Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivered the keynote address at The Heartland Institute's 42nd Anniversary Benefit Dinner on September 3, 2026, at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, where he was awarded the Heartland Liberty Prize.

DeSantis walks through the record: four consecutive years of budget reductions, retiring more than half of Florida's state debt, the nation's first universal school choice program, eliminating DEI from public universities, five-year tenure review, ESG out of the state pension, paycheck protection for public employee unions, and tort reform. He explains why he rejected the advice to trim his sails in a state everyone expected to turn blue — and how Florida went from 300,000 more registered Democrats to 1.5 million more registered Republicans.

He closes on America's 250th anniversary and what the founders actually risked, then takes audience questions on 2028, reopening Florida during COVID, the teachers unions, whether conservatives should stay in blue states, and the work of First Lady Casey DeSantis.

The Heartland Institute is one of the world's leading free-market think tanks, celebrating free markets, limited government, and individual freedom. Learn more at heartland.org.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Great to be in the Windy City
0:46 "When Republicans die and go to heaven, it looks a lot like Naples"
1:31 The cheat code: do the opposite of California, New York and Illinois
2:32 Four straight years of budget cuts
3:19 Retiring 52% of Florida's debt
3:52 Fewest state bureaucrats per capita in America
4:18 Universal school choice and eliminating DEI in higher ed
4:40 Tenure review every five years
5:15 Election integrity
5:49 Getting ESG out of the state pension fund
6:21 Immigration enforcement and Martha's Vineyard
6:51 Banning Sharia law; designating the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR
7:18 Paycheck protection and the teachers unions
7:39 Tort reform and falling insurance rates
8:06 Civics in schools and the America 250 statues
8:30 Remaking the Florida Supreme Court
9:04 The rankings: #1 economy, #1 education, #1 parental rights
9:47 Why he got into politics — and the Obama book nobody read
11:38 Buckley said "stand athwart history and yell stop." That's not enough anymore.
12:44 The scoreboard: Fauci, the unions, Disney, Soros, BlackRock, Biden
13:55 "Florida was supposed to become a blue state"
15:31 The registration flip and a 1.5 million-vote win
18:17 Bold colors, not pale pastels
19:19 Young voters, socialism, and who really caused the affordability crisis
20:43 Crony capitalism and venture socialism
23:32 America at 250: what the founders put on the line
25:04 "Human nature has not changed one bit"
26:31 The job of a statesman
27:45 The sacred fire of liberty
29:07 Heartland Liberty Prize presentation
30:19 Cigar Aficionado and a box of Chicago cigars
32:28 Q&A: Will you run for president in 2028?
34:52 Q&A: Why Florida reopened before any other state
39:13 Q&A: What could fix Illinois
41:48 Q&A: Fight or flight from blue states?
44:18 Q&A: The Cancer Fund, opioids, and welfare reform

Actor, director, and producer Kevin Sorbo spoke at The Heartland Institute's 42nd Anniversary Benefit Dinner on September 3, 2026, at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.

Sorbo traces the whole arc: a Minnesota school teacher's son who decided at 11 to become an actor, the seven auditions that landed him Hercules, the three strokes at the height of his fame that took years to recover from, and the phone call from his agent and manager telling him the studios had blacklisted him. He talks about leaving California for Florida, losing 4.1 million Facebook followers during COVID, founding Sorbo Studios with his wife Sam, and why he keeps making faith and family films — plus a few golf jokes and a run-in with a former president at a charity tournament.

The Heartland Institute is one of the world's leading free-market think tanks, celebrating free markets, limited government, and individual freedom. Learn more at heartland.org.

