The Logical Next Step After the Mississippi Miracle – AI and Mastery Learning

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By William Cork

“We’ve known for 40 years how to teach kids 10x better. But until now, we didn’t have the infrastructure to scale it. That infrastructure is AI.” — Joe Liemandt

In a world where the stakes for our future couldn’t be higher, education remains the ultimate force multiplier—or the great unforced error. We’ve poured trillions into K-12 systems across the globe, yet the results are a damning indictment: declining test scores, widening achievement gaps, and a generation of kids disengaged from learning. It’s not just an academic failure; it’s a societal one. The doctors, engineers, innovators, and leaders who will shape tomorrow’s world are sitting in classrooms today, staring down curricula that prioritize seat time over mastery, rote memorization over real understanding.

This isn’t hyperbole. As I listened to Peter Attia’s “Drive” podcast episode with Joe Liemandt—available here—I was struck by how Joe’s story cuts through the noise. A software entrepreneur who built Trilogy into a private juggernaut worth billions, Liemandt could have coasted into retirement on a yacht somewhere. Instead, three years ago, he walked away from it all to pour a billion dollars of his own fortune into fixing K-12 education. His vehicle? Alpha School, a network of innovative campuses blending AI tutors, mastery-based learning, and a radical rethink of the school day.

Liemandt’s pitch isn’t pie-in-the-sky idealism. It’s grounded in 40 years of learning science that’s been gathering dust because we lacked the tech to scale it. AI, he argues, is education’s “light microscope”—the inflection point that turns theory into transformation. “We’ve known kids can learn two, five, or 10 times faster,” Liemandt tells Attia. “In Bloom’s Two Sigma [experiment], if everybody got a personalized tutor and they did it to mastery… your worst students are going to be what today is considered the top 10 percent.”

But here’s the exciting part: Liemandt’s vision doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. It’s the logical evolution of real-world successes like the “Mississippi Miracle,” where evidence-based reforms have catapulted the nation’s poorest state from the educational basement to the penthouse in just over a decade. Mississippi’s gains—dramatic jumps in NAEP reading and math scores, vaulting from 49th to 9th in fourth-grade reading—prove that structured, mastery-oriented interventions work at scale when backed by policy muscle. Alpha takes this blueprint and supercharges it with AI, promising not just incremental lifts but exponential acceleration: 10x faster learning, personalized to every child, without the manual grind that limited Mississippi’s model.

What follows is my deep dive into the key messages and themes from this conversation. I’ll weave in Liemandt’s words liberally because, frankly, the man speaks with the clarity of someone who’s not just theorizing but building. If you’re a parent, policymaker, educator, or just a citizen vested in America’s future, consider this a roadmap for the next generation. Education isn’t optional; it’s existential. And with Mississippi lighting the path, Alpha’s AI-driven mastery approach shows us how to sprint down it.

From Silicon Valley Dropout to Education Disruptor: Joe’s Unlikely Journey

Joe Liemandt’s origin story reads like a Silicon Valley script, but with a twist that lands him not in venture capital echo chambers, but in the messy trenches of middle school math. Born in Minnesota, he bounced around the East Coast as his dad chased General Electric gigs. High school was a breeze; Stanford, less so. He majored in economics—not for passion, but because “it was easy in the Stanford curriculum.” By his junior year, though, the pull of AI was irresistible.

Picture this: It’s 1989. Liemandt, a wide-eyed undergrad, stumbles into a class with Edward Feigenbaum, a pioneer in expert systems—the “old school AI” of the era. Feigenbaum’s riffs on building million-dollar software ignite a fire. “He was just talking about how you can build these incredible systems,” Liemandt recalls. Teaming up with classmates, he drops out between junior and senior year to launch Trilogy. No degree, no safety net—just conviction. “I’m sitting in Spanish class. I don’t care. My market’s going to run away without me.”

The doubters were legion. Forbes dubbed him a “moron” in a headline that stung his dad. Silicon Valley wouldn’t touch dropout-funded startups in the late ’80s, so they bootstrapped from a Palo Alto garage. By 1992, they’d decamped to cheap-rent Austin, where Trilogy quietly became a software behemoth. They sold a billion dollars in “AI products” (without calling it AI, thanks to the tech’s bad rep post-AI winter). Trilogy stayed private, minting fortunes without the IPO circus. Liemandt’s cut? Enough to fund a second act.

That act crystallized a decade ago when McKinsey Price, co-founded Alpha School in a literal garage and was one of the intellectuals behind the software and tech that enabled it. Liemandt, a Catholic school alum sending his own kids there, balked at first. “I’m not going to the weird school.” But after his daughters sampled it post-Catholic classes, they begged to skip summer camp. “Dad, we don’t want to go to summer camp, we want to still go to Alpha.” Hook, line, sinker. Liemandt is credited with scaling the tech and the school.

Alpha’s early days were scrappy: 20 kids, grades 2-6, in a one-room schoolhouse vibe. Co-founder Brian Doyle laid down the law: “Kids must love school. They must love school.” And: “Your kids can do so much more than you expect.” Liemandt was skeptical—”sort of spinach sometimes, dude”—but testing showed gains. Apps like DreamBox and Khan Academy handled basics, but gaps yawned wide. His oldest daughter bombed a seventh-grade standardized test after a year at Alpha. “She failed at all.” The apps were “janky,” mastery standards too low. That’s when Liemandt dove in, first as a dad, then as principal.

The pivot wasn’t whimsy. Trilogy’s war chest gave him freedom, but GenAI’s arrival in 2022 was the spark. “Neural nets are here. Finally.” Echoing his high school paper on expert systems, Liemandt saw AI as the enabler for scaling Alpha’s magic. He took a billion out of Trilogy—”my first lump sum”—and bet it on education. “I’m going to go use this billion dollars to figure out what I can with education and fix as much as I can.”

Why education? Liemandt ties it to Attia’s wheelhouse: health and longevity. “You can’t have a great system of health and medicine if you’re not educating kids today. The people that are learning today are going to be the ones taking care of us.” It’s personal, too—his daughters’ transformation sold him. But scaling? That’s the Everest. “This is awesome, but it’s not scalable,” he told McKinsey early on. Now, with 25 Alpha campuses and more variants, he’s proving it can be—much like how Mississippi scaled its reforms statewide, turning skeptics into believers. Yet to fully grasp why Liemandt’s quest feels so urgent, we must first confront the broken system he’s fighting to overhaul.

The Education Crisis: A Time-Based System in Freefall

If Liemandt’s story is the hero’s origin, the villain is our ossified K-12 model. America’s spending $1 trillion annually—seventh of global outlay, despite a sliver of the population—yet ROI is abysmal. Attia notes the parallel to U.S. healthcare: top dollar, middling outcomes. Life expectancy lags; so do learning metrics.

Liemandt piles on the data, painting a portrait of decline. The NWEA MAP test, taken by millions, just normed for 2025. “America knows less now. So your average eighth grader in 2025 knows less than the average eighth grader in 2020, which knows less than the average in 2015.” COVID? A blip—the trend predates it. AP exams, benchmarked against college kids, got easier because “college kids know less.” At Alpha’s back-to-school talks, Liemandt drops a bomb on parents: Straight-A kids from $40K private schools test “anywhere from one year ahead… to three years behind.” B students? “Three years behind to seven years behind.”

Tangible example: A seventh-grade B student flunks basic multiplication. “They don’t know their multiplication tables or division tables.” Why? “They’ve decided that memorization is bad… you’re just going to use a calculator.” Learning science begs to differ. Cognitive load theory—slots in working memory—demands fluency for higher math. “If you have memorized something to fluency, it doesn’t use a slot.” Without it, you’re toast. Liemandt shares a gem: A girl with a 740 SAT math score (top 10%) plateaued due to “careless mistakes” from overload. She drilled third-grade tables; score jumped to 790.

