Jeff Dornik

Jeff Dornik – May 18

There is a difference between putting America First and putting Americans First, and that distinction is at the center of the primary in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District tomorrow. The political class would prefer that we not notice the difference, because once people begin asking whether the machine is serving the citizen or the citizen is being sacrificed to the machine, the whole consultant-industrial complex starts making the same sound as a smoke detector with a dying battery. Annoying, persistent, and somehow always installed right above your bed.

America First is not inherently wrong. Much of it is good, necessary, and long overdue. Securing the border is America First. Lowering taxes is America First. Rebuilding manufacturing is America First. Restoring American strength is America First. Ensuring that China does not dominate artificial intelligence, energy, semiconductors, infrastructure, and the technologies that will define the future is America First. I am not interested in surrendering this country to globalists, bureaucrats, communists, technocrats, or any other collection of very important people who believe the average American exists primarily to fund their theories and clap at their press conferences.

But America First can become something dangerous when it becomes detached from Americans themselves.

America First can become the excuse for expanding federal power in the name of national greatness. It can become the excuse for fusing Big Government and Big Business because the spreadsheet says freedom is inefficient. It can become the excuse for fast-tracking artificial intelligence infrastructure and data centers across the country while the people living in those communities are expected to smile, nod, and accept that their land, water, energy grid, and local sovereignty have been repurposed for the glorious future, which always seems to be designed by billionaires, bureaucrats, and consultants who do not live anywhere near the consequences. President Trump’s July 2025 executive order directed federal agencies to accelerate permitting and support for large-scale data center and AI infrastructure projects, and that is exactly the kind of policy that can sound America First while still demanding an Americans First audit.

America First can mean cutting deals with China because the deal is supposed to help America as a country. It can mean welcoming Chinese investment into non-sensitive American sectors, selling more Boeing planes, exporting more energy and agricultural products, and trying to rebalance trade from the top down. Reuters reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed those kinds of arrangements during Trump’s China visit while dismissing speculation that the administration was pursuing a $1 trillion Chinese investment deal, which is exactly the sort of clarification Washington offers when the original trial balloon starts looking like it might require adult supervision.

America First can mean opening American universities to hundreds of thousands of Chinese students because our colleges have become financially dependent on foreign tuition, and apparently the solution to institutional failure is to keep feeding the institution until morale improves. Trump said American colleges would struggle without Chinese students after suggesting that as many as 600,000 could be allowed to study here as part of trade discussions. That may make sense to people who view America as a balance sheet, but Americans First asks a different question: Why are American universities so broken, so bloated, and so hostile to their own country that they need foreign dependency to stay open in the first place?

That is the divide. America First looks at the strength of the nation-state. Americans First looks at the liberty, dignity, rights, and actual lives of the people the nation exists to protect. America First can build a powerful country. Americans First is the reason that country deserves to be powerful.

Thomas Massie is Americans First.

That is why the attacks on him have been so revealing. Massie does not oppose the Republican Party because he is confused about which team he is on. He opposes the Republican Party when the Republican Party strays from the constitutional principles it claims to defend. He does not oppose Donald Trump because he has joined the Resistance and started sipping oat milk with former Lincoln Project donors in a candlelit room somewhere. He opposes Trump when Trump moves away from the very principles that made his movement powerful in the first place. 

A congressman’s oath is not to a president. It is not to a party. It is not to a donor class, a lobbyist network, a foreign government, a defense contractor, a Silicon Valley billionaire, a media personality, or whichever political consultant remembered to wear cowboy boots while telling Kentucky how to think. The oath is to the Constitution. That matters, even when your side is in power. Actually, it matters especially when your side is in power, because that is when the temptation to excuse everything becomes spiritually radioactive.

Psalm 146:3 says, “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.” That verse remains stubbornly relevant, which is probably why no political consultant has found a way to turn it into a fundraising email without ruining it. The point is not that leaders do not matter. They do. The point is that no leader, no movement, and no party gets to become the standard of truth. When loyalty to a man requires silence about spending, war, surveillance, secrecy, or constitutional violations, the problem is not the person refusing to be silent.

Massie has been right to oppose sending American money overseas while our own people are told to wait their turn. He has been right to resist another regime change war in the Middle East while Washington’s foreign policy priesthood pretends the last twenty-five years went beautifully, other than the bodies, the debt, the destabilization, and the minor inconvenience of reality. Massie is a critic of the Iran war and Trump-aligned pro-Israel forces have spent heavily against him in what has become a nationally watched primary.

