Guest Host Lisa Von Geldern with Susan Ellsworth & Ron Desouza
Gold in Your Wallet, Scores on Your Screen, and the Conference That Brings It All Together
While Kathleen Winn was in federal court arguing that the Elections Procedures Manual violates the First Amendment, her guest host for the morning had her own court to hold. Lisa Von Geldern — Arizona state coordinator for the John Birch Society, organizer of the Salt Lake City conference that had just wrapped, and a woman who moved from California to Arizona to escape overreach only to find it arriving close behind — spent two hours making the case that constitutional self-education is not a hobby. It is the only mechanism that actually works. Two guests joined to reinforce it: Susan Ellsworth, the Arizona coordinator for the John Birch Society, who walked listeners live through the Freedom Index scorecards for every Arizona congressman; and Ron DeSouza, a young Tucson entrepreneur whose grandfather was a John Birch Society chapter chairman decades ago, who drove to Salt Lake City and came back convinced that the right is finally starting to organize like it means it.
Lisa Von Geldern: Digital Money, Wild Pigs, and Why the Fence Is Almost Closed
Von Geldern opened the morning with the central argument of the Salt Lake City conference, which she organized, and which drew attendees from Tucson, the Phoenix area, and Mesa: the digital financial system is not a convenience. It is a trap. And the door of that trap is almost closed.
The Canadian Trucker Lesson — and January 6th
The most vivid demonstration of what digital money means in practice is recent, documented, and available to anyone who wants to look it up.
When Canadian truckers struck in 2022, the government of Canada did not arrest them. It simply closed their bank accounts. They could not buy food. They could not buy farm supplies. They could not function. And critically — when private citizens donated to support the truckers, those accounts were frozen too. You did not need to be at the protest. You needed only to have sent a donation.
The January 6th parallel is domestic and equally documented. Bank of America turned over transaction records for anyone who had been in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. during that period to the FBI. That list was then used to pursue people who were simply traveling in the same city at the same time.
"If you don't believe me, I'm sure you can find it on the interwebs."
Von Geldern's analogy for how this works culturally — slowly and with apparent generosity until it is too late — is the wild pig capture. You put up one section of fence in the woods. You throw some corn out. The pigs come and eat. You add another section of fence on the other side. The pigs keep coming. Eventually you close the gate.
"So digital money and digital transactions are trackable and traceable, and we learned this with the Canadian trucker strike."
Gold, Silver, and the Goldback
The practical alternative Von Geldern has been advocating — and which was a core topic at the conference — is the gradual, deliberate move toward physical money, specifically gold and silver.
Arizona has already recognized gold and silver as lawful money. The next step — a bill working through the legislature to establish a depository in the state — would allow Arizonans to pay for groceries, gas, and utilities in gold and silver.
The vehicle that makes this practical at the street level is the goldback — a physical note containing one one-thousandth of a troy ounce of 24-karat gold, embedded in a laminated bill-like format, and available in denominations by state. They are legal tender. They have intrinsic, stored value. Someone at a restaurant recently tipped a waiter with one.
"There's actual real gold in these bills, and we're trying to get people to learn how to use it as money."
The Sound Money Defense League and its executive director JP Cortez — one of the conference speakers — have been moving legislation across the country to recognize gold and silver as lawful currency. Cortez's presentation, along with every other session from the Salt Lake City conference, is being posted to the JBS.org website under the education tab and conferences section. Patrick Wood's technocracy presentation was scheduled to go live at noon the day of this broadcast.
The Agenda 2030 Reality and the Board of Peace
Von Geldern did not restrict her critique to Democrats or liberals. She was equally pointed about Trump's Board of Peace — a billionaires club, in her characterization — and the UN and World Economic Forum documents that are publicly available and describe exactly the kind of restrictions she is warning about.
"It's in their own words on the World Economic Forum and the United Nations websites."
The Agenda 2030 provisions she cited: three clothing items per year. One round-trip flight every three years. The 15-minute city framework that is already operational in the United Kingdom, where license plate cameras track movement and issue automatic fines when a registered vehicle enters a zone it is not permitted to enter.
