Tag: eminent domain

Henry Family Saves 175-Year-Old New Jersey Farm From Government Seizure

For nearly two centuries, the Henry family has worked the same soil in Bedminster, New Jersey — a 175-year-old farm passed from one generation to the next. But earlier this year, their heritage came under attack. Local officials, invoking the state’s “affordable housing” laws, sought to seize part of the Henrys’ land through legal maneuvering that would have handed it to developers.

The battle lasted months. It was draining, personal, and emblematic of a deeper national struggle between individual liberty and government overreach. At its heart was a simple question: do Americans still have the right to protect their property from the encroaching power of the state?

The Henrys said yes — and refused to back down.

Bedminster Township officials claimed the family’s land was needed to satisfy New Jersey’s affordable housing requirements, part of the state’s “Mount Laurel doctrine,” which forces municipalities to set aside areas for low- and moderate-income housing. In practice, that mandate often translates to deals between town governments and private developers — deals that profit politically connected insiders while displacing long-time property owners.

For the Henrys, compliance wasn’t an option. The farm had been in the family since before the Civil War, and to lose it to bureaucratic manipulation would have been a betrayal of everything their ancestors built. “This isn’t just land,” patriarch John Henry said. “It’s our home, our history, and our future. We weren’t going to let the government take that away.”

The family took their fight to court, arguing that the township’s actions amounted to an unconstitutional land grab disguised as “public good.” Their legal team showed that the town’s plan violated both the spirit and the letter of eminent domain law — which allows government to take private property only for legitimate public use, not for private development masked as social policy.

After months of hearings, the judge ruled in favor of the Henry family, halting the township’s attempt to rezone and seize the property. It was a rare victory for ordinary citizens in an era when small landowners are routinely bulldozed by regulation and corporate collusion.

The case may have unfolded in a quiet corner of New Jersey, but its implications stretch nationwide. Across the country, similar battles are erupting as state and local governments exploit “housing equity,” “green energy,” and “climate resilience” initiatives to justify taking or restricting private land. What happened in Bedminster is a warning: government power, once expanded, rarely retreats — unless citizens are willing to fight back.

The Henrys did just that. Their courage reaffirms a truth that runs deeper than politics — that freedom is inseparable from property. The ability to own, cultivate, and preserve what one’s family has built is not a mere privilege; it is a cornerstone of self-government and human dignity.

Their victory isn’t only about acres of farmland. It’s about preserving a way of life rooted in responsibility, faith, and independence — values that have long defined America’s heartland and are increasingly under assault by bureaucrats who see people as obstacles to policy.

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New Carbon Capture Legislation, Same Old Grift

A bi-partisan Congressional duo is pushing for a massive federal land grab through new carbon capture and storage (CCS) legislation in the U.S. House.

Utah Republican Blake Moore joins forces with California Democrat Jim Costa to sell out private property owners nationwide with the BECCS Advancement Commission Act of 2025.

BECCS stands for “Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage,” and the legislation builds on Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, adding additional funding for CCS to the billions included in that massive financial debacle.

H.R. 5597 also proposes adding another layer of bureaucracy to our already bloated federal government. If passed, it will establish a BECCS Advancement Commission in the Department of Agriculture, a nine- or 10-member board comprised of career politicians, lobbyists, and subsidy recipients. (So much for DOGE.)

Assorted Accolades

To date, no other Congressmen have added their names as cosponsors. But the bill has earned plenty of accolades from those who stand to reap billions in federal largess. Some of them include:

  1. Arbor Energy, a carbon capture tech company founded in 2022, cozy with Microsoft, and which has already received $7 million in federal funding.
  2. Elimini, an even more recent startup launched in late 2024 and specializing in BECCS technology, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Kingdom’s renewable energy giant Drax Group. In other words, it’s a conduit for American tax dollars to a foreign-owned company.
  3. The Carbon Business Council (CBC) is a non-profit association whose members hail from CCS circles. It is involved in Elon Musk’s XPRIZE which, at $100 million, is touted as the “largest incentive prize in history,” and aims to fund development of carbon dioxide removal technology. CBC’s executive director, Ben Rubin, is a frequent speaker at United Nations climate conferences and at the World Economic Forum.

