The 2019 ProPublica piece is out of date.

The IRS announced significant changes Monday [Dec 30, 2019] to its deal with the tax prep software industry. Now companies are barred from hiding their free products from search engines [as reported in the ProPublica piece] such as Google, and a years-old prohibition on the IRS creating its own online filing system has been scrapped.

https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2020/01/irs-reforms-free-file-program-drops-agreement-not-compete-turbotax/162167/
Intuit did itself no favors by hiding the free software from users. Instead of living with half a loaf, it could wind up with crumbs. It, and H&R Block, shot themselves in the foot by going further and completely dropping out of the Free File program in 2021 and 2020 respectively.
https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-intuit-will-leave-free-tax-filing-partnership-with-irs
From that piece:

The program was founded as a gambit by the tax prep industry, led by Intuit, after the George W. Bush administration proposed that the IRS create a free online filing option for taxpayers.

Worth noting who made the original proposal, given that

Republicans are already lining up against the plan, fearing it could eventually lead to a system where the IRS fills out people’s returns for them, which they say is a conflict of interest since the agency also enforces tax laws.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/16/irs-free-online-filing-system-00097198
Why haven't I seen lots of homeowners up in arms about their municipal government determining how much their property is worth (assessor), then based on that number calculating how much they owe in property taxes, and even collecting the taxes online. And if you don't pay, they'll send the county sheriff to arrest you, the city attorney to prosecute you, and the municipal court to try you.
Certainly those must be blatant conflicts of interest as well. I protest! :-)

[snip]
BTW, IRS is setting up online tax filing for free. If they can make the user interface similar to that ofTurboTax, that would be very helpful for those with straightforward tax filing.

Intuit will vigorously oppose plans from the IRS to offer free tax filing.
"But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens."
"For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders. The company unleashed a battalion of lobbyists and hired top officials from the agency that regulates it. From the beginning, Intuit recognized that its success depended on two parallel missions: stoking innovation in Silicon Valley while stifling it in Washington."
"Internal presentations lay out company tactics for fighting 'encroachment,' Intuit’s catchall term for any government initiative to make filing taxes easier — such as creating a free government filing system or pre-filling people’s returns with payroll or other data the IRS already has. 'For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,' reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing '3rd-party grass roots' support."
Link

s-l-o-w-l-y try to explain why an investor, going forward, should invest in either taxable or municipal bond funds in their portfolio's fixed income sleeve instead of say, 5-yr, 4.50%, non-callable CDs.
But please leave out the widely understood part about past performance being no guarantee of future results. Got that part.

