Policy Skeleton Key

Problem solving with Electronic Federal ID

1. What is EFID? How does it work?

Technological integration has expanded throughout virtually every facet of modern society and while many of our utilities have kept pace, some stubbornly remain analog. The physical ID systems we use in the United States present many challenges from theft to locale to durability of the ID itself. Addressing these should be as simple as establishing an electronic federal ID system (EFID) in the form of a two factor verification app connected to a person's social security number (SSN). Despite the fact social security numbers aren't meant to be used as a form of ID, they already fill that role in various areas of our society; until a better system of federal ID is established, it's likely the best option available to build the EFID program from. An EFID can be acquired anywhere with cell service and cannot be physically stolen like a legacy ID; this sort of system allows for a level of real time fraud protection not possible with current models. In the event that a person’s ID is used from an unfamiliar device, a warning notification could be sent to a linked security email. Maintaining data siloing standards would be easy as such a program would only require someone’s SSN and date of birth to be stored, this is already the case with our social security administration. The physical infrastructure necessary to instate this policy is limited to server space to maintain code generation and the phone app that would be used to verify an ID. Having a rapidly verifiable and secure form of identification in place opens up the opportunity to address a wide variety of issues plaguing our political environment currently.

2. Removing the political roadblock of voter ID

Due to the consistent push from republicans, favorability for voter ID has risen on a relatively bipartisan line ^[1]. The policy of voter ID, when proposed simply, is an appealing concept in line with the MAGA “common sense” mantra, this makes it something that democrats cannot afford to ignore. In reality voter ID solves a problem that doesn't meaningfully exist and only serves to reduce the total number of eligible voters. While most Americans have a valid form of ID, physical ID can be expensive, sometimes requires a restrictive degree of travel to the nearest DMV, and for people in the working class with less flexible working schedules can present issues taking time off. Electronic federal ID would ideally be distributed for free to anyone with a smartphone and a cell signal; while not a perfect solution, EFID effectively addresses most downsides of a voter ID law. Assuming a federal ID system of this sort were enacted, the strategy of the democrats would just be to enact a federal law mandating that all voter ID laws accept EFID as valid identification. With the downsides of voter ID accounted for, the democratic party can move into a more aggressive stance combatting misinformation on voter fraud itself.

3. Social media verification and combatting foreign interference 

Though the infestation of autonomous profiles or “bots” has long been a problem in online spaces, the advent of artificial intelligence has made the accessibility of bot creation significantly more widespread. No platform has had a more visible problem with this than X under Elon Musk; estimates vary widely but generally fall in the range of 20% - 60% of activity being attributable to bots^[2]. The problem of unreliability of information found on social media is much broader than just bot accounts however, the clarity of this was solidified in late 2025 when a feature rollout on X made it possible to view the country accounts are operated from. Community sleuthing quickly uncovered that a large number of pro-Trump accounts were run by foreigners pretending to live within the United States^[3]. Cultivating a healthy information environment for our political system to operate within requires radical transparency of sources and EFID could allow us to take a large step in that direction. Using a two factor code allows for verification of citizenship without putting personal data at risk by sending an image of a physical ID, a social media company could confirm the validity of a profile by submitting a code and receiving a simple yes or no from the government. Once integrated, verification of this kind might look as simple as a citizen badge on a user’s profile or as broad as altering the algorithm to prioritize verified accounts. The best way to implement this in a pragmatic way would be to forcibly apply a badge system paired with a pop up message that informs users of a settings toggle to prioritize ID verified accounts. This plan ensures that users of the platform are made aware of the foreign interference problem without making them feel forced to use the new feature. Despite my personal skepticism of the efficacy in the Australian policy, EFID could be used to age gate social media in the United States by requiring verification to create an account. 

4. Opening the door to addressing age gated products

The issue of ID verification for access to age gated products and spaces is something that, with some logistical tinkering, could be attacked with the use of an EFID system. Studies vary but generally find that the number of college age adults who have used a fake ID falls in the mid 40% range. ^[4] While policy has been enacted around the country attempting to disincentivize use of fake IDs, demand for the product remains high. Use of technology in the form of ID scanners have improved over time but are still not always reliable and can be tricked by higher quality fakes. The EFID program has potential to circumvent this issue by offering the ability for vendors to instantly verify the authenticity of an ID directly with the government. Utilizing an interface specially designed for businesses with a license to sell age gated products, cashiers would input the customer’s two factor code and be returned a yes or no for eligibility to purchase. Vendor logins could be customized by business to service varying age restrictions such as nightclubs that utilize alcohol wristbands or the sale of tobacco. The tinkering required for this use case would be addressing an underage customer borrowing the phone of an adult to make the purchase as the current outline for EFID does not include photo verification.

5. Closing thoughts

 Electronic federal ID as I’ve laid out should not be viewed as a comprehensive solution to federal ID. My policy was designed with the goal of supplementing the existing system to address modern shortcomings without requiring the creation of a new governmental body or large-scale reform of existing systems. While this policy could raise privacy concerns, well written language in the law barring tracking of individual IDs should ease these worries. 

This March Digital Ground Game is kicking off our monthly Midterms Report by taking a look at one of the states that interests us most for 2026: Iowa.

The combination of growing disdain for MAGA’s policies and the quantity and type of elections in 2026 makes Iowa a compelling state to dedicate canvassing resources. Sentiment in Iowa is bleak on the Trump administration due to pressure on agriculture from the Trump tariffs. This does not just extend to the farmers themselves but to the local manufacturing and services sector that supports Iowa agriculture. Iowa is also interesting due to it not only having a contested Senate seat with Joini Ernst retiring but also a competitive gubernatorial race and three competitive House races for this year. As the 2026 Midterms nears Digital Ground Game is analyzing the best places to position our limited canvassing operations and Iowa makes a compelling case to be on the list.

Iowa’s Economy Under Trump 2.0

The core of Iowa’s economy is agriculture. Across the nation, agriculture has seen a massive markup in production costs while seeing a decline in sales. This has led to farmers entering 2026, after receiving over $11 Billion in aid, seeing increased losses and compounding layover debt from previous seasons. On top of that, tariffs have increased the costs of fertilizer, MAGA immigration policies have increased labor costs, and losses starting in Trump’s first term have caused compounding runaway debt ^[1]. Additionally, Tariffs caused domestic oversupply, particularly in rice and soybeans, leading to price reductions in U.S commodities causing a catastrophic situation forming in the Iowa farming industry. In 2025, Iowa had the second highest number of farm bankruptcies and is projected to have a 24% contraction in revenues in 2026 ^[2]. On a pure agricultural standpoint the economics look bleak, and the state and national slump on agriculture, mixed with tariffs, are beginning to cripple Iowa’s manufacturing industry.

Table 1: Table showing Iowa's decrease in manufactured imports and exports. Whirlpool’s manufacturing center in Iowa has been bleeding jobs since 2020 and there was net job loss in 2025^[3][4].

Due to Iowa’s location near the Great Lakes, far upstream on the Mississippi river, and close to the Chicago rail nexus; Iowa has not only become a hub for appliance manufacturing, but also a massive leader in agricultural equipment manufacturing. Due to the fall-off in agricultural revenue and the Trump tariffs, manufacturing exports are down 9.3% from 2025 and are projected to see a continued downward trend in 2026 ^[5]. Layoffs like what have happened at Whirlpool are happening across the state as manufacturing shrinks leading to a shrinking consumer pool that affects the State’s services industries ^[6]. The Trump admin has doubled down on his tariffs, which were shut down by the Supreme Court in February, by raising the global tariff from 10% to 15% using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as justification. This has led to farm groups in Iowa to publicly challenge the Trump admin on the tariff policy as they are dependent on imported fertilizer and other goods. It has escalated to the point where even the Iowa farmers union is calling for congressional oversight on Trump’s policies ^[7]. The downstream effects from Trump's policies and economic failures nationwide have bled into the broader Iowa economy making everyone feel it.

