metro policies and must stop,” she said. “If there is a lack of interest in enforcing Metro’s laws and policies, we must immediately reassess their necessity.”

But protesters at the October 18 NO KINGS protest marched in the streets and it was legal.

On September 25 the Metro Council approved an ordinance that allows permitless protests in public parks and on city-owned streets, including street marches, as long as they are peaceful demonstrations related to protected First Amendment speech.

This change means that groups no longer need a parade permit to march in the street, provided they do not disrupt traffic to the point where there are no alternative routes for drivers and emergency personnel cannot access necessary areas.

The ordinance was sponsored by District 19 Council Member Anthony Piagentini, who emphasized that the law aims to align with how the mayor’s administration has been handing protest regulations, addressing inconsistencies in enforcement. The final language of the ordinance, amended during the meeting, ensures that permitless street protests are permitted as long as they do not cause gridlock. The measure passed unanimously, with Council Member J.P. Lyninger stating it represents "unquestionably an expansion of free speech rights" in Louisville.

We wonder if the LMPD views this new ordinance favorably.

An article in Louisville Public Media further explains the reason for the ordinance and sheds light on the final version.

Protests in public parks cannot disrupt “previously approved permitted uses of that same park.” And street protests cannot disrupt traffic to the point where there are no alternative routes for drivers and emergency personnel cannot go where they’re needed. The rules related to street protests do not apply to state-owned roads that Louisville doesn’t control.

Council members debated the exact language around regulating street protests.

District 6 Council Member J.P. Lyninger, a Democrat, raised concerns in committee about the original wording of Piagentini’s proposal, which required a permit for protests that disrupt traffic “in any manner.”

Lyninger said the final language, which was approved by amendment Thursday night, makes it clear that permitless street protests are OK as long as they aren’t causing gridlock.

“Councilman Piagentini was 100% willing to work with me on this amendment,” Lyninger said. “He stated over and over that that was the intent. If that’s the intent, then let's see it in the law.”

Lyninger ultimately voted in favor of the amended ordinance, which passed Metro Council unanimously. He said the measure is “unquestionably an expansion of free speech rights here in Louisville.”

Lyninger is a Democrat Socialist (aka, Marxist) and head of the Louisville DSA.

As of this writing, the new ordinance is not yet online for the public to read .

A difficulty with protests is paid participants. Some are furnished by leftist organizations. These are the ones who influence like-minded individuals to follow their lead. They will cause Louisville Metro to question this ordinance.