There are moments in life when you stop and look around and think, “How in the world did I get here?”
A week from now I turn 60.
That number feels strange to even type. When I was younger, 60 seemed old. Not “getting older.” Old. The age of retirement parties, early dinners, and conversations about blood pressure medication. Now? It just feels like…now. Another mile marker on a road that somehow went by both incredibly fast and painfully slow at the same time.
My wife surprised me with a trip out to Colorado to see our children and their partners. Sitting here looking at the mountains, realizing that the little kids who once ran through our house are now building lives of their own, I understand something I probably should have realized years ago: I am incredibly lucky.
Not “successful.” Not “important.” Lucky.
I have my health—mostly. Thanks to a pretty solid workout regimen, I am still in pretty good shape. A little more worn down than I was at 25, obviously. A few more scars and surgeries than the average person too. But every scar has a story attached to it. I once read a quote that said, “Scars are just tattoos with better stories.” That feels about right.
And there are a lot of stories.
After college and a brief time teaching school, I knew pretty quickly that my life was not going to follow the traditional path. I wanted to coach gymnastics. Not casually. Not as a side job. I wanted it to be my life.
One thing led to another, and Stephanie and I opened a gym, Atlantic Gymnastics Training Center, in Portsmouth NH. Then another location in Dover, NH. Somewhere along the way, this crazy dream became a business, a community, and honestly, part of our identity. Today we employ around 50 people and have roughly 1,500 students a week come through our doors. Sometimes I walk into one of the gyms and still cannot believe it exists.
What is funny is that I do not actually coach in my own gym anymore.
When my youngest son was in middle school, I made a conscious decision to step back from daily coaching and spend more time at home. I concentrated on the business side of things because I knew those years with my kids were limited. I do not regret that decision for one second.
Then, when he went away to college, life opened another door.
I had time again. So I started consulting. Coaching overseas. Working in different gyms, with different systems, different philosophies, different cultures. I would like to believe I was already a good coach, but traveling made me a far better one. The beautiful thing about teaching is that if you are paying attention, you are also learning.
Switzerland. Italy. Central America. Canada. Different programs. Different methods. Different ways of communicating. Different ways of thinking about athletes and performance and fear and pressure and success.
And somewhere along the way, I grew.
Not just as a coach, but as a person.
I had the opportunity to work with Olympic athletes and world champions. Experiences that a kid from New York who simply loved gymnastics could never have imagined. And now, somehow, I spend a great deal of my life coaching in Italy—to the point where Stephanie and I bought a home there.
There is something about the lifestyle in Italy that fits me. The pace. The emphasis on relationships. The understanding that life is supposed to be lived, not simply survived.
At almost 60, I still feel like I am learning who I am.
These days, much of my time is spent working with coaches. Helping them grow. Helping them communicate better. Helping them understand that coaching is really teaching. It is education. It is leadership. It is human connection.
Maybe that is the strange gift of getting older.
When you are young, you spend so much time trying to prove yourself. When you get older, you begin to understand that what really matters is what you leave behind in other people. The athletes you helped believe in themselves. The coaches you helped become better educators. The people whose lives became just a little bit better because you crossed paths with them. Lately, much of my energy outside the gym has been going into writing. I am pouring my heart into a book called Coaches as Educators. In many ways, it is the culmination of everything I have learned over decades in gymnastics—not just about training athletes, but about teaching human beings.
I genuinely believe coaching is education. A coach is not simply someone who teaches a skill or prepares an athlete for competition. A coach helps shape confidence, resilience, communication, discipline, and self-worth. We are often with young athletes during some of the most important and vulnerable years of their lives. That responsibility should mean something.
The book is my attempt to move the needle, even slightly, within the coaching community. To challenge coaches to think deeper about how we teach, how we communicate, and how we lead. I want younger coaches to understand that the technical side of gymnastics matters greatly, but the human side matters even more. Athletes may forget scores and medals over time, but they rarely forget how a coach made them feel.
And maybe the funniest thing about being almost 60 is that instead of slowing down, my mind keeps racing toward the next project.
When Coaches as Educators is finished, I already have plans for a second book: From Practice to the Podium. That one will be far more technical—a practical training manual built from decades of coaching, observing, learning, failing, adjusting, and growing. A book designed to help coaches and athletes better understand the long journey from developmental training to elite performance.
I still feel like I have something to contribute. Maybe that feeling never goes away if you truly love what you do.
If that is my legacy, I am more than okay with it.
There is a difference between political loyalty and political worship. One is healthy in a democracy. The other is dangerous.
What we are witnessing with Donald Trump and much of the MAGA movement no longer resembles normal politics. It resembles a cult of personality. Every failure is someone else’s fault. Every criticism is labeled “fake news.” Every warning from economists, generals, historians, judges, or former allies is dismissed as betrayal. The movement has become centered not around conservative principles, fiscal responsibility, or even patriotism—but around protecting one man’s ego.
And while the cheering crowds chant his name and wear the hats and wave the flags, ordinary Americans are getting poorer.
