About Brent Lambi
Brent Lambi is an Omaha-based real estate investor and developer whose career spans more than four decades of business leadership, civic engagement, and community development. A native of the greater Omaha area, Lambi has built a distinguished record of transforming ideas into lasting institutions.
Lambi earned a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting from the University of Northern Iowa in 1982, followed by a Juris Doctor from Creighton University School of Law in 1985. That combination of financial acumen and legal training has informed every dimension of his professional and civic life.
His business career took root through a professional relationship he cultivated at Coopers & Lybrand, the international accounting and consulting firm, while working with an Omaha-based company. That early foundation sharpened his instincts for finance, operations, and strategic growth — and set the stage for decades of entrepreneurial and civic achievement. He also became a pivotal figure in the revitalization of Omaha’s historic Old Market district, spearheading Tax Increment Financing development projects that helped restore and energize one of the city’s most beloved neighborhoods.
Over the years, Lambi built a record of real estate development and investment across the Midwest and beyond, contributing to residential and commercial projects in Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Texas. In more recent years, he has focused his investment activity on a carefully selected portfolio of publicly traded companies, applying the same disciplined, long-term thinking that defined his earlier career.
Lambi is also a committed philanthropist whose charitable giving reflects a deep sense of civic responsibility. His support has included Volunteer Fire Departments and First Responder organizations in Iowa, as well as contributions to the ACLU, the American Red Cross, Save Inc., and other charitable causes. He is also currently working with the Rockefeller Neurological Institute at West Virginia University in support of research focused on Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and addiction.
Beyond business, Lambi is a recognized civic voice and prolific editorial writer, contributing opinion pieces on fiscal policy, democratic governance, constitutional accountability, and the health of American institutions. A lifelong Independent voter with a history of supporting candidates from both parties, he brings a perspective rooted in the rule of law, fiscal responsibility, and the enduring promise of the American middle class.
Brent Lambi remains deeply connected to Omaha and its future, continuing to invest in the community he has called home throughout his career.
A Voice for Independent Thought
Honest Politics is dedicated to thoughtful editorial commentary grounded in principle, accountability, and a belief in the strength of American democracy. Brent Lambi writes to inform readers, challenge assumptions, and encourage civic engagement through honest political discussion.
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Recent Articles
As Seen in the Des Moines Register and the Omaha World-Herald: The Narco-State That Became a Bank Account / The Woman Who Never Asked Your Party / The Failed Trump MAGA Movement / A Pause and an Apology
Narco-State That
Became a Bank Account
We Were Promised a Drug War. We Got an Offshore Account.
Sixty-seven boats destroyed. Thirteen billion dollars collected.
And the one account nobody in this country is allowed to audit.
IMAGINATION LIBRARY 332 million+ books, five countries
FOUNDED 1995, for a father who could not read
VACCINE RESEARCH $1 million
SMOKIES FIRES, 2016 $1,000 a month, per displaced family
HURRICANE HELENE $1M personal, $1M from her companies
DOLLYWOOD Full college tuition for employees
THE LEDGER, ITEM BY ITEM
WE WENT FOR THE CARTELS. WE CAME HOME WITH THE OIL.
THE DRUGS ARE STILL MOVING. THE MONEY IS STILL MISSING.
AN AMERICAN SEIZURE BELONGS IN AN AMERICAN BANK.
WHERE IS THE MONEY? WHERE ARE THE DRUGS?
ANSWER THE PEOPLE WHO PAID FOR IT.
WHAT WE WERE TOLD. Venezuela was a
narco-state and its president a cartel boss. On
that premise, American forces struck Caracas
on January 3 and flew Nicolás Maduro to New
York. Congress never voted on it. When five
Republicans joined Democrats to force the
question, the Vice President broke the tie to
kill it.
WHAT WAS PROVEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Nothing yet. Maduro pleaded not guilty, and
the case is pending. The premise was thin before
the first shot. DEA data put the Caribbean
corridor at roughly 8 percent of seaborne cocaine
leaving South America, most of it bound
for Europe. Venezuela appears in no DEA National
Drug Threat Assessment as a fentanyl
source or transit country. The SOUTHCOM
commander told lawmakers in March that
boat strikes are not the answer. Sixty-seven
vessels were destroyed, 221 people were
killed, and the traffickers rerouted.
WHAT WE TOOK. Ten oil tankers were boarded
or seized. One hundred fifty million barrels
were sold by April. More than $13 billion was
collected by late July.