The hierarchy compounds it. “Math, science, knowledge is hierarchical.” Fractions predict algebra; algebra, chemistry. “Chemistry is just algebra with advanced word problems. Physics is literally calculus with advanced word problems.” In a time-based system—”at the end of third grade, you’re moving to fourth grade”—holes fester. No holdbacks; social pressures rule. Grade inflation follows: 80% A’s at Harvard. “If you only have 80% knowledge, you’re creating all these holes, and it all compounds.”

Parents bear blame, too. Liemandt’s epiphany: “less than 10 percent of parents really care about academics. 90 percent… oh well.” They prize the “bundle”—community, sports, life skills—over seatwork. Pre-Alpha, he pitched “twice as much in the two-hour block.” He got pushback: “Don’t pressure my kid.” Switch to “two-hour learning” for “cool workshops,” and buy-in soars. “Johnny, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to get out of here and do the cool stuff?”

The virus? Coddling. “The key to your kid’s happiness is high standards.” But parents shield from struggle. “I don’t want to see my kids struggle and fail on their road to success.” Child psych 101: “Struggle, fail, sometimes cry… supported by a caring, loving adult. That loop… is the key to kids development.” Sports get it—coaches drill basics. Academics? Not so much. “If you’re the point guard and you lose the ball 20% of the time… the coach isn’t like, let’s work on the advanced stuff. They’re like, kid, let’s learn how to dribble.”

Wealth gaps exacerbate it. By sixth grade, affluent kids lead poorest by four grades; by high school, five in reading. Raj Chetty’s data: Richest 1% are 77x likelier for Ivies than $30K families. “The academic gap between the affluent and less affluent is greater today than… white American and black American kids in the final days of Jim Crow.” Liemandt’s fix? Raise absolutes, narrow relatives. “Instead of the gap being 77X, could that gap be 12X? Yeah, 100%.” Could this be the next goal for Mississippi?

Yet amid this national slide, Mississippi stands as a beacon. Dubbed the “Mississippi Miracle,” the state’s reforms—rooted in structured literacy, phonics instruction, and accountability measures like retaining third-graders who fail reading—have delivered outsized gains. From 2013 to 2022, fourth-grade NAEP reading scores rose 9 points, outpacing the nation and lifting Mississippi from 49th to 9th nationally. In math, the state climbed from 50th to 16th, with the highest score increases in the country for fourth-grade reading and math combined. By 2024, 32% of Mississippi fourth-graders hit “proficient” in reading—above the national average of about 30%—with 65% at or above “basic.” Across all NAEP categories, improvements held steady even as national scores dipped post-COVID, propelling Mississippi into the top 20 states for public education overall.

These aren’t flukes. The Literacy-Based Promotion Act of 2013 mandated evidence-based reading instruction and third-grade gates, backed by $50 million in teacher training. Result? A 15-year turnaround from dead last to a model for replication. Mississippi proves that ditching fads for mastery—holding kids back until they read fluently, drilling phonics like multiplication tables—yields dividends. But scaling it statewide took Herculean effort: retraining 30,000 teachers, overhauling curricula. What if we could automate that precision, personalize it per student, and accelerate it 10-fold? As Liemandt explains, the antidote lies in the principles of learning science that Mississippi intuitively embraced—and that Alpha now turbocharges.

Mastery Over Time: The Learning Science Revolution—Building on Mississippi’s Foundations

Enter the antidote: mastery-based, individualized learning. Liemandt channels Benjamin Bloom’s 1984 Two Sigma experiment: Tutors + mastery = 2σ gains. Worst become top 10%. “We’ve known it… 10,000 papers published… learning science has been around for 40 years.”

Core tenets, per 90% of experts, form the bedrock of this revolution—and they align seamlessly with what made Mississippi’s reforms sing:

– Individualized Tutoring: One-on-one trumps lectures. Retention in passive classrooms? “Maybe 5%.” AI delivers precision: “Absolutely precise teaching… closed loop measurement.” Mississippi’s tutors—human, high-dosage—closed gaps; AI scales them infinitely, targeting holes like a third-grader’s phonics deficit before it snowballs.

– Mastery Standards: Advance on knowledge, not calendars. “You have to know the material before you advance.” Fills holes fast—20-30 hours per grade level vs. 200. “One subject per grade level takes our Alpha kids between 20 and 30 hours to finish an entire grade level to mastery.” Echoing Mississippi’s retention policy, which boosted proficient readers by 10-15% in early grades, Alpha enforces fluency without the social stigma—kids advance when ready, not when the bell rings.

– Zone of Proximal Development: 80-85% accuracy sweet spot. Too easy (99%)? Boredom. Too hard (50%)? Frustration. Video games nail it; AI streams content accordingly. “An unending stream… at 80 to 85 percent accuracy.” Goal: 20-40 facts/hour now; 100 with GenAI. Mississippi’s structured lessons hit similar zones via scripted phonics; AI dials it dynamically, adapting mid-lesson like a real-time coach.

– Spaced Repetition & Testing Effect: Active recall is better than passive review.

– Cognitive Load Theory: Fluency frees bandwidth. No tables? Overload city. Mississippi mandated fact fluency in reading; Alpha extends it to math, where a single gap can tank SATs by 50 points.

– Analogies & Event Frameworks: Fastest learning via knowns. “A is analogies.” TikTok memes as hooks: “Let’s take what we’re trying to teach them and use something they already know.”

Liemandt’s bold claim: Through eighth grade, 95% of kids could hit top 10% math. “Everybody can do it… by the design of Common Core, [leaps] aren’t that big.” IQ matters later; here, it’s effort. Girls’ “math aversion”? Meme, not science. “There’s no such thing.” Alpha seniors: Broadway-bound with 790 SAT math; TikTok influencer crushing Calc BC.

Mississippi’s data validates this hierarchy. Pre-reform, 75% of third-graders read below grade level; post-2013, that plunged to 30% by 2022, with NAEP proficiency doubling in a decade. But gains plateaued in upper grades without personalization—eighth-grade reading held flat at 256 in 2024, still below national 257. Alpha’s AI closes that loop: If Mississippi’s policy lifted the floor 9 points in reading, imagine AI filling every prereq gap, pushing ceilings 20-50 points higher per Bloom’s sigma.

Sports analogy seals it: “Academics is the same way… go back and do the basics.” Game film—review misses—exposes gaps. One chem struggler? Fractions deficit. Fix it; “this will become easy.” Mississippi’s “game film” was statewide testing and remediation; Alpha’s is AI diagnostics, 10x faster. With these principles in hand, Liemandt didn’t stop at theory—he built a school to put them into action, transforming abstract science into everyday magic.

Alpha School: Two Hours to Freedom, Lifelong Skills—Scaling Mississippi’s Wins

At its essence, Alpha School transcends theoretical blueprints; it is a living embodiment of these principles in action—a carefully orchestrated daily rhythm designed to foster deep learning without the drudgery of traditional schooling. A typical day begins with just two hours dedicated to core academics, broken into focused 25-minute Pomodoro sessions delivered through intuitive AI applications. Gone are the endless lectures and rigid group pacing; instead, students dive into personalized modules that adapt in real time to their pace and needs. The remaining time? That’s the revolutionary “time back”—a liberating stretch for hands-on workshops, creative pursuits, and real-world exploration. Overseeing this isn’t a single instructor lecturing to a room full of mismatched learners, but a cadre of guides, often former teachers themselves, who provide intimate, one-on-one coaching. As Liemandt succinctly captures the distinction, “Teachers are great, teacher in front of a classroom is bad.” These guides aren’t dispensers of facts; they’re navigators, helping students chart their unique paths through challenges and triumphs.