"I don't want a 15 minute city."
Her daughter lives on the East Coast. Her daughter's fiancé has family in Ireland. She has family in Florida, Boston, South Carolina, and Georgia. Under the proposed framework, she would be restricted to one round trip every three years to visit any of them.
"I just want people to not only listen to people on social media or people on radio. You need to start paying attention to literally the legislation that is being proposed and getting pushed through because this is where the rubber meets the road."
What Happened in Sahuarita
Von Geldern gave a local example of the UN/WEF infiltration into small-town governance that she has observed firsthand in her own community. When more than 200 people showed up at a Sahuarita town council meeting to oppose the elimination of individual trash service in favor of a single provider, the council went behind closed doors and voted yes anyway.
"Their reasons were nonsense and you can go look it up."
The broader pattern: the United Nations and World Economic Forum long ago recognized they could not implement their agenda through Congress. So they went local. Town planners are trained by these organizations. The changes come through zoning, through consolidated service contracts, through NDA agreements signed with developers — not through legislation that anyone is watching.
The Amazon distribution center fight in her community was the same pattern: the city council signed NDAs with the developer, restricting what they could tell the people they represent, then pushed the project through. Elected officials signed non-disclosure agreements that prevented them from serving the people who elected them.
The Conference Series Coming to Arizona
Von Geldern announced that she is working with other John Birch Society members to bring the Salt Lake City conference's key presentations to Arizona — specifically one event in Phoenix and one in Tucson. People who could not or did not get to Salt Lake City will be able to attend locally.
The upcoming Red Pill Expo in Las Vegas in July — organized by G. Edward Griffin, who wrote The Creature from Jekyll Island and is a former JBS field coordinator — will feature Alex Jones among the keynote speakers. His parents, she noted, were Birchers. Alex Jones learned what he knows about government at the knees of his John Birch Society-member parents.
"If you recommend this conference in Las Vegas, I'm sure it'll be worth it for freedom-loving patriots."
Susan Ellsworth: Every Arizona Congressman, Scored Live — and the Legislator Who Shamed His Own District into Withdrawing a Bad Vote
Susan Ellsworth is the Arizona coordinator for the John Birch Society, based in the northern part of the state, and a woman who has been handing out Freedom Index scorecards at candidate events long enough to know exactly what happens when a legislator walks in and sees his own number on a table.
She joined the broadcast to walk listeners through the Freedom Index — a constitutional scorecard maintained at freedomindex.us that rates every member of the U.S. House and Senate, plus state legislators, based on the constitutionality of their votes. It is free. It is current. And it is the kind of tool that changes conversations when you bring it to the room.
How to Read the Freedom Index
Listeners who navigated to freedomindex.us during the broadcast found a site with a header showing the scale of the operation: 12,923 legislators scored, 3,670 votes analyzed, 506,837 roll calls counted. The methodology: professional staff examine each piece of legislation, assess its constitutional grounding, and assign a plus (constitutional) or minus (unconstitutional) to each legislator's vote. The aggregate produces a percentage score.
From the page:
The Freedom Index rates members of Congress based on their adherence to the constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and the traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements.
Each vote comes with a description of the bill, the constitutional issue at stake, the cost per household, and a link to the actual bill text. No editorializing required. The votes speak.
Arizona's Congressional Scores — Live on Air
The current Arizona delegation, pulled in real time during the broadcast:
David Schweikert: 70% — with pluses and minuses visible. Every minus tells you specifically which vote caused the deduction.
Eli Crane: 100%
Andy Biggs: 100%
Juan Ciscomani (CD-6): 60% — a 14-point improvement over his 44% in the 118th Congress. Ellsworth noted he voted against federal funding to any school receiving support from the People's Republic of China. He also voted against continuing appropriations (HR 10545), which passed 366 to 34 and extended federal funding through March 14, 2025 at a cost of $3,191 per American household.
