The Compliment You Didn’t Ask For / The Sickness No Medical School Can Cure / The Strait is Not The Border / What the Pool Reflects

GOOD MORNING, READERS. Today
Honesty Reporting is making a projection,
and we label it as exactly that: our opinion,
drawn from the public record, about
THE SWORD OVER EUROPE. Europe is
Service now warns Moscow will intensify
its hybrid campaign in the coming
months, “with greater consequences for
the targeted countries than in the past.”
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk
says the Kremlin plans drone and missile
attacks it will then call accidents, to blunt
any response. In August a drone carrying
an explosive device was found at Leipzig/
Halle Airport in Germany.
Between August 2024 and February 2026,
suspected Russian drones forced the closure
of airports in Brussels, Copenhagen,
Munich, Oslo and Vilnius. Russia denies
all of it. Deniability is the point: an attack
that can be called an accident is a provocation
built to wear a disguise.
Our projection is that this sword rattling is
aimed as much at Washington as at Warsaw.
Putin knows how our politics work.
Frighten the allies, and the pressure falls
not on the aggressor, but on the victim.
THE “PEACE MAKER” SCRIPT. We have
seen this script before. At the United Nations
on September 22, President Trump
promised a Ukraine deal “more quickly
than people understand.” Four days later
he was again calling on President Zelensky
to “make a deal” with Putin.
A deal that ratifies theft is not
peace. It is a down payment on
the next invasion.
Russia holds roughly a fifth of Ukraine. A
deal that ratifies that theft is not peace;
it is a down payment on the next invasion.
Yet a signing ceremony a month
before an election would make a fine
television backdrop — the “Peace Maker”
in the photograph, and Ukraine left
to pay the bill.
The President now holds a new sanctions
law letting him impose 100 percent
tariffs on the biggest buyers of Russian
oil. That is the leverage. Use it on Moscow,
not on Kyiv.
THE PEACEMAKER’S STEEL. Now
The Drums of October
Russia is rattling its sword over Europe. In Washington, the noise is drowning out five things
every voter knows — and a steel deal with a Russian-oil past is heading straight for Iowa.
“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its
office-holders.” — Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Veritas Pro Populo
HONEST POLITICS
Brent Lambi
Now on X: @_HonestPolitics | x.com/_HonestPolitics
When I filed this case, I expected a
straightforward process involving discovery
and documents. If the record
supported it, I also expected the true
wrongdoer to be named as a third party
defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is
being shaped by people whose names do
not appear in the case caption. I cannot
prove that today, and I will not tell readers
otherwise. I can only tell you what I
believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and
its agents may themselves have been
used by someone else who gave them a
version of events and left them to act on it.
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author
of this defamation but a vehicle for it. To
the extent that my filings suggested otherwise,
my apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or
its agents will come forward or tell others
what I suspect they may already know:
the origin of this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute
with the federal government is ongoing
and that the government’s objective is
to silence and discredit me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In
this political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi:
The opinions expressed above are
solely those of the author.
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
“Berkshire is not the author of this defamation but a vehicle for it.”
Iowans deserve to know who Essar is. In
a deal signed in 2016, Essar sold its Indian
oil empire to a group led by Rosneft,
the Kremlin-controlled oil giant, for $12.9
billion. That refinery business, now called
Nayara Energy, is 49 percent owned by
Rosneft and has been under European
Union sanctions since July 2025; since
then it has run on Russian crude, and its
gas stations still carry the Essar name under
a 99-year branding deal. Essar’s British
refinery took a $3.9 billion loan in 2016
from VTB, Russia’s state-owned bank. To
be fair and precise: Essar itself is not under
U.S. or EU sanctions. But the same week
the President leaned on Kyiv, he handed
his biggest stage to a family whose fortune
was refilled with Russian oil money.
Then ask Minnesota. In 2008 Essar broke
ground at Nashwauk on the Iron Range,
promising North America’s first mineto-
steel complex. By 2015 the steel mill
was scrapped; in 2016 the company was
in Chapter 11 with the mine half built.
Contractors — American and Minnesota
businesses — were left owed roughly $60
million. The state was stuck with some
$65 million to $71 million in infrastructure
costs, and about $22 million is still
outstanding. Unpaid taxes punched a
hole worth 60 percent of Nashwauk’s city
budget. Minnesota stripped Essar’s mineral
leases, and Governor Walz tried to
bar the company from the state.
