RFK goes nuclear on Democrats

Thank you very much.

So I'm so I'm 72 years old and for 70 years of my life I would have bet any amount of money that I would not be addressing a Republican convention.

[cheering]

The irony of my presence here is inescapable.

I attended my first Democratic convention in 1960 when I was six years old and I attended most of the Democratic conventions after that, and I spoke as a keynote speaker in many of them. I grew up in a Democratic party of Franklin Roosevelt, of my uncle John Kennedy, of my father Robert Kennedy, and ours was a party.

[applause and cheering]

Ours was a party of strong principles, of clear policies, and an inspiring idealistic vision for America. My uncle ran on a platform of tax cuts, strong defense, and fighting communism. Does that sound familiar?

[cheering]

[applause]

Oh, the Democrats of that era stood with labor and working people and the American middle class. Nearly every cop and firefighter was a Democrat. Our party was a champion of the Bill of Rights and particularly for unbridled free speech. It was wary of centralized government power and corporate privilege and secret intelligence agencies. My uncle and father understood the connection between free markets and functional democracy.

They stood firmly against crony capitalism on the right and socialism on the left. They were all for competition, for meritocracy, and for excellence, which they thought should be a universal aspiration for Americans.

My father and uncles had served in World War II and they understood the difference between forever wars that they opposed and wars to protect our national security which they believed we should never hesitated to defend. My family

[applause]

[cheering]

[applause]

My family played critical roles in building NIH and CDC into centers of gold standard science that transformed America into this relentless dynamo of international research. They promoted physical fitness and they protected women's sports.

My uncle Ted Kennedy wrote Title Nine, which because he wanted to make sure that women, real women, were able

[screaming]

[applause]

were able to have a safe and guaranteed spot in college sports.

And they stood with Israel as the full work of democracy

[applause and cheering]

and as a beacon for press and religious freedoms. A haven for oppress from oppression to gays and women and ethnic and religious minorities amidst a regional sea of intolerance, of misogyny, of child marriage, of human slavery, and of ethnic and religious genocide.

They saw Israel as America's most critical frontline ally in fighting the toxic ideology of Islamism,

[applause and cheering]

[applause]

which by its own accounts is waging an existential war against our country and against western liberal democracies.

It's an ideology that has subjugated impoverished and tyrannized and tortured the people of Palestine and the people of Iran, and they openly promised to do the same to us. Democrats opposed government coercion, defended individual rights, believe that government should give Americans information, good information, and then let them trust them to make up their own minds.

Democrats and labor leaders fought fiercely in my generation to stop illegal immigration at the border.

During Covid, I watched the Democratic Party turned against every one of its essential values, its principles, and all of the policies that define my party.

Democrats turned away from gold standard research and blindly defended industry sponsored agenda driven science written by corrupt and captive regulatory agencies.

[applause]

And the Democrats, which were once the champions of the American Constitution, systematically obliterated the Bill of Rights. And particularly beginning with the first amendment, under the guise of combating misinformation, Democrats censored hundreds of scientists and physicians who questioned the government's dubious COVID pronouncements and orthodoxies.

37 hours after President Biden took the oath of office, he ordered Facebook and Instagram to remove my accounts in order to prevent public debate.

I'm not complaining about what happened to me, but it was a bad thing for our country. Democrats obliterated the second leg of the first amendment, the right to the guaranteed right of assembly by social distancing regulations that were completely un-science-based.

Democrats violated the third leg of the first amendment, the freedom to worship.

They closed every church in our country for a year. Who could imagine that would have ever happened?

And they kept open the liquor stores and the big box stores as essential businesses.

Democrats torpedoed the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial by giving liability shields to the giant pharmaceutical companies. No matter how negligent they were, no matter how reckless, no matter how toxic the ingredients, no matter how grievous your injury, you could not sue them.

Democrats violated the Fifth Amendment by shutting down three million businesses with no due process and no just compensation.

Democrats shut down the Fourth Amendment, protection from unlawful searches and seizures by forcing Americans to disclose their medical information before they could exercise their constitutional rights.

