The 2026 Young America's Foundation Cruise

The Occupy Movement didn't start on Wall Street. It started in Madison, Wisconsin, when 100,000 protestors descended onto the grounds of the State Capitol soon after Scott Walker took office as Governor. Their goal was to intimidate him and his allies, but he did not back down. He was unintimidated.

Scott's reforms took power from the hands of big government special interests and put it firmly into the hands of the hard-working people of Wisconsin and those that they elect to run their local governments. Those reforms, known as Act 10, have saved taxpayers more than $16 billion. During Governor Walker's tenure, Wisconsin enacted more common-sense conservative reforms than any state in the nation. They targeted him, and he won, becoming the first Governor in American history to win a recall election.

Now, Scott serves as president of Young America's Foundation, which trains the next generation of leaders in the fight for freedom. YAF conducts programs at the Reagan Ranch, Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home, its national headquarters in northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and regional sites nationwide. YAF also hosts more conservative campus lectures than any other organization and has a digital presence with more than one billion views.

Scott has been married to Tonette for more than 30 years. They live on Pewaukee Lake in Wisconsin while also spending time in Virginia and California. Scott and Tonette have two adult children.

Born the son of a pastor and a part-time bookkeeper and raised in a small town, Scott understands the value of hard work and community. He is a proud Eagle Scout and an alum of the American Legion's Badger Boys State and Boys Nations programs. When he's not working, Scott can be found riding on his Harley Davidson Road King, on their pontoon boat out on the lake, or cheering on the Packers or one of Wisconsin's other sports teams. Most importantly, he is a follower of Christ.

Larry O’Connor is a radio talk show host on Washington, D.C.’s WMAL, where he hosts the morning drive-time show O’Connor & Company. He also hosts LARRY, a daily streaming video show and podcast for Townhall Media, which is seen on Townhall, Hot Air, PJ Media, Red State, and Townhall’s social media platforms, reaching several million viewers. Mr. O'Connor is a regular panelist on Newsmax's prime time panel show, THE RIGHT SQUAD. He has also been seen on Fox News, ABC News, and MSNBC. Larry was a frequent guest host for nationally syndicated hosts, Dennis Miller and Hugh Hewitt, and is currently the regular guest host for Mark Levin.

Before radio, Mr. O'Connor was the general manager of the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles, where he oversaw the American premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Blvd., starring Glenn Close. He also worked on major productions including Ragtime, Rent, Beauty and the Beast, Chicago, Cats, and A Chorus Line. During his theatre career, Larry worked with Sir Ian McKellen, Kelsey Grammar, Christine Baranski, Neil Patrick Harris, Adam Lambert, and, regrettably, Val Kilmer. 

In 2009, Larry was plucked from obscurity and the entertainment business by internet trailblazer Andrew Breitbart, with whom he worked during the first days of Breitbart's trailblazing news empire. While at Breitbart, Mr. O’Connor became a trailblazer himself by creating one of the first live, daily internet radio programs/podcasts, which quickly attracted a large and loyal following. The online program led to his high-profile guest-hosting appearances and, eventually, his current job on WMAL — one of the highest-rated and most influential talk radio stations in America. He was the first online radio host to successfully transition to a major-market radio career.

T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr. is a native of South Carolina. Currently, he is a trustee and counselor to the Federalist Society, chairman of the board of trustees for the Brevard Music Center, chairman of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, and a trustee of the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Kenneth also serves on Young America’s Foundation’s Board of Directors as treasurer and as the chairman of YAF’s National Journalism Center Board of Governors.

Mr. Cribb has served in many leadership positions over the years. From 1971 to 1977, he served as national director for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). He became president of ISI and served from 1989 to 2011. He was also the founding publisher of ISI Books, and retains the title of president emeritus of ISI. Kenneth is the past president of the Collegiate Network, the Council for National Policy, and the Philadelphia Society and a former senior fellow of the Heritage Foundation.

He was deputy to the chief counsel of the 1980 Reagan campaign. During the Reagan transition, he was deputy director of the Legal and Administrative Agencies Group, Office of the Executive Branch Management. Kenneth went on to serve the Reagan administration for almost the entire eight years of its existence, beginning in 1981 as assistant director for the Office of Cabinet Affairs. He served next as assistant counselor to the President, in which capacity he assisted Counselor Edwin Meese. When Mr. Meese became attorney general, Mr. Cribb accompanied him to the Justice Department where he became counselor to the attorney general of the United States. In 1987, Kenneth returned to the White House as assistant to the President for domestic affairs, serving as President Reagan’s top advisor on domestic matters, supervising four White House offices: policy development, cabinet affairs, public liaison, and welfare reform. He held this position until the fall of 1988.

Mr. Cribb has received numerous awards, including the Edmund Randolph Award, the highest honor given by the US Department of Justice, and the Charles H. Hoeflich Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor rarely awarded by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Kenneth received a BA from Washington and Lee University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He also has honorary doctorate degrees from Thomas Moore University, Oklahoma Christian University, and Universidad Francisco Marroquín.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway provides unique and thoughtful reporting and analysis of American politics and culture. She helped launch and is editor-in-chief of The Federalist, which has become one of the most influential voices in politics and has millions of readers.

Ms. Hemingway is a senior journalism fellow at Hillsdale College where she teaches journalism. A Fox News contributor, she is a regular member of the Fox News All-Stars panel on Special Report with Bret Baier. She has been profiled in the New York Times and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Claremont Review of Books, and Christianity Today.

Mollie was a 2004 recipient of a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship and a 2014 Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute. In 2021, her distinguished reporting and commentary earned her the prestigious Bradley Prize, awarded for extraordinary contributions to American scholarship and debate, and in 2019, recognizing her "journalistic integrity and willingness to stand alone beside the truth," the Heritage Foundation conferred on her its Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship.

Ms. Hemingway holds an honorary doctorate from Concordia Theological Seminary. She is the co-author of the #1 national best seller Justice On Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court and the author of Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.