Voters are sending newly elected Arizona legislators to office with a clear mandate from the people of Arizona: The people must be the chief stakeholder of their representatives.
The days of woke and swampy lobbyists and consultants overriding our voices have come to an end, unless your legislator votes for the swamp grift to continue with their first vote representing you. The SECRET vote for legislative leadership picks happens tomorrow, Tuesday, November 12th at 9 am.
Leadership votes are the most evident indicator of the policy that will lead each chamber. All policy floats downstream from leadership. The leadership of each chamber of the legislature determines whether the grassroots have a seat at the table or if a quid pro quo, pay-to-play agenda will lead their administration.
The leader of the House is called the Speaker. The leader of the Senate is called the Senate President. While the grassroots worked hard to reform both chambers in 2022, only Senate President Warren Petersen performed with a complete turnover of poor-performing staff and additional efficiencies in how government runs. He also led the efforts to stop the run-amok executive authority by appointing Sen. Jake Hoffman to lead the confirmation committee process of Governor Katie Hobbs’ appointees. These efforts have been wildly successful, with Arizona voters confirming their support at the ballot box by expanding Republican majorities in both chambers.
It’s time for the House to follow suit with a Speaker who will put the mandate from the people first and help ensure that President Trump’s America First agenda takes root in Arizona. The candidates running include:
1.Joe Chaplik, a legislator in LD3 who previously ran for Speaker in 2022. Chaplik was spurred on by the grassroots and only missed it by a single vote. He has served his district since 2022. He’s a successful businessman with “25 years of executive leadership experience building and guiding top-tier companies,” according to his AZ Legislature biography. Chaplik is also a founding member of the Arizona Freedom Caucus. He gained wide popularity in leading the effort to relieve children of the abusive mask mandates in schools. Chaplik’s lifetime Arizona Free Enterprise Club scorecard score is 100%.
2.Leo Biasiucci, a legislator in LD30 currently serving as Majority Leader. Biasiucci has no biography on record. He’s served in his district since 2020. Ballotpedia says he has a background in “owning Mohave Traffic Survival School and working as an actor with SAG-AFTRA, a claims analyst with GEICO, and a financial auditor with GE Capital.” He is known to have led the House Victory PAC effort. And he’s also been a friend to both the grassroots and moderate members of the Caucus. Biasiucci’s lifetime Arizona Free Enterprise Club scorecard score is 84%, with a recent session score of 78%.
3. Steve Montenegro, a legislator in LD29 since 2023. Montenegro also doesn’t have a biography on record. He previously served as a legislator from 2008 to 2017. Montenegro previously ran for Congress against Debbie Lesko and lost mainly due to a myriad of reports of an inappropriate relationship with a young staffer while serving in legislative leadership, even though he was married and a pastor. He also previously worked in former Congressman Trent Franks‘ office for a decade. Franks was also plagued by a scandal involving a young female staffer. Montenegro’s Ballotpedia says he previously worked as a principal consultant of Coronam Consulting. He’s also served as an executive with Patrick Byrne’s The America Project. Montenegro has also previously been a big champion of eliminating the Electoral College with a yes vote on the National Popular Vote initiative in 2016 on HB2456—a popular radical left initiative to upend our Constitutional Republic. It died thanks to then-Senate President Andy Biggs, who blocked it from being voted on in the Senate. Montenegro’s lifetime Arizona Free Enterprise Club scorecard score is 91%, with the most recent session clocking in at 81%.
When looking at the most recent legislative track records, the voters get a clearer picture of the leadership each candidate offers. Montenegro ran 29 bills this session, with only two passing or 6.9%. Chaplik ran seven bills, with one passing or 14%. Biasiucci ran 34 bills, with eight passing or 23.5%. Unfortunately, most passed bills were victim to Governor Hobbs’ veto stamp.
Chaplik’s keen understanding of government efficiency stands out most in this record. Chaplik has long been preaching a message that poor management in the House has led to chaos, an all-powerful lobbyist and consultant class overriding the will of the people, and unsupported legislators with few tools to serve the best interests of their constituents and fulfill the people’s mandate. He’s walked the walk by limiting the number of bills he’s personally run, ensuring staff time isn’t wasted on silly messaging bills.