Trump was elected promising economic strength. Instead, families are watching grocery bills climb, paying painful prices at the gas pump, and struggling with the rising cost of basic goods. His reckless tariff obsessions drove up prices for consumers and businesses alike. His aggressive foreign policy rhetoric and impulsive leadership helped drag the country into another conflict after promising “NO MORE WARS.” Once again, working Americans pay the price while politicians and defense contractors profit.
This is the pattern of narcissistic leadership throughout history: the leader’s image always comes first.
While Americans worry about rent, mortgages, and retirement savings, Trump obsesses over monuments to himself. A ballroom project taxpayers will ultimately subsidize. Talk of a triumphal arch in Washington, D.C., as if America should imitate emperors instead of republics. Vanity projects nobody asked for while roads crumble, schools struggle, and healthcare costs bury families. Reports of unnecessary no-bid contracts handed to friends for cosmetic projects around Washington only reinforce what many Americans already suspect: this administration treats public money like a personal checking account for political loyalty and ego.
And yet his followers defend every bit of it.
Not because it helps them.
Not because their lives are improving.
But because cults require loyalty above reason.
A movement that once claimed to stand for fiscal conservatism now cheers deficit spending if Trump does it. A movement that once screamed about government overreach now applauds when law-abiding immigrants, students, or political opponents are targeted to feed outrage cycles on cable news and social media. A movement that once called itself anti-war now rationalizes another conflict because admitting failure would mean admitting Trump was wrong.
That is the power of narcissism when combined with political tribalism. Truth becomes secondary. Loyalty becomes everything.
The saddest part is this: Donald Trump has shown people exactly who he is for years. He has openly spoken about admiring wealth over service, loyalty over competence, spectacle over substance. He measures success by applause, television ratings, and personal enrichment. The country was supposed to become “great again,” but instead the focus became making sure one man never feels defeated, criticized, or held accountable.
Meanwhile, the American people keep footing the bill.
We are paying more.
We are divided more.
We are respected less internationally.
And we are once again watching America stumble into conflict while being told everything is “historic,” “beautiful,” and “the greatest ever.”
Real leadership is not about building monuments to yourself.
It is not about humiliating enemies or demanding constant praise.
Real leadership is sacrifice. Restraint. Competence. Humility. It is putting the country ahead of your own ego.
America was founded rejecting kings, emperors, and dear leaders.
Somewhere along the way, too many people forgot that.
The Worst Things Humans Have Done Were Done to Other Humans
I studied History as an undergraduate, with a concentration in post-war America rather than World War II. For a long time, I focused more on the systems that emerged after the war: the rise of suburbanization, the Cold War, labor shifts, media influence, corporate expansion, and the changing identity of the American middle class.
Recently, though, I started reading World War II diaries.
Some were written by Italian civilians trying to survive the collapse of their country. Some were written by American soldiers processing what they saw overseas. Others came from people who survived concentration camps and somehow found the strength to record experiences that most of us can barely comprehend.
What struck me was not simply the scale of suffering. History books already teach us numbers. Millions dead. Cities destroyed. Entire populations displaced.
What struck me was the intimacy of cruelty.
The worst acts in human history are not abstractions. They are humans harming other humans directly, personally, deliberately.
A guard deciding another person is no longer fully human.
A soldier learning to suppress empathy.
A bureaucracy organizing suffering with paperwork and schedules.
A crowd convincing itself that violence is justified because the victims are somehow different.
That pattern exists throughout history.
It existed in slavery.
It existed in genocides.
It existed in political purges.
It existed in colonial violence.
It existed in lynchings.
It exists today whenever people are taught to fear and hate one another before they truly know one another.
We often talk about history as though it belongs to the past. But history is not dead. History is a warning.
One of the most dangerous myths people believe is that atrocities are committed only by monsters. The reality is more uncomfortable. Many atrocities are carried out by ordinary people who become convinced that cruelty is acceptable, necessary, patriotic, profitable, or unavoidable.
That is why remembering matters.
Not to drown ourselves in guilt.
Not to endlessly relive suffering.
But to recognize how fragile civilization actually is.
The diaries I read repeatedly showed something else as well: people under enormous pressure searching for someone to blame. That instinct never disappeared after World War II. It simply changed form.
Today, many people are angry, exhausted, isolated, and financially strained. Instead of encouraging solidarity, powerful institutions often redirect frustration sideways. Workers are told their problems come from immigrants, neighbors, political opponents, different races, different religions, or people living in different regions.
Meanwhile, many of the people and institutions accumulating enormous wealth and influence remain largely insulated from the consequences of the systems they shape.
I want to be very clear: I am a capitalist.
I believe markets can create innovation, opportunity, efficiency, and prosperity. Human ambition can build incredible things. Free enterprise has improved countless lives.
But capitalism without limits becomes something else.
When profit becomes the only moral standard, people stop being citizens and become consumers. Workers become expendable. Communities become markets. Truth becomes advertising. Human dignity becomes secondary to quarterly earnings.
Healthy capitalism requires boundaries.
It requires labor protections.
It requires ethical regulation.
It requires accountability.
It requires remembering that an economy is supposed to serve human beings, not the other way around.