WHERE IT WENT. Not the U.S. Treasury, at
least not at first. The opening $500 million
landed in a Qatari bank, described by an official
as neutral ground beyond any risk of seizure.
But Executive Order 14373 had already
blocked the creditors under an emergency the
President declared himself. So the offshore account
was not shielding the money from them.
It was shielding it from American courts.
About $3 billion is accounted for. Ten billion is
not. Two of the trading houses that were hired
had previously been prosecuted for bribery.
In February, the Treasury Secretary promised
Congress the statutory authority. By March 11,
it still had not come.
We took the oil by force and banked it where
no American judge can reach it.
THE PARDON THAT DOES NOT FIT. On
December 1, 2025, one month before the drug
war began, this President pardoned Juan Orlando
Hernández, former president of Honduras,
convicted of moving more than 400
tons of cocaine and serving 45 years. Same
crime. Same hemisphere. Opposite outcome.
WHAT IT COST. Brown University’s Costs of
War project put Southern Spear and Absolute
Resolve at a minimum of $4.7 billion through
March 31, $3.8 billion of it naval, and called
that figure conservative. The Pentagon refuses
to give Congress a number at all.
WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGED. Maduro’s
own vice president governs, unelected. No
free elections have been announced. Inflation
was 475 percent last year. Roughly 90
percent of the country is in poverty. Three
months’ minimum wage does not buy one
dollar. June earthquakes killed more than
5,000, and $386 million in aid moved while
$13 billion sat in a bank.
AND IT WAS NEVER ARGENTINA. Argentina
is Level 1. Go tomorrow. The country
we liberated is Level 3, with seven states still
marked Do Not Travel and visas issued from
Bogotá.
THE EDITOR’S OPINION. No court has
found corruption here, and I allege none. But
I have seen this shape before, and the questions
below are not rhetorical. They are unanswered.
THREE QUESTIONS NOBODY WILL ANSWER.
Where are the drugs? Sixty-seven
boats were destroyed. Two hundred twenty-
one people are dead. The routes moved; the
cocaine did not stop. No public evidence has
yet tied a single shipment to the man we took.
Where is the money? Thirteen billion was collected.
Three billion is explained. Ten billion is
behind a seal no American judge is permitted
to break.
And why a foreign bank? That question answers
the other two. A seizure made by American
forces, paid for by American taxpayers,
belongs in the American Treasury, on an
American ledger, in front of an American
court. In 1989, we invaded Panama, took a dictator
on drug charges, and found the money
in Panamanian banks, but those assets went
through courts. There is exactly one reason to
send this money to Qatar instead: so that nobody
here can look at it. The cartels used foreign
banks for the same reason. They simply
never called it foreign policy.
THE HONEST PART. Maduro was a tyrant
who stole an election, and some of this money
has paid Venezuelan salaries under a continuing
audit. Fine. Then publish the authority,
publish the ledger, and let a judge look.
A TRIBUTE
The Woman Who Never
Asked Your Party
She Just Mailed the Book.
Sixty years in public life, a coalition wider than either party’s,
and not one loyalty oath. Washington should study the tape.
The Failed Trump/MAGA Movement
The Voters Got Promises. The Insiders Got Everything.
Nineteen months in, one side of this bargain has been paid in full,
and it was not the side that voted.
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi: The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
“Berkshire is not the author of this defamation but a vehicle for it.”
Sources: Forbes “World’s Billionaires” (Mar. 2026); USDA ERS Food Price Outlook (Aug. 2026); NBC News grocery tracker
(Aug. 19, 2026); Purdue Consumer Food Insights; Economist/YouGov (Aug. 7–10, 2026); Reuters (Oct. 23, 2025); Public
Citizen; Senate letters of Oct. 22, 2025; PBS NewsHour (Apr. 2026).
Sources: Executive Order 14373; Treasury and OFAC general licenses; DEA National Drug Threat
Assessment; Costs of War Project, Brown University; Semafor; CNN; Reuters; House Financial Services
Committee correspondence; U.S. Department of State.
SHE STARTED WITH A DEBT SHE COULD
NOT REPAY. Dolly Rebecca Parton was born
January 19, 1946, in Sevier County, Tennessee,
one of twelve children in a mountain
cabin. Her father could not read. In 1995, she
founded the Imagination Library in his honor,
mailing free books to children from birth until
kindergarten. When she died in Nashville
on August 25 at eighty, the program had gifted
more than 332 million books to over three
million children across five countries. The
book is addressed to the child, not the parent.
Her family asked that flowers be sent as donations
to it instead.
THE LEDGER NOBODY MADE HER PUBLISH.
