Category: Blaze Media
‘100% MAGA’ county executive joins governor’s race in New York
While Republicans may have suffered some defeats in the elections last month, one Republican with a proven track record is tossing his hat into the ring in New York.
On Tuesday, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman announced that he will be running for New York governor in 2026, challenging Democrat incumbent Kathy Hochul.
‘I am ready to take on Kathy Hochul and fight for our families.’
“It is official. I am running for Governor of New York. Our state is struggling with high taxes, rising utility bills, and rising crime. New Yorkers deserve a proven leader who will Put New York First,” Blakeman announced in a Tuesday morning post.
“New York needs leadership that works. I am ready to take on Kathy Hochul and fight for our families,” Blakeman added.
RELATED: Trump slams Hochul’s endorsement of ‘communist’ Mamdani: ‘No reason to be sending good money’
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Blakeman’s announcement video touted his ties to President Trump as well as his successful track record as Nassau County executive. Blakeman’s wins include Nassau County being named the safest county in America and the successful ban of males in girls’ sports.
Kathy Hochul and her team offered a variety of responses to Blakeman’s announcement.
“Bruce Blakeman is another MAGA cheerleader running to do Donald Trump’s bidding in New York — and raise your costs. Not on my watch,” Hochul said on her personal X account.
“Meet Bootlicker Blakeman, #1 fan of Trump’s expensive tariffs. 100% MAGA, 0% committed to fighting for New York,” Hochul’s team said above an attack video on X.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) previously announced her candidacy as well.
According to Fox News, Stefanik’s campaign said of Blakeman’s announcement: “Public polling has repeatedly shown Elise Stefanik leads Blakeman by 70% in a primary, including beating him soundly on Long Island. Elise is the strongest candidate against Kathy Hochul by a long shot.”
Trump has previously praised both Stefanik and Blakeman for their work in New York, so it is unclear who will ultimately gain his endorsement.
“I don’t think the president has to make a decision now. Let’s see how it plays out,” Blakeman said in an interview on “Fox & Friends.”
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9-time convicted felon opens fire on man, woman outside Florida home; he allegedly was after money owed to him: Cops
A nine-time convicted felon opened fire on a man and woman outside a Florida home early Sunday morning, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said.
Deputies responded around 2:15 a.m. to a report of two people who had been shot in the 3100 block of 11th Street Court East in Bradenton, officials said.
‘The title of this video is exactly what is wrong with our country: “9-time convicted felon.” There should’ve never been a second time.’
When deputies arrived, they found a 32-year-old woman with a gunshot wound to her face and a 41-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his chest, officials said.
Both victims were taken to a hospital, officials said. The woman was later listed in stable condition, and the man’s injury was determined to be minor, officials said, adding that he has since been released.
The sheriff’s office said the shooter fled the scene prior to deputies’ arrival.
An investigation identified the suspect as 26-year-old Exzavion Richardson, officials said, adding that he was located in a vehicle several blocks away and detained during a traffic stop.
Multiple witnesses positively identified Richardson as the man who came to the residence looking for someone he claimed owed him money, officials said.
Witnesses reported that Richardson shot the male victim and then shot the female victim who also was standing outside the residence, officials said.
Richardson is charged with two counts of attempted murder, home invasion robbery, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, officials said. Jail records indicate he’s being held with no bond.
As for his criminal history, court records indicate Richardson has at least two battery convictions and multiple convictions for lewd and lascivious behavior, WFLA-TV reported. Jail records indicate Richardson stands 6’3” and weighs 205 pounds.
Commenters under WFLA’s video report about the shooting were not happy the suspect was back on the streets after so many run-ins with the law:
- “Lock up the judges that released him as accomplices to the crime,” one commenter wrote.
- “The title of this video is exactly what is wrong with our country: ‘9-time convicted felon.’ There should’ve never been a second time,” another commenter noted.
- “Where’s Vlad the Impaler when you need him,” another commenter wondered.