Chaplik also advocates for sessions to return to 100 days as our state Constitution prescribes to prevent swampy budgets and pay-to-play sweetheart deals benefiting the lobbyist and consulting class.
Finally, Chaplik offers a vision where the legislature prioritizes its only constitutional mandate – the budget – and presents that to the Governor early in the session to avoid gridlock and threats of government shutdowns. Senate President Petersen has supported early budget preparation and was successful in this endeavor in 2023. It changed the power dynamic with the radical left executive branch and restored power to the people’s representatives. The people benefit greatly when efficiency is prioritized by leading with the budget first.
These reforms, coupled with cleaning house of staff leadership who have promoted chaos and undermined the body and Speaker historically on many occasions, are a winning combination for the majority party to fulfill the mandate from the voters.
Legislators who genuinely seek to serve the people should make it known now whether they intend to make the people the chief stakeholders of their government or the political lobbyist consultant class.
The voters should demand transparency in their legislators’ first vote, setting the tone for the next two years. Transparency dies in darkness, and no legislator should keep their leadership votes secret from their constituents.
A quick search on X shows the grassroots favors Chaplik to lead the House. Do you know who your legislators will vote for tomorrow in the House Speaker race? Have they asked you who you want to lead the AZ People’s House?
Merissa Hamilton is the founder and chairwoman of the nonpartisan nonprofit organizations Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and Strong Communities Action, also known as EZAZ.org, which are focused on making civic education and action as easy as pie. She’s an elected Member at Large of Congressional District 1 for the Arizona Republican Party and previously ran for Mayor in 2020. Merissa is also the Director of Integration and Policy at The R.O.A.R. PAC, which is on a mission to restore our American Republic.
Here are the hard truths of our threatening situation with Social Security and Medicare. We have a looming major fiscal crisis which no one denies. There are solutions but no politically easy ones, and our options get worse with time.
Yet every time a working politician suggests considering even mild changes, the formidable senior lobby and AARP erupt in outrage and beat down the hapless reformer. Former allies of responsible reform flee, and the status quo is again preserved.
Facts, as they say, are stubborn things. Social Security is by design a mandatory government administered defined-benefit retirement trust, funded by payroll taxes. However, the inflows to the trust are insufficient to support the benefits promised and, unlike private pension plans, there is no corpus of funds earning compound interest to make up the difference. Thus, the fund will become insolvent in nine years. As matters stand, benefits across the board will need to be reduced by 23%.
Worse, deficits in Social Security and Medicare comprise the overwhelming majority of future anticipated federal debt accumulation. So, the courageous politicians who assured seniors in this and every election that they will “protect” their Social Security (i.e., do nothing) were not protecting anything except their own political skins.
The problem nobody wants to face is that either benefit levels are too high, payroll taxes are too low, or retirees are retired for too long. Politicians long ago raided the “surplus” and replaced the funds with non-income generating IOUs.
Reducing benefit levels, even for high earners, is politically toxic. The mere suggestion evokes hyperbolic charges of “pushing granny over the cliff” and “giving the middle finger to senior citizens.”
On the other hand, raising taxes would be nearly as unpopular. It would take a 25% hike in the payroll tax to fill the hole once insolvency occurs. Economic growth and consumer spending, the drivers in our economy, would be crowded out as would several federal programs.
Clawing back the Social Security trust funds so that income could be generated would be nice. But that train has left the station. The funds have long since been spent on other priorities
That leaves only shortening the length of retirements that Social Security supports. This option is also massively unpopular, as public demonstrations against it here and around the globe attest.
Yet when Social Security was established in 1935, the average life expectancy was just 63. Today it is nearly 80. We are now down to just three workers paying into the system for every retiree, compared to 16 at the beginning of Social Security.
These workers’ earnings are paid out as current benefits in what amounts to a giant Ponzi game. Like Ponzi schemes before it, this one is also doomed to failure.
The concept of retirement was basically unknown until recently in human history. Everyone worked as long as they could, and the rest were cared for primarily by families. So why is delayed retirement, even modest (two years) and gradually phased in, violently opposed?
Part of the reason is that government subsidies are never “enough.” Free money is always popular, and beneficiaries quickly develop an entitlement mentality.