Iowa’s Competitive Races

The economic fallout in Iowa has created an electoral environment for 2026 that opens up previously locked in MAGA GOP seats. The most consequential is the Senate seat that Joini Ernst is vacating. Ernst was already suffering a low WAR score of -4.3, and, as she leaves, her GOP successor Ashley Hinson is left supporting the tariffs and other Trump policies that have caused so much anger in the Iowa electorate ^[8]. Challenging Hinson is a competitive batch of Democrats Zach Wahls, J.D. Scholten, and Jackie Norris leading the pack going into the primaries. Of those, Zach Wahls is currently the presumed favorite of the Democratic contenders as seen in various polls ^[9]. They have an easy avenue of attack using the possibility of flipping the balance in the senate to stop, and potentially roll back, Trump’s more destructive policies for Iowa. Iowa House races are also shaping up to be competitive as IA-1, IA-2, and IA-3 candidates are all having to vocally support the Trump Tariff policies and other practices that are so unpopular with their constituents. Democrat challengers benefit from attacking those practices and promising to be part of a coalition in the House and Senate to provide oversight to the Trump Admin.

The Iowa’s current Governor Kim Reynolds is not running for 2026 opening an incumbent free challenge to the gubernatorial this November. The race is looking like a showdown between Democratic candidate Rob Sand and the Republican candidate. The latter is still in the air as frontrunner Randy Feenstra if facing strong opposition by four challengers: MAGA sycophant Adam Steen, the libertarian leaning Eddie Andrews, Tea party remnant Zach Lahn, and evangelical head case Brad Sherman^[10]. The Republican primary is causing a heavy amount of discord and division in the Iowan Republican party, coupled with Trump not endorsing any of the candidates, only making this race harder. Rob Sand was one of the few Democrats to survive the 2022 red wave and has built a reputation for government transparency and anti-corruption practices during his time as auditor of the state. To capitalize on the situation in Iowa, he is running a campaign for an “Iowa that isn’t redder or bluer, but better and truer… For the next year, Rob will keep his foot on the gas and continue meeting Iowa voters where they are to talk about his plans to lower costs, strengthen public education, and help Iowans live better, healthier lives” ^[11]. Sands’ campaign draws a lot of similarities with Spanberger’s Virginia campaign, which is a very encouraging thought.

 Implications for the 2026 Midterms

Due to the economic hardships caused by Trump’s policies and the frustration of Iowa’s most influential demographics, Democratic candidates have a competitive edge in a state that was considered deep Trump country. This compounded by it having a Senate, a gubernatorial, and 3 House races this November makes it a “multiple birds with one stone” situation for Digital Ground Game’s canvassing program for 2026. As demonstrated in other states (California, Minnesota, Virginia and Georgia as examples), having a Governor that will stand up to Trump makes a huge difference and winning a majority in the Senate can allow actual oversight to occur. Not only would canvassing in Iowa touch a lot of races, it is also one of the most cost effective states to canvas in. Des Moines is centrally located and the heart of Iowa’s transportation infrastructure. On top of that, Iowa has one of the lowest rent costs in the country, paired with lowest national cost of living, making it a much easier task to fund a full time canvassing operation. The combination of low incumbency elections, elections in the Senate, House and Governorship, strong anger towards Trump’s GOP, and low operational costs make Iowa a strong contender for canvassing operations by Digital Ground Game.

Hasan Piker sat down with Adam Mockler last week after the uproar he caused when he said that he would vote third party in a hypothetical election between Gavin Newsom and JD Vance. Unlike his more cavalier approach in earlier discussions, Hasan framed himself here as a committed Democratic supporter who puts significant effort into electing Democrats, even as he argues that the party repeatedly sabotages itself by clinging to center-left politics and tolerating corporate candidates.

That matters, because Hasan doesn’t merely claim that Democrats are ineffectual, but that liberal democracy itself is an obstacle to meaningful change.

In Hasan’s world, Democrats are losing because they capitulate. Kamala lost because she said she would have signed Lankford’s bipartisan immigration bill. Democrats allow 70,000 people to die through the ACA when they fail to implement socialized medicine. Newsom got too chummy with Ben Shapiro. Per Hasan, there isn’t anything he could possibly do to “outflank” the DNC if they constantly run on a moderate, center-left policy agenda and how bad Trump is. 

However, Hasan is running the same game. In his debate with Mockler, he said that socialist movements are more likely to rise from an illiberal regime, and he isn’t wrong. History has plenty of examples of authoritarian excess leading to revolution, but what happened next and who suffered first? If the Democrats are accused of running a negative-motivated strategy, what do you call letting things degrade in hopes of a collapse that forces transformation? At least Democrats are trying to save people; to Hasan, those people become collateral.

Democrats are seeking harm reduction and to protect people now. Hasan appears to prefer allowing a Trump government to force a break, only those pesky Democrats aren’t letting things get bad enough for his revolution to happen.

Hasan’s hypocrisy carried through the whole debate, and while I think Adam Mockler did a fine job trying to get Hasan to explain his dual messaging, there is an overarching hypocrisy in Hasan’s ideology that he didn’t hammer home. Hasan acknowledges that Democrats are better but then calls them the uni-party with Republicans. Hasan describes the policy differences between Democrats and Republicans as marginal, then tries to qualify that claim by conceding that those same differences can have major impacts on marginalized groups. That qualification undermines the original claim. Differences that materially affect people’s lives are not marginal, and calling them so functions as justification for disengagement rather than serious analysis.

So what if a core motivation to vote Democratic in elections is often harm reduction, or “voting for the lesser of two evils”. Hasan often focused on the people that didn’t get help under Democratic policies compared to his socialist dream policies. Hasan claims that socialized medicine would have saved 100,000 people, while the ACA only saved 30,000 people, compared to the insurance system before the ACA. That framing is revealing, because it treats partial success as moral failure. He acknowledges that Democrats are better, but then refers to the Democrats and Republicans as the uni-party, implying they are the same. He claims that the Democrats are leaving 70,000 people to die without socialized medicine, but that only works if the Democrats could have passed Medicare for All and refused. Democrats enacted what they could with the votes they had through the ACA and saved 30,000 people who would have died. When people like Hasan undermine that, or advocate in ways that don’t encourage people to support the Democrats so we can move toward that socialist dream, he is saying those 30,000 people are an acceptable sacrifice until people are desperate enough to vote in a way that saves the other 70,000. 

Same with trans people. Their access to healthcare, identity, and rights get thrown on the poker table for the all in bet so trans people also get access to sports. They are treated as leverage rather than protections. You know, that thing that affects like 10 people in the country.

Sorry, but these things aren’t marginal, and Hasan’s weird attempt to sane-wash his rhetoric doesn’t change that. Hasan and his ilk struggle to win through democratic processes, which makes illiberal routes feel more attractive as a means to enact their agenda. Since anger and fear are so beneficial, the leftists are banking on the idea that if they accelerate the Trump agenda, people’s anger and fear will create the conditions needed for their socialist agenda. 

History has plenty of examples where the left failed to coalesce and this has never led to a socialist utopia. The failure to coalesce and defeat Hitler is the most obvious example, and let me tell you, those leopards ate so good. In the final years of the Weimar Republic, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) argued that the Social Democrats were “social fascists” and that liberal democracy was already a sham. Some party leaders believed that a Nazi victory would expose capitalism’s contradictions and radicalize the working class leftward. 

They thought Hitler would be the match that ignited their cause, until he outlawed them, destroyed unions, ended elections, and executed their leadership.

In examples where the socialists do get power, they didn’t rule a democratic paradise. In Russia, when the Bolshevik Party was able to take over, they didn’t bother to put one in place once they got the reins. They ruled as a one-party state where they purged citizens, and filled the gulags with former revolutionaries and political opponents.

Reform is messy, but movements that treat democracy as an obstacle don’t suddenly restore it once they have power.

Bernie Sanders-style social democracies don’t come from allowing conditions to degrade and treating marginalized groups as bargaining chips. They grow from things like Bernie Sanders actually does; consensus building, working with liberals in government, compromising to enact more progressive policies, maintaining power by not losing elections and building on these progressive policies once people realize they benefit from them and are comfortable with taking another step.