Central to Alpha’s success is an unyielding focus on motivation, which Liemandt identifies as “the most important part of education… a motivated student.” The Timeback system ingeniously harnesses this by tying academic engagement directly to freedom: students who fully commit to their app-based lessons earn the afternoon’s rewards, while those who disengage simply extend their session—a built-in incentive to stay present. An innovative “waste meter” within the apps serves as a gentle but firm coach, nudging users with real-time feedback like, “You’re scrolling… not going to learn that way.” To amplify intrinsic drive, Alpha incorporates targeted extrinsic motivators, such as offering middle-schoolers $1,000 bonuses for reaching the top 1% in national benchmarks. Far from undermining authenticity, these rewards catalyze a profound mindset shift. “What’s even more important,” Liemandt notes, “it’s their internal view of themselves… you’re limitless.” Students who once saw ceilings in their abilities discover, through tangible wins, that excellence is a choice, not a genetic lottery.

The results speak volumes, underscoring Alpha’s ability to deliver outsized outcomes with remarkable efficiency. Incoming freshmen routinely score 1410 on the SAT—firmly in the top 10% nationally—with baseline expectations set at 1350 for standard tracks and 1550 for honors. As Liemandt reflects, this reframes effort entirely: “It’s just more work. It’s not, I’m not smart enough.” Remediation, often the Achilles’ heel of traditional systems, becomes a swift triumph here; a student three years behind might close that gap in as little as 60 hours of targeted practice. “If I do an hour of homework… two months, I’m there,” Liemandt illustrates, highlighting how AI’s precision turns daunting deficits into manageable milestones.

With academics streamlined into these potent bursts, Alpha dedicates afternoons to LifeCore—a comprehensive curriculum that cultivates the holistic skills parents universally champion, from leadership and grit to entrepreneurship and financial literacy. Picture second-graders channeling James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” to train for a 5K run, embracing the mantra of “1% better… they all can understand” as they progress from tentative walks to triumphant finishes. Kindergarteners scale rock walls to build resilience, while eighth-graders orchestrate food truck ventures, negotiating budgets and marketing their wares to the community. These aren’t add-ons; they’re integral to Alpha’s five foundational dimensions, which together redefine what a school can be:

–Love for School Surpassing Vacation: A rigorous metric where over 50% of students affirm they’d choose Alpha over a beach getaway, evidenced by high schoolers who, last May, petitioned to extend sessions through summer because, as one Broadway-aspiring senior put it, “I want to keep coming to school and doing it.”

– 10x Faster Learning: Powered by AI tutors destined for on-device affordability (<$1,000 per tablet), Alpha compresses what Mississippi achieved in a decade—those hard-won 9-point NAEP gains—into weeks of mastery, freeing minds for broader horizons.

– Life Skills Suite: Delivering the toolkit parents crave, from compelling storytelling and public speaking to practical financial savvy, ensuring graduates emerge not just knowledgeable, but capable.

– Guides as Mentors: Embodying high standards paired with unwavering support, these relationships prompt probing questions like, “Is your guide that for you?”—the transformative adult who unlocks potential. For parents, it’s a partnership: “Do you trust your Alpha guide… so you… provide the unconditional love?”

– The Cs—Character, Community, Classmates, Culture: The intangible yet essential glue, fostering environments where families reflect, “Did I raise a good kid?” through shared values and enduring bonds.

To broaden access and tailor to diverse passions, Alpha has spawned specialized variants that scale its model without dilution. Sports academies cater to D1-bound athletes, where morning rigor yields afternoons of elite training—and tales of chronic absentees now “waking me up… let’s not be late.” Gifted and talented (GT) programs host chess Olympiads for intellectual sparring, while wilderness outposts immerse students in fishing, archery, and sustainable farming, blending nature with nurture. Costs reflect this flexibility: flagship campuses range from $40,000 to $75,000 annually (with robust scholarships), charters operate tuition-free, and hybrid models clock in at $5,000 per year or $500 monthly. Even the AI backbone, currently $10,000 per student, is on a steep downward trajectory toward ubiquity.

Mississippi’s miracle scaled through bold mandates and systemic overhaul, mandating phonics and retention to lift an entire state from the bottom rungs. Alpha democratizes that ethos, making elite personalization available beyond policy fiat. Take the Brownsville, Texas campus in the nation’s second-poorest district: Here, Alpha scholarships seamlessly integrate SpaceX families with local talent in a 50/50 blend, where every child—regardless of zip code—achieves 2x learning velocity. If Mississippi narrowed its own poverty proficiency gap by 20% (shrinking from a 15-point spread in 2013 to 12 points by 2024), Liemandt’s projections suggest Alpha’s hyper-personalized approach could halve national disparities, leveling the field for millions. At the heart of Alpha’s rapid progress lies the technology that makes it all possible: AI, the tool that turns these ambitious designs from feasible to revolutionary.

AI: Education’s Light Microscope—Amplifying Mississippi’s Structured Approach

At the core of Liemandt’s vision lies a compelling analogy drawn from the history of scientific progress: disciplines like biology, medicine, chemistry, and physics languished in periods of stagnation until a pivotal tool emerged to unlock new possibilities. For medicine, that instrument was the light microscope, which revolutionized our understanding by revealing the invisible world of microorganisms and laying the groundwork for germ theory. As Liemandt puts it, “Until we could actually start to see microscopic organisms, we couldn’t really handle germ theory.” Without such breakthroughs, knowledge remains theoretical, trapped in the realm of observation rather than application.

Education finds itself in a similar wilderness. For the past four decades, researchers have amassed over 10,000 papers illuminating the principles of effective learning—principles that promise dramatic improvements in outcomes. Yet these insights have languished on the shelf, unimplemented at scale. Why? As Liemandt observes, “This doesn’t work with a teacher in front of a classroom time-based model.” The traditional structure, with its rigid schedules and one-size-fits-all lectures, simply cannot accommodate the personalization and precision that learning science demands. Pre-AI experiments often faltered, undermined by uncontrollable variables such as student engagement, prior knowledge gaps, or inconsistent delivery. The result? Promising ideas that never translated into widespread transformation.

Artificial intelligence, however, marks education’s long-awaited inflection point—the light microscope that finally brings these principles into sharp focus. By enabling precise content delivery and real-time measurement, AI eliminates the guesswork that plagued earlier efforts. “You know exactly what is being told to the kid… what do they know and what they don’t know,” Liemandt explains. This closed-loop system allows educators to iteratively refine lessons based on immediate feedback: tweak a module for clarity, track comprehension gains, and adjust on the fly. Already, Alpha’s implementation has yielded tangible results; this school year alone, students achieved math mastery in 20% less time than before, demonstrating how data-driven iteration can compress years of learning into mere months.

Generative AI takes this potential even further, evolving from today’s static content—still prone to occasional hallucinations—toward fully dynamic, adaptive experiences by 2026. Imagine lessons tailored not just to a child’s knowledge gaps but to their unique interests, woven through sophisticated graphs mapping what they know and what captivates them. A baseball-obsessed student might tackle fractions via batting averages and strikeout probabilities; a budding superhero fan could explore reading comprehension through Avengers-inspired choose-your-own-adventure tales. Alpha’s Teach Tales tool exemplifies this already: a Lexile-adjusted interactive story that hooks a third-grade boy who despises books, turning an hour of reluctant scrolling into nonstop engagement.

These innovations extend across subjects, blending rigor with relevance. High schoolers might master U.S. history not through rote timelines but by generating custom songs inspired by “Hamilton”, embedding key events in catchy lyrics they compose themselves. Finance-savvy parents could even see probability lessons disguised as poker strategies for their middle-schoolers. As Liemandt emphasizes, “Our competition is Fortnite and TikTok. We need… compelling content… that also teaches.” Looking five years ahead, he envisions a near-seamless “physical upload” akin to Neo’s Matrix awakening—minus the dystopia—where students absorb 100 facts, ideas, and concepts per hour. “12 years to fill your kids’ head with cool stuff… two hours a day at 10 times faster,” he says, reframing the standard school day as an opportunity for profound efficiency rather than endurance.

