Michael Ryan’s decisive victory in the 2026 Butler County Republican primary for commissioner marks a significant shift in local politics, reflecting voter demand for genuine conservatism, accountability, and fresh leadership. I have followed these races closely for years, and this outcome stands out as a clear repudiation of entitlement politics and a triumph for the kind of candidate who earns support through hard work and integrity. With final unofficial results showing Ryan capturing approximately 72% of the vote to Cindy Carpenter’s 28%, the primary essentially decides the seat in this heavily Republican county.
Butler County, Ohio, is in the southwestern part of the state, encompassing communities such as Hamilton, Middletown, Fairfield, and Oxford (home to Miami University), as well as numerous townships. Its population exceeds 390,000, with a strong manufacturing and agricultural base alongside growing suburban development. The Board of Commissioners oversees a substantial budget, infrastructure projects, economic development, public safety, and human services. For decades, the board has operated under Republican dominance, making the GOP primary the real contest. Winning it virtually guarantees victory in November against the unopposed Democrat Mike Miller.
Cindy Carpenter had served as commissioner since 2011 and was seeking a fifth term. Her tenure focused on human services, public health, and fiscal matters, but it was marred by controversies that alienated many in the party base. Incidents included a heated confrontation at a Miami University-area apartment complex involving her granddaughter, where she was accused of leveraging her position, using inappropriate language, and displaying aggressive behavior captured on video. Investigations cleared her of criminal wrongdoing but highlighted conduct deemed “distasteful” and “beneath her elected position.” Additional complaints arose, including allegations of aggressive conduct at a housing coalition meeting. Even the county sheriff publicly expressed concerns about her behavior.
A particularly damaging episode involved Carpenter campaigning for a Democrat in the Middletown mayoral race, crossing party lines in ways that many viewed as disloyal. This move, combined with her decision not to seek the Butler County Republican Party endorsement, signaled a disconnect. She appeared to operate with an entitled mindset, assuming incumbency alone would carry her through. Her campaign signs, some in blue tones reminiscent of Democratic aesthetics, and limited fundraising—only about $7,700 compared to Ryan’s over $46,000—underscored a lack of broad support.
In contrast, Michael Ryan entered the race as a former Hamilton City Council member with a background in business and community service. He positioned himself as a true conservative caretaker focused on fiscal responsibility, job creation, lower taxes, and practical governance. Ryan methodically built support: he secured the Republican Party endorsement with a striking 71% in the first round of voting, an early and historic show of strength. Major figures lined up behind him, including Auditor Nancy Nix, who endorsed him at a fundraiser when it still carried risk; Congressman Warren Davidson; State Representative Thomas Hall; and others, such as George Lang. These endorsements validated his approach and reassured voters that change could be safe and effective.
I endorsed Ryan early, well before the primary heated up. Having known him for years, I saw in him the sincerity and dedication often missing in politics. He raised money effectively, attended events tirelessly, engaged voters across the county, and maintained a positive, bridge-building demeanor even amid challenges like sign theft. His campaign emphasized family values, economic growth, and responsiveness—qualities that resonated deeply in a county frustrated with the status quo. The watch party on primary night, held at the Premier Shooting facility with a speakeasy-style back area, overflowed with supporters. The room was packed; people had to turn sideways to navigate. Energy filled the space as results rolled in.
Congressman Warren Davidson attended and shared insights from his experience in large districts. We discussed the political savvy required at every level and how Ryan had grown into a polished figure capable of uniting people. Davidson’s presence underscored the race’s importance, and his admiration for Ryan’s development over the couple of years spoke volumes. Other supporters like Darbi Boddy added to the festive, optimistic atmosphere. It felt like a genuine celebration of earned success rather than entitlement.
The results confirmed what grassroots momentum had suggested. With 100% of precincts reporting in unofficial tallies, Ryan’s 72%-28% margin was overwhelming and, for some, embarrassing to the incumbent. Early voting and election-day observations showed Carpenter’s team attempting a last-minute sign blitz, but it failed against organized, enthusiastic Ryan volunteers who kept their ground game strong. The Republican slate card proved crucial, as it often does; voters seeking vetted candidates found Ryan prominently featured through party processes and independent media coverage.
This victory carries broader lessons for politics, especially local races. Party systems matter because they help aggregate preferences in a diverse society. People differ on countless details—concrete versus asphalt, tax priorities, development approaches—but effective governance requires building majorities. Dismissing the party as irrelevant or operating as a “RINO” critic while undermining it rarely succeeds. Ryan demonstrated the opposite: he worked within the system, earned endorsements through respect and effort, and presented a positive vision.
Background on Butler County’s political landscape adds context. The county has long leaned conservative, supporting Republican candidates at high levels, including strong support for Trump in recent cycles. Yet local frustrations with taxes, growth management, infrastructure, and perceived insider politics have grown. Projects involving economic development, public safety, and services will benefit from new energy. Ryan has signaled readiness to hit the ground running, with ideas on efficiency, accountability, and forward-thinking initiatives already in motion during the campaign. His experience on Hamilton council involved practical decision-making on budgets and community issues, preparing him well for county-level responsibilities.
Roger Reynolds, former county auditor, briefly entered the race but withdrew after the party endorsement went decisively to Ryan. His last-minute alignment with Carpenter, including sign placement, highlighted lingering personal grievances but ultimately underscored the party’s unified shift. Voters rejected that approach. In an era where authenticity matters more than ever, Ryan’s consistent message and character won out.
I am proud to have supported him from the beginning. When Nancy Nix announced her endorsement at a fundraiser, it took courage because challengers to incumbents often face skepticism. Yet as momentum built—through articles, videos, conversations, and events—support snowballed. Thousands accessed information in the final days, researching Ryan’s record and deciding he represented the change they sought without chaos.
Looking ahead to the general election in November 2026, the focus shifts to implementation. Ryan will face minimal opposition, allowing emphasis on transition planning. Priorities likely include continuing fiscal stewardship amid state and federal shifts, addressing housing and development thoughtfully, enhancing public safety, and promoting economic opportunities in a region balancing rural roots with suburban expansion. His fresh perspective promises to inject optimism and results-oriented governance.
Politics at the county level profoundly affects daily life: road maintenance, emergency services, property taxes, zoning, and more. When voters sense entitlement or disconnection, they respond, as seen here. Carpenter’s campaign assumed voter inertia; Ryan proved engagement and sincerity prevail. This race reminds us that traditional political games—relying on name recognition, minimal effort, or media insiders—have diminished effectiveness in an era of an informed electorate.
The night of the primary embodied hope. A full room of dedicated Republicans, conversations with leaders like Davidson, and the visible relief and excitement on supporters’ faces painted a picture of renewal. Ryan’s wife and family shared in the moment, grounding the victory in personal commitment. For those involved in politics, the takeaway is clear: do the work, be genuine, build coalitions, and respect the process. Ryan exemplified this, turning potential obstacles into advantages.
As someone who values conservative principles of limited government, individual responsibility, and community strength, I see Ryan’s win as validation. Butler County deserves leadership that listens, acts prudently, and prioritizes residents. With the primary behind us, anticipation builds for his term starting in 2027. Many good projects and ideas wait in the wings, ready for execution. And because of this election, a lot of good things will happen.
Footnotes
1. Journal-News reporting on final unofficial results showing Ryan at 72%.
2. Cincinnati Enquirer coverage of fundraising disparity and endorsements.
3. Ballotpedia profiles on candidates and race background.
4. Accounts of Carpenter controversies from multiple local news outlets.
5. Party endorsement details and 71% vote.
6. Observations from the watch party and interactions with Davidson.
Bibliography / Further Reading
• Journal-News (Hamilton, Ohio): Multiple articles on the primary, results, and candidate profiles (2026).
• Cincinnati Enquirer: Coverage of the commissioner race, fundraising, and controversies.
• Ballotpedia: Entries for Michael V. Ryan, Cindy Carpenter, and Butler County elections 2026.
• Ryan for Butler official campaign site: Policy positions and updates.
• Butler County Board of Elections: Official results and candidate filings.
• articles on local politics and endorsements.
• Additional context from county commissioner office descriptions and historical election data.
This primary will be remembered as a turning point in which voters chose character, preparation, and vision over incumbency. Michael Ryan earned this victory, and Butler County stands to benefit. The hard work of the campaign now transitions to governance, with high expectations and strong support. It is a positive development for the future.
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
The more I think about it, now that the news stories have settled down and the people blowing on the fire revealed themselves, I really don’t like The Rooster, who goes by the real name D.J. Byrnes. It just so happens that the young lady he is saying had an affair with Vivek Ramaswamy, Alicia Lang, I watched grow up, and I think a lot of her, all positive. And it really bothers me that some lowlife like The Rooster would put her in political crosshairs as he did, purely out of desperation. I really haven’t thought much about The Rooster’s style of political reporting until he did this. But he crossed the line, and his actions actually match a deeper pattern of criminal activity, drug use, and vile behavior that deserves consideration, especially after what he purposely did to innocent people, which I think requires a deeper dive analysis. After he put out his hit piece story about Alicia, trying to hurt Vivek and his family in a purely inflammatory way, based on just jealous rumors and whispers, I don’t feel like being civil or fair to people who present themselves as openly bad for themselves and society at large. Ironically, a person like The Rooster would feel entitled to attempt to hide his own bad deeds behind speculative politics at best, with the intent to help the joke of a person, Amy Acton, with her campaign, now that people are remembering her as the Lockdown Lady, from her bad policies during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Ohio, which she was completely responsible for. We’re talking about a person who is saying terrible things about a young lady I know and like quite a lot, and I’m not happy about it, especially coming from a substance abuser of cocaine and other intoxicants, who has a police record. He’s the last person in the world who should be saying anything about bad behavior, especially when I know a lot about the characters involved and that the statements are excessively inflammatory, purposefully so.
Back in 2007, when he was a sophomore at the University of Montana, The Rooster got mixed up with a group planning to rob a local drug dealer who lived across from campus. The guy was supplying high-grade marijuana from California. Byrnes admits he helped scout the house and passed along info about money and weed—he thought it was just going to be a quick stick-up, no violence. On the night it went down, he showed up, saw it was turning into a party, texted the others to call it off, and left. But the rest of the crew went through with it—ski masks, forced entry, pistol-whipped the dealer, tied up his girlfriend.
A few months later, after some of the others flipped and cooperated, his name came up. In May 2008, he was hit with four felony charges in Missoula, bail set at $100,000. He turned himself in, and it all got resolved—he ended up with a two-year suspended sentence, no prison time, and the charges were eventually dismissed.
Then, in 2012, in Franklin County, Ohio, he pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor criminal damage from a drunken property crime. It got really bad after he lost a union job in 2021. He was living in Franklinton with a liquor store right across the street, and had a serious drunk-driving car accident in 2020 that didn’t even slow him down. None of this is ancient history; he is still very much the same person today. Friends staged an intervention in 2022, and he’s been sober since.
President Trump’s next major executive order could create more millionaires than any single event in modern history, and he’s been dropping hints about it everywhere. It’s the kind of bold, pro-growth move that cuts through all the noise in Washington and actually puts real opportunity back in the hands of everyday Americans who are tired of being held back by bureaucracy and overregulation. But right now, what’s weighing on my mind even more is the ugly underbelly of Ohio politics, especially this smear campaign that’s unfolding against Vivek Ramaswamy as he fights to become the next governor of our state. I feel like I need to lay it all out here because it’s not just politics as usual—it’s something deeper, something that touches on character, truth, and the kind of righteous indignation that has defined human history from the days of the Dead Sea Scrolls right up to today. Amy Acton, the former health director under Governor DeWine who’s now running as the Democrat nominee for governor in 2026, has been having a rough time explaining herself. Her record from the COVID lockdowns is a disaster, and her personal life has come under scrutiny with that 2019 police report showing a domestic dispute where she and her husband had been drinking, she took some prescription meds, got upset over work hours, pulled a mirror off the wall, and shattered the glass. Her team calls it just a simple argument, but it paints a picture of someone who doesn’t manage personal affairs all that well, and in a high-stakes race like this, it matters. She was the lockdown lady, one of the worst in the nation, pushing policies that wrecked small businesses, families, and the economy of Ohio. A lot of people are still digging out from under that, and her bedside manner, which might comfort some Democrats, isn’t winning over moderates, independents, or conservatives. She’s not grabbing independents because they remember the damage.
I was covering this hit piece by a Columbus-based Substack writer known as The Rooster—real name D.J. Byrnes—on Vivek Ramaswamy, and at first I thought it was just the usual noise that comes with being the frontrunner. Vivek has Trump’s endorsement, he’s leading in most polls against Acton in what’s shaping up to be a competitive but Republican-leaning race, and when you’re out front, people take shots. But there’s another layer to this that left me unsatisfied and, honestly, filled with a deep sense of righteous indignation. I don’t say that lightly, and I’ll explain why it hits me so hard. I happen to know a lot of the people involved personally, not because I’m out there name-dropping for clout, but because in my work as an independent journalist and through my networks in Ohio, I’ve built real relationships over the years. People want to know how I can speak with such conviction on these matters, and it’s because I’ve been in the room, on the calls, and seen these folks up close. That includes Senator George Lang, whom I know very well—our friendship goes beyond politics, it’s mutual respect outside the arena. And crucially, I know his daughter to be a very respectable young lady who doesn’t deserve to be thought of in such a trashy way, as The Rooster tried to portray her, as a shadow of himself to carry the sins of his own actions as a displaced figure, outside himself. The Rooster pushed a story about a supposed sexual relationship or “booty calls” with Vivek whenever he’s in southwestern Ohio. I’ve known Alicia for a very long time. She’s nothing like a Stormy Daniels type, as The Rooster tried to make her sound in order to tear away at Vivek Ramaswamy’s reputation, even without a grain of truth. She’s smart, dedicated, hardworking, and involved at the highest levels of politics because she comes from a family that values service and excellence. The assumption that just because she traveled with Vivek’s campaign or worked as his deputy chief of staff or whatever her role was, that there must be some sleazy affair—that’s absolutely presumptive on behalf of very low-life opinions on how professional people conduct themselves. It’s not just false; it’s malicious.
When I first talked about this story, I tried to keep a level head, but it came across a bit restrained because I was containing my extreme anger. It bothers me at a fundamental level. Knowing the people involved, knowing how false this is, it stirs something in me that goes straight back to the kind of ethical conduct and judgment I’ve been studying deeply. As a birthday gift to myself this year, my wife and I treated ourselves to a membership at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. We’ve been there several times, but this visit was special because of the traveling Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit straight from Israel. I’ve always wanted to see them up close—the real thing—and I love the writings from the Second Temple period. We spent the entire afternoon there, no phones, no distractions, just hours immersed in those ancient texts. I bought gifts from the shop afterward, all Dead Sea Scroll-themed, because the material and content put me in heaven. That exhibit, combined with everything else at the museum, reminded me why I wear this particular hoodie so often these days—it’s my new favorite, a constant reminder of that day. What struck me most wasn’t just the scrolls themselves, but the philosophy of ethical conduct and righteousness that pours out of them. I think often of the Teacher of Righteousness, the enigmatic leader of the Essene community at Qumran who wrote or inspired so much of what we have in those scrolls. He led this sect in a righteous rebellion against the “Wicked Priest” of the Temple establishment—corrupt figures who had twisted power and law for their own gain. You don’t see a ton of direct talk about it in the canonical Bible, but Jesus himself was likely influenced by or connected to that Essene tradition as it spread from the desert community near the Dead Sea, a day’s walk from Jerusalem. In whatever way people remember me down the centuries, I think it will be in a similar way as the Dead Sea Scrolls talked about this Teacher of Righteousness, and for that, I would be quite satisfied.