Harm reduction isn’t sexy, it’s pragmatic. It doesn’t promise a socialist utopia, but it protects more people now while showing others a better way. Using accelerationism to worsen conditions now in hopes of better outcomes later is like betting against the house after you give the casino to your enemy. History shows that method doesn’t have a good track record, and the people who pay first are the most vulnerable. 

If influential voices argue that preventing authoritarianism is less important than accelerating collapse as a political strategy, they share responsibility for the risks that follow. 

In 334 BCE, Alexander the Great began his invasion and conquest of the Persian Empire, casting his campaign as both retribution for Xerxes’ earlier assault on Greece and liberation for the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Unlike the border skirmishes that preceded it, Alexander's campaign was designed for absolute finality; the decapitation of leadership and the dismantling of the state. That fusion of grievance, ambition, and ultimate destruction has echoed across centuries, including in the modern trajectory of U.S./Iran relations. Over the past three decades, the relationship was marked by alternating cycles of negotiation, coercion, and proxy confrontation. From the sanctions regimes of the 1990s to the 2015 nuclear accord and its subsequent unraveling, Washington and Tehran have engaged one another through a language that was at once strategic and civilizational. However, the events of February 28th, 2026, marked a definitive rupture in this cycle. With the launch of Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion, Washington and Jerusalem abandoned decades of shadow-boxing in order to strike directly at the heart of the Islamic Republic.

While the ideological dimension of the rivalry deepened after Hamas' attacks on October 7 and the ensuing regional crisis, the sheer scale of the current offensive has rendered those previous friction points obsolete. The United States previously intensified its support for Israel and reinforced its military posture across the Middle East, while Iran’s network of aligned militias expanded pressure points from Lebanon to Yemen. Much as Greek poleis and Persian satrapies maneuvered across contested frontier zones rather than committing immediately to decisive battle, Washington and Tehran historically tended to clash indirectly through peripheral theaters. Iraq, Syria, and the maritime corridors of the Gulf were long treated as arenas where deterrence was tested without formal declarations of war. That dynamic shattered overnight. The competition is no longer structured by influence or calibrated escalation. By executing daylight decapitation strikes on Tehran's Pasteur Street political district, the U.S. and Israel explicitly discarded peripheral deterrence in favor of total structural collapse.

Domestic politics within Iran complicate any linear reading of this new confrontation. Waves of anti regime protest have revealed persistent dissatisfaction with economic stagnation and political constraint, yet they have not produced systemic collapse as of yet. Now, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have explicitly framed this unprecedented attack as an opportunity for the Iranian people to overthrow their government. With the confirmed death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic faces an existential test. It differs fundamentally from the Achaemenid Empire that Alexander dismantled; it is not a loose imperial federation but a nation state whose revolutionary ideology and national identity are intertwined. The ultimate question of this new war is whether this massive external shock will trigger the systemic collapse Washington is betting on, or if it will provoke the exact fierce, unifying nationalist mobilization that historically occurs when sovereignty appears threatened.

The structural parallels between antiquity and the present lie less in tactical detail than in recurring patterns of power and perception. A dominant maritime power projecting force across distance confronts a continental actor defending depth and interior lines. Each frames the contest as a defense of order against destabilization, and hardliners argue that decisive action will resolve chronic insecurity. Yet history cautions that conquest and coercion rarely yield tidy outcomes. Alexander’s triumph produced fragmentation after his death, and Persian invasions once consolidated Greek unity rather than dissolving it. In the contemporary Middle East, the interplay of ideology, proxy warfare, and regional ambition suggests that this severe escalation may transform the strategic landscape in ways neither capital fully intends.

U.S. Force Posture: From Deterrence to Decapitation 

The present American force posture in the Middle East, as reflected in recent deployments catalogued by open source reporting, reveals a configuration optimized for rapid punitive action rather than territorial occupation. The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group is already operating in or near the Persian Gulf region, positioned within operational reach of Iranian territory and key maritime chokepoints, while the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is presently transiting the Mediterranean, en route to reinforce the theater, a dual carrier posture that materially enhances capability. Carrier strike groups provide sustained sortie generation, electronic warfare capability, and deep strike reach, while guided missile cruisers and destroyers furnish layered air defense and precision strike options through cruise missiles. Forward based assets at Al Udeid in Qatar and Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates extend ISR coverage across the Gulf and into Iranian airspace, supported by aerial refueling platforms that lengthen the operational radius of strike aircraft. The architecture is coherent and scalable, capable of delivering concentrated blows against nuclear facilities, missile depots, and command nodes without requiring immediate ground commitment. We now know that rather than mere coercive signaling, these assets formed the architecture of a massive decapitation strike. This configuration reveals an enormous strategic gamble: Washington is relying entirely on air supremacy and precision strikes to shatter the regime, effectively betting that the Iranian populace will finish the job on the ground since there is no U.S. occupation force to secure the country.

The forces also convey limits. Absent are the heavy armored divisions, vast logistics trains, and mass troop prepositioning that characterized the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Amphibious readiness groups and Marine expeditionary units may provide contingency flexibility, yet they are not invasion armies poised for sustained occupation of a country with Iran’s demographic and geographic depth. Instead of using this posture as a form of strategic communication calibrated to deter escalation, the U.S. has weaponized it for an all-out air campaign. The lack of ground forces highlights the immense risk of this strategy: initiating regime change from the sky without the capacity to manage the aftermath on the ground.

Technically, the United States retains overwhelming advantages in suppression of enemy air defenses and precision targeting. Stealth aircraft and stand-off munitions have heavily degraded Iran’s integrated air defense network, while cyber and electronic warfare assets have disrupted command and control infrastructure. However, Iranian systems are dispersed, redundant, and embedded within hardened or subterranean facilities, complicating any expectation of decisive neutralization in a single wave. The geography of Iran, with mountainous terrain and extensive interior lines, imposes operational friction that tempers assumptions of swift strategic paralysis, meaning the U.S. must sustain these strikes over an extended period.

Ultimately, the present American military alignment in the region was long assumed to be designed to sustain deterrence through credible force while stopping short of the massive mobilization that would signal imminent invasion. Instead, it has been used to execute a sweeping offensive. The strategic logic has shifted violently from escalation control to total war. The gamble relies less on technical superiority than on the assumption that extreme, concentrated punishment will cause the Iranian state to fracture before it can inflict unbearable costs on the region.

The Activation of Iran's Arsenal

Facing this unprecedented assault, Iran’s capacity to resist an American strike rests less on parity and more on it's activation of layered deterrence. The Islamic Republic cannot contest American air and naval supremacy in open battle, yet it has invested for decades in ballistic missiles, cruise systems, and an expanding drone arsenal designed to inflict catastrophic damage in the event of an intervention. Its deterrent has failed to prevent the strike, and so it has transitioned immediately to execution. Its missile forces, dispersed and hardened, are surviving the initial waves of bombardment and actively retaliating against regional bases, energy infrastructure, and maritime traffic. The objective is not battlefield victory but imposing maximum pain.

Tehran’s conventional limitations have long driven it toward asymmetric design, a principle now being tested to it's absolute limits. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has refined a doctrine that substitutes precision salvos, proxy warfare, cyber operations, and maritime disruption for direct confrontation. With its senior leadership wiped out, the dispersed, decentralized nature of Iran's military means local commanders are likely executing pre-planned "doomsday" protocols. In the confined waters of the Strait of Hormuz, small craft, mines, anti-ship missiles, and unmanned systems provide tools for harassment that can reverberate through global oil markets within hours. Beyond the Gulf, Iran’s relationships with armed groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen furnish it with deniable instruments capable of striking U.S. personnel and allied interests. These networks are no longer theoretical threats; they are actively launching salvos at U.S. bases and Israel, converting geography into a zone of active combat.

