The items referred to are posted below, in chronological order.
Opinion: Root out invasive extremists
https://www.concordmonitor.com/2025/08/19/opinion-free-state-project-invaders/
{Jean Lewandowski | 19 August 2025}
New Hampshire gardeners and outdoor enthusiasts are familiar with highly invasive vines like knotweed and bittersweet. They climb all over power poles and fences, smothering and killing trees and shrubs. These invaders are very much like the plague of outside money and anti-democratic ideology that came to New Hampshire 20 years ago as the Free State Project. It has entwined itself around what once was our Grand Old Party and made alarming progress in pulling down our cherished public institutions.
The FSP isn’t a political party that respects our Constitution or seeks to influence policy as part of our representative government. It’s a movement aimed at destroying government by defunding public institutions and creating what Jason Sorens, its founder, calls an anarcho-capitalist state. In this vision of a “free state,” all goods and services are privately held by a few wealthy people who free themselves from regulation and oversight. Everyone else is on their own.
Several thousand people have migrated from across the United States, bought land, moved in and established themselves as “good neighbors.” Many have used the good neighbor strategy to win elected offices. At the local level, they have changed zoning laws to make it easier to buy up land and undercut environmental and other regulations. They’ve gained control of some school boards and town committees and drastically cut budgets and services. Free Staters and allies in the Liberty Alliance hold majority power in our state legislature, and Jason Osborne, a Free State transplant, is their leader.
These self-described “liberty Republicans” represent the shoots and vines of a nationwide anti-democracy movement. Pull on those, and we unearth the complex root system that feeds them. Billionaire donors like Make Liberty Win and Americans for Prosperity, a big-oil-funded super-PAC, contributed over a million dollars to FSP-aligned candidates last year. The NH Liberty Alliance PAC distributed it to over 150 members of our 400-member House of Representatives, which obligingly passed bills that defunded public education, public works, public health, city and county governments and support for small businesses.
This legislation isn’t even written in our state. It’s provided by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a libertarian think tank. Writers draft bills that attack everything from voting rights to Medicaid funding and send them to state leaders to introduce to their legislatures. Major donors to ALEC include big pharma, big tobacco, big insurance, big oil, and others whose primary objective is big profits, not the will of the people. These are the same billionaires responsible for Project 2025, whose stated goal is also to defund and privatize every agency and program created for the common good.
New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Accounts are a good example of how the current legislature represents profiteers, not people. Voters testified during legislative hearings by a margin of 10-to-1 against expanding EFA eligibility to wealthy families, but our testimony was ignored. The state education fund is being plundered while taxes rise and public schools struggle. At the same time, we’re denied any say about curricula, standards, practices or outcomes. Is this not taxation without representation?
It’s not just education, either. For a decade, while clear majorities of state voters have called for worker protections; affordable health, housing, and energy; consumer protections; and clean air and water, our efforts have been blocked and vetoed. Now we know why: our state government represents its billionaire donors, not us.
This is a critical moment to stand up for the Granite State. FSP leaders recently told attendees at a training that they plan to “accelerate migration” to New Hampshire this year to achieve their goal of seceding from the Union and forming an independent nation-state powered by unregulated nuclear energy under a crypto-currency economy. What could possibly go wrong?
It’s also urgent that states check the increasingly invasive federal government. As she has shown through her support for EFAs, Gov. Ayotte supports the Trump regime’s practice of hijacking public funds to benefit private entities. And unlike many governors, she failed to fight back when they demanded Medicaid recipients’ records, including confidential health information and Social Security numbers. Who gets access to that information? How will they use it? How will they guarantee that every eligible person continues to have access to these funds? There’s no way to know. We deserve a state government that resists this federal abuse of power.
Elections are next year, and we have a state Constitution and representative government to defend. The Liberty Alliance publishes “liberty ratings,” which assess legislators based on how closely their voting records align with FSP goals. The higher their score, the more they need to be replaced. There are energetic and talented people ready to run for office, uproot anti-democracy forces, reject billionaire-class money and influence and revive a legislature that serves the people and has the courage to check corrupt executive power, both state and federal. We must support them with our dollars, our time, our voices and our votes.
Jean Lewandowski is a retired special needs teacher. She lives in Nashua.
Letter: The Invaders are Real
https://www.concordmonitor.com/2025/08/21/letter-the-invaders-are-real/
{Susan Seidner | 21 August 2025}
Thank you to Jean Lewandowski for her informative article. It should be a wake up call for all of us. Unfortunately, few people know that their Representative who calls himself Republican is actually a member of the Free State party.
It would be important for those of us who understand their mission to share this with friends and neighbors and encourage them to read about their goals. The internet carries lots of information. For now, people should be aware that many Republicans are not listening to their constituents concerns but taking marching orders from Jason Osborne whose goal is to take over the Republican Party with his followers.