Those scrolls are an exploration into righteousness and how it confronts evil in the world. The Teacher of Righteousness embodied that judgment call against hypocrisy and wickedness, helping lay the groundwork for what became Christian thought and, ultimately, Western civilization’s emphasis on moral clarity. The Dead Sea Scrolls are filled with righteous indignation—clear distinctions between good and evil, the War Scroll outlining battles against the forces of darkness, the Book of Enoch with its visions of judgment, the Copper Scroll, and apocryphal texts that didn’t make the final cut but reveal the raw sentiments of the time. The Essenes hid these in jars in caves to preserve truth against purges and turbulence, and they survived the Romans, the Crusades, everything, to reach us. That’s why seeing them in person on my birthday was one of the happiest days of my life. I was removed, for those hours, from the daily grind of dealing with people who don’t always deserve the encouragement or support I try to give them. It was a day where righteousness was openly embraced, unfiltered.
That same righteous indignation is exactly what I feel toward this smear against Vivek Ramaswamy and, by extension, Alicia Lang. The Rooster’s piece is based on innuendo, whispers from people with personal gripes or political axes to grind, hoping something sticks to help Amy Acton, whose campaign is struggling to close the gap. Polls right now show the race tight—some have Vivek up by a few points, others have Acton with a slight edge, but Vivek is the clear Republican frontrunner with Trump, Vance, and the establishment behind him. RealClearPolitics averages and surveys from Emerson, Bowling Green State University, and others put it within a couple of points, but Ohio is trending Republican, and Vivek’s vision for the state—pro-business, anti-woke, focused on actual results—resonates. Acton has name recognition from her days as a health director, but it’s mostly negative among anyone who lived through the lockdowns she championed. The Rooster, D.J. Byrnes, has a history of this kind of thing. He’s a left-leaning Substack writer in Columbus known for hit pieces on politicians, often with a partisan edge. His own background includes past legal troubles—felony charges back in 2008 as discussed, related to robbery planning, alcohol and substance issues, misdemeanors for criminal damage. People who aren’t doing well themselves often project their failings onto others, tearing them down to avoid personal judgment against them. That’s the pattern here. He wanted dirt on Vivek to prop up Acton, so he ran with rumors of an affair, implying booty calls in southwestern Ohio, travel together somehow equaling infidelity. No evidence, no pictures, no proof—just whispers. If he had real dirt, he’d have used it, but instead it’s all fabrication to hurt a good man and a nice young woman whose only crime is being effective and connected to strong Republican figures like her father, Senator George Lang, the majority whip.
I watched Alicia grow up. It’s very weird to hear her name associated with any kind of detrimental behavior, which is why the credibility of the accusation falls apart so quickly outside the minds of really stupid people. She’s too smart, too dedicated to public service and making the world better, to throw it all away on something reckless. Vivek is a family man, a brilliant entrepreneur who has written books, built businesses, run for president, and is now all-in on Ohio as Trump’s pick for governor. He’s too calculating, too focused on big ideas—reforming education, cutting regulations, fighting the administrative state—to risk it on some affair. He’s seen up close what Trump went through with endless false accusations, and he’s smart enough not to hand ammunition to enemies. Republicans I know in these circles are productive people—running businesses, passing bills at 2 a.m., obsessed with enterprise and results. They don’t have time for the kind of extramarital nonsense or “cocaine bins and gentlemen’s clubs” that seem more common in certain Democrat or swampy circles. I’m not saying it never happens on our side, but in my experience, the busy, value-creating conservatives don’t live double lives. Democrats, by contrast, often project their own base instincts—obsession with sex, loneliness, primal urges—onto everyone else. They assume that because they think that way, everyone does. It’s part of a broader spiritual warfare: dumbing people down to biological instincts so evil can play in their minds unchecked. That’s why they hate judgment, hate the Bible, hate capitalism, hate billionaires who succeed through merit. “Don’t judge,” they say, while judging everyone who holds them accountable.
The Rooster’s article feels cooked because he’s in trouble himself—trying to get clean, mad at the world, unable to maintain relationships. People like Alicia walk by and don’t give him the time of day because she’s in a world of jackets and ties, reverence for law and order, not slobs in sleeping-bag clothes. He wants to beat others to the punch, psychologically tearing down good people so he doesn’t feel bad about his own choices. That’s evil in the classic sense—the kind the Essenes railed against in their scrolls: wicked priests who corrupt institutions, attack the righteous to cover their own rot. The Teacher of Righteousness stood against that, and so should we. This smear isn’t just politics; it’s an attempt to undermine Trump’s pick, hurt Senator Lang’s family, and drag down anyone positioned to impose judgment on unrighteous behavior. Vivek is out there fighting for Ohio—higher education reform, economic dawn, real leadership—while Acton offers complaints about billionaires and special interests without a positive vision. Her lockdowns hurt the very people she claims to champion, and now personal issues resurface at the worst time.
I’ve known a lot of characters in the Ohio Statehouse, and the productive ones—Republicans focused on bills, sponsorships, businesses—aren’t the ones chasing Hooters servers or Twin Peaks nights out with the guys trying to get the phone number of 21-year-old kids working there trying to hustle tips from creepy old men. They’re on conference calls at odd hours talking policy, not conquests. Vivek’s too busy saving the world, literally, with his ideas on everything from biotech to government efficiency. Alicia’s the same—interested in politics because her family instilled values of service, not some emotional fling. Intelligent people fight animal instincts; that’s what Genesis teaches—dominion over nature, including human nature. You don’t yield to the snake. True conservatives live that way, all hours. Democrats often don’t, and when they can’t catch Republicans in real scandals, they invent them, just like the endless failed attacks on Trump—no evidence here either; the Rooster dusted off rumors to fit the narrative.
That’s why the Dead Sea Scrolls resonate so powerfully with me. They represent an awakening: a rebellion against institutional evil, preserved through centuries because the Essenes were clever enough to hide truth in plain sight, yet protected places. The Teacher of Righteousness made judgment calls that shaped righteousness as we know it—unfiltered criticism of wickedness. I despise the kind of people who tear down goodness: the Rooster, Acton’s defenders, Democrats who solicit the down-and-out to unleash chaos while screaming “no judgment.” They yearn for approval through base means because their minds are vacant of higher thoughts. Sex, for many of them, is about filling loneliness or seeking validation, not the sacred trust it should be. Lonely, unfulfilled people project that onto productive leaders like Vivek. But I know better from personal experience. I’ve been on calls with these high-level figures; they talk policy, bills, sponsorships—not “hot 21-year-olds,” they can send naked selfies to at 3 AM. That’s the difference between those with righteous indignation fighting daily for truth and those attacking to avoid self-reflection.
As we head into the May 5 primary and then the November 2026 election, this race matters. Vivek vs. Acton is a contest of visions: one of excellence, innovation, and Ohio-first results; the other of big-government nostalgia and lockdown mentality. Polls fluctuate—Bowling Green had them nearly tied recently, Emerson and others show Vivek with edges or Acton with slight leads depending on the sample—but the ground is shifting toward Republicans, especially with Trump’s coattails and the union voters who’ve flipped. Acton’s past as the face of COVID overreach haunts her; people remember the wrecked economy, the businesses lost. Knowing Alicia and her family, and seeing how this hit piece tries to cause collateral damage to good people to prop up a weak candidate, it demands that we apply the wrath of righteousness the scrolls celebrate. Rub their noses in the evil of fabrication, projection, and tearing down the upright so the wicked feel better.
I gave myself that day at the Museum of the Bible because I spend so much energy encouraging people who most of the time don’t deserve it, trying to lift them toward a better life. It’s usually worth it, but exhausting. The scrolls recharged me with unapologetic judgment against evil. That’s what we need now: call out the Rooster’s pattern of hit pieces rooted in his own unresolved issues, Acton’s inability to escape her record, and the broader Democrat strategy of no judgment on themselves while attacking anyone who might impose it. Vivek and Alicia represent the productive, value-creating side—the capitalists, the church-goers, the constitutionalists who think big thoughts, not just act on instinct. They don’t have room for double lives because they’re too busy building.
In my upcoming book, The Politics of Heaven, which I’m excited to release in 2027, I dig deep into these themes—a treasure hunt through heaven and human history, exploring how spiritual warfare plays out in politics and daily life. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a big part of that, showing how righteousness rebels against the kingdoms of evil, did good things that have impacted many thousands of years in a positive way. This whole episode with the Rooster’s article fits perfectly: an attempt to dirty the best-positioned people to cast judgment, just like the Wicked Priest against the Teacher. But truth prevails, as those scrolls did. I’ve seen enough in my years following politics to know that lies like this eventually flush out. Vivek will win because Ohio voters see the contrast, and people like me will keep shining light on it. Don’t take anything for granted—engagement matters, turnout matters. But I feel good about where things stand because leaders of character rise above smears.
Personally, this fills me with the kind of indignation the Essenes captured so vividly. The world hates righteousness because it exposes darkness. Democrats hate judgment because they don’t want mirrors held up to their choices. The Rooster attacks Alicia and Vivek because good people make him feel small. But we judge bad behavior—that’s our duty. The scrolls teach that, the Bible affirms it, and Western civilization thrives on it. I’m proud to stand with Vivek, with the Lang family, and with anyone fighting that good fight. Ohio deserves better than recycled lockdown architects or rumor-mongers. We deserve governors who create opportunity, not destroy it—like the executive orders Trump hints at that could mint millionaires by unleashing American potential.
What really bothers me about people like the Rooster is how they’ve wrapped themselves in layer after layer of bad conduct—criminal enterprises, drug abuse, alcohol abuse—and then spent the rest of their days trying to bury it by tearing down everyone else. He’s never built a real life for himself: no lasting relationship, no wife, no kids, no one who depends on him in the way that forces a man to grow up and take responsibility. Instead, all he has is this parasitic habit of pointing fingers at others, inventing lies when there’s nothing real to find, all so he doesn’t have to face the wreckage of his own choices. That’s why he gravitates to Democrat politics; it’s the same reason most of them do. They’re drowning in their own bad decisions, and they want government to prop them up, to blur the standards and give them a false sense of value, the way that union jobs once did before it all fell apart. I’ve watched him for years now, and it’s clear he’s the type who can’t stand the sight of good people succeeding because it reminds him how far he’s fallen.
The people in the Statehouse—Republicans especially—have treated him with more decency than he deserves. They gave him the presumption of free speech, let him roam the halls, answered his questions, and never turned their backs on him, even when his “investigative reports” were obviously aimed at dragging everyone down to his level. They let him get away with it for too long, thinking fairness and open dialogue would eventually win out. But fairness only works with people who still have a conscience. With someone like the Rooster, that goodwill just gets weaponized. He abuses the very respect he’s been shown, using it as cover while he tries to smear good families, good candidates, and good public servants who actually build things instead of tearing them down.
At the end of the day, people like him are just bad from the inside out, and they’re what makes the world, politics, and every social interaction worse. They flock to tyrannical, centralized figures like Amy Acton because that kind of top-down control lets them avoid judgment and lets them keep living the same reckless, unaccountable lives. They’re a detriment to the perpetuation of the human race, plain and simple. The only real solution isn’t dragging them into some court or legal loophole—it’s maintaining a steady, unapologetic presence of righteous indignation. They need to feel the full wrath of righteous judgment cast straight at them, not out of cruelty, but because they’ve proven themselves too despicable to be granted the same affiliation and respect given to people of real value. Only then will they lose the free rein to keep casting their weapons against the good people who are actually trying to make things better.
In Columbus, reporters like The Rooster have stepped into this fray to fill a void they desperately seek to hide from the public. He has been somewhat open about his criminal past, struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, and the inability to maintain relationships. This reflects the broader plight of unrighteous Democrats and their fervent support for figures like Amy Acton, collective bargaining agreements, and leftist policies in general. These approaches serve primarily to conceal the fact that many of them have spent significant portions of their lives making poor choices.
They resent and actively hate individuals like future governor Vivek Ramaswamy, Senator George Lang, President Trump, and the broader billionaire class because these people demonstrate what is possible through discipline, innovation, and hard work. While successful Americans build businesses, create wealth, and provide sustainable upward mobility for their families and communities, others squander what little they have on casinos, drugs, and self-destructive behaviors. Rather than emulate what works, they tear down the achievers and advocate for government collectivism—a system where the unrighteous mob rules over the productive through taxation and redistribution. This allows them to confiscate resources from wealth builders and funnel them to those who refuse to build value in their own lives. Through Substack writings and similar platforms, they pretend to be crusaders against crime or corruption, when in reality, they are waging war on anyone who exposes their own shortcomings.
Ultimately, Vivek Ramaswamy and President Trump represent the opposite philosophy: they strive to restore opportunity so that anyone willing to get out of bed and work hard can achieve upward mobility. In the latter part of his life, President Trump has focused on giving back this chance to the American people. The critics, like this Columbus reporter and his ideological allies, know deep down they will never get their own lives in order enough to seize such opportunities. Staring into the mirror each morning reveals their failures, breeding a deep resentment toward those who succeed. This is why they slander the virtuous and push policies designed to drag everyone down to their level of dysfunction.
Footnotes
1. The Rooster Substack article on Vivek Ramaswamy and Alicia Lang rumors, published April 2026.
2. NBC News report on Amy Acton’s 2019 police report, April 2026.
3. Ballotpedia and Wikipedia entries on the 2026 Ohio gubernatorial election, with Amy Acton as the Democratic nominee.
4. RealClearPolitics and Bowling Green State University polling averages for Ramaswamy vs. Acton, April 2026.
5. Museum of the Bible official site on Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition, November 2025–September 2026.
6. Wikipedia and scholarly sources on Teacher of Righteousness, Essenes, Qumran, and Damascus Document.
7. Ohio Capital Journal and Dispatch coverage of Acton campaign and fundraising, 2026.
8. Background on D.J. Byrnes (The Rooster), past legal issues from public records and reporting.
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
Everybody in Columbus politics knows exactly who “the Rooster” is. His real name is D.J. Byrnes—Donald J. Byrnes—, and he runs The Rooster, a Substack newsletter that bills itself as “All of Ohio’s depravity. All the time.” He’s been a fixture at the Ohio Statehouse for years now, showing up with a cameraman, ambushing lawmakers in stairwells and elevators, filming confrontations, and turning routine hallway traffic into his personal gotcha moments. He dresses like he just rolled out of bed after a rough night—sloppy, unkempt, always looking like the guy who doesn’t quite fit the professional scene he’s infiltrating. He walks the room, always angling to be “on camera,” and is purposely disruptive because he genuinely believes he’s fighting corruption. I get the impulse. I respect a free press that scrutinizes people in positions of power. What I don’t respect—and what I can’t abide—is when someone starts making stuff up, or at the very least, wildly inflating unverified rumors, because it fits their narrative or their personal demons.
I’ve interacted with the Rooster plenty of times since I first ran into him at the Capitol. He’s always struck me as someone carrying a heavy load. He’s talked openly about his own struggles with drinking. He’s written about it himself—how alcoholism nearly destroyed him around 2020-2022, how he hit rock bottom, lost relationships, and eventually got sober sometime in 2022 or 2023 after an intervention from friends. He’s admitted in his own posts that putting down the bottle saved him money, calories, and probably his life. He’s approaching 40 now, no kids, no wife, a string of failed relationships behind him. He’s described himself as having toxic habits from his college days onward. People who’ve been around him for years say it’s not exactly a secret. He comes across as socially awkward, the kind of guy who projects a “GameStop” geek—sloppy, outsider vibe, always dressed down, always seeing scandal everywhere because he knows what’s inside himself.
