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Boston Globe
2 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
The founders of this new development say you must be white to live there
'Seeing someone who doesn't present as white might lead us to, among other things, not admit that person,' said one founder, Eric Orwoll, who moonlights as a Platonic scholar on YouTube but is now focused on developing 160 acres in Ravenden, Arkansas, into a community strictly for white, heterosexual people called Return to the Land. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Co-founder Eric Orwoll, at Return to the Land on Aug. 11, 2025. To date, there have been no legal challenges to Return to the Land, and its creators believe they could win a challenge in court, during the Trump administration. WHITTEN SABBATINI/NYT Advertisement The far right is surging in the United States, driven in part by white nationalists exploiting economic anxieties and a populace increasingly frustrated with the political status quo. Now, as the Trump administration rolls back diversity, equity and inclusion policies; cracks down on immigration; and offers pardons to white supremacists, some see an opening. In creating their community, the founders of Return to the Land are testing antidiscrimination housing laws that have been in place for 57 years. Related : The community's other founder, Peter Csere, was arrested in Ecuador for stabbing a miner and is accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a vegan community there. He and Orwoll say they believe Return to the Land meets the requirements for a legal exemption for private associations and religious groups that offer housing to their members. Advertisement Tim Griffin, the Arkansas attorney general, opened an investigation into potential legal violations by Return to the Land after reports on the community were published earlier in the summer in The Forward and on Sky News. Jeff LeMaster, his communications director, said in a statement, 'We're continuing our review of this matter.' ReNika Moore, the director of the racial justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union, disputed the men's claims that Return to the Land is legal. 'Federal and state law, including the Fair Housing Act, prohibit housing discrimination based on race, period,' she said in an email. 'Repackaging residential segregation as a 'private club' is still a textbook violation of federal law.' Representatives for America First Legal, the conservative advocacy group, did not respond to a request for comment on the community's legal status. Representatives for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas also did not respond to a request for comment. A pen of milk goats at Return to the Land, on Aug. 11. Housing rights experts say a community restricted to white residents is illegal, but the creators believe they could win a potential challenge in court. WHITTEN SABBATINI/NYT To date, there have been no legal challenges to Return to the Land. But John Relman, a civil rights lawyer who specializes in fair housing violations, said the group could be sued under not just the 1968 Fair Housing Act but also multiple sections of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1866. 'You've got a smoking gun case of intentional discrimination,' he said. 'I think they're misguided when they say that they're home free.' But Return to the Land says it sees an opening under a federal government that has pushed the boundaries of laws and norms, especially when it comes to race. Advertisement 40 occupants and some goats Return to the Land is the name of both the 160-acre compound, which has about 40 residents, and a private association that Orwoll said 'hundreds' have joined, paying a one-time $25 membership fee and earning acceptance after sharing information online about their ethnic background. Orwoll and Csere, along with three other men, run a limited liability company founded in September 2023. Nearly two weeks later, they bought the land in Ravenden for $237,000, property records show. Members of the association can buy shares currently valued around $6,600 each in the LLC. In exchange for each share, they each receive 3 acres in the compound. Orwoll, 35, recently gave The New York Times a limited tour, allowing entry to the property through a gate that had a lock. He sat on a folding chair in his office, housed in an insulated shed with air conditioning and fiber internet, two pianos and shelves full of philosophy texts. Before a photographer could snap pictures, he pulled a copy of 'Mein Kampf' from a bookshelf and turned it around to hide its spine. The compound feels isolated from the rest of the world. Ravenden is a tiny strip of a town that has about 400 residents and one barbecue restaurant. The closest grocery store is inside a Walmart Supercenter 30 minutes away. The town mascot, a raven, is commemorated by a 12-foot stucco statue on the side of its main road. Related : At the compound, rough gravel roads have been carved by bulldozer into the rugged, wooded terrain. Orwoll showed off one trim, two-story white cabin with an American flag flapping above its front door, and a rising community center he hopes will one day host dinners and events. Down past a creek was a pen of milk goats, both mothers and babies, guarded by Lucy, a white Great Pyrenees, on a long chain. Advertisement The rest of the compound, he said, was off-limits because of residents' wishes. He declined to say how many cabins have been fully built, but some members, he said, already have installed solar panels, dug septic and water systems, and installed generators for electricity. A planned community center at Return to the Land, a 160-acre compound which has about 40 residents and a private association that Orwoll said 'hundreds' have joined, paying a one-time $25 membership fee. WHITTEN SABBATINI/NYT From Plato to Orania Orwoll grew up in La Mirada, California, outside Los Angeles, and in high school, he considered himself a libertarian. He studied the French horn at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, before moving to Milwaukee to join the orchestra with Shen Yun, the classical Chinese dance and music production. While Orwoll considers the group a cult, he said, 'I liked a lot of how they did things, though. They're very efficient. I thought it was interesting having a compound like they have.' Despite never studying it formally, he'd always been drawn to Greek philosophy, and he eventually started uploading homemade videos about Plato and collective consciousness to his YouTube channel. He attracted a following, including some commenters who responded with arguments about demographic shifts in the United States. They repeated ideas from what's known as the Great Replacement theory — a conspiracy theory that nonwhite populations will replace white people through birthrates and mass migration — and racist pseudoscience about human intelligence and its link to genetics, an idea that has been broadly debunked by experts. Those comments, he said, began to convince him that white people in America were being persecuted and that the fabric of the United States was fraying as its nonwhite populations grew. 'I got red-pilled,' he said, using a term for awakening to a supposed hidden truth. 