“BECCS is a novel technology uniquely positioned to promote wildfire mitigation, bolster economic development in rural America, and deliver much-needed baseload power as energy demand for data centers and artificial intelligence continues to grow,” stumped Moore as he introduced the bill. “This legislation will help us harness new technology to reduce wildfire risks, create good-paying jobs and keep rural economies like ours growing,” Costa predictably parroted.

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Who Owns the Unknown? When private hands hold technology not of this Earth, who decides what happens next? The UAPDA has an answer.

Imagine this: A private landowner discovers something buried deep beneath the surface of their property. It’s not oil, gold, or a rare fossil, but something entirely foreign. A piece of machinery, perhaps. Advanced. Intact. Entirely unexplainable. It appears to be manufactured, but not by any known earthly process. It does not match the signatures of Russian, Chinese, or even American technology. It is exotic, inexplicable, and possibly not of human origin at all.

What happens next? Does the landowner get to keep it? Auction it to the highest bidder? Lease it to a defense contractor or a foreign state? Does the government step in, invoke national security, and confiscate the technology of unknown origin, without due process or compensation, never to be seen again?

This scenario is no mere thought experiment. The U.S. Senate has now, for the third time, introduced the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act (UAPDA), legislation designed to pierce through 80 years of secrecy, disinformation, and scientific suppression surrounding the subject of UAP, or UFOs. One of its most vital and controversial provisions is its explicit affirmation of the applicability of the right of eminent domain.

Opponents of the UAPDA have zeroed in on this provision. They argue it threatens property rights and creates a dangerous precedent for federal overreach. But these objections collapse under scrutiny. In truth, the eminent domain clause is the linchpin that makes lawful UAP disclosure possible. Without it, we risk continuing a shadow system of secret seizures, constitutional violations, and scientific stagnation.

Let’s be clear: eminent domain is not a novel or unchecked power of our local, state, and federal governments. Instead, it is a deeply rooted legal principle in American constitutional law. What the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment provides is not the denial of that right, but a granting of that right and its regulation through due process, and which goes on to assert one of the required aspects of due process is the taking of property solely for public use with just compensation. The UAPDA need not define “just compensation.” The legal requirement for fair compensation in any lawful taking under eminent domain is already firmly established in precedent and practice. Importantly, the exercise of eminent domain can be contested in court, providing a clear check on government power, unlike covert seizures under the guise of national security, which offer no such judicial review or recourse. The UAPDA merely renders a specific process already governed by over a century of constitutional law.

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DOE cancels $4.9B loan for energy project Illinois lawmaker calls a ‘scam’

The U.S. Department of Energy has canceled $4.9 billion in federal loans for the Grain Belt Express, a proposed multistate transmission line that faced pushback from Illinois landowners over concerns about property rights and eminent domain.

State Rep. Chris Miller, R-Oakland, praised the DOE’s decision and called the project a “scam” driven by global investors and green energy lobbyists.

“This is a huge win for taxpayers in Illinois and across the United States,” Miller said in an interview. “It was an assault on property rights, on the livelihoods of Illinois farmers, and I’m proud to stand with my constituents against this scam.”

The 800-mile Grain Belt Express aimed to carry wind power from Kansas eastward but drew rural backlash over eminent domain, including opposition at a 2024 Meade County Kansas Corporation Commission hearing where resident Barbra Parker spoke.

“The current plan would place it approximately 150 feet from my front door. Over the years, through that very door, have walked my grandfather, my father, my grandmother, my mother, myself, and now my daughter Kate — four generations of farmers and ranchers,” said Parker. “So I’m asking Invenergy to work with me on possibly adjusting the route or considering micrositing alternatives. I’m asking that the commission oversee and ensure that micrositing is used.”

Micrositing in wind energy means fine-tuning turbine placement to boost output and reduce environmental impact.

Supporters say the Grain Belt Express would improve grid reliability, deliver lower-cost clean energy to major population centers and generate economic activity along its route.