- “Only nine times; that’s practically a clean record,” another commenter stated sarcastically. “I mean, he didn’t kill the woman — just shot her in the face. Give him probation. 10th time is a charm, right[?] He will change smh.”
- “This dude either has a huge growth on his 4head or someone hit a Grand Slam on it,” another commenter observed.
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Inside the left’s push to reshape 2028 with ranked-choice voting
If Democrats seem extreme now, wait until they adopt ranked-choice voting. Some activists inside the party want exactly that — a reform that would push presidential nominations even further left and force establishment figures to navigate an ideological gauntlet to win.
Multiple reports indicate that Democratic Party activists and elected officials are pressuring the party to adopt ranked-choice voting for its 2028 presidential primaries. Axios notes that the push has grown serious enough that top party officials met in late October with advocates including Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), pollster Celinda Lake, and representatives from FairVote Action.
Ranked-choice voting would pour accelerant on a process already pulling Democrats further left.
Such an effort fits a long pattern: For decades, Democrats have shifted presidential nominations away from party leadership. On ranked-choice voting specifically, several states already use it — Maine and Alaska among them — along with deep-blue cities such as New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Ranked-choice voting takes multiple forms, but New York City’s model illustrates the dynamic. Voters rank up to five candidates. If no candidate wins an initial majority, the last-place candidate drops out, and those voters’ second-choice votes are redistributed. This “loser leaves” process continues until a candidate secures a majority.
Assuming rational behavior, Democratic voters would likely rank candidates from more extreme to less extreme. That pattern would advantage the leftmost candidates again and again as lower-preference votes transfer upward.
This structural boost would encourage both supply and demand for extreme candidacies. Candidates on the ideological edge would have more incentive to run. Voters who prefer them would have more influence. Ranked-choice voting’s supporters tout this expanded participation as a virtue.
Offering voters multiple choices would foster coalition-building. Knowing the race may go to multiple rounds, candidates would angle for second- and third-choice votes. The horse-trading once done in old convention “smoke-filled rooms” would unfold publicly through a series of ranked ballots.
But the key question is simple: Why would ranked-choice voting necessarily supercharge extremism inside the Democratic Party? Because the system rewards voters for casting marginal votes — and among today’s Democrats, “marginal” means “further left.”
The party’s ideological shift is measurable. In Gallup’s 2023 polling, 54% of Democrats identified as liberal — an all-time high. Support for democratic socialists in major-city mayoral primaries shows how rapidly the party’s activist base has moved left. In 1995, the liberal share of the party was 25%, roughly equal to conservatives. Three decades later, conservatives make up just 10% of Democrats.
Exit polling confirms the trend: In 2024, 91% of self-identified liberals voted for Kamala Harris; only 9% of conservatives did.
Extrapolate from this trajectory, and the danger becomes even clearer. Extreme candidates increasingly win Democratic primaries in major cities. Those cities dominate statewide Democratic politics. And in closed primaries, only Democrats vote — meaning the hyper-engaged activist left already sets the terms of competition. Ranked-choice voting would amplify that influence. The same voters who nominated democratic socialists in New York and Seattle would wield disproportionate power in a presidential contest.
RELATED: Democrats are just noticing a long, deep-running problem
Photo by RYAN MCBRIDEDON EMMERTDON EMMERTKENA BETANCURROBYN BECKANGELA WEISSROBYN BECKROBYN BECKROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
Consider how the 2020 Democratic primary might have played out under ranked-choice voting. Joe Biden — an establishment candidate favored by moderates — would have faced a field dominated by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Tom Steyer, and others to his left. Ranked-choice voting would have forced him through a gauntlet designed by the party’s most ideological voters.
This trend is not new. In 1972, George McGovern reshaped Democratic nominating rules and then benefited from the changes. Since then, the party has repeatedly weakened its establishment’s role (with key exceptions). Ranked-choice voting would accelerate that shift dramatically.