A million dollars that helped fund
COVID vaccine research. A thousand dollars
a month to families burned out of the Smokies
in 2016. A million of her own after Hurricane
Helene, with a million more from her businesses.
Full college tuition for Dollywood employees.
The Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy
in 2022. None of it appropriated. None of it
borrowed. She spent her own money, then
went back to work.
SHE DECLINED THE HONORS SHE HAD
EARNED. Twice she turned down the Presidential
Medal of Freedom. In 2021, she asked
the Tennessee legislature to hold off on a statue
of her at the Capitol, not while there was
work left to do. Read that beside a renamed
plaza and a fresh bronze inscription, and note
carefully who paid for which.
SHE WAS NOBODY’S FOOL. She retained
her publishing rights while the industry was
taking everyone else’s, and walked away from
an Elvis recording rather than surrender half
of “I Will Always Love You.” Generosity was
never naivety. It never is.
AND SHE NEVER ASKED YOUR PARTY.
She spent half a century in the brightest light
in America, and no one could reliably say how
she voted. She kept it that way on purpose.
The result was that a coal miner and a college
professor could sing the same chorus and
both mean it. She did not build that audience
by agreeing with everyone. She built it by refusing
to sort them.
Three hundred thirty-two million books, and
not one of them billed to the taxpayer.
Three hundred thirty-two
million books, and not one of
them billed to the taxpayer.
That is the whole lesson, and it is not complicated.
SHE NEVER ASKED WHICH WAY YOU VOTED.
SHE ONLY ASKED WHETHER YOUR CHILD COULD READ.
SET THE BAR WHERE SHE LEFT IT.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE.
LEAD LIKE DOLLY.
Sources: family statement and obituary notices, Aug. 25, 2026; Dolly Parton’s Imagination
Library; Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy; contemporaneous news accounts.
WHAT THEY RAN ON. Prices down starting
on day one. The war ended in twenty-four
hours. The files released. The swamp drained.
Each of those promises was made plainly,
from a stage, to people who believed it enough
to stand in line in the cold.
WHAT WAS DELIVERED. Food cost 3.0 percent
more this July than a year earlier. Ground
beef is up 18 percent since January 2025, and
orange juice is up 20 percent. Health premiums
rose by roughly a quarter when the
enhanced credits lapsed. Food insecurity
reached 13.3 percent overall and 46 percent
among SNAP households. Consumer optimism
hit an all-time low this month. The debt
is past $39.9 trillion. The Epstein files were
ordered released by a 427-to-1 vote, and the
measure was signed into law in November,
but they still need a judge to pry them loose.
The Iran war is still running. Approval this
month: 33 percent.
AND WHAT THE INSIDERS GOT. Forbes put
the president’s fortune at $6.5 billion in March,
up $1.4 billion in a year, roughly $1.8 billion of
it from cryptocurrency, including about $550
million from selling the family venture’s own
tokens. On the administration’s first full day,
the SEC opened a crypto task force; cases
against that venture’s investors and partners
were dropped or settled. An Emirati state fund
moved $2 billion into Binance using the family
stablecoin. The envoy who co-founded the
venture still held his stake ten months in. In
October, the president pardoned Binance’s
founder, whose company had pleaded guilty
and paid $4.3 billion.
A movement is judged by who got paid. This
one paid its founders and billed its believers.
THE HONEST PART. Egg prices are down 31
percent. Presidents are exempt from the conflict-
of-interest statute; none of this has been
charged as a crime, and the Trump Organization
says it complies with every applicable ethics
law. Grocery inflation is off its 2022 peak.
Some of these promises were fantasies the
day they were made: no president could have
ended that war in a day. And no party’s donor
ledger is clean.
AND STILL. None of that changes the arithmetic.
Two ledgers were kept over these nineteen
months. One of them was settled in full.
Check which one has your name on it.
THE MOVEMENT DID NOT FAIL ITS INSIDERS.
IT ONLY FAILED THE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVED IT.
AN EMPTY PROMISE IS STILL AN INVOICE — AND IT IS MADE OUT TO YOU.
“HOLD YOUR NOSE AND VOTE DEMOCRAT — OR JUST DON’T VOTE IN NOVEMBER.”
DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN!
LET’S MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!
As Seen in the Des Moines Register and the Omaha World-Herald: Storm Clouds on the Horizon / They Held Up the Book / A Pause and an Apology
A WARNING FROM THE ROAD: IOWA AND NEBRASKA
Storm Clouds on the Horizon
And the Wind Is Already Up
A Carroll banker with sixty-six years behind a desk says he has read this sky before.