In fairness, the company has since repaid
nearly $50 million to Minnesota,
and its Nashwauk mine fired its first
blast on September 17 — eighteen years
after groundbreaking. But the steel mill
Minnesota was promised is now promised
to Iowa instead. Former Iron Range
lawmaker Jason Metsa called it “a gaping
hole for years to come,” and his advice to
Iowa was blunt: “Don’t go throw all your
eggs in one basket all at once.”
The old rule of politics says the winds of
war favor whoever holds power. In our
opinion, that is exactly why this administration
will be tempted to keep the drums
beating through October. And it is our
opinion that holding power has become,
for this President, a matter of personal
protection — from impeachment if the
House changes hands, and from prosecutors
once he leaves office.
WHAT THE DRUMS ARE MEANT TO
DROWN OUT. Here are the five subjects
Republican leadership would most like
you to forget before November 3.
1. The Epstein files. Congress passed the
Epstein Files Transparency Act 427 to 1.
The Justice Department still withholds
records, and a federal judge has given
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
a deadline and warned of possible contempt.
A second transparency act is nearing
enough signatures to force a vote —
but not until after the election.
2. Inflation and gas. Consumer prices
rose 3.4 percent in the year through August.
Gasoline averaged $4.35 a gallon,
up 27 percent from a year ago. Diesel hit
a record near $6.52 in late September —
and every farmer and trucker in Iowa is
paying it.
3. “No foreign wars.” That was the promise.
Instead we have an Iran war in its seventh
month, a military raid in Venezuela,
and a Strait of Hormuz crisis setting the
price at your pump. In CNN’s polling,
Americans say the Iran war was not worth
it by 52 points.
4. Pardons for narco-traffickers. This
administration calls the cartels terrorists
and blows up boats in the Caribbean. Yet
last December the President pardoned
former Honduran President Juan Orlando
Hernández — convicted by a New
York jury and sentenced to 45 years for
helping move some 400 tons of cocaine
into the United States. Roger Stone has
acknowledged delivering his pardon request.
Tough on the small boats; forgiving
of the kingpin with friends.
5. Tariffs and failing farms. Chapter
12 farm bankruptcies rose 46 percent in
2025. April 2026 brought the most in a single
month in six years. USDA projects net
farm income down again this year, and
70 percent of farmers in one poll say they
cannot afford all the fertilizer they need.
THE FEW AND THE 99 PERCENT. Put
the five together and a pattern appears.
MAGA was sold as the revolt of the forgotten
American against Washington. In
our opinion it has become the reverse: a
small Washington circle using power to
protect itself and enrich its friends, while
the other 99 percent pay at the pump, the
grocery store, the co-op and the bank.
The pardons flow up. The bills flow down.
This is not a party broadside. Honesty
Reporting has never been a party paper,
and good Republicans from Reagan onward
understood that you stop Putin by
pressing Putin. It is a call to keep your
eyes on the ledger when the drums start.
A Republican president said it best, in the
middle of a world war:
“To announce that there must be no
criticism of the President, or that we
are to stand by the President, right or
wrong, is not only unpatriotic and
servile, but is morally treasonable to
the American public.”
— THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918
Roosevelt wrote those words while American
troops were fighting in France. If
questioning a president was a patriot’s
duty then, it is a patriot’s duty now —
when the drums are louder, but the war
being sold is mostly for the cameras.
THE BALLOT QUESTION. Every candidate
for Congress in Iowa and Nebraska
should answer on the record, before November
3: Will you oppose any Ukraine
deal that rewards Russian aggression —
and will you vote to release the Epstein
files, end the tariff squeeze on our farms,
and check the pardon power — and will
you demand ironclad clawbacks before
one Iowa tax dollar goes to Essar? Rep.
Ashley Hinson, running for the U.S. Senate,
says she has “zero concerns.” Iowa
voters should have a few.
ESSAR BY THE NUMBERS
$12.9B
49%
$3.9B
~$60M
$65-71M
18 yrs
$15B
Paid to Essar in the
Rosneft-led purchase of its
oil business (2016 deal)
Rosneft’s stake in that business,
Nayara Energy – EU sanctioned
since July 2025
2016 loan to Essar’s UK
refinery from Russia’s
state-owned VTB Bank
Owed to contractors when the
Minnesota project collapsed
State infrastructure costs left
behind; ~$22M still owed
Groundbreaking (2008) to
first mine blast (2026) – and
no steel mill
Iowa’s promise, for 2030; Lee
County permits filed so far: none
WHEN THE DRUMS BEAT THIS OCTOBER,
LISTEN FOR WHAT THEY ARE COVERING UP.