With moderates now only 36% of the party, according to Gallup, how could they resist a move toward ranked-choice voting? More importantly, which remaining moderate or establishment Democrat could survive a ranked-choice system dominated by the party’s left wing?
Ranked-choice voting would pour accelerant on a process already pulling Democrats further left. The only question is how long it takes for the party to adopt it — and how long the party can remain viable nationally if it does.
Frustrated Trump calls for Ukrainian election after Zelenskyy seemingly torpedoes another peace opportunity
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has effectively torpedoed President Donald Trump’s peace plan.
After his meeting on Monday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and French President Emmanuel Macron — who reportedly suggested last week that the U.S. might “betray” Ukraine — Zelenskyy reportedly told reporters that Kyiv will not cede any territory to Russia.
‘A lot of people are dying. So it would be really good if he’d read it. His people loved the proposal.’
“We have no right to give anything away — not under our laws, not under international law, not under moral law,” said Zelenskyy, reported the New York Post. “Russia is, of course, insisting that we give up territory. We, of course, do not want to give up anything — that is precisely what we are fighting for, as you are well aware.”
Zelenskyy, whom Trump accused in February of “gambling with the lives of millions of people,” added, “To be honest, the Americans are looking for a compromise today.”
Russia, which has slowly captured additional territory over the past year, presently occupies around 20% of the entire country and most of the Donbas — including all of the Luhansk region, most of the largely Russian-speaking Donetsk region, much of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, and parts of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
Under the Trump administration’s initial 28-point peace plan, embraced by Moscow but rejected by Kyiv and European leaders,
- the U.S. would recognize Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk as de facto Russian;
- Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would be divided along the current line of contact;
- Russia would cede other territories under its control outside the five regions; and
- Ukrainian forces would abandon the part of Donetsk Oblast currently under their control, leaving it as a demilitarized buffer zone.
Photo by Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu via Getty Images
Trump has long maintained that Kyiv will have to make some territorial concessions to bring an end to war that has resulted in millions of casualties. In August, for instance, the president said that while the U.S. seeks to negotiate for some of the Russia-occupied territories back for Ukraine, inevitably “there will be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody.”
On Monday, Zelenskyy suggested that he and Trump see things differently, stating that Trump “certainly wants to end the war. … Surely, he has his own vision. We live here, from within we see details and nuances, we perceive everything much deeper, because this is our motherland.”
‘It gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.’
Trump said in an interview with Politico on Monday that while he credits the Ukrainian people for their bravery in defending their homeland, Russia is presently in the stronger negotiating position and “size will win, generally.” Accordingly Ukraine has to “play ball,” suggested the president, who was uncertain about whether Zelenskyy had even bothered to read the latest peace proposals.
“That’s as of yesterday. Maybe he’s read it over the night,” said Trump. “It would be nice if he would read it. You know, a lot of people are dying. So it would be really good if he’d read it. His people loved the proposal. They really liked it. His lieutenants, his top people, they liked it, but they said he hasn’t read it yet. I think he should find time to read it.”
Zelenskyy indicated this week that he will provide Washington with his views on the current U.S. peace plan — which has reportedly shed eight of the original points Zelenskyy characterized as “anti-Ukrainian” — on Tuesday night but not until he discusses with European leaders the “reparations loan and security guarantees” he regards as critical to the peace process.
When asked what would happen if Zelenskyy rejected the deal, Trump said, “He’s gonna have to get on the ball and start accepting things.” As for the European leaders who appear keen to involve themselves in the process, Trump said, “They talk but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.”
Trump noted further that it’s time now — 18 months after Zelenskyy’s term was originally scheduled to end and in the midst of an ever-worsening corruption scandal involving Zelenskyy’s administration and close allies — for a Ukrainian presidential election.
“It’s been a long time,” said Trump.
“I think it’s an important time to hold an election. They’re using war not to hold an election, but I would think the Ukrainian people would, should have that choice. And maybe Zelenskyy would win. I don’t know who would win. But they haven’t had an election in a long time. You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.”