History shows what happens when systems become detached from human dignity. Sometimes the result is not immediate violence. Sometimes it is slow dehumanization: convincing people they are disposable, replaceable, or undeserving of empathy.
That dehumanization is the first step toward every historical horror.
And once people stop seeing each other as human, terrible things become possible.
The answer is not abandoning disagreement. People will always disagree politically, economically, culturally, and philosophically.
The answer is refusing to let disagreement erase humanity.
The person next door is probably not your enemy.
The struggling family in another town is probably not your enemy.
The worker trying to survive is probably not your enemy.
History repeatedly shows that ordinary people often have more in common with one another than they do with the powerful institutions profiting from division.
Reading those diaries reminded me that civilization depends on empathy more than ideology.
It depends on resisting the temptation to dehumanize.
It depends on recognizing manipulation when fear is used to turn people against each other.
Most importantly, it depends on remembering.
Because forgetting is dangerous.
The people who lived through humanity’s darkest periods were warning us.
We should listen.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that’s being dead.” — Elie Wiesel, US News & World Report (27 October 1986)
In a world that feels impossibly loud right now—war headlines out of Iran, a tumbling economy, the city budget, unstable national leadership, the constant churn of scandal and speculation, it is easy to feel like everything is closing in.
The noise is relentless.
And then, if you let yourself… you stop.
You step outside.
You shut it all off.
And you look up.
Somewhere above us, beyond the noise, beyond the arguments and the fear, Artemis II is making its way home having traveled farther than any humans have ever gone, looping around the Moon, seeing what few ever will: the far side, the quiet side, the side that reminds us just how small our conflicts really are.
There is something profoundly humbling about that.
NASA has always understood the power of naming of poetry in the face of science. The Sea of Tranquility. The Ocean of Storms. And now, Artemis.
Artemis: goddess of the hunt, of wilderness, of wild things untamed. Sister to Apollo. A protector. A force. A presence tied to the Moon itself. Her name carries the idea of being safe, unharmed, resilient.
What a perfect name for this moment.
Because while we argue, while we divide, while we question whether our leaders will escalate the next conflict or stumble into something we cannot undo… there are human beings floating in the vast silence of space. Not as Americans. Not as political factions. But as representatives of all of us.
Of humanity.
Think about that.
At the very moment we are looking up at the night sky, searching for perspective, they may be looking back AT US. At a fragile blue planet that holds everything we’ve ever loved, fought for, built, and broken.
And from that distance, none of our noise matters.
Only the question does:
What are we going to do with this place?
We have always been capable of greatness. We have built impossible things. We have crossed oceans, cured diseases, created art that stops time, and sent people to the edge of existence itself.
We are still those people.
But somewhere along the way, we got smaller. Louder. More consumed by the immediate and the trivial.
Artemis II is a reminder that we don’t have to stay that way.
It is a reminder that we are at our best when we are reaching not fighting. When we are exploring not retreating. When we are united by curiosity instead of divided by fear.
So tonight, step away from the headlines.
Look up.
Find the Moon.
And know that above all the noise, something extraordinary is happening. Something hopeful. Something that belongs not to one nation, but to all of us.
As Artemis makes her way home, may she return safely.
And may we, down here, find our way back to something better.
Recently, Rep. Travis Corcoran (R-Weare) made statewide news, but not in a good way.
He posted on X: “We need a final solution for theater kids in politics,” in response to an invitation to a legislative karaoke night hosted by Rep. Jessica Grill, who is Jewish.
For those unfamiliar, the phrase “final solution” was used by Nazi leaders to describe their plan to commit genocide against European Jews.
That’s not a throwaway line. It’s not edgy humor. It’s a phrase with a very specific and horrific meaning.
Speaker Sherman Packard and Minority Leader Alexis Simpson both condemned Corcoran’s statement. But beyond that, there was silence where it mattered most.
There was no public statement from Governor Ayotte or Majority Leader Jason Osborne. No call for accountability. Just silence. And that silence speaks volumes.
This stands in sharp contrast to what happened in 2020. Then-Speaker Steve Shurtleff asked Rep. Richard Komi (D-Manchester) to resign over a social media comment widely viewed as dismissive of survivors of sexual violence. Komi stepped down.
Leadership acted then. Why not now?
Deputy House Speaker Steve Smith has said that meaningful action would require a majority of lawmakers to agree it’s warranted: “We can condemn it, but there is nothing we can do about it.”
I disagree.
Republican leadership has tools…if they choose to use them. They could pressure Corcoran to resign or rally their caucus to support expulsion. Leader Osborne has shown, time and again, that he can deliver votes when he wants to.
Short of that, they could at least make clear that this kind of rhetoric has consequences, including the option of supporting a serious primary challenger.
And recent elections show that even “safe” districts aren’t immune to voter backlash. Bobbi Boudman’s victory in a traditionally Republican district (Wolfeboro, Tuftonboro and Ossipee) underscores that point.
So why does this matter?
I’ll answer that personally, as a Jewish member of the New Hampshire House.
My grandfather Max came to the United States alone at age 13 from what is now Poland, fleeing the early threats that would later become the Holocaust. He spoke no English. Years later, much of his family was murdered, some at Auschwitz and Dachau.
