The billionaire leaders of the tech-right–like conservative megadonor Peter Thiel–who are now deeply politically and financially intertwined with the President of the United States, are advocating for public lands to be turned over to them so that they can create “freedom cities.” And, according to the President’s own campaign messaging, he is promoting “a contest to charter up to 10 new cities” on America’s public lands.
What is a “freedom city?” Groups like the Freedom Cities Coalition and the Charter Cities Institute are lobbying the White House and Congress to create legislation that would allow for tech billionaires to create their own lawless company towns on US public lands.
Freedom cities would be free from the governmental laws and regulations needed to protect their citizens or environment. These “startup cities” would govern themselves and be run by corporations, with a strict hierarchy and no democracy.
In other words, freedom cities are a newer and more diabolical version of the company town. (If you need a refresher on how inhumane company towns are, check out this article by J.J. Anselmi.)
Does this plan sound farfetched? Like dystopian fiction? Of course it does, but it is also close to becoming a reality.
According to investigative journalists Vittoria Elliott and Caroline Haskins with The Wired, Jeffrey Mason, the director of policy for the Charter Cities Institute, said in March of 2025 that his group and others are working with US lawmakers to draft legislation allowing the transfer of American public lands to individual corporations.
He says that he and other lobbyists from similar organizations are having “casual conversations with people in the White House,” as well as members of Congress from both parties. Mason claims that legislation to create freedom cities will be ready later in 2025.
Think a freedom city can’t become a reality? One already exists: a corporate “startup city” named Próspera off the coast of Honduras, which is really a mini-fiefdom funded by Thiel and his fellow anti-democracy, pro-fascist rich friends. The city doesn’t follow the laws of Honduras, and the government of that nation is trying to have them removed.
Prospera’s chief of staff, Trey Goff, says that he and other freedom city advocate groups have been meeting with the Trump Administration and that “you can tell in meetings with the people involved that they have the mandate to do some of the more hyperbolic, verbose things Trump has mentioned.”
So what has Trump mentioned? As stated above, in 2023 he outright said in a campaign video that he wants to create ten freedom cities. Goff says that he is hoping to build more freedom cities: “not just 10, but as many as the market can handle.”
The President of the United States is having meetings with billionaires and their lobbyists who want to establish mini-dictatorships within the US. This is not alarmist handwringing; it is fact. And the alarms only grow louder when you learn what they plan to do in their freedom cities.
If you aren’t aware, the tech-right dogma is one of elitist, authoritarianism. The billionaire CEOs to come out of Silicon Valley believe they are superior to their workers and that their enemy is democracy.
When Elon Musk tried to take down vast swaths of the American government through his work with DOGE, he was intentionally sewing chaos and inflicting damage on a system he perceives to be counter to his accumulation of wealth and power–i.e., American democracy. He and tech billionaires like him (along with the politicians they keep in their pockets) believe themselves to be the rightful rulers of the people.
They believe that civil rights and the regulations that protect the health and safety of citizens are not just a hindrance to their businesses but a sign that American democracy must be dismantled. And they have the money and clout to attempt to do just that.
So what are they proposing to do on the public lands they steal from Americans? They want to do all the things that no governments will allow them to do now because they are ethically or morally questionable (or reprehensible) or flat out unsafe–like gene-therapy to extend life, animal or even human experimentation, dangerous defense tech, or building unregulated nuclear power plants.
Yes, you read that last one correctly. Running AI data centers requires a tremendous amount of power, and companies like Google and Meta have started signaling interest in nuclear power as a means to power their new tech.
Imagine you are a morally bankrupt billionaire who wants to have an endless power supply. What would you do? Well, stealing US federal land, declaring it your own fiefdom where no state or federal environmental regulations apply, and then building a giant nuclear plant sounds like a great place to start.
This is the future that America’s president is signing us up for. A nation not of democracy or freedoms but of corporate overlords. A place where corporations govern us and employ us and oppress us at the whims of CEO dictators. A land where an unregulated nuclear facility can be built for the benefit of a billionaire and to the potential devastation of millions of nearby humans.
This is not the future that most Americans want, even those that may have voted for this president. But it is the future America that is currently being discussed and promoted in the highest halls of power in our nation.
The people in conversation with America’s leaders right now are bigots and wannabe dictators.
It is almost poetic to me that they are trying to use America’s public lands–some of our most democratic and treasured communal spaces–to wage this war against democracy and the rule of the people.
The modern concept of public lands was for the most part invented in America, where the government for and by the people chose to hold some land that was for all of us, not just for a few and certainly not only for the wealthy elite.
These are the same lands that may now be given to the rich to create toxic cesspools of environmental degradation and inhumanity.
All Americans benefit today from our public lands, whether we know it or not. They provide us with sustainable resources, economic benefits, and places to adventure and rejuvenate. They protect some of our most precious cultural and natural treasures.
All Americans except a handful of billionaires will suffer should our public lands become their kingdoms. These kings will violate the laws of nature and man. They will harm their own lands and workers, as well as the land and people in surrounding communities. Their destruction, lawlessness, and lack of empathy will ripple out from our once public lands like a sickness, infecting us all.
And what they don’t seem to understand is that it will infect them too.
The tech-right’s fascist, fantasy future reveals how monumentally dumb they are. They act like environmental regulations and protective laws are oppressing them, but those rules are in place to protect them as much as anyone else.
They want police and laws and courts and the military to protect them and their patents and their tech. They want their homes and companies to not be destroyed by climate change-induced natural disasters. They too want to drink the water and breathe the air.
And, though they would never understand it, public lands benefit them too. Even if they only care about money, happy and healthy workers are more productive. And public lands are a part of what makes Americans happier and healthier.
The super-rich don’t seem to realize that they are living here too. Why protect your environment? Because you live in it. Isn’t that enough of a reason?