In a single year, my party obliterated 250 years of constitutional guarantees. The only bill of right that they left unscathed was the second amendment and probably only because there is a second amendment.

[cheering]

[applause]

cheering]

[applause]

And then the party of my body, my choice for citizens to wear masks and to submit to invasive and intrusive medical interventions against their own wills.

The party of me too. Remember that we were all supposed to listen to women and to believe women. They silenced the voices of tens of thousands of mothers who believe that their children had suffered vaccine injuries.

[applause]

The Democrats declared war on women's sports, effectively destroying Title Nine. The Democrats condemned meritocracy openly and celebrated mediocrity.

The Democratic Party became the party of elites, labeling working Americans as deplorables.

Democratic cultivated deep ties with big pharma, big tech, big a big food, big insurance, and the mainstream media. They embraced policies that divided Americans along racial lines. They abolished my uncle's physical fitness test because they said that competition was bad for children.

The Democrats abandon all of these values and all of their traditional values, offering Americans only one policy. The one policy that they stood for, the unbridled sociopathic and blind hatred of a single man, Donald J. Trump.

[applause]

And they were so confident that Trump hatred alone was sufficient to win elections that they abandoned accountability and made our government a predatory organism of monumental incompetence and corruption.

[cheering]

[applause]

The Democrats dismantled the public integrity safeguards and open the floodgates to thieves and fraudsters who flee the American medical regulatory agencies for a hundred billion dollars annually during every year of the Biden administration. They somehow they somehow lost 360,000 children and they turned our federal government into the biggest child trafficking operation in world history.

The Democratic Party in short lost its way. I mourn the fact that neither my father nor my uncle would recognize the Democratic party of today.

[cheering and applause]

It struck me this was no longer about left and right. It was about sane and insane.

[cheering]

[applause]

It was about common sense and communism.

In April 2023, I ran for president hoping to summons my party back to its bedrock values. But the Democratic Party had lost faith in American voters and utterly ironically lost faith in American democracy. They were convinced that they would lose the ballot box. that couldn't win. And so they unveiled a lawfare strategy to prevent an election from occurring. They sued every candidate who dared to run against Joe Biden and then attempted to remove us all from the ballot. A lot of you think that the lawfare was just against Donald Trump. It was mainly against him. But they sued Dean Phillips. They sued Maryanne Williamson. They sued Cornell West. They sued Donald Trump 50 times in 38 states to remove him from the ballot.

And they sued me in 12 states to remove me from ballots where I had legally qualified. And then --this is almost comical-- After I endorsed President Trump and I tried to remove myself from the ballot so that he could have my votes, they sued me to keep me on the ballot.

[cheering]

[applause]

I'm not joking.

Oh, here was the Democratic Party that in my youth, the biggest issue that we had that my father and my uncle fought for was voting rights and particularly in the southern states to guarantee that every American had a right to cast a ballot. And here's that same party 60 years later using all of its ingenuity and all of its power to make sure that Americans could not vote for the candidates that they wanted to vote for.

They excluded me from the debates. They cancelled the primaries.

The Democratic Party changed the rules to make sure I could not win and neither could the other people who were running as Democrats. No matter how many votes we got and for the first time in history, they cancelled their own convention.

No voter ever cast a primary ballot for Kamala Harris. No elected delegate was ever consulted.

The party of no kings simply anointed a queen,

[cheering]

[applause]

[cheering]

[applause]

handpicked by secretive party elites and nobody even knows who they were.

Trump’s Top 25 Achievements: The List Every Conservative Should Know and Use

From the Twitter account of Rod Martin, Founder/CEO, Martin Capital- "Philosopher Capitalist". Christian, Anti-Communist. Part of the team that started PayPal

Donald Trump doesn’t have an accomplishment problem. Republicans have an information problem. It’s on each of us to change that.

With the midterms coming, an astonishing number of Republican voters cannot name three things President Trump has accomplished. Which is remarkable when you consider that Donald Trump has accomplished more in a year and a half than any other president ever did in four.