The Collapse of the Regional Hedging Strategy

Internally, Iran’s leadership must now weigh domestic considerations in an environment of existential peril. The deadly January protests revealed long standing dissatisfaction with economic mismanagement and political repression, yet external threat often consolidates elite cohesion and narrows space for dissent. While a limited U.S. strike might have been absorbed and reframed as proof of foreign hostility, the current campaign aimed at total decapitation tests the very limits of the regime's cohesion. Rather than generating manageable internal strain, the reported death of Supreme Leader Khamenei has forced the remaining elite to unify for raw survival. The regime’s strategy no longer hinges on calibrated retaliation, but on desperate, overwhelming force to prevent the state from fracturing entirely.

Ultimately, Iran’s response options have shifted from constrained harassment to maximalist warfare. It cannot expel American power from the region through conventional means, yet it can and is actively attempting to impose sustained political and economic costs that complicate Washington’s strategic calculus. Its deterrent architecture is built on dispersion and persistence rather than decisive engagement, which means decentralized commanders are now utilizing that dispersion to wage an all-out counter-offensive. The current conflict environment proves that superiority in American firepower does not guarantee control over escalation, as Iran's asymmetric repertoires transform what was intended as a swift decapitation into a protracted regional conflagration.

As the conflict metastasizes, regional governments across the Middle East are now living their nightmare scenario.Official statements from Gulf capitals often reaffirm the importance of deterrence and opposition to Iranian destabilizing activity, yet diplomatic reporting and policy analysis suggest that many of these governments lobbied Washington against direct military action. Their concern was not rooted in sympathy for Tehran but in a sober assessment of geography and vulnerability. That dual-track hedging strategy has collapsed overnight. Countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE are now caught in the crossfire as Iran strikes the U.S. bases hosted on their soil. In a region where economic diversification and investment stability are central political priorities, this massive exchange is reverberating through financial markets and domestic social contracts.

Israel occupies a distinct position within this regional mosaic. Israeli officials have long framed Iran’s nuclear and missile programs as existential threats and have signaled readiness to act unilaterally if necessary. With Operation Roaring Lion, Israel has achieved its long-sought direct strike on Iran's nuclear and leadership core. However, Israel must now weather the absolute maximum response from whatever remains of Iran's "Axis of Resistance." Jerusalem must weigh the tactical benefit of degrading Iranian capabilities against the reality that this strike has triggered a broader regional confrontation. Israeli calculations therefore intersect with, but do not perfectly mirror, Washington’s

European governments and Turkey view the crisis through yet another prism, one that has instantly shifted from diplomatic abstraction to economic triage. The Strait of Hormuz remains a critical artery for oil shipments, and its disruption is already cascading into inflationary pressure and political instability beyond the Middle East. In Ankara, concerns center on regional spillover into Iraq and Syria, theaters already burdened by militia activity and competing spheres of influence. For these actors, escalation is not an abstraction but a scenario with immediate material consequences.

This new reality confirms that the divergence between stated and actual positions among regional stakeholders reflected a broader structural tension. Public rhetoric often aligned with Washington’s language of deterrence and red lines, yet private diplomacy revealed deep apprehension about uncontrolled escalation. Gulf monarchies had spent the past several years hedging, reopening channels with Tehran while maintaining security partnerships with the United States. That dual track approach underscored a central reality: most regional governments feared a major war more than they feared a constrained Iranian posture. Now, those worst fears have materialized. The U.S. strike, far from being limited in scope, has not unfolded in a vacuum. It is tearing through a dense web of alliances, rivalries, and economic interdependence in a way that has completely obliterated the distinction between punitive action and systemic shock.

The Domestic Political Gamble for the U.S.

Back in Washington, this maximalist approach is colliding with a complex domestic reality. Public opinion data from Quinnipiac and similar surveys suggest that while Americans remain wary of another prolonged Middle Eastern war, there exists conditional support for limited, targeted strikes if framed as preventive or retaliatory. The administration, however, did not take the finite route; they went all-in on regime change. This creates a high-wire act for executive action. A short air campaign designed to degrade nuclear or missile infrastructure might have been politically sustainable; a protracted conflict with mounting casualties and skyrocketing energy prices will likely exhaust bipartisan tolerance. The electorate’s posture is neither isolationist nor interventionist in pure form, but transactional and contingent upon perceived cost, duration, and clarity of purpose.

For Donald Trump and Republican leadership, the calculus is particularly intricate and carries significant political risk. On one hand, confrontation with Iran aligns with longstanding party rhetoric emphasizing deterrence, restoration of credibility, and repudiation of the nuclear deal. On the other, the America First current within the coalition remains skeptical of open-ended military commitments that resemble the Iraq and Afghanistan precedents. If the Iranian regime collapses quickly and the nuclear program is erased, it could be framed as a historic victory. If the regime survives—or if it collapses into a chaotic, protracted regional war that spikes global oil prices and drags on—it will directly violate the core "America First" promise of avoiding new, messy foreign entanglements.

Congressional dynamics further complicate the equation. War Powers debates, funding authorizations, and the broader fatigue with expeditionary warfare constrain the executive branch, even if formal declarations remain unlikely. At the same time, no administration wishes to appear passive in the face of perceived nuclear acceleration or proxy aggression. Now that the rubicon has been crossed, the political risk lies not only in action but in inaction. By choosing the most expansive possible action, the administration has wagered its domestic political capital on a swift resolution. Domestic policy ramifications, therefore, do not merely shadow strategic decision-making. They shape its boundaries, define its tempo, and influence whether this war is pursued through sustained force or devolves into an uneasy quagmire.

The central question confronting policymakers is no longer whether the United States possesses the capacity to strike Iran’s nuclear infrastructure or military assets, but what strategic objective such massive action is ultimately intended to secure. The goal is clearly no longer deterrence restoration or limited strikes calibrated to reestablish credibility. Yet deterrence is relational rather than unilateral. A strike designed to compel submission has instead validated Tehran’s long-standing narrative of encirclement and accelerated precisely the behaviors Washington sought to inhibit. Even with the immediate objective of nuclear rollback, airpower alone has at best degraded facilities while leaving the technical knowledge, dispersed supply chains, and political resolve intact. The destruction of centrifuges is measurable. The recalibration of intent is not.

Before the campaign, a more ambitious objective was structural coercion, what some analysts have termed strategic submission. This presumed that the cumulative weight of sanctions, isolation, and kinetic action could compel Iran’s leadership to renegotiate the foundations of its security doctrine. Yet history suggests that regimes under external pressure often respond by consolidating authority rather than relinquishing it. The Islamic Republic has repeatedly demonstrated a capacity to absorb punishment while shifting costs outward through proxy networks and calibrated retaliation. In the current context, a total military campaign has become an instrument that produces tactical clarity but strategic ambiguity. One can crater runways and strike depots, but reshaping a regime’s threat perception through force has proven to be an unpredictable and violently chaotic undertaking.

The most expansive objective, regime change, is now the explicit reality, carrying implications that extend beyond operational feasibility into the realm of political transformation. The record of external intervention offers sobering lessons about the distinction between toppling authority and constructing durable order. Even a successful air campaign that fractures the governing apparatus does not resolve the question of succession, territorial control, or national cohesion. Iran is not an artificial polity but a deeply rooted nation-state with a strong identity that has historically rallied in the face of foreign intervention. Thus the debate over these current strikes is less about military capability than about strategic coherence. Without a clearly defined end state and a credible theory of how this overwhelming application of force produces it, the campaign risks substituting motion for progress and spectacle for strategy, leaving behind a catastrophic power vacuum.

The narrow space between deterrence and war has been completely obliterated, replaced by a reality defined less by capability than by severe political consequence. The United States has utilized its ample means to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, missile infrastructure, and command nodes with precision and depth. The more difficult question is whether such action has altered Tehran’s strategic calculus or merely compressed the timeline of confrontation into immediate, maximum-intensity conflict. Air power can degrade enrichment sites and disrupt logistics, but it cannot extinguish the underlying rivalry, which is rooted in regime identity, regional competition, and mutual suspicion reinforced over decades. Tactical success in dismantling the Iranian state, in other words, may coexist with profound strategic ambiguity regarding the region's future.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the events of the past 48 hours dictate that The Islamic Republic’s foundational doctrine of asymmetric deterrence has been fundamentally shattered. Prior to February 28th, Iran’s leadership operated on the premise that it did not need to defeat the United States conventionally, but merely needed to impose economic costs and survive politically. That calculus evaporated with the daylight decapitation strikes on Tehran. With Khamenei's death and the explicit U.S.-Israeli declaration of regime change, the Iranian state is no longer fighting for leverage, it's fighting for its existence. Consequently, retaliation has abandoned the threshold of "calibrated" harassment. By launching direct, symmetrical ballistic missile salvos not only at Israel but at U.S. installations across the Gulf—including the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain—Tehran has acknowledged that the era of proxy mobilization and deniability is over. The strategy is no longer about sustaining instability below the threshold of open war; it is a desperate effort to inflict catastrophic costs in response to an existential threat.

