This year started with uncovering the undue influence of the shadow government in

Georgia’s Medicaid procurement process.

What should have been an apolitical and competitive bid to provide Georgians the best healthcare possible became a political litmus test corrupted by the National Association of Medicaid Directors. There, Chief Health Policy Advisor and then President-Elect of the NAMD, Lynnete Rhodes, altered questions in their procurement process to award contracts based on left-wing ideological litmus tests. These questions ranged from race-based DEI adherence to even loyalty tests to break Georgia law with respect to child transgender treatment.

As a result of this undue influence, the Georgia Medicaid procurement process has totally broken down, and what was initially meant to be implemented in 2025 has been stalled until July 2027 due to ongoing litigation. SLI is continuing its work in Georgia to raise awareness with leaders and legislators over the malevolent influence of the shadow government.

But this work doesn’t just stop with reports and awareness; earlier this year SLI worked with leaders in Louisiana and the Federal Office of Management and Budget to strike against the shadow government. Working with Louisiana leaders, the state withdrew from the Association of State Territorial Health Officers, another shadow government organization that worked with the Biden administration and then chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci to promote mass censorship during the Covid response. Meanwhile, in May of this year, OMB included a provision from SLI for a rules change that would “prohibit using federal funds to engage in issue advocacy or public messaging that promotes or opposes a particular social, political, or public policy position unrelated to the statutory objectives or performance requirements of the federal award, including messaging designed to influence public attitudes on matters not necessary to accomplish the purpose of the federal award.” This rule change would deal a crucial blow to federal funds in states being used by lobbying and shadow government groups.

These successes are just the beginning as SLI looks forward to the rest of 2026 and through 2027.

Moving on from shadow government work, we have made a crucial impact in cutting the waste and abuse in state governments across the country. During the 2026 legislative sessions, both Indiana and West Virginia passed substantial cuts to boards and commissions, informed by SLI’s analysis. Identity-based entities like the “Commission on Aging” in West Virginia and the “Commission on the Social Status of Black Males” in Indiana were abolished, freeing your tax dollars from defunct and useless government waste.

This was only the first of our work in bringing good governance to red states. Following our board and commission success, we embedded two of our own as volunteer special government employees for Florida’s DOGE program. There, not only did SLI help Florida DOGE identify waste and abuse with government payments to pointless left-wing-driven shadow government non-profits, but also, in collaboration with Florida DOGE, SLI created the State DOGE Playbook. A step-by-step guide on how to DOGE a state based on their incredibly successful model launched at our Florida DOGE Showcase event in Washington DC.

As we move into August, we at the State Leadership Initiative want to share some of our incredible progress delivering foundational reform to red states in 2026. From reining in rogue blue cities with receivership in Texas to creating the foundational model to bring government efficiency to your state, SLI has been hard at work ensuring that red states are prepared to lead the way in 2027.

This year started with uncovering the undue influence of the shadow government in

Georgia’s Medicaid procurement process.

What should have been an apolitical and competitive bid to provide Georgians the best healthcare possible became a political litmus test corrupted by the National Association of Medicaid Directors. There, Chief Health Policy Advisor and then President-Elect of the NAMD, Lynnete Rhodes, altered questions in their procurement process to award contracts based on left-wing ideological litmus tests. These questions ranged from race-based DEI adherence to even loyalty tests to break Georgia law with respect to child transgender treatment.

As a result of this undue influence, the Georgia Medicaid procurement process has totally broken down, and what was initially meant to be implemented in 2025 has been

stalled until July 2027

due to ongoing litigation. SLI is continuing its work in Georgia to raise awareness with leaders and legislators over the malevolent influence of the shadow government.

But this work doesn’t just stop with reports and awareness; earlier this year SLI worked with leaders in Louisiana and the Federal Office of Management and Budget to strike against the shadow government. Working with Louisiana leaders, the state withdrew from the Association of State Territorial Health Officers, another shadow government organization that worked with the Biden administration and then chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci to

promote mass censorship

during the Covid response. Meanwhile, in May of this year, OMB included a provision from SLI for a

rules change

that would “prohibit using federal funds to engage in issue advocacy or public messaging that promotes or opposes a particular social, political, or public policy position unrelated to the statutory objectives or performance requirements of the federal award, including messaging designed to influence public attitudes on matters not necessary to accomplish the purpose of the federal award.” This rule change would deal a crucial blow to federal funds in states being used by lobbying and shadow government groups.

These successes are just the beginning as SLI looks forward to the rest of 2026 and through 2027.

Moving on from shadow government work, we have made a crucial impact in cutting the waste and abuse in state governments across the country. During the 2026 legislative sessions, both

Indiana

and

West Virginia

passed substantial cuts to boards and commissions, informed by SLI’s analysis. Identity-based entities like the “Commission on Aging” in West Virginia and the “Commission on the Social Status of Black Males” in Indiana were abolished, freeing your tax dollars from defunct and useless government waste.

This was only the first of our work in bringing good governance to red states. Following our board and commission success, we embedded two of our own as volunteer special government employees for Florida’s DOGE program. There, not only did SLI help Florida DOGE identify waste and abuse with government payments to pointless left-wing-driven shadow government non-profits, but also, in collaboration with Florida DOGE, SLI created the State DOGE Playbook. A step-by-step guide on how to DOGE a state based on their incredibly successful model launched at our Florida DOGE Showcase event in Washington DC.

This leads us to our most exciting new initiative tackling the problem of blue islands in red seas. Receivership.

Receivership is the most powerful tool any state can use to rein in failing municipalities. Across the country, every red state has a blue city with a DA that refuses to prosecute crime, city councils that over regulate exacerbating the housing crisis, high taxes out of line with state policy, and much worse. These city governments wage wars on the rest of the state and use everyday Americans as collateral damage. This can end, and it will end, starting with Texas.

For years Texan representatives have been working on creative solutions to stop the crime and destruction plaguing cities like Dallas and Houston. Most notably, these efforts were realized in 2023 through HB2127, known as the “Death Star Bill,” and HB17, which allowed the state to remove rogue prosecutors. However, both of these bills have hit legal challenges thwarting their effectiveness. This is where receivership is different. It’s been upheld multiple times in the Supreme Court and was most notably functional receivership was used in Detroit to get the city back on track after facing insolvency. It’s proven, it’s effective, and it’s now in Texas.

In June of this year, SLI deployed to Texas with a single mission: to get receivership on the GOP platform for the upcoming legislative session, and we are proud to say that we were successful. Municipal receivership is officially on the Texas GOP platform and has support from the House majority leader and organizations across the state.

These are just a few of the wins SLI has produced in 2026, not including the release of our Corporate Welfare report exposing how Red states are handing billions to companies that hate their constituents, paired with the publication of our Fiduciary Duty Law Review article, which lays the legal groundwork for changing how Red states do business with private partners.

The first half of 2026 has been an incredible year with astounding accomplishments, and we are only getting started.

On July 14, the State Leadership Initiative was honored to host the Florida DOGE team and their tech partners, Vulcan, Echelon, and DigiBuild, for the Florida DOGE Showcase in Washington, D.C. Spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, the state has become the leader for providing accountable and efficient governance to its citizens.

Since its creation in 2025, the Florida DOGE team has identified nearly $1 billion in waste and abuse at the local government level and sent over $878 million back to the federal government. But the team’s work extends beyond fiscal savings and budgetary cuts—it also includes auditing university curriculum and state union programs and reining in rogue municipalities that had adopted woke-left policies.

Take Florida’s SB 1134, which banned counties and municipalities from using government funds for discriminatory DEI programs and activities. Florida DOGE found that local governments were forcing employees to undergo “Transgender Humility” training, which included the use of a “wheel of power/privilege” that singled out certain ethnic groups as being worse than others. In some extreme cases, the team found that local governments were directing taxpayer dollars to immigration lawyers who represented criminal illegal aliens. All of this was identified by Florida DOGE and prohibited by law.

This ideological audit was most prevalent in universities, where the team examined over 74,000 syllabi and 100,000 research articles for left-wing ideological content. Funding for these DEI-related activities was effectively halted through SB 266 and SB 7044. While the federal DOGE program failed to codify reform through legislation, Florida DOGE succeeded.

Florida DOGE has proven it is the model to emulate. The next step is to provide the blueprint for bringing it to other states.

Enter the State DOGE Playbook, a collaborative effort between the State Leadership Initiative and the Florida DOGE team. This is a step-by-step guide to ensure that these reforms are not merely a temporary win for a single executive’s tenure, but a long-term fundamental shift in how red states govern.

Instead of Elon Musk drawing from his own stable of engineers, Florida hired volunteers and tech-minded interns to leverage new technologies to conduct investigations and root out waste and ideological indoctrination previously unheard of at the state level. Many of Florida DOGE’s accomplishments were secured with a team of only three full-time employees, supplemented by a staff Florida put together. SLI is proud to be part of this effort; we even sent two of our own to act as special government employees, at no cost to the state, to help identify shadow government organizations funded by the state, local governments, and universities.

All that’s needed are a few liaisons for law enforcement and legislators, and the rest is bulk data analysis. Add to this that Florida DOGE implemented these reforms on just a six-figure budget. Rarely have government initiatives accomplished so much in such a cost-effective manner.

None of these accomplishments would’ve been possible without the power of new AI tools and data-analysis technologies provided by three partners: Echelon, Vulcan Technologies, and DigiBuild. While varying in scope, each was instrumental in identifying waste and abuse during the audits, leading to the most significant reforms in Florida.

Echelon was used to analyze spending and waste in the Lee County school district. Florida DOGE identified up to $80 million in potential savings through contract reviews and more than $8 million in savings by eliminating 170 unnecessary positions spanning 30 departments. Programs like this can restore public schools to their proper mission rather than serving as a patronage scheme for overeducated administrative staff.

Vulcan Technologies was utilized to conduct top-to-bottom payment transaction audits across the state. It was so effective that local governments throughout Florida are implementing it to find opportunities for savings. In a time when property taxes are a dominant issue among voters, AI and DOGE principles are bridging the gap, fulfilling the public’s demand for making cuts and providing the services local governments owe their citizens.

Many other states have similar programs. Texas’s Office of Regulatory Efficiency has generated over 400 reductions in administrative code, and Oklahoma’s DOGE office has produced over $19 million in cuts. But Florida’s success remains unparalleled, and SLI’s State DOGE Playbook explains how to emulate its success.

Blue states across the country continue to bankrupt themselves by allowing endless fraud and overfunded programs that never deliver on their promises. It’s not enough for red states to avoid these pitfalls—red states need to match Florida’s pace and provide the governance their citizens deserve. With this playbook, there are no more excuses, only the will to act.

I’m a public affairs consultant. I’ve spent my career watching institutions make decisions and helping people navigate the consequences. I know how bureaucracies work. I know how they protect themselves. And I know — maybe better than most — the distance between what an institution says it’s doing and what it’s actually doing.

I’m also a Clevelander. Third-generation. I left, the way a lot of us leave, and then I came back — deliberately, eight years ago — because I love this city. I watched the Browns go 1-31. I was there for the 1. I stayed. That’s not a credential. That’s just context for what I’m about to say: I am not someone who gives up on Cleveland easily, and I am not writing this out of contempt. I’m writing this because I’m furious, and I think you should be too.

I want to be clear about where I stand before I make my argument, because this is the kind of issue where people hide their priors in the footnotes.

I went to St. Ignatius. I got a Jesuit education — rigorous, demanding, the kind that opens doors and expects you to walk through them. My parents made choices and sacrifices that put me there, and I am aware, every time I think about this issue, that not every family in Cleveland gets to make that choice. That awareness is not guilt. It is the whole point.