So have I. It looked like this in 1979, and the man in the White House was Jimmy Carter.
If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available around the clock, and Iowa State
University Extension operates the Iowa Concern Hotline for farm families.
Sources: U.S. Treasury; Learning Resources v. Trump (Feb. 20, 2026); USDA; American Farm Bureau Federation; Federal
Reserve Banks of Chicago and Kansas City; Congressional Research Service; NCBA; Iowa Farm Bureau; UPI and Iowa PBS
archives; Human Rights Watch; company filings.
CARTER, 1980 An embargo that cost us the market
THIS TIME $20 billion Treasury swap to Argentina
AUTHORIZED BY No vote in Congress required
TIMED FOR The longest U. S. shutdown, and Milei’s election
ARGENTINA Beef quota quadrupled in February
BRAZIL 40 tariff points off, record 2026 imports
WHAT CARTER NEVER DID
CARTER COST US THE MARKET.
TRUMP WIRED MONEY TO THE MEN WHO TOOK IT.
IN MY OPINION, THAT IS NOT A MISTAKE. IT IS A DIRECTION.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE
DEMAND REAL SOLUTIONS BEFORE THE SPRING NOTE!
THE MAN WHO READS THE SKY. In Carroll
I sat with a retired banker, a sixty-six-year veteran
of the business and a director of an Iowa
regional bank. He says another 1980s farm crisis
is coming and could be worse. His reasons:
a debt that crossed $40.05 trillion on August
18, trade policy that cost farmers their buyers,
and what happens when money gets expensive
again. At fifteen or eighteen percent, he said, it
will be twice as bad as 1981 because in 1981 we
had no trade war on top of it. He watched millionaire
farmers go broke in three years, men
he had banked for thirty.
WHAT THE LAST STORM TOOK. Researchers
counted 913 male farmer suicides across
five Upper Midwest states that decade. On December
9, 1985, Lone Tree farmer Dale Burr,
half a million in debt, killed his wife, Hills Bank
president John Hughes, and a neighbor, then
himself. Iowa banks hired guards.
IN MY OPINION, THIS IS CARTER’S PLAYBOOK.
Carter used food as a weapon. In January
1980 he embargoed grain to the Soviets,
trusting competitors not to take the sales. Argentina
refused, raising export earnings roughly
thirty percent selling to Moscow. Brazil, Canada
and Australia followed. The Soviets ate.
Iowa did not. America was branded an unreliable
supplier and never won that share back.
Then Carter bought the grain himself: $2.25
billion of it. Now watch it again. We taxed our
way out of the Chinese soybean market. Brazil
and Argentina took it. Our share of world soybean
trade is a record-low 23 percent. Then we
wrote a $12 billion check, drawn not on tariff
revenue but the Commodity Credit Corporation.
Borrowed money.
THE TARIFF THE COURT SAID HE NEVER
HAD. Read this twice. On February 20, the Supreme
Court ruled 6-3, with Roberts writing,
that the president has no power to impose
tariffs under the emergency-powers act. The
Court did not say they were unwise. It said they
were never lawful from day one. Roughly $175
billion may be owed back to importers. Iowa
farmers spent a year eating Chinese retaliation
for a policy the Court says was never authorized.
A day later the Trump administration
announced it would reimpose a fifteen percent
tariff globally under another statute. The share
is gone. The retaliation was real. Only the authority
was imaginary.
CARTER LOST US THE MARKET. THIS
ONE PAID THE MAN WHO TOOK IT. Here
is where my opinion hardens, and it is the
heart of this editorial. Carter was wrong, and
Iowa paid for it. But Carter never wrote Argentina
a check for taking our business. On October
9, 2025, during the longest government
shutdown in American history, the Treasury
Secretary announced a $20 billion swap line
with Argentina’s central bank and directly
purchased Argentine pesos. The money came
from the Exchange Stabilization Fund, which
needs no vote in Congress. No economic conditions
were attached. The timing served President
Milei’s October elections. And at that very
hour, Argentine farmers were selling China
the soybeans Iowa could not. Senator Grassley
said it plainly at the time: our farmers were
upset about Argentina selling soybeans to China
right after the bailout, with zero U.S. sales.
Then in February we quadrupled Argentina’s
beef quota. On August 21 we floated 300,000
metric tons more. Cattle broke that morning.
Carter shut a door and our competitors walked
through it. Trump opened the Treasury and
wired them the fare.