The hazard of miscalculation has therefore been superseded by the reality of a totalizing regional war. Washington and Jerusalem’s decision to bypass limited deterrence in favor of structural decapitation has thrust the Middle East into uncharted territory. Regional actors who privately counseled restraint are now involuntary participants, forced to absorb the immediate material consequences of Iranian retaliation within their borders. Energy markets and global trade corridors are bracing for the exact systemic shocks that European and Gulf diplomats spent years trying to hedge against. The central dilemma is no longer whether Washington can punish Tehran without sparking a wider conflict. The question now is whether the outright destruction of Iran’s ruling apparatus will yield a viable, pro-Western political reality, as envisioned by the current U.S. administration, or simply plunge a deeply rooted nation-state of 88 million people into catastrophic, generational fragmentation. In crossing the threshold from coercion to annihilation, the United States has traded the ambiguities of deterrence for the profound, unpredictable burdens of regime collapse.

Editor's note: DemosthenesRex originally submitted this piece on February 23rd, but due to unforeseen circumstances I was unable to publish it before the US and Israel attacked Iran. I have updated the piece to reflect the current reality, but here's the link to the original. Spoiler alert: he nailed it.

"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them...." - Thomas Paine

On January 24 2026, 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. As with Rene Good, the Trump administration went on full attack, quick to denigrate the victim and label the death as justified. This response surprised few and perceptions of the shooting fell cleanly along partisan lines.

Pretti, a gun owner with a permit to conceal carry, brought his handgun to the protests against ICE activities in his community. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem claimed he brandished his gun at officers and wanted to “inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement”. The claim was completely unfounded by video footage, and she has since walked these statements back, saying that she was using the “best information we had at the time”.

After efforts to label the victim a “domestic terrorist” fell on deaf ears, officials shocked many Second Amendment advocates with their Hail Mary tactic to vilify the lawful carrying of firearms. During a news conference hours after the shooting, Noem said that “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign”. FBI Director Kash Patel mirrored these sentiments on Fox News, saying, “As Kristi said, you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

U.S. attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli shared his opinion on social media, writing “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you. Don’t do it!” Donald Trump himself spoke on the issue, saying “you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns.”

Gun rights groups, including the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, were quick to inform the administration that they were “completely incorrect.” The NRA replied to Essayli’s statement, noting that it is “dangerous and wrong”, and that “responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

The framing of Pretti carrying a firearm at a protest hit particularly close to home for prominent GOP advocate and Second Amendment defender Kyle Rittenhouse. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Rittenhouse shot three men, killing two, and was later acquitted of all charges. A day after Pretti’s death, he posted on X, “Carry everywhere. It is your right. #ShallNotBeInfringed”.

Aside from a few tepid responses from Republican members in Congress, their collective silence on the Second Amendment as a right belonging to all Americans, regardless of political standing, speaks volumes.

Over the last few decades, the Republican Party has been a stalwart defender of an individual’s unalienable right to own guns. However, these tides are appearing to shift in the wake of an increased interest by leftists and liberals to practice their Second Amendment right.

The Trump administration’s efforts to ban transgender Americans from owning guns directly fly in the face of the very principle they claim to defend. The party of “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun” appears to not be operating in a way in which guns make the world a safer place. Arguably, the only safe world in their eyes is one in which they hold all the weapons, and their opposition does not.

The Black Panthers and the Mulford Act

The Republican party’s selective application of the Second Amendment is not without historical precedent. The Civil Rights era was plagued with polarization fueled by police brutality.

Many found inspiration in the message of Martin Luther King, Jr., who believed the fight for racial equality would be gained through nonviolence and civil disobedience. Others were not won over by this approach, including Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who formed the Black Panther party in 1966 in Oakland California. Their ideology was based on the teachings of the late Malcolm X, who largely rejected King’s message of peaceful defiance.

Newton and Seale were disappointed by the civil rights movement’s inability to improve the condition of black lives. In the face of rampant state sanctioned violence, they lost faith in the idea that nonviolent protests would truly liberate black Americans.

In April of 1967, Denzil Dowell, a 22-year-old black California resident, was shot and killed by the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department. He was unarmed and shot six to ten times while fleeing the scene of a robbery. This event was just one of many instances of police violence that sparked outrage within the black community.

Shortly after Dowell’s death, 30 Black Panther Party members practiced both their First and Second Amendment rights on the steps of the California statehouse. Armed with .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols, members declared, “The time has come for Black people to arm themselves”.

This caught the attention of Republican California assemblymen Don Mulford. He introduced a bill that would repeal the law that permitted citizens to carry loaded weapons in public spaces. The Mulford Act shortly followed, which was signed into California law by then Governor Ronald Reagan, prohibiting the carrying of loaded firearms in public without a permit. Not dissimilar from the statements given by Kash Patel and Donald Trump, Reagan commented that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”

Contrary to the NRA’s current opposition to gun restriction, they supported the government’s efforts to control gun access in the 1960s, particularly for ex-convicts and mental patients. They viewed gun ownership as a right for “law-abiding, trained, and responsible citizens”. However, their support of the Mulford Act directly contradicted this credo.

The Black Panther Party engaged in the legal, responsible open carrying of firearms in public. They believed that every citizen should utilize their Second Amendment rights to protect themselves from the corrupt government that was brutalizing their communities.

Finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of operating as the oppressive government, Republican leaders saw them as a threat and acted. This move should come as no surprise, nor should the behavior of the current administration. In both instances, the key principle they hold is that of self-preservation. They are behaving as rational actors to defend themselves; not from a tyrannical government, but from those they oppress.

A Right for All, or for None

The right to bear arms is being invoked selectively by the current administration in an effort to preserve power. The Second Amendment was never meant to function as a privilege granted to the politically favored. If arms are to deter tyranny, they must be equally available, or equally restrained. When the right is affirmed for some and denied to others, it ceases to defend liberty. In that world, the Second Amendment is no longer a shield against oppression, but an instrument of it.

Sources

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62r4g590wqo
2. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5714611-kristi-noem-alex-pretti-shooting/
3. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/2nd-amendment-backlash-portrayal-alex-pretti-trump-administration/story?id=129559823
4. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-you-cant-have-guns-you-cant-walk-in-with-guns-trump-says-of-alex-pretti-killing
5. https://time.com/7358403/nra-trump-clash-gun-carrying-rights-pretti-federal-agents/
6. https://www.newsweek.com/what-kyle-rittenhouse-has-said-about-alex-pretti-ice-shooting-11417690
7. https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/01/us/gun-rights-politics-alex-pretti-killing-cec
8. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/06/trump-gun-ban-pushback-00547529
9. https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_capitolmarch.html
10. https://www.history.com/articles/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act
11. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/malcolm-x
12. https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/black-panther-party-challenging-police-and-promoting-social-change

PART I

In 2010, the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, holding that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. In doing so, the Court struck down portions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that had barred corporations and unions from financing independent political advertisements in the weeks leading up to federal elections, sharply narrowing Congress’s authority to regulate such spending.

In the years since, Citizens United has become a central reference point in debates about money in American politics. The growth of independent expenditure groups and the emergence of Super PACs have frequently been linked to the ruling. Many reform advocates and political commentators regard it as accelerating a shift. The case addressed a specific constitutional question within a much larger debate about money and elections. 