Zelenskyy said in a statement on Tuesday, “We are committed to a real peace and remain in constant contact with the United States. And as our partners in the negotiating teams rightly note, everything depends on whether Russia is ready to take effective steps to stop the bloodshed and prevent the war from reigniting.”
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Gov. DeSantis joins Gov. Abbott in taking a stand against radical Islam
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) announced a new executive order on Monday, taking action against radical Islam.
DeSantis issued an order designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist organizations.
‘CAIR was designated as an unindicted co-conspirator by the United States Government in the largest terrorism-financing case in American history.’
The order, which took immediate effect, argued that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “transnational network with a long history of engaging in or supporting violence,” noting that the group created Hamas in 1987. It stated that the U.S. designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 and that the group was responsible for 1,200 murders on October 7, 2023.
DeSantis’ order explained that the Palestine Committee, a group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, founded CAIR in the U.S. in 1994.
“CAIR was designated as an unindicted co-conspirator by the United States Government in the largest terrorism-financing case in American history, and the court found ‘ample evidence to establish the association[]’ of CAIR with terrorist organizations,” the order read, citing United States v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
RELATED: Gov. Abbott talks redistricting victory, action against CAIR with Glenn Beck
KHALIL MAZRAAWI/AFP via Getty Images
“Florida agencies are hereby directed to undertake all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities by these organizations, including denying privileges or resources to anyone providing material support,” DeSantis stated.
DeSantis’ order follows similar executive action from Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) in November.
RELATED: No Sharia law in Texas: Abbott draws a hard line against radical Islam
Greg Abbott. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
CAIR issued a statement declaring that it plans to file a lawsuit against DeSantis’ designation, accusing the governor of “serving the Israeli government over serving the people of Florida.”
“Like Greg Abbott in Texas, Ron DeSantis is an Israel First politician who wants to smear and silence Americans, especially American Muslims, critical of U.S. support for Israel’s war crimes,” CAIR National and CAIR-Florida said in a joint statement. “Governor DeSantis knows full well that CAIR-Florida is an American civil rights organization that has spent decades advancing free speech, religious freedom, and justice for all, including for the Palestinian people. That’s precisely why Governor DeSantis is targeting our civil rights group with this unconstitutional and defamatory proclamation.”
CAIR plans to hold a press conference on Tuesday to announce details of its forthcoming lawsuit against the state of Florida.
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Can this high-stakes overhaul save Ethereum from the dustbin of crypto?
It was once fashionable to speak of Ethereum as a “world computer,” a phrase that suggested a certain noisy, industrial utilitarianism. The idea was that every instruction, every transfer of value, every digital breath would be executed publicly and redundantly by a global network of nodes, a process that was transparent, unstoppable, and, as it turned out, prohibitively slow.
Although Ethereum in 2015 aimed at radical transparency, it is now engaged in a great transformation, an architectural renovation carried out while the building is still occupied. Ethereum is remaking itself not with more computing power, but with the mathematics of shadows: zero-knowledge proofs.
Ethereum replaces personal trust with mathematical guarantees, accountability without surveillance.
The central tension of the digital age has always been this trilemma: how to remain secure and decentralized while scaling to meet a global demand. Ethereum’s answer is to turn to an innovation in cryptography: the zero-knowledge proof, a protocol that allows one party to prove a statement is true without revealing why it is true, or indeed revealing any other information at all. It is a way to convince a stranger that you know a secret without ever telling him the secret itself. This property, which borders on the magical, is being woven into the very foundations of the network.
The heavy lifting of transaction execution is leaving the main stage. The Ethereum roadmap, in a phase titled the “Surge,” dictates that most activity will now occur off-chain, on Layer-2 networks known as rollups. These rollups bundle thousands of transactions, execute them in the dark, and generate a succinct validity proof, which is then posted back to Ethereum’s main layer. The main chain, once the sweating engine of the network, is now a high-security court, a judge that need not hear the testimony, only see the irrefutable mathematical certificate of the verdict.