Indeed, he has accomplished so much, so fast, across so many fronts that most people cannot keep up. The Enemedia buries the victories, while Republicans do an abysmal job of explaining them.

So here is the cheat sheet. It barely scratches the surface. And yet each and every item here is a game-changer, and your befuddled black-pilling friends need to know it.

This is not a list of promises. It’s a list of laws enacted, cases won, policies implemented, agreements secured, and measurable results.

You don’t have to memorize all 25. Learn five. And when somebody says Trump “hasn’t done much,” show them the receipts.

Trump Restored American Safety and Sovereignty

1. He made the border a real border again.

In a matter of months, Trump reduced illegal border crossings to their lowest level in half a century. Catch-and-release is finished. The wall is going up and even being expanded, “Remain in Mexico” is back, and the Administration reduced releases into the country by an incredible 99.9 percent.

2. He reversed mass migration.

America recorded negative net migration in 2025 for the first time in at least half a century. So far, nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the country, whether voluntarily or involuntarily: more than 675,000 forcibly deported and the rest “self-deported.”

Many of those self-deportations were facilitated by the President’s innovative program to offer plane tickets and cash bonuses for illegals to leave, not only incentivizing good behavior but significantly reducing the cost of deportations. Citizenship and the law actually mean something again.

3. He signed the Laken Riley Act — and required detention of criminal illegal aliens.

Named for an innocent girl murdered by an illegal alien, the Laken Riley Act requires federal authorities to detain illegals arrested for theft, burglary, shoplifting, assaulting police, or any crime causing death or serious injury. It also lets states sue officials who refuse to enforce it.

Laken Riley should still be alive. This law will prevent tragedies like hers.

4. History’s biggest drop in violent crime, and the lowest violent crime rate in 126 years.

According to FBI data, violent crime in America dropped an incredible 9.7 percent in 2025 — the largest one-year decline in history. Murder fell 18.1 percent, robbery fell 18.5 percent. And America’s violent crime rate is its lowest since 1900.

This is what happens when you put the National Guard on the streets in crime-ridden blue cities: fewer victims, safer streets, and better futures for America’s poorest.

Trump Launched an American Industrial Supercycle

5. He made the 2017 tax cuts permanent…and better.

The One Big Beautiful Bill locked in the largest tax cut in modern history, including the doubled standard deduction, the expanded Child Tax Credit, and 100 percent expensing for factories and equipment. It also delivered No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, an abolition of most taxes on Social Security benefits, and major relief for seniors.

Every Democrat voted no. With the 2017 act set to expire in December 2025, that would have resulted in the largest tax hike in American history.

6. He repealed 129 regulations for every new one.

In fiscal 2025, federal agencies finalized 646 deregulatory actions and just five regulatory actions: 129-to-1, and in nearly every case, the “one” was to repeal the others! OIRA says the savings exceeded those of Trump’s entire first term. That is more freedom, lower costs, and less bureaucratic sabotage.

Of these, the crown jewel was the repeal of Obama’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding”, the legal foundation for the Green New Scam’s vehicle mandates. EPA calls it the largest deregulatory action in American history and estimates that by itself, it will save Americans more than $1.3 trillion. Trump also killed the federal EV mandate, restored Americans’ freedom to buy the cars and trucks they actually want, and even eliminated the incentives behind the almost universally hated start-stop button.

7. He secured $18 trillion in announced investment commitments.

That’s nearly two-thirds the size of the entire American economy, building American factories, chip plants, data centers, energy projects, steel mills, shipyards, and supply chains employing American workers. Apple, Meta, NVIDIA, Micron, Hyundai, U.S. Steel, Ford, Taiwan Semiconductor, and many corporations and sovereign wealth funds are betting big on Trump’s America. 

No President has ever done anything remotely like it. And it’s just getting started.

8. He made “reshoring” and “reindustrialization” real, not a slogan.

Ford is moving Lincoln production out of China. Toyota is shifting Tacoma production from Mexico to Texas. GM, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and others are expanding U.S. production. The capital equipment pouring into the country is the machinery that’s building the growing boom.