Since retiree benefits are funded by payroll taxes, the notion of being “owed” is understandable. Unfortunately for proud seniors, the facts now are that the money flows in Social Security are essentially like other government welfare programs.
Fortunately, most jobs today are not as physically demanding as in the past. Medical care for job related injuries is much improved. Disability insurance and retirement accommodations for workers in occupations like law enforcement and the military are already in place. For the rest, many able seniors experience work as manageable and even enriching.
Regardless, the do-nothing option, so wildly popular in this last election, is no longer feasible. The “private account” reform offered by George Bush in 2005, which was demagogued into the ground by the same crowd proudly blocking all reforms this go-around, would have resulted in the average worker having three times more retirement income by now.
This can has been kicked down to near the end of the road. Our options now are to defer retirement or face serious program cuts. Sad.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
One recurring theme that no one in Washington seems capable of learning is that the best way to destroy an industry is to have the government subsidize it.
That lesson came shining through in recent days when Intel acknowledged that it suffered a $16.6 billion quarterly loss. That is more than the entire annual budget of some states.
Wait. Isn’t this the same Intel that is in line to be the biggest corporate welfare recipient of federal aid under the CHIPS Act — the Biden bill designed to make sure that microchips are made in the United States, not China? Intel is first in the soup line to receive $8.5 billion in grants and $11 billion in subsidized loans. The checks haven’t been written yet, but this will be one of the biggest welfare checks ever written to an American company.
Maybe President Joe Biden, who had a joyous photo op with Intel officials when the bill was passed, should have second thoughts. Intel’s near broke. They were just replaced by their rival chipmaker Nvidia in the Dow Jones composite. Nvidia gets none of the stash from the CHIPS Act, yet its stock price has soared more than five-fold. It has been on a hiring spree and has made hundreds of billions of dollars for American investors — including pension and 401k plans.
Talk about politicians betting on the wrong horse.
It gets worse. Semafor Technology reports that instead of pulling the plug on this near $20 billion aid package, Biden officials and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia — one of the lead sponsors of the CHIPS Act — “have discussed whether the company needs more help.” More?
This despite that Bloomberg reported that Intel has failed to provide federal officials with a viable plan to turn its financial woes around. Why do that when you have an umbilical cord to the federal Treasury?
Ironically, Intel made more than $20 billion in profits before the CHIPS Act welfare bill was passed. So far this year it has lost nearly $20 billion.
What is next? A federal takeover of Intel as happened with failing automakers and banks in 2008?
There is an important lesson here. Many Democrats and Republicans have become enamored with the idea of America adopting a Japanese-style “National Industrial Policy” that would direct hundreds of billions of tax dollars to nurture “strategically important industries” — such as manufacturing, tech products and “clean energy.”
The politicians think they can pick winners and losers better than private investors who allocate funds in our highly efficient multi-trillion dollar capital markets. Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has effectively declared war on the half-trillion-dollar booming private equity industry, which she calls “vampires,” because sometimes they make bad bets.
But maybe it’s Uncle Sam that sucks the blood out of viable businesses. Look no further than Biden’s EV handouts, which have only corresponded with a massive consumer rejection of an industry that was flourishing before Uncle Sam started passing out tens of billions of dollars to the car manufacturers and strong-armed the U.S. auto industry to produce them. Over the past four years the federal government has authorized more than $300 billion in green energy subsidies including wind and solar power grants and yet the amount of power they produce has barely budged — thanks to low-priced natural gas.
If we want American industries to be number one, the government should stop giving them money and the CEOs should stop taking it.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and co-founder of Unleash Prosperity. His latest book is The Trump Economic Miracle, co-authored with Arthur Laffer.
Against all odds, former President Donald Trump appears to have won a decisive victory and will become the 47th president of the United States. He will be only the second American in history reelected to a non-consecutive presidential term. Trump prevailed despite the opposition of every institution in America, including the corrupt media and government.
Far from merely a defeat for his notional opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, a stand-in for the status quo, or the failed presidency of dotard Joe Biden, Trump’s victory marks a consolidation of the New Right. What lies ahead will be such a radical break that it will make Trump’s first term look like a warmup.