Instead of a world computer, Ethereum is becoming a “world settlement layer,” an anchor for off-chain environments. To facilitate this, the network has introduced “blobs,” an inelegantly named but vital innovation of the Dencun upgrade. Blobs are temporary data, a cheap lane on the highway for rollup trucks, allowing vast amounts of information to be posted without clogging the passing lane. The new Fusaka upgrade promises to expand this capacity further, raising the gas limit and introducing PeerDAS, a system where nodes sample data rather than storing it. It is a move toward a system where the network holds everything, but no single participant must hold more than a fraction.
RELATED: Bitcoin billionaire will serve time after British police broke down her door and arrested her in bed
Photo by Vince Mignott/MB Media/Getty Images
But the most radical application of this new approach lies in the “Verge,” a suite of upgrades intended to make the network “stateless.” The ambition is to allow a user with a basic laptop, or even a phone, to verify the chain. Through the use of Verkle trees — cryptographic accumulators that replace more cumbersome data structures — proofs of state become tiny, manageable things. Verification is broadened, flattening the hierarchy of nodes. In this future, we need not trust institutions or even the “full nodes” of the blockchain priesthood, but rather trust the math and verify the proof.
There is a detachment to this logic that appeals to the cypherpunk instinct. The implications are deeply social. In the classical world, trust was intimate; it required knowing a reputation, a face, a history. Ethereum replaces this personal trust with mathematical guarantees. It is a vision of accountability without surveillance. This affordance is particularly relevant in the realm of privacy, an area where the unblinking transparency of the blockchain has long been a liability.
The Privacy Stewards of Ethereum, a group operating within the Ethereum Foundation, have outlined a roadmap that seeks to make privacy a “first-class feature.” They speak of “private writes” and “private reads,” of enabling users to interact with the ledger without leaking their identity or intent. They reject the idea that scaling requires the sacrifice of privacy and posit that one might gain a degree of invisibility while the system enforces the rules so strictly that cheating becomes computationally impossible.
One could prove one is a unique human without revealing one’s name, or prove a vote was counted without revealing the ballot. It is a shift from universal transparency to a society of secret handshakes, where transparency is selective and discretionary.
Of course, the Ethereum roadmap has risks. There is the question of “gas limit politics,” the danger that the specialized hardware required to generate zero-knowledge proofs will reintroduce centralization by another name. There is the fragility of the new cryptography itself, the fear that a breakthrough in quantum computing could render these mathematical castles defenseless. There is the ever-present tension between the ideal of a decentralized network and the reality of complex governance.
Yet, the momentum is undeniable. The integration of a zkEVM at Layer 1, an implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine that generates proofs of the blocks themselves, represents the capstone of this overhaul. It is an attempt to scale to the level of global finance, to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, without utilizing trusted servers.
Ethereum aims to renovate digital society in real time, to reconcile the conflicting desires for scale, security, and privacy through a reliance on “moon math” that has suddenly, quietly become infrastructure. Ethereum is betting that cryptographic truth can substitute for consensus. It is moving toward a global notary that sees everything and nothing, verifying the unseen with absolute precision in a ballet of proofs, harmonizing to a music we are only just beginning to hear.
Trump’s Gaza plan exposes the truth behind the genocide libel
More than two months have passed since President Trump unveiled his Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict — arguably the most consequential Middle East peace initiative in decades.
Foreign policy insiders predicted failure. Yet since October 10, the plan has held through volatility and uncertainty, confounding critics of the president, Israel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel deserves a fulsome defense from everyone committed to law, order, and truth.
The plan has done more than reduce the fighting. It has underscored Israel’s actual aims from the start: Eliminate Hamas, free the hostages, and ensure that Gaza never again serves as a launchpad for mass murder — not destroy the Palestinian people.
Still, the “genocide” libel endures. It may be the most destructive falsehood leveled against Jews in modern history.