'If we never had mass immigration, if we were still a homogeneous nation, we would not feel as much of a need to form communities like this,' he said. Advertisement Between his recorded musings on Plato, he began weaving in videos about elites in the United States and theories on how the genetics for blond hair and blue eyes spread across the globe over history. Peter Csere, a co-founder of Return to the Land, was arrested in Ecuador for stabbing a miner and is accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a vegan community there. WHITTEN SABBATINI/NYT The videos caught the eye of Csere, 36, a Connecticut-raised jazz pianist. The two men struck up a friendship online. 'Eventually, I realized there is a genetic component to IQ, and it's one of those things that people like to pretend doesn't exist because it's politically inconvenient,' Csere said, repeating the theory in an interview on the compound. 'You have cultures that invented the wheel thousands of years ago, and then you have cultures that never ever invented the wheel until it was given to them by somebody else.' He said he became interested in Orania, a town for white people in South Africa established at the end of the apartheid era that is restricted to Afrikaners — South Africans of European descent — and has been largely ignored by the South African government. Unfulfilled by life as a musician, Csere said he began searching for something with 'more meaning.' He first embraced veganism and a 'need to become a hippie' and formed an eco-village in Ecuador. The village, Fruit Haven, publicly accused Csere of fraud and theft on its website. In a statement, it accused him of absconding in July 2023 with thousands of misappropriated dollars and said that he once stabbed an Ecuadorian miner, causing him a collapsed lung, and was arrested on a potential charge of attempted murder in Ecuador. He has not yet been formally charged. The Times reviewed documentation of the arrest as well as emails from members of the community begging Csere to return their funds. Advertisement Csere said the stabbing was an act of self-defense during an altercation, and he left the country many months after the incident. He disputed the idea that he owed money to any members of the community. Related : 'They've been trying to press charges for a long time and were unable to,' Csere said of Ecuadorian authorities. Members of the community were 'trying to generate drama' by discussing the incident and claiming he owed them money, he said. Men, women and children On a Monday in August, four children giggled and played on a rusty seesaw under the shade of a few trees. There are about a dozen children living at Return to the Land — Orwoll declined to give a firm number — and all are homeschooled, he said. 'I'd rather leave it to the parents to educate their kids how they want,' he said. Orwoll and his ex-wife, Caitlin Smith, have four children between the ages of 2 and 8. Living in the community, Smith said, has been great for her children because it has given them 'people to play with that we could trust.' The pair met at music school; like Orwoll, Smith, 31, who is originally from upstate New York, plays the French horn. Before they had four children, the pair made live sex videos for money on the porn site Chaturbate. 'When I was doing that, I was a moral nihilist. I was not yet a Christian,' Orwoll said of the videos. 'I had a different worldview and value system, and part of my rationale for going toward more traditional values was seeing the mistakes I made when I did not have them as a young person.' Smith declined to comment on the videos. According to her profile page, which is still visible, along with the videos, she listed a preference for men, women, trans people and couples. At Return to the Land, gay people of any race are barred. Caitlin Smith with one of the four children she had with Orwoll, on Aug. 11. They divorced in 2024, and she now is remarried to another man on the compound. WHITTEN SABBATINI/NYT Smith is now remarried to another man, and they live on the compound. She sat next to Orwoll and his new fiancee, Allison, who declined to give her last name, saying she was fearful of being targeted for her views. 'This is how I've always wanted to live — returning to the land,' Smith said. 'The most important thing about this project for me is being able to actually vet my neighbors. You can move to a nice area, and in 10 years, you have no idea who's going to be living down the street. What makes a person a person is their whole past, who they are now. And the genetics as well.' Orwoll hopes to one day welcome around 200 men, women and children to Return to the Land in Arkansas. He said supporters nationwide have expressed interest in following the Ravenden model to build their own communities. The website of Return to the Land shows five additional projects — two more in the Ozarks, one in the Deep South and two in the Appalachian Mountains. Orwoll has a trip planned to Missouri soon, he said, to look at potential land sites for a community there and to 'vet people who may not necessarily be fully vetted.' This article originally appeared in .
Bloomberg
3 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Zelenskiy Should Not Make Concessions: William Taylor
William Taylor, former US Ambassador to Ukraine, voices his thoughts on what security guarantees the US can give Ukraine to help the country against Russian President Vladimir Putin and whether or not Ukraine may cede territory as part of a peace deal. He speaks with Tyler Kendall and Michael Shepard on the late edition of Bloomberg's "Balance of Power." (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US to hold more than 30 offshore oil and gas auctions through 2040
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday unveiled a comprehensive schedule to hold more than 30 offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Cook Inlet over the next 15 years. WHY IT'S IMPORTANT The plan fulfills a directive in Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed last month, and is aligned with his administration's energy dominance agenda to boost domestic fossil fuel production. The schedule marks a significant departure from former President Joe Biden, whose administration had planned for a historically small number of drilling rights auctions as part of its efforts to address climate change. KEY QUOTE "The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a landmark step toward unleashing America's energy potential," Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. "Under President Trump's leadership, we're putting in place a bold, long-term program that strengthens American Energy Dominance, creates good-paying jobs and ensures we continue to responsibly develop our offshore resources." BY THE NUMBERS The schedule includes 30 lease sales through 2040 in the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump has renamed the Gulf of America. The first Gulf sale is set for Dec. 10 of this year. Starting next year, there will be two sales in the Gulf annually through 2039 and one in 2040. Six lease sales are planned for Alaska's Cook Inlet through 2032. The first will be held in March of 2026.