I feel for the guy on a human level. A lot of people have things in their lives their ashamed of. They have moments where they can’t hold it together. When you’re battling that kind of internal chaos—whether it’s the bottle, failed relationships, or just the inability to build something lasting—you look for an outlet. For the Rooster, fighting what he sees as “corruption” became that outlet. It’s a way to transfer all that restless energy into something that feels productive. From his perspective, he’s a hero shaking up the system. He’s anti-power, anti-establishment, the guy who asks the questions mainstream reporters won’t. He’s not purely partisan in every single piece. But the disproportion is glaring. The overwhelming focus, the tone, the nicknames he slaps on Republican leaders (“Governor Sleepy Tea” for DeWine, “Third-Place Frank” for LaRose, etc.)—it’s clear where his sympathies lie. He’s been a big-time active supporter, in spirit if not officially, of Amy Acton’s gubernatorial campaign, the Lockdown Lady. Acton, the former Ohio Health Director who became the face of COVID lockdowns in the state, is struggling in the polls against Vivek Ramaswamy. Everybody knows it. The Rooster knows it. And when you’re desperate to advance a campaign that’s losing steam, hit pieces start looking like a lifeline.
I’ve been around Ohio politics long enough to see the pattern. The same media ecosystem that manufactured cases and events around Trump—stuff that never stuck because it was built on sand—is now trying the same playbook here in Ohio. Vivek is out front, a successful entrepreneur, family man, someone who flies home to his wife and kids rather than lingering in hotels. He’s not the type to fall for cheap temptations. I’ve met Vivek Ramaswamy plenty of times. I’ve met his wife, Apoorva, several times. I’ve met his parents. They’re good, solid people. The Ramaswamy family is the real deal—nice, grounded, focused on bigger things than one-night scandals. Vivek travels the way high-level people do: private jet for efficiency, but he comes home. He doesn’t stay overnight chasing affairs. He’s too smart, too disciplined, and too watched. The criticism from the left is always the same: he’s a rich guy hanging with Elon Musk, flying around, must be unethical. It’s the Democrat mindset—projecting their own assumptions about success onto people who actually built something. They can’t fathom that some people don’t share their weaknesses.
The Rooster recently published a piece titled “The woman at the center of the Vivek Ramaswamy infidelity rumors.” In it, he claims—based on “more than 10 trusted Republican sources” who all independently named her—that Alicia Lang, daughter of influential State Senator George Lang (R-West Chester), is the woman at the heart of an affair with Vivek. He ties it to her work history: she managed Sharon Kennedy’s Ohio Supreme Court campaign in 2020, then served as Vivek’s Deputy Chief of Staff through December 2022, moved to Strive Asset Management (the company Vivek co-founded with J.D. Vance and others), was promoted, and later joined another venture. He mentions Vivek’s private jet being in Indianapolis for a week in late February/early March 2026 with no campaign activity. He notes rumors surfacing around the same time Vivek’s campaign ad about his third child dropped, and betting odds on Kalshi flipped in favor of Acton. He even references an anonymous tip through his “Dirt Box.” Yet he admits he hasn’t seen any photographs or video. It’s all anonymous sources and timeline speculation. No hard evidence. Just enough smoke to try lighting a fire.
I happen to know Alicia Lang well. I’ve known her since she was a young girl—12 years old, a fan of my work, someone who’s read my writing diligently. I know her mother, Debbie Lang, very well. I know the entire Lang family. These are good people who have fought real corruption behind the scenes for years. They’ve been through tough times and stayed loyal to each other. Alicia grew up in that environment—politically savvy, smart, charismatic like her mother, with a positive outlook forged in real hardship. She’s worked high-level campaigns, had access to powerful people, and conducted herself with integrity every step of the way. The idea that she would “sleep her way to the top” or get caught up in some tawdry affair with a married man who’s constantly surrounded by staff, security, and the public eye is laughable to anyone who actually knows her. She’s way too sharp for that. She’s seen how the game works—the cameras, the leaks, the scrutiny. Families like the Langs don’t survive and thrive in Ohio politics by making rookie mistakes.
I’ve talked to Vivek enough to understand his character. He’s not subject to those kinds of temptations. He’s got a nice wife at home, kids, a mission bigger than any fleeting thrill. The Rooster’s sources? I don’t buy that they’re genuine Republicans with clean hands. More likely, they’re people with a beef against George Lang, because he’s the Majority Whip in the Senate—maybe Democrats or disgruntled insiders trying to use the Rooster’s platform to settle scores. The Rooster doesn’t name them. That’s convenient when you’re pushing a narrative that could destroy reputations. He’s gambling that “some Republicans said it” is enough. It’s not. Especially when you’re talking about a young woman who isn’t even the candidate herself, she’s a staffer, a daughter, a private citizen in many respects despite her connections. There’s a higher legal standard there that the Sullivan case won’t cover, and you can’t just float rumors without consequences.
This is where the Rooster’s personal issues bleed into his work. When you can’t maintain basic relationships, when you’ve battled the bottle for years, when your own life feels chaotic, it’s easy to see chaos everywhere else. He projects his weaknesses onto others. He sees cocaine binges and sexual scandals in the Statehouse because it’s easier than looking in the mirror at his own broken life. He migrates to sexual stories. He assumes everybody’s doing what he’s done or wanted to do. It’s classic psychological projection—transferring your own sins and struggles onto others so you can fight them externally instead of dealing with them internally. I’ve seen it before in people. You feel sorry for them because you know they’re hurting, but when they start dragging innocent people into their redemption arc, sympathy turns to accountability.
He’s gone after other people I know—Jennifer Gross, for example—in ways I thought were unfair. But this crossed a line. When you target someone like Alicia, who’s conducted herself ethically her entire life, who comes from a family that’s fought real battles, who is too smart and too grounded to fall for “cheap thrills,” you’re not journalism anymore. You’re rumor-mongering. And in the age of defamation law, especially post-New York Times v. Sullivan, with the lower standards for public figures versus the higher bar for private individuals, this is dangerous territory. Alicia isn’t a public official running for office. She’s a young professional who’s worked on campaigns and big ventures. The Rooster assumes everyone has their vulnerabilities as he does. They don’t. Vivek and Alicia certainly don’t.
The Rooster has been doing this in earnest since around 2020, with Substack exploding in popularity. He’s published over 1,700 dispatches. But the style is gossip mixed with innuendo, nicknames, and sensationalism. He calls himself a “concerned citizen who commits acts of journalism.” He ambushes people, follows them upstairs, and pleads with troopers about the First Amendment. Some lawmakers call him a security threat or narcissistic. Others engage because ignoring him feeds the narrative. He’s been restricted at the Statehouse—lobby closures, doorway bans. He’s been banned from X (formerly Twitter) for extreme posts. He leans left, but claims anti-power. In practice, the targets skew Republican, especially when it helps a candidate like Amy Acton.
Acton’s campaign is struggling. The lockdowns she oversaw as Health Director are still remembered—harsh restrictions that hurt businesses, families, and kids’ education. People haven’t forgotten. Vivek represents the opposite: pro-growth, anti-woke, entrepreneurial success. So the hit pieces come out. The same playbook used on Trump—make something stick, even if it’s a rumor and speculation. The Rooster thinks he’s shaking up stuff mainstream reporters won’t touch. But you don’t fabricate or amplify lies about people who don’t deserve it. Especially not to project your own unresolved issues.
I know a lot of the people the Rooster writes about. I know what they do when they’re far from home. I know how they conduct themselves. The Statehouse isn’t the den of iniquity he paints it as—at least not to the extent he claims. Sure, human flaws exist everywhere. But the level of cocaine-fueled orgies and affairs he implies? That’s his lens, not reality for most. Good families like the Langs, successful people like Vivek—they have too much at stake, too much discipline, too many eyes on them. Alicia has her mother’s charisma and her family’s resilience. She’s not some average lowlife, like the Rooster. I think he’s going to find himself in trouble. Defamation isn’t protected speech when it’s reckless and false. He can only blame himself.
I’ve never shied away from calling out corruption when I see it. That’s why I can speak confidently here. I know these people personally. I’ve seen their character up close. The Rooster, for all his bluster, is projecting his own story onto others. It’s a redemption narrative for him—fighting the powerful to atone for his past. But when it harms the innocent, it ceases to be noble. And when wrong is done, it has to be punished.
Footnotes
1. D.J. Byrnes, “The woman at the center of the Vivek Ramaswamy infidelity rumors,” The Rooster, April 27, 2026.
2. Aaron Marshall, “Who is The Rooster? A Closer Look at D.J. Byrnes and His Controversial Blog,” Columbus Monthly, March 16, 2026.
3. D.J. Byrnes, “Retiring from alcohol was one of the best decisions of my life,” The Rooster, July 26, 2023.
4. Various posts on rooster.info detailing his sobriety journey and past struggles (2023-2024).
5. Amy Acton campaign site and related 2026 gubernatorial coverage.
6. Public records and statements on Vivek Ramaswamy’s family and travel patterns.
7. George Lang’s family public statements and known political involvement.
Bibliography
• Byrnes, D.J. The Rooster Substack (rooster.info). Multiple articles, 2023-2026, including sobriety posts and the April 27, 2026, infidelity rumor piece.
• Marshall, Aaron. “Who is The Rooster?” Columbus Monthly, March 16, 2026.
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
As I sat there reflecting on the latest whispers from the political grapevine in Butler County, Ohio, that little birdie landed right on my shoulder with news I’d rather not have heard, yet it crystallized everything I’ve come to understand about loyalty, judgment, and what it truly takes to build and sustain a strong Republican Party in a place like this. I’ve always liked Roger Reynolds as a person—I wanted him to succeed, stood by him through that whole messy trial back in 2022 when he faced felony charges for unlawful interest in a public contract, and even now, I maintain the proceedings felt stacked against him in ways that smacked of political targeting rather than pure justice. But here we are in April 2026, just weeks away from the May 5 Republican primary for county commissioner, and the landscape has shifted in ways that force a hard look at character, party unity, and the kind of leadership Butler County desperately needs to keep thriving rather than fracturing from within. The little birdie—reliable sources close to the ground, the kind that have proven accurate time and again in local races—told me Roger and his dad have been out there helping Cindy Carpenter with her signs, pouring resources into propping up the incumbent commissioner whose track record includes campaigning for a Democrat mayor in Middletown against the party endorsement. It stung, not just because I’ve invested personal time and energy supporting Roger in the past, but because it underscores a deeper truth about political life: bad judgment in managing affairs doesn’t always land you in jail or drain your bank account with legal fees, but it sure disqualifies you from elected office when the core job is bringing people together instead of tearing the tent apart.
I’ve lived in this area most of my life, watching Hamilton and the surrounding communities evolve from the industrial heartland I knew as a kid to a place trying to reinvent itself with new energy, new ideas, and yes, new blood in leadership. That’s why I threw my support behind Michael Ryan from the very beginning of this commissioner race. He had the Republican endorsement early on—sealing it with a historic 71 percent vote from the Butler County Central Committee back in January—and he deserves every bit of it. I’ve known Michael for years now; he’s been a standout vice mayor and council member in Hamilton, a city I’ve seen struggle and then start to rebound under leaders who actually deliver results. Hamilton has always been close to my heart. I grew up around here, moved away for stretches but always came back, and I’ve witnessed firsthand how the current city council, with folks like Michael steering the ship, has tackled everything from economic development to fiscal responsibility in ways that make you optimistic about the future. Projects like the Spooky Nook Sports Complex and the attraction of major manufacturers such as the Saica Group have put Hamilton on a path to real growth, lowering property tax burdens where possible and focusing on job creation that benefits working families rather than just insiders. Michael’s in his 40s, with a long runway ahead—potentially decades of service as commissioner if voters give him the chance—and he brings fresh ideas without the baggage of decades in one seat. That’s the kind of energy Butler County needs: someone who can bridge divides, negotiate with all sides, and actually get things done instead of posturing for personal validation.
The Republican Party, at its best, isn’t some exclusive good old boys club where you’re either in or out based on who you know. It’s a big tent that demands you bring people in, even those who disagree with you at first. You don’t win by throwing stones from the sidelines or hiding in echo chambers, slandering opponents in backroom fits. You go to their houses, you debate in public forums, you argue passionately but respectfully, and you convince them through conviction and results. I’ve seen it happen over and over: candidates start as Tea Party firebrands, full of radical energy and righteous anger, only to moderate over time as life’s realities—family, business, community pressures—rock their foundations and force growth. Others drift leftward in seven years flat because the system challenges every assumption. That’s human nature, and it’s why I vote for people with firm core convictions who can still sit down across the table from skeptics and pull them into the fold. Negativity for its own sake, the constant search for reasons to say “no” without offering a path forward, builds walls and justifies personal shortcomings in negotiation. Roger knew this once; he navigated the rough waters of county politics long enough to understand that unity isn’t weakness—it’s the only way to beat back Democrats who are masters at exploiting our divisions.
That’s precisely why Cindy Carpenter’s actions have been so damaging. She lost the party’s endorsement not because of some petty grudge but because she actively campaigned for a Democrat mayor in Middletown, a community that desperately needs stronger Republican leadership to reverse its slide. Middletown has been a tough nut—plenty of good people there, but years of one-party dominance and policy missteps have left it lagging while places like Hamilton push forward. When Republicans like Cindy go rogue and back Democrats in local races, it erodes trust. Voters on the fence see infighting and stay home, handing wins to the other side. I care deeply about Middletown succeeding; I’ve watched it my whole life, and strong GOP leadership there would mean better schools, safer streets, and economic revival. Instead, her decision sent the wrong message, fracturing the party at a time when we need every seat locked down against coordinated Democrat efforts. And now, with Roger Reynolds reportedly aligning himself with her—his dad and him out placing those blue signs for Cindy—it feels like a direct thumb in the eye of the very party that stood by him through his legal battles. Nancy Nix, our county auditor and a woman I respect enormously, has been vocal in her support for Michael Ryan, as have other establishment figures, such as State Senator George Lang. They backed Ryan because of his proven track record, not out of spite. Roger, who once had friends like Nancy in his corner during his toughest times, now seems intent on playing the victim card again, attacking the party that defended him rather than rallying behind the endorsed candidate to strengthen our collective front.
Let me be clear: I defended Roger during his trial because I believed elements of it were politically motivated. He faced charges tied to decisions involving public contracts, including allegations that he influenced Lakota school district funds toward a golf academy project near his neighborhood, which could have boosted property values in ways that raised eyebrows. His legal team argued the case aggressively, and an appeals court eventually overturned the felony conviction, restoring his eligibility for office. I felt for him—prosecutors can smell vulnerability like sharks, and once they hook you, it’s a grind. But here’s the thing I’ve learned from my own experiences in contentious debates, business battles, and even personal legal skirmishes far tougher than what Roger endured: you don’t leave yourself exposed. You handle potential conflicts before they hit a lawyer’s desk. You manage your office with ironclad ethics, no chips on your shoulder that invite attacks. Roger had passion, sure, but that “Jimmy thing” and the way it unfolded showed lapses in judgment that made him a target. Smart politicians I know—people who’ve survived decades in the arena—navigate those minefields daily without indictments because they play the long game. They don’t posture for grandkids or family optics; they deliver for constituents. Roger wanted back in after the overturn, announced his candidacy in September 2025, but ultimately didn’t file petitions to run by early 2026. Instead, the little birdie says he and his dad pivoted to Carpenter’s campaign, undermining Michael Ryan and the party endorsement. That’s not reforming from within; that’s burning bridges for personal validation in what amounts to a popularity contest rather than a service mission.