In 2023, when the ICC approved the project, Mark Denzler, president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association said in a news release, “This project will deliver billions in energy cost savings. Energy infrastructure investment is key to ensuring our region maintains our traditional energy cost advantage and manufacturing competitiveness.”

Miller criticized the project as a costly green energy push that threatens farmland and drives up electric bills.

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Trump admin to intervene on behalf of New Jersey family trying to stop government seizure of 175-year-old farm

ANew Jersey family trying to save their 175-year-old farm from being seized by a local government are getting support from the Trump administration.

The Cranbury city government announced its intention to seize the 21-acre farm through eminent domain in order to build low-income apartments, but the Henry family is resisting.

On Tuesday, Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins said the power of the federal government would intercede in the case on the side of the family.

“On the phone with Andy Henry of Highland Ranch in Cranbury, NJ. The city govt has approved seizing his 175-year-old family farm via eminent domain for affordable housing units,” wrote Rollins.

“Whether the Maudes, the Henrys or others whom we will soon announce, the Biden-style government takeover of our family farms is over,” she added. “While this particular case is a city eminent domain issue, we @usda are exploring every legal option to help.”

Andy Henry says he has received many multimillion-dollar offers for the farm, but he has denied all of them.

“Didn’t matter how much money we were offered,” Henry said. “We saved the farm no matter what. We turned down all the offers to preserve the legacy for our family, city, and even state.”

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OUTRAGE: Cranbury, NJ Moves to Seize 175-Year-Old Family Farm to Make Way for ‘Affordable Housing’ Project

Another American legacy is on the chopping block—this time in deep-blue New Jersey, where local officials are ramming through a plan to bulldoze a 175-year-old family farm in the name of “affordable housing.”

NJ.com reported that Chris Henry stood before the Cranbury Township Committee, pleading with officials not to rip his family’s heritage from the soil their great-grandfather purchased in 1850.

The Henry family, whose parents both served in World War II and whose mother’s name is etched into the town’s war memorial, is now watching bureaucrats prepare to seize their 21-acre farm by force.

Their crime? Refusing to sell.

The family has poured over $200,000 into preserving the historic Middlesex County farm, which is currently leased to a local rancher who raises sheep and cattle.

Despite the property’s agricultural use and historical importance, the Cranbury Township Committee voted unanimously in May to move forward with seizing the land through eminent domain.

All of this—just to meet a state-mandated housing quota pushed by far-left courts and Trenton bureaucrats.

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Iowa Landowners Fight Seizure of Private Property for a Pipeline

A privately owned company is proposing a pipeline across five states. While some of the state governments appear to be on board, the project is facing backlash from a large and formidable population: property owners.

The pipeline, known as Summit Carbon Solutions, would span 2,500 miles and transport carbon dioxide (CO2) captured at 57 ethanol plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas to a permanent underground storage site in North Dakota. Construction of the $9 billion pipeline is expected to begin this year, with operations kicking off in 2026.

In June 2024, the project received regulatory approval from the Iowa Utilities Commission, despite landowner protests.

Julie Glade and her husband, Paul, are Iowans who oppose the project because of its use of eminent domain. Their property aligns with the proposed route, and in 2022 the couple was visited by a land agent. “The guy who came to our door wanted us to sit down and sign it without reading it,” Glade tells Reason. “They swooped in and tried to contact as many people as possible right away before the people knew what the consequences were. It’s very unethical.”

Several other landowners in the state share the Glades’ worries. During a hearing conducted by the Iowa Utility Commission, landowner Joan Gaul testified against the pipeline, which she said would cross a large portion of her farmland.

Gaul said Summit Carbon Solutions mailed two easements, which would give the pipeline a legal right to her land, to her without notice.

“This letter came telling us about taking our land using eminent domain. It was a difficult pill to swallow,” she said. Gaul said she didn’t accept the easements and has indicated that she will continue to fight the project.

The Glades visit the Iowa Capitol nearly every week to voice their opposition to the pipeline. They are joined by what the couple calls a diverse coalition united by their concern for the basic constitutional right to land ownership.