Max was one of the kindest men I’ve ever known. We lived in the same two-family home, and I saw him every day growing up.
I never experienced antisemitism until I served in the New Hampshire State House.
Several years ago, two state representatives were brought before the Ethics Committee for posting antisemitic content. One sat across from me on the Commerce Committee. She never apologized and even suggested we should get together because we had so much in common.
No, thank you.
Neither representative faced any serious repercussion for their behavior.
Corcoran’s comment is not an isolated incident. It’s part of a broader pattern, of rhetoric and legislation that seeks to marginalize and demonize others.
And when leadership responds with silence, it sends a message.
Not just to those of us who are directly affected, but to everyone watching.
If there is no accountability from within the State House, then it must come from outside of it.
Vote out state representatives who believe they can act with impunity because they are protected by leadership or insulated by district lines.
Help your community recruit strong candidates from both sides of the aisle who reject the politics of hate and are willing to represent all their constituents, regardless of religion, race, or sexual orientation. And get out and volunteer to help get these candidates elected. Newly elected representative Bobbi Boudman demonstrated that it can be done.
Rep. Anita Burroughs State Rep, Bartlett Carroll 2
But let’s start by being honest about what actually made America great in the first place.
It wasn’t slogans. It wasn’t hats. And it certainly wasn’t loyalty to one man.
America was great because we stood up for what was right—even when it was hard.
We passed laws for moral reasons. We struck down laws for moral reasons.
We waged a war on poverty—not a war on poor people.
We invested in each other. We cared about our neighbors. We believed that when America succeeded, it was because all of us were pulling in the same direction.
We built big things—dams, highways, universities, research institutions.
We made astonishing technological advances. We cured diseases. We explored the universe.
We cultivated the greatest artists, the greatest scientists, and the most dynamic economy the world has ever seen.
We reached for the stars.
And we were able to do those things because we respected knowledge.
We aspired to intelligence. We didn’t belittle it. We didn’t fear it. We didn’t treat education or expertise like some kind of enemy.
And we didn’t scare so easily.
Today, that spirit is under attack.
Donald Trump and the people who enable him have replaced patriotism with grievance. They have turned politics into a loyalty test to one man instead of a commitment to one country.
They mock intelligence. They undermine truth. They divide Americans against each other.
And now, once again, they have entangled the United States in another Middle East conflict—one that makes Americans less safe, not more.
That is not strength.
That is recklessness.
The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.
And right now, we have a problem.
America is not the greatest country in the world today—not when we tolerate corruption, cruelty, and ignorance in our leadership.
But here’s the good news:
We can fix it.
Because greatness doesn’t come from slogans. It does not come from rage. It does not come from lies. It does not come from bullying the weak, demonizing immigrants, attacking education, or turning patriotism into a costume.
It comes from courage. From sacrifice. From intelligence. From decency.
From citizens who are willing to stand up and say:
We can do better.
If we truly want to make America great again, then the first step is simple.
STOP saying YES to Donald Trump and the politicians who enable him. STOP voting for the unserious members of the GOP whose only goal is to get invited to Mara Lago.
And then let’s get back to the work that actually made this country great in the first place.
Building. Inventing. Discovering. Learning. And taking care of one another.
The Invisible Cost of War — Who Fights and Who Bears the Burden
When the topic of war comes up in coffee shops, in newsrooms, or on social media, there’s often an unspoken gap between the abstract decisions of policy and the lived realities of service and sacrifice.
We prize technological dominance — drones, precision weapons, unmanned platforms — because they keep our soldiers physically safer. That’s a humane impulse. Yet in doing so, we risk making war feel distant from the lives of most Americans — until it isn’t.
War from a Distance — But Who Faces the Consequences?
One of the most profound effects of America’s All-Volunteer Force is that the duty of war is no longer a shared burden. Instead of a broad cross-section of society feeling the cost of conflict, the military becomes its own community — disproportionately composed of people from smaller towns, rural areas, and families with a tradition of service.
That dynamic creates a quiet but growing divide:
For many Americans, war feels like a distant policy choice.
For others, it’s a lived reality — something that shapes their family’s future, their town’s demographics, their community’s hopes and fears.
That’s not just a statistic — it’s a human story. It’s the parent writing letters home, the small-town baker waiting for a son’s return, the neighbor whose family has served generation after generation.
The Psychological Distance of Remote Warfare
We’ve become experts at minimizing danger to our own forces — deploying drones and long-range systems that keep Americans off the ground. But that very safety can make military action feel risk-free to the vast majority of the public. When decisions about war are made in secure rooms thousands of miles from the battlefield, the human weight of those decisions can feel abstract, impersonal, even sanitized.
Major Dusty, 9th Attack Squadron MQ-9 Reaper pilot, and TSgt Trevis, 49th Operations Group MQ-9 sensor operator (last names omitted due to operational security concerns) fly an MQ-9 Reaper training mission from a ground control station on Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., Oct. 3. The Reaper is a multi-functional aircraft that supports both reconnaissance and combat roles. Holloman trains all Air Force MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper pilots. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Michael Shoemaker/Released)
That gap — between decision-maker and service member, between civilian majority and military minority — matters. It shapes how society perceives war, how politicians justify it, and how we, as a nation, understand sacrifice.