9. He replaced lopsided trade deals with balanced, reciprocal trade.

Trump used tariffs as leverage to reverse 80 years of lopsided trade deals that favored everyone but America, and to win new or improved agreements with trading partners accounting for more than half of global GDP. Those agreements open foreign markets, attack non-tariff barriers, defend strategic industries, and make it more profitable to build in America than to export American jobs.

10. He shifted global energy dominance from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of America.

Once the world’s largest energy importer — “exporting” $700 billion a year to our enemies — America now outproduces Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. The U.S. is also setting new records in oil, natural gas, and LNG exports, becoming the first country ever to export more than 100 million metric tons of LNG in a year.

Trump also opened land, accelerated permits, expanded pipelines and export terminals, and made American energy a tool for prosperity and peace.

11. After four decades of nuclear paralysis, Trump brought five new reactors online in a single year.

For more than 40 years, not one new privately developed non-light-water reactor reached criticality in America. Trump ordered at least three by July 4, 2026. DOE delivered four by the deadline, then a fifth just one month later.

Decades of zero. One Trump summer: five. That is a genuine nuclear renaissance.

Trump Made Elections Matter Again

12. He broke the Deep State’s power to defy the elected branches.

In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time in 90 years that Article 2, Section 1 is still part of the Constitution: the President may fire subordinate officials in the executive branch, overturning the 1935 precedent that insulated “independent” agencies from voters’ control.

Ever wonder why elections often seem to change nothing? How about one President and 5,000 political appointees vs. 2.8 million unfireable, unaccountable bureaucrats? THAT is the “Deep State”.

Trump then made that victory real. For the first time in a century, all policy-making bureaucrats can now be fired for misconduct, incompetence, or defying lawful directives. The permanent bureaucracy no longer gets to veto the voters.

13. He ended nationwide injunction abuse.

In Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court sharply limited nationwide injunctions. A single, local, district judge should not be able to block a national policy for everyone, everywhere; and yet that’s exactly what they’ve done, nonstop, ever since Trump (and only Trump) took office in 2017. 

In restricting that unconstitutional power, the Court kneecapped the Black Robe Bureaucracy’s favorite tool of unlawful judicial supremacy.

14. He shut down USAID as a left-wing slush fund and shadow government.

USAID had become a taxpayer-funded machine for exporting abortion, gender ideology, censorship, and left-wing politics. It had a bigger budget than the CIA and the State Department combined, absolutely no accountability whatsoever, and a penchant for overthrowing governments.

Trump terminated it — completely — and moved real humanitarian aid under the State Department. Immediately, seven socialist Latin American governments lost re-election. Coincidence?

15. He shrank Federal employment to its lowest level in 60 years.

From a high under Biden, the federal workforce is now its smallest since 1966. Workforce reductions, agency closures, and spending cancellations mean fewer bureaucrats paid to resist the voters.

What’s more, when Biden left office, 94 percent of federal employees “worked” from home. The Trump administration cracked down: as Elon Musk put it, “you can work from the office or you can pretend to work somewhere else.”

16. He expelled DEI from the federal government.

Trump eliminated federal DEI offices and barred race- and sex-based preferences across the executive branch. Government hiring and contracting are returning to merit and equality under the law, ending the grotesque Democrat idea that “fighting discrimination” requires the federal government to discriminate.

He Defended Faith and Family

17. He delivered sweeping pro-life reform.

In his first term, Trump delivered the judges that overturned the abominable Roe v. Wade. Hardly anyone believed it could be done, or that Trump would do it. But he did, and a half-century nightmare finally ended.

Since returning to office, Trump has enforced the Hyde Amendment prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy prohibiting federal funding of foreign abortions, ended federal fetal-tissue research, strengthened conscience protections, protected Medicaid from funding large abortion providers, and pardoned 23 pro-life activists prosecuted by Biden’s weaponized Justice Department.

He’s also done everything within the Executive Branch’s power to defund Planned Parenthood. It would be nice if Congress did likewise.

No President has ever done more to protect life. No one.