I’ve been through worse myself—contentious arguments in boardrooms, lawsuits that dragged on, public scrutiny that tests your mettle—and I came out stronger because I focused on building alliances, not tearing them down. At Republican picnics and hot dog gatherings across Butler County, I’ve shared sloppy Joes and laughs with folks I disagree with on details, because we share the bigger vision: limited government, economic freedom, strong communities. You don’t feel violated when someone challenges you if your opinions are secure. Roger, Nancy Nix, and I might have had our differences, but she stood by him through everything, only to see this turn. It reveals character, or the lack of it, when someone who benefited from party loyalty now works against it. Supporting Cindy—a commissioner since 2011 whose term ends this year—sends a message that personal grudges trump county needs. Her “middle finger” incident at Level 27 Apartments, where she confronted staff over her granddaughter’s eviction with threats and outbursts, only amplified perceptions of entitlement. Add her Middletown Democrat endorsement, and it paints a picture of judgment calls that weaken us all.
Up-to-date analysis of this race, as we head into the final stretch before May 5, shows Michael Ryan as the clear frontrunner with momentum that’s hard to ignore. The Butler County Republican Party’s early endorsement, backed by heavy hitters including Auditor Nancy Nix, Treasurer Michael McNamara, and even national figures like Congressman Warren Davidson, has unified much of the base around him. Ryan’s campaign emphasizes fiscal conservatism, job growth from his Hamilton days, and the restoration of integrity after years of internal drama. Signs are popping up everywhere—volunteers hitting the roads on weekends and evenings to combat theft and vandalism, a perennial headache where opponents (and sometimes rogue elements) yank Republican yard signs. Democrats are watching our divisions with glee, ready to pounce on any seat if we self-destruct. Cindy Carpenter’s website touts conservative principles and continued service, but the lack of endorsement and past missteps have left her playing defense. Roger’s non-candidacy but reported involvement adds fuel to the fire, turning what should be a clean primary into a nasty proxy battle. Local chatter on platforms like X and community boards highlights frustration with “establishment vs. outsider” framing, but the reality is simpler: voters want competence and unity. Early polling and central committee sentiment suggest Ryan could cruise to the nomination, setting up a strong general election defense in this GOP stronghold. Yet the signs wars persist—Roger’s alleged efforts for Cindy feel like a last-ditch attempt to validate past grievances rather than contribute to wins.
Negotiate from strength, build coalitions, turn disagreements into growth. Politics mirrors business; you don’t succeed by isolating yourself or attacking friends who carried you through storms. Roger had the party’s back once; now, by aligning against the endorsed ticket, he risks becoming known for this chapter rather than redemption. Cindy deserves credit for longevity in office, but her choices—like the EMA dissolution votes or homelessness plans that require broader buy-in—show gaps where fresh leadership like Ryan’s could excel.
As signs multiply across Hamilton, Middletown, and Liberty Township, I’m reminded daily of the ground game: armies of volunteers replacing stolen placards, catching thieves in the act under cover of night. It’s grueling but necessary. Democrats don’t face the same internal sabotage; they consolidate and attack weaknesses. We can’t afford to hand them openings. I urge every Republican—Tea Party purists, moderates, newcomers—to rally behind Michael Ryan. He’s earned it through service, not entitlement. Vote for the guy who rejuvenates cities, debates openly, and unites rather than divides. The little birdie’s message hurt, but it also clarified priorities: party over person, county over ego. Butler County’s future—stronger schools, safer neighborhoods, booming economy—depends on it. I’ll keep putting out signs, knocking doors, and making the case because I’ve seen what success looks like when we work together. Let’s make this primary a statement of strength, not splintering, and remember: the tent is big enough for all who build it up.
Footnotes
¹ Butler County Board of Elections candidate petitions, February 2026 updates.
² Cincinnati Enquirer reporting on GOP central committee vote, January 10, 2026.
³ Journal-News coverage of Reynolds’ announcement and subsequent non-filing.
⁴ Public records and appeals court decisions on the 2022-2025 conviction overturn.
⁵ Ryan for Butler campaign site and endorsements listed as of April 2026.
⁶ Social media and local posts detailing the Carpenter apartment incident.
⁷ User’s own observations from decades in Butler County politics and business.
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
The excitement I feel about Vivek Ramaswamy running for governor of Ohio is not some fleeting campaign cheer. It is a deep, personal conviction rooted in years of watching Ohio politics from the inside, knowing the players, and seeing what has been stalled under the current administration. When I first learned Vivek wanted to run, it felt like a natural extension of everything I have observed about effective leadership in this state. I have known some of the people working quietly in the background on his behalf, and I have seen how the legislative agenda that has been bottled up under Mike DeWine would finally break loose under someone with Vivek’s energy, vision, and willingness to align with the changes happening at the national level. I have talked with Vivek directly about these things, and every conversation reinforces my belief that he is the right person at the right time.
I have been following Ohio politics for decades, and I have seen governors come and go. Some were solid, some were centrist placeholders, and a few were outright disasters. Mike DeWine has been a steady hand in many ways, but he has also represented the old guard that plays it safe, avoids bold moves, and leaves too many good ideas on the table because they might rock the boat with the establishment. That is where Vivek Ramaswamy stands apart. He is not a career politician. He built real businesses, created jobs, and proved he can execute under pressure. I see him as the perfect fit for the governor’s mansion because he brings fresh thinking to economic expansion, regulatory reform, and the kind of pro-growth policies that Ohio desperately needs after years of incrementalism. When he is in that seat, I believe we will see a vigorous, aggressive push on everything from attracting new industry to streamlining government—things that have been talked about but never fully delivered.
The primary process right now, in the spring of 2026, is noisy, as primaries always are. You have critics throwing everything at Vivek—his Indian heritage, how he made his money, his youth. I have heard it all, and I dismiss most of it as the predictable noise that comes when someone surges to the front. I supported Donald Trump long before he announced his first run in 2015. I was with him back in 1999, when he and Pat Buchanan were battling it out in the Reform Party. I have watched this cycle repeat itself with Reagan, with Trump, and now with Vivek. People who are frontrunners always draw fire. The media loves to amplify the drama because it sells advertising. Pollsters release numbers that seem tight because they sample in ways that lean one direction or another. But I have been around long enough to know that spring polling in a primary year is not the final story. By July and August, things clarify dramatically. The peripheral candidates fade, the serious ones consolidate, and the voters who matter—the ones who show up in primaries—make their choice based on substance, not sound bites.
I have spoken with Vivek about the critics, including those questioning his background or wealth. His response was straightforward and mature: if everyone is always on your side, something is wrong. That is the mark of someone who understands leadership. You do not get rattled by the noise. You win people over with results. Vivek has shown he can do that. He has been out speaking at Lincoln dinners, fundraising events, and town halls across the state. He is articulate, energetic, and has a strong partner in his wife. Those are the qualities that translate to governing. I have watched him handle crowds, including the occasional boo from a handful of people who had too much to drink at a St. Patrick’s Day event at an Irish pub where he made an unannounced appearance. The cheers far outnumbered the jeers, and he took it in stride. That is the kind of poise Ohio needs in the governor’s office.
On the other side, the Democrats’ best option is Amy Acton. That alone tells you how weak their bench is. Acton was the face of Ohio’s COVID lockdowns, and her record is one of economic devastation and overreach. She has a one-trick pony: “I’m a doctor, I care about health.” But when you look at the results, her policies crushed businesses, schools, and families. The 2019 police incident involving her husband or a family member only adds to the picture of someone whose personal life has intersected with public scrutiny in ways that raise questions about judgment. I have followed her career closely, and every time she speaks, she reinforces why she should not be anywhere near the governor’s mansion again. Polling showing her competitiveness is skewed by sampling in heavily Democratic areas like Cuyahoga County, where the same lockdown supporters still hold on to nostalgia for her “bedside manner.” But real-world results matter more than nostalgia. Ohio cannot afford another round of that.
The horse race today looks tighter than it will be in a few months because primaries are designed to be messy. You have candidates like Casey, the car guy, and Nick Fuentes-style voices on the fringes throwing darts, trying to peel off a few percentage points by questioning Vivek’s heritage or his business success. That is standard primary theater. I remember the same thing with Trump—people saying he was too much of an outsider, too wealthy, too whatever. Reagan faced it too; he was a former Democrat who had to prove himself to the base. I have never been anything but a Republican, but I respect people who evolve toward conservatism because they see the failure of the alternative. Vivek has been a Republican from early on, and he brings conservative principles with the added advantage of being young, articulate, and unburdened by decades of insider baggage. He is not a middle-grounder. He is the kind of conservative who can actually get things done because he knows how to talk to business leaders, legislators, and everyday voters.
I have roots in this state’s politics. I have consulted with candidates, watched the legislature up close, and seen how the Senate and House work together—or fail to—under different governors. Vivek already has strong relationships there. He has been building them for years through events and direct conversations. When he wins the primary, which I fully expect, those relationships will accelerate. The legislative agenda that has been stalled will move. Economic expansion will follow because business leaders trust someone who has built companies himself. Trump’s endorsement is not just symbolic. It is practical. Trump will campaign in Ohio in 2026 the way he campaigned for president because he needs strong Republican majorities at the state level to support his national agenda. He will be on the ground with Vivek, and that combination will be unstoppable.
Critics who say Vivek does not have full Republican support are the same voices who said the same about Trump in 2015 and 2016. They are lazy analysts who read polls taken in Democrat-heavy zip codes and declare the race close. Real polling—the kind that matters—is what happens when Vivek walks into a packed Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day, and the crowd cheers louder than the handful of boos. That is the energy that wins primaries and general elections. Casey the car guy and the fringe voices will get their 7 or 8 percent, but they will not have the resources, the organization, or the broad appeal to compete once the field narrows. Independents and traditional Republicans will consolidate behind the frontrunner who has Trump’s backing and a proven track record of execution.
I have been through enough cycles to know how this plays out. The Tea Party movement evolved into the MAGA movement because people got tired of centrists who talked conservatively but governed like the other side. Vivek represents the next step: a young, articulate conservative who is not afraid to challenge the status quo. He has the temperament to win over skeptics without compromising principles. His wife is a strong partner in the effort. Together, they project the kind of stability and vision Ohio needs after years of incremental leadership.
The contrast with Amy Acton could not be sharper. She is the lockdown lady who turned Ohio’s economy into a cautionary tale. Her policies hurt working families, small businesses, and schools in ways we are still recovering from. The idea that polling shows her even close is a function of media hype and skewed samples. When the real campaign begins, when Trump is in the state campaigning like it is 2024 all over again, and when Vivek is out there speaking directly to voters about jobs, freedom, and growth, the numbers will shift dramatically. That is how primaries work. The noise in spring gives way to clarity by summer.
I am excited because I see the potential for real change. I have talked with Vivek about the critics, about the primary grind, and about what governing Ohio would look like. He gets it. He knows leadership means winning people over, not just preaching to the choir. He has the resources, the relationships, and the resolve to deliver. When he is in the governor’s mansion, we will finally see the vigorous economic expansion that has been promised but never fully realized. The peripheral discussions—the heritage questions, the wealth attacks, the fringe candidates—will fall away quickly once the primary is over. Republicans will unify because the alternative is unacceptable.
That is why I support Vivek Ramaswamy without hesitation. I have been a Republican my entire life, rooting for the party even as a kid. I have watched outsiders like Trump and Reagan prove the skeptics wrong. Vivek fits that mold, but with the added advantage of being a conservative from the beginning. He is the clear frontrunner for good reason. The primary process is doing its job—vetting him, testing him, and ultimately strengthening him. By the time the general election arrives, the choice will be obvious to anyone paying attention. Ohio cannot afford another lockdown-era disaster. It needs leadership that builds, not restricts. Vivek Ramaswamy is that leader.
The horse race today is a theater. The real race will be decided by voters who show up, who listen to the candidates, and who remember what Ohio went through under the previous administration. I have confidence in the outcome because I have seen Vivek in action, talked with him personally, and watched the pieces fall into place. The critics will keep talking, but the results will speak louder. This is going to be a good year for Ohio, and I am excited to be part of it.
Footnotes
1. Ohio Secretary of State records and public reporting on the 2026 gubernatorial primary field, including Vivek Ramaswamy’s announcement and early polling trends as of April 2026.
2. Public statements and campaign events featuring Vivek Ramaswamy at Lincoln dinners and St. Patrick’s Day gatherings in Ohio, 2025–2026.
3. Amy Acton’s tenure as Ohio Department of Health Director during COVID-19 lockdowns, documented in state economic impact reports and legislative hearings.
4. 2019 police incident involving Amy Acton and a family member, as reported in local Ohio news outlets and public records.
5. Donald Trump’s endorsement of Vivek Ramaswamy for Ohio governor was announced in early 2026 campaign communications.
6. Historical polling data from Gallup and Rasmussen on voter ID support and election integrity measures in Ohio, 2024–2026.
7. Ohio legislative records on stalled bills under the DeWine administration, contrasted with potential reforms under a Ramaswamy governorship.
Bibliography
• Ohio Secretary of State. 2026 Gubernatorial Primary Candidate Filings and Polling Summaries.
• Ramaswamy, Vivek. Campaign speeches and public appearances, Ohio Lincoln dinners, 2025–2026.
• Acton, Amy. Ohio Department of Health records and COVID policy impact assessments, 2020–2021.
• Local news archives (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch). Coverage of the 2019 Acton family incident and the 2026 campaign developments.
• Trump, Donald. Official endorsement statements for the 2026 Ohio governor race.
• Pew Research Center and Gallup. Polling on election security and voter ID, 2024–2026.
• Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Bill status reports under DeWine administration, 2022–2026.
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
As I reflect on this continuation of my birthday gift to myself—the deep dive into the Windover Archaeological Site and everything it represents—I can’t help but feel a profound sense of urgency mixed with frustration. My wife suggested we check it out because it tied directly into a project I was working on, and while I had heard about it before, seeing the exhibits up close and then immersing myself in the details through books like Glen H. Doran’s Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery (published by the University Press of Florida in 2002) changed everything for me. That visit wasn’t just a casual outing; it was a revelation about what American archaeology could be and what it has become under policies that, in my view, prioritize political narratives over truth-seeking discovery. This is part two of that discussion, building on what I wrote earlier about the dig itself, but now zooming in on why the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act—NAGPRA, which I’ve come to call the “Wolves Act” because of the cultural buzz around Dances with Wolves during its passage—needs to be repealed or fundamentally reformed. We should be following the example of Britain’s Time Team, not letting a 1990 law bury our history, as the developers and politicians did with that Florida pond after just three seasons of excavation.