s-l-o-w-l-y? I don't know how one writes slowly, but if you're asking for gory details, I'm happy to oblige.
Let's start with the question. It gives as one option a 5-yr, 4.5% non-callable CD. Even non-callable CDs may be redeemed early by a debtor. Should a bank fail (no longer an unexpected event), high yielding CDs may be redeemed by the FDIC or reset to a lower rate by an acquiring bank.
Thus actual rate of return, though highly likely to be as stated, is not certain. Some posters have addressed this risk by saying they would only buy CDs from well-managed banks. You did not. (I discovered that by reading your post s-l-o-w-l-y.)
The question carries an implicit assumption that an investor is absolutely certain that they will not want to withdraw money early. Any possibility of pulling money out would expose the investor to the same interest rate risk as experienced by a bond fund.
Further, the investor would have less flexibility in selling off a CD (basically, all or nothing on a per-CD basis) as opposed to a bond fund where one can sell as little as 0.001 shares. In addition, the investor would take a big hit on the bid-ask spread that isn't present when selling bond fund shares.
So already we have a reason - flexibility - for an investor to consider using a bond fund rather than a CD with the same (or even marginally lower) expectation value of rate of return. Maybe you wouldn't, but the question was asked about any investor.
That brings us to the expected rate of return going forward. As explained (slowly) above, aside from minor risks expected rate of return is pretty well though not quite 100% certain for the CD. The challenge is to figure out at a minimum what the expected rate of return of a bond fund is. Ideally one would want to estimate not only the expected return but the dispersion of possible outcomes. That plays into risk analysis, which I'll (slowly) get to.
What you did was look at past 5 year returns. In do so, you acknowledged but disregarded the fact that past returns may be poor predictors of future returns. Putting that problem aside, you also disregarded that fact that all rates were lower over the past five years than they are now. One could make at least a passing attempt at compensating for this this by looking at 5 year CD rates 5 years ago vs. now and adjusting the question's comparison accordingly.
According to depositaccounts.com, 5 years ago the best one could do was about 3.3%, while now it is, as you stated, about 4.5%. So if we use your method of estimating bond fund returns going forward based on past performance, we should adjust those past performance figures upward by about 1.2%. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
But situations change, and as already noted, past returns may be poor predictors.
bond funds returning 7%-8% over any LT period of time ... just doesn't happen.
This is easy to disprove by counter example. It does sometimes happen. From inception (12/31/1986) through the end of 2002, VBMFX had an annualized return of 7.85%. More generally, looking at 10 year rolling averages, AAA corporate bonds had annualized returns ranging between 7.30% and 11.29%(!) for every 10 year period ending between 1975 and 2000. So, over a period of at least 30 years (three non-overlapping ten year periods between 1965 and 1995) the average return on AAA corporates was more than 7.3%. That seems long term enough.
Baa corporates did even better. Their 10 year average rate of return surpassed 7.26% every 10 year period ending between 1973 and 2005, topping out at a 10 year average return of 12.84%. Interested in T-bonds? The same analysis shows that 10 year T-bonds had ten year rolling average returns exceeding 7.12% for every period ending between 1984 and 2002.
Source is spreadsheet from NYU/Stern, whose ultimate data source is FRED.
Even though you asked for an explanation given s-l-o-w-l-y, I can understand your quick and dirty search for 5 year bond fund returns. I can understand your saying that there were 1921 funds even though 138 of them didn't have five year records. I can understand your excluding the 114 funds that are closed at Fidelity, even if some of them were open five years ago.
I can understand your using Fidelity's screener though it gives fewer than half the number taxable bond funds with 5 year records that Portfolio Visualizer's screener returns. Because a reasonable (though unverified) assumption is that the funds currently open and sold by Fidelity are representative of all the bond funds available five years ago.
But when it comes to expected returns going forward, one is going to have to do better than assert 7%-8% LT returns just don't happen.
So far, most of what I've done is explain why some of the data presented is either unhelpful, biased, or simply wrong. I've also provided one rationale for preferring bond funds to broker-sold CDs, viz. flexibility.
Implicit in your reasoning (and that of most others) is that investors are risk averse. Someone who is truly risk indifferent will consider a bond fund with an expected 4.5% return to be just as good - not better, not worse - than a CD at that rate. (As I explained before, given the additional risk of possibly needing access to the money, someone who is risk indifferent would demand a higher rate from the CD than from the bond fund.)
An investor who is only slightly risk averse will not need a much higher expected rate of return to choose the bond fund. So the question comes down to: what is a reasonable expectation for five year returns of some bond funds? Past performance used blindly clearly is not a good approach to answer this; there have been extended periods of time when bonds have returned well in execess of 7%. It could happen again.
The question is not what has happened before, but what (and why) one expects going forward.
Others have offered some explanations for better returns going forward - based on their expectations for interest rates. I could dig up a bunch of papers explaining that over particular long terms, what one should expect from bond funds (total return) is determined by their current yields. That's how I look at bond funds, assuming that I'll hold for a long period of time.
Checking out current SEC yields, it's not hard to find several familiar funds yielding above 4.5%. Many multisector funds sport yields above 6% (i.e. 1.5% or more above the CD) such as DBLNX (8.69%) and MWFSX (7.69%). PIMIX (5.86%) comes in just below 6%, but still well above the CD rate. The core plus fund TGLMX has a 6.17% yield. Even a fund as conservative as FCNVX has a yield above 5% and can serve as a dynamic (flexible) cash backup.
(These are not recommendations; just a listing a few familiar funds.)
We've seen this question before: RPHYX/RPHIX vs. 6 mo T-bills. As here, I used current data, not past performance (i.e. 2022 or earlier). What one gleans from past performance is general behavior of a fund, not performance that can be easily extrapolated.

@Sven. +1.

Crash, If you have a Fidelity account, you can choose from hundreds of new-issue CDs, many with yields exceeding 5%. I have constructed two CD ladders extending up to 5 years with total yields about 5.1%. Similar options are available at Schwab and other investment sites.

Thank you, but I want not to be using more than a single broker for simplicity and consolidation, and I'm already with TRP. It has its faults. I inquired once, and FEES were mentioned. Don't need fees.

Crash, If you have a Fidelity account, you can choose from hundreds of new-issue CDs, many with yields exceeding 5%. I have constructed two CD ladders extending up to 5 years with total yields about 5.1%. Similar options are available at Schwab and other investment sites.