Massie has been right to question the rapid centralization of artificial intelligence power. I say that as the CEO of Pickax, where we are building technology to restore ownership, direct relationship, and authentic community to creators instead of trapping people under algorithmic control like digital sharecroppers with better lighting. Technology is not the enemy. Centralized control is. AI can be a tool of human flourishing, but when government, Big Tech, intelligence interests, and global capital all start humming the same tune, the rest of us should at least ask who wrote the song and why the chorus sounds like a terms-of-service update from the Tower of Babel.

Massie has also been right on the Epstein files, and this might be the clearest test of all. He has been one of the leaders in Congress pushing for the release of those records, and is continuing to lead efforts for openness on the Epstein case. A government that hides the truth about a sex trafficking network connected to powerful people has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. The public does not owe silence to institutions that have lied, stonewalled, redacted, slow-walked, and then acted offended when citizens noticed. “Trust us” is not a constitutional doctrine. It is what guilty institutions say when they have misplaced their moral authority and would like you to help them look for it in the couch cushions.

The most absurd attack against Massie is that he is not loyal enough to the Republican Party. If someone supports the party more than ninety percent of the time, and the remaining disagreements are over war, spending, executive power, government secrecy, foreign influence, and constitutional limits, maybe the anger should not be directed at him. Maybe the anger should be directed at the party for wandering away from the principles printed on its own bumper stickers.

This is where Con Inc becomes almost impressive in its shamelessness. These are the people who spent years telling us to distrust the establishment, question the regime, resist the censors, oppose endless wars, expose corruption, and defend the Constitution, right up until someone actually did those things without asking permission from the approved personalities first. Then suddenly independence became treason, constitutional conviction became grandstanding, and asking for transparency on Epstein became inconvenient. The speed with which some people can convert principle into talking points would be breathtaking if it were not so spiritually exhausting.

Lauren Boebert was right when she said people are allowed to support both Trump and Massie. Trump threatened to pull his endorsement of Boebert after she defended Massie, which only proves the point that the pressure campaign is about obedience more than discernment. You can support Trump where he is right and oppose him where he is wrong. You can support Massie without pretending he is perfect. This should not be complicated, but politics has become the only place where grown adults regularly insist that moral maturity means choosing a team and turning off your conscience.

The Founders did not build a system for obedient partisans. They built a system for free citizens. They gave us divided powers because they understood that power concentrates, corrupts, and then hires a communications director. They gave Congress the power of the purse because they did not want presidents funding every foreign adventure, domestic scheme, and emergency project through executive will. They gave Congress the power to declare war because they knew executives would always discover urgent reasons to act first and explain later. They gave us the First Amendment because truth does not need permission from the state. They gave us the Fourth Amendment because privacy does not become optional when the government buys better software.

That is Americans First. It is not isolationism. It is not weakness. It is not anti-Trump. It is not anti-Republican. It is the actual foundation of the American experiment. Government exists under God, by consent, and for the protection of rights it did not create. The moment we forget that, America First becomes little more than managerial nationalism, and managerial nationalism is still managerial. It still assumes the people exist to be arranged, optimized, nudged, surveilled, taxed, conscripted, distracted, and occasionally thanked for their service.

I do not want a representative who treats the Constitution like ceremonial parchment. I do not want a representative who believes war powers are a vibe, spending restraint is optional, transparency is dangerous, and local communities should be bulldozed by the future because the federal government found a faster permitting lane. I want representatives who remember that America is not great because Washington is powerful. America is great when Americans are free.

That is why I’ve endorsed Thomas Massie for re-election to Congress and encourage anyone in his district to vote for him in tomorrow’s Primary.

Not because he is perfect. Not because any politician deserves blind loyalty. Not because every vote he casts will make every faction happy. I stand with him because he has shown the one trait Washington hates most and the republic needs most: the willingness to say no when everyone in power is demanding yes.

We need more Massies, not less. We need more representatives who understand that the people are not an obstacle to America’s greatness. The people are the point. We need more leaders who will defend the Constitution when it is popular and when it is costly. We need more men and women who will refuse to trade liberty for access, truth for applause, and conviction for party favor.

America First is only righteous when it serves Americans First. When it protects our borders, lowers our taxes, restores our industry, defends our rights, and strengthens our families, it is a blessing. When it grows the state, shields the powerful, feeds the war machine, empowers foreign dependency, centralizes technology, or tells citizens to stop asking questions, it has lost the plot.

Massie has not lost the plot. Washington has.