The justices were asked whether the federal government possesses the authority to restrict certain forms of independent political spending in order to prevent corruption - or even the appearance of corruption - in federal elections. In answering that question, the Court drew a constitutional boundary that altered the balance between the government’s authority to regulate elections and the First Amendment’s protection of political expression.

PART II

The dispute arose from a specific provision of federal campaign finance law. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 regulated “electioneering communications,” a category that included certain broadcast advertisements mentioning federal candidates shortly before elections. Corporations and unions were barred from financing those communications with general treasury funds, even when acting independently of any candidate’s campaign. The provision was challenged when Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, sought to distribute and promote a documentary critical of then–Senator Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary season. Because the film fell within the statute’s definition of an electioneering communication and was to be financed with corporate funds, it was subject to BCRA’s restrictions. 

Those restrictions rested on a familiar constitutional rationale: that Congress may limit certain forms of political financing in order to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption in federal elections. For decades, beginning with Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the Court has understood that interest primarily in terms of quid pro quo exchanges - direct arrangements in which financial support is traded for political favor - and the appearance of such arrangements. 

Hillary: The Movie, released during the 2008 primary season, brought that distinction into focus. The documentary was financed independently of any candidate’s campaign, yet the statute prohibited its distribution within the regulated pre-election window. The question before the Court was whether such a prohibition could be reconciled with a constitutional framework that had treated independent expenditures as less susceptible to quid pro quo corruption. The Majority concluded that it could not.

PART III

Writing for the Court, Justice Kennedy framed the case not as a question of money’s influence, but of constitutional limits on government authority. The majority reaffirmed that the only sufficiently compelling justification for restricting political spending is the prevention of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance. Because independent expenditures are made without coordination with a candidate, the Court concluded that they do not give rise to the type of direct exchange that campaign finance law may permissibly regulate. In the majority’s view, defining corruption to include influence, access, or disproportionate political power would significantly expand the government’s authority to regulate political speech. The First Amendment does not permit such expansion merely because the speaker is a corporation or a union.

In dissent, Justice Stevens argued that the majority’s approach overlooked the distinctive legal and structural characteristics of corporations. Unlike natural persons, corporations are state-created entities endowed with special privileges, including limited liability and perpetual existence, which enable them to amass and deploy significant economic power. The dissent contended that these characteristics may justify differential treatment in the political sphere, particularly when corporate expenditures risk distorting electoral processes even absent explicit quid pro quo arrangements. In Stevens’ view, the Constitution does not require the government to treat corporate-funded political advocacy as indistinguishable from individual speech, nor does it prohibit Congress from taking account of the institutional advantages corporations possess when crafting campaign finance regulations.

The disagreement in Citizens United centered on how corruption should be defined and how much authority the government should possess in attempting to prevent it. A narrow definition constrains regulatory power and protects political speech from expansive government oversight. A broader definition permits greater intervention in the name of democratic integrity, but necessarily grants the state wider discretion over political expression. The constitutional boundary the Court drew reflected a judgment about that tradeoff: whether the risks posed by independent corporate expenditures justified expanding the government’s authority over political expression.

PART IV

In a closely divided 5–4 decision, the Court resolved that tradeoff by concluding that the risks posed by independent corporate expenditures did not justify expanding the government’s authority over political expression. The decision invalidated BCRA’s categorical ban on independent corporate and union expenditures in federal elections, while preserving existing restrictions on direct contributions and coordinated spending.

The ruling opened the door to independent political spending by corporations and unions. In the years that followed, independent expenditure groups known as Super PACs expanded in scale and prominence, operating alongside campaigns while remaining formally uncoordinated with them. Political strategy increasingly adapted to this parallel structure, in which large sums could be raised and deployed outside the official campaign apparatus.

These structural changes became visible to voters in the form of increasingly aggressive independent advertising campaigns - waves of television and digital spots funded by organizations unaffiliated with the candidates they supported. Because such groups operated outside formal campaign control while remaining legally uncoordinated, they were often able to pursue sharper and more adversarial messaging strategies. Campaigns could benefit from these efforts while maintaining formal distance. 

The expansion of independent spending unfolded during a period of intensifying partisan polarization, further entrenching the perception that large-scale outside money was reshaping electoral politics. Over time, Citizens United came to function not merely as a constitutional ruling, but as a shorthand explanation for a wide array of frustrations about money, influence, and polarization in American politics.

PART V

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, debates about economic inequality, corporate influence, and institutional accountability grew more pronounced. As movements like Occupy Wall Street gave voice to concerns about concentrated economic power, Citizens United increasingly came to symbolize a perceived consolidation of wealth and political influence. In subsequent election cycles, the decision became a recurring point of reference in political rhetoric. Candidates pledged to overturn it, advocacy groups organized around it, and proposals for constitutional amendments gained renewed attention. In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama publicly criticized the ruling in the presence of the justices themselves, warning that it would “open the floodgates” to corporate spending in elections. The moment underscored how rapidly the decision had moved from constitutional doctrine into the center of political contestation. 

The name “Citizens United” appeared on protest signs, in campaign advertisements, and in primary debates. It became a recurring touchstone in arguments about money and democratic accountability, invoked as evidence that wealth had gained outsized influence in the political system. What began as the title of a small nonprofit organization became a symbol of democratic imbalance in public debate while remaining, in constitutional doctrine, a specific boundary on governmental authority.

PART VI

Citizens United did not settle the broader debate over money in politics. It defined a constitutional boundary: how narrowly corruption should be understood, and how far the government may go in regulating political expression to prevent it. The Court exercised its authority to draw that line, reshaping the terrain on which campaigns, advocacy groups, and voters would operate. The ruling came to carry meaning far beyond its holding, becoming a focal point for broader anxieties about wealth, power, and democratic accountability. Its legacy lies not only in the boundary it set, but in the interpretive weight that boundary came to bear.

In January, Donald Trump ramped up his rhetoric in regards to Greenland. The vague strategic musings evolved into explicit demands that the United States acquire the Arctic territory. “The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of national security” he posted on Truth social.  Unlike earlier, more tentative discussions about purchasing the island, that no one was taking seriously, Trump publicly threatened tariffs against key NATO allies if they don’t acquiesce to his demands. 

In a wave of posts on his Truth Social platform, Trump announced a plan to impose 10% tariffs on imports from eight European countries including Denmark, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. These were to begin on February 1, with an increase to 25% in June unless Greenland was turned over to the United States. He repeatedly linked his bullying tactics to geopolitical competition with China and Russia, arguing that “world peace is at stake” if the U.S. does not assert complete control over Greenland’s strategic geography.

But just as quickly as he began his threats, he pulled back, announcing that a deal framework was in place, and the tariffs would evidently not go into effect.

The posts triggered alarm bells among Europe’s political leadership, who are starting to become painfully aware that Trump respects nothing, not even sovereign territory. He pulled back this time, sure, but who is to say the next threat towards Europe won't be acted upon? If the US is willing to attack its own allies, can it truly be trusted?

Why Greenland?

Why Trump decided to target Greenland so aggressively is a mystery, but it is possible that it wasn't simply to posture or appear strong.

Greenland has been significant strategic and economic asset, filled notable if inaccessible natural resources. Trump has previously shown interest in extracting resources from allies, like his plan to continue aid to Ukraine only in exchange for rare earth minerals. It has also always been a strategically important location, hence the 1951 agreement between NATO and Denmark, which affirmed Denmark’s ownership of the island, as well as establishing coordination with US troops on the island. 

Greenland is in a unique position, connecting the shortest routes between North America and Europe. This geography has made the island a cornerstone of early-warning architecture. It allows the US and NATO to monitor air and missile traffic crossing the Arctic. Greenland is the most direct pathway for potential intercontinental ballistic missile launches. As Arctic ice recedes from global warming and sea routes grow more active, Greenland’s relevance has only increased, turning it into a forward sentinel for transatlantic defense and communications.

The U.S. operates Pituffik Space Base in northern Greenland, which holds advanced radar systems used for missile warning and space surveillance, allowing NATO to track objects in orbit. It also providing crucial data to NATO allies. It also supports secure satellite communications that link North America with Europe, making it a key node in NATO’s integrated defense posture. It is important to note that these capabilities already function through longstanding agreements with Denmark, obviously showing that the United States enjoys deep strategic access without needing to outright own the island.