This technological leap doesn’t reinvent the wheel; it amplifies proven paths like Mississippi’s. The state’s phonics-based scripts provided a foundation of structured mastery, holding steady at an average score of 219 in fourth-grade reading on the 2024 NAEP amid national declines to 214—a testament to the power of evidence-based consistency. Yet even Mississippi’s model, for all its triumphs, relied on static protocols that couldn’t fully adapt to individual needs, leaving upper-grade momentum to wane: eighth-grade math scores lingered at 269, just below the national 272. Alpha’s AI transforms this into adaptive mastery, sustaining gains through high school and beyond. Early pilots of similar AI tools already echo Mississippi’s rapid jumps, delivering 15-20% lifts in proficiency within months rather than years—evidence that personalization can turn statewide progress into a national, even global, standard.

As powerful as this technology promises to be, however, no revolution comes without roadblocks—and Liemandt is candid about the challenges ahead in taking Alpha’s model from Austin classrooms to a billion kids worldwide. Liemandt’s killer analogy: Sciences stagnate sans tools. Medicine’s? Light microscope, birthing germ theory. “Until we could actually start to see microscopic organisms, we couldn’t really handle germ theory.” Education’s wilderness: 40 years of papers, zero scale. “This doesn’t work with a teacher in front of a classroom time-based model.”

Hurdles to Horizon: Scaling to a Billion Kids—From Mississippi’s Playbook to Global Game-Changer

Liemandt’s ambition—to reach a billion children within two decades—carries the audacity of a moonshot, one that demands not just innovation but unflinching realism about the obstacles ahead. The technical risks, while real, are largely surmountable: Alpha’s current platform already delivers three- to fivefold learning acceleration, and ongoing refinements will only sharpen that edge. The true gauntlet lies in adoption—the cultural, systemic, and perceptual shifts required to embed this model at scale. As Liemandt challenges in the podcast, “Are you willing to change the motivational model… rebuild what we think K through 12… are?” It’s a question that probes deeper than logistics; it asks whether we’re prepared to upend the sacred cows of schooling, from the sanctity of the six-hour day to the comfort of familiar routines.

For parents, the leap hinges on evidence they can touch and feel. Liemandt emphasizes the power of two simple proofs: endorsements from trusted voices in their circles and vivid demonstrations of transformation in their own children. “He loves school… wakes me up,” one parent might share, recounting how a once-reluctant learner now bounds out of bed eager for the day. These anecdotes aren’t marketing fluff; they’re the emotional currency that converts skepticism to commitment, much like the word-of-mouth buzz that propelled Mississippi’s reforms from pilot programs to statewide mandates.

Institutional resistance adds another layer of complexity. Consider Austin, where three chronically failing middle schools—graded F for years—prompted a superintendent’s bold proposal: shutter them and redirect students to higher-performing options. The backlash was swift and visceral, with parents decrying the loss of “community” ties, from familiar teachers to walkable neighborhoods, even as academic shortfalls persisted. School Choice opponents in Mississippi sound a bit like this. Superintendents echo these tensions: “What do the kids do the rest of the day?” they ask, grappling with visions of shortened academic blocks yielding afternoons of workshops and electives. Layer on the broader edtech fatigue—”Every five years, ed tech is going to solve the world… it doesn’t,” Liemandt laments—and the “evil billionaire” narrative, which casts innovators like him as meme-worthy villains meddling in public goods. These aren’t abstract hurdles; they’re the gravitational pull of the status quo, demanding a model that proves itself not just superior, but sympathetic to the human elements at stake.

Yet amid these headwinds, a key ally emerges: teachers themselves. Liemandt estimates that at least 80% would embrace the shift in a heartbeat, drawn by its alignment with their original calling. “They got into teaching to transform kids’ lives,” he says. “They did not [get into it] to grade… tests.” In Alpha’s reimagined role, educators evolve into guides—deeply relational figures who roam the floor during those focused Pomodoro bursts, pulling aside a student for a quiet check-in: “How was your weekend? You don’t seem as motivated lately.” This isn’t surveillance; it’s stewardship, fostering the high-support, high-standards dynamic that child development experts like Laurence Steinberg champion as essential for adolescent growth. Coupled with competitive pay that reflects their elevated impact, fulfillment isn’t just possible—it’s palpable, turning potential resistors into evangelists.

Liemandt’s roadmap to surmount these barriers blends demonstration with diffusion: establish flagship exemplars that radiate influence, allowing the model to seep into the ecosystem through osmosis. With 25 Alpha campuses already operational and hundreds of variants—tailored hybrids blending the core engine with local flavors—poised to launch within the year, the groundwork is laid. To accelerate open-source adoption, he envisions an XPRIZE-style competition, but not under his banner: “You need Dean Schwartz… the people that everybody looks up to,” he insists, pointing to Stanford’s learning science luminaries as the credible stewards who could rally academia, policymakers, and philanthropists alike. Could Mississippi be that laboratory?

Economically, the math pencils out with striking clarity. Globally, K-12 commands a staggering $7 trillion market—roughly 5% of GNP—yet much of it funnels into inefficient structures like high-dosage tutoring, which shines in one-on-one settings but buckles under scaling pressures, often diluting to ineffective group sessions. Post-COVID infusions proved the hunger for proven interventions, pouring billions into catch-up programs that yielded uneven results due to execution gaps. AI flips this script: personalized at a fraction of the cost, with Alpha’s engine already trending toward $1,000 per student annually. Contrast that with Mississippi’s $50 million investment in teacher training, which unlocked those pivotal 9-point NAEP gains; AI promises comparable (or greater) lifts per child, liberating resources for the life skills and community elements that parents value most.

Mississippi’s own odyssey underscores the path forward: its central hurdle was buy-in, with politicians weathering fierce backlash over third-grade retention policies that many decried as punitive. Yet that resolve paid dividends, catapulting the state into top-10 territory for reading proficiency and overall rankings. Alpha confronts parallel scrutiny but arms itself with irrefutable data: If Mississippi surged from 50th to 16th in math through policy grit alone, Liemandt posits, AI could vault perennial laggards like New Mexico—from its current 52nd rung—to the top 10 in half the timeframe, all while preserving the relational heart of schooling. Overcoming these barriers isn’t just about policy tweaks or technological tweaks—it’s about igniting a personal and collective urgency that turns vision into velocity, as Liemandt so passionately urges.

Why This Matters: A Personal Reckoning

As a father and grandfather, I’ve seen firsthand how raising kids tests every ounce of ingenuity—my wife and I grappled with four wildly different children under one roof, each demanding a tailored approach to spark their potential. Today, we watch them navigate the same with their own families, amid a world of dazzling tech that evolves overnight. Yet the buzz around AI often veers from excitement to unease: fears of job loss, disrupted lives, and a future where machines outpace people. We’re drawing these innovations to Mississippi—building one of the country’s largest AI and datacenter hubs, backed by partnerships ready to integrate them across our communities. But what if we flipped the script? What if this very technology, instead of displacing us, empowered our kids to lead it—equipping them to thrive as the sharpest minds in a tech-driven age?

That’s the promise here: Redirect those algorithms and alliances from sheer compute power to the classroom, where they could accelerate learning 10-fold, filling gaps and fueling curiosity. Alpha’s model shows the way—mastery-based, AI-personalized education that turns anxiety into agency, letting children command the tools rather than be commanded by them. This builds on our first Mississippi Miracle, that decade-long climb from last-place rankings to top-10 reading proficiency through disciplined reforms. Now, imagine the sequel: A statewide push that narrows achievement gaps, ignites excellence in every district, and cements Mississippi not just as an education turnaround story, but the global benchmark for human potential unlocked. The choice is ours—cling to fear, or seize this edge? Let’s make it the latter.

Our kids deserve a future they shape, and Mississippi can lead it.