Re-Centering the Human Story
Let’s bring the narrative of war back to the people who live it:
The young recruit from a town with limited job prospects who saw service as a way forward.
The parent who wonders whether this deployment will take a child out of a wedding, a graduation, a town celebration.
The veteran who carries memories home that no amount of distance or technology could erase.
These are the real stories behind the headlines.
War should never feel like a video game. It should never feel like an easy choice. It should always, always feel like a last resort.
Because it changes people — not just places on a map — but hearts, families, communities, futures.
When “Easy” Victory Isn’t Peace — Reflections on Iran and the Peace After War
There’s something deceptively simple about how we talk about modern war: high-tech instruments, swift strikes, minimal casualties on our side. In the opening weeks of the current conflict with Iran, headlines and political comments have often framed this as a matter of American resolve — a powerful nation using precision weapons to thwart an adversary.
But it’s worth pausing and asking: what comes after the violence? What happens when the bombing stops?
The Illusion of “Easy” Victory
Our military can destroy an adversary’s infrastructure with firepower unmatched in history. That’s not empty rhetoric — it’s a fact rooted in overwhelming technological advantage. Yet all the weaponized drones, bombs, and missiles can only end one aspect of conflict: the physical threat. They cannot magically build the trust, stability, or political structures that make peace sustainable.
Even in a moment where U.S. and allied strikes have damaged Iranian military capabilities, Iran still retains short-range missiles, drones, and conventional forces that could inflict harm — as analysts have pointed out in recent days. That’s a reminder that a weaker opponent is not a non-threat. And a defeated state from the air is still a society of human beings dealing with loss, fear, and uncertainty.
The Dangers of a Power Vacuum
When a regime weakens or collapses — whether through military pressure or internal upheaval — the world doesn’t instantly become safer. Power vacuums don’t tidy themselves up. Arms don’t disappear into thin air. Structures of governance don’t rebuild on their own. This was starkly evident after interventions in other countries, where the dismantling of existing power structures left behind chaos that no missile could target.
In Iran’s case, years of tension over nuclear development and regional influence didn’t suddenly evaporate. Even if the regime’s upper hierarchy is decimated or its nuclear ambitions delayed, the region remains volatile and people’s lives remain fragile. Compassionate policy must reckon with that.
Beyond Military Metrics
We talk about “operations,” “missions,” “targets hit,” even “success” in purely technical terms — as though human experience falls outside the calculus of war. But peace isn’t measured in how many planes return home. It’s measured in whether families can wake up without fear, whether cities can rebuild, whether neighbors can trust neighbors again.
This moment calls for a deeper conversation: not just about how we project power, but about how we rebuild trust, how we foster resilience, and how we make sure that those who survived don’t spend a generation reliving trauma.
Military might buys quiet — not peace. Let’s remember that true peace isn’t the absence of bullets and bombs. It’s the presence of hope.
The Mandate of Accountability: Defending the American Idea
It is time to say out loud what too many people are whispering: this is not normal governance. What we are witnessing is an organized abuse of power.
I have spent more than 30 years running a business. I have served on my city council. I have coached athletes who wore “USA” across their chests. I understand what accountability looks like, I understand budgets, and I understand the sacred responsibility one has to the people they serve.
What we are watching right now from the Trump administration is the opposite of responsibility. It is corruption wrapped in a flag.
A Pattern of Abuse
We must be clear about what this corruption looks like in practice. It is a systematic dismantling of our norms and rights, including:
• Weaponizing ICE: Agencies unleashed with minimal training and maximum intimidation.
• Trampling Constitutional Rights: This includes arrests for speech, warrantless raids, and the ignoring of due process.
• Subverting Justice: A Department of Justice bent to serve one man’s personal grievances while Capitol rioters who beat police officers are released.
• Retaliation: Open defiance of court orders and attacks on universities, law firms, and critics.
• Direct Harm: Citizens killed and subsequently slandered to justify the state’s actions.
This corruption is so blatant that even conservative commentators are beginning to sound the alarm.
The Shadows of the Epstein Files
Remember the promise? There was a loud commitment to expose the global crimes of “the elite” and tear down the powerful who abused children in the shadows.
Instead, they are protecting those shadows.
They stall, they redact, they “lose” documents, and they slow-walk disclosures. They claim transparency while hiding the very evidence they once screamed about. This failure has exposed the truth: they don’t want accountability; they want control.
The Strategy of Chaos
If you feel overwhelmed, it is because you are meant to. By creating chaos everywhere at once—in the courts, the press, and our foreign policy—the goal is to exhaust the public and make outrage feel pointless.
Criminals rely on silence and fatigue. But Americans are at our best when we decide we have finally had enough.