CHAPTERS
0:00 "That's my pride flag"
0:32 Honoring the veterans in the room
1:05 Growing up in Minnesota on a school teacher's salary
1:44 The Jesus and Moses golf joke
3:02 Vikings, Bears, and where the Lakers got their name
4:18 A fifth-grade field trip that made him an actor
5:23 Commercials, a SAG card, and a $290 apartment in Venice
6:17 Hercules: 2,800 actors, seven auditions, and Anthony Quinn
7:32 Season five — something was wrong with his arm
8:38 Three strokes and learning to walk again
9:10 True Strength: "Nearly dying saved my life"
9:33 Speaking at pro-life events
9:53 Andromeda and five years in Canada
10:43 Throwing out the first pitch at Wrigley
11:40 Voting for Reagan in 1980
12:05 The Obama golf story
13:49 Leaving California for the Free State of Florida
14:20 "Nobody wants to work with you" — the Hollywood blacklist
15:00 Building Sorbo Studios
15:34 Facebook takes down 4.1 million followers
16:26 The culture war and the spiritual war
17:48 What If, God's Not Dead, and Eating With the Enemy
18:34 Walt Disney's warning about movies and television
18:52 "God bless what you guys do here"

Bestselling author and libertarian podcaster Tom Woods spoke at The Heartland Institute's 42nd Anniversary Benefit Dinner on September 3, 2026, at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.

Woods opens with his father — a blue-collar worker who got his GED in his 40s, read constantly, and taught him that credentials don't make someone right — and then makes the case for why nobody should "move on" from COVID. Drawing on his book Diary of a "Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania", he compares the 25 most restrictive states against the 25 most lenient, walks through Sweden's excess mortality, examines Florida against California, and revisits the one moment a reporter asked the White House COVID adviser to explain why the numbers didn't match the policies.

The Heartland Institute is one of the world's leading free-market think tanks, celebrating free markets, limited government, and individual freedom. Learn more at heartland.org.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Three speakers, one Free State of Florida
0:19 Thirty years to the day since his father died
1:03 Why letters after your name don't make you right
1:55 Diary of a Psychosis
2:22 Why "moving on" hands the story to the establishment
2:45 The Great Depression, 2008, and the textbook version of events
3:38 The story they want told about COVID
4:10 "We did listen to them" — 25 strict states vs. 25 lenient states
4:58 The moralizing narrative
5:20 Sweden: the predicted bloodbath that never came
6:08 Best excess mortality in Europe
6:34 The statistic you were never told
6:56 Florida as the control group
7:18 Florida vs. locked-down California on excess deaths
8:05 The one time someone asked — Andy Slavitt on MSNBC
8:45 "The answer is, I don't know"
9:50 Fauci on Texas: "Maybe they're doing things outdoors"
10:41 The charts: California, Nevada, and Arizona
11:45 Japan vs. South Korea
12:11 Iowa and the Washington Post headline
13:14 Lakers fans, San Diego, and the moralizing filter
13:39 What the lockdowns cost the world
14:34 A million extra deaths, plus TB, HIV, and malaria
15:01 "We owe it to mankind to get the facts right"

On this episode of The Climate Realism Show, we're stitching together four powerful presentations from past International Conferences on Climate Change (ICCC), Heartland Institute's flagship climate events where scientists, engineers, and policy experts challenge the mainstream climate narrative with hard data.

Segment 1: NASA Engineer Tom Moser Reveals the Truth About Climate Science
Former NASA engineer and space station program director Tom Moser — who held roles including Acting Associate Administrator for Spaceflight, Director of the Space Station Program, and Chief Engineer at the Johnson Space Center — breaks down the correlation between global temperatures and solar irradiance, and exposes the gap between real-world data and the climate models driving public policy.

Segment 2: Implausible Climate Goals For a Non-Existent Emissions Crisis
A hard look at the emissions targets driving global climate policy — and why the "crisis" framing behind them doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Segment 3: The Climate Data Changed My Mind
A firsthand account of how digging into the actual climate data — rather than the headlines — led to a fundamental rethink on the climate debate.

Segment 4: Exposed: Corrupted Climate Stations and Solutions You Need to Know
Heartland Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, creator of SurfaceStations.org, lays out his research on U.S. temperature monitoring stations — finding that a large share fail to meet siting standards, casting doubt on the reliability of the official warming record — and what can be done about it.

Watch every episode of The Climate Realism Show live every week, and check out more from The Heartland Institute:

Climate Realism: https://climaterealism.com/

Climate at a Glance: https://climateataglance.com/

The Heartland Institute's 42nd Anniversary Benefit Dinner brought together some of the biggest names in the free-market and liberty movement for a night of stories, awards, and hard truths about climate policy, COVID lockdowns, and the fight for limited government. Recorded live at the Palmer House in Chicago on September 3, 2026, the evening was headlined by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who accepted the Heartland Liberty Prize and took audience questions on everything from a possible 2028 run to how he'd fix a state like Illinois.