Many pundits across the political spectrum will hope that the election result is an aberration: that Trump is a populist who bewitched the Republican Party and then duped the electorate. Perhaps he won because of Biden’s decay, the late switch to Harris, or an electorate that the elite deems too stupid to understand how good it has it.
Unfortunately for the doubters, the reality is far more stark than merely a transient setback or misunderstanding. Trump is the vehicle. The force behind his victory marks a fundamental turning point in U.S. history and the politics of the right around the world. This is not the high-water mark of the fight against the system. Rather this marks a critical mass in the effort to replace that system.
Trump’s first victory in 2016 was a willingness by a public angered by a lost decade of economic stagnation and lost wars to give an unknown outsider a chance to mix things up. His second victory is a decision by that electorate, which now has his measure precisely, to supplant a corrupt system that runs through American and western society — a feckless compilation of self-appointed referees known also as the “elite” or the “establishment.”
What was whimsy then is now determination and it is much bigger than just Trump. The system put everything it had into this election and it lost.
Those at home and abroad who have estranged themselves from the MAGA movement will take false solace from Trump’s previous term. This time will be different. The degree to which Trump changes America will depend on the effectiveness of his administration and an always-disappointing Congress. But it will be different.
In broad terms, one should assume that Trump will reduce regulations and taxes to spur the productive part of the economy. Conceptually, his polices will supplant globalism with nationalism, including higher tariffs.
He will dispense with the progressive religions of climate change alarmism and racism under the banner of diversity. Despite being a late addition to his campaign, he will seek reductions in government spending except Social Security and Medicare.
Internationally, he will devote fewer resources and less time to irrelevant or exotic alliances and partnerships, focusing instead on ones that matter most. He will order the largest deportation program since the Eisenhower administration. However, he will otherwise seek the reduction of the national security state, especially the intelligence bureaucracy, the Justice Department and the secret police, all of which sought to undermine his presidency and reelection campaigns.
The big question is how far Trump wants to go and how far he will be able to go. In a nation of 335 million, it theoretically should not be hard to find effective and loyal people to fill the roughly 4,000 politically appointed positions in the executive branch. Yet subject-matter expertise in government and a willingness to confront the swamp while living in it are evidently rare qualities.
Trump One had more than its fair share of appointees who were indifferent or opposed to the president’s wishes, joined by two million federal civilian employees, most of whom hated his guts. Trump’s own aides recognized the failure with personnel and were planning big changes in a second term. Trump himself acknowledged the problem in his recent podcast with Joe Rogan.
If Trump and his top lieutenants manage personnel better — acknowledging that some duds and flops among appointees are impossible to avoid entirely — his impact will be magnified greatly. His term could see big tech broken up, the military transformed radically and reoriented to the Pacific, the seeds planted for the type of news media that America deserves, the border secured and all illegals deported, mass reductions in government employment and handouts in order to balance the budget, and universities regulated to teach real things instead of disdain for America.
However, no matter how well Trump does, one thing is already clear. The New Right he has helped to create is now not only dominant but insurmountable on its side of the political spectrum. The “NeverTrump” Republicans may still land some media money, but they no longer exist as a political force.
They have gone the way that Rockefeller Republicans did during the Reagan administration. The fact that anyone under fifty will have to look up what a “Rockefeller Republican” was is a testament to their extinction — and that of today’s opponents of Trump and the New Right among Republicans.
A final point is that this election’s rebuke of the system is not just political but cultural as well. Trump and the rise of the New Right are not just about the economy, inflation, tax rates and America losing. It is also a cultural shift. The system told Americans that voting for Trump would lead not just to bad policy but was morally wrong. He is a (fake) felon. He is a (fake) fascist. He is a lout and a liar — or so came the word from the system’s hypocrites projecting their own traits on Trump.
Electing Trump was a rejection of this schoolmarmery. It is a rejection of they/them pronouns, tampons in boys’ rooms, school shutdowns, neurotic Karens who politicize everything, celebrities who deign to preach, attempts to emasculate the military and everything else in America, and all of the other progressive passions. Trump’s election marks a return to normalcy in which merit and achievement are celebrated instead of politics and preening.