Sources: NBC News (Sept. 26, 2026); IISS via RTÉ; Kyiv Independent and Sahara Reporters on the UN meetings; BLS August CPI and US Inflation

An Open Letter to
The Drug Enforcement Administration has misled you.
The Honduras pardon is the proof. Please act.
Dear Mr. President:
I write to you as an independent voter, a small-business owner, and the editor of an independent civic-journalism
publication in Omaha — the city where Berkshire Hathaway holds its Annual Meeting and where the country’s
most respected business minds gather each spring. I write not in anger, but in concern — for your reputation, for
the country, and for the truth.
On November 28, 2025, you announced — and on December 1, formally granted — a full pardon to Juan Orlando
Hernández, former President of Honduras. Mr. President, with all respect: I believe the people who urged that
pardon misled you about who Mr. Hernández is.
This is not a man who was “treated very harshly and unfairly.” This is a man whom prosecutors accused of leading
a narco-state. A federal jury in New York convicted him in March 2024. A federal judge sentenced him to 45
years and an $8 million fine. The Assistant U.S. Attorney told the court Mr. Hernández had “paved a cocaine superhighway
to the United States.” Prosecutors documented at least 400 tons of cocaine moved into America during
his presidency and a $1 million bribe to his brother — also convicted — from the Sinaloa Cartel under “El Chapo”
Guzmán himself, in exchange for unimpeded passage of product through Honduras.
By any measure — tonnage, duration, sophistication, government infrastructure — Juan Orlando Hernández is
in the running for the largest cocaine trafficker any American jury has ever convicted. Bloomberg described the
pardon as having “toppled the capstone of one of the most ambitious narcotics investigations in the history of the
Department of Justice.”
Mr. President, I do not believe you knew. I believe you were told a different story.
That story came, in significant part, through the Drug Enforcement Administration — the agency that built the
case, that knows every page of the record, and that should have walked into the Oval Office and told you plainly:
“Sir, do not pardon this man. His record will become your record.” If the DEA gave you anything less, I believe the
DEA failed you. If the DEA helped engineer that pardon while withholding its institutional knowledge, I believe the
DEA betrayed you.
I do not write to you as a stranger to DEA misconduct. I am the pro se plaintiff in active federal litigation in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Nebraska arising from a Freedom of Information Act enforcement claim against the
DEA, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security. In the course of that litigation, I have
developed firsthand knowledge of DEA conduct that in my opinion does not reflect well on the agency. I will not air
the details here; they belong in court filings. But I will state my opinion plainly: my experience is consistent with an
agency that has lost the discipline of telling its political leadership the truth.
You have demonstrated, in this term, a willingness to remove officials whose conduct damaged the administration.
That same willingness is needed now. Senator Mark Warner has already called the Hernández pardon
“glaring hypocrisy” — and that was before the capture of Nicolás Maduro on essentially identical charges. The
contradiction is unanswerable; the agency that allowed it to develop is the one that should answer for it.
I write from Omaha, where the country’s most discerning business community gathers each May. Your reputation
among serious Omaha businesspeople is being eroded by DEA conduct that does not bear your fingerprints
but is being attributed to your administration. That is unjust to you.
For your protection, and for mine, please act:
 Direct the Attorney General to remove the current Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
 Direct the Department of Justice Inspector General to open a formal review of the agency’s communications
with the White House regarding the Hernández pardon — who recommended it, who vouched for the recommendation,
and who possessed institutional knowledge of Mr. Hernández’s conduct and failed to convey it.
The country deserves a Drug Enforcement Administration that tells the President the truth. You deserve advisors
who do not damage your record by engineering pardons that contradict your own policy. And I deserve a federal
agency that responds to my FOIA requests honestly, accurately and transparently.
Respectfully,
Brent Lambi
President Donald

Every Iowan and Nebraskan who ever
held a driver’s license learned the same
bargain at sixteen. You stop at the red
light even when the road is empty. You
yield when the sign says yield. You pull
over when the trooper’s lights come on,
and if you think the ticket is wrong, you
take it to the judge, and then you do what
the judge says. Nobody in either state
has ever been issued a license stamped
rules optional.
On November 3, voters will decide whether
that bargain still applies to the man in
the White House. Strip away the ads and
the rally music, and this election comes
down to one question: does the President
of the United States have to follow the
rules of the road? Donald J. Trump and
the MAGA movement have answered it
with their conduct. The answer is no.
