All right, let’s get this thing started. Hello and welcome to the fourth – Beryl, can you believe this is the fourth? – annual Louisiana Freedom Caucus PAC Legislative Summit dinner.

Before we get started, let’s take care of some housekeeping. First up is state representative Chuck Owen, who’ll lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

And now, state senator Valarie Hodges will lead us in prayer.

All right. How’s everybody feeling?

We’re here at a very different venue than the previous three events we’ve done, and we’d like your feedback. What do you think of Tiger Stadium as a site for this thing? More fun than the Hilton? Definitely better selfies with the field in the background, right?

We like it. We’d like to park this event here for future years.

It’s fitting that we made some changes, because this is something of a pivotal year for public policy in Louisiana. I don’t know if you folks saw it, but last week Site Selection Magazine listed Louisiana in its top 10 states for new facilities and projects, which is something we had in our favor for a while and then it went away under a certain governor and now it’s back. Also, as of April there were more people working a job in Louisiana than ever before. The state has apparently reversed its outmigration problem after a decade of utterly swooning in population. Insurance rates aren’t exactly down, but they’re at least not spiraling like they were a couple of years ago. Our public schools are rising pretty rapidly in the national rankings thank to some common-sense reforms made in recent years.

Those are effects of things many of the folks in this room have been able to do. I would call out, individually, all of the members of our House and Senate, but then this really would come off like the SGA hearings, so instead, can we have our legislators stand and be recognized?

Thank you for your efforts to improve this state. We talk about that capitol as a factory of sadness, and, well… that isn’t altogether wrong. But while we on the Right like to beat each other up for falling short of our ideals, there is no question Louisiana is better off today than it was when the Louisiana Freedom Caucus was formed back in 2023.

And can our other elected officials in the crowd stand and be recognized?

Thank you for all you do as well.

We’ve got a great show lined up for you tonight, and the theme of this year’s Legislative Summit is that we’re taking stock of where we are as a state, as well as here in our capital city, and as a nation. The speakers you’ll hear from tonight are state representative Beryl Amedee, the chair of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus, Baton Rouge mayor-president Sid Edwards, and our keynote speaker J. Christian Adams, who is unparalleled, as far as we’re concerned, as an expert in American election law.

And while I definitely don’t  want  to step on Christian’s speech, because he’s going to leave everybody in this room enlightened on the opportunities and challenges states like Louisiana have in front of us in light of the Callais case, I do want to open up with a couple of words about where we are on the most important issue left to deal with in this legislative session – and expand that a little.

Because this week we’re going to agree on a congressional redistricting map, and when we do we’re going to be closing the book on a bad era – or error – which thankfully didn’t last long. I’m not going to rehash the process which gave us Cleo Fields as a DEI congressman, and for that I’ll just say that you’re welcome. What I will say is that going back to at least a 5-1 map restores the will of Louisiana’s people, and it happens at a time when we’re beginning to join the rest of the South in the kind of growth and renewal which will reshape this country.

What do I mean by that? Well, earlier this month Clayton Wood, who writes one of the more interesting blogs on Substack that you’ll find, put forth a very interesting hypothesis. Wood suggested that in the coming years four factors will combine to turn America dramatically away from the politics of the Barack Obamas, Hakeem Jeffrieses, AOC’s and Bernie Sanderses of the world. Amid all the caterwauling about the midterm elections that might sound Pollyanna-ish, I’ll grant you, but I think Wood is nonetheless correct, and I’ll  explain it.

First, he notes that the 2020 census has now been acknowledged by the Census’ own review report as grossly inaccurate. For example, Florida was undercounted by some 750,000 people. That’s a whole congressional district. Tennessee was badly undercounted. So was Texas and several others, all of which were red states. On the other hand, a number of blue states were overcounted – some, like New York, to the tune of six hundred thousand people. Minnesota was overcounted by over 200,000, which gave Minnesota a chance to hold on to Ilhan Omar’s seat when that would have gone away. In total, this gave the Democrats a handful of seats they wouldn’t have had in an accurate Census count.

The excuse for this? COVID. Of course! It’s amazing how these “crises” always end up benefiting the Left, isn’t it?

Wood’s second point, and this is where some of the good economic news holds promise for us in Louisiana at long last, is that the Great Migration continues not just apace, but it’s accelerating. That should begin to positively affect this place if it hasn’t already. Anybody noticing the traffic in South Baton Rouge would swear this is an absolute boomtown. States across the South are filling up at an even greater pace, though. Florida is pretty much full, and people in South Carolina are talking about putting up roadblocks on I-95 they’ve got so many people trying to get in.

We’re not there yet, but the argument could be made that we’re next. And the import of that is when the 2030 Census is in, states like Louisiana are going to have a lot more political power than we’ve ever had. This is already true given that Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise are the  two most important men in the House, but that House majority is going to swell thanks to red Southern states picking up congressional districts and electoral votes as a result of the 2030 census.

Third, Wood notes, is the effect of the Callais case. We’ve already seen several other Southern states alter their congressional maps as a result of now being free to draw districts the same way blue states up north do, and that’s going to change the makeup of Congress in significant ways. Louisiana is joining that parade this week, and hallelujah for that.

And finally, though this is more speculative – though I’d argue it’s no less true  – Wood notes that the Democrats as a party have put themselves in a pretty tight box politically. There is no Barack Obama lurking out there to shake up American politics like we saw 20 years ago. Obama might still be the power behind the throne within his party, but they’ve borne a terrible cost for that. Obama was elected in 2008 largely by a lot of crossover voters who were hoping to get racial reconciliation out of electing a black guy president, and I don’t think it’s overstating the case to say that those voters were pretty badly burned by the experience.

Obama didn’t remake America, though he tried his damnedest. What he did was to pave the way for Donald Trump. And while this could be a big opportunity for Democrats to have a blowout in the midterms, if you’ll notice, they haven’t really done the work when it comes to finding electable candidates. They’re running an avowed communist with a Nazi tattoo for the Senate in Maine, a gay vegan in Texas, and a quack doctor of Egyptian extraction in Michigan. And the House candidates tend to be even worse. And when you’re picking between Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, AOC and Pete Buttigieg as your presidential nominee, it’s not a sign that you’re ready for a future in which Republicans have a built-in electoral college advantage.

Projections have it that they’re going to have to carry every one of the current swing states, plus somewhere else, in order to win a presidential election by 2032.

And Wood notes that this is why they want DC and Puerto Rico statehood, they want to open the border and register illegals to vote and they want to pack the Supreme Court. They’re validating his hypothesis by what they’re telling each other. Kamala was just dumb enough a couple of weeks ago to say the quiet part out loud.

It’s a really good read, and tomorrow at the Hayride I’ll link to it. I’m just lazy enough to post this speech at the Hayride tomorrow and call it my contribution at the site for the day, so I’ll include the link to Wood’s piece. But if we’re taking stock of where we are, what I’d say is that despite all the screaming and yelling here and elsewhere, the side represented by the folks in this room really does have the future in our hands. We just need to seize it, and I’d say that this crowd is an awfully good start on having the people to do just that.

Editor’s Note: The annual fundraising dinner for the Louisiana Freedom Caucus PAC might be over, but our efforts to elect solid conservatives to move Louisiana forward continue nonetheless. If you’d like to join the team and make a contribution, feel free to click this link to our Anedot fundraising page.