Adelita Grijalva (CD-7): Only two votes in the index — because she replaced her father Raul after his death mid-term and hasn't taken enough votes to generate a meaningful score. Ellsworth noted this as an opportunity: CD-7 residents can engage her now, before the pattern is set.
Grijalva and Stanton: 11% and 10%, respectively
Hamadeh: 80%
Gosar: 90%
The national picture, scrolling down: California shows row after row of zeros, fives, and tens. Connecticut shows nothing over 20%. These are the people writing federal law.
Arizona's State Legislature
Arizona's state Freedom Index (state-level scorecards, separate from congressional) places at the top: Lisa Fink, Kyle Powell, Kareen Werner (100%), Jake Hoffman, Mark Fincham, Rachel Jones (B-plus), Joseph Chaplik. Near the bottom: Eva Birch, Myron Tosi, Alma Hernandez, Denise Epstein, Lydia Hernandez — scoring 7-8% on constitutional votes. Warren Peterson appears at 79% — a C-plus. Ellsworth's comment was direct: "I think Warren can do a little better. He's running for office, people. Push him."
The live on-air national debt clock — visible at the bottom of the Freedom Index page — was running as they spoke. Per household share: $291,000 and climbing.
The Wyoming Model and the 10,000 Printed Scorecards
The most powerful section of Ellsworth's time came when she described what Dave Iverson — the Cowboy State Politics host who moderated the legislative panel at the Salt Lake City conference — presented about Wyoming. Over a period of years, constitutional advocates in Wyoming used the Freedom Index scorecards to elect constitutional legislators and drive out those who were not following the state and federal constitution.
The method was not sophisticated. It was persistent.
"They would buy 10,000 of these things printed professionally. And they went to parades or they went to street fairs and they passed them out."
Von Geldern's parallel approach: arriving at a candidate event before the legislator gets there, handing a printed scorecard to every person in the venue, so that when the candidate walks in and starts talking, every constituent in the room already has the data in their hands.
"You can actually quiz them on the things they've done and quiz them on the votes they've taken that harm us."
Some members of Congress have the current scorecard under the glass on their desk. When a lobbyist walks in and starts pitching, they point to it.
"Because these are coming in from my constituents. They're watching me. They're watching how I vote. And I'm in office to uphold the Constitution."
The Legislator Who Shamed His Own District
The most powerful story Ellsworth brought was personal.
She was at a small candidate event. An incumbent legislator walked in and saw two scorecards on the table — his colleague's at 100%, his own at 70. He asked why his was lower.
She had the printed scorecard in her hand and walked him through the specific votes that had produced the minus marks instead of pluses. He understood the issue.
Then she described a separate incident involving the same legislator and his legislative district body, which had voted to ask him to cast an unconstitutional vote. His response, given publicly to the assembled body:
"If you want me to adhere to my sworn oath to defend the Constitution, then you turn around and you do a vote like this in your legislative district saying you want me to vote for this and you're trying to put my arm behind my back and twist me into doing this. You're asking me to go against the very oath you asked me to uphold. So you either need to fire me because I'm not going against the Constitution because I did swear the oath — you didn't — or you turn around and vote this down. Because I'm going to tell you why it was unconstitutional."
He explained the constitutional issue. The body understood it. They asked for another vote. They rescinded the original motion altogether.
"That is the power behind understanding how the Freedom Index works and how it empowers the legislators that have been voted in to not go with their party line so much as go with what's constitutional."
Susan Ellsworth can be reached directly at 602-784-0588 — by call or text. If you can gather six to ten people, she will come to your area and present on the Freedom Index, constitutional education, and how to start or support a local John Birch Society chapter. The society provides materials — educational content that can be handed to neighbors, postal carriers, service workers, anyone in your community who is unhappy about what they see but doesn't know where to start.
The Freedom Project Academy — a constitutional and Christ-centered homeschool program with three tracks including self-directed, standard hours, and anytime — is another resource Ellsworth and Von Geldern both endorsed. Students are taught by credentialed teachers via computer at home, take far fewer hours than a traditional school day requires, and can travel with their families as part of their education.