Also on the program: Heartland President James Taylor telling the inside story of how DeSantis saved the "free state of Florida" from an establishment takeover, libertarian author and podcaster Tom Woods breaking down the official COVID narrative with the data that contradicted it, and actor Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) accepting the Champion of Freedom Award while reflecting on his near-fatal stroke, his faith, and being blacklisted by Hollywood.

Featured speakers:

Tom Woods, author, historian, and host of The Tom Woods Show
Kevin Sorbo, actor (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) and filmmaker
Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida

Timestamps:
0:00 Program begins
6:08 Welcome from Danielle Carl
9:42 James Taylor: how DeSantis saved the "free state of Florida"
21:10 Young Americans for Liberty with Daniel Taylor
27:10 Tom Woods on the COVID lockdown narrative
43:01 Jim Lakely introduces Kevin Sorbo
45:04 Kevin Sorbo accepts the Champion of Freedom Award
1:08:12 Steve Milloy introduces Governor Ron DeSantis
1:13:36 Governor Ron DeSantis: keynote address
1:43:04 Heartland Liberty Prize presentation
1:46:26 Audience Q&A with Governor DeSantis
2:04:05 Closing remarks and sponsor recognition

The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit advancing free-market solutions on energy, healthcare, education, and government spending.

Learn more and support our work: https://www.heartland.org

Today the team is away at The Heartland Institute's 42nd Anniversary Benefit Dinner, hosting Governor Ron DeSantis.

Instead of your regularly scheduled program, we bring to you an amazing speech by Yeonmi Park!

Communities across the United States and Europe were told that building more wind turbines would bring electricity prices down. Instead, prices went up, and in many cases went up faster than almost anywhere wind wasn't mandated.

Heartland Institute's Linnea Lueken walks through the real economics of wind energy: the subsidies keeping it alive, the hidden costs the industry leaves off its spreadsheets, and why offshore wind has the worst value-to-cost ratio of any new power source on the grid.

The levelized cost of electricity figures used to make wind look affordable leave out repair, replacement, and removal costs. They also ignore the expensive backup power that has to sit on standby for when the wind isn't blowing, or when it's blowing too hard for the turbines to even run. Those costs are real. They just get quietly passed on to you.

Wind is only eight percent of world electricity despite decades of subsidies and mandates. That should tell you something.

Learn more at Heartland.org & EnergyAtAGlance.com
#energy #HeartlandInstitute #windpower

The scenes coming out of Nepal of the glacier collapse and flash flood of mud, ice, and water are horrifying. The amount of devastation is almost hard to fathom, and the landscape is changed forever. Mainstream media outlets are blaming the disaster on climate change, and pointing to human activity warming the globe as the top cause. We will expose the truth.

On Episode 214 of The Climate Realism Show the Heartland Institute’s Sterling Burnett, Jim Lakely, and special guests Craig Rucker of CFACT and Marlo Lewis will also cover some other Crazy Climate News of the Week. Psychology Today says global warming causes child abuse. The White House is ditching climate doom. And are even the green weenies of Europe giving up climate as a political issue?

Join us Friday at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook. Participate in the show by leaving your comments and questions in the chat.

Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
6:54 Global Warming Causes Child Abuse
27:49 White House Ditches Climate Doom
45:08 Even Euro Greens Are Mum
56:57 Tragedy in Nepal
1:16:15 Memes of the Week
1:18:22 Advisor Metals (sponsor)
1:21:20 Q&A

We’re celebrating 550 episodes of In The Tank by revisiting some of the greatest stories from the American Revolution!

Join host Linnea Lueken, alongside regulars Jim Lakely, Sam Karnick, and Chris Talgo, as they explore the people, battles, and ideas that transformed 13 colonies into a nation that defied the odds, and has done so for 250 years of American history.

Tune in for this special collection of America at 250 from the Heartland Institute’s In The Tank!