AND THE GATE FOR BRAZIL. In July 2025
the Trump administration put a 50 percent
tariff on Brazilian beef. By November it had removed
40 of those percentage points. Brazilian
packers shipped $795 million of beef into this
country in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Total
U.S. beef imports hit a record $13.75 billion in
2025 while our own beef exports fell about 11
percent to $9.3 billion. Imports are on pace for
nearly 6 billion pounds this year, which would
be a record. And on August 21 the Trump administration
announced a 90-day cut to beef
tariffs, in the middle of that record. The cattlemen’s
association called it flooding the market
with “government-subsidized, below-market
beef.” Not my words. Theirs.
AND NOW THE PACKINGHOUSES. I
watched plants go dark in Storm Lake, Fort
Dodge and Cedar Falls. Rath closed in Waterloo
in 1985. But those jobs went to American
firms cutting American wages: IBP’s boxed
beef, rural low-wage plants, packing pay below
the average U.S. manufacturing wage by
1983. Ugly, and ours. Now the ledger. Tyson
shut its Lexington, Nebraska, plant in January,
eliminating 2,000 jobs. On August 13, Tyson
announced the immediate closure of its Joslin,
Illinois, plant, affecting 2,500 workers, plus its
Eagle Mountain, Utah, facility. Perry, Iowa is
gone. Over 10,000 Tyson jobs since 2023. JBS
is closing a Pennsylvania plant, eliminating
2,000 more jobs. JBS is Brazilian, controlled by
the Batista family of São Paulo. The plants that
closed this month processed American cattle.
What is replacing them does not.
ONE THING REAGAN WOULD NEVER DO.
Reagan ended Carter’s embargo in ninety-four
days. He tore a barrier down. Whatever else he
was, and I have written plainly about what he
was, he never bought a competitor’s currency
with public money, and he never cut his own
ranchers’ tariff protection during a record import
year. That, in my opinion, is the whole distance
between a president who mishandled a
crisis and one who is financing the other side of
it. Carter was wrong. He was not misdirected.
This is misdirected.
WHY THIS ONE COULD BE WORSE. The
banker’s real warning was not about prices. It
was about where the debt is sitting. Farm debt
hits a record $624.7 billion this year, carrying a
record $33 billion in interest. The Kansas City
Fed reports farmers taking larger operating
loans and longer to repay. The Chicago Fed’s
May survey of 104 Midwest ag lenders found
falling cash rents, rising rollovers, tightening
credit and near-breakeven cash flow. An Iowa
bankruptcy attorney describes what I remember
from 1980: farmers moving operating debt
onto the land because the land is the only thing
still holding value. That is the trap. Land is up
three percent while cash flow is negative. The
ground is carrying the losses. It carried them in
1979 too, right until it did not. Then it fell sixty
percent with the notes still attached.
The ground is carrying the losses.
It carried them in 1979 too,
right until it did not.
THE WIND IS ALREADY UP. Corn breaks
even near $5.00; USDA forecasts $4.20. Soybeans,
$12.27 against $10.30. Iowa net farm income
is projected down 53 percent. Nineteen
percent of the state’s midsize and large farms
are financially vulnerable, double 2022. Chapter
12 filings rose 220 percent here.
THE HONEST PART. Tyson and JBS blame
the cattle herd: 86.2 million head, a 75-year low
from drought and disease, not imports. That is
the stated cause, and I will not pretend otherwise.
The Argentine swap was a credit line,
not a grant, and Treasury says the draw was repaid.
In terms of wreckage, 1980 through 1985
was still worse: land off sixty percent, Farm
Credit down $2.7 billion. My argument is not
that the checks have already destroyed us. It is
about direction and about what is being loaded
onto the ground right now.
GET THE MACHINERY IN. Remove the tariffs
and trade barriers. Rebuild the herd before
importing the beef. Stop financing the competition.
E20 now, E30 by 2029. Do it before the
spring note comes due. The note is where this
ends. It always was.
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi: The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
THE BOOK IS NOT A PROP
They Held Up the Book
They Simply Never Opened It.
The acts first, in plain language. Then the verse each one breaks.
The deeds are public record. Scripture is theirs too.
THE PHOTOGRAPH. On June 1, 2020, federal
officers cleared demonstrators from Lafayette
Square. Minutes later the president walked
across it and held a Bible up in front of St.
John’s Church for the cameras. He did not go
in. He did not read from it. He did not pray.
◆ “They love to pray standing in the synagogues
and in the corners of the streets, that
they may be seen of men… They have their
reward” (Matthew 6:5). The reward was the
photograph. That was the transaction.