Less than three months after the October 7, 2023, terror attacks, South Africa — a country collapsing under corruption and poverty — accused Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice. That case continues, with a final ruling unlikely before 2028.
Meanwhile the libel spreads. Radical activists, anti-Western NGOs captured by ideological agendas, pseudo-intellectual academics, and hollow institutions such as the International Association of Genocide Scholars push it relentlessly.
IAGS illustrates the problem. It requires nothing more than a $30 fee to join. The group has been flooded with frivolous “members,” including Adolf Hitler, Darth Vader, and Emperor Palpatine, along with a host of non-experts. Yet major media outlets still treat its anti-Israel resolutions as credible, impartial assessments of genocide — the gravest crime in human history.
This campaign demands a serious response. Legal experts and clear-minded observers should dismantle the genocide libel once and for all. The arguments are so straightforward that only bad faith can obscure them.
After the October 7 massacre — which, proportionally, represented the loss of roughly 50,000 American lives — Israel acted in self-defense against an enemy openly committed to exterminating every Jew in the country. Calling Israel genocidal in this context is not simply wrong. It inverts reality and rewards Hamas.
Israel also facilitated massive humanitarian aid to Palestinians throughout the war — more than 2 million tons since the fighting began. That record alone destroys the claim of genocidal intent. No nation at war has ever delivered aid on that scale to a population governed by its enemy.
RELATED: Hamas floods the feeds to sway clueless Westerners
Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Israeli forces have fought with precision to reduce civilian casualties while targeting Hamas operatives. The challenge has been immense. Hamas hides behind civilians, embeds fighters in hospitals and schools, and uses civilian infrastructure as shields. Even so, Israel repeatedly issued advance warnings of airstrikes and troop movements to limit harm. Genocidal regimes do the opposite: They hunt civilians and slaughter them deliberately. Gaza has seen none of that conduct from Israel.
The International Court of Justice should weigh these facts carefully when it rules in the South Africa-Israel case. Israel’s position is strong, which explains why radical actors want to rewrite the rules of genocide to fit their narrative.
The Genocide Convention remains a respected, almost sacred document. It should guide the final judgment. Attempts to stretch or dilute it through political lawfare threaten justice itself.
For now, Israel deserves a fulsome defense from everyone committed to law, order, and truth. The future of international law, counterterrorism strategy, and the conduct of modern warfare may hinge on how the world judges Israel’s actions. The stakes could not be higher.
Trading cubicles for crops: One couple’s ‘Exit’ from the corporate grind
An estimated 80% of people hate their jobs. They fantasize about quitting in a blaze of glory, hurling their lanyards across the office like a frisbee, and riding off into the sunset to raise goats, bake sourdough, or at least remember what eight hours of sleep feels like.
Sean Carlton was one of them.
‘Nobody wakes up one morning ready to raise animals and turn them into food.’ Change begins with one thing you can actually change. Lower one bill. Learn one skill.
The difference is that he didn’t stay. Two years ago, he and his wife, Alexys, walked away from their corporate careers and bought an acre of land in West Virginia. The experience also prompted Carlton to write “Exit Farming: Starving the Systems That Farm You” — a book that reads like both a confession and a call to arms.
The Carltons didn’t step into a new job, but into a new way of being. They rolled the dice with no promise of a soft landing, and in doing so they exposed something uncomfortable: Many of us aren’t trapped by circumstance so much as by the stories we tell ourselves about what we are allowed to want.
Sean Carlton
Questioning ‘normal’
Carlton is no professional commentator or pundit. “Exit Farming” is a cri de coeur from the American cubicle.
So when asked what exactly he means by “systems that farm you,” he doesn’t reach for theory. He answers with the simplicity of a man who finally recognized the shape of his own confinement.
“Systems farm people by taking more from you than they give back while convincing you this arrangement is normal,” he says.
Work dictates your hours. Debt dictates your decisions. Health care dictates your fears. Even your phone becomes, in his words, “the delivery system for apps that track you, profile you, and sell what they learn.”