I believe in school choice. Full stop. I believe that every parent — rich, poor, in East Cleveland or in Lorain — should have the power to put their child in a school that works. I believe a well-designed voucher program is the most direct, most honest, most equitable solution to the crisis I’m about to describe. If we gave every child in Lorain City Schools the $17,598 the district currently spends per student and let families direct it wherever they believed their kids would learn — that would be my first choice. Today. Before lunch.¹ Every kid deserves what I had. That is not a complicated position. It is the only position that takes seriously the idea that children’s futures are not negotiable.

Ohio has a voucher program — EdChoice — and I want to say plainly: I’m for it. I want it to succeed. The right answer, the answer I’d fight for in Columbus tomorrow, is to raise the voucher amount until the gap between what the state provides and what a school like St. Ignatius costs simply disappears. Make class irrelevant to educational opportunity. That is the policy I want. Fully fund the promise.

But we haven’t done that yet. And in the gap between the promise and the reality people live. That is what I’m most worried about — what I’d call the tragic tweeners. Not the families wealthy enough to bridge a $10,000 shortfall without blinking. Not the families poor enough to qualify for additional assistance. The working men and women in the middle: the Lorain family making $52,749 a year — the city’s median income — who can get an EdChoice voucher for $8,408 toward high school tuition, and then open the St. Ignatius website and see a number closer to $20,000.²² That gap — call it $10,000, $12,000, more depending on the school — isn’t covered by anything. For a family running two jobs and watching the electric bill, it might as well be $10 million. The voucher is real. The escape hatch, for them, is not.

Some will argue the answer is simply to raise the voucher, and they’re right — that’s exactly what we should do. But until Ohio gets there, those families are still trapped. And when families are trapped, accountability isn’t optional. It’s the only protection they have. The deal, then, is this: if the state of Ohio is going to define a child’s educational options by their ZIP code — if geography is destiny, if the boundary line drawn around Lorain or Ashtabula or Elyria determines what classroom your kid sits in — then the people running those classrooms are accountable. Not in the vague, press-release way. Not in the way where you miss the target for a decade, issue a statement about challenges and trajectories, and collect your salary. Accountable in the way that means something. Accountable in the way that costs something.

Because right now? It costs them nothing. And it costs our kids their future.

Here’s what a decade of failure looks like in Northeast Ohio.

Lorain City Schools has failed to reach Ohio’s minimum 3-star threshold every year since the state adopted its current rating system.² The current report card puts the district at 2 stars — the state’s official designation for “needs support to meet state standards” — its lowest score since overall ratings began, and the third-lowest rating in all of Ohio.³ The district has been under some form of state oversight for academic failure since 2013 — more than a decade of documented, formally recognized failure.⁴ Half of Lorain’s students score at the lowest possible achievement level on state tests.⁵ One in four can read at grade level.⁶ Fewer than one in five can do grade-level math.⁷ Fifty-nine point two percent of students are chronically absent — the highest rate of any school district in the entire state of Ohio.⁸ The district ranks dead last among all 607 Ohio school districts on the performance index.⁹ Dead. Last.

Ashtabula Area City Schools: approximately 76% graduation rate.¹⁰ Around 30% math proficiency.¹¹ Two stars across every single component the state measures for all three years it has issued overall ratings.¹² Elyria City Schools: a graduation rate that has fallen from 85% to 79% over five years.¹³ Seventeen percent math proficiency at the high school level.¹⁴

These are not bad years. These are not pandemic anomalies. Lorain has been in some form of state-recognized academic failure since 2013. Ashtabula and Elyria have been rated below minimum standard in every year Ohio has formally measured them under the current system — and have continued to receive public money, employ administrators, and make decisions about the futures of children who had no say in the matter.

Now do the math on what that actually means in human terms.

Lorain’s class of 2024: 432 students walked across the stage.¹⁵ About 100 more didn’t make it to graduation at all.¹⁶ The ones who did graduate — 432 kids in caps and gowns — did so having spent twelve years in a system where, statistically, three-quarters of them never learned to read proficiently and four-fifths never achieved math proficiency. They have diplomas. What they don’t have, in most cases, is the preparation those diplomas are supposed to represent.¹⁷

Multiply that by ten years. That’s more than 4,000 graduates carrying credentials that the state’s own data says were built on a foundation of inadequate instruction — and roughly 1,000 kids who didn’t graduate at all. Add Ashtabula and Elyria, and you’re looking at another 500 or more kids per year who didn’t finish, from districts that have been rated below standard every year Ohio has measured them.

These aren’t statistics. These are people. They are twenty-two years old right now, trying to get a job, trying to rent an apartment, trying to build a life, carrying the compounding consequences of decisions made by adults they never elected, in institutions they never chose, that failed them quietly and completely and faced no meaningful consequence for doing so.

The economic literature on this is not subtle. A student who doesn’t graduate high school will earn, over a lifetime, approximately $260,000 less than one who does.¹⁸ A student who graduates without genuine literacy and numeracy earns less than that, is more likely to cycle through low-wage work, more likely to rely on public assistance, more likely to have children who enter the same failing schools that failed them. The damage doesn’t stop at graduation. It compounds. It passes that systematic failure onto another generation.

Over ten years, across these three districts alone, we are talking about billions of dollars in suppressed lifetime earnings, elevated social service costs, reduced tax base — and that is before you try to quantify what it costs a person to be told, implicitly, by every test score and every closed door, that they weren’t worth the effort.

The superintendents have had their chances. The school boards have had their chances. Ohio’s Academic Distress Commission — the state’s existing mechanism for intervening in chronically failing districts — has had its chances.¹⁹ East Cleveland, to its credit, has started to turn.²⁰ The rest have not.

So here is the argument, stated plainly: any Ohio school district that fails to meet statewide minimum performance standards for ten consecutive years should enter receivership. The state takes operational control. The superintendent answers to a state-appointed receiver with full authority to hire, fire, restructure, and reform. The school board retains advisory status and nothing more. The receiver operates on a defined timeline with defined benchmarks. If those benchmarks are met, local control returns. If they are not, the state continues to hold the wheel.

This is not a radical idea. It is what happens when a city can’t pay its bills. It is what happens when a hospital fails its accreditation. It is what happens in every other domain where the public trust has been broken and the public pays the cost. We do not let institutions fail indefinitely in most areas of public life. We intervene. We restructure. We hold someone accountable.

The objection I hear most often is that state takeovers don’t work — that state-run districts haven’t consistently outperformed locally-run ones, that the research is mixed, that you’re just swapping one bureaucracy for another. Sure, the record is genuinely complicated. But here’s what I know: a decade of locally-controlled failure is not an argument for the status quo. It is an argument that the status quo has already failed, and the people most harmed by it deserve something different…even if “different” isn’t guaranteed success. When the choice is between possible failure and ten years of proven failure, it’s an easy decision.

There’s a famous quote “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.” I don’t think that’s true, but I heard a different version of this quote recently, and it applies here “insanity is doing the same thing, knowing it’s a bad idea, and not caring.” What we’re doing is insane by either definition, but worse, by the second.

The other objection is local control. Democracy. The right of communities to govern themselves. I believe in that too. But local control is not a suicide pact. It is not an unlimited license to deliver 17% math proficiency to children who never voted for anyone on that school board and cannot opt out.²¹ When the social contract includes mandatory attendance and ZIP-code-assigned schools, local control carries local responsibility. You get one, you get the other. A decade of failing the children you were entrusted to educate is not governance. It is abandonment. And abandonment has consequences.

I want school choice. I want every family in Lorain and Ashtabula and Elyria to have the same options that families in Solon and Chagrin Falls have always quietly enjoyed. I want the conversation we’re having right now to become unnecessary because no child is trapped in a district by accident of birth.

But until that day — until Ohio builds a system where parents, not ZIP codes, decide where children learn — the people running these institutions owe those children something. They have owed it for ten years. They have not delivered.

It is time for someone else to be in charge.

Footnotes

¹ Per-pupil expenditure of $17,598 for Lorain City Schools. Source: U.S. News & World Report, citing Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (ODEW) fiscal data. https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/ohio/districts/lorain-city-108706

² Ohio’s current 5-star overall rating system was established by House Bill 82 (signed June 2021, effective September 30, 2021). Overall district ratings were first issued for the 2022-23 school year; the 2021-22 report card issued component ratings only and carried no overall rating. Lorain’s overall ratings: 2022-23: 2 stars (News5Cleveland, September 14, 2023); 2023-24: 2.5 stars (Lorain Daily, September 15, 2025); 2024-25: 2 stars (WKYC, September 15, 2025). In all three years, the district fell below the 3-star minimum standard. Source: Ohio School Boards Association, https://www.ohioschoolboards.org/taxonomy/term/334; News5Cleveland, https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/how-well-did-your-school-do-ohio-releases-2022-2023-school-report-cards

³ “Lorain actually getting saddled with the third-worst rating in all of Ohio.” WKYC, “Ohio Department of Education and Workforce releases 2024-25 school report cards,” September 15, 2025. https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/education/education-station/ohio-department-of-education-2024-25-report-cards-cleveland-akron-canton-northeast-ohio-schools/95-94f3ab04-0858-42d0-92d7-2aab412db6d5. Official state definition of 2-star rating: “Needs Support to Meet State Standards.” Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, 2024-25 Report Card Guide. https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Data/Report-Card-Resources/Traditional-Report-Cards/2024-2025-Report-Card-Guide.pdf.aspx

⁴ Lorain City Schools first entered Academic Distress Commission oversight in 2013. Under Ohio House Bill 70 (2015), the ADC was restructured and the school board’s powers were transferred to a state-appointed CEO. In 2021, the board regained its superintendent under a state-supervised improvement plan. The ADC was dissolved by state budget amendment in 2023. “In 2023, through an amendment tucked into the biennial budget, Ohio lawmakers threw in the towel on state efforts to improve Lorain City Schools. They did so by dissolving the academic distress commission (ADC) that had overseen the 6,000-student district since 2013.” Thomas B. Fordham Institute, “Lawmakers gave Lorain City Schools a free pass. Here’s how it’s going two years later,” October 2, 2025. https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/lawmakers-gave-lorain-city-schools-free-pass-heres-how-its-going-two-years-later. See also: Ideastream Public Media, “Local schools, state control: Lorain City Schools celebrate exit from state distress commission,” August 7, 2023. https://www.ideastream.org/education/2023-08-07/local-schools-state-control-lorain-city-schools-celebrate-exit-from-state-distress-commission

⁵ “A staggering half of Lorain students score at the lowest possible achievement level known as ‘limited.’” Specifically, 49.6% of Lorain students scored at the “limited” level on state assessments in 2024-25. Thomas B. Fordham Institute, citing ODEW 2024-25 report card data (reportcard.education.ohio.gov/district/044263). Fordham Institute, October 2, 2025. https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/lawmakers-gave-lorain-city-schools-free-pass-heres-how-its-going-two-years-later

⁶ Third-grade reading proficiency: 26% of Lorain students achieved proficiency on the reading segment of the state ELA exam in 2024-25, compared to 61% statewide. District-wide reading proficiency across all grades is approximately 25-30%. Fordham Institute, October 2, 2025 (ibid). ODEW data: reportcard.education.ohio.gov/district/044263. See also: ODEW 2024-25 report card, confirmed by Lorain Daily, September 15, 2025. https://loraindaily.com/lorain-city-schools-earn-2-stars-on-state-report-card/

⁷ District-wide math proficiency: Lorain’s 2024-25 state report card shows high school Algebra I proficiency of 21.4% and Geometry proficiency of 10.1%. Middle school math proficiency ranges from approximately 9.7% to 15.5%. ODEW 2024-25 report card data for Lorain City Schools, confirmed by John Campbell’s research team directly from the state report card portal. See also Fordham Institute (ibid): “just a quarter of Lorain students currently achieve proficiency in reading or math.”