Much of the fabric of New Hampshire is changing under their leadership. The jury is still out as to whether or not Kelly Ayotte supports them. She may be using them to get her goals achieved but that is a dangerous game.
Susan Seidner
Pembroke, NH
Opinion: Whose ideas are truly “invasive” in the Live Free or Die state?
https://www.concordmonitor.com/2025...truly-invasive-in-the-live-free-or-die-state/
{Eric Brakey | 29 August 2025}
Recently in the Concord Monitor, an opinion piece described fellow citizens as “invasive” weeds — but who better fits the bill?
Picture a veteran who moved to New Hampshire for the “Live Free or Die” spirit. He embraces the 1776 ideals that once animated America and still drive the Granite State. Known as a good neighbor, his community has elected him multiple times to the legislature to protect their freedoms, their paychecks and the New Hampshire Advantage.
This describes many legislators, but I am thinking of Rep. Tom Mannion (R-Pelham). After serving honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps, Tom left Massachusetts, where the New England spirit of 1776 has been smothered by a one-party nanny state. Figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, sneering schoolmarms of the modern era, treat constituents like dependent children, not free adults. Tom came to New Hampshire, where that revolutionary spirit still thrives.
Now consider Jean Lewandowski. Her columns generally push leftist causes — from gun control to Russiagate — but in her latest piece, she branded good people, like Rep. Mannion, “invasive” weeds to be “rooted out.” Whatever you think of her dehumanizing language against “Free Staters,” Lewandowski’s hypocrisy is glaring when you learn she was born in California, worked in Minnesota, and has only lived in New Hampshire for a decade.
Let’s clarify: A Free Stater is anyone — native or newcomer — who believes in a free New Hampshire where the maximum proper role of government is protecting life, liberty and property. We reject welfare statism, nanny statism and corporate cronyism.
Many arrived here, fleeing leftist tyrannies in neighboring states, because New Hampshire honors its revolutionary history, rejects income taxes and protects our freedom to be left alone (even from mandatory seat belts). Progressives gawk and ask why. New Hampshire replies: “We are a free state — not a nanny state.”
Beyond general name-calling, Lewandowski makes other claims in her column worth refuting. First, she calls everything she opposes “anti-democratic” — a buzzword worn thin by hypocrisy. She and her allies cheered lawfare, spy agency abuses and COVID-era dictatorships in the name of “democracy.” What this word means to her is anyone’s guess.
Second, she claims economic freedom only enriches the rich. She is wrong. Free market competition empowers the little guy. Big business thrives on political privileges. The bigger the government, the more privileges they can buy from state officials — picking winners and losers through bailouts and regulatory capture. Her scorn for cryptocurrency further defends an inflationary fiat money system that loots middle-class savings. Contrast this with Argentina’s Javier Milei, whose free-market reforms show what’s possible, and Rep. Keith Ammon (R-New Boston), another “invasive” Free Stater, who is easing access to sound money and empowering local families to save.
Third (and most humorously), she is alarmed that Free Staters are “good neighbors.” How dare Tom Mannion and Keith Ammon integrate so well that voters elect them in droves? Apparently, they should be snitching on neighbors for selling pickles without permits and pushing for income taxes to “Mass up” New Hampshire.
Fourth, she calls universal Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) illegitimate due to vocal opposition at the public hearing. She forgets the 2024 election, where Republicans ran on expanding EFAs and Democrats opposed them. Voters handed Republicans historic majorities, giving a clear mandate for school choice.
Fifth, she claims “we’re denied any say about curricula, standards, practices and outcomes.” I am curious if she had much to say when officials invoked the Patriot Act against conservative parents for speaking up at school board meetings against progressive curricula and policies. Either way, if she feels unheard, she can join the school-choice marketplace by starting a charter school or homeschool co-op (and even accept EFA funds from willing families).
Sixth, she hysterically insists our goal is “seceding from the Union and forming an independent nation-state powered by unregulated nuclear energy under a crypto-currency economy.” No matter how cool she makes it sound, as a leader in the Free State Project — while I do support nuclear energy, cryptocurrency, and a robust defense of the 10th Amendment — I do not support secession. Lewandowski is mashing up different ideas from different people and painting them as a unified agenda.
Finally, she urges checking the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance’s “liberty ratings” on state legislators. At least we can agree on this. We should all know who is voting to protect our freedom and paychecks, and who wants to transform the Granite State into a progressive nanny state
Through her exasperation, one wonders how many more electoral losses Lewandowski will accept before she returns to California or Minnesota. If she wants to stay in the region (without being too “invasive” with her ideology), she may also consider any other New England state. Here in the Granite State, however, we intend to keep New Hampshire free.
Eric Brakey is the Executive Director of the Free State Project. A retired three-term Maine Senator, he currently resides in Dover, New Hampshire.