THE $59.99 BIBLE. In 2024 he put his name
on the “God Bless the USA Bible”: scripture
bound with the Constitution and a song lyric,
sold at $59.99, with a licensing cut to him.
◆ Christ drove the sellers out of the temple:
“make not my Father’s house an house of
merchandise” (John 2:16). Merchandising
the book is not witness. It is inventory.
A Bible held up for a photograph is
not a testimony. It is a costume.
THE MONUMENT. A $600 million ballroom
rises on the people’s ground, about half of it
charged to taxpayers. A federal judge ruled
that only Congress may rename the Kennedy
Center; in August the board voted around him
and renamed the grounds the President Donald
J. Trump Plaza.
◆ “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built…
for the honour of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30).
Nebuchadnezzar lost his reason in the middle
of that sentence. “Whosoever shall exalt
himself shall be abased” (Matthew 23:12).
THE GIFT AND THE SETTLEMENT. A $400
million jet was accepted from Qatar. A $10 billion
claim against the IRS, filed in his personal
capacity, was settled in May by the attorney
who defended him in his own criminal case
and now runs the Justice Department; the
claim was traded for audit protection on every
earlier return.
◆ “Thy princes are rebellious, and companions
of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth
after rewards” (Isaiah 1:23). And the
ledger verse: “A false balance is abomination
to the LORD” (Proverbs 11:1).
THE PARDONS. Juan Orlando Hernández,
sentenced to 45 years for moving hundreds of
tons of cocaine, was pardoned and released.
Roughly a hundred drug clemencies followed.
Meanwhile, 70.6 percent of those held in ICE
detention had no conviction.
◆ “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that
condemneth the just, even they both are
abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15).
Both halves, in one line. Mercy for the trafficker.
A cell for the roofer.
THE SICK AND THE CHILDREN. Premium
credits lapsed on December 31, 2025, and
premiums rose about 26 percent. Measles returned
to its worst year since 1991 as kindergarten
vaccination rates fell to 92.5 percent.
A law passed 427–1 ordered the Epstein files
released; the survivors are still waiting.
◆ “I was sick, and ye visited me not” (Matthew
25:43). Of the children: “it were better for him
that a millstone were hanged about his neck”
As Seen in the Omaha World-Herald & The Des Moines Register: Your Tax Dollars, Their Harvest / Four Hundred Tons Is Not a Political Opinion / The Movement Ate Its Own / One Less Bidder at the Gate / A Pause and an Apology
Your Tax Dollars,
Their Harvest
The Tariff Is Ours. The Bailout Is Theirs.
The American farmer never asked for protection. He asked
for a market, and Washington sold it to his competitor.
A FARMER DOES NOT WANT A CHECK. HE WANTS A BUYER.
STOP FINANCING THE COMPETITION.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE
SELL IT — DON’T SUBSIDIZE IT!
Sources: U.S. Treasury; White House Proclamation of Feb. 6, 2026; U.S. Customs and Border Protection quota bulletins;
USDA; American Soybean Association; Congressional Research Service; Reuters; CNN; NBC News; Associated Press.
SWAP LINE $20 billion to Argentina’s central bank, Oct. 2025
CHINA’S CUT More than half of U.S. soybean exports; $12.6B in 2024
BEEF QUOTA 20,000 to as much as 100,000 metric tons in 2026
FARM INPUTS ~$33 billion imported yearly – taxed at the gate
THE “HELP” $12 billion in bridge payments, Dec. 2025
THE LEDGER, BY THE BUSHEL
WHAT “POLITICAL” NOW MEANS. Juan
Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras,
was convicted of conspiring to move
at least 400 tons of cocaine into this country
and sentenced to 45 years by Judge Kevin
Castel, an appointee of George W. Bush. On
December 1, 2025, he walked out of a federal
penitentiary with a full pardon. The explanation
offered was that he had been “persecuted
very unfairly” and was the victim of what the
President called a Biden administration setup.
No evidence was produced. Not one juror answered.
Just the word “political,” thrown over a
verdict like a tarp.
WHO ACTUALLY DID THE WORK. In 2025,
the Coast Guard seized more than 511,000
pounds of cocaine, over three times the service’s
annual average. Operation Pacific Viper
alone has taken more than 215,000 pounds and
apprehended 160 suspected traffickers. Eighty
percent of interdictions of U.S.-bound drugs
happen at sea: small boats, black water, boarding
ladders. DEA agents and county deputies
do the same work on land: years of wiretaps,
controlled buys and grand jury testimony, given
under their own names, in the same counties
where the people they charge live. Nobody
hands them a signature at the end of it.