⁸ “Lorain’s 59 percent chronic absenteeism rate is the highest of all districts statewide.” Two independent Fordham Institute analyses confirm this based on 2024-25 ODEW report card data. Source 1: Fordham Institute, “Lawmakers gave Lorain City Schools a free pass,” October 2, 2025 (ibid). Source 2: Fordham Institute, “Ohio still hasn’t solved its chronic absenteeism problem,” September 30, 2025: “The highest rate was in Lorain (which also happened to post the state’s lowest performance index score), followed by Youngstown and North College Hill near Cincinnati.” https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/ohio-still-hasnt-solved-its-chronic-absenteeism-problem. Exact figure of 59.2% confirmed by Lorain Daily (ibid). A chronically absent student is defined by ODEW as one who misses at least 10% of the school year for any reason.

⁹ “In 2024-25, the district’s performance index score was no better than it was in 2021-22, and Lorain’s score now ranks dead last among all Ohio districts.” Lorain’s Performance Index score: 53.1 out of a maximum of approximately 109.8, compared to a statewide average of approximately 82. Comparison pool: 607 Ohio school districts. Fordham Institute, October 2, 2025 (ibid), footnote: “In the years displayed, there were 608 districts (FY17 to FY19) or 607 districts (FY22 to FY25).” Source: Fordham Institute, citing ODEW 2024-25 data. See also: “Ohio still hasn’t solved its chronic absenteeism problem” (ibid): “The highest rate was in Lorain (which also happened to post the state’s lowest performance index score).”

¹⁰ Ashtabula Area City School District four-year graduation rate: approximately 76-77%. Sources: PublicSchoolReview.com, drawing on NCES Common Core of Data and EDFacts (the same datasets ODEW submits to federally): graduation rate of 76%, up from 72% over five years. https://www.publicschoolreview.com/ohio/ashtabula-area-city-school-district/3904351-school-district. Corroborated by OpenSchoolData.org (NCES-sourced): 77% average graduation rate. https://www.openschooldata.org/district/ashtabula-area-city-oh.

¹¹ Ashtabula Area City math proficiency: approximately 19% at the high school level; approximately 30% district-wide. Sources drawing on NCES/ODEW data: U.S. News & World Report: high school math proficiency 19%. https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/ohio/districts/ashtabula-area-city-110093. Niche.com (citing ODEW 2023-24): 30% district-wide. https://www.niche.com/k12/d/ashtabula-area-city-school-district-oh/.

¹² Ashtabula Area City Schools has received 2 stars overall in every year overall ratings have been issued. 2022-23 and 2023-24: WKYC confirmed “a second straight year” of 2-star ratings, with Ashtabula named specifically. https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/education/education-station/ohio-department-of-education-2024-report-cards-cleveland-northeast-ohio-schools/. 2024-25: WKYC, September 15, 2025: “three — Ashtabula, Elyria, and Lorain — received just two stars.” https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/education/education-station/ohio-department-of-education-2024-25-report-cards-cleveland-akron-canton-northeast-ohio-schools/. The 2-star rating for all three years is confirmed by direct WKYC reporting from each year’s report card release; overall ratings were not issued for 2021-22. Component-level data for 2021-22 from Star Beacon confirms 2 stars in achievement and 1 star in graduation. https://www.starbeacon.com/news/local_news/local-state-report-cards-released/article_1fe7b9ac-34fb-11ed-a5b0-470bd7742ff8.html

¹³ Elyria City Schools four-year graduation rate: 79%, down from 85% over five years. Sources: PublicSchoolReview.com (NCES data): “The school district’s graduation rate of 79% has decreased from 85% over five school years.” https://www.publicschoolreview.com/ohio/elyria-city-schools-school-district/3904394-school-district. Building-level confirmation: Elyria High School graduation rate of 79% per PublicSchoolReview and corroborated by SchoolDigger.

¹⁴ Elyria City Schools high school math proficiency: 17% at the building level (Elyria High School); approximately 22% district-wide. Sources: PublicSchoolReview.com (NCES/ODEW data), Elyria High School profile: “17% of students have achieved math proficiency (compared to the 54% OH state average).” https://www.publicschoolreview.com/elyria-high-school-profile. Corroborated by SchoolDigger: Geometry proficiency at Elyria High School 15.7%, vs. state average of 39.8%. https://www.schooldigger.com/go/OH/schools/0439400893/school.aspx. District-wide figure: U.S. News & World Report (ODEW data): 22% high school math proficiency. https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/ohio/districts/elyria-city-schools-107797.

¹⁵ Lorain City Schools confirmed 432 graduates in the Class of 2024. Source: Official Lorain City School District press release, June 11, 2024: “With 432 students graduating and earning 45 associate degrees simultaneously, this year’s class boasted the highest graduation rate the district has seen in a generation.” https://www.lorainschools.org/details/~board/lorain-city-schools-news/post/lorain-high-school-graduates-more-than-400

¹⁶ At an 80% four-year graduation rate (confirmed by ODEW 2024-25 report card and Fordham Institute) applied to the Class of 2024, the implied adjusted cohort is approximately 540 students (432 ÷ 0.80 = 540), meaning approximately 108 students did not graduate within four years. The “about 100” figure is a conservative estimate derived from the confirmed 80% graduation rate and confirmed graduate count. The official adjusted cohort denominator for the Class of 2024 is available directly from ODEW at reportcard.education.ohio.gov/district/044263.

¹⁷ “Just 3 percent of Lorain’s class of 2024 reach the college-remediation free standard on the ACT/SAT. No students passed an AP exam, or even took a course, though 13 percent did earn dual-enrollment credits.” These figures appear verbatim in the Fordham Institute analysis as direct citations from ODEW’s 2024-25 College, Career, Workforce, and Military Readiness (CCWMR) component data: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, “Lawmakers gave Lorain City Schools a free pass. Here’s how it’s going two years later,” Aaron Churchill, October 2, 2025. https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/lawmakers-gave-lorain-city-schools-free-pass-heres-how-its-going-two-years-later. The CCWMR component data is publicly available on the ODEW report card portal at reportcard.education.ohio.gov/district/044263 under the “College, Career, Workforce, and Military Readiness” section. The research team should pull the primary data to confirm before publication; the specific indicators are ACT/SAT remediation-free scores and AP exam passage rates from the Class of 2024 CCWMR report. These figures are considered strongly defensible as Fordham’s analysis reproduces the exact language and specific percentages that would only appear in official ODEW data output.

¹⁸ The approximate $260,000 lifetime earnings gap between a high school non-completer and a diploma holder is documented by multiple independent research sources. Primary sources: Alliance for Excellent Education, “The High Cost of High School Dropouts,” citing research presented at the Teachers College Columbia University Symposium on Educational Equity. https://all4ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/HighCost.pdf. See also: Graduation Alliance, “The True Cost of High School Dropouts”: “Lifetime earnings of high school dropouts are $260,000 less than peers who earn a diploma.” https://www.graduationalliance.com/2017/03/06/the-true-cost-of-high-school-dropouts/. This figure represents the undiscounted earnings differential. Present-value estimates using a 4% discount rate yield lower figures; the Social Security Administration Research Summary (2015) calculates the net present value of a bachelor’s degree vs. high school diploma at $260,000 for men at age 20. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html

¹⁹ Ohio’s Academic Distress Commission (ADC) was established in state law in 2007 and significantly strengthened by House Bill 70 in 2015. Under HB 70, a district becomes subject to ADC oversight after receiving an overall F grade (later updated to below 2 stars) for three consecutive years. The ADC is empowered to appoint a CEO with the authority of both superintendent and school board. Three districts have been placed under HB 70 ADC oversight: Lorain (released 2023), East Cleveland (released 2026), and Youngstown (currently the sole remaining district). Source: Fordham Institute, “The ABCs of ADCs,” 2015. https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/abcs-adcs-depth-look-new-academic-distress-commission-legislation. Current status: Vindicator, January 14, 2026. https://www.vindy.com/news/local-news/2026/01/city-schools-remain-under-academic-distress-commission-oversight/

²⁰ East Cleveland City Schools rose from 2 stars overall to 3 stars in the 2024-25 report card — the first time in more than a decade the district met state standards. The district was formally released from Academic Distress Commission oversight in January 2026. Source: News5Cleveland, September 15, 2025. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/ohio-school-report-cards-released-east-cleveland-and-akron-public-school-districts-see-improvements. Ideastream Public Media, January 2, 2026. https://www.ideastream.org/education/2026-01-02/a-community-effort-east-cleveland-schools-released-from-state-oversight

²¹ Elyria City Schools high school math proficiency: 17%. See footnote 14.

²² EdChoice Expansion voucher and enrollment data. When Ohio made EdChoice universal in 2023, voucher recipients surged from 23,272 students in 2022-23 to 82,946 students in 2023-24 — nearly 60,000 new recipients — while the number of students enrolled in private schools increased by only 3,719. Source: News5Cleveland investigative report, “Ohio Triples EdChoice Expansion Program, Sending $387 Million in Public Money to Private Schools,” citing ODEW enrollment and scholarship data. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/investigations/ohio-triples-edchoice-expansion-program-sending-387-million-in-public-money-to-private-schools. Income eligibility data: the shift in low-income recipient percentage from 67% to 17% following universalization is drawn from ODEW scholarship data. The research team should confirm the precise income-eligibility breakdown directly from ODEW’s EdChoice scholarship data at education.ohio.gov before publication, as the specific 17% figure comes from analyses of that data. The underlying enrollment discrepancy — voucher recipients far outpacing new private school enrollment — is confirmed by ODEW’s own figures as reported by News5Cleveland.

²³ Lorain city median household income: $52,749. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 1-year estimates, via Census Reporter: https://censusreporter.org/profiles/06000US3909344856-lorain-city-lorain-county-oh/. EdChoice Expansion maximum voucher amounts: $6,166 for grades K-8 and $8,408 for grades 9-12, per ODEW. Source: EdChoice.org, citing ODEW program data: https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/programs/ohio-income-based-scholarship-program/. Schools are only required to accept the voucher as full payment for families at or below 200% of the federal poverty level ($64,300 for a family of four in 2025-26). Families between 200% and 450% FPL ($64,300–$144,675) receive the full voucher amount but may be charged tuition above the voucher value by schools that participate in the program. St. Ignatius High School tuition of approximately $20,000 is representative of competitive Catholic prep schools in Northeast Ohio; the exact figure should be confirmed directly with the school as tuition may change annually. The $10,000+ gap between the EdChoice voucher ($8,408 for high school) and a school like St. Ignatius is accurate at the order of magnitude and illustrates the real financial barrier for working-class families outside the 200% FPL threshold.

They are now the most polarizing development of America’s new industrial age. Across the country, wherever a new facility is proposed, it’s rapidly followed by massive crowds of enraged activists protesting the new project.

The first question we need to ask is, “Why?”

The answer is simple, Tech has not sold itself to the American public.

When people think of data centers, they think of AI. While data centers are required for AI to exist, they are also required for the entire internet, the pictures stored on your phone, your free Gmail account, being able to search through your family memories on Facebook, the movies you stream and the YouTube videos your kids watch; all of it requires data centers. Make no mistake, having a record of your life in the palm of your hand is a luxury, a luxury that requires real infrastructure.

This is not the pitch that Sam Altman and other AI tech founders are selling. Instead, they go to big shareholder meetings and proclaim that the sky is falling and the development of AI will change the world forever by unemploying everyone. It turns out that this is a great way to raise money but a terrible way to get people on your side.