Like President Calvin Coolidge observing that “the chief business of the American people is business,” it is a deliberate turn inward, a focus on real life, and a decision to keep politics in its place.
Presumably there will be much emoting ahead. Who can forget the screaming woman at Trump’s first inauguration or the boo-hoo look on the faces of reporters for most of the following four years? (I was reminded of my own return to State Department headquarters after President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection — I had Darth Vader’s “Imperial March” tune in my head as I enjoyed all of the sadder-than-usual faces.) Less amusing were the Russia hoax, the phony Ukraine impeachment, and the “Summer of Love” riots orchestrated by Antifa and BLM.
Who knows what lies ahead this time. But it is important to keep in mind that Trump and his policies have a clear mandate from the republic he will soon lead again. The country has spoken. And the country and the world will be changed.
Christian Whiton is a contributor to the Daily Caller News Foundation. He was a State Department senior advisor in the Trump and Bush administrations. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a principal at DC International Advisory. The author of “Smart Power: Between Diplomacy and War,” he co-hosts the “Domino Theory” podcast and edits “Capitalist Notes” on Substack. This article was first published on “Capitalist Notes.”
As I endure the last few months of this election cycle, REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It,” has been playing on repeat in my mind.
From cable networks to talk radio, from my X feed to late night TV, partisans are working overtime to convince us that the world will never be the same if the candidate they oppose is elected.
It’s divisive…and exaggerated. They hurl invectives at one another and then they all scream that “we’ve never seen a political climate like this!” In fact, we have. This is a repeat of what typically happens every four years in a Presidential election.
“Nazi.” “Leftist crank.” “Baby Killer.” “Mush for brains.” These insults are as unoriginal as they are pernicious. They’re trotted out each election cycle.
Case in point, every Republican presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater has been called a Nazi, a fascist, or Hitler—usually all three.
While every Democratic candidate since Johnson has been called a socialist, communist, or Marxist.
And yet through the six Republican presidents and five Democratic presidents we have had since 1964, we’ve remained a vibrant Democratic Republic, not a fascist state or a socialist hotbed.
But wait, “This is the most important election of our lifetime!” “This could be the last election in our nation’s history.” Well, until the next one.
Presidential elections are consequential. But this is the United States of America; one election is not going to make or break our union. Despite the dire warnings of civil war coming from both sides of the political spectrum, we will remain a free and prosperous people.
Might there be protests, unrest, maybe even riots after the election? Probably. But those engaged in these disruptions are a tiny fraction of the American public. Most people will wake up the next morning, get on with their lives, and continue working hard to better their future.
And isn’t that the beauty of our system? Our Founding Fathers were damn smart. To a person, they were better read on government, philosophy, language, and mathematics than the vast majority of today’s PhDs. They also cared deeply about creating a system of government that protects our God-given rights and allows us to pursue “a more perfect union.”
Their genius shines brightly in our three-branch system of government: Executive (President), Legislative (House and Senate), and Judicial (the Courts).
While partisans on either side always cry that their opponents will govern with “unchecked power,” the truth is considerably less dire. Just look at history.
When Trump was elected in 2016, the Left went into a panicked frenzy that he would be a dictator and imprison his political enemies. It didn’t happen.
When Biden won in 2020, the Right claimed that the election was stolen, that Biden would expand the Supreme Court, and that everyday Americans would lose all their rights. That didn’t happen either.
So, we must take these drastic predictions with a grain of salt. This is not new. It happens in every election. It was happening all the way back in our third Presidential election when John Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson. According to Adams’ supporters, a Jefferson presidency would mean “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will all be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.” So, they may have been more elegant in their hyperbole, but it’s safe to say, not much has changed.
Despite this turmoil every four years, our nation endures.
The Founders knew that they were creating something special. The Declaration of Independence laid out the argument of self-government and that informed the debate that drafted the Constitution. By diffusing power among three separate branches, the Founders created a check on each branch against the other, and even checks within each branch.
We have seen multiple examples of this in action in just the last few years. The House of Representatives impeached Trump (twice), and the Senate failed to convict. The Executive branch attempted to prosecute a former President, and the Supreme Court ruled that Presidents have immunity while engaged in official actions.