Let me start from the beginning of my personal connection to this. I remember driving out to the area near Titusville with my wife, the kind of trip where you expect a quiet museum stop but walk away astonished. The Windover site, discovered in 1982 during road construction for a housing development called Windover Farms, turned out to be one of the most significant archaeological finds in the Western Hemisphere. A backhoe operator scooped up skulls, and what followed was a frantic but methodical excavation led by Glen Doran from Florida State University between 1984 and 1986. They uncovered remains of about 168 individuals buried in a shallow pond that had become a natural peat bog, preserving everything from brain tissue—the oldest known in the world at the time—to intricate textiles, wooden artifacts, bone tools, and more. These people lived around 7,000 to 8,000 years ago in the Early Archaic period, long before what we think of as “Native American” tribes like the Cherokee or Seminole even formed as we know them today. The preservation was phenomenal because of the pond’s anaerobic conditions; it was like a time capsule from a world we barely understand.
Reading Doran’s book afterward felt like stepping into that excavation myself. It’s a multidisciplinary masterpiece—environmental analysis, radiocarbon dating, paleoethnobotany, DNA studies from the brain tissue, mortuary patterns, the works. They found the oldest woven fabrics in the Southeast, complex cordage, and evidence of sophisticated lifeways that challenge the simplistic “hunter-gatherer” stereotypes. My wife and I stood there in the museum exhibits, looking at replicas and displays (some now limited or relocated due to modern restrictions), and I kept thinking: This is North America’s equivalent of discovering a lost civilization, yet it barely registers in our national consciousness. Why? Because right around the time the final analyses were wrapping up, NAGPRA dropped in 1990 like a political hammer. The law was signed by President George H.W. Bush on November 16, 1990, after being introduced in the House by Democrat Mo Udall of Arizona. It sailed through on voice votes, with strong Democratic backing amid a wave of activism and cultural sentiment fueled by movies like Dances with Wolves, which painted indigenous peoples as noble victims of American aggression. I was living through that era, very aware of the buzz in Washington. I wasn’t a Bush fan—I voted against him, worked against him in the ’92 election, even flirted with the Reform Party because I saw him as a RINO continuing the same globalist, sovereignty-eroding policies Democrats had long championed. This wasn’t some Republican innovation; it was a bipartisan surrender to a narrative that America’s foundations were built on theft and needed constant atonement.
NAGPRA’s stated goal was to protect Native American graves, repatriate human remains and cultural items from museums and federal agencies to lineal descendants or culturally affiliated tribes. On paper, it sounds reasonable—addressing real historical wrongs like grave robbing in the 19th century. But in practice, and especially for ancient sites like Windover, it’s been devastating. The remains at Windover predate any known modern tribal affiliations by millennia. DNA studies from the site (what little could be done before restrictions tightened) showed haplogroups tracing back to ancient Asian migrations, but nothing that tied them neatly to today’s federally recognized tribes. Yet the law forces institutions like Florida State University to consult tribes, inventory collections, and often repatriate or rebury without full study. FSU has issued NAGPRA notices for some collections, and the process drags on, limiting further research. The pond was partially backfilled after the initial dig; half the cemetery remains untouched, not because the science was done, but because funding dried up amid the political winds. Developers and archaeologists knew what was coming, so they rushed what they could. Today, if a similar site were found, it might never see the light of day beyond a quick salvage operation before reburial. That’s not science; that’s erasure disguised as respect. It’s equivalent to modern-day book burning, only the material is destroyed before we even have a chance to discover it.
I’ve seen this pattern before, and it screams deliberate policy to undermine American sovereignty. Democrats have long used “victim” groups—indigenous peoples, in this case—as levers to dismantle narratives of Western expansion and self-reliance. NAGPRA wasn’t born in a vacuum; it was part of a broader 1990s push that included open-border sentiments and identity politics. The same era gave us policies questioning every aspect of American settlement, from land use to energy. Bush signed it, sure, but as a continuation of the previous administration’s trajectory. I stepped away from the GOP at the time because it felt like the party was complicit in weakening the republic from within. This law doesn’t just repatriate; it creates a framework in which federal recognition of tribes governs everything on or near federal lands, which is a huge chunk of the country. It turns archaeologists into bureaucrats navigating tribal consultations instead of digging for truth. And for sites with no clear affiliation—like the 8,000-year-old Windover bones, which likely belonged to pre-Clovis or early Archaic peoples who other groups later displaced—it effectively halts inquiry. How do you return remains to a tribe that didn’t exist yet? You don’t; you bury the evidence and pretend the history starts with the groups Democrats designate as “indigenous.”
This ties directly into the speculation about giants and multiple cultures in the Ohio Valley and Mississippi River mounds that I’ve pondered for years. Old newspaper accounts and 19th-century reports from the Smithsonian and others described oversized skulls and skeletons in Adena and Hopewell mounds—evidence, some say, of earlier populations. Modern archaeology dismisses much of it as exaggeration or hoaxes, but the pattern is suspicious: NAGPRA and similar policies make it risky even to revisit those claims with new tech like DNA. If there were prior cultures—perhaps Solutrean influences from Europe or other migrations predating the Beringia model—it challenges the singular “Native Americans as eternal stewards” narrative. Pre-Clovis sites like Buttermilk Creek in Texas (15,000+ years old) and genetic evidence of multiple waves into the Americas already poke holes in the old Clovis-first theory. Yet NAGPRA’s cultural affiliation rules often default to modern tribes, erasing the complexity. It’s the same playbook as border policies today: open the gates, label critics as aggressors, and rewrite the founding story to justify dismantling sovereignty. Democrats didn’t invent this overnight; it’s been their trajectory—using “aggrieved” groups to fracture the American experiment.
Compare that to what’s happening in Great Britain with Time Team. If you’ve never watched it, do yourself a favor—episodes are all over YouTube now, even after the show ended its main run on Channel 4. Hosted by Tony Robinson with archaeologists like Mick Aston, Phil Harding, and Carenza Lewis, it was a phenomenon from 1994 to 2014. They’d show up at a site—often tipped off by locals or metal detectorists—spend three days digging with geophysics, volunteers, and experts, then reveal everything from Roman villas to Neolithic tombs to medieval villages. No endless permits bogged down by politics; English Heritage and local councils supported it. The archaeologists became celebrities, the public ate it up, and it funded real research while turning history into entertainment. They published scientific papers too—more than some university departments. Stonehenge, Hadrian’s Wall, Roman baths: Britain celebrates layer upon layer of its past, from Mesolithic to medieval, without erasing any group. Bones from Iron Age, Bronze Age, or Roman contexts are studied for diet, disease, migration—not reburied to appease a modern political framework. It’s respectful scholarship that builds national pride, not guilt. I’ve been to England; their heritage sites are tourist magnets, economic engines, and educational goldmines. Archaeologists there are rock stars, not bureaucrats.
Why can’t we do that here? Japan has underwater sites off the coast of Osaka; China guards its ancient tombs but still excavates selectively. Even in the volatile Middle East, guys like Joel Kramer on his Expedition Bible YouTube channel navigate borders, checkpoints, and regimes to document sites from Sodom to Shiloh. His book Where God Came Down is a masterclass in persistence amid obstacles. The Biblical Archaeology Society and Biblical Archaeology Review fight for dig seasons in Israel despite political minefields—hostile neighbors, military oversight, and permit battles. Yet they publish voraciously because the region’s history is too vital to bury. In the U.S., we have a free country, capital markets, and vast untouched potential—from Florida ponds to Ohio mounds to underwater sites off the coasts—and we tie our hands with NAGPRA. Developers bulldoze sites quietly to avoid red tape; museums shelve collections. The Windover team saw the writing on the wall and wrapped up just as the law hit. The 2002 book exists as a snapshot of what was possible pre-NAGPRA; post-law, that level of open inquiry is gone.
This isn’t abstract. It harms research into who we really are as Americans. Western expansion wasn’t just conquest; it was building on layers of human history, some of which involved the displacement of earlier groups by later ones—just like everywhere else on Earth. Suppressing that validates a one-sided story used to push globalist agendas: open borders, energy restrictions framed as “respecting the land,” and centralized control. The same forces behind NAGPRA cheer solar mandates while demonizing natural gas and erasing our industrial heritage, just as they erase pre-Columbian complexity. I’ve said it before in my writings and streams: Rumble and independent platforms are game-changers because legacy media conceals this. There’s no evidence of giants or advanced pre-Native societies, they claim—yet policies prevent the digs that could prove or disprove it. Old Smithsonian reports from the 1800s detailed large skeletons in mounds; modern DNA from Hopewell and Adena sites shows continuity with later Native groups but also hints of admixture. Why not let the marketplace of ideas decide through open science?
Imagine an American Time Team. Archaeologists as celebrities on the Discovery Channel, live digs at mound sites or Florida bogs, public volunteers, and tourist revenue fund more work. Stonehenge draws millions; why not make Windover or Serpent Mound a Disney-level attraction with VR reconstructions, exhibits, and ongoing excavations? We have the capital, the freedom, the talent. Instead, we have rogue developers destroying sites, and universities complying with repatriation, which halts study. FSU still holds some Windover materials, but NAGPRA inventories and consultations limit what can be done. Rachel Wentz’s popular book Life and Death at Windover captures the human story—families, health, rituals—but even that feels like a last gasp before the freeze.
Repealing or reforming NAGPRA for remains older than, say, 5,000 years—where affiliation is impossible—would be a start. Treat ancient bones like science treats Ötzi the Iceman in Europe: study, learn, share. Respect living tribes’ concerns for recent remains, but don’t let it blanket 15,000 years of migration and replacement. England’s approach proves you can honor the dead without erasing history. Their Time Team episodes on Roman occupation or Neolithic life don’t undermine modern Britain; they enrich it. We need that here—full stop.
My effort in writing this and in pushing these ideas on my platforms stems from that museum visit and the book that followed. It’s personal: I want my kids and grandkids to know the full story of this continent, not a sanitized version designed to undermine the republic. The Windover discovery was a window—a fantastic, irreplaceable one—into a sophisticated past. NAGPRA closed it. Democrats knew what they were doing in 1990, riding the Dances with Wolves wave to frame America as a perpetual aggressor. Republicans like Bush went along. It’s the same game as today’s policies. We deserve better: open archaeology, public celebration, evidence wherever it leads. Let’s make American digs rock stars again. The Time Team model isn’t just British; it’s what humanity needs. And it starts by repealing the laws that bury our past to serve political ends.
Footnotes
1. Glen H. Doran, ed., Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery (University Press of Florida, 2002). Core source for site details, artifacts, and analyses.
2. Rachel Wentz, Life and Death at Windover: Excavations of a 7,000-Year-Old Pond Cemetery (personal accounts and bioarchaeology).
3. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Pub. L. 101-601 (1990). Legislative history via Congress.gov; signed by GHW Bush.
4. Time Team episodes, Channel 4 (UK), available on YouTube; see also English Heritage reports on public archaeology impact.
5. Joel P. Kramer, Where God Came Down: The Archaeological Evidence (Expedition Bible publications); YouTube channel documents border and access challenges.
6. Biblical Archaeology Review archives detail permit struggles in the Holy Land due to geopolitics.
7. Pre-Clovis and migration studies: e.g., Waters et al. on Buttermilk Creek (Science, 2011); ancient DNA papers in PNAS and Nature on multiple waves.
8. Historical mound reports: 19th-century Smithsonian and newspaper accounts (contextualized in modern critiques); DNA from Hopewell sites (Ohio History Connection studies).
Bibliography for Further Reading
• Doran, Glen H., ed. Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery. University Press of Florida, 2002.
• Wentz, Rachel. Life and Death at Windover. University Press of Florida (related publications).
• U.S. Congress. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq. (1990).
• Robinson, Tony, et al. Time Team series (1994–2014). Channel 4; scientific outputs summarized in Current Archaeology and English Heritage reports.
• Kramer, Joel P. Where God Came Down. Expedition Bible, 2022 (approx.).
• Biblical Archaeology Society. Biblical Archaeology Review (ongoing issues on global dig challenges).
• Waters, Michael R., et al. “The Buttermilk Creek Complex and the Origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Friedkin Site, Texas.” Science, 2011.
• Mills, Lisa A. “Ancient DNA from the Ohio Hopewell.” Ohio History Connection research.
• ProPublica/NBC investigations on NAGPRA implementation (2023 reports on repatriation delays and impacts).
• Additional: Federal Register notices on FSU NAGPRA inventories (2021+); Archaeological Conservancy site profiles on Windover.
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
The Supreme Court of the United States has long stood as one of the most vital institutions safeguarding the principles that define American liberty, a bulwark against the encroachment of government power on individual thought and expression. Its decisions shape not only legal precedents but the very fabric of how society balances competing rights, particularly when the vulnerable—such as minors navigating the tumultuous waters of adolescence—are at stake. On March 31, 2026, the Court delivered a landmark ruling in Chiles v. Salazar that exemplifies this role, striking a decisive blow for free speech in the context of professional counseling and underscoring the dangers of state attempts to stifle dissenting viewpoints on matters of profound personal and moral significance. In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the justices held that Colorado’s 2019 law banning so-called “conversion therapy” for minors, as applied to the talk therapy practices of licensed counselor Kaley Chiles, unconstitutionally regulates speech based on viewpoint. The ruling requires the lower courts to apply strict scrutiny on remand, a standard that few laws survive when they target expression in this manner. This outcome is not merely a technical victory for one counselor; it is a profound affirmation of the First Amendment’s protection against government orthodoxy, especially where children’s developing minds and futures hang in the balance.
To fully appreciate the significance of Chiles v. Salazar, one must first understand the origins and contours of the Colorado law at issue. Enacted as House Bill 19-1129 in 2019, the statute prohibits licensed mental health care providers—including physicians specializing in psychiatry and licensed, certified, or registered counselors—from engaging in “conversion therapy” with any patient under the age of eighteen. The law defines conversion therapy broadly as any practice or treatment that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, encompassing efforts to alter behaviors, gender expressions, or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions toward individuals of the same sex. Violations can trigger disciplinary actions by state licensing boards, ranging from fines to probation or outright revocation of a professional license. Proponents framed the measure as a necessary response to a perceived mental health crisis among Colorado’s youth, citing studies linking such practices to increased risks of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and attempts. Yet the statute is not neutral in its application. It explicitly carves out exceptions for “[a]cceptance, support, and understanding for an individual’s identity exploration and development” and for assisting persons “undergoing gender transition.” This asymmetry—banning one set of therapeutic conversations while permitting and even endorsing another—lies at the heart of the constitutional infirmity identified by the Supreme Court.
Kaley Chiles, the petitioner in the case, is a licensed professional counselor in Colorado holding a master’s degree in clinical mental health. Her practice is rooted in client-directed talk therapy, a non-coercive, non-aversive approach that begins with no predetermined goals. Chiles listens to her clients—adults and minors alike—discuss their aspirations, then collaborates with them to develop methods that respect their fundamental right to self-determination. For some young clients struggling with same-sex attractions, gender dysphoria, or related issues, the goal may be to reduce unwanted feelings, change behaviors, or achieve a sense of harmony with their biological bodies, often informed by religious or personal convictions. Chiles employs only verbal counseling; she prescribes no medications, performs no physical interventions, and imposes no values. Her work, she argues, is simply speech—protected conversations aimed at helping clients achieve their own stated objectives. When Colorado’s law threatened to subject her to professional discipline for engaging in such dialogue with minors, Chiles filed suit in federal court, seeking a preliminary injunction on First Amendment grounds. Lower courts initially viewed the restriction as a permissible regulation of professional conduct with only incidental effects on speech, applying a deferential rational-basis review. The Tenth Circuit upheld this approach, but the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve conflicts among the circuits on how the First Amendment applies to laws regulating talk therapy.