As of now there isn’t much of a reason to believe that AI is the driving factor in white-collar unemployment. Every tech firm announcing mass layoffs for “AI optimization” is also filing record-setting numbers of LCAs for H-1B workers. So we know AI isn’t laying people off yet. So what does AI do?

To most of the public, we know AI to be a chatbot or maybe an effective Google search, and a more select group of people are using AI in their work. At its worst, most people know AI for creating “slop” on their social media pages. But AI is much more than that. AI has helped develop groundbreaking treatments for Alzheimer’s and dementia; it’s being used for early screening of pancreatic cancer, and much more. Only 13% of the American workforce has integrated AI, but even here at the State Leadership Initiative, it’s become a remarkable tool. Processing a year’s worth of emails for FOIA requests takes 2 days instead of 2 weeks. More fraud and abuse has been discovered in the government this year alone because an AI can parse through documents and flag for suspicious behavior faster than a person can.

There are real genuine uses that help make your world better every day. This is the vision the State Leadership Initiative proposes for an America where tech serves the people, not people serving tech.

This is the core issue with the data center revolt. Every protest about “annual water usage” from a closed-loop plant (which doesn’t consume water the way annual water usage implies) is actually an outcry of fear because of a lack of vision. Every headline featuring the Box Elder County Data Center’s “4 gigawatt” power usage (even though the center requires an independent power source) is because people don’t know how the data center benefits them. So here’s how.

1. Data Centers will Lower Your Property Tax

Across the country, property taxes have become a hot button issue. From Texas to Florida there have been nonstop calls to abolish the property tax. Whether or not this aspiration is realistic is irrelevant; people don’t want to pay a forever tax on a home they own for good reason. You own our home, not the government.

So where is this tax abolition realistic? In communities with data centers. Covington, Georgia, is on the path to abolish property taxes for every resident thanks to the tax revenue from a single Amazon data center. It’s not loud; it doesn’t pollute. This particular center has a specialized water treatment facility, so the coolant is using recycled water.

Not long ago a City Journal article featuring Loudoun County went viral for the same reason. These developments are massive economic boons, and not just for tech companies. The average household in Loudon saw a 40% reduction in property taxes in the past 10 years. Your eyes don’t deceive you, that is a blue county, in a (now) blue state, lowering property taxes for normal Americans.

2. Data Centers will Cut Your Energy Prices

Not all data center development is made equally. In states like Missouri and Indiana, development negotiations were done with the interest of the people in mind. Instead of offloading the usage onto the American people, these deals have created new development for updated infrastructure and, in some cases, drops in energy prices. In Mississippi, data centers actually pay a surplus, which is being used to rebuild its energy grid and keep prices low for the people. Indiana has negotiated a deal with Amazon resulting in a $1 billion surplus, which is being delivered as energy price credits to Hoosiers across the state.

3. Data centers will fund water projects.

One of the biggest environmental scares of data centers is their water usage. Across the country, water scarcity is becoming an increasingly concerning issue; Corpus Christi’s mismanagement is the most notable water crisis in the country. Ironically, it has nothing to do with data centers. Regardless, older data centers used a system of evaporative cooling towers where roughly 70% of the water used in a system is evaporated out for cooling. Very few, if any, of the new data center proposals use this technology; now they use closed-loop system cooling that reduces water usage by 90%. Similar to cases with energy, the excess profits of the data center are also used for developing new water projects across the country. For example, El Paso’s development is hinged on the funding and generation of water reclamation projects. What the tangible results are of these projects is yet to be seen, but these requirements on development are another way where technology serves the people.

4. Data Centers Bring Blue-Collar Jobs

Contrary to popular belief, the tech revolution isn’t just for the white-collar class of workers. It takes carpenters, welders, electricians, plumbers, construction workers, foremen, forklift drivers, and every other blue-collar job on the planet to build these facilities. These developments create six-figure blue-collar jobs wherever they’re built and revitalize communities across the country. Sixty years ago a single blue-collar income could sustain a family of four; we can create that American dream again, not by making cars but by making data and energy.

Where does development go wrong?

Not all development is made equal; some centers are massive ecological hazards. They pollute, they overconsume, and they create a burden on the people around them. These can be avoided, as we have seen with newer development. The other main concern is the issue of subsidies. The American people cannot be fronting the bill for development. Even in some of the biggest success stories, like Loudon County, the development was heavily subsidized by property tax waivers and sales tax abatements. This is unacceptable, especially for Red states where tech companies have been openly hostile to conservatives.

All of these tech companies are sprinting to red states to develop infrastructure that they cannot live without. It’s impossible to build in California, Washington, Colorado, and Massachusetts. They need Red states as much as we would like to have the jobs and revenue they bring. The key is to make it easier to build, not to pay them to come. Permitting should take days, maybe weeks, not months or years. It shouldn’t take years of litigation to make projects possible; that is the key to bringing in business.

You don’t need to pay tech companies, or let them drink up all the water, or offload energy costs onto the American people. You simply need to make it easy for builders to build, and the American people will benefit from it.

Across the country, in every state with a Republican trifecta, there is a core disconnect between what people vote for, what is delivered legislatively, and what is performed bureaucratically. While voters cast their ballots for deregulation, an end to DEI, and common-sense immigration enforcement, the public sector employees tirelessly work and collude with national organizations to deliver the opposite.

This isn’t intentional; in many cases elected Republicans have no idea that their bureaucracies are actively working against them. Furthermore, they trust legacy institutions and their supposedly nonpartisan credentials to deliver expertise. In reality the nonpartisan is very partisan, and it is always at the behest of the Left.

The most important aspect of this work is that it’s boring; Republicans in their home-states have abdicated the more banal aspects of governance for years, and as a result every Red state has now been quietly infected with blue state policy.

This quiet conversion is how Alabama’s Department of Environmental Management has an entire page for “environmental justice” or how Texas’ Parks and Wildlife Department has DEI-style grants where money is awarded not based on need, but on ethnic makeup.

The most damning case has been Georgia. With the help of The Free Beacon, we found that the National Association of Medicaid Directors infiltrated the Medicaid procurement process. As a result, they required insurance providers to pledge to provide illegal transgender healthcare to minors. Most of the lawmakers there had no idea this was going on. Thanks to collaboration with the Eagle Forum and the Georgia Freedom Caucus we were able to get this on the desks of lawmakers across Atlanta.

Following our Shadow Government work, we released the first State Leadership Index. While others grade Republicans on their wins, we grade where it matters. Like how Red states are as regulated as blue ones, or how only one state in the country is effectively reindustrializing. As a movement, it’s not enough to publish braggadocios scorecards. Blue states are sowing their own destruction through suicidal policy; Red states need to make sure they don’t do the same.

As Fleetwood points out in his article at The Federalist, our greatest wins are our work in boards and commissions reform.

Through working with the governors in Indiana and West Virginia, we helped pass broad reform, saving each state millions and removing entire unnecessary and politicized government entities. Boards like the Commission on the Social Status of Black Males in Indiana and the Council on Aging in West Virginia were removed along with countless other redundant, taxpayer-wasting entities.

Governor Morrisey’s statement regarding this reform highlights the importance of this work:

“These are commonsense measures focused on opportunity, safety, and making government work better for the people of West Virginia.”

We are now expanding this effort to Red states across the country, from Missouri and Louisiana to Florida and Alabama. These victories are the first to come, and many more are on the way.

Following the new blue trifecta in Virginia, we see an opening into the game plan. Run as moderates and rule as radicals. Within the few months of taking power, the Virginia legislature has proposed a litany of insane and destructive policies that would ruin the state. They’ve proposed minimum sentence removals for rape, murder, and child porn production and distribution; a ban on assault rifle purchases; a ban on handguns in cars (lawmakers are exempt, of course); tax increases; redistricting to ensure they never lose another election; mandatory race-based discrimination in state contracts; and much more.

None of this is particularly surprising given that the attorney general still won his race after being exposed for fantasizing over murdering Republican children, but what does this mean for the future of Virginia? What will Virginia look like in 10 years’ time?

The answer is Colorado.

Just over twenty years ago, Colorado had its last Republican governor. Since then it has been a stronghold of leftist policy, endlessly importing out-of-state voters to calcify its left-wing government. Back when Democrats first took control, Colorado was one of the most desirable states to live in; it was listed in all sorts of magazines and featured across TV. Fortune 500 companies were sprinting to Denver, and the state economy exploded with new investment. So where is Colorado now?

Unsurprisingly, it’s in a recession. Nobody talks about it; Colorado is the silent tribute to the failures of left-wing economic governance. Colorado doesn’t have the geographic advantages of California nor the institutional buy-in of New York. So when things go south, companies pull out. The result is a private sector that has been consistently shrinking. All of the private losses in the state last year were quietly made up with new public sector jobs. However, the government is in a 1.2 billion dollar shortfall, and the Polis regime is quietly admitting that they will have to cut back.

While the housing crisis has taken its toll nationwide, it’s even worse in Colorado; homebuyer misery is up in every county across the state. Even after the end of COVID-19 lockdowns, domestic migration never bounced back, and even international migration has fallen off a cliff. The most desirable state in the country has now become a wasteland where everyone wants to leave but can’t because nobody wants to move in.

It somehow gets worse, though. Homelessness is up 90% since 2020, never recovering from COVID levels. Even after the end of COVID lockdowns, it only got worse; homelessness of families with children is up 134% between 2023 and 2024. Similarly, crime is up, while red states across the country are seeing drops, and the most unruly cities like Memphis are being tamed by National Guard deployments; Colorado’s violent crime rate has increased by over 30% commensurate with the 28% reduction of prison populations.

Even Colorado’s shining jewel Boulder has faded into irrelevance. Once the most illustrious city in America, it used to receive accolades like being the startup capital of the US; it was foretold to be the next Silicon Valley. Now it’s a retirement home with an impending “silver wave.” The only thing keeping Boulder alive right now is the famous University of Colorado Boulder, which heavily inflates its under-24 population.

The story is clear: before Colorado could become the next big thing, left-wing governance shut it down. The next Silicon Valley ended up being in Austin, not Boulder. Massive companies like Pfizer, Boom Supersonic, and Palantir have all pulled out of the state. The worst part of all is that Coloradoans will keep voting for it. Whatever voter base that existed 2 decades ago has been supplanted, and even when the overwhelming sentiment across the state is that the left has mismanaged it, the voter base will still vote the left in.

The future of Virginia and every Red state that turns Blue isn’t one of bombastic collapse but of entrapment, stagnation, and silent failure. The game plan has been public for some time: once one election is won, irrevocably destroy the ability to lose power, then govern the state into the ground.

Catchy bumper stickers and braggadocious remarks on TV aren’t enough anymore; red states must understand the real threat of losing once and guard themselves from it.

— The final message of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte

Lord Nelson spent nearly his entire adult life at war with the French Revolution. He won fame, honors, wealth, and a resting place in Westminster Abbey over the course of the greatest naval career in history’s greatest navy. Born the son of prosperous farmers, Nelson died one of Britain’s greatest national heroes, the savior of his country, and eventually all of Europe from French domination. He fought and won battles on three continents, on sea and on land, and lost his arm, one eye, and finally his life in service of God, navy, king, and country.

Admiral Lord Nelson died aboard his flagship, HMS Victory, while winning the greatest battle of his career. Famously, before the Battle of Trafalgar, the Admiral placed his ships in two columns and ordered them to sail straight into the broad-sides of the numerically superior Franco-Spanish fleet. After nearly half a year of pursuit, to the West Indies and back, Nelson finally had his enemies in sight. Before he entered the fray that would claim his life, he sent this final message to his fleet: “Engage the enemy more closely”.

Nelson faced a daunting challenge and responded with brilliant aggression. He relied on every man in his fleet, some boys as young as ten or eleven, to outsail, outshoot, and outfight their enemies. His aggression won the day, with remarkably few losses for the British. Fewer than 500 men died.Among them was the Admiral.