NOW DO THE ARITHMETIC. Four hundred
tons is 800,000 pounds. One signature
undid more than the Coast Guard’s best
year on record.
They boarded the boat. He signed the paper.
Only one of them was risking anything.
THE COMPANY HE KEEPS. Hernández was
not alone. On day one, it was Ross Ulbricht,
founder of the largest online drug market of its
time, serving two life sentences. In May 2025, it
was Larry Hoover. The Washington Post counts
clemency for roughly 100 people accused of
drug-related crimes.
AND THE PRESS THAT MOVED ON. It was
reported once. The Washington Post ran the
clemency tally. The wires carried the release.
Two House members filed a resolution condemning
it. Then the cameras went back to
THE PARDON LEDGER
Four Hundred Tons Is
Not a Political Opinion
And a Cutter Crew Is Not a Talking Point.
A federal jury convicted him. A judge appointed by a Republican president
sentenced him. The White House calls it persecution.
Sources: U.S. Coast Guard and DHS interdiction releases (2025–2026); The Washington Post clemency analysis; AP, NPR and
CBS reporting on the December 1, 2025 release; U.S. v. Hernández, S.D.N.Y.
Every package of imported, foreign-processed
meat on an American shelf is a shift that
does not get run here. Tyson shut its Lexington,
Nebraska, plant in January, eliminating
3,200 jobs. This month, it announced the closure
of its Joslin, Illinois, complex, eliminating
roughly 2,500 more jobs, plus the closure of its
Eagle Mountain, Utah, plant. It is also seeking
a buyer for its Pasco, Washington, facility. Imports
have hit a record 17 percent of American
beef supply, and Washington suspended the
tariff-rate quotas in May. Consolidation pencils
out for shareholders. The bill lands on the
farmer. Every packer that disappears is one
less bidder at the gate, and kill capacity, once
gone, does not come back.
None of this was a market accident. Washington
suspended the quotas, waved the imports
through, and called it competition. Our
farmers lose the buyer. Our towns lose the
payroll. Our floors go quiet while the trimmings
come off a boat. That is not policy. That
is gross incompetence, and the farmer pays
for it last and longest.
One Less Bidder at the Gate
The Packing Jobs Go First. The Farmer’s Price Goes Next.
Every pound processed overseas means one less shift run
here and one less buyer for the farmer.
LEXINGTON, NEB. Closed Jan. 20, 2026 – about 3,200 jobs
JOSLIN, ILL. Closed Aug. 14, 2026 – about 2,500 jobs
EAGLE MOUNTAIN, UTAH Case-ready plant closing – 723 jobs
THE IMPORT SIDE 17.3% of U.S. beef supply, an all-time high;
tariff rate quotas suspended May 11, 2026
THE RECORD, PLANT BY PLANT
Source: Tyson Foods statements, Nov. 21, 2025 and Aug. 13, 2026; UNL Center for Agricultural Profitability;
WARN notice, Joslin complex; USDA WASDE import share.
A FARMER OUR FARMERS LOSE THE BUYER. OUR INDUSTRIES
LOSE THE FLOOR. OUR NEIGHBORS LOSE THE JOB.
GROSS INCOMPETENCE IN WASHINGTON WROTE THIS.
AMERICAN CATTLE. AMERICAN PLANTS. AMERICAN JOBS.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE. DEMAND BETTER FROM BOTH!
THE MAN WHO NEVER ASKED FOR A
SUBSIDY. The American farmer was the original
small businessman. He bought his inputs
at market, sold his crop at market, absorbed
his own losses without a lawyer, and asked
Washington for one thing: an open door and
an honest price. He was the freest trader this
country ever produced. He is now the only
man in America being taxed on both ends of
his own barn.
WHAT TWENTY BILLION BOUGHT. In October
2025 the Treasury opened a $20 billion
swap line to Argentina’s central bank and began
buying pesos outright, the largest direct
U.S. rescue of a foreign government since Mexico
in 1995, with talk of doubling it to $40 billion
through private funding. Days later Buenos Aires
suspended its grain export taxes, and China
bought Argentine soybeans at a price we could
not match. China had already halted American
purchases in May; a market worth $12.6 billion
in 2024 went to zero. Republican Sen. Chuck
Grassley asked the obvious question in public.
He never got an answer.
AND THEN THEY SENT THE BEEF. On February
6 the President quadrupled Argentina’s
tariff-rate quota: 80,000 additional metric tons
of lean trimmings on top of the existing 20,000.