It might sound melodramatic. It isn’t. It’s simply Monday morning in America, with millions waking up already weary of the hours ahead.
Slow and steady
But Carlton insists the way out is rarely a dramatic jailbreak. It’s the slow, steady act of starving the system’s influence. You “bring one thing at a time back under your control.” Lower an expense. Learn a skill. Build a sliver of income that doesn’t depend on a single institution. These small shifts break the spell. Every small act of independence starves a machine that has grown used to feeding on your time, your attention, your identity, even your sanity.
Of course, independence comes with a price, and Carlton tallies it honestly and without self-pity. One of the most striking sections in the book addresses the loss of family once he stepped off the expected path. Not through screaming matches or slammed doors, but through slow erosion: “Phone calls got shorter. Conversations turned tense.”
Disapproval had less to do with the specifics of his life than the simple fact that he no longer fit the template.
When asked how Americans can balance honoring their families with refusing to, as he puts it, “participate in systems that drain your energy and compromise your values,” his answer is as clean as it is compelling: “If a relationship survives you making choices that improve your health, your time, or your stability, then it survives. If it falls apart the moment you stop living the way they prefer, then it was already conditional.”
It’s a hard truth, but Carlton refuses to dress it up. Long before any institution closes a door on us, we’ve already built the cell ourselves. The ancients understood this well: People cling to the comfort of captivity, obeying expectations set by those who would rather see them worn down than transformed.
RELATED: An artist and farmer cultivates creativity
Stacy Tabb
Work with consequences
There’s also a spiritual undercurrent to his critique of modern work culture. Carlton never lapses into sermonizing, but his diagnosis reads like a measured moral warning. Modern work “follows you home,” he notes. It takes evenings, weekends, and whatever fragments of peace remain. It erodes sleep, attention, and the mental steadiness that previous generations recognized as the bedrock of a healthy life.
Americans worship productivity with almost religious devotion, even though the devotion always seems to cost them more than they can spare. Two-thirds of the workforce is burned out, but the cult of busyness marches on. Another day, another dollar … but also another headache, another email chain, and another reminder that coffee can only do so much.
When asked whether “exit farming” is a return to older ideas of work and stewardship, he rejects romantic myth-making. “Exit farming isn’t about finding something spiritual,” he says. “It’s about doing work where the consequences are real.” If you don’t feed the animals, “they suffer and then they die.” If you don’t tend the crops exactly as needed, the season is lost before it begins. Nothing waits for permission. Nothing reschedules itself for your convenience. This realism is its own kind of grounding. And you don’t need a farm to reclaim it, but only work that doesn’t demand the erosion of dignity as its hidden price of admission.
Grow one thing
The final question in the book’s conversation is the one most Americans are actively wrestling with: What about those who feel trapped? Trapped between institutions they no longer trust and a life of greater self-reliance that feels too big, too frightening, too foreign?
Carlton’s reply is the opposite of theatrical bravado. “Nobody wakes up one morning ready to raise animals and turn them into food.” Change begins with one thing you can actually change. Lower one bill. Learn one skill. Grow one thing you eat often. Build one dependable relationship. Reduce one vulnerability. These are small, almost humble acts. But they mark the beginning of a life that no longer runs on someone else’s terms.
Over time, he says, these small adjustments stop being adjustments. They become a different kind of life, one that is sturdy enough to withstand the failures of the systems around it.
That’s the heart of “Exit Farming.” It isn’t about rejecting society or romanticizing hardship, but about reclaiming stability in a country where stability has become a cruel joke. It’s not about storming out in some “Office Space” fantasia with a baseball bat.
It’s about one couple choosing a different path and showing that others could do it too. Not through dramatic destruction, but through the refusal to be drained of the very things that make a life worth living — time, purpose, and peace.