THE COURTS ARE NOT
HIS EMPLOYEES
An Associated Press review found federal
judges had determined that this
administration ignored court orders at
least 31 times. In Minnesota, Judge Patrick
Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee,
catalogued 96 violations of court
orders by ICE in his district in January
Gallagher, appointed by Trump himself,
held the administration in contempt for
the second time in the same case, after a
19-year-old asylum seeker was deported
to El Salvador in spite of three separate
cuit heard arguments over whether officials
criminally defied an order to turn
deportation flights around.
The owner of a company can overrule a
store manager. A president cannot overrule
a federal judge. In my opinion, Donald
Trump lives in a delusional world in which
the judiciary is a subsidiary he holds a majority
stake in, and an unfavorable ruling
is a memo from a junior employee that he
may drop in the wastebasket.
“A president who will not
stop at the red light will
not stop anywhere.”
CONGRESS HOLDS
THE PURSE, NOT HIM
Article I of the Constitution gives Congress
the power of the purse. It does not
Government Accountability Office, Congress’s
own nonpartisan watchdog, ruled
that his attempt to cancel $810 million
in health, education and other funding,
passed by Congress and signed into law,
is illegal. The maneuver, GAO wrote,
“subverts both the constitutional process
for enacting federal law and Congress’s
constitutional power of the purse.”
The White House budget director’s response
was to call GAO “hyper partisan.”
But it was Maine Republican Susan
Collins, chair of Senate Appropriations,
who called it an “unlawful cancellation
of appropriations that were approved on
a bipartisan basis.” When a Republican
chair says it, it is not partisanship. It is
arithmetic.
THE CONSTITUTION IS
NOT A SUGGESTION
In February the Supreme Court, 6–3, in
an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts,
held that the President never had legal
authority to impose his sweeping emergency
tariffs. The same day, he reached
for a different statute and announced
a new global tariff on every country on
earth, raising it to 15% within a day.
Roughly $166 billion taken unlawfully
from American importers now has to
be pried back through the courts, while
trade lawyers describe the administration
slow-walking the refunds as interest
runs up on your dime.
A DEAL IS A DEAL,
UNLESS HE SIGNED IT
Trump signed the U.S.–Mexico–Canada
Agreement in 2020 and called it the best
trade deal ever made. Then he slapped
tariffs on Canada anyway and told our
neighbor, which buried 158 soldiers from
the war in Afghanistan that followed 9/11,
that it ought to become the 51st state.
In January he said he was open to military
force to take Greenland from Denmark, a
NATO ally that lost 43 soldiers fighting
beside Americans in Afghanistan. When
Denmark’s friends stood with it, he hit
Denmark, France, Britain, Germany and
The Greenland pact signed September
22 was sold as “permanent control.”
Analysts at the hawkish Foundation for
Defense of Democracies concluded it
The Rules of the Road
“Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.” — Mark Twain
This election is a referendum on the rule of law. A president who treats the courts and Congress
as subsidiaries of his own company has not even delivered what he promised, and the
Republicans who once vowed to stand up to Washington are standing on his stage.
Veritas Pro Populo
HONEST POLITICS
Brent Lambi
Now on X: @_HonestPolitics | x.com/_HonestPolitics
When I filed this case, I expected a
straightforward process involving discovery
and documents. If the record
supported it, I also expected the true
wrongdoer to be named as a third party
defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is
being shaped by people whose names do
not appear in the case caption. I cannot
prove that today, and I will not tell readers
otherwise. I can only tell you what I
believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and
its agents may themselves have been
used by someone else who gave them a
version of events and left them to act on
it.
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author
of this defamation but a vehicle for it. To
the extent that my filings suggested otherwise,
my apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or
its agents will come forward or tell others
what I suspect they may already know:
the origin of this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute
with the federal government is ongoing
and that the government’s objective is
to silence and discredit me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In
this political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi: The opinions expressed
above are solely those of the author.
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
“Berkshire is not the author of this defamation but a vehicle for it.”
changes less than it seems, since a 1951
treaty already gave America broad access,
and that Trump “severely damaged
trust among America’s European allies
and created strains in the NATO alliance
to the delight of the Kremlin.” Allies are
not rivals to be shaken down. They are
the reason we win.
EVEN BY HIS OWN
SCORECARD, HE FAILED
If contempt for the courts, Congress,
the Constitution and our allies were not
enough to revolt any decent American,
consider this: the administration has also
failed to deliver what it promised you.
THE LEDGER OF BROKEN PROMISES
Lower prices on “day one.”
Tariffs would make
farmers rich.