Nelson’s spirit, Nelson’s aggression, and Nelson’s sacrifice must be channeled by any man who strives with grand ambition to save his country from revolutionary forces that oppose it. Nelson was a fierce critic of the French Revolution. He did not oppose it from the comfort of Parliament or a newspaper column, but from the deck of a ship of war and on enemy-held beaches. Victory, for him, and for us, cannot be won with mere verbal sniping.

“I have only one eye, I have a right to be blind sometimes.”

— Admiral Nelson to Sir Thomas Foley, his Flag Captain, at the Battle of Copenhagen

Nelson won many honors for his excellent service. He received a knighthood after the Battle of St. Vincent, a barony for his victory on the Nile, a duchy from the King of Naples for his service in that country, and an Earldom for Trafalgar (posthumously granted to his brother). But Lord Nelson had his fair share of critics; at the Battle of Copenhagen, he ignored an order to withdraw, falsely claiming blindness, and though Sir Hyde Parker, who had given the order, honored Nelson after the battle, he was attacked from some quarters for insubordination and impetuosity (not to mention that the Copenhagen was the capital of neutral Denmark, whom the British attacked without a declaration of war in order to deny Napoleon a naval resource).

Success has many fathers while failure is an orphan. Because Nelson won victories for his navy and his country, the people loved him. He was a hero to the common man and even his unfortunate personal indiscretions did not shut him away from English high society. Victory, patriotism, and sacrifice secured the love and esteem of his countrymen for Lord Nelson in his life and a hero’s treatment after his death. He risked approbation because he had a cause and he knew himself best suited to achieve it. France had to be defeated at sea; Nelson knew this and beat them. The lesson is clear: know the necessary action and take it.

“Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made.”

— Admiral Nelson in a letter to Chevalier Micheroux, a Neapolitan diplomat and court official

As a tactician, Admiral Nelson was clever and bold. In the shifting landscape of Napoleonic era great power politics, an admiral needed to understand international relations and strategies in addition to naval tactics. In response to French and French-aligned privateers, Nelson instructed his captains to be wary of claims of neutrality. They learned through experience that a seemingly neutral port could easily hold dangers to the British navy and British commerce.

As Nelson and the British learned their lesson, we should learn ours. Claims of neutrality and nonpartisanship are common. Neutral, nonpartisan actions are not. We have allowed the Left to use neutral institutions to promote their destructive agenda, pushing ESG and DEI under the aegis of “expert advice”. The ineffective opposition supports these claims, hoping to keep their actions more circumspect, and under control, by limiting left-wing action to only those they can pass off as neutral. Instead, we must know them by their fruits. The places where attacks against our values, our liberties, and our way of life originate cannot be allowed to hide under the thin veneer of neutrality. They must be called out, held to account, and either reformed or destroyed.

“The measure may be thought bold, but I am of the opinion the boldest are the safest.”

— Admiral Nelson to Sir Hyde Parker, Commander of the Royal Navy’s Baltic Fleet

Lord Nelson proved himself correct many times throughout his career. At Trafalgar, his greatest triumph, the British lost fewer than 500 men and not a single ship and inflicted more than 10,000 casualties and destroyed or captured 18 French and Spanish ships of the line. Every British sailor risked his life as soon as he stepped aboard his ship; sailing in a wooden vessel stuffed with gunpowder and cannonballs before satellite navigation, modern weather forecasting, or even steam power was a remarkably unsafe way to earn a living. Nonetheless, those who succeeded in the great game of naval warfare were the men who could stomach that risk and continue to take them.

Even in an age where politicians and their aides are subject to credible threats of violence, the risks we run are nowhere near those taken by our ancestors or our nation’s soldiers. Yet the Left can threaten the livelihoods and reputations of those it deems enemies. But to defeat the Left, to govern in accordance with our principles, requires anyone engaged in Republican politics to accept that risk. Those who capitulate to the Left will seem to run no risks, until at last they find some capitulation a bridge too far. Rather than waiting for our favored policies or our most treasured liberties are under threat, the safest measure is to engage, and destroy, left-wing influence in our states and bureaucracies, winning our reprieve from their efforts rather than trading for it.

“England expects every man will do his duty”

— Signal to the British Fleet before the battle of Trafalgar

The State Leadership Initiative is raising a cri de coeur, a cry from the heart: victory belongs to those willing to get directly in front of the enemy’s guns to better assault them, despite the extraordinary risks. We engage heartily where the fighting is thickest and the current strategic priority highest: in the backend of governance, where Leftist bureaucrats and NGOs have been waging a quiet but unrelenting war on republican self-governance. Up until now, our focus has been too narrow. We’ve won legislative victories and begun major federal reforms, but in state bureaucracies, the Left has one hundred years of infiltration to uncover and unravel. We will purge them from governments where the electorate never requested them, and would throw them out in a heartbeat if only given the opportunity.

And yet the parallel government operating inside red states won’t collapse because we won an election. It will only fall when we’re willing to close the distance, identify its mechanisms, expose its networks, and systematically dismantle its power. Each ship of state requires loyal, competent, and committed frontliners, serving the will of the people and fighting the bureaucrats who circumvent it every single day. We address this message to those with the inclination to serve their states and the courage to fight the Left. Your services are needed. In Birmingham, Cheyanne, Nashville, Lexington, Tallahassee, and across the country, we can take back power from unelected bureaucrats and achieve what Republicans have long voted for. You are the key, engage the enemy more closely.

We’re pleased to report that these developments aren’t just PR victories but have also resulted in substantive action. Our work has created coalitions with groups like the Eagle Forum and the State Freedom Caucus Network to build a united front in dispelling the undue influence taking control of red states.

In Wyoming, we have worked closely with the State Freedom Caucus to identify key shadow government organizations and go on the offensive. The first battle of Wyoming has been marked with the sponsorship of HB0169 of Representative Webb. This bill withdraws Wyoming from four target organizations: the National Association of Medicaid Directors, the Environmental Council of the States, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Following the release of our Shadow Government in Georgia’s Medicaid report, we began work with the Georgia Freedom Caucus and Mrs. Suzi Voyles of The Eagle Forum to combat the effects of the Shadow Government in their home state. The Georgia Freedom Caucus drafted and sent letters demanding the state auditor investigate the association and ethics violations between the NAMD and the Georgia Department of Community Health over its Medicaid contract. Furthermore, Representative Kahaian has spearheaded the issue, pushing her own bill withdrawing all Georgia state funds from nonessential membership organizations.

Over the past week, our own Jacob Wehmeyer flew down to Georgia to work directly with Mrs. Voyles to bring awareness and propose further legislation to the chairmen of the state senate appropriations committee. This second barrage would finally provide Georgia with the teeth to meaningfully enforce against progressive policy by defining DEI programs as “prohibited discrimination” and would bar state funds to any organization with internal DEI policies. Furthermore, it would force the state auditor to conduct investigations into any state department providing funds to organizations engaging in prohibited discrimination and present its findings to the Appropriations Committee. Finally, the appropriations committee would have oversight over the expenditure of state funds to these organizations, bringing accountability to the bureaucracy and power back to the elected, not the hired.

Last but not least, Louisiana is proving to be one of our most effective fronts. We’re working directly with the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) to identify and root out the NGO fraud, waste, and political subterfuge that has quietly captured state health policy for years.

On the legislative side, we’re advancing a study resolution that would direct LDH to conduct a comprehensive audit of its non-governmental relationships—cataloging membership dues, conference expenses, staff time, and the policy positions these organizations are pushing inside the department. The goal is simple: follow the money, expose the influence, and give Louisiana lawmakers the data they need to act.

While the fight is only beginning, we are confident that the first victories against the Shadow Government are imminent. Thank you for your support.

This isn’t a new phenomenon; for the past few decades there has been a growing trend of young students being shepherded into left-wing activism by their teachers. For years we have seen walkouts in support of the DREAM Act, law enforcement, President Trump’s first electoral victory, gun violence, climate change, BLM, the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, Roe V. Wade being overturned, the Russian-Ukraine war, the Israeli-Gaza war, and now ICE.

The list is endless because the project is never-ending. Instead of being educated and prepared for the real world, they are being indoctrinated and trained to be the foot soldiers of the progressive left. Any well-meaning parent watching videos of their child’s classmates protesting politics might ask, “How did this happen?” and the answer is simple: teachers’ unions.

In ages past, unions were supposedly a collection of workers bargaining as a group for their interests against capital owners. This framing must be totally discarded. Teachers’ unions are not groups bargaining for better wages and fewer hours; they are some of the oldest and wealthiest political organizations in American history, all of which are funded by American taxes.

The largest teachers’ union in America is the National Education Association, which has been around for 170 years; its accomplishments are everything from organizing political protests in the civil rights era to the formation of entire UN councils. These organizations are not “unions” but the arms and legs of the globalist left-wing project. The past twenty years have now taught us that their next target is American children.

It doesn’t stop with brainwashing children into being leftist operatives; they are simply making kids dumber. Literacy is at a historic low across the United States; this isn’t because of cell phones or too much YouTube and TV; it’s because unions have decided against phonics-based teaching. Students used to be taught to read by sounding out the letters of words and associating that sound with the meaning. This practice has been totally abandoned which has universally resulted in significant drops in literacy across all grade levels.

Mississippi, which has unilaterally rejected the demands of these groups by allowing students to be held back, maintaining uncompromising standards in excellence, and reintroducing phonics, is the only outlier.

Merely rejecting the demands of teachers unions is hailed as the “Mississippi Miracle.”

Meanwhile failed states like California routinely capitulate to the demands of these forces. In an interview with California union teachers, they admitted that they know their methods are making children more illiterate; they know that what they are doing wasn’t working, but they will spend millions lobbying the California legislature to reject a bill bringing back phonics. The basis of the opposition against phonics was that it felt “colonizing.” The California Teachers Association, a subsidiary of the NEA, wrote an impassioned letter proclaiming: “Limiting instructional approaches undermines teachers’ professional autonomy and may impede their effectiveness in the classroom.”

According to these groups, a teacher’s role is to make children illiterate and activate them for political organization, not education and to prepare America’s youth for excellence in the world.

There is no other way to describe what is happening than comically evil.

Teachers relentlessly claim that they are the underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated backbones of society. They’ll proclaim themselves as the tutors of the future, and their station isn’t given the praise they deserve. Meanwhile, they intentionally raise children to be illiterate so they can brainwash them for their political movements. They strip American children of the ability to think freely, to learn new information, and to simply read, all so they will unquestioningly consume their leftist liturgy.

It’s time this charade ends; these are not unions, they are not saints, they are the commissars of revolutionary groups that recruit children as their soldiers.

In the fallout of this reporting, there has been an uneasy sentiment looming overhead: “They couldn’t have done it alone.” Across social media, podcasts, and news reports, there is a seemingly unanswered question, “Who helped them?” These are less so questions but more statements of certainty; nobody believes that a community so insulated they don’t have to learn English could navigate mass government bureaucracy alone. Nobody believes that the Minnesota government quietly looked away without political and ideological motivation to do so.

They didn’t; we found at least a few of the organizations that, while maintaining plausible deniability, helped push policy opening the flood gates, and directly helped open daycare centers across the state.

To understand Thorpe and Rufo’s original reporting, one must understand the word “cultural.” It’s used within many variations; take a look at your state’s medical practices, and you will see phrases like “culturally competent,” “culturally appropriate,” “cultural humility,” and many more. This is a new age term from the leftist DEI world that results in extending extra privileges to immigrant groups in America. A red state like West Virginia has their own training on this and is very clear: “Cultural competency,” as they put it, “is needed to respond to demographic changes in the United States.” In the very next slide, the state of WV recommends implicit bias training to meet cultural competency standards.