Eulogy for Charlie Kirk

On By Bill Cork2 Comments

I write these words today not as a politician, not as a pundit, not as a talking head on television or a professor in some ivory tower. I speak to you as a nearly sixty-year-old American man who has walked through the fire of life: a Marine Corps veteran, a husband of forty-one years, a father of four, and a grandfather of six. I speak to you as someone who has lived long enough to remember an America where debate was fierce but civil, where words mattered but were not policed like contraband, where one’s neighbor might be a Democrat, a Republican, or something else entirely, and yet still your neighbor.

And today, I speak in eulogy for Charlie Kirk.

I am not here to canonize him. I believe Charlie himself would bristle at being turned into a saint or martyr. He was a man, with faults and flaws like any of us. He said things that drew anger and criticism, even among his allies. I am not here to defend every word that crossed his lips, because that would miss the point. What mattered about Charlie was not always what he said, but how he said it — how he fought, how he refused to let himself be silenced, and how he forced people, willing or not, to confront ideas in an age where ideas are increasingly treated as threats.

There is a tendency in America today to dismiss people with whom we disagree as unworthy of speech, to cancel, to ostracize, to smear. But Charlie stood in that storm, and he did not bow. That spirit — whether you agreed with him or not — deserves our respect.

His death leaves a hole, not simply in the ranks of conservative activism, but in the broader landscape of public discourse. Because love him or hate him, he was willing to stand up and speak, loudly, clearly, and unapologetically. He embodied something increasingly rare: the courage to engage.

As I reflect on Charlie’s life, I cannot help but reflect also on my own journey, and on the journey of America itself over the last thirty years. I remember the early 1990s, when I was a student at the University of Illinois. I served on the Student Faculty Senate in 1992, back when political correctness was still in its infancy. We were told that “speech codes” were necessary, that “offensive” words or phrases had to be eradicated. I fought those codes tooth and nail.

Charlie lived his whole career in that world. And while I do not agree with every phrase he uttered, I do sympathize with the struggle he faced: to speak freely in a society that punishes free speech. That is why we mourn today — not simply the passing of a man, but the ongoing loss of civil discourse in America.

When I enlisted in the Marine Corps, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That oath did not expire when I hung up the uniform. It is etched in my heart, as enduring as the marriage vows I made to my wife more than four decades ago.

The Corps taught me discipline, loyalty, sacrifice. It taught me to value the man next to me — his courage, his effort, his willingness to bleed and sweat for something greater than himself. It did not teach me to ask where he was born, what color his skin was, or how he voted. It taught me to recognize him as a fellow Marine, a fellow American.

After my service, I completed university.  I built a life. I worked, I raised children, I sent them to schools where I expected them to be taught how to think, not what to think. I raised them to love their country, to argue passionately, to stand up when the anthem played, and to bow their heads when prayers were said.

But somewhere along the way, I watched this country drift. In the early 1990s, I was at the University of Illinois, where the battles of today were already being sketched in miniature. Words were being outlawed, ideas labeled “unsafe.” I remember the smugness of the bureaucrats and professors who insisted that “free speech” was just a cover for bigotry. I fought that, not because I wanted to offend, but because I understood — as every thinking person understands — that when you silence speech, you enslave thought.

And then one day, in a graduate level class on the history of environmentalism (it was all that was available as an elective), I used the word “mankind” in a sentence.  The professor stopped me cold. He said it was “sexist” and a form of “misogyny.” I laughed, because I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. He told me to leave the class.  I left and never returned.

That moment, burned into my memory, was a harbinger of what was coming: a world where speech codes metastasized into HR departments, where political correctness evolved into DEI, where tolerance was redefined to mean enforced conformity.

Charlie Kirk was born into that very world — around the same time my two sons were born into it — and he made it his mission to push back. His style was not my own, yet I recognized in him the same fire I once carried into the UIUC Auditorium chambers at Illinois, pounding the table and insisting that the right to speak be preserved.

Charlie Kirk was a sharp mind and a compelling orator, but he was not the kind of polished intellectual adorned with a Harvard degree or a Wall Street pedigree. In fact, he sometimes stumbled in the rarified air of debates at places like Oxford. Yet that, paradoxically, was his strength. He was authentic. He was self-taught, an autodidact who never hid the rough edges. He was a husband, a father, and a kid from Illinois, like me, who rose from the ground up, determined that neither universities, nor corporations, nor bureaucrats would dictate what could be said in America — or who was allowed to say it.

He founded Turning Point USA with little more than grit and determination. He built an organization that gave young conservatives a voice, often in hostile environments. He showed up on campuses where students were shouted down, jeered, sometimes even threatened — and he spoke anyway.

You didn’t have to agree with him to respect that, and many of his opponents did.

Too often in our country, people measure worth by credentials. “Where did you go to school?” “What degrees do you hold?” “What committees did you serve on?” But Charlie measured worth differently: by courage, by persistence, by willingness to debate. He wasn’t always right, but he was always there.

And he was unafraid of confrontation. In an age when people retreat to safe spaces, Charlie ran toward the fight. He wasn’t subtle, and sometimes his words were sharp-edged. But that was the point: he wanted to spark discussion, to jolt people out of their slumber.

In that sense, Charlie was a warrior of speech. I will not elevate him to martyrdom — that belongs to churches and saints — but I will say this: America is poorer without him. For every Charlie Kirk who dares to raise his voice, there are a hundred others who bite their tongues in silence, afraid of the cost of speaking freely. My prayer is that his passing will not be in vain, but that it might shift those odds, giving courage to more voices to rise.

When I was young, America was a place where neighbors argued across the fence. They argued about taxes, about civil rights, about foreign wars, about unions, about religion. But they also shared beers after work, mowed each other’s lawns when one was sick, watched each other’s kids play outside when one parent couldn’t and came together on the Fourth of July to watch fireworks. Debate was not war; it was part of citizenship.

But something has changed. Over the last thirty years, the very fabric of civil discourse has unraveled. Political correctness, once a punchline, has become doctrine. DEI has institutionalized division, teaching people to view each other not as individuals but as categories: oppressed or oppressor, privileged or marginalized. Multiculturalism, once sold as a celebration of diversity, has devolved into the rejection of a shared national identity.

I have lived long enough to see conversations shrink, not expand. Today, people are afraid to speak at work, afraid to post online, afraid even to talk at the dinner table. Words that once sparked debate now end careers. Humor is censored, curiosity punished, dissent demonized.

I know this not only from observation but from bitter experience. In 2021, while serving at the Mississippi Development Authority, I wrote a simple Facebook post criticizing a Biden Administration proposed policy on childcare subsidies. My argument was plain: government preference for subsidizing institutional childcare might benefit businesses, but it distorted the market for families who chose to raise their children at home. I wrote that the traditional, two-parent, biological, conflict free family ought to be recognized as the best environment to raise children — not dismissed or penalized in favor of arrangements that placed career or lifestyle above parenting.

That single post was treated as a crime. My colleagues filed complaints.  I was directed to take the post down. The State Personnel Board launched an investigation. I had done nothing illegal, but to keep my job, I was compelled to sit through twelve hours of “sensitivity training.” I agreed, not out of contrition or because I was worried about losing my job, but because I wanted to see firsthand what the one-on-one counseling would say and what they were putting other people through. What I discovered was exactly what I expected: a pile of jargon, ideological dogma dressed up as sensitivity, and no serious engagement with the substance of my original point.

This, I say plainly, is un-American. Because America was built not on conformity but on conflict — the healthy conflict of ideas, the robust clash of opinions, the marketplace of thought. To shut that down is not to progress; it is to regress into tyranny.

Charlie fought against that. Again, I do not claim his every word was perfect. Just as I’m sure not every word I have said or will say is perfect.  But I sympathize with his battle, because it is my battle too.

To be an American is not to be perfect. It is not to be free from sin or error. To be an American is to live in a country where you are allowed to stumble, to fall, to speak, to argue, to rise again. It is to live in a nation forged by liberty and bound together by shared principles, not by tribal bloodlines.