The Call to Action
We must anticipate that there will be attempts to manipulate future elections, as we saw in 2020, because criminals repeat behaviors that yield no consequences. To stop this, we must:
1. Organize and Vote: Show up both locally and nationally to protect election integrity.
2. Demand the Truth: Insist on the full, unredacted release of the Epstein files, regardless of who is implicated.
3. Defend the Constitution: Support candidates who prioritize our founding documents over the interests of one man.
4. Refuse to Normalize Corruption: We must pay attention and volunteer.
America is not a man, a party, or a cult—it is an idea. That idea only survives if we have the courage to defend it.
Love of country is not blind loyalty; it is the courage to say we can do better. Register, volunteer, and vote like the Constitution depends on it—because it does.
Big Ag Has Corrupted Our Food System. Here’s How We Can Rebuild — An Introduction
There are certain truths in this country that cut across party lines, geography, and ideology. One of them is this: our food system is broken.
For decades, Big Agriculture has consolidated power, squeezed out family farms, degraded our soil and waterways, and flooded our communities with highly processed food that is cheap at the checkout counter but devastatingly expensive to our long-term health. Meanwhile, small farmers struggle to survive, rural communities hollow out, and consumers are left wondering why food is both unaffordable and lower in quality than ever.
This didn’t happen by accident. It happened because policy choices — made in Washington and echoed in statehouses across the country — consistently favored consolidation over competition, scale over sustainability, and corporate profit over public health. When a handful of massive companies control seed, fertilizer, processing, and distribution, the system stops serving people and starts serving shareholders.
As a business owner, I understand efficiency. As a city councilor, I understand budgets and infrastructure. But as someone who cares deeply about community health and long-term resilience, I also understand that a system designed purely for short-term profit is not sustainable. Not for farmers. Not for consumers. And certainly not for the next generation.
Rebuilding our food system isn’t about nostalgia for some imagined past. It’s about creating a modern, resilient, and fair system that supports local agriculture, protects our environment, and ensures that the food on our tables actually nourishes the people eating it.
The following piece lays out how Big Ag helped create the mess we’re in — and, more importantly, how we can begin to fix it.
Big Ag Has Corrupted Our Food System. Here’s How We Can Rebuild.
Austin Frerick explains how eaters and farmers can unite to fix our broken food system
I first came across Austin Frerick inThe American Conservativein 2019.His story,“To Revive Rural America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System,” with its plain-spoken, factual description of how Big Ag conglomerates have held hostage and defrauded farmers for generations, was an awakening.
Not since Osha Gray Davidson published his 1990 Broken Heartland: The Rise of America’s Rural Ghettohad I read someone who could break beyond a liberal audience to expose our country’s failed agricultural policy and its impact on rural communities. Both Frerick and Davidson help those from rural places understand what happened to us over the last half-century under the influence of “get big or get out”—the advice Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz gave U.S. farmers in 1973
Like Davidson, Frerick delivers a warning that transcends the politicization of farming: Big Ag monopolies, and the policies that allowed them to thrive, have failed our rural communities and country’s food system, leaving them vulnerable to epic failures. The urgency of that message has even spooked the government officials and powerful industry leaders who helped create the farming crisis we face today. On February 3 former U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials from the Bush and Reagan administrations, as well as former heads of industry groups representing corn and soybean farmers,sent a letter to Congresswarning of “a widespread collapse of American agriculture” should current economic conditions and Trump administration policies continue.
But Frerick also sees bold possibilities to disrupt the Big Ag status quo. In his conversation withBarn Raiser, Frerick considers ways to dismantle monopolies and solutions to transform food policy to support small farmers. He invites us to entertain what is possible if we face the crisis in agriculture with strategic action instead of apathy.
Frerick, a seventh generation Iowan, is an expert in antitrust law and agricultural policy. He’s lead projects at the Open Markets Institute and he’s published research and analysis for tax journals, theNew York Times, and at the U.S. Department of Treasury. He served as a co-chair on the Biden campaign’s Agriculture Antitrust Policy Committee. His 2024 book,Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industryexposes the families who control America’s agricultural monopolies.
This is the first of a two-part interview with Frerick.
The last time I talked to you was back in September when the Arkansas farmers were raising alarm bells. At a hearing with the House Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources subcommittee, Arkansas lenders and farmers warned that1 in 3 farms could closewithout federal aid because of how Trump’s tariffs had upended export markets. How are you making sense of the moment we find ourselves in?
What’s happening with farmers says everything about this moment. Last week, theNew York Timesran a story saying farmers are going to let theircrops rotbecause the prices are so bad. At the same time, we’re having a food affordability crisis. That juxtaposition captures how broken our food system is, where farmers are letting crops rot and they’re barely getting by as Americans are paying more and more for food in the stores.
On January 1, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began implementing a new rule requiring that “Product of U.S.A.” labeling on meat only apply to livestock born, processed, finished in the United States. Is this a win for farmers and eaters?
No, and here’s why. I’m so sick of giving gold stars for doing basic things. When Americans buy meat that says “made in America,” it should mean made in America. This debate has been going on for more than a decade. To me, this is a good example of the incompetency of the USDA: You don’t get a reward for doing your job.
It’s embarrassing more than anything that it took them this long to make the “Product of U.S.A” label mean something.
The scariest thing to me right now in the beef market is this: Normally in moments like this where prices are high and herd populations are low, ranchers expand the herd. But they’re not doing that. We’re not seeing herd expansion.