Partisans wail and gnash teeth at the process, but it works and cooler heads prevail. Are there abuses that have yet to be rectified? Absolutely, but the system was designed to work slowly and deliberately. In this age of instant gratification, it is good for us to be reminded that we don’t want to live in a country where snap judgments by a government entity can forever change the trajectory of our nation.
If you feel anxiety creeping up as you watch the final days of the election unfold and the results come in on election night, just take a breath, and express gratitude to our Founders that we have a system that will work, despite the failings of the players in the game.
Sean Noble is the president of American Encore. You can follow him on X here.
By now, my story is pretty well-known. I (Riley Gaines) swam against Lia Thomas (who had previously competed on Penn’s men’s team before switching to the women’s team) in the spring of 2022, and we tied for fifth place. Officials told me Thomas needed to hold the trophy for “photo purposes” and that they would mail me mine. What a degrading way to finish my swimming career.
Thomas made headlines early this year after suing World Aquatics (and losing) in hopes to compete as a woman in the 2024 Paris Olympics. World Aquatics, understanding that testosterone suppression doesn’t eliminate male athletic advantage, prohibits individuals who have gone through male puberty from competing in women’s events.
If Thomas would have been allowed to compete as a woman, it’s very possible that the women’s Olympics might have had a different outcome. Thomas had the fastest time in the nation in the women’s 500 freestyle in 2022. And, as we’ve seen in various sports across the nation and the world, over 500 medals, honors, and trophies meant for women have gone to males who identify as such. This is demeaning and discouraging at best.
That’s exactly what Title IX protects against. Under the Title IX Congress passed 52 years ago, women were promised equal opportunities, including in athletics, in an educational program (like high school and college) that accepts federal money, even indirectly.
But radical and illegal interpretations of Title IX say it doesn’t protect women, but rather subordinates women to males who identify as women. The Biden-Harris administration released a controversial revision in April (in effect as of August 1), unilaterally rewriting the landmark sex equality law. This is a dangerous game to play. Several states have challenged the law and preserved single-sex sports in their states. Arizona is not one of them, thanks to Democrats in charge deciding to support the Biden-Harris regime.
Not only did Arizona leaders fail to sue, but Congress had a chance to undo the Biden-Harris Title IX revisions. A Congressional Review Act (CRA) joint resolution was introduced and voted on by the House to overturn this rewrite, but the Senate failed to act.
U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego (AZ-3), now running for a hotly-contested Senate seat in Arizona, was one of 205 Democratic members of Congress who voted not to protect women’s sports, signaling his disdain for the integrity of women’s spaces.
As both of us have said before, the allowance of men in women’s sports is discrimination at the highest level. I (Sami) played women’s disc golf professionally since 2012 and recently stepped down so that I could join the fight for women’s rights.
This is truly one of the top civil rights issues of our time, and so much is at stake.
It’s not just sports that are affected, either. Across the country, we’ve seen males dominate women’s prisons, sororities, locker rooms, and other intimate spaces. This is nothing less than the attempted erasure of women.
This year, the Arizona legislature passed the “Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights” to codify common sense definitions of sex-based terms, such as “woman,” “man,” “female,” and “male.” Sadly, it was vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs.
Time and time again, elected officials on the federal and state levels have signaled that they do not stand with women. And we’ve had enough.
That’s why I created the Riley Gaines Stand With Women Scorecardwith Independent Women’s Voice. This first-of-its-kind resource scores every candidate for federal office on whether they stand with women and promise “to uphold legislation that preserves female opportunities and private spaces.”
Senate Candidate Kari Lake, for instance, signed the Stand With Women Commitment, making her the only Arizona Senate candidate to be Riley Gaines-Approved.
As former athletes, we desperately hope the next generation of girls have the same opportunities we had to compete and win, with privacy and safety in mind. The integrity of women’s spaces hangs in the balance. Do your leaders stand with women? Visit the scorecard to find out.
Riley Gaines is an ambassador with Independent Women’s Voice and a former 12x All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky. She is the host of “Gaines for Girls” on OutKick and author of Swimming Against the Current: Fighting for Common Sense in a World That’s Lost its Mind. Sami Keddington is the Chandler, Arizona, Chapter leader of Independent Women’s Network and a former professional disc golfer.