Being American means believing in the right of the individual — to speak his mind, to worship his God, to defend his family, to pursue his dreams. It means respecting the Constitution, not as an old piece of paper, but as a living covenant with those who came before us and those who will come after us.

Being American means standing for the flag, not because your country is flawless, but because it is yours. It means loving your neighbor, even if he votes differently. It means understanding that freedom comes with responsibility, and that liberty requires courage.

To be un-American is the opposite. It is to demand conformity and to silence dissent, to divide people into categories and identities rather than recognize them as individuals. It is to desecrate the flag, to mock the very idea of nationhood, and to brand free speech itself as dangerous. It is to erode the foundations of self-government by surrendering authority to bureaucrats, to ideologues, or to foreign interests — whether they come from Ukraine, Israel, Russia, or any other land that is not our own

I have stood against un-American forces all my life — on foreign soil as a Marine, and on our own soil as a citizen. Charlie Kirk stood against them as well, in his own way. For that, I honor him.

So where do we go from here? How do we restore civil discourse in America?

First, we must reclaim education. Schools must teach history honestly, literature broadly, and debate openly. They must stop policing words and start training minds. If a student uses the word “mankind,” the response should be a discussion, not an expulsion.

Second, we must model courage. Children learn not from slogans but from example. If we hide our opinions, they will learn to hide theirs. If we speak respectfully but firmly, they will learn to do the same.

Third, we must reject the false idols of DEI and multiculturalism. Diversity has value only when it is rooted in unity. Without a shared American identity, diversity becomes division. We must return to the idea that we are Americans first — from many backgrounds, yes, but united under one flag.

Fourth, we must cultivate humility. Debate is not about destroying your opponent but sharpening your own understanding. Too many today treat politics as war, not conversation. We must relearn the art of listening, of admitting when we are wrong, of finding common ground.

Fifth, we must defend free speech relentlessly. This means standing up in workplaces, in schools, in communities, and refusing to be silenced. It means protecting even speech we dislike, because the alternative is no speech at all.

If we do these things, we can honor Charlie Kirk not by idolizing him, but by carrying forward the spirit of his fight.

Charlie Kirk is gone. A voice, sometimes sharp, sometimes brash, always bold, has been silenced by an assassin’s bullet. But in his life, he reminded us of something too easily forgotten; that speech matters, that debate matters, that courage matters.

I write these words as a Marine, a father, a husband, a grandfather, and I mourn his passing. But I also mourn what America has lost over these past three decades: the ability to argue without hatred, to disagree without destruction, to be citizens together in the great experiment of liberty.

Let us not waste this moment. Let us not reduce Charlie to a slogan or a symbol. Let us instead take from his life a challenge: to speak honestly, to listen openly, to live boldly as Americans.

For in the end, that is what matters. Not whether you agreed with Charlie Kirk, but whether you will carry forward the fight for freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the right of a free people to govern themselves.

That is what it means to be American. That is what Charlie, in his own imperfect way, stood for. And that is what we must continue to defend — for our children, for our grandchildren, and for the generations yet unborn.

Rest in peace, Charlie.

The Future of NASA: Vision, Bureaucracy, and the Right Stuff to Lead the Agency

On By Bill Cork1 Comment

By:  William Cork

Introduction: A Mission Nearly Launched

When Jared Isaacman was nominated by President Trump to be the 15th Administrator of NASA, insiders and space enthusiasts alike felt the excitement. Isaacman wasn’t a career bureaucrat or a political placeholder—he was a battle-tested entrepreneur, an accomplished jet pilot, a commercial astronaut, and the architect of civilian space missions that made history. Most importantly, he brought a private-sector mindset to one of the most bloated and stagnant federal agencies in American government.

Then, just days before what many anticipated would be a smooth confirmation by the full Senate, the nomination was withdrawn. President Trump, as is absolutely his right, made a decision that aligns with his broader strategic vision for space policy and leadership at NASA. That decision deserves not only respect but appreciation. The President has consistently demonstrated boldness in challenging the status quo, prioritizing American excellence, and making leadership choices that reflect his deep instincts about what it takes to win. His administration has accomplished more to reignite American space leadership than any in recent memory, and we are confident that his next nominee will carry forward that momentum with clarity and resolve. What matters most is the national conversation this nomination sparked—about reform, purpose, and the role of NASA in securing America’s place in the future of space. In that debate, there is tremendous value—and an opportunity we cannot afford to waste.

During the nomination process, I was fortunate to meet with Jared Isaacman alongside Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves- after his Senate Committee hearing and before the scheduled full Senate vote.  We met because Mississippi is home to Stennis Space Center (SSC) – a hub of rocket propulsion testing and innovation, employing nearly 5,000 people across dozens of tenants and supporting missions in commercial space, ocean science, and national defense. 

Bill Cork, Jared Isaacman, Governor Tate Reeves (Washington, DC May 2025)

Under the leadership of several governors, the Mississippi Development Authority has invested heavily in SSC and its ecosystem.  One of our key partners, the Mississippi Enterprise for Technology, works daily to sustain the center’s critical mission.  Governor Reeves and I met with Isaacman to express our unequivocal support for SSC and opened the possibility to reimage what the future could be like under his leadership. We remain committed to that support for the next nominee.

Those of us who care about Stennis took Isaacman’s nomination seriously.  We began building a relationship with him even before his confirmation.  Through those conversations and a review of his public testimony, we came to understand the depth of his vision:  a bold, no-nonsense roadmap to rebuild NASA as a streamlined, mission-driven force equipped to lead the 21st-centery space race. 

In addition to my own conversations with Mr. Isaacman, two other sources are worthy of your attention.  The first is a document that outlines the vision for NASA tied to the Presidential Budget (Combined Mission Fact Sheet dates 5/30/26).  The other is Isaacman’s hour-long interview on the All-In Podcast (see link below), with a heavy emphasis on what he uncovered inside NASA, what he planned to do about it, and what it means for the future of American space leadership—especially in contrast to the mission priorities outlined in NASA’s Budget.

Love for NASA—But Not for Its Bureaucracy

Jared Isaacman made clear from the beginning: “I love NASA.” His respect for the agency’s mission, history, and personnel runs deep. But his experience over six months of deep engagement with NASA revealed a structural failure point that could no longer be ignored.

“NASA’s got problems. And look, that’s not unique to them—it’s systemic across every government agency. The bureaucracy is super real. No one’s going to be surprised by that.”

What troubled him most was how decision-making is hamstrung by hierarchy. He described a management culture clogged with layers of leadership, deputies to deputies, and committees that paralyze action.

“There are so many layers of management. Everybody’s got a deputy. You’ve got committees with 200 people on them. Review boards. Like—all that needs to go.”

By contrast, the Combined Mission Fact Sheet reveals a sprawling ecosystem of programs managed by multiple centers and offices, with overlapping responsibilities across lunar systems, Earth science, deep space, and STEM engagement. Nowhere does it reflect a move toward leaner governance or flattened accountability.

“Ownership needs to be pushed down to the absolute lowest level. That’s how you get velocity. That’s how you win.”

The China Challenge: This Is a Space Race

Isaacman’s vision for NASA wasn’t rooted in nostalgia—it’s driven by urgency. He warned that China is now executing the same centralized, high-efficiency playbook America used during the Manhattan Project and Apollo.

“China is doing what we did in the ‘40s and ‘60s. They place the facilities where they belong. They put the right people there. There’s no baggage. They’re moving at lightning speed.”

In contrast, NASA’s fact sheet highlights a broad and diffuse portfolio, including many Earth-centric missions and technology programs with modest timelines. While laudable in scientific merit, the document lacks a clear framework for confronting near-peer threats in lunar or cislunar space.

“We’re repurposing labs that used to be cutting-edge into places that now do ‘a lot of littles.’ Some are relevant. Most aren’t. We’re not aligned around a mission anymore.”