Farm aid would
make you whole.
Ethanol’s champion.
End Ukraine’s war
“in 24 hours.”
Something “much better”
than Obamacare.
Release the Epstein files.
Drain the swamp.
PROMISED DELIVERED
Inflation 3.4% in August after a 4.2% April peak. USDA
sees beef up nearly 10% this year.
Record farm debt of $624.7 billion and record $33 billion
in interest. Chapter 12 filings up 220% in Iowa, 29%
in Nebraska in 2025.
A $12 billion bridge against $50 billion-plus in losses
(Farm Bureau). Financially vulnerable Iowa farms:
7.7% to 19%.
Still no permanent nationwide year-round E15.
The war grinds on; he pressures Zelensky, not Putin.
“Concepts of a plan.” Enhanced ACA credits lapsed;
premiums rose.
Months of resistance until his own party forced a vote.
A $400 million Qatari jet; $1.2–1.4 billion in family
crypto income in 2025.
THE REPUBLICANS
WHO KNEW BETTER
That is what makes this sad. Iowa and
Nebraska have sent Republicans to
Washington who told us they would
stand up to it. Don Bacon, a retired Air
Force brigadier general, broke publicly
with this President over Ukraine, tariffs
and Pete Hegseth, and he is leaving Congress.
Mariannette Miller-Meeks and
Zach Nunn campaigned as independent
voices for Iowa, then stood on the stage
in Clive praising the administration’s policies
before Trump spoke. Pete Ricketts
built his name as a free-trade governor
who led missions abroad to sell Nebraska
beef and grain; he now stands with the
President whose trade war has cost those
same producers dearly.
when Congress’s own watchdog said the
President broke the law to take money
Congress appropriated? Where were
they when a Trump-appointed judge
found contempt a second time? Silence
in the face of lawlessness is not neutrality.
It is a vote.
THE VISIT WILL NOT SAVE THEM
promised to come to Iowa: “We have to
get you all elected.” He added, “I think
I’m more popular now than I was then.”
Iowans disagree. A Marist poll taken
September 17–20 found Democrat Josh
Turek leading Ashley Hinson 50% to 42%
among registered voters for the open
Senate seat, Democrat Rob Sand ahead
for governor, and, most telling, 43% calling
their congressional vote mostly a vote
against Trump, against just 22% for him.
In Nebraska, which has not elected a
Democrat to the Senate since 2006, independent
Dan Osborn led Ricketts
46% to 42% in a SurveyUSA poll, while a
Wedgewood poll had Ricketts up 52% to
48%, a dead heat either way. In Omaha’s
Second District, Democrat Denise Powell
led Republican Brinker Harding 46% to
42% in a Democratic-sponsored survey.
In my opinion, every rally is a reminder
of whom these candidates answer to, and
it is not you.
THE BALLOT QUESTION
To every Republican on the ballot in
Iowa and Nebraska, two questions, on
the record: If the President defies a federal
court order, will you vote to hold
him accountable, yes or no? And: Is
Congress’s power of the purse yours to
defend, or his to ignore?
This is not about party. I am a lifelong Independent.
Had a Democratic president
ignored 31 court orders and spent money
Congress never approved, I would write
every word of this again. But this cycle, a
vote for any Republican who will not answer
those questions is a vote to let him
keep driving with no rules at all. A president
who will not stop at the red light will
not stop anywhere.
FOLLOW THE RULES
OF THE ROAD.
ON NOVEMBER 3,
TAKE AWAY THE KEYS.
Sources: Associated Press court-order review (May 2026); Just
Security on Schiltz order (Feb. 2026); Axios on Judge Gallagher
contempt (Sept. 25, 2026); ACLU on D.C. Circuit en banc
hearing (Sept. 29, 2026); GAO opinion via Roll Call, AP, Deseret
News, NBC (Sept. 26–29, 2026); Learning Resources v. Trump
(Feb. 20, 2026), WilmerHale, BDO; Wikipedia and House of
Commons Library on the Greenland crisis; FDD (Sept. 29,
2026); BLS CPI August 2026; USDA ERS Food Price Outlook;
American Farm Bureau; Iowa Farm Bureau/ISU/Iowa Bankers
Assn. 2026 Outlook; PBS/AP and Iowa Capital Dispatch
(Sept. 28, 2026; Jan. 27, 2026); Marist Poll (Sept. 17–20, 2026);
Political Wire (SurveyUSA, Wedgewood); Pollsmax; Legis1 and
Ballotpedia on NE-2.