This focus on “culturally appropriate” care in Minnesota did not come out of the ether. It was pushed by shadowy NGO groups like the National Association of Medicaid Directors. John Connolly, Medicaid director of Minnesota, is a member, and Minnesota is a dues-paying state to the NAMD. A shadow government group that uses its position of “expertise” to push these harmful leftist ideologies into what should be non-partisan governance.

The NAMD has a litany of documentation urging Medicaid programs to only work with “culturally aligned” firms and, in their own words, believe that culturally appropriate care is “more likely to meet people where they are—linguistically, geographically, and culturally—when guided by those who use them.” Like all other leftist pseudo-speak, this may sound fine but in reality is a long-winded way to say oversight is racist, which is exactly what happened in Minnesota.

So how does this relate to Minnesota? Rufo and Thorpe answer here:

The Feeding Our Future, HHS, autism care, and now daycare fraud all have one line in common: they were necessary because the Somali community needed “culturally” appropriate care. A legislative audit of Minnesota’s Department of Education found that oversight procedures were altered for Somali-related nonprofits due to the risk of negative media coverage from being threatened with accusations of racism.

There is a phrase very common now: The purpose of the system is what it does, and in the case of the NAMD and “culturally appropriate” care, the purpose is to remove oversight from designated groups, which inevitably lead to billions in fraud.

But the help doesn’t end there. Enter the Minnesota Child Care Association and its partners, Think Small and Child Care Aware of Minnesota.

While the NAMD was laying the groundwork internally for Minnesota organizations to overlook the fraud, these organizations are the ones that proudly boast about opening daycare centers en masse. In Think Small’s 2025 report, they claimed to help open 1,540 child care slots specifically in “Minnesota Child Care Access Equity Areas.” But they’re not the worst offenders.

Child Care Aware of Minnesota is a chapter of the national Child Care Aware group and partnered with the Minnesota Department of Health to create the Child Care Wayfinder. A program that explicitly ushers people into opening child care programs. In it they have “navigators” that fill out all the paperwork and organize grants, funding, and licensing for new child care programs. In the first 6 months after opening, Wayfinder filed over 350 contracts and 84 new programs, with an added 1,061 child care slots.

Their promotional video below is very clear: “Wayfinder navigators are available to accompany you through the licensing process.” This was for a daycare that the owner stated was “specifically for the Somali community.”

Acacia Montessori, the daycare in the video, has had inspection violations nearly every year since opening, failed the last 4 inspections, violations included children not washing hands, lack of emergency preparedness, teachers not having training requirements, lack of CPR and first aid training, and unmaintained fire extinguishers.

As of January 9th of 2026, Acacia Montessori’s website still says that admissions are for the “2023-2024 school year".

Both groups are advocacy partners for the Minnesota Child Care Association, which makes it a policy goal to remove attendance requirements for child care organizations and “expand the definition of eligible child-serving employees.”

This reveals a destructive feedback loop. NGOs advocate for policy to make opening these centers easier and have less oversight to avoid claims of “racism,” then they collaborate with the government to open more facilities, and the government itself overlooks it all because it’s “best practice” to do so to avoid racism, which is disseminated to them via “experts” at these NGOs.

A century ago, we built the Empire State Building in 410 days. We built the Hoover Dam—a concrete colossus that rerouted the Colorado River and powered the rise of the American West—in just five years. During the Second World War, the Willow Run factory went from blueprint to full-scale production in under two years. Within months it was producing one B-24 Liberator bomber every hour, each with more than a million parts, assembled by ordinary American workers.

That was a civilization that could act. It built the physical symbols of its own confidence—monuments of steel and stone that embodied national purpose. Today, that same civilization cannot build a factory without a decade of environmental review. It cannot string a high-voltage line across a state border. It cannot expand a refinery or open a new mine without triggering years of litigation.

America did not lose its industrial base by accident. It regulated it out of existence.

The main lever being used in Washington to revamp our industrial economy is tariffs. The main lever being used in Red States is corporate welfare. Both are inferior choices.

Tariffs are defensible in the present moment—they level the playing field in a world where China manipulates currency, subsidizes production, and uses slave labor. But tariffs alone cannot build anything. They can slow decline, not reverse it. Protection without production is inflation, not revival.

Corporate welfare is patently indefensible. The academic literature is unequivocal: subsidies rarely alter long-term investment decisions. They reward politically connected firms, not productive ones. And they nearly always flow to corporations that despise the very people funding them—companies that outsource labor, flood the workforce with H-1B replacements, and funnel shareholder capital into ideological causes such as DEI that are aimed at eroding the culture that sustains free enterprise.

The tragedy is not that we spend too much on industry. It’s that we spend to avoid confronting the real problem: a country where building itself has become illegal in practice.

You cannot subsidize your way through a seven-year permitting queue. You cannot tariff your way past an environmental regime that treats construction as a moral failure. The problem is not money. It’s permission.

Deregulation is not about “small government.” It’s about restoring the government’s capacity to act. A state that clears away its own red tape can unleash more productive energy than Washington can buy with a trillion dollars.

Consider this: when a factory approval timeline drops from five years to one, the rate of return on capital quadruples. That single reform multiplies economic growth far more than any subsidy could.

When Texas streamlined its permitting process for LNG export terminals, it became one of the largest energy exporters in the world—no industrial policy required. When Georgia simplified licensing for advanced manufacturing facilities, it attracted billions in private capital without a dime of corporate welfare. When Wyoming cut the average approval time for new energy infrastructure by over 60 percent, it reignited a stagnant industry.

Each of these examples demonstrates a simple law of economics: time is the ultimate form of capital. The faster a society can act, the richer it becomes. Deregulation shortens the feedback loop between investment and output, turning compounding into acceleration.

No tariff or subsidy can achieve that.

The genius of American federalism is that reform does not need to start in Washington. It can begin in the states.

Every governor, every legislature, every state agency has the power to make their state a refuge for builders. A red state that wants to lead the next industrial wave doesn’t need new subsidies—it needs to rewrite its own operating manual.

• Set hard timelines. Permits expire, reviews conclude, and deadlines mean what they say. “180 days” should mean 180 days.

• Demolish the regulatory code. Every Red State governor should be looking for the regulatory equivalent of an axe-murderer, whom they can hire and set loose on the state regulatory code with sweeping jurisdiction.

• Ignore alarmists. With every deregulatory effort comes a horde of nagging schoolmarm bureaucrats who insist that “if we cut this code, people will die!” They are quite wrong. Human civilization does not rest on the precious code these nancies seek to protect at the cost of our national vitality. They must be ignored.

• Unify authority. Instead of five agencies issuing conflicting opinions, empower one office to make binding decisions on major projects.

• Reward action, not process. Measure regulators by what they enable, not what they prevent.

• Institutionalize pro-production review. Require that every rule account for economic, strategic, and energy implications—not just environmental cost.

This is not deregulation as destruction. It’s deregulation as construction—the deliberate rebuilding of state capacity in the service of industry and sovereignty.

The first state to master this will change the balance of the American economy. Just as Delaware once became the center of corporate law by offering predictability, a modern red state can become the center of production by offering freedom to build.

The moral dimension

When we ask, “Why can’t we build anymore?” we are not just asking an economic question. We are asking a civilizational one.

A nation that cannot build cannot defend itself, cannot house its citizens, cannot transmit the hope that once defined its people. To build is to affirm life—to act, to take responsibility, to bring order from chaos.

Our ancestors did not have better tools than we do. They had fewer laws standing in their way. The America that built the Hoover Dam was not smarter than we are—it was freer.

Corporate welfare sells that freedom for influence. Tariffs defend it, but cannot renew it. Deregulation restores it. It is the one lever still fully within our control, the one reform that can multiply every other source of strength—economic, cultural, and national.

If we want to reindustrialize, we must begin by freeing ourselves to act again. We must unlearn paralysis.

The path forward

This is the great task for red states in the decade ahead. They cannot wait for Washington to discover courage. They must act as the laboratories of reconstruction—places where Americans can build without apology, produce without permission, and lead without deference to bureaucratic nihilism.

The next great wave of American growth will not begin in the capital. It will begin in the states that remember what freedom once meant: the right to build.

America does not need another spending bill. It needs a greenlight.

America’s roadways are becoming increasingly unsafe; since 2020 motorist fatalities have increased by 18%. Many Americans may have noticed their car insurance premiums increase in recent years; this is undoubtedly why. The median car insurance premiums have increased by nearly 50% since 2020; this is becoming an unavoidable issue that needs course correction.

This has been exacerbated by failing blue states like California, where audits showed that 17,000 foreign commercial drivers were still operating in the US even after their permits expired. Even in Texas, state representative Brian Harrison recently exposed that Texas was handing out permits to illegal immigrants.

The Trump administration has admirably tried to tackle this issue by limiting commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants and especially illegal ones like Singh. However, federal courts have struck it down, deciding that illegal immigrant trucking is more important than safe roads for everyday Americans.

So when activist judges decide that the DOT isn’t allowed to limit who is on the roads, it then becomes up to the states to enact legislation to do so. Thankfully we are seeing this now in states like Florida.

In the next year’s legislative session, Don Gaetz proposed SB 86, a bill that would allow police to arrest illegal immigrant truck drivers, fine the owner of the vehicle, and prohibit the company from operating in Florida. This is the type of bold legislation that Red states need to be passing. It’s not enough to farm outrage on social media through horrific traffic accident videos; substantive change needs to be made to protect the American people from dangerous drivers.

Thankfully other states have followed suit; Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma all have upcoming bills with similar penalties and expansions of law enforcement. If red states want to lead, then they need to restore the rule of law to the roads with sensible legislation like this. Especially when rebellious states like California are doing everything they can to do the opposite.

However, this should make heads turn; conservatives across the Lone Star State should be asking themselves, “That was allowed?” It turns out, yes, it was. While native Texans were assembling binders of paperworkto wade through the DMV, illegal alien criminals were waltzing in and getting their registrations done without a license. This comes as the latest revelation of Texas’ governance not living up to its reputation.

For decades now Texas has maintained an image of Republican governance, which sadly it has failed. It’s a problem that plagues most Republican states and one that we seek to solve. We released the State Leadership Index to identify these pain points, and below are some of the largest outliers in failing governance we have seen thus far:

Regulation

Texas is THE MOST regulated Republican state in the country. Sitting at a staggering 274,469 restrictions in the Texas Administrative Code. This amounts to 19,785,582 words of restrictions to appease. If the average person reads 250 words per minute, then this amounts to 22 days of straight reading to get through the Lone Star State’s regulatory code. The sad truth is that while Texas’ taxes may be lower, its economy is not open. Texas needs to follow Idaho’s example and conduct a mass deregulation at the state level. Idaho did so in 2019 and saw the greatest YoY economic growth in the country for the past 5 years.

Industrialization

The new administration marks a unique opportunity for America to reindustrialize. The Covid lockdowns taught us that offshoring is more of a national security concern than it is an economic one. What happens when China gets hit by another disease and suddenly we lose 95% of our antibiotic supply? Texas should be leading the way in the reindustrialization movement, but it isn’t. It’s LOSING industry as a share of its GDP. Texas has fewer industrial facilities per capita than New York and New Jersey.

Bureaucracy:

Bureaucratic bloat is an issue that plagues all states, especially Republican ones. Texas should be an outlier and serve as the poster child of small government. Instead, what we find is that its government is just as bloated as Illinois’s and Arizona’s. Being lower than most on this list isn’t enough. It’s time for Conservatives to be exceptional and bold. Texas is failing that.