Budget Cuts: A Tool for Clarity, Not Chaos

Some critics seized on the Trump administration’s proposed $6 billion cut to NASA’s budget—down to the lowest level since 1961. But Isaacman defended the move.

“Overfunding leads to complacency. Bureaucracy. Slowdown. When you have to do more with less, you focus.”

The fact sheet, while dense with programs, gives no indication of prioritization based on return-on-investment or strategic differentiation. All missions appear equally weighted—whether focused on climate observations, lunar rovers, or educational outreach. This, Isaacman would argue, is exactly the problem: without budget discipline, the system grows bloated and directionless.

The Core Reform Agenda: What Isaacman Wanted to Fix

Isaacman’s vision centered on returning NASA to a focused, mission-oriented institution. His “one-pager” to President Trump outlined four pillars:

  1. Complete lunar obligations—especially in the face of Chinese ambitions.
  2. Accelerate Mars and deep-space capabilities in parallel.
  3. Invest seriously in nuclear electric propulsion.
  4. Restructure NASA to stop doing what others can do and start doing what no one else will.

The fact sheet, by contrast, reaffirms Artemis and Gateway systems as long-term programs with heavy reliance on legacy hardware and cost-sharing among a sprawling industrial base. There is no mention of nuclear propulsion as a core objective—something Isaacman calls a missed opportunity of historic scale.

“We need to stop testing light bulbs in labs and start building real systems. Like the Nautilus after WWII—we laid the keel in 1951. That’s what NASA should be doing.”

The SLS and Artemis Problem: Yesterday’s Tech at Tomorrow’s Price

While Isaacman supported completing Artemis missions already funded, he was blunt about the program’s long-term viability.

“SLS is repurposed shuttle hardware. It’s the equivalent of flying a WWII P-51 Mustang in Desert Storm because we want to keep the factory open.”

NASA’s fact sheet leads with SLS and Artemis, describing them as foundational and enduring. But Isaacman sees them as legacy projects extended for political reasons. “Use the tools we already paid for,” he argues, “but move to reusable, modern tech—especially for cislunar operations.”

Mars: The Real Mission

Isaacman affirmed that Mars—not the Moon—is the strategic and scientific priority.

“Mars is the next step. It’s not pretty. It’s not easy. But it’s our path forward. And we’ll learn things out there that will change how we see everything.”

NASA’s document lists Mars sample return as a technology objective, but it is not framed with urgency or finality. Isaacman, by contrast, believes Mars should be a continuous goal, developed in parallel—not sequenced after multi-decade lunar programs.

Science and Speed: A New Model for Discovery

Isaacman criticized the slow pace and spiraling cost of flagship science missions.

“We should launch James Webb or Hubble-type programs every year—not once a decade. Let’s try 10 $100M missions. Let three fail. We’ll still learn more than one $3B mission that takes 12 years.”

The fact sheet lists a robust science portfolio, but offers little indication of reform in pace, cost control, or failure tolerance. Isaacman proposes a more venture-style model: faster iterations, distributed bets, and reduced fear of failure.

Let Commercial Space Lead—And Let NASA Build What They Won’t

Isaacman sees the rise of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab not as threats to NASA, but opportunities.

“Let SpaceX get us to orbit. Let NASA focus on what no company will touch—like in-space nuclear, or infrastructure to mine and manufacture off-Earth.”

NASA’s fact sheet mentions partnerships but keeps them on the periphery. Commercial crew and cargo are cited as examples, yet the document does not reflect a philosophical shift toward maximizing industry’s lead and letting NASA focus on frontier technologies.

Final Thoughts: The Administrator Who Isn’t and What to Say to the Next Nominee

Isaacman’s vision wasn’t about politics. It was about restoring mission discipline, rooting out inefficiency, and making NASA the tip of the spear again.

“NASA should shock the world—not sponsor rocket clubs.”

Though Isaacman won’t be Administrator, his reform blueprint remains on the table. For those who want a NASA that leads rather than lags, his plan offers a place to begin—and a mirror to measure the current direction reflected in official documents like the 2026 mission sheet.

“We can’t bet on 100 miracles to make Mars work. We need to build infrastructure—nuclear, industrial, scalable. That’s what NASA should do.”

Conclusion: America’s Space Imperative

Stennis Space Center is not just another NASA facility—it’s a national asset hiding in plain sight. With over 30,000 acres of usable space and a 125,000-acre acoustical buffer, it dwarfs every other NASA installation except Kennedy. You could fit almost the entire agency inside the Stennis footprint. And yet, its role in shaping the future of space exploration has too often been peripheral.

That needs to change.

From the very beginning, the people of Mississippi—and particularly Hancock County—have embraced the dream of interplanetary exploration. They gave up their homes and land to build Stennis. And for generations, they’ve been unwavering stewards of this mission-critical facility. Their message is simple: We still believe. We still want to lead.

That was the spirit Governor Tate Reeves conveyed directly to Jared Isaacman during our meeting. Mississippi isn’t just along for the ride—we’re ready to build, to innovate, and to partner with NASA in shaping what comes next. Whether it’s propulsion testing, commercial space integration, or Earth science innovation, nothing is off the table.

Isaacman may not have been the final nominee. But he was a candidate with vision—clear, coherent, and executable. Our hope now is that the next nominee brings the same urgency and clarity and arrives at NASA with eyes open to collaboration and ambition.

“NASA should be the place where impossible things happen,” Isaacman told us. “That’s what it was built for. That’s what it can be again.”

We agree. Mississippi is ready to help make the impossible real.

Let’s break new ground (in space) —together.

Howard Lutnick: A Vision for America’s Economic Renaissance

On By Bill CorkLeave a comment

By William Cork

In a candid and wide-ranging conversation on the “All-In” podcast, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick shared his insights on America’s economic challenges and his bold strategies to address them. Drawing from his extensive experience in finance and his close relationship with President Trump, Lutnick outlined a vision aimed at revitalizing the U.S. economy, restoring fiscal discipline, and reasserting America’s position on the global stage. 

From Wall Street to Washington

Howard Lutnick’s journey from the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce is marked by resilience and determination. Reflecting on his transition into public service, he remarked:

“I never imagined I’d be in this role, but when the President asked, I knew I had to step up for the country.”

His longstanding relationship with President Trump, spanning over three decades, has been instrumental in shaping his approach to governance. 

“We’ve had countless discussions about America’s potential and the need for strong leadership to realize it.”

Balancing the Budget: A $2 Trillion Challenge

One of Lutnick’s primary objectives is to address the ballooning federal deficit. He emphasized the urgency of the situation:

“We’re staring down a $2 trillion deficit. It’s unsustainable, and action is imperative.”

To tackle this, Lutnick proposes a dual strategy: cutting unnecessary expenditures and increasing revenues through innovative programs. 

“We’re identifying areas where we can trim the fat without compromising essential services. Simultaneously, we’re introducing initiatives to boost revenue.”

Introducing the ‘Trump Card’ Visa Program

A cornerstone of Lutnick’s revenue-generating strategy is the introduction of the “Trump Card” visa program. This initiative aims to attract high-net-worth individuals to invest in the U.S. economy. 

“The ‘Trump Card’ offers a pathway for affluent individuals to contribute to our economy, bringing in substantial revenue and fostering job creation.”

By setting a $5 million price tag for this visa, the program is projected to generate significant funds that can be directed toward infrastructure and other critical areas.

Reforming GDP Calculations

Lutnick also highlighted the need to modernize how the U.S. calculates its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). He pointed out discrepancies in current methodologies:

“Our GDP calculations don’t accurately reflect the digital economy’s contributions. We need metrics that capture the true state of our economic health.”

By refining these measurements, Lutnick believes policymakers can make more informed decisions that better serve the nation’s interests.

Tariffs: Protecting American Interests

A significant portion of the discussion centered on trade policies, particularly the administration’s stance on tariffs. Lutnick defended the use of tariffs as a tool to protect American industries: 

“For too long, other nations have taken advantage of our open markets. Tariffs level the playing field and ensure fair competition.”