The majority opinion in Chiles v. Salazar meticulously dismantles the notion that professional licensing somehow strips speech of constitutional protection. Drawing on longstanding precedents, Justice Gorsuch explained that the First Amendment safeguards the right of all individuals—including licensed professionals—to speak their minds without government-imposed viewpoint discrimination. The Colorado law does not merely regulate conduct; it targets the content of what counselors may say in the counseling room. By forbidding any effort to “change” sexual orientation or gender identity while expressly allowing affirmations of identity exploration or transition, the statute discriminates based on the speaker’s perspective. As the Court noted, this is “egregious” viewpoint discrimination, the most blatant form of content-based regulation presumptively unconstitutional under cases like Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015) and Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995). The law does not incidentally burden speech as part of a broader regulation of medical procedures; talk therapy is speech itself, not conduct like surgery or medication. The opinion explicitly rejected attempts to recast pure verbal expression as regulable “treatment,” citing Cohen v. California (1971) for the principle that speech cannot be stripped of protection merely by labeling it otherwise.
This reasoning builds directly on the Court’s seminal 2018 decision in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra (NIFLA), which rejected the idea of a separate, diminished category of “professional speech” exempt from ordinary First Amendment scrutiny. In NIFLA, California had attempted to compel crisis pregnancy centers to post notices about abortion services, a content-based mandate that the Court subjected to strict scrutiny. Justice Thomas’s opinion there emphasized that professionals do not forfeit their expressive rights simply by virtue of their licensure; states cannot use licensing regimes as a backdoor to suppress disfavored ideas. Chiles extends this logic to counseling, affirming that even in the therapeutic context, the government may not dictate which viewpoints on sexuality and gender a counselor may articulate. Exceptions for traditional professional regulations—such as requiring factual disclosures in commercial speech under Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel (1985) or incidental burdens tied to conduct like informed consent in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey (1992)—do not apply here. The Colorado law is not about ensuring informed consent or preventing fraud; it is about silencing one side of a debate. As Justice Gorsuch wrote, “The First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concurred in the judgment, reinforcing that the law’s selective prohibition on change-oriented speech while permitting affirmation constitutes impermissible viewpoint discrimination. She left open whether a hypothetical content-based but viewpoint-neutral regulation of counseling might warrant different treatment, but emphasized the “egregious” nature of skewing the marketplace of ideas. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing that the law regulates professional conduct—substandard care deemed harmful by medical consensus—and only incidentally burdens speech. Jackson invoked the state’s traditional police powers to license professions and protect public health, citing historical precedents for regulating medical practice. Yet the majority rightly countered that no historical tradition supports outright bans on specific viewpoints in talk therapy; counselor licensing itself is a relatively modern phenomenon, dating primarily to the mid-twentieth century, and malpractice laws require proof of actual harm rather than preemptively silencing dialogue.
The ruling’s implications extend far beyond Colorado’s borders. At least two dozen states have enacted similar bans on conversion therapy for minors, many of which could now face renewed constitutional challenges under the strict scrutiny standard. This decision safeguards counselors like Chiles’ ability to provide client-centered support to young people who may seek alternatives to medical transition or affirmation-only approaches. It also highlights the critical role of parental involvement and professional judgment in addressing youth mental health, rather than allowing states to impose ideological uniformity. For families, the stakes could not be higher. Adolescence is a period of profound biological and psychological flux, and the law’s attempt to limit therapeutic options risks leaving vulnerable minors without the full range of perspectives needed to make informed choices.
Central to this debate—and to the broader societal implications of the ruling—is the science of adolescent brain development. Extensive neuroscientific research demonstrates that the human brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functions such as impulse control, long-term planning, risk assessment, and emotional regulation, does not fully mature until the mid-twenties. Studies using MRI have shown that this region undergoes significant “rewiring” during adolescence and young adulthood, with gray matter volume peaking around puberty, followed by pruning inefficient connections while strengthening others. As one comprehensive review in Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment explains, “The fact that brain development is not complete until near the age of 25 years refers specifically to the development of the prefrontal cortex.” This maturation process explains why society has long recognized age-based restrictions on decision-making: the drinking age of 21, the common law age of majority at 18, and even restrictions on contracts or military service reflect an understanding that younger individuals may lack the full capacity for mature judgment. In the context of gender dysphoria or sexual orientation confusion, this developmental window underscores the prudence of caution. Young people experiencing rapid-onset distress—often exacerbated by social media influences, peer groups, or underlying comorbidities like autism, trauma, or anxiety—may not be equipped to consent to irreversible interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries that carry risks of infertility, bone density loss, cardiovascular complications, and lifelong medical dependency. Talk therapy, by contrast, offers a reversible, exploratory space where counselors can gently probe whether distress stems from transient factors rather than innate identity. Chiles’s approach exemplifies this: helping clients align with their stated goals, whether that means reducing unwanted attractions or simply processing family and social pressures, without coercion.
The medical and psychological landscape surrounding youth gender dysphoria has evolved dramatically in recent years, revealing deep fissures in the once-dominant “affirmation-only” model. Historical data from the 1970s through the 2000s indicated high rates of natural desistance among children with gender dysphoria—often 60 to 90 percent by adulthood without medical intervention—particularly when comorbidities were addressed through watchful waiting and therapy. More recent studies, however, document a surge in adolescent-onset cases, disproportionately affecting adolescent females, coinciding with the rise of social media and online communities. Researchers like Lisa Littman have described “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” as a potential social contagion phenomenon, where peer influence and online exposure play outsized roles. The 2024 Cass Review in the United Kingdom, an independent analysis commissioned by the National Health Service, concluded that the evidence base for puberty blockers and hormones in minors is “remarkably weak,” plagued by poor study quality, confounding factors, and failure to account for desistance or mental health comorbidities. European nations, including Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the UK, have since restricted or banned these interventions for minors, shifting toward holistic psychological care. In the United States, detransition stories and lawsuits against clinics—such as those involving Keira Bell in the UK or multiple cases here—highlight the potential for regret when hasty affirmation supplants exploratory therapy. The Colorado law, by criminalizing one form of such exploration while mandating another, effectively stacks the deck against caution, prioritizing ideological conformity over individualized care. The Supreme Court’s ruling restores balance, ensuring that counselors can present all options, including those rooted in biological reality, faith-based values, or simple prudence about permanent changes.
This free speech victory resonates deeply with broader cultural and policy struggles over the meaning of human flourishing. Progressive agendas in recent decades have increasingly framed traditional views on sexuality, family, and procreation as obstacles to progress, often at the expense of empirical realities. Policies promoting unlimited access to abortion, expansive gender ideology in schools without parental notification, and the normalization of lifestyles that do not naturally result in reproduction reflect a worldview that devalues the nuclear family as society’s foundational unit. When combined with energy policies that demonize reliable, high-density sources like nuclear power—Ohio’s nuclear plants, for instance, faced regulatory pressures and subsidy disadvantages in favor of intermittent wind and solar, despite nuclear’s proven record of clean, baseload energy production—the pattern suggests a prioritization of ideological purity over human welfare. Nuclear facilities in northern Ohio represent the future of abundant, affordable power essential for economic mobility, yet similar regulatory zealotry that targeted them mirrors the Colorado law’s assault on dissenting therapeutic perspectives. Both exemplify how certain political forces seek to regulate not just behavior but thought itself, sidelining evidence-based alternatives in favor of narratives that align with anti-natalist or de-growth ideologies. The result? Diminished human potential, whether through energy scarcity or through policies that encourage self-harm under the guise of liberation. The Supreme Court’s intervention in Chiles halts one such incursion, reminding us that logic, parental authority, and open discourse remain essential safeguards.
The decision also illuminates the fragility of our constitutional order and the imperative of preserving institutional integrity. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ideological balance, fortified by appointments prioritizing originalism and textualism, proved decisive here, with even two liberal justices recognizing the viewpoint discrimination at play. Yet the dissent’s reliance on professional deference and medical consensus highlights the risk of judicial abdication to evolving—often politically influenced—orthodoxies. History shows that majorities in the Senate, when unchecked by procedural safeguards like the filibuster, have eyed court-packing or threshold alterations to bend the judiciary to transient electoral winds. During periods of unified Democrat control, such temptations loomed large, restrained only by political calculus and the lingering prospect of electoral accountability. Had those efforts succeeded, rulings like Chiles might never have materialized, leaving counselors muzzled and minors funneled toward one approved narrative. The case thus serves as a stark reminder: safeguarding the Court’s independence is not partisan gamesmanship but a defense of the republic’s commitment to reasoned debate over enforced conformity. As the nation grapples with declining birth rates, family dissolution, and youth mental health crises, policies that isolate children from diverse perspectives—logical counsel included—exacerbate rather than alleviate suffering.
In the end, Chiles v. Salazar reaffirms that free speech is not a luxury but the lifeblood of a free society, particularly in the intimate, high-stakes domain of counseling our nation’s young. It protects the right of a Christian counselor to whisper caution into the ear of a confused adolescent: “Do you really want to make changes you may regret for a lifetime?” It honors the reality of immature brains still wiring for adulthood, the wisdom of parents as primary guardians, and the folly of state-imposed silence on uncomfortable truths. By rejecting Colorado’s attempt to legislate orthodoxy, the Court has not only vindicated Kaley Chiles but has fortified the foundations of liberty against those who would sacrifice children’s futures on the altar of ideology. In a time when debates over energy abundance, family formation, and human dignity rage unabated, this ruling stands as a beacon of sanity—a reminder that the path to human flourishing lies not in censorship but in the open exchange of ideas, guided by evidence, faith, and the unyielding pursuit of truth. The survival of our moral and cultural ecosystem depends on it.
Footnotes
1. Chiles v. Salazar, 603 U.S. ___ (2026) (Gorsuch, J., majority opinion), slip op. at 1-2.
Arain, Mariam, et al. “Maturation of the Adolescent Brain.” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment 9 (2013): 449–461. PMC3621648.
Cass, Hilary. Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report. UK National Health Service, 2024.
Giedd, Jay N. “The Teen Brain: Under the Hood.” Harvard Medical School (2014).
Littman, Lisa. “Parent Reports of Adolescents and Young Adults Perceived to Show Signs of a Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria.” PLOS ONE 13, no. 8 (2018).
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
The book that now sits on shelves and in offices across Ohio, including that of my friend George Lang, the longtime Ohio State Senator and Majority Whip from West Chester, began as a simple conversation about energy policy and the deeper forces shaping our world. George, who serves on the Energy Committee and has been instrumental in pushing legislation like Senate Bill 294 to prioritize truly affordable, reliable, and clean energy sources—defining fossil fuels and nuclear power in those terms while scrutinizing intermittent renewables—handed me a copy of Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future during one of our discussions. He had been reading it closely, multiple times, as he worked on reforms to counter the distortions in Ohio’s energy markets. I knew the book existed, but it was George’s recommendation that finally prompted me to dive in. What I found was not just a defense of fossil fuels but a philosophical framework that resonated with everything I had observed over years of political involvement, from local battles in Butler County to the broader national fights over regulation, subsidies, and human progress.
That encounter crystallized why I spent nearly a year writing The Politics of Heaven, a roughly 20-chapter manuscript that draws on my proximity to these stories—energy scandals, regulatory overreach, and cultural undercurrents that few dare to name. Publishing a book is no small feat; it demands flushing out ideas across chapters, refining arguments through beach walks where the sand and waves clear the mind, and confronting the hard realities of distribution, branding, and getting the work into readers’ hands. But books endure in ways podcasts or interviews cannot. They invite readers to pause, take notes, and pursue their own research. This one explores the intersection of energy policy, philosophy, and what I term the “non-human” movement—a force older and more lethal than partisan bickering, one that masquerades as environmentalism or compassion but ultimately seeks to curb human flourishing. It ties directly to Ohio’s energy debates, where George and others are fighting to defend fossil fuels and nuclear power against policies that subsidize wind and solar at the expense of reliable baseload sources. And it explains why, despite scandals like the FirstEnergy affair that ensnared some Republicans, the bigger picture reveals a systemic bias against the very energy that powers human advancement.
To understand the stakes in Ohio, one must revisit the FirstEnergy scandal surrounding House Bill 6 in 2019. That legislation provided ratepayer-funded subsidies—ultimately costing consumers around $1.3 billion over time—for two nuclear plants, Perry and Davis-Besse, owned then by a FirstEnergy subsidiary, along with some coal-related support. Federal prosecutors later charged that roughly $60 million in bribes flowed through a dark-money group to influence the bill’s passage and defeat a repeal effort, leading to the arrest of then-House Speaker Larry Householder and associates in 2020. Householder received a 20-year federal prison sentence, one of the most significant political corruption cases in Ohio history. Democrats have rightly highlighted the Republican involvement, using it to paint the entire party as captured by utilities. Yet many who supported HB6, including some who later faced scrutiny, acted out of genuine concern for energy reliability—nuclear power provides carbon-free baseload electricity, avoids millions of tons of emissions annually, and supports high-paying jobs. I feel for those wrapped up in the fallout, even those I disagree with on other issues; the scheme was wrong, but it did not negate the underlying need to protect nuclear assets from market distortions caused by renewable mandates. What the scandal obscured was the broader regulatory environment, shaped by decades of policies that tilted the scales toward intermittent renewables through subsidies, mandates, and penalties on fossil fuels and nuclear power. Ohio’s earlier renewable portfolio standards, set in 2008 at 25 percent by 2025, were scaled back under HB6 to 8.5 percent by 2026, but the damage from prior distortions lingered. As recently as late 2025, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio ordered FirstEnergy utilities to pay roughly $250 million in restitution and forfeitures related to HB6 violations, with additional settlements bringing consumer relief to around $275 million total in some agreements. George Lang’s recent work on bills like SB 294 seeks to correct this by redefining “clean” and “reliable” energy around true cost accounting—fossil fuels and nuclear emerge as superior on affordability and dispatchability (with high capacity factors), while wind and solar, with their capacity factors often below 35 percent, require massive backups.
Nuclear energy, in particular, stands as a triumph of human ingenuity. It generates a substantial share of America’s emissions-free electricity, powering communities across dozens of states, avoiding enormous emissions, and supporting thousands of high-paying jobs. Plants like Ohio’s Perry and Davis-Besse employ hundreds of workers each at salaries well above average, injecting billions into local economies. Safety records are exceptional: nuclear results in approximately 0.03 deaths per terawatt-hour (TWh), compared to coal’s roughly 24.6 deaths per TWh (from accidents and air pollution), oil at 18.43, and even natural gas at 2.82. This makes nuclear about 99.8 percent safer than coal on a deaths-per-TWh basis. Wind and solar sit at 0.04 and 0.02 deaths per TWh, respectively, but their system-level challenges (intermittency requiring backups) complicate direct comparisons. Yet Democrat-driven policies have subsidized solar and wind—now cheaper on levelized cost in some projections but unreliable without subsidies or storage—while burdening nuclear with regulatory hurdles that inflate costs. The result? A society paying more for less reliable power, all while fossil fuels remain the backbone of upper mobility.
Electricity from any source, especially dense, reliable sources like coal, gas, and nuclear power, has transformed human life. Consider medieval Europe, where a king’s luxuries—climate control, preserved food, instant global information—mirror what even modest American households take for granted today. Air conditioning, refrigeration, lighting, and appliances that once defined royalty now enable low-income people to escape drudgery. Strong correlations exist between electricity access and human development metrics: health, education, income, and gender equality improve markedly where power flows consistently. Globally, basic electricity access rose to around 92 percent by 2023, with the number without access falling to roughly 666 million (down from higher figures earlier in the decade), lifting billions from energy poverty—though deeper “energy poverty” (inadequate reliable usage) affects an estimated 1.18 billion people, including many officially “connected” but unable to use power meaningfully due to outages or cost. Without abundant energy, upper mobility stalls; with it, creativity flourishes. Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution, fertilizer production that feeds billions, and the machines that built modern medicine and transport. Opposing them while ignoring these benefits reveals a deeper motive.