Another indicator of bureaucratic growth is in education. Texas’ schools are filled with bureaucratic bloat, with half of all staff being administrative personnel. How can Texas claim to lead the way with education when states like Delaware and Massachusetts have more efficient schools than them?

When we published the State Leadership Index Scorecard, the most recent data for all states was for 2021. Back then the median homebuyer in Texas was 37, much higher than most Republican states but not as bad as Florida, New York, or California.

Per a 2025 report, the median homebuyer in Texas is 58. First-time purchases are down to 1 in 5 compared to 1 in 3 during 2023, and Texas homebuyers’ incomes have shrunk by 10%. Meanwhile, median housing prices have stayed the same size and same price.

It’s imperative that Texas tackles its housing crisis; the first step in doing so is deregulation. Up to 40% of a house’s cost is regulatory compliance. Most of these weren’t on the books 40 years ago; they shouldn’t be on the books now.

Texas has much to boast about. It has a massive growing economy and some of the best schools in the nation. But we all need a reality check, and there can be no exceptions. Texas needs to truly lead the way with brave and bold legislation. There is no room to govern like failing blue states.

The losses in these state elections, especially Virginia, show a lack of inspiration, vision, and energy. As a result, this opened the path for some of the most radical and destructive Democrat victories America has ever seen. California voted to strip Republicans (40% of the state) of representation, New Jersey elected for the most corrupt candidate in the state’s history, New York elected for a radical socialist, and Virginia elected for an attorney general that wants to murder Republican children.

These candidates and policies did not win despite these flaws but because of them. The left’s new policy platform is race-based taxes, pro-crime, and socialism. Regardless of how evil and un-American these policies are, they campaigned on a vision that won. Even if that vision is making their opponents “feel pain personally.”

Meanwhile, Republicans presented nothing new. Earle-Sears ran on essentially the same platform as Youngkin in 2021 and couldn’t differentiate herself from the failures of her predecessor. Youngkin won on a bold vision of restoring American values to education, opposing harmful DEI policies, securing American elections, and opening up the Virginian economy through deregulation. Youngkin failed at fulfilling this agenda, Sears failed at proposing a vision that wasn’t the status quo, and the result was a catastrophic loss.

The takeaway from these blue and purple state losses is not that Republicans need to double down on foreign policy concerns or that we need more tired, limp-wristed candidates whose only platform is tax cuts and the status quo. Republicans in purple states need to focus on low propensity voter turnout and run inspiring leaders. We need bold, energetic visionaries that want to realize President Trump’s Golden Age.

Most importantly though, Republican strongholds can no longer afford to sit back and watch these states destroy themselves with destructive policies and politicians and then make comments in jest as if everything is okay at home.

It’s not acceptable that New York City elects an American-hating socialist and Governor DeSantis jokes about how real estate prices are going to skyrocket while the median first-time homebuyer in Florida is 40. Instead of making jokes, they need to be democrat-proofing their states.

In short, they need to practice what they preach; they need to make their states foolproof from refugees of collapsing blue states by being indisputably superior. They cannot afford to merely be blue states with lower taxes. Republicans need to improve the lives of Americans at the state level by fulfilling the 2024 electoral mandate and bringing about the Golden Age through what has been promised:

• Mass deportations

• Deregulation

• Revive American manufacturing

• Cut back government bureaucracy

• End harmful discrimination

• Protect American jobs

All of this can be achieved at the state level; we’ve seen Florida deputize police officers for deportations, Idaho cut regulations by 95%, and DEI/ESG bans across multiple red states. But patchworked success from state to state isn’t enough. Every red state needs to deliver on their own Golden Age. When they do so, they are rewarded; Florida, for all its faults, is the best example of this success.

We believe at SLI that bold visionaries can not only win elections but also improve the day-to-day lives of the people that vote for them. November 4th, 2025, taught us that we need visionaries, not vicars of a faltering status quo, because if losing results in Jay Jones and Mamdani, then losing isn’t an option.

“Red states are failing to lead. Despite the rhetoric of conservative governance… Most red states remain deeply entangled in the same bureaucratic bloat, cultural drift, and economic stagnation that afflict their blue counterparts.”

We released this scorecard not to create a self-aggrandizing victory lap on conservative victories but to provide a roadmap for where Red states need to focus their energy. It’s important to win on headline-grabbing policy issues, but it’s more important to lead. With that being said, Florida is a state that we believe deserves a spotlight.

Florida’s governance in recent years has been undeniably exceptional (we reported on it here); this was just highlighted as Governor DeSantis announced he would ban all universities from abusing the American worker with H1-B visas. But how does Florida rank in other ways? How is it doing culturally or economically? What we found was concerning.

In our index we ranked Florida at 32nd. Even with exceptional governance (ranked 8th), we found economic (ranked 44th) and cultural (ranked 45th) concerns.

We want to first take a look at the Economic Index.

In our scorecard we forgo flashy GDP metrics and short-term thinking. We’re focusing on the overlooked signs that show whether an economy is being built for long-term strength, prosperity, and reliance with a focus on industrial metrics.

In Florida’s case we found many concerning signs; Florida is significantly overregulated. There are over 170,000 lines of regulatory code; Florida is MORE regulated than blue states like Colorado or Maryland.

Florida also scores last for state-chartered bank assets. For those who don’t know, this is a sign that state economies are not insulated from the influence of megabanks and international finance. Florida’s economy isn’t for Floridians; it’s up for sale for the international market.

Finally, Florida also ranks 2nd to last of Republican states for industrial facilities per capita. Not only do the American people want manufacturing and industry brought back to the US, but it’s a national security concern. What happens when another global disaster hits and suddenly Floridians can’t get medicine again? Bringing industry back home is key to economic success and putting Floridians first, and Florida is failing at that.

Moving on from the economy to Florida’s greatest area of improvement, culture. Beyond national headlines about “don’t say gay” bills and DEI bans, there are some very concerning indicators here. Hence the 45th ranking.

Our index keys in on the health and prosperity of local communities, especially with young people. Are young people staying in state, getting married, buying homes, and having kids? Are those communities safe, and are violent criminals being put behind bars? In the case of Florida, it’s not a good picture.

While Florida is middle of the pack in terms of per capita violent crime, a dismal 1 in 3 violent crimes are solved. This is some of the lowest in the nation.

Meanwhile, young people are not buying homes; the median homebuyer is 42. There isn’t a single Red state in America worse than Florida on housing.

Furthermore, it’s ranking at the bottom or near the bottom not only for Red states but overall aswell.

Essentially Charlie Kirk’s famous mantra “get married, have children” isn’t a dream in Florida; it’s a near-impossible fantasy. This needs to end, and it needs to end now.

Overall, Florida is a mixed bag; DeSantis’ government certainly deserves praise for its legislative and executive victories. It’s the first state to crack down on H1-B abuse, made national headlines protecting children from progressive indoctrination, has remarkable state-level immigration enforcement, and is known as the preferred bastion for blue state refugees.

But we can walk and chew gum at the same time. None of these victories take away from the apparent failures. Florida needs to heavily deregulate and unleash the power and innovation of an industrialized America. It needs to undo the restrictive zoning and cut permitting timelines so young people can live out the American dream. There is good being done, but there is much more work to do.

In an X post, Governor DeSantis states, “If any universities are truly struggling to find U.S. citizens to fill their job openings, they ought to evaluate their academic programs to determine why they cannot produce graduates who can be hired for these positions.”

An X user gave the expected response that this is discriminating against global talent, but Ron clarified that the H1-B visa was being used for “athletic coaches and media relations specialists.”

Contrast this with Texas, where every state school has well over one hundred faculty and professors on H1-B visas. Texas A&M has over 200 H1-B visa workers.

Florida’s exceptional governance doesn’t end with H1-B bans; within the last two years, Florida has had one of the most impressive lists of enacting the American people’s will that has not been matched by any state. Here are just some of them:

• 6-Week Abortion Ban

• Mandated E-Verify for businesses

• Ban local IDs for illegal immigrants

• DEI university ban

• Permitless gun carry

• Ban on LGBT+ lessons in elementary and middle schools

• Ban on trans surgeries for minors, child school drag shows, and protected women’s restrooms

• School Choice expansion

• Banned ESG in state investing

• Death penalty allowed for undocumented immigrants

• Deputized state troopers for deportations

• H1-B visa ban for universities

Not a single state has accomplished exactly what Florida has in such a short amount of time. No matter how red their reputation is, they don’t come close. Even Republican strongholds like Texas and Utah haven’t come close to this type of governance.

Put simply, if you want to know what winning looks like, just google Florida.

President Trump’s administration cannot fight alone; Republican states cannot afford to be stagnant and slow when addressing the American people’s concerns. Issues like DEI and progressive indoctrination in schools, mass legal and illegal immigration, rampant crime, and housing affordability are not issues that merely one administration can fix. Every Republican state should be looking to Florida to see how they can mimic what is being accomplished there. It’s not enough to be a blue state with lower taxes; it’s time for Real Republican governance.

“Without blue states, America would look like a developing country—patchy internet, collapsing schools, no tech, no medicine, no future.”

There are many debates to be had about whether or not chasing GDP is the single best indicator for success; regardless, the pretentious position isn’t even true. In fact, the opposite is true. For the last twenty years, red states have silently surpassed blue states in education, infrastructure, and even economic growth. Whenever a Republican simply chooses to govern, then unbelievable success stories follow.

Take education, for example. If you were to go to somebody and tell them that Mississippi is the best state in the nation for education, they wouldn’t believe you. They would start listing “coastal elite” states like California or Massachusetts, but they would be totally wrong. Mississippi is not only the sole state that didn’t have a decline in literacy scores among schooled children, but it also saw literacy scores INCREASE. Back in 2013 Mississippi Republicans passed the Literacy Based Promotion Act, which pushed for an education overhaul focused on early literacy and demanded success from students, where students can’t pass 3rd grade if they can’t pass a literacy test.

The result has been nothing short of remarkable, gaining the nickname “The Mississippi Miracle.” Mississippi has had a complete turnaround, going from one of the lowest-scoring states in the country to in the top twenty. They have surpassed California, Massachusetts, New York, and many others. Not only did Mississippi see success for its best performers, but the bottom 10% had incredible gains in their test scores too.

While Democrats are implementing classes on unionizing and LGBTQ history, Mississippi focuses on actual education. Over a decade after the law was first passed, Republican governance is hailed as miraculous. That’s only one of many examples.

Living in California, one gets accustomed to its dilapidated and deteriorating infrastructure; it’s so bad that even the most radical blue-hearted liberals can’t defend it. From billion-dollar projects that go nowhere to the pothole-ridden roads, California is a perfect representation of how to waste tax dollars. This isn’t anecdotal, though; it’s actually a national trend. For both urban and rural roads, Democrat states consistently rank the worst, while the best are dominated by Republicans. For both urban and rural road conditions, 8/10 of the worst states are Democrats. California is the worst state for urban roads with 40% of them being in poor condition.

While the states with the best road conditions are dominated by Republicans. Earlier this week we featured Oklahoma’s infrastructure turnaround, where it used to be one of the worst states for bridge safety. Bridges across the state were on the verge of collapse; repairs would take forever. Twenty years later, Oklahoma is now in the top 10 for its infrastructural integrity and can repair bridges faster than any blue state. Compare that to California, hailed for its economic success, and they rank 34th for structural integrity; roads, bridges, trains, and everything in between are falling to the wayside as a result of Democrat leadership.

There is an obvious trend that even if blue states have high GDPs, they still look and feel like a developing country.