And what this is telling me is these markets have been so tight for so long. They don’t trust the USDA to police these markets and they don’t think they’ll get a good price in the future. So they’re essentially letting the American herd shrink. That means more and more of our beef will have to be imported. What’s going on in the beef markets is a good example of just how hard it is to farm in America anymore.
I want to talk about pricing for a second. In 2019, the cost for a pound of hamburger was just under four dollars. Today it’s more like six and a half dollars. Many eaters can’t afford hamburger anymore. So, who’s making the money for the last seven years?
The Big Four meatpackers (Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef). R-CALF USA is a great cattlemen’s organization and they have a chart I love to show in my presentations. For the longest time, what Americans spend for beef and the dollars ranchers get in return has been closely correlated. What happened in 2015 is a significant divergence started to occur. Today that gap is wider than ever. And that to me is a story of monopoly. You’re seeing Americans spend record prices for beef, but that’s not going to the farmer. It’s all going to the four largest meatpackers.
The largest meatpacker in America (JBS) is owned by a cartoonishly corrupt Brazilian family, the Batistas. They were also Trump’s largest inauguration donor. So it’s all going to them.
Think of what this means for rural communities. You’re seeing the wealth of rural America being hollowed out. Farmers are producing the most they’ve ever produced, but that wealth is not staying in their community. And so Americans are paying more and a secretive family, whether it is the Cargills of Cargill or the Batistas of JBS, is capturing all that.
And on top of it, you’re seeing a lot of corners being cut. Beef imported from Brazil is just not as good. Something I realized in the last few years is this whole system is making bad tasting food.
I get chicken through a local farmer right here in southwest Virginia. When you start eating locally, like chicken that’s raised on a normal farm, the difference is amazing compared to the Tyson chicken you buy in a chain store. Eaters have no idea.
It’s also that the farmer doing it right, managing their operation locally, is not playing on a level playing field. The local farmer is not getting government subsidies. These industrial big corporations are. It’s just not fair.
My favorite example to illustrate this is butter. Butter in America is awful. It’s white. It’s hard. It doesn’t spread well.
Most of the butter in America now comes from Bakersfield, California. It’s cows on a feedlot next to an oil rig, being fed corn. On the other hand, Kerrygold is now the second largest branded butter in America. Irish butter. People love it. Here’s the thing: That’s the way butter used to be in America. But now it’s a premium. Now it’s only for the yuppie class, which just shows you how many corners are being cut.
We’ve chosen to subsidize this really bad system. And most of the subsidies are just being captured by a few rich oligarchs or robber barons.
Tyson Foods announced in January that they’re cutting 5,000 employees in their industry. They cut a line in Amarillo, Texas, with about 1,700 employees losing their jobs. And then in Lexington, Nebraska, they’re closing a whole beef processing plant. That’s 3,200 employees who are losing their jobs. Lexington, in Dawson County, has a population of 10,348. So about a third of the whole community is facing unemployment. But for Tyson, this is just business as usual.
The reason Tyson gave is it expected to lose $250-$500 million in its beef segment, so they are deciding to scale back operations. Yet the United States right now is not producing enough beef to meet demand. What is happening here, and why is Tyson closing domestic processing plants?
It’s a few things. As I mentioned earlier, our beef supply chain is moving offshore. But Tyson’s also in a weird pickle. Other big beef packers like JBS are state-backed monopolies. Tyson doesn’t have these Brazilian operations like they do.
You also can’t deny the climate crisis here.
A lot of former beef packing regions are getting too hot and the aquifers are getting too low. A few years ago, in western Kansas, thousands of cattle died because of a heat wave.
At the same time the ethanol mandate has essentially pushed a lot of cattle ranchers off the land. Ranchers are in this weird pickle where they have less land because of the climate crisis, but then corn being grown from ethanol subsidies is taking over a lot more land too. They just can’t compete for land against ethanol. And on top of it, margins are getting tight because of the price squeezes they’re getting from the big meatpackers. And a lot of them ranchers are just saying it’s not worth it.
When you look at the situation in Lexington, Nebraska, is a disaster for a small town and rural area around it. When these corporations come in, they sell an area on job creation, they invest and that increases the tax base, and then they up and close, they leave. It’s like a death sentence. Can you talk about that?
My perspective on this is shaped by Newton, Iowa. Newton used to be home to Maytag appliances, where the company was founded in 1893. The town even used to be called the “Washing Machine Capital of the World.” Maytag’s last factory closed in 2006. I went to college down the road in Grinnell, Iowa, and Maytag’s closing was like watching a slow death. Because you don’t realize it overnight.
What tends to happen is you can’t sell your home when these things close, and your home is everything in America. That’s your wealth. Some people just take a loss, try to restart elsewhere. Others start doing long commutes. So in the case of Newton, people start driving like an hour to Des Moines for new jobs, making a fraction of what they used to.
Think about what that does for the local community of Newton, Iowa. People have less time to be active in their communities. On top of it, they have less money. This is how the slow decay of the community begins. Don’t get me wrong, Newton has tried really hard since to recreate itself. The town has tried to get back on its feet, but it’s not the same as it used to be. What was unique in Newton’s case is they also lost a white-collar workforce. A lot of the workers in Maytag would live in the town, like the ad people, and all that’s gone.