This brings us to the heart of The Politics of Heaven: the non-human movement. Epstein’s Fossil Future articulates this brilliantly, arguing that opposition to fossil fuels cannot stem from genuine concern for the environment or the climate alone, given their overwhelming benefits. He contrasts the “human flourishing framework”—where energy abundance is measured by its capacity to advance life, health, and prosperity—with the dominant “anti-impact” or “delicate nurturer” worldview. In the latter, any human alteration of nature is suspect, and experts systematically ignore benefits while overstating side effects. Epstein notes that “mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous—because human life is the standard of value, and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it much better for human beings.” Those pushing rapid phase-outs, he contends, reveal an anti-human core: they prioritize a pristine Earth over human potential, even if it means regressing to pre-industrial conditions. This is not hyperbole. We saw it during the COVID lockdowns, when many imposed draconian restrictions that shuttered businesses, closed churches, and isolated families, all while claiming public health as the goal. The policies sacrificed economic vitality, mental health, and small-scale enterprise on the altar of control, mirroring a willingness to limit progress if it served certain ends.
This non-human impulse echoes ancient cults of sacrifice. Across history, from Aztec temples in what is now Mexico City—where priests offered thousands of human hearts to gods like Huitzilopochtli, with archaeological evidence of massive skull racks (tzompantli) holding thousands of skulls and historical accounts of large-scale rituals during temple dedications—to headhunters in New Guinea and child sacrifices to Baal in the ancient Near East, societies have ritualized the destruction of life to appease higher powers or maintain cosmic balance. The Aztecs believed gods had sacrificed themselves to create humanity; humans owed blood in return, a debt repaid through ritual to prevent catastrophe. Mesoamerican cultures saw human sacrifice as essential reciprocity, nourishing deities so the universe endured. Similar practices appear in biblical warnings against Molech worship and in countless pre-modern traditions. Today, this manifests not in literal altars but in policies that treat human beings as expendable for an idealized “nature.” Radical environmentalism, influenced by deep ecology thinkers like Arne Naess, promotes “biocentric egalitarianism”—granting all living things equal moral status, often elevating the biosphere above human needs and rejecting anthropocentrism. Rooted in earlier works and formalized in the 1970s, deep ecology views humans as part of a holistic web rather than exceptional stewards, sometimes framing human impact itself as the core problem. It fuels a modern impulse in which “saving the planet” justifies limiting energy use, population rhetoric, and opposition to technologies that expand human life. Epstein captures this: advocates cling to the “delicate nurturer” assumption to mask anti-human goals, convincing themselves they save humanity from itself while halting the very activities that enable flourishing.
In politics, this anti-human stance permeates certain energy agendas and cultural positions. Subsidies for renewables—often requiring vast land use, rare-earth mining, and backup power—distort markets while fossil and nuclear provide dense, scalable energy. Nuclear is “very clean vigorously”: low emissions, high capacity factors near 90 percent, and a safety profile unmatched. Yet policies born of environmentalism created barriers, favoring wind and solar despite their intermittency and higher system costs. The result harms the poor most—energy poverty correlates with stalled development, as seen in regions without reliable power where hardships persist. Upper mobility flows from energy: refrigeration prevents spoilage and disease, air conditioning combats heat-related deaths, and digital access opens education and opportunity. Epstein documents how fossil fuels have enabled unprecedented global progress; denying them is anti-human because it denies this reality. We witnessed ruthlessness in policy responses that prioritized control over empowerment. The same mindset underlies positions that treat certain lives as disposable and resist breakthroughs powered by abundant energy. It is an anti-God position, opposing the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply” and steward creation productively. Fallen angels, cultural influences, and worship of anti-divine entities all point to a spiritual war against God’s creation—humans included. No one who values divine commandments should embrace a worldview that sacrifices human potential on abstract altars.
The Politics of Heaven unpacks these layers across its chapters. Early sections examine the non-human nature of radical environmentalism and its hunger to regress society, drawing parallels to historical sacrifices. Later chapters dissect the philosophical roots of energy policy, using Epstein’s stats and my own observations from Ohio battles. I explore how electricity has eradicated the worst forms of poverty, turning “luxuries” into necessities. One chapter details revelations from policy responses that exposed a desire to control rather than empower. Another ties energy to creativity—human ingenuity thrives with power, from medieval kings’ dreams to modern innovators. The book culminates in policy prescriptions: defend fossil fuels and nuclear power as bridges to a future in which renewables mature, but never at the cost of reliability. For Ohio, this means supporting Lang’s initiatives and approaches that prioritize American energy dominance. I am heading to Washington, D.C., to finalize the 20th chapter, perhaps adding an epilogue on emerging developments. The content cohered powerfully because it addresses timeless truths: politics is spiritual at root, a battle between human advancement and forces that would sacrifice us to false gods.
Critics will dismiss this as partisan, but the evidence transcends parties. Some Republicans erred in aspects of HB6, yet the structural biases against reliable energy predate and outlast individual scandals, embedded in frameworks that favor subsidized intermittents over “solid, great suppliers” like fossil fuels and nuclear power. Renewables will improve—costs have dropped—but they remain unready for full grid dominance without massive, expensive storage. Fossil and nuclear are here now, delivering the energy density civilization requires. Opponents who ignore benefits while amplifying costs reveal the non-human core: a lust to limit growth, echoing Malthusian fears or deep ecology’s egalitarianism. As Epstein writes, the knowledge system of experts disguises anti-human goals behind “save the planet” rhetoric. We cannot assume common ground when some outright reject human flourishing. The book implicates this reality without apology, using examples from Ohio’s nuclear plants to global poverty metrics. It defends the human race against oblivion, arguing that good energy policy perpetuates creativity, wealth, and options.
Writing demanded rigor: a year of research, reflection, and revision to articulate the non-human element without descending into conspiracy. It connects energy advocacy to broader cultural fights. George Lang recognized this when he passed the book; his office in Columbus now stocks copies for those seeking clarity on Ohio’s path. Knock on his door, and you might secure one. The arguments align with policies emphasizing energy independence, which Ohio can lead. Fossil fuels remain vital for decades, enabling the transition without regression. Renewables have roles, but not as forced replacements that harm reliability.
Ultimately, The Politics of Heaven exists because books outlast soundbites. They equip readers with receipts—stats on energy deaths (nuclear and renewables at under 0.1 per terawatt-hour versus coal’s ~25), historical sacrifice patterns, and policy outcomes. They invite further study: Epstein’s works; Our World in Data on electricity’s poverty links; IAEA and World Bank reports on nuclear’s role and global access trends; archaeological accounts of Mesoamerican rituals; and philosophical texts on deep ecology. In an era of anti-human aggression—from regressive energy mandates to cultural erosion—the book asserts a counter: human beings are meant to flourish, powered by the energy God’s creation provides. Those supporting anti-fossil stances must confront alignments with older impulses. Republicans, even those scarred by scandals, must defend the ground. Ohio, with its nuclear assets and fossil resources, is pivotal. By prioritizing reliable energy, we secure upper mobility, creativity, and the perpetuation of human potential. This is not mere policy; it is a defense of heaven’s politics against earthly cults that would erase us. The iceberg’s tip is touched here, but the depths reward those who read, research, and act. The book is worth the discussion, the defense, and the fight—because human life, powered and free, is the ultimate good.
Expanded Bibliography / Footnotes for Further Research
1. Epstein, Alex. Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less. Penguin Random House, 2022. (Core source on anti-impact vs. human flourishing frameworks; see also Epstein’s substack summaries of Chapter 3 on the anti-impact moral goal.)
2. Ritchie, Hannah. “What Are the Safest and Cleanest Sources of Energy?” Our World in Data, updated analyses (death rates per TWh: nuclear ~0.03, coal ~24.6, etc.). https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
3. World Bank / Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report 2025 (global electricity access ~92%, ~666 million without basic access in 2023).
4. UNDP reports on energy poverty (deeper metrics affecting ~1.18 billion with inadequate, unreliable usage).
5. Ohio Capital Journal and PUCO records on HB6/FirstEnergy scandal and 2025 settlements (~$250M+ restitution orders).
6. Ohio Legislature records on Senate Bill 294 (sponsored by Sen. George Lang, focusing on affordability, reliability, and capacity factors for new generation).
7. Archaeological and historical accounts of Aztec sacrifice (e.g., Science magazine on skull racks at Templo Mayor; estimates of large-scale rituals).
8. Naess, Arne, and George Sessions. “Basic Principles of Deep Ecology” (1984) – on biocentric egalitarianism and non-anthropocentrism.
9. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports on nuclear safety, capacity factors, emissions avoidance, and economic impacts.
10. Additional context from energy poverty and human development links: UNDP Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2025; studies on electricity’s role in lifting populations from extreme poverty.
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
In the bustling corridors of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, where policy shapes the daily lives of millions, one encounters leaders who prioritize practical wisdom over fleeting trends. State Senator George F. Lang, a Republican representing Ohio’s 4th District, which encompasses much of Butler County, exemplifies this ethos. As Senate Majority Whip in the 136th General Assembly, Lang has long championed policies rooted in economic reality and human advancement. Visitors to his office are greeted not just by legislative fervor but by a quiet testament to intellectual curiosity: a table displaying copies of Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less by philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein. Lang freely distributes these books to legislators, constituents, and anyone seeking deeper insight into energy policy. This gesture reflects a decades-long commitment to education and informed discourse, a tradition Lang cultivated even during the early Tea Party movement around 2010, when he gifted copies of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as holiday presents to underscore the value of individual liberty and productive enterprise.
Fossil fuels remain indispensable for human flourishing, and the attack against them is more occult-driven than practical. Drawing on Epstein’s core arguments, empirical data on energy access and poverty alleviation, Ohio-specific examples of renewable energy’s limitations, and the broader political landscape, it argues that derailing fossil fuel development through misguided regulations and ideological mandates has imposed unnecessary costs on society. Energy policy must prioritize affordability, reliability, and abundance to lift billions out of poverty, sustain economic mobility, and enable the very progress that environmental alarmists claim to champion. The central thesis aligns with Lang’s practice of book distribution: true leadership educates citizens on energy’s foundational role in a thriving civilization, rejecting the false choice between prosperity and planetary stewardship.
George Lang: A Legislator Who Values Ideas and Practical Energy Solutions
Senator George Lang’s career embodies a blend of small-business acumen and public service. A graduate of Southeast Missouri State University with a degree in communications (minors in marketing and speech), Lang entered politics after building a successful career as a business owner. Elected to the Ohio House in 2016 and the Senate in 2020, he now serves as Majority Whip, influencing key decisions on everything from labor notices to community investments. His office ritual of offering books like Epstein’s Fossil Future—and earlier, Atlas Shrugged—stems from a belief that legislators and citizens alike benefit from engaging big ideas. Lang has handed out such volumes for years, encouraging recipients to read widely, even contrarian works. This practice echoes his Tea Party roots, where intellectual self-reliance countered government overreach.
In Ohio’s energy debates, Lang has been proactive. He co-sponsored Senate Bill 294 (introduced in late 2025), which mandates that new power generation meet strict standards for affordability, reliability, and cleanliness—explicitly favoring domestic sources like natural gas (deemed “clean” under the bill’s criteria) while scrutinizing intermittent renewables. Critics decry it as a de facto barrier to wind and solar, but Lang counters that it ensures grid stability amid rising demand from data centers and manufacturing. “Energy is so critical to our economy,” he has stated, emphasizing the need for reliable power to attract advanced industries. This aligns with his distribution of Fossil Future: policy must be evidence-based, not driven by subsidies or virtue signaling. Lang’s approach—practical, readerly, and unapologetically pro-human progress—stands in contrast to centralized mandates that have burdened Ohio and the nation.
The Core Arguments of Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future
Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future (2022) is no mere polemic; it is a 430-page philosophical and empirical defense of hydrocarbon energy as the bedrock of modern civilization. Epstein, who has testified before Congress and founded the Center for Industrial Progress, reframes the energy debate through a “human flourishing framework.” Rather than the dominant “anti-impact” worldview—which obsesses over minimizing human effects on nature at all costs—Epstein insists we evaluate energy by its net contribution to human life: health, prosperity, safety, and opportunity.
The book’s central thesis is unequivocal: fossil fuels’ benefits—unparalleled cost-effectiveness, reliability, and energy density—far outweigh their side effects, including climate impacts, which humanity can “master” through adaptation and technology powered by abundant energy. Epstein details how oil, coal, and natural gas have enabled the Industrial Revolution’s gains: a doubling of global life expectancy since 1800, an 11-fold increase in per-capita income, and the support of a population that has grown from under 1 billion to over 8 billion. Without them, alternatives like solar and wind (currently just 3% of global primary energy) cannot scale reliably or affordably to meet exploding demand.
Epstein dismantles “climate catastrophism” by noting that the benefits of fossil fuels’ climate mastery (e.g., heating, air conditioning, disaster-resilient infrastructure) have already saved millions of lives. He projects that restricting fossil fuels would condemn billions—especially in developing nations—to energy poverty, reversing gains in literacy, healthcare, and economic mobility. Renewables’ intermittency (wind blows only 34% of the time on average; solar 23%) requires backups that often rely on… fossil fuels. Epstein advocates “energy freedom”: policies that unleash fossil fuels, nuclear power, and true innovation rather than mandating reliance on unreliable sources.
This layered analysis—philosophical reorientation, empirical data, and policy prescription—makes Fossil Future a “must-read” for anyone in energy policy, as Lang recognizes. It is not anti-environment but pro-human: the environment improves precisely because fossil fuels free us from subsistence drudgery.
Fossil Fuels’ Indispensable Role in Human Progress and Poverty Alleviation
The empirical case for fossil fuels is overwhelming. Since widespread adoption around 1800, they have powered unprecedented human flourishing. Global GDP has skyrocketed, life expectancy has more than doubled (from ~35 years pre-industrial to ~72 today), and extreme poverty has plummeted. In 1800, nearly all humanity lived in destitution; by 2022, that figure was under 9%, despite population growth.
Energy access is the linchpin. As the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports, 685 million people lacked access to electricity in 2022—a number that rose for the first time in a decade as population growth outpaced connections—while 2.1 billion still rely on polluting cooking fuels, causing 3.2 million premature deaths annually. Billions consume less energy than a typical refrigerator requires. Fossil fuels bridge this gap affordably: their high energy density (concentrated, on-demand) enables refrigerators, hospitals, internet access, and factories that lift people from subsistence. Studies show a strong correlation between energy consumption per capita and poverty reduction; below 30-40 GJ/capita, modest increases yield dramatic gains in health and income.
Historically, fossil fuels fueled the escape from Malthusian traps. Coal- and oil-powered mechanized agriculture, fertilizers, and transport averted famines and enabled urbanization. Air quality in developed nations has improved despite (and because of) fossil fuels, via scrubbers and efficiency—contrary to claims of inevitable degradation. Life expectancy gains track energy abundance more than any other factor, with fossil-driven GDP growth accounting for substantial portions of health improvements.