But going back to the graph at the top, it is undeniable that blue states across the country have high GDP rankings. One would assume that with such vibrant and successful economies, they would continue to grow, and that the potential still lies in these Democrat-run states rather than “poor” Republican states. This assumption is wrong. When ranked for GDP growth of the last 5 years, Republican states again are dominating. Idaho is at the top with a staggering 23% GDP growth in the last 5 years; Florida is right behind at 22%. The top 10 fastest-growing states in the country are all either red or purple, with the only exception being Washington. But why did Idaho come out of nowhere and dominate growth?

It’s simple; they cut regulations. In 2019 Gov. Brad Little slashed 95% of Idaho state regulations and unleashed an economic boom in the state. When Republicans choose to lead, they do so exceptionally.

There is a very obvious dichotomy here. Democrats across the country are choosing rot, decay, and inaction. They have rested on ivory towers of neoliberal economic success and have grown slovenly and fat on their thrones. Meanwhile, red states have silently surpassed them on every metric that matters. Their roads are smoother, their bridges are safer, their schools result in smarter kids, and they are growing.

What matters in a state’s success isn’t GDP; it’s what the GDP does for their people, and Democrats have failed them. Every time a Republican decides to stand up and govern in accordance with their values, strides are made, records are broken, and they become the standard in what can be done.

Nearly twenty months after the crash, the Baltimore government has announced the removal of 10,000 tons of concrete, beginning the next phase of reconstruction with an estimated completion date of October 2028. First completed in 1976, the Francis Scott Key Bridge cost 141 million, equal to 743 million in today’s dollars; the cost for reconstruction is projected to reach 5 billion dollars, over six and a half times the original price.

Time and time again we have seen blue state projects fail, go over budget, get bailed out by the federal government, and exceed projected timelines. This provides a unique opportunity for Red states to lead and show America that they know how to build. Oklahoma is doing precisely that.

This month the Williams Crossing bridge in Oklahoma was just built; while it’s a much smaller pedestrian bridge, it makes an interesting comparison to the Francis Key Scott rebuild. The Francis Scott Key Bridge is roughly 8 times as long as the Williams Crossing but will cost roughly 142 times more. It’s a staggering indictment against the infrastructural inefficacy of blue states.

Maybe this comparison is crude, which would be fair; these are very different bridges—one is for walking and one is for driving. However, the ascent of red state infrastructure development doesn’t stop there.

In 2005 Oklahoma was 49th in bridge conditions; the state was plagued with a collapsing infrastructure, with 1,200 out of 6,800 bridges being structurally deficient. As a result, the state legislature opened more funding, allowed builders to use new Accelerated Bridge Construction Techniques, streamlined federal regulatory submissions, and adopted a new policy to cut demolition permit times. The result has been unbelievable; the national average for a bridge rehab is 2-5 years; Oklahoma is doing it in 6 months.

As of this year, Oklahoma is 4th in the nation for structurally deficient bridges; Maryland is 39th. The blue coastal elites have ceded the ground of building for Red states to lead the way.

Furthermore, housing is another sector where Oklahoma has silently expanded their lead from sluggish Democrats. Compare Oklahoma to Maryland, and it becomes clear who wants to build homes for Americans. Oklahoma leads with just under 3.3 permits per capita, while Maryland is stuck with 2.4. Even though Oklahoma isn’t a national leader in housing development, the top 10 states for new housing construction are dominated by red states.

What’s become abundantly clear is that blue states have paralyzed themselves. They have inserted endless government middlemen to extract fines and permitting fees and implant endless delays to every construction project. Thankfully, red states have mostly rejected this practice, but more can always be done. While the left is failing to govern for people, it’s imperative that the right fill the vacuum and show that the alternative is better, faster, safer and creates an America that people want to believe in.

This loss has been due to a 50-year-long effort in anti-industrial policy. Part of this is the FTC’s extensive regulatory apparatus, which mandates that “all or virtually all” of a product must be sourced in America for it to count as Made in America. On the FTC’s website, “all or virtually all” is defined as “that the final assembly or processing of the product occurs in the United States, all significant processing that goes into the product occurs in the United States, and all or virtually all ingredients or components of the product are made and sourced in the United States. That is, the product should contain no—or negligible—foreign content.”

This seems fairly straightforward and strict, but in an age of global markets and complex products, it devolves into a nonsensical mess. Reading through the page, you’ll find examples that are frankly bewildering. One of them being if a lamp is “assembled from American-made brass and an American-made Tiffany-style lampshade and an imported base,” then the product wouldn’t be labeled as Made in America because an “essential part” was sourced overseas. Therefore that lamp would have to be labeled as “Assembled in America with foreign parts.”

Conversely, the FTC then says that if a company sourced raw petroleum from a foreign country to turn it into plastic for a case, then this plastic would count as American-made. But importing wood and hand cutting it into an ornate table isn’t.

If we require that the raw goods of products be sourced in the US and then outlaw sourcing the raw goods below our feet, suddenly nothing is made in the US anymore. We created a regulatory landscape that is nearly impossible to overcome and killed any motivation to do so.

A perfect example of this is the television. There are exactly zero American-made TVs anymore; any person born after the year 2000 has never looked at an American-made TV younger than them.

The reason why is because TVs require electronic components, which require rare earths that we don’t mine for anymore. If a manufacturer wanted to import europium from China and produce it into phosphors for LED screens, then that product would count as foreign, and when they sold it to another company for assembly, then that company would have to list their products as “Assembled in America with Foreign Parts.”

To make this clear, there are only 2 rare earth mines operating in the entire US. There is simply not enough domestic supply at the moment to allow for domestic manufacturing.

Now extend this situation to everything, from smartphones to shoes, TVs to microwaves. A manufacturer could buy all of their components from an American company that produced their part in the US but with foreign raw goods, and somehow none of this is “Made in America.” Companies aren’t willing to even assemble in America because they are attached to the baggage of not making it in America even when it ostensibly isn’t true.

But this isn’t just a loss on the consumer side; there has been a catastrophic loss in infrastructure and expertise. This is likely one of the greatest uphill battles the reshoring effort will have to fight. It takes dozens of engineers and designers to lay out a factory and assembly line; each of these people has intimate knowledge of the product being made at hand. Then it takes hundreds of workers to assemble these products all together. Billions in infrastructure and expertise were cast aside not just because China was merely cheaper, but because even if all of that work was done in the US, the product still wouldn’t say “Made in America.”

So how do manufacturers get around this? They adorn their labeling with silly stickers that consumers are catching on to. There is a near 100% chance that if a product says “Designed in California,” somewhere else it will say “Made in China.” However, this isn’t malicious behavior from a greedy company; we pushed them out. This has to come to an end.

Manufacturing and industry were not lost in the United States all at once; they were precisely destroyed over time through surgical incremental victories. First they cut out raw goods sourcing, justified as environmental protection. Then they drove up the cost of production through endless compliance and regulation. Finally, they killed any motivation for manufacturers to overcome these hurdles by insisting on esoteric, nonsensical policy where even if every step of production was done by American hands, if the raw good wasn’t dug from American soil then it wasn’t “Made in America".”

Reindustrialization similarly will not be brought back all at once. It will be through incremental victories from different directions, and no stone can be left unturned. While the private sector invests its money, the public sector must deregulate. This isn’t lowering standards, it’s opening the door to incrementally revive our industry. Made in America should not be something manufacturers strive for because it’s a near-impossible achievement, but because it means they employ our fellow Americans. Purchasing something made in America becomes a patriotic action; it puts your neighbor’s kid through school or the down payment on a young couple’s first home. We should be enabling as much of that as possible, scrutinizing it out of existence.

The conceit of theorizing: Right-wing politics has historically opted to theorize rather than to act. Marx famously said that “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” This quote, from the father of the modern Left, illustrates precisely why the Right has lost virtually every battle of strategic consequence against the Left for several hundred years.

Principles matter. But principles unexercised become ornaments—impressive to admire, useless in battle. The man who wins is the man who acts, not because “that’s what the Left does,” but because action is the proof of conviction. “Faith without works is dead.” The same is true of politics. Theory should ground us, but it should not distract us. Leaders of the Right need to develop an aggressive bias for action.

It is no coincidence that perhaps the two most productive, action-oriented men on the Right, Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump, have been wounded or slain by the bullets of the Left. They are threats to the Left not because of their ideas. They are threats to the Left because of their actions. No assassins have come for think-tank leaders, because they are simply not a threat to the Left. We must engage the enemy more closely, as Charlie did. “Move fast and break things” is the word of the hour. That is how we win.

The conceit of denying: The second conceit is even worse: the habit of defining ourselves against the vision of the Left, rather than proposing a definitive vision of our own. Ours has too often been a politics of negation—“Not what the Left wants!”—instead of affirmation: “This is what we want.” We pine for a past we cannot restore and ignore the future we could shape. Or, worse than pining for an unrecoverable “golden age,” we insist on preserving the status quo. We deny any change, because that is the ingrained conservative habit of the Right. For centuries, the Right has been following the lessons of Burke, which are essentially the tactics of a people trying to defend their castle. That is, trying to deny the entry of hostile invaders and ideologies. But we are no longer in possession of the castle, thanks to the Left’s long march through every institution.

When your society has been desiccated by years of domination by the Left, mere conservation is no longer enough. In an important sense, the Leftist position is now the conservative position; they are the cultural incumbents. The Right, if it means to win, must become the revolutionary force of renewal.

But progress, we are told, belongs to the Left. Nonsense. The real question is what kind of progress. Man does not live by resistance alone. He is moved by vision—by purpose—by the promise of something better. The Right needs to develop a serious vision of this—far more serious than “free, open-markets” or “low taxes and prosperity.” People need a cultural vision, something worth dying for. We have failed to provide that. And so we have lost.

So these are the two key conceits. The path around them, the path of Righteous progress, the path to winning, does not pass through Washington. The French revolutionaries did not send their best men to the court of Versailles to tempt the king. The American revolutionaries did not spend years dithering in London. Revolutions are always provincial. The French revolution was instigated only when the provincial elites found themselves gathered in the Estates-General. The American revolution was instigated only when provincial elites were gathered in the Continental Congress. Even in Russia, the provincial zemstvos were the seedbeds of rebellion in 1905. Every true revolution begins far from the capital, and every true renewal begins far from the regime’s reach.

So it will be in America. The future of the Right is provincial—rooted in the states. There, power can still be exercised; there, culture still breathes. The task now is to raise a generation of new founders: men who cut their teeth in state politics, who learn the art of building coalitions, managing institutions, and taking ground. Men with a reckless bias for action—willing to make mistakes so long as they do not stall. Men who understand that politics is not a chess match but a cavalry charge. Men who believe, as Horatio did, that “the boldest measures are the safest.” So the nation was established, so it will be restored.

Moreover, provincial politics will train these new founders not only in action but in vision. The states are still capable of imagining a new vision which is rooted in the old but not a hopeless pursuit of an age gone by. We are not trying to restore an old order. We are building a right order—one in which moral law, economic vigor, and political courage reinforce one another. The Left’s vision of progress is material and rootless; ours must be moral and rooted.

The states are the way forward. We must prepare the provinces. We must be encouraging young patriots to throw themselves into state politics; an especially fruitful avenue is their state bureaucracy: the boards and commissions that dictate 90% or more of the actual policy of their state. Serving on one of these is an incredibly low time investment, but provides enormous leverage in their community. Often, the difference between having a 90-foot pagan statue erected in your township or not can depend on one 90-minute meeting. The State Leadership Initiative exists to cultivate precisely that: a new generation of builders in the states who will be the basis of our Right-wing renewal. We must be fostering leaders in the states who, in God’s good time, will at some future crisis find themselves gathered in the same rooms, suffused with the same love of country, skilled in the same political maneuvering, and willing to risk the same risks to turn the Nation—just as the Founders did.

If the Right is to win again, it must rediscover what it means to build, and where to build. That’s what we’re doing in the states.