18. He got men out of women’s sports, and restored biological reality to federal policy.

The United States government once again officially recognizes two sexes: male and female. Trump ended federal support for the chemical and surgical gender mutilation of children, stopped taxpayer funding of such irreversible abominations, and forced more than three dozen health systems to end or suspend their programs as well.

Trump also enforced Title IX as written: women and girls deserve their own teams, trophies, scholarships, and locker rooms. The NCAA and other athletic organizations changed their rules in response. After years of Democrats doing everything they could to destroy women’s sports and ruin girls’ lives, Trump’s administration protects women and girls again.

19. He enacted America’s first nationwide school-choice program — and launched Trump Accounts.

As part of the President’s One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump enacted America’s first-ever nationwide school choice program. The new Education Freedom Tax Credit helps fund scholarships for tuition, books, and other educational costs.

That’s on top of the new Trump Accounts, which give every child a tax-advantaged stake in America’s future, including a $1,000 federal seed for eligible newborns. Parents gain power. Bureaucracies lose it. And children learn first-hand about free markets and future orientation.

20. He targeted anti-Christian bias and discrimination.

Trump created the White House Faith Office, Religious Liberty Commission, and Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. He restored conscience protections and made clear that Christians do not surrender their First Amendment rights merely by entering public life.

He Restored Peace Through Strength and Put America First

21. He forced NATO to stop freeloading and increase defense spending by 250 percent.

For decades, wealthy European governments underfunded their militaries, effectively sending America the bill and using American taxpayers to subsidize their bloated welfare states. Trump forced NATO to replace its old two-percent-of-GDP spending target with an enormous five percent by 2035.

Allied spending is rising, American defense orders are soaring, and Europe is becoming a partner instead of a dependent.

22. He drove China out of the Caribbean.

China spent years building strategic beachheads at both ends of the Panama Canal, in Cuba, and in Maduro’s Venezuela. Trump forced Panama out of Belt and Road, expanded American security access around the Canal, and captured Maduro, who now sits in a New York jail cell awaiting trial.

Beijing’s planned encirclement of the United States collapsed. The Monroe Doctrine is back. Call it the Donroe Doctrine.

23. He brokered eight peace deals in just eight months.

In eight months, Trump brokered peace in eight conflicts spanning four continents, including wars that had gone on for as much as 40 years. It’s a record unmatched by any other President.

24. He launched and funded Golden Dome, the first-ever true missile defense for the U.S. population.

Ronald Reagan dreamed of making nuclear missiles obsolete through his Strategic Defense Initiative. Today, Trump is actually building it: a layered homeland shield with space-based sensors and interceptors, conventional defenses, and new technologies including microwave systems to destroy drone swarms and directed-energy weapons (yes, lasers) that can replace an $11 million missile with $2 of electricity.

Congress has funded the initial $25 billion, with far more on the way once it passes the NDAA this fall. Better a shield than a sword.

25. He restored the warrior ethos — and reversed the recruiting crisis.

After years of missed targets under Biden, every active military component met or exceeded its 2025 recruiting goal. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refocused the newly renamed Department of War on actually winning wars, while pouring resources into shipbuilding, munitions, drones, missile defense, and America’s atrophied industrial base.

Young Americans once again believe their Commander-in-Chief is worth serving. And they’re showing up en masse.

Read more.

James Fishback

Article on X by James Fishback, 2026 candidate for Florida governor

It's not “DEI” to want American jobs for qualified Americans.

My generation and younger are staring down an existential threat. The entry-level jobs that were once a starting point for young Americans are disappearing, not just to artificial intelligence, but a different kind of A.I.: arrogant immigration. The arrogance of companies like Amazon, which last year got approval for 10,044 H-1B foreign workers, and fired 30,000 of its own workers.

Americans can accept losing their job to a recession or to an American who is more qualified. What Americans cannot (and should not) accept is losing opportunities to a system that elevates foreign nationals who share neither a role in our history nor a stake in our future.