Trump highlighted these resources to justify his annexation threats. He attempts to frame control over Greenland as essential to preventing adversaries like Russia, China, and others from exploiting the Arctic. By emphasizing ownership over working together, he undermines the alliance framework that allows these systems to operate effectively in the first place.

Greenland holds vast reserves of rare earth elements and other minerals critical to supply chains. Previously inaccessible due to harsh weather conditions, these resources are increasingly tempting as Western nations seek to reduce dependence on China’s dominant position in rare-earth processing. Extraction is still challenging due to those harsh conditions and environmental concerns, but interest persists. Climate change is rapidly increasing accessibility in the Arctic, due to retreating ice opening new shipping lanes and makes resource extraction more feasible.

Just as likely however, even if frustratingly simplistic, is that Trump wanted Greenland as a result of his being snubbed for the Nobel peace prize. “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace”, he wrote in a letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister. Trump may have forgotten that Norway does not own Greenland, and does not have control over the Nobel committee. 

The EU’s response

European governments and institutions have responded to Trump’s pressure campaign with strong condemnation and symbolic deployment of troops to Greenland. These troops are not meant to truly fight off a US invasion, but to show solidarity with the people of Greenland.

On behalf of eight affected NATO countries, European leaders issued a joint warning that tariff threats “undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.” The statement reaffirmed solidarity with Denmark and Greenland and rejected coercion as a tool among allies.

National leaders took firm positions, with Starmer of Britain calling the tariff threats “completely wrong” and reiterated that Greenland’s future is a matter for the Kingdom of Denmark and its people. French President Emmanuel Macron declared that “no intimidation or threat will influence us” and that such tactics have no place among allies. Other leaders have made similar statements, with none in agreement with Trump. 

Greenland’s people have also soundly rejected the idea of an annexation, with Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen vowing that Greenland will not be pressured. Only 6% of Greenlanders agree with annexation, with a strong 85% opposing the idea of Trump’s rule over their island. 

European ministers have openly discussed using the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument, a clause that enables retaliation against economic pressure by third countries, as a method to counter potential U.S. tariffs. Emergency EU summits are under consideration to agree on possible responses.

This willingness to consider countermeasures against the United States is unprecedented in recent diplomatic history, showing building resentment with the President's threats.

Alliance Erosion

The Greenland dispute is adding to the strained way allies perceive U.S. leadership and reliability. Trump’s aggressive posture has caused many European allies that traditionally saw the U.S. as a security anchor to reconsider. Tariffs against NATO members for participating in joint military exercises in Greenland signal to allies that cooperation could lead to economic punishment rather than shared security gains. Even if the members paid the 2%, or double that at 4%, Trump’s original gripe with the EU NATO members, nothing signals that it would change his aggressive messaging towards Europe.

European officials have warned that divisions in the transatlantic alliance benefit geopolitical competitors. EU foreign policy representatives explicitly stated that China and Russia are “having a field day” amid the discord, capitalizing on Western disunity to advance their own influence in global forums. With similar insinuations aimed at Canada, one only needs to look at their recent deal with China to see this playing out in real time. Rivals can, and will, exploit cracks in alliances to strengthen their positions within US allied circles.

European leaders will likely embrace initiatives for European autonomy by strengthening defense capabilities independent of Washington. While not a direct pivot to Russia or China, this defensive hedging reflects diminished trust and a desire to ensure security without relying solely on U.S. support.

Conclusion

Donald Trump’s brief but intense Greenland episode has morphed from an odd policy gambit into a defining moment of diplomatic strain in the early 21st century. Although he has officially backed down from tariffs and threats of force, the impact on international trust and alliance cohesion is already palpable. Trump’s approach has aggravated transatlantic tensions and weakened U.S. soft power for the foreseeable future. America is now untrustworthy, constantly acting tough with their allies, and playing nice with their enemies.

The future of the transatlantic alliance is grim. It is fracturing under the weight of unilateral demands, giving rivals room to expand their influence. The Greenland episode is now a defining moment in early 21st-century diplomacy, but there are still 3 more years of the Trump Administration. Greenland may be in the clear for now, but other territories, especially those not in NATO, may be at risk. If we are willing to threaten our allies and kidnap foreign leaders, what could be next? The President is not known for his moderation. He will push and push to get the most that he can, and when he is gone, he will leave America's reputation in shambles.

Comparisons between contemporary state institutions and fascist paramilitary organisations are often dismissed as inflammatory or historically careless. This quite blatantly ignores the power of comparison lying in finding key overarching similarities, not one-for-one likeness. Yet historians of fascism have long emphasised that authoritarian systems are rarely recognised in their formative stages. One of the key references this article will refer to is the work of Robert O. Paxton. He argues that fascism is best understood not as a static ideology but as a process, identifiable through behaviour, institutional accommodation, and the gradual normalisation of coercion rather than through explicit declarations of intent [9].

This article does not claim that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is equivalent to the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) or Mussolini’s Blackshirts. Instead, it advances a narrower and historically grounded argument: ICE increasingly exhibits structural and behavioural traits that resemble those historically associated with early-stage paramilitary formations, and these similarities warrant careful scrutiny as indicators of institutional trajectory rather than categorical identity.

Using comparative fascist history this article examines origins, evolution, recruitment, use of violence, and power structure to identify warning signs rather than assert equivalence.

The Nazi Brownshirts (SA)

Origins in Crisis and Political Opportunity

The Sturmabteilung emerged in a Germany marked by military defeat, economic collapse, and widespread distrust in parliamentary democracy. Founded in 1921 as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the SA initially framed its role as defensive: protecting nationalist speakers, restoring order to chaotic streets, and countering perceived left-wing disorder [1][2].

Socially, the SA drew heavily from men displaced by the postwar settlement, including unemployed veterans and those alienated from liberal institutions. The SA offered belonging, hierarchy, and symbolic purpose through uniforms, ranks, and ritual. Violence was not peripheral to this identity; it was central. Street fighting, intimidation, and public demonstrations of force created momentum and visibility that conventional political activity lacked [3]. Despite how these actions may be viewed today, through the lens of those involved at the time many will have framed them as legitimate actions to bring about order and stability.

Early SA violence operated in a space of selective enforcement. Although formally illegal, assaults and disruptions were often inadequately punished or quietly tolerated, particularly by conservative judges, police, and political elites who viewed the SA as a useful counterweight to socialism. As Paxton stresses, this tolerance did not require ideological commitment to Nazism, it rested on expediency and fear of alternative threats, mostly from the left. Moreover,  He argues that the success of fascist movements depended heavily on complicity from traditional elites who did not necessarily share fascist ideology but accepted or enabled it for expedient reasons, treating it as preferable to feared alternatives [9].

From Street Militancy to Normalised Coercion

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the SA had matured into a mass organisation operating across Germany. What began as episodic street violence evolved into systematic intimidation, electoral interference, and the harassment of Jews and political opponents [2]. Violence became the norm rather than exceptional, reshaping public space through the constant possibility of coercion.

This phase is often mischaracterised as chaotic. In practice, it reflected a new political equilibrium in which violence increasingly aligned with Nazi electoral strategy. Democratic participation remained formally intact, but the presence of uniformed intimidation distorted its substance. People learned where not to speak, where not to gather, and when silence was safer than dissent. Democracy at this point became superficial as the key pillar of free speech was de facto eroded away by SA intimidation.

Paxton’s process-based analysis is crucial here. The decisive shift was not the formal seizure of power but the normalisation of violence as a political instrument. By the time Hitler became chancellor in 1933, much of the democratic erosion had already occurred. The later purge of SA leadership during the Night of the Long Knives did not negate the SA’s historical role. It confirmed that the organisation had already fulfilled its function in destabilising democratic norms [9].