The Article V Convention Warning
Before wrapping up her formal segment, Ellsworth connected the Freedom Index to the Article V constitutional convention debate.
Robert Brown — author of The Constitution Is the Solution series and a conference speaker — has offered $10,000 to anyone from the COS (Convention of States), US Term Limits, or the balanced budget amendment movement willing to publicly debate him on whether an Article V convention is safe. None of them have accepted.
The reason the debate matters: if a convention is called, the delegates are selected by the people currently in office — the same legislators scoring zeros and fives in the congressional Freedom Index. The result would not be a reaffirmation of constitutional principles. It would be an opportunity to rewrite them.
"If you want a bunch of zeros and tens and 20 percenters choosing your delegates, nothing's going to change other than the chance that we could have our Constitution ripped out from underneath us."
Ron DeSouza: His Grandfather Was a Bircher, He's 23, and He Thinks the Conference Got It Right
Ron DeSouza joined at the end of the show — a young Tucsonan who traveled to Salt Lake City for the conference and came back with a specific observation that neither Von Geldern nor Ellsworth had explicitly named: the generational mix in the room.
"We had a whole mix of Zoomers, Gen X, all people of all different ages, just together at these tables and we were exchanging a lot of good ideas — what worked in the seventies, what worked during the time of Reagan, and what we believe is going to work now."
His grandfather was a chapter chairman for the John Birch Society in New York. His background includes serving as president of the Young Americans for Liberty — the Ron Paul organization. He is currently working with a PAC focused on connecting small business owners with town councils and city councils, advocating for the interests of businesses that cannot afford lobbyists.
"Small business owners can't afford to hire a lobbyist. So someone's got to advocate for their interests out there."
His assessment of the conference's significance went beyond the individual presentations.
"The most inspired I've been by a conference since AmFest. And it really did remind me of AmFest because a lot of these organizations were all working towards the same goal and it should be one united front."
The comparison to the left's organizational model was honest and useful:
"I think this conference is a good example of organization on the right done right. The left has been organized for decades. Whatever petty differences they might have, they agree on 80% of things and so they unite around that. I want to see that with liberty, freedom-loving patriots on the right."
He acknowledged the structural challenge: conservatives tend toward independent critical thinking, which produces internal arguments that keep them fractured while the left's tendency toward institutional compliance keeps them united.
DeSouza also referenced the "tree" presentation by Wayne Marl — an image that Von Geldern described as her favorite teaching device from the event. The tree has branches labeled with individual issues: water rights, data centers, flock cameras, gold and silver, constitutional voting. Each branch represents a different fight. But the trunk — and the roots — are the same across every one of them. The agenda driving all these individual issues comes from the same source.
"I can go and fight the branch that's trying to take away my Second Amendment rights or take away my free speech rights. But the truth is all of that grows out of the same swampy mess."
His final point was about the COVID generation — specifically his own experience watching his college years canceled by bureaucratic decree, and the clarity that experience produced.
"A lot of my generation had it pretty bad because that was supposed to be our hangout years, our getting our career started years — only to have it taken away by these bureaucrats."
He is 23 years old, was 17 when COVID lockdowns began, and has spent the years since educating himself about the mechanisms behind what happened. The John Birch Society conference, in his view, was one of the best investments of time a person his age can make.
"It's never too early to learn about tyranny."
Winn Tucson airs Monday through Friday, 9 to 11 a.m., on KVOI 1030 The Voice.
Freedom Index: freedomindex.us — look up every member of Congress and your state legislators. Free. Current. Searchable.
Susan Ellsworth, Arizona JBS Coordinator: 602-784-0588 (call or text) — available to present to groups of 6-10 people anywhere in Arizona
JBS.org — conference presentations including Patrick Wood's technocracy session now posting under Education tab → Conferences → 2026
Sound Money Defense League: soundmoneydefense.org | Goldbacks: goldbacks.com
Freedom Project Academy: freedomprojectacademy.com
Red Pill Expo, Las Vegas, July 2026: redpillexpo.com