I have to trust the fund managers. If I've selected a stinker, I look for a moment to unload it. But that's never immediately clear. It's all about portfolio construction. I own junk. The junk is 63% of my bonds. Bonds in general are 35% of portfolio. Others know better than I do. I try to learn and stay on top of all this kinda stuff. I've heard repeatedly that "junk" companies are in a better spot than in the past right now. Better funded. Defaults are low. I enjoy the higher dividends than with I.G. these days. I have read negative stuff about dealing with TreasuryDirect: clunky and un-user-friendly. CDs? One of my CUs offers stinky rates. The other CU plays games with small dollar-limits. Getting one of the online CDs and having to upload my ID in the process, is a pain I'm unwilling to experience, with no smart-phone. Unless the sky falls and things turn inside-out, I'll stick with the plan. And sticking with the plan is giving me a great yield, while stocks are in a funk, except for ONE of my holdings.
If it can be trusted, Morningstar is telling me that my portfolio is yielding me 150% more than the SP500. But of course, that's an apples-to-oranges comparison. No one invests in the SP500 for yield.

Fidelity Flex® funds are a lineup of Fidelity mutual funds that have zero expense ratios, and include proprietary active and passive funds. Flex funds are currently available only to certain fee-based accounts offered by Fidelity, like Fidelity Go®. Unlike many other mutual funds, the Flex funds do not charge management fees or, with limited exceptions, fund expenses. Instead, a portion of the advisory fee you pay is allocated to access the Flex funds in which your account will be invested.

https://www.fidelity.com/managed-accounts/fidelity-go/investment-account-faqs
They're generally good funds. Be advised that Fidelity is still tinkering with its lineup. For example, Fidelity recently shuttered the Intrinsic Opportunities Fund (FFNPX), a MCV offering. It looks like Fidelity decided to change its lineup from mostly actively managed funds to mostly indexed funds. Here's the original lineup (CityWire PR) and the current lineup (M* search by name)
One of the few actively managed funds is FJTDX. It is managed by the same team as the retail fund FCNVX, with similar ultrashort duration, though the actual holdings while similar don't seem to be identical. That is, these funds are not clones. Nevertheless, performance difference seems to approximate the difference in ERs, i.e. 0.25%. Here's a Fidelity comparison page for the two funds.
The slightly better performance of the Flex fund is somewhat illusory. As noted above, the fund is getting paid management fees out of your pocket. They're just getting laundered through advisory service charges. So the management fees aren't subtracted from the performance figures of the Flex funds, making the Flex funds look a little better than they actually are.
It's a matter of perspective - how you want to allocate the advisory fees in your mind - do they all go for advisory services (when you compare advisory fees from different providers), or do you mentally reduce the advisory fees and add that to the Flex funds' ERs, thus reducing the funds' performance numbers?
Finally, with respect to Vanguard changes, Vanguard dropped the free financial plan offering years before the pandemic. I'm just not sure of exactly which year.

Using solely Flex funds without other ETFs and non-Fidelity funds will not work for us. Fidelity will make their money from their 0.35%-1.0% advisory fee. They have made several cold calls, but the timing was premature. I will reach out to them again for details on their level of planning.

Excerpt from the article

Big rotation out of commodities, utilities, and into tech stocks — highest since December 2021 — and euro-zone equities
Investors are most long growth versus value stocks since July 2020; survey investors have said only twice since September 2020 that growth would outperform value
After long big tech, most crowded trades include short US banks, short US dollar, long European equities, long T-bills and long China equities
Bank credit crunch and global recession are seen as top tail risks, followed by high inflation keeping central banks hawkish, worsening geopolitics and systemic credit event
Share of surveyed investors expecting a debt ceiling resolution ahead of the X-date dropped from 80% in April to 71% in May

But please leave out the widely understood part about past performance being no guarantee of future results. Got that part.

Ok, but that's exactly what you based your whole argument on. Past 3-5 year performance.
I do agree with everyone else though that with CD's at 5%, it's hard to take on more risk to get 6, 7 or 8% as rates plateau or start to come down. But it may be close to that time IMHO. I do believe the next 3-5 years will not look like the past 3-5 years. Extrapolate YTD returns on some of these funds now and it shows returns growing greater than 5% for the year.
...