“We have MAGA Republicans and we have lefties. We put our differences aside and we work together,” she says.

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Pope Leo’s Childhood Home Faces Eminent Domain as He Relocates to a More Eminent Domain

“Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own,” wrote Pope Leo XIII, in his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, laying down the basics of Catholic social teaching.

The plans of contemporary socialists to seize private property, Leo XIII denounced as “emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.”

The last Pope Leo’s defense of private property adds no small amount of irony to the small Chicago suburb of Dolton, Illinois’ plan to honor the new American-born Pope Leo XIV by seizing his childhood home from its private owners.

Yesterday, Chicago-area media reported that Dolton officials plan to use eminent domain to take the home where Leo XIV, formerly Robert Francis Prevost, was raised from its current private owners to create a publicly accessible historic site.

At present, the owners are auctioning off the small, 1949-built home for a reserve price of $250,000.

In a Tuesday letter to the auction house running the sale, Dolton attorney Burton Odelson cautioned buyers against purchasing the house.

“Please inform any prospective buyers that their ‘purchase’ may only be temporary since the Village intends to begin the eminent domain process very shortly,” reads Odelson’s letter, per NBC Chicago.

Odelson told Chicago’s ABC7 that the village had initially tried to voluntarily purchase the home but had snagged on the sale price.

“We’ve tried to negotiate with the owner. [He] wants too much money, so we will either negotiate with the auction house or, as the letter stated that I sent to the auction house, we will take it through eminent domain, which is our right as a village,” Odelson said.

One wonders how outrageous the owners’ offered sale price was given its current auction price of $250,000.

The fact that the home was once lived in by the current pope surely doesn’t enable the owners to command that much of a sale premium on what is undeniably a quite modest dwelling.

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Supreme Court Lined Up to Consider Case That Could Kill ‘One of the Most Reviled Decisions in Recent Decades’

An often-criticized precedent from the Supreme Court 20 years ago that gives local governments permission to literally confiscate a landowner’s property and give it to someone else who may have more political influence could be overturned through a new case pending before the justices.

It is the Institute for Justice that has been fighting on behalf of Bryan Bowers, a New York landowner whose property was “seized” by a local government agency.

It was then given to his competitors.

The precedent that soon could be doomed is the Kelo decision from 2005 in which the court redefined “public use.”

That’s the standard that courts must use to determine whether governments can take over private property without the owner’s consent, and it often is associated with the construction of roads and bridges and such.

In Kelo, a single-vote on the court claimed that creating jobs or increasing tax revenue was just that “public use.”

Dissenters, including a left-leaning Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that now the government “has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more.”

The IJ described the Kelo precedent as “one of the most reviled decisions in recent decades.”

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Town Secretly Seizes Developers’ Property Then Threatens Them With Trespassing Citation

As readers might recall, in the Providence suburb of Johnston, the town government and its very outspoken mayor have been attempting to seize a family of developers’ land to prevent their construction of an unsubsidized affordable housing project.

Last week the developers sued to stop the seizure in federal court, alleging that the “municipal campus” Johnston was seizing the land for was merely a pretext to stop new affordable housing.

Already, Rhode Island law establishes a fairly elaborate process that local governments have to follow when using eminent domain to take land for public buildings.

The developers’ constitutional challenge to the town’s seizure would typically delay things even more.

But in a surprise turn of events late last week, the town is claiming to have already seized the developers’ plot without providing any advance notice to the owners and without following the processes laid down in Rhode Island law.

The owners first learned of the seizure via Johnston’s mayor’s X post. With the town now alleging that the seizure is complete, it’s telling the former owners of the land they have until Friday to get off it or else they’ll be cited for trespassing.

In response, the developers are now filing for a temporary restraining order to stop what they describe as the town’s unprecedented lawlessness in taking the land.

“In 40 years, I’ve seen some pretty outrageous exercises of eminent domain powers. Never anything like this,” says Robert Thomas, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public interest law firm, who is representing the developers.

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