The scary thing in the case of Tyson closing its plant in Lexington, Nebraska, is it’s pretty remote. There’s not a lot of job options nearby. And so I think it’s going to hurt the community even more because you just can’t drive two hours for a job. Some people might, but a lot of people will probably just take a big financial hit and try to restart somewhere else. I think an underappreciated thing of consolidation are all the towns that are hollowed out because of it.
Austin, you’re an expert in antitrust law. What do you see as the future of antitrust legislation and the enforcement?
First of all, fun little fact: The first antitrust laws in the world come out of Iowa. It was Iowa farmers mad against the railroads and grain elevators. So they organized the Iowa legislative body to pass the first antitrust laws in the world. Then a few states copied it. And then eventually D.C. copied it as well. I love telling this story because it’s ingrained in me the notion that D.C. is always the last to know. Change in America always starts locally.
The New Deal didn’t just happen in D.C. A lot of the New Deal actually came out of Wisconsin, where the state legislature created several measures that have now been called the “little New Deal.” These ideas are always incubated in small towns and states in America. And it’s also part of the Iowa culture of fairness. The joke is that usually the richest person in Iowa is an old farmer in the back with overalls on.
There’s a humbleness I’ve always respected. And I think that’s why a lot of Iowans gravitate towards anti-monopoly stuff.
But to your question in the future of antitrust. Honestly, the reason why I love antitrust issues the most is it’s one of most bipartisan things right now in America. Everyone’s feeling like they’re being shortchanged for different reasons, and it’s unifying.
My whole thing is: Don’t blame the immigrant, blame Tyson. People have a right to feel their anger, but we need to redirect it to productive means. I also view this whole thing as cyclical. The goal of any corporate executive is monopoly. That’s where profits are.
Corporate people don’t want competitive markets. Government wants competitive markets because that’s good for innovation, it’s good for workers, it’s good for farmers. So you have a natural tension between the two. We’re at a new laissez-faire moment in American history where business has captured government and things have gone too far. We need to usher in a reform era.
So what should we do? What should a well-regulated meat market look like? You can only be angry for so long. I really want to focus on articulating hope, what things could be.
The beauty of a family farm a diversified operation because it makes you resilient. Diversity breeds resiliency. The system we have now pushes people to one or two crops, which makes you very fragile. One bad thing happens and it can wipe you out. It also makes it really expensive.
Look at bird flu, for example. When you have that many genetically similar cows living in the same confined area, you’re just asking for trouble.
And then we have this expensive, fragile, broken system that makes bad tasting food.
How do we think about antitrust enforcement as our food production moves international? Does legislation like the Packers and Stockyards Act, which was meant to reign in meat monopolies, apply?
That is the key question here. The short answer is: No.
Trade agreements, have essentially moved our produce system offshore, especially anything that’s labor intensive. Look at California. California used to produce a lot of produce. Today, it’s mostly nuts, because that’s more mechanical work. The second agriculture production moves offshore, labor and environmental standards collapse. In Barons, I talk about Driscoll’s. Driscoll’s is my berry baron. They sell one in three berries globally.
A lot of their berry production has now moved to Baja, California. These are essentially modern-day plantations. And it’s very, hard to inspect them. As a journalist, you’re putting yourself at risk if you want to go investigate them. And on top of it, the USDA’s Food Inspection Service has been gutted by the Trump administration, which would inspect food imported to this country. So it’s a Wild West. You cannot compete on price against a berry picked by a child in Latin America. And it undermines the growers doing it here domestically.
Going back to the issue of taste: When your produce is coming from Chile, it’s not going to taste good. That produce is engineered for durability, not for taste.
I’ve followed your work for a few years, and I see you navigating some polarized political scenes concerning agriculture and farming. On the one side, Barons received good reviews from publications like The American Conservative. And on another end, you’re also speaking at events like the Real Organic Project at Churchtown Dairy, in Hudson, New York. Do you see agriculture as a polarized issue in today’s politics?
In the same month this past summer I keynoted one of the largest cattle conferences and I also keynoted one of the largest vegan food festivals. I love being able to tell people that. I’m a big believer that things get done when you have a big tent approach and weird bedfellows get together.
Because who isn’t happy after a good meal? I always like to redirect the conversation there.
Neither party really has a vision here. An undercurrent in Barons is my dislike of Tom Vilsack [the former Iowa Governor and Secretary of Agriculture under Obama and Biden].
To me, there’s nothing worse for a democracy than when a politician pretends to be your friend, and they undermine you. A lot of people over the years have been galvanized in Iowa fighting these industrial animal facilities, fighting these Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) wanting to break up Big Ag. A lot of farmers went on a limb, testified. Not only did Vilsack not do anything, he made all the situations worse. That’s how people lose their faith in government.
How do we get out of the situation we’re in? We actually know what to do here. We’ve addressed the concentration crisis in the meat packing before, such as with policies like the Packers and Stockyards Act. The question right now is political courage.