Trump cracks the Caracas cartel code
Democrats deny what mountains of evidence have long shown: Terrorist groups traffic in illegal drugs.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) recently insisted, “There is no such thing as a narco-terrorist,” as he defended his opposition to the Trump administration’s war on narco-terrorism in the Caribbean. He accused the administration of trying “to make this look like it’s ISIS or Al-Qaeda,” ignoring that ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and similar groups have long run profitable drug operations with local and transnational cartels. These alliances increased revenue, financed attacks, fueled violence, and deepened existing conflicts.
Maduro’s narco-terrorist regime threatens regional stability and US national security. Trump’s war on narco-terrorism meets that threat head-on.
Narco-terrorism did not originate with the Trump administration. It was the subject of my 1990 book, which documented how governments around the world used the drug trade to fund and advance terrorist activity. For more than three decades, Washington looked away. That era has ended.
On November 16, the U.S. Treasury designated Venezuela’s Cártel de los Soles — run by Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and key figures in his illegitimate regime — along with Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel, as foreign terrorist organizations. Treasury should have added Colombia’s National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, or ELN), a Marxist paramilitary and major drug-trafficking force that controls both sides of the border and works closely with Maduro.
When I began researching narco-terrorism in 1986, I assumed political groups across the spectrum could use terror and drug trafficking to advance their aims. The evidence showed otherwise. Marxist-Leninist and Islamist regimes, movements, and militias initiated, expanded, and ultimately dominated this trade.
Venezuela’s slide into narco-terrorism dates to 2005, when Hugo Chávez expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. After Chávez died in 2013, Maduro took control of both the government and the drug enterprise, tightening his partnership with Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, under the so-called Axis of Resistance. The goal is to counter U.S. influence in Latin America and the Middle East while enriching the regime.
Maduro’s alliance with Iran and Hezbollah runs deep. He offers sanctuary and support for their narcotics networks, money laundering, weapons pipelines, and terrorist smuggling throughout the region.
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Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal — a former three-star Venezuelan general under Chávez and Maduro and a former member of Cártel de los Soles — described the strategy bluntly in a letter to President Trump. “The purpose of this organization is to weaponize drugs against the United States,” he wrote. “The drugs that reached your cities through new routes were not accidents of corruption nor just the work of independent traffickers; they were deliberate policies coordinated by the Venezuelan regime against the United States.”
This collaboration, built over decades, helped millions of Americans fall into addiction and contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Maduro’s narco-terrorist regime threatens regional stability and U.S. national security. Trump’s war on narco-terrorism meets that threat head-on and is perfectly just.
Elementary school teacher allegedly possessed thousands of files of child sex abuse material
An elementary school teacher has been placed on administrative leave after police said they found thousands of files containing child sex abuse material in his possession.
Pleasantview Elementary teacher Martin Waskowski was arrested on Wednesday in Vermont after Border Patrol agents identified him as a suspect at the Highland port of entry.
One device contained more than 12,000 files appearing to be child sex abuse material, according to a preliminary review.
Waskowski was re-entering the U.S. from Canada when he was nabbed in a records check by law enforcement, according to a federal complaint.
A search of his cell phone allegedly revealed images and videos of adult men committing sexual acts with prepubescent boys.
Michigan State Police then searched his home, where they confiscated computers, hard drives, and an iPad.
One device contained more than 12,000 files appearing to be child sex abuse material, according to a preliminary review.
Waskowski had been a teacher at the elementary school in Eastpointe for three years and had been a long-term substitute as well.
He allegedly confessed to police that he had collected the child sex abuse material for approximately 20 years, and said that he knew the behavior was wrong, had tried to stop, but had not sought treatment to stop.
He was charged with possession and transportation of child exploitation materials. He was released under supervision and location monitoring.
District officials said they put him on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
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“Prior to this formal notification, the District had no knowledge of, nor had it received any allegations related to, this individual,” reads the statement from the district.
Waskowski is scheduled for a preliminary court hearing on Dec. 23.
Eastpointe is a suburb of Detroit, with about 34,000 residents.
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