In developing regions, restricting fossil fuels exacerbates suffering. Sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor, invests heavily in upstream fossil fuel exports but lags in domestic power generation. Epstein and the data underscore that without scalable, cheap energy, people with low incomes remain trapped. Solar panels on Mars work for space stations; they do not power billions reliably here.
The Pitfalls of Renewable Mandates: Ohio’s Real-World Lessons
Ohio illustrates the folly of prioritizing intermittency. In Greenville (Darke County), three wind turbines now punctuate the once-open skyline near the Whirlpool facility, Walmart, and fairgrounds—visible landmarks that once blended into “God’s country.” Installed to offset ~70% of the plant’s power, they generate when the wind blows but underscore unreliability: “Can we watch TV tonight, darling? Is the wind blowing?” as locals quip.
Nearby, Lebanon’s $13-14 million municipal solar array (10+ MW on 41 acres of floodplain) promises savings but faces vulnerabilities: tornadoes, hail, and high winds common to Ohio could shred panels, disrupting grid contributions. Statewide, renewables account for ~2% of electricity (per the EIA), while natural gas (52%) and coal (29%) provide the backbone. Lang’s SB 294 targets this imbalance by requiring “reliable” new generation—implicitly challenging wind/solar’s capacity factors.
Nationally, California’s renewable-energy push has led to blackouts and sky-high rates, forcing reliance on out-of-state fossil fuels. Obama’s and Biden-era regulations squeezed nuclear and coal, subsidizing intermittents while ignoring nuclear’s clean, high-output potential (91% capacity factor). Epstein warns: such policies entrench energy poverty globally. Solar flashlights suit camping; they do not industrialize nations.
Political Dimensions: Centralized Control vs. Energy Freedom
Democrats’ regulatory war on fossils—via EPA rules, subsidies, and mandates—reflects an “Earth worship” that Epstein critiques as anti-human. From TSA union disputes to opposition against reliable power, centralized authority throttles innovation. Trump’s policies reversed this, boosting domestic production and lowering costs. Ohio Republicans, via Lang, continue this: SB 294 prioritizes U.S.-sourced fuels, minimizing foreign dependence.
Critics attribute anti-fossil stances to population control or primitivism—village councils over Starbucks economies. Transgender policies and family erosion compound this by shrinking future demand. Yet data refute catastrophe: fossil side effects are manageable; benefits are not.
Broader Implications and Rebuttals
Energy abundance correlates with autonomy: internet access, education, and entrepreneurship. Suppressing fossils widens rich-poor gaps, as 1.18 billion live in “energy poverty” beyond mere connections. Rebuttals to Epstein (e.g., climate models) falter on adaptation: fossil-powered mastery (dikes, AC) has already mitigated risks. Renewables’ land use, rare-earth mining, and backup needs often exceed fossil fuels’ footprint.
Conclusion: A Fossil Future for Ohio and the World
Senator Lang’s book-giving is more than a gesture—it seeds understanding that fossil fuels are not villains but enablers of the good life. Epstein’s Fossil Future equips us to reject scarcity mindsets in pursuit of energy freedom. Ohio’s turbines and panels symbolize short-term optics over long-term reality; policy must follow data. As global demand surges (2.2% in 2024), prioritizing fossil fuels alongside nuclear power ensures mobility, health, and prosperity.
Trump-era gains proved reversible only if abandoned. For decades ahead, leaders like Lang must expand this message nationally. Fossil fuels power refrigerators, factories, and dreams—denying them is not environmentalism; it is regression. Read Fossil Future. Support reliable energy. Human flourishing demands it. Life and everyone in it is far better off with energy from fossil fuels.
Footnotes
1. Ohio Senate biography of George Lang.
2. Additional legislative records confirming Whip role.
3. Epstein book reviews summarizing framework.
4. IEA 2024 energy access data.
5. Whirlpool Greenville wind project details.
6. Lebanon solar array project reports.
7. Historical energy-poverty correlations from Visualizing Energy and related studies.
8. SB 294 legislative analyses.
9. Life expectancy and GDP linkages from multiple economic histories.
Bibliography for Further Reading
• Epstein, Alex. Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less. Portfolio, 2022.
• International Energy Agency. Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2024/2025. IEA, 2024-2025.
• Ohio Senate. “Senator George F. Lang Biography.” ohiosenate.gov.
Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.
He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.
Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
I’ve never liked Dr. Amy Acton. I had very little good to say about her back when she was Ohio’s Health Director under Governor Mike DeWine, and I haven’t thought much about her since those nightmare years of 2020 and 2021. I tried to push her out of my mind after all the damage she helped inflict. But here we are in 2026, with a primary right around the corner and a full gubernatorial election coming up, and the Democrats have talked her into running for governor. In my opinion, it’s one of the worst political decisions they could have made. It’s not just bizarre—it’s tone-deaf to what Ohio families actually went through.
I happened to be in Columbus recently, and within just a couple of days, I had two conversations that really drove this home for me. First, I spoke with Governor Mike DeWine himself—the man who’s been in the governor’s office through it all. We talked policies, what worked during his eight years, and what went horribly wrong. COVID came up naturally, his administration got challenged in court over the constitutionality of the lockdowns and orders pushed under her advice. At no point during those dark months were the things they were doing fully constitutional, and many smart people—including me—knew it at the time. The Ohio Supreme Court and lower courts eventually forced reopenings because the overreach was so extreme. DeWine knows he lost a lot of goodwill over it, and he’s still trying to make it up to Republicans.
But it was
A couple of days later, I talked to the future governor of Ohio—Vivek Ramaswamy. He’s a super nice guy, high-character, above-the-trench kind of person who wants to play well with everybody if he can. He’s smart, young, and genuinely wants to do good things for Ohio. He’s not the type to go down in the dirt and bodyslam somebody just for sport. But when we talked about Amy Acton, I told him straight: she deserves it. “Vivek,” I said, “she shut down our state. We’re still bleeding economically from the torpedo she dropped on Ohio under Fauci’s influence. You’re going to win the primary easily, and you’re going to have a new mop in your house because you’re going to mop the floor with her. That’s all she’s good for after what she did.” He laughed, but he knew I was right. He’s got people like Donald Trump Jr. and others who will remind folks of her record, so he doesn’t have to get his hands too dirty. She’s the Lockdown Lady, and Ohio must never forget.
This isn’t abstract history to me. I lived it. I saw families destroyed, small businesses wiped out, kids losing years of education, and people denied the simple joys that make life worth living—like tailgating at a Browns game or taking the kids to Kings Island. I remember driving to Kings Island that miserable summer of 2020. It was supposed to be family fun, but her policies turned it into a dystopian nightmare: rides taped off, masked staff barking orders, social-distancing enforcers everywhere, limited concessions, and zero joy. We couldn’t ride half the things, couldn’t buy souvenirs properly, and the whole experience felt like punishment for wanting normalcy. That’s what Amy Acton did to Ohio. And now she wants to run the whole state? No way. I’m here to lay it all out—from my perspective, with the background you need, the facts she can’t erase, and why Vivek Ramaswamy is the only choice.
How It All Started: DeWine’s Bipartisan Mistake and Acton’s Rise
Let’s go back to 2019 so you understand the context. Governor Mike DeWine wanted to reach across the aisle after winning in 2018. He’s a moderate Republican with a long career—U.S. Senator, Attorney General—and he thought putting a Democrat on his team would build coalitions. That’s how Dr. Amy Acton, a physician and researcher from Youngstown with a background in public health, became Director of the Ohio Department of Health. On paper, it looked like smart politics. She had worked on infant mortality issues and seemed qualified. What DeWine couldn’t foresee was COVID-19 hitting in early 2020 and the federal machine behind her.
During her tenure, Acton completely deferred to the CDC and to Dr. Anthony Fauci at NIAID. Their guidance—later proven flawed, contradictory, and largely politically driven—became gospel in Ohio. Her daily briefings had this folksy, almost hippie vibe: “hug your neighbor,” “support each other around the campfire,” “we’re all in this together.” But behind the warm words were iron-fisted orders: stay-at-home mandates, school closures, business shutdowns, mask rules, and capacity limits that crushed everything. Ohio was one of the first states to go full lockdown on March 22, 2020. Schools closed statewide. “Non-essential” businesses were ordered to shut down. Amusement parks, fairs, and sports—everything ground to a halt.
I watched it happen in real time. Acton estimated as many as 100,000 infections early on, scaring everyone into compliance. But as I’ve said many times, the virus was engineered. Gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology—funded in part by U.S. taxpayers through Fauci’s NIAID and EcoHealth Alliance—took a bat virus and made it transmissible to humans. That’s not a conspiracy; it’s documented. RFK Jr., now serving in the Trump administration at HHS, laid it all out in books like The Real Anthony Fauci and The Wuhan Cover-Up. China released it, the WHO covered for them, and Fauci stonewalled investigations. Bill Gates’ involvement and his Epstein ties added another layer of suspicion, but the core fact remains: this was a lab-created bio-weapon scenario that justified the panic.
Acton wasn’t smart enough to be in on the big conspiracy, in my view. She just followed the CDC memos like a good soldier. “Outdoor outdoor outdoor,” she’d say, then flip to full lockdowns. She sounded whacked out on something during those speeches—Grateful Dead concert energy mixed with authoritarian control. And DeWine empowered her. DeWine lost in court, had to reopen, and still carries the scars. Acton resigned on June 11, 2020, amid protests outside her home (some armed), legislative bills stripping her emergency powers, and public fury. She faded away—until Democrats dragged her back out in 2025, thinking we’d all forgotten.
The Human Toll: What I Saw and What Ohio Still Feels
The damage was catastrophic, and I saw it up close. Ohio’s unemployment shot from 4.9% to 16.4% in one month—the worst spike in modern history—small businesses, restaurants, gyms, and retailers closed by the thousands and never reopened. Hospitality and tourism tanked. Families who saved all year for Kings Island got a nightmare version: no lines near rides, masked everything, and a joyless slog. Mental health crises exploded. Overdoses rose 20% in Ohio in 2020. Kids lost massive learning—third-graders fell behind by a third of a year in reading, especially poor kids. Life expectancy dropped.
Critics on the left still say Acton “saved lives” by flattening the curve. But compare Ohio to Florida, which reopened earlier under Governor DeSantis. Adjusted for demographics, outcomes were similar or better without the economic suicide. The real scandal was ignoring natural immunity, the virus’s low risk to healthy people and kids, and the secondary deaths from isolation and delayed care. As I told Vivek, we’re still bleeding. Families lost homes. Communities—especially rural southern and southeastern Ohio—felt betrayed by big-government edicts from Columbus.
Acton didn’t invent the virus, but she owned the implementation here. She channeled Fauci’s flip-flopping on masks, overstated models, and suppression of early treatments like hydroxychloroquine. Congressional hearings in 2023-2024, plus RFK Jr.’s work, confirmed the gain-of-function funding, the lab’s military ties, and the cover-up. Trump’s administration has now banned such research and put the lab-leak theory front and center. Yet Acton never questioned it. She just locked us down.
The Tweets That Prove It: Resurfaced Evidence of Her Madness
Nothing captures her tone-deaf cruelty better than the tweets she posted in May 2020—tweets she later deleted but that have now resurfaced thanks to OutKick, Fox News, and Donald Trump Jr. I’ve shared them on my podcast, and they’re Exhibit A for why she’s unfit. These weren’t policy announcements. They were personal scoldings aimed at ordinary Ohioans desperate for a break.
Context: The Cleveland Browns, with Baker Mayfield as the new quarterback, were generating rare excitement in a sports-starved state. Fans dreamed of tailgates, playoffs, and packed FirstEnergy Stadium. Empty stadiums that year were already heartbreaking. But Acton inserted herself into Browns Twitter like a hall monitor:
• To a fan posting a Kermit the Frog meme about playoff hopes: “Please social distance.”
• To excitement about Baker Mayfield: “Please follow CDC guidelines.” Then, when the fan pushed back, “We should be discussing ways to prevent COVID.”
• To another fan saying Browns Twitter was “the only fun part of quarantine”: “Please stop.”
• To Super Bowl dreams: “No. Too many people.”
• To jersey talk: “We need masks and PPE, not jerseys.”
• And the kicker: “Grow up #StayAtHome” and “We are in a pandemic.”
These are direct quotes from her deleted account, resurfaced this week. She was lecturing fans for wanting to watch football, cheer their team, or escape the misery. She told people to stop influencing others “in a bad way” by hoping for games. This is the same woman who made Kings Island miserable and shut down so much else. People just wanted relief. She wanted compliance.
Her campaign now claims some were parody accounts, but the screenshots don’t lie. Trump Jr. amplified them. OutKick called it “bizarre harassment.” And she’s running for governor? In northern Ohio, where sports are religion, this stings. Cleveland Browns fans, Cuyahoga County union folks—they remember the empty stadiums she helped create.
Vivek’s Path
That brings me to Vivek Ramaswamy. I told him exactly what I think: he’s going to win the primary without much trouble, and the general, too, if we show up. Southern and southeastern Ohio—rural, Trump-flag country—will deliver huge margins for him. Those are the right kind of people: hardworking, America-first, sick of big government. Northern urban areas (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Cuyahoga counties) might tilt toward Acton with unions and Democrats, but the numbers won’t overcome the south. Recent polls show her competitive? Smoke from cherry-picked areas. I guarantee it.
Vivek has raised nearly $20 million, got Trump’s endorsement, picked Senate President Rob McColley as running mate, and has DeWine’s blessing. He’s a Cincinnati native, biotech entrepreneur, author—exactly what Ohio needs: innovation, tax cuts, merit over DEI, and manufacturing revival. He doesn’t want to “beat the heck out of somebody,” as I put it, but he doesn’t have to. Surrogates like me, Trump Jr., and others will remind voters she’s the Lockdown Lady.
DeWine endorsed Vivek the same day Acton picked David Pepper as her running mate. That timing wasn’t a coincidence. DeWine knows her record. Vivek is the future—opportunity, excellence, the American Dream. Acton is the past: fear, control, economic destruction.
Never Forget: The Lockdown Lady’s Legacy
Democrats bet on amnesia. They thought six years later we’d forget the empty stadiums, closed parks, lost businesses, learning loss, and suicides of despair. They were wrong. History has judged the lockdown crowd poorly, and Acton was at the center in Ohio. She followed Fauci, the CDC, and a corrupt China-WHO axis straight into disaster.
I’ve said it for years now: remember until November. She locked down Ohio. She destroyed lives following bad science from people who funded the gain-of-function weapon in Wuhan. Read RFK Jr.’s books. Study the tweets. Recall your own pain—whether it was a canceled wedding, a lost job, or a kid who never caught up in school. And when it comes to this election, never forget what she did.
Bibliography / Further Reading
• RFK Jr., The Real Anthony Fauci (2021) and The Wuhan Cover-Up (2023) – essential on origins and response.
Rich Hoffman is an independent writer, philosopher, political advisor, and strategist based in the Cincinnati/Middletown, Ohio area. Born in Hamilton, Ohio, he has worked professionally since age 12 in various roles, from manual labor to high-level executive positions in aerospace and related industries. Known as “The Tax-killer” for his activism against tax increases, Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.
He publishes the blog The Overmanwarrior (overmanwarrior.wordpress.com), where he shares insights on politics, culture, history, and personal stories. Active on X as @overmanwarrior, Instagram, and YouTube, Hoffman frequently discusses space exploration, family values, and human potential. An avid fast-draw artist and family man, he emphasizes passing practical skills and intellectual curiosity to younger generations.
The Overmanwarrior 