At its core, a nation exists to serve, protect, and defend its citizens, and so long as a system allows 1.3 million H-1B workers and their dependents and 1.2 million foreign students to compete for the same opportunities as American citizens, our nation is not living up to its commitments.

It is time for America to become what I call a “nationalist meritocracy.”

A nationalist meritocracy is a system in which a nation's opportunities go to its most qualified citizens. It’s different from today's system, in which a nation’s opportunities are open to the entire globe. I call today’s system a “globalist meritocracy.”

Under a globalist meritocracy, an American citizen and foreign national are treated the same.

An American who has worked at the same company for 20 years can be fired in an instant solely because the company got an H-1B visa to hire someone in Mumbai who can do the job "better," and by "better," they almost always mean cheaper. In fact, 83% of H-1B petitions sit in the two lowest wage tiers, according to a 2025 Department of Homeland Security analysis.

Even if a foreign worker were the same price but 10% more qualified, it would still be unacceptable.

Think of it this way: If a charter elementary school in New York began admitting top test takers in India or China, and denied your child, who had the best score in town but scored 10 points lower than an admitted foreign student, you'd be livid, and rightly so.

Even staunch proponents of “pure meritocracy” would admit it's messed up to pass up qualified kids from down the street only to admit slightly more qualified kids halfway across the world.

It’s not “DEI” to believe that every meritocracy should have a border drawn around it. The charter school’s border should be at city or state lines, and our admissions pool or labor market should be at our national border.

In a nationalist meritocracy, we don't care whether a foreign student scores 50 points better on the SAT. We proudly deny them and admit the American instead.

Why? It’s our nation, we helped build it, and we pay for the very opportunities that we (or our posterity) seek. Public universities are funded by taxpayers; private universities receive research grants from taxpayers; and American companies’ customers are predominantly American and they too receive taxpayer dollars via government contracts.

The moral case for a nationalist meritocracy is obvious: put Americans first because it’s our country and we paid for it. But the economic case is just as important.

The limited gains of our present globalist meritocracy are privatized: companies pocket the labor cost savings between American and cheaper foreign workers and universities make more on foreign vs. domestic tuition. But the losses are socialized, and they are enormous.

A nation that allows opportunities to go to foreign nationals instead of qualified citizens will find citizens without work and reliant on government.

Taxpayers must foot the bill for unemployment benefits, food stamps, and healthcare for the unemployed, and as unemployment persists, the unemployed become increasingly unemployable because they’ve been out of the labor market too long and their skills have atrophied. They will be out of work, with little savings or stability. If they have kids, they too will suffer. If they haven’t started a family yet, they may never.

They will be susceptible to the loneliness, depression, and addiction that often afflicts those who struggle to secure meaningful, gainful employment.

A nationalist meritocracy can fix this by fighting to make sure opportunities almost exclusively go to American citizens, with narrow exceptions like the O-1 visa, reserved for people of extraordinary ability at the very top of a field.

If an American company is building a new kind of nuclear reactor and only 30 people in the world can do it, then obviously let them in.

Opposition to foreign workers is often straw-manned into opposition to technological progress. But how can that be when 8 out of 10 H-1B petitions sit in the two lowest wage tiers?

Half of Walmart’s H-1B positions are below the local median wage. Nearly half of Uber’s software engineer H-1B positions are at the second-lowest wage tier.

Companies pushing the frontiers technological progress don’t important cheap programmers from India.

A nationalist meritocracy is a brutal competition that should be race-blind and class-blind. The most qualified American should get picked, regardless of what they look like or how they pray. The key difference is that in a nationalist meritocracy the competition is exclusively among American citizens.

There can and should still be international cooperation: exchange students from allied nations for a semester, so long as it's reciprocated, along with bilateral research projects and regional partnerships. Global cooperation is possible without surrendering your sovereignty.

At its core, a meritocracy is a competition, but who gets to compete in the first place is a question we must urgently answer: a meritocracy for our nation, or for the entire globe? A sovereign nation has an obligation to answer it in favor of its own citizens.

James T. Fishback is the Founder of Azoria, an American investment firm.

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.

---

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?