Kristi Burke

Big Tech shouldn’t get to treat Tennessee like a resource colony, burning unpermitted gas in working class neighborhoods while pushing higher power bills onto everyday families. When massive corporations bring energy-hungry data centers into our state, we need clear accountability: tech companies must pay for 100 percent of their own grid expansion, face mandatory power cutbacks during extreme weather so home heating stays prioritized, and comply fully with Clean Air Act standards instead of using temporary exemptions like xAI did in South Memphis. We cannot let multi-billion-dollar tech ventures privatize the profits of AI while socializing the pollution and energy costs onto Tennessee families.

When basic healthcare becomes a hassle and trust in our public systems gets eroded for political gain, kids end up unprotected from preventable diseases like measles. To get our kindergarten vaccination rates back above that critical 95 percent mark in Tennessee, we need to meet working families where they actually are. That means bringing free mobile clinics directly to public schools and rural community centers so parents do not have to miss work or worry about surprise medical bills just to keep their children safe. It also means funding local pediatricians, school nurses, and community health boards to answer parents’ questions honestly and track outbreaks before they start. When we make preventative care free, accessible, and grounded in real communication, parents do right by their kids.

Two years after Tropical Storm Helene, families across East Tennessee are still being forced to navigate endless red tape just to rebuild their lives, and that is a total failure of leadership. Real recovery means making sure funds actually reach working families and local small businesses quickly, which is why federal assistance must prioritize direct, non repayable emergency grants for home repairs instead of piling more debt onto families with low-interest loans. We need to streamline federal disaster aid into a simple application process, set up an immediate working capital fund so local shops and farms can keep workers paid, and establish a dedicated regional recovery reserve so East Tennessee towns do not have to wait years for funding to rebuild roads and bridges. When disaster strikes, working families should never be left to rebuild alone while politicians look the other way.

Institutions like Oak Ridge National Laboratory, UT, and Vanderbilt perform life-saving medical research, power grid innovations, and scientific breakthroughs that fuel good paying Tennessee jobs, yet corporate politicians routinely threaten science funding whenever it does not align with their political agendas or private interests. My priority for federal science agencies like the DOE, NIH, and NSF will always be protecting public investment that goes directly toward local innovation, public health, and good union jobs rather than letting corporate special interests privatize publicly funded research. When we fully fund real science and keep those resources anchored in our state universities and national labs, we strengthen our economy, train our workforce, and build a safer future for working families.

Politicians sow distrust in scientific facts in an attempt to gain power over those that they represent while disregarding the societal impacts that distrust causes. This kind of system gaming benefits only the corporations that are beholden to their shareholders and takes more money out of the pockets of working families. When career politicians treat public health, extreme weather planning, and medical research like a culture war, they leave everyday people to pay the price with higher bills and worse health care. We rebuild real trust when we call out these corporate financial motives, demand full transparency for publicly funded research, and demand a government that puts people over profit.