Of Elephants and Possums
A guide to navigating the chaos of the Trump era and focusing on the greatest threat to American liberty in 2026.
Dear Friends,
You probably know the names Roger Stone1 and Steven Bannon. You may know the names Ric Grennell2 and Patrick Byrne. You certainly know the names of Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.3
What do all of these men have in common?
They are MAGA Republicans who have worked diligently since 2017 (or maybe earlier) with agents and collaborators in state and national Libertarian Party chapters to cripple growth and keep Libertarians from challenging Republican candidates nationwide.
There is an elephant in our midst, trampling and destroying what had been built over decades. Some people want to keep the elephant. Some people have left out of fear of being damaged by the elephant. Some people just can’t stand being in a room that stinks of elephant manure.
As long as the elephant is there, it’s not safe to go back in, but the elephant is too big and dangerous to fight without getting hurt.
So how do we remove the elephant?
We make the Libertarian Party intolerable to elephants.
In 2022, at the national convention in Nevada, the Mises Caucus won their first ever victory for national party leadership, installing a corrupt grifter who dismantled the operational infrastructure of the party systematically over the next three years. There’s been thousands of words written about that personal treachery, but that doesn’t help in getting rid of the elephant.
What does help is examining what the elephant’s priorities were in 2022, the last convention before the 2024 presidential election: Removing support for abortion rights, immigrant rights, and rejection of bigotry from the official platform of the Libertarian Party.
As has been revealed by the decisions of the elephantine Supreme Court, animus against minorities, women, and immigrants is driving the MAGA movement.
An approximately 30% rump of delegates at the 2026 national convention in Grand Rapids spent nearly two hours engaging in parliamentary maneuvering to avoid allowing the convention to take up platform proposals addressing immigration and bigotry. They referred to themselves as the “Possum Caucus” and had cute shirts and post funny pictures and even 3-D printed possum toys that they were giving out to delegates and kids. Seems cute, until you see their real goal: ensuring the Libertarian Party remained hospitable to elephants and those who quietly support violating the rights of immigrants and minorities.
Because the elephants and the possums worked hard to make sure the convention adjourned without taking up those proposals, the Libertarian Party goes into the 2026 midterm elections without taking an official stand on the most salient political issues in American politics.
It will be incumbent on libertarians organized outside the official structure of the Libertarian Party to take bold stances against bigotry and hate, to make it clear that elephants are not porcupines, and to poke the possums until they reveal themselves. Real libertarians are eternal enemies of racial prejudice. Real libertarians recognize the human right of immigrants to seek a better life in America. Real libertarians support transgender kids against government attempts to interfere in their medical care.
Elephants hate real libertarians.
They always have.
Keep your eye on what they do, more than what they say. Speak up, speak out, and support candidates who carry a real libertarian message.
Yours in liberty,
Nick
P.S. If this email resonates with you, please forward it to a friend who may have been scared off by the elephants.
Roger Stone was part of Gary Johnson’s campaign at the 2012 Libertarian National Convention and ran a Super PAC supporting Johnson.
At the 2024 Libertarian National Convention, RFK, Jr. was considered for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president, but received only a handful of votes.
A Libertarian Party welcoming of donkeys is equally distasteful to one which welcomes elephants. The LP must represent the unique Libertarian perspective which rejects the legacy parties' top-down, centralized solutions.
To that end, the planks on abortion and "bigotry" will not return. There is good faith disagreement amongst Libertarians on whether abortion violates the NAP, so an alienating pro-life or pro-choice national plank is pointless. That is the top-down, "one plank to rule them all" mentality expected from the legacy parties.
Likewise "bigotry" in the sense that its definition is impractically subjective. Rare will be that over-the-top LPNH-type post. Mostly it will be thousands of screenshots from Discord chats which deluge the Judicial Committee. Violation inquiries will fritter away scarce party time and resources, whereas members can always disassociate from those they deem unsavory.