Anyone who actually spent a few minutes of time on the links I posted would have likely seen that the results are just as bad for the bond fund universe over the past 10 years.
Had you, would you have instead stated "I do believe the next 3-5 (and 10) years will not look like the past 3-5 (and 10) years"?
And would your basis also be that if you extrapolate out the recent ST bounce for those periods, bond fund investors will (I guess, magically) get LT TRs of "6, 7 or 8%" for those periods?
I'll ignore your wild-eyed notion of bond funds returning 7%-8% over any LT period of time because it just doesn't happen.
But I will address the HOPE of 6% LT because, in the past, it was achieved by a few taxable bond funds. To wit, did you see that only 7/1,921 taxable bond funds returned over 6% during the LIFE of their respective funds, um, that was during the greatest, 30+year bond bull market in history?
Bottom Lines: Starting several months ago, investors were given the once in over a decade opportunity to buy (ugh, unsexy) CDs and ASSURE themselves % returns for the next 5 years equal to/greater than the LT % we all strive for in bond funds, which is generally 4%-5%.
Many missed the short-lived peak period. But all still have a chance to get it done. If they can just get over themselves.
I don't understand the widely held bias against CDs paying 5% as a preferred alternative to bond funds for the next 5 years.
I don't understand why investors who are striving for LT bond sleeve TRs of 4%-5% don't get that all their time, energy and HOPE spent trying to achieve that level of returns is effectively wasted as guaranteed returns of those levels are there for the taking.

”The mood among global fund managers soured further in May, with investors flocking to cash amid concerns that a recession and credit crunch are looming, according to Bank of America Corp.’s latest survey. The sentiment among fund managers deteriorated to the most bearish this year, with 65% of survey participants now expecting a weaker economy,”
Yahoo (Reprinted from Bloomberg)

It used to be (until 2015 or so?) that Vanguard would provide Voyager Select and Flagship customers with a free financial plan. After reviewing the basic survey that a customer filled out, a CFP would discuss the customer's situation over the phone for about an hour. There would be shorter followup conversations, before and after the plan was prepared.
The plan was not cookie-cutter, at least in the sense that it provided for keeping a lot of non-Vanguard assets, both individual stocks and funds. The plan offered suggestions on how to deal with specific (overweighted) individual stock holdings. Vanguard said it had tools to help the DIY investor implement the plan on their own, or that Vanguard could manage the portfolio for the investor.
I didn't mention specific financial planning because this particular service was discontinued years ago and I don't know whether a service like this is integrated into Vanguard's current service offering.

this influenced my decisionmaking 8y ago and I have not regretted it
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/01/16/investing-international-funds/21825245/

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1135300/000089418923003709/buffalosticker51523.htm
Buffalo Funds
Supplement dated May 15, 2023
to the
Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information (“SAI”)
dated July 29, 2022, as previously supplemented
The Buffalo Funds regret to inform shareholders that Jamie Cuellar, CFA, a co-portfolio manager of the Small Cap Fund since 2015 and of the Discovery Fund since April 2020, unexpectedly and tragically passed away on May 8, 2023. Jamie spent more than 30 years as part of the investment management industry, including the last 8 with Kornitzer Capital Management, Inc. (“KCM”). The Funds and KCM are grateful for all of Jamie’s contributions. He will be greatly missed.
Please note all references to Mr. Cuellar in the Funds’ Prospectus and SAI are deleted in their entirety.
The Small Cap Fund continues to be managed by Robert Male, CFA, and the Discovery Fund continues to be managed by Dave Carlsen, CFA.
Please retain this supplement with your Prospectus and SAI
Picture:
https://buffalofunds.com/team/jamie-cuellar/

Dollar diversification is one of the reasons for foreign exposure. Dollar has been strong for last several years, but may have peaked in September 2022. Since then, the pattern is of a decline (look at declining 50d-MA and 200-dMA) with wiggles up/down.
As has been noted, strong dollar is a headwind for foreign funds held by the US investors, while weak dollar provides tailwind. The currency-hedged foreign funds become popular in strong dollar eras.
But currency movements/trends are hard to predict.
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$USD&p=D&yr=1&mn=0&dy=0&id=p35088383212

The MSCI EAFE 100% Hedged to USD Index provides a close estimation of developed market currency performance when compared to its parent index.
PDF

FMIJX is an international equity fund which hedges currency (most foreign funds don't hedge).
The strong U.S. dollar provided a tailwind for FMIJX.
FMI introduced an unhedged version of its International Fund (FMIFX) on 12/31/2019.
The link below shows the portfolio backtest results for both funds.
FMIJX vs. FMIFX

Yes, +1