The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 36 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Gebbia: Presidential power was entirely sufficient to solve the border crisis
“And lo and behold, you know, we had a lot of excuses in the last administration about why the problem couldn't get solved. Oh, you gotta wait on this, that, and the other. And in the first couple months of the Trump administration, it became very clear that th…”
Gebbia: Tech workers privately backed my administration work but feared speaking up
“Certain people reached out and said, you know, I'm excited that you're doing this, and I could never really speak up in my company. You know, I kind of always stayed a little bit quiet. Because I couldn't promote my support for this administration. And so a lo…”
Gebbia: Former peers sent hate mail and cut ties over administration role
“I call them, like, hate mail. It's probably the right way to put it. And so, I don't know, like, hey guys, I'm fixing retirement in the government. Yeah. To make it better for federal employees. Do you really have an issue with that? Like, come on, like, if yo…”
Gebbia: Team aims to fix all 27,000 government websites
“Well, some estimates have up to 27,000. And we're fixing all of them.”
Gebbia: TrumpRx.gov will offer Americans access to lowest-cost prescription drugs
“And TrumpRx will be the storefront For Americans to access the lowest cost drugs on the internet.”
Gebbia: The Democratic Party moved too far left to support
“After being a lifelong Democrat, going back to Al Gore in 2000, when I could first vote in college, it was hard for me to identify with the things that they stood for. The things that I remember from previous presidents and previous policymakers on the democra…”
Gebbia: DOGE operates at Silicon Valley speed and ships products
“This is moving at tech speed. This is moving at Silicon Valley speed. And they're actually getting stuff done. They're actually shipping things.”
Gebbia: Federal staff completed digital retirement proof-of-concept in four days
“We went off, the careers took this assignment on, and they didn't do it in seven days. They did it in four days. They did it faster than we all thought. It was possible, you know, again, it was a proof of concept prototype.”
Gebbia: Marketplaces should prove supply and demand in one city before scaling
“Pick one city and make that city successful. Figure out supply and demand in one market and make that work and then scale that model to the rest of your markets.”
Gebbia: Time-and-materials government contracting creates incentives to never finish
“The business model of some of these contracting firms is time and materials. Which means that your business model is to never finish.”
Gebbia: The federal design team has shipped safedc.gov and trumpcard.gov
“We've already shipped a couple things already. People can see some of our initial work on safe DC.gov, which is a new website to help attract law enforcement talent to come join the task force here in DC. We shipped trumpcard.gov, which is- Trump card.”
Gebbia: Some U.S. government websites turn off at 6 PM daily
“Government websites, some of them turn off at six p.m. Because they have operating hours.”
Gebbia: The White House ballroom project is completely privately funded
“And by the way, doing it without costing taxpayers a dime. This is all privately funded.”
Gebbia: Nuclear power is one of the safest energy sources
“The technology's proven itself over 50, 60 plus years. It's safe, it's one of the safest forms of energy. People don't realize this. It's actually one of the safest forms of energy.”
Gebbia: 70% of Americans across all age groups have chronic disease
“You know, 70% of people have chronic disease. It's kind of insane. You know, at all, all age ranges. And it's like, we spend the most on healthcare, yet we have the most disease.”
Gebbia: Over 70,000 federal retirees are in the new digital pipeline
“And on August first, we flicked the switch. All new retirements were required to go through our software. And now we've got upwards of 70,000 retirees in the pipeline.”
Gebbia: Federal retirement application time cut from dozens of hours to minutes
“And the process that a retiree spends themselves, or an employee, went from, you know, Dozens of hours to six minutes or less.”
Gebbia: Former DOGE staff took full-time roles inside federal agencies
“Some people have taken full-time roles within different agencies and have brought the spirit of Doge into those agencies.”
Gebbia: Recreation.gov leaves much to be desired and undersells national parks
“It looks like one of our competitor sites from maybe, you know, it's, there's a lot to be desired for. When you have, like, this incredible feature of the American experience, international parks. They were being undersold in the way that they were showcased.”
Gebbia: Airbnb faced $1.5 billion in refund requests over two weeks in 2020
“We realized That we had about a billion and a half dollars of refunds to make in about a couple of weeks.”
Gebbia: Airbnb has collected over $5B in municipal hotel taxes
“We implemented transient oxypeed tax or hotel tax which since we've launched that, we've I believe it's over five billion dollars”
Gebbia: Small modular reactors can reuse existing nuclear waste as fuel
“Small modular reactors which will address some of the issues of the costs involved in building nuclear plants, the timelines associated with building nuclear plants. Small modular actors can actually reuse existing nuclear waste as their energy source.”
Gebbia: Oklo and NuScale lead the deployment of carbon-free nuclear power
“So I'm super excited about Oclo and new scale and many of the others that are at the forefront of helping us create clean carbon-free energy at scale.”
Gebbia: Federal retirees previously waited months to learn their monthly annuity payment
“The way it worked previously is you didn't find out how much you're going to make every month for the rest of your life until your first check, check arrived months later.”
Gebbia: Estimates show upwards of 27,000 .gov websites exist
“We have upwards of some estimates say 27,000 dot gov websites that some look like they're from the mid nineties with regards to their interface design.”
Gebbia: Modernizing federal websites is his hardest challenge since Airbnb
“Like, I think this is one of the hardest challenges I've ever faced. Besides how do you get a stranger to stay in a stranger's home? This is like the next biggest challenge. How do you upgrade a whole web of outdated digital experiences for the American people…”
Gebbia: Samara spun out of Airbnb as an independent company
“And it's actually started as an innovation team inside Airbnb. We spun it out late last year brought in a co-founder, Mike McNamara, and we started an independent company.”
Gebbia: California ADU permit applications surged 17x after 2016 law
“California passed a law in 2016 that basically makes it a right for somebody to have an ADU in their backyard, and since that law passed, permit applications have increased 17 x in the state of California. Eight other states have also copied California's laws.”
Gebbia: Told Brian Chesky in college they'd build a book-worthy company
“Over the pizza, I looked him in the eyes, I said, Brian, there's something I have to tell you. I think we're gonna start a company one day, and they're gonna write a book about it.”
Gebbia: Airbnb was intended as a one-off weekend project, not a company
“This instance of trying something was meant to be a weekend, never meant to be a company, but it gave us the basis for what became the next iteration.”
Gebbia: Airbnb began filing to go public in December 2019
“In December of 2019, we started the paperwork process to file to go public.”
Gebbia: Airbnb funded a $250 million relief fund for hosts during COVID-19
“For our hosts, we came up with a relief fund to help put some money back into their pockets. That was two hundred fifty million dollars. Out of our pocket.”
Gebbia: Airbnb laid off about 25% of its workforce during COVID-19
“For our employees we did have to go through a riff, laid off about 25% of our workforce.”
Gebbia: Airbnb raised about $2 billion in emergency debt during COVID-19
“For our investors, we took out about two billion dollars in debt just to make sure we had money in the bank, because no one knew how long this was gonna go on for.”