He acknowledged the short-term challenges but emphasized the long-term benefits:

“There might be initial disruptions, but the end goal is a robust, self-reliant American economy.”

Embracing Technological Advancements

Lutnick is a proponent of integrating technology into government operations to enhance efficiency and transparency. He discussed plans to overhaul outdated systems: 

“We’re investing in modernizing our digital infrastructure, ensuring that government services are accessible and efficient.”

He also touched upon the potential of artificial intelligence in streamlining administrative processes:

“AI can revolutionize how we manage resources, from automating routine tasks to analyzing complex data for better decision-making.”

Establishing a Sovereign Wealth Fund

Drawing inspiration from countries like Norway, Lutnick proposed the creation of a U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund. This fund would invest in various assets to generate returns that support national programs.

“A Sovereign Wealth Fund can provide a steady income stream, reducing our reliance on debt and ensuring financial stability for future generations.”

He emphasized the importance of prudent management and transparency in overseeing such a fund.

Personal Reflections and Commitment

Throughout the interview, Lutnick’s personal experiences, particularly the tragic loss of colleagues during the 9/11 attacks, underscored his dedication to public service. He shared:

“The events of 9/11 profoundly impacted me. They reinforced the importance of resilience and the need to contribute meaningfully to our nation’s future.”

His commitment to philanthropy and rebuilding efforts post-9/11 demonstrates a deep-seated desire to make a positive difference.

Conclusion: Charting a New Course for America

Howard Lutnick’s vision for America’s economic future is both ambitious and grounded in practical strategies. By addressing fiscal challenges head-on, embracing technological advancements, and implementing innovative programs, he aims to steer the nation toward sustained prosperity.

His insights from the “All-In” podcast offer a glimpse into the administration’s broader economic agenda, reflecting a commitment to revitalizing America’s standing in the global economy.

Note: This blog post is based on the “Howard Lutnick | All-In DC” interview. For a more in-depth understanding, you can watch the full interview here.

Why Mississippi Is Winning — And What It Takes to Keep It Going

On By Bill CorkLeave a comment

By William Cork

It’s an exciting time to be doing economic development in Mississippi.

We’re not just seeing growth — we’re seeing the kind of record-breaking momentum that only happens when people get aligned, work a plan, and follow through. Since 2020, under Governor Reeves’ leadership, we’ve landed over $31 billion in new capital investment and more than 22,000 jobs. And we’ve done it with a smaller team and a smarter approach.

This isn’t about headlines or photo ops. It’s about building something real — something that lasts — for the people of Mississippi.

A few months ago, I sat down with Damon Tipton for his podcast and had a wide ranging interview. If you listen to it (it’s linked at the end of this post) you’ll learn a lot about what Mississippi is doing to position us for the future.

Let me provide a quick summary of the key points of the interview, and give you a walk through what I believe is driving our success, and what it’ll take to keep moving forward.

We Don’t Incentivize Hope — We Incentivize Performance

We’ve changed how Mississippi does business. We used to write checks up front and hope it all worked out. But if the project didn’t materialize, we were stuck trying to claw that money back from companies that were already failing.

Now, we do it differently.

With tools like the Mississippi Flexible Incentive Tax Credit, we tie performance to benefits. Companies don’t get incentives until they’ve met their commitments. Just like a contractor’s draw — you perform, you get paid. It’s conservative, it’s smart, and it protects the taxpayer.

Speed, Risk, and Money — Plus the Intangibles

When a company is evaluating where to put a factory or a data center, they’re asking three things: How fast can I move? What’s the risk to my business? What’s it going to cost?

Mississippi has learned how to answer those questions well.

But there’s a fourth element that gets overlooked: the intangibles. A lot of states can check the same boxes we do. But companies are also looking at culture, at values, at brand. They want to know: If I tie my brand to this state, what does it say about me?

We had to confront that head-on with the old state flag. Nobody could quantify how many deals we lost because of it, but we all knew it was an issue. Now, with a flag that reflects the values of our people, we’re no longer starting conversations with a disadvantage.

This Is About People

When we cut a ribbon and I see workers standing there in their uniforms — ready to go to work, with a wage that supports a family and a future — that’s why I do this job.

I’ve been in economic development for over 30 years. I’ve worked projects from the local level to the national level. Nothing compares to the run we’ve had over the last five years. And nothing compares to the reward of seeing Mississippians thrive because we landed a company in their town.

This job is about people. It always has been.

Mississippi Is Affordable — But We’re Not Cheap

Too often, people mistake affordability for being low-quality or low-wage. That’s not the case here.

We’re affordable — for both companies and workers — but we’re not racing to the bottom. The average wage for the manufacturing jobs we’ve brought in is around $60,000 a year. These are family-sustaining jobs with real upward mobility.

I don’t want us competing to be the cheapest. I want us to be competitive — on value, on speed, on workforce, and on outcomes.

Why Net Export Income Is the Whole Ballgame

One of the most important things we think about at MDA is what I call net export income.

If we’re going to grow our economy, we have to bring money into Mississippi — not just move it around within the state (which is also a good thing). That’s why we don’t typically incentivize retail or restaurants. Those businesses are important and they generate a multiplier effect, but our primary target is attracting new dollars to the state.

When Nissan builds cars here and sells them globally, that creates net export income. When the federal government funds military contracts and R&D in Mississippi, that’s money we’ve pulled in from across the country.

And when a tourist comes here and spends their dollars — we’re exporting our experience and importing their money. That’s how you grow a state economy.

The Tech Boom Is Real — and We’re Ready for It

Our recent wave of hyperscale data center announcements didn’t happen by accident. We’ve built out fiber infrastructure, we’ve got abundant power and water, and we’ve prepared sites in advance.

We’ve also invested in workforce — from construction and HVAC to cybersecurity and AI.

We’re not just chasing the leaves and ornaments of a tech ecosystem. We’re planting the roots and growing the trunk. When you get that right, the rest follows.

Immigration and Workforce: A Pragmatic, Human Approach

I served in the Marine Corps. As a military policeman at Camp Pendleton, I personally apprehended hundreds of undocumented migrants. I’ve seen firsthand what it looks like — scared families, children, people just trying to find a better life.

At the same time, I believe in law and order. We need to secure the border. We need to enforce our laws. But we also need to acknowledge the humanity behind the issue and look for common-sense solutions.

We’ve got around 42,000 working-age Mississippians not in the labor force today. We need to figure out how to re-engage them — not grow welfare, but grow opportunity.

Eliminating the Income Tax Is the Right Move

Governor Reeves has made it clear: he wants Mississippi to eliminate its personal income tax. I agree.

Taxing labor is the wrong way to grow an economy. When you tax something, you discourage it. That’s Economics 101.

States like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee have shown that you can eliminate income tax and still grow — in fact, they’re growing faster. If we want to attract high-net-worth individuals and business owners, this is a smart play.

Yes, we’ll need to be smart about the transition. But long-term, the benefits outweigh the risks.

If You Want to Win, You’ve Got to Show Up

I tell communities all over the state: you can win something — but only if you’re aligned, prepared, and committed.

Amazon in Madison County, Aluminum Dynamics in Columbus, Compass in Meridian — none of those projects happened overnight. They were years in the making. Some of them started with a water line to a piece of empty land.

The state will meet you halfway. But we can’t do it for you. If you’re fighting among yourselves or waiting for someone else to act, you’re not going to see results.

Get organized. Make a plan. Stick to it. That’s how we win.

Mississippi is on a run right now. The stars have aligned — and we’ve worked hard to make it happen. We’ve got more work ahead, but the mission hasn’t changed.

We’re here to serve. We’re here to grow. And we’re here to make this state everything we know it can be — for every worker, every community, every business.

Mississippi has momentum. This is Mississippi’s time.

Watch the full one-hour interview here where we go into these concepts in detail and much more!!