Senator Deb Fischer objected. The trimmings
came anyway.
“We taxed his fertilizer, closed his market, then financed the man who took it.”
THE BILL HE CANNOT PASS ALONG.
Meanwhile the tariff lands on the one man in
the chain who cannot hand it to anyone else.
Roughly $33 billion in imported inputs a year,
including fertilizer, chemicals and machinery
parts, is taxed at the gate. Three straight years
of losses. Chapter 12 filings up 46 percent.
Then $12 billion in bridge payments: Washington
handing you your own money back
and calling it generosity.
THE HONEST PART. A swap is not a grant,
and Treasury insists no taxpayer loss is anticipated.
The beef quota answers a cattle herd at
a record low and ground beef at $6.69 a pound.
The Argentine agreement opens more than
two hundred categories to American goods.
Fine. Now explain all of it to a man in Idaho
paying a tariffed price for a combine part while
his buyer loads Argentine soybeans.
the boat strikes, and the pardon shrank into a
footnote inside coverage of the very campaign it
contradicts. The question worth putting to this
administration on camera, and putting again
the next day, is a simple one: how does that
ledger get explained to the crews still being sent
out? A government that kills suspected smugglers
without trial while pardoning a convicted
kingpin is not a news cycle. It is a standing contradiction,
and it deserves a standing question
at every briefing.
THE HONEST PART. The pardon power is
absolute, and both parties have used it on drug
cases. Hernández and his lawyers maintain the
case rested on the word of convicted traffickers.
Clemency is not the offense here. Calling a jury’s
verdict political is. The Movement Ate Its Own
It Called That Loyalty
Three women asked one question about the Epstein files. Two are gone.
And the file they asked about now sits with the president’s own lawyer.
AND WHO HOLDS THE FILE NOW. On August
10, Todd Blanche, Trump’s own criminal
defense attorney, was sworn in as Attorney
General by Emil Bove, another of his former
lawyers. Only two Republicans voted no. Epstein
survivors testified against him. New Mexico
is suing his department for stonewalling a
state investigation. He has declined to promise
that the president will have no voice in individual
prosecutions.
THE HONEST PART. Greene, Mace, and
Massie crossed Trump on more than Epstein,
and primary voters removing a member is democracy,
not conspiracy. Bondi’s and Noem’s
failures were their own. But no conspiracy is required
here. Only a rule: ask, and you are gone.
THE THREE WHO ASKED. In November 2025, four House Republicans signed the discharge
petition forcing a vote on the Epstein files. Three were women: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren
Boebert, and Nancy Mace, who called her signature deeply personal as a survivor of sexual
and domestic violence. Trump phoned Boebert before dawn and summoned her to the White
House. He played phone tag with Mace. Neither folded.
AND WHAT IT COST THEM. Trump branded Greene a traitor. She resigned on January 5, 2026.
Mace lost her primary for governor of South Carolina in June. Thomas Massie, the fourth signer,
lost his primary as well. Boebert survived chiefly because the president moved to punish her
after the filing deadline had passed.
THE WOMEN WHO WERE USED. Pam Bondi handed Epstein binders to influencers, issued the
memo declaring the case closed, and absorbed a year of fury that belonged upstairs. She was fired
on April 2, 2026. Kristi Noem testified that Trump personally approved the $220 million campaign
promoting her own leadership. She, too, was fired. They were not partners. They were padding.
GREENE Called a traitor; resigned
Jan. 5, 2026
MACE Lost the S.C. governor’s
primary, June 2026
MASSIE Lost his primary as well
BOEBERT Survived – the challenge
came too late to file
THE FILES Law passed 421 – 1; still in
court in 2026
THE FOUR WHO SIGNED
“Loyalty was not a bond.
It was a warranty period.”
THEY DID NOT LOSE THEIR LEADERS.
THEY WERE SHOWN THE DOOR FOR ASKING A QUESTION.
THE FILE BELONGS TO THE PUBLIC — NOT TO HIS ATTORNEY.
THEY ASKED ONE QUESTION
VOTE INDEPENDENT IN NOVEMBER!
Sources: AP, Reuters, NBC News, CNN, Axios, The Hill, NPR, PBS NewsHour, 19th News, Ms. Magazine (Nov. 2025 to Aug. 2026). When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my opinion
that discovery in this matter is being shaped
by people whose names do not appear in the
case caption. I cannot prove that today, and I
will not tell readers otherwise. I can only tell
you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents
may themselves have been used by someone
else who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi: The opinions expressed