The Italian Blackshirts

Informal Violence in a Fragmented State

Italy’s Blackshirts arose from a different political tradition but followed a strikingly similar path. In the aftermath of World War I, Italy (as per Germany) experienced economic instability, mass strikes, and widespread fear of socialist revolution. Fascist squadristi formed initially as local, loosely organised groups that targeted trade unions, socialist councils, and political opponents [6][7].

Like the SA, early Blackshirt violence was decentralised and opportunistic. It was framed as restorative rather than revolutionary, claiming to defend national unity and property against chaos. Violence was overt and theatrical, designed to be seen as a signal that authority had shifted away from formal institutions toward those willing to act decisively.

State response was inconsistent and often complicit. Police and courts frequently failed to intervene, while industrialists and conservative politicians increasingly viewed the squads as stabilising forces. Violence thus became politically functional before it was formally legalised. Arguably the inadequate reaction of the authorities could be seen as appeasement.

Institutionalisation and the Absorption of Violence

Following Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922, the Blackshirts were institutionalised as the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale. Earlier extralegal violence was retroactively legitimised, and perpetrators were absorbed into the fascist state apparatus rather than punished [6].

This transition illustrates a central historical insight that paramilitary violence often precedes authoritarian consolidation rather than following it. The Blackshirts did not seize power on behalf of a completed dictatorship. Instead they helped create the conditions under which such a system could plausibly function. As with the SA, coercion moved from the margins to the centre through tolerance, utility, and eventual incorporation.

ICE

Origins and Structural Differences

ICE was established in 2003 under George W Bush as part of the Department of Homeland Security following the September 11 attacks. Its creation was bureaucratic and security-driven, intended to consolidate immigration enforcement and customs functions within a legal framework. Unlike the SA or Blackshirts, ICE did not arise from a mass political movement or street-level militancy.

This distinction matters. The most pertinent comparison must focus not on origin but on institutional evolution and behavioural convergence over time. Despite the origins of ICE having footing in a reaction to a perceived threat from within violence and enforcement methodologies fitted within the norms of the day. One shade of grey in this regard is that post 9/11 norms had indeed shifted though not quite to the degree of post first world war continental Europe.

ICE Before and After Trump: A Shift in Enforcement Logic

For much of its early history, ICE prioritised immigration enforcement within a framework that emphasised due process and the removal of individuals with criminal convictions. This enforcement logic changed markedly during the first Trump administration and intensified in subsequent years.

Interior enforcement expanded, oversight mechanisms weakened, and enforcement adopted a more demonstrative character focused on deterrence and visibility. Operations conducted in major cities, including Minneapolis, marked a qualitative shift toward aggressive street-level enforcement in civilian spaces [4][8].

Collective Violence, and Intimidation

Recent years have seen multiple controversial uses of force by ICE and related federal agents, including fatal shootings of U.S. citizens during enforcement operations in Minneapolis in early 2026 [4][5]. These incidents often involved bystanders or individuals not subject to immigration enforcement, intensifying public scrutiny. Such actions, with such frequency, can simply not be seen as within the legal remit of ICE instead demarcating over-reach, intimidation with a political slant.

Charles Tilly’s analysis in The Politics of Collective Violence provides a useful framework. Tilly demonstrates that violence frequently emerges without explicit orders, as a product of institutional incentives, boundary-drawing between protected and unprotected populations (a growing

us and them mentality), and weak accountability [10]. What matters is not legality in principle, but whether violent outcomes are predictable and tolerated.

From this perspective, repeated violent encounters, slow or ineffective accountability, and post-hoc justification are indicators of structural coercion, not isolated misconduct.

Recruitment, Culture, and Ideological Practice

While ICE lacks an explicit ideological manifesto, organisational ideology need not be articulated to be operative. Recruitment patterns, internal culture, and tolerated behaviour function as mechanisms of ideological reproduction. Paxton’s emphasis on behaviour over doctrine is instructive here [9].

Historical paramilitaries did not begin with explicit exterminatory programs. They began with dehumanisation, boundary-drawing, and the normalisation of aggression. ICE’s increasingly adversarial posture toward migrants, and at times toward observers and critics, raises questions about similar mechanisms operating within a different institutional context.

Hierarchy, Autonomy, and Legal Overstretch

Formally, ICE remains subordinate to civilian authority within DHS. Yet operational autonomy at the field level, combined with political backing and judicial strain, produces a greater de facto authority in enforcement.

Historically, paramilitaries were not initially autonomous either. As Paxton notes, they operated in spaces where enforcement outpaced law and restraint was politically inconvenient [9]. The resemblance lies not in formal structure, but in functional authority and tolerated overreach.

Outlook

This analysis does not assert inevitability. Democracies do not collapse by analogy. But history provides warning signs. Early fascist movements were characterised by selective enforcement, tolerated violence, erosion of oversight, and elite rationalisation of abuse. These were early features, not late ones.

Following Paxton, the question is not whether ICE is fascist today, but whether its institutional practices align with historically dangerous trajectories [9]. Following Tilly, the focus remains on mechanisms rather than intent [10].

ICE differs fundamentally and unquestionably from the Brownshirts and Blackshirts in origin and legal status. This is nevertheless a disraction from the current trajectory. History shows that paramilitarisation is a process, not an event. When violence becomes routine, accountability weakens, and intimidation spreads beyond designated targets, institutions change character before they change name.

The lesson of interwar Europe is not inevitability, but urgency. Unchecked coercion rarely self-corrects with appeasement an irreversible process. The use of ICE beyond its remit is a clear non-cooperative action of the current administration that should be met reciprocally with an equal and opposition acts of non-cooperation.

Across the political landscape it is easy to become fixated upon the die-hard populists cheering on Donald Trump. Yet, history also teaches us that it is the tepid bystanders that wilfully dismiss the threat, appease or disengage with politics, that play a critical role.

Whether ICE’s trajectory continues, stabilises, or reverses will depend on political will, judicial capacity, and institutional restraint. There is of course the hope that Trump and his movement do not continue down the fascist rabbit hole, that the normalisation of violence on the part of ICE as a tool of political intimidation is reined in, recognising the tarnished image this would leave for history to see. This hope, vanishingly small, cannot be relied upon.

Bibliography

[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “SA (Sturmabteilung).”
[2] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The SA.”
[3] Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: Hubris. London: Penguin, 1998.
[4] Reuters, “Federal immigration agents kill another US citizen in Minneapolis,” Jan. 24, 2026.
[5] Al Jazeera, “Minnesota governor wants federal agents out after Pretti killing,” Jan. 25, 2026.
[6] Oxford Reference, “Blackshirts.”
[7] Payne, Stanley G. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
[8] Reuters, “Trump moved to cut funding for ICE body cameras, pared back oversight,” Jan. 25, 2026.
[9] Paxton, Robert O. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
[10] Tilly, Charles. The Politics of Collective Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
[11] Deportation Data Project, “Immigration Enforcement in the First Nine Months …” (analysis page), published Oct 15, 2025 data release, accessed 2026.
[12] FactCheck.org, “As ICE Arrests Increased, a Higher Portion Had No U.S. Criminal Record,” Jan. 28, 2026.
[13] TRAC Reports, “Immigration Detention Quick Facts,” data current as of Nov. 30, 2025.
[14] Human Rights Watch, “US: ICE Abuses in Los Angeles Set Stage for Other Cities,” Nov. 4, 2025.
[15] Migration Policy Institute, “Unleashing Power in New Ways: Immigration in the First Year of Trump 2.0,” Jan. 13, 2026.
[16] Brookings, “ICE expansion has outpaced accountability. What are the remedies?” Jan. 26, 2026.
[17] Center for American Progress, “The Trump Administration’s ICE and CBP Have Become a Threat to Americans: Congress Must Ensure That DHS Follows the Law and Adopts Commonsense Reforms,” Jan. 28, 2026

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher and historian in the 17th century. In 1651, he published his most notable work, The Leviathan. He described how human beings, left without restraint, would live in a condition he called Warre. Warre is not constant violence or endless bloodshed, but the absence of assurance to the contrary. The knowledge that violence could occur at any moment, and that no higher authority exists to stop it. In that world, planning becomes irrational, trust collapses, and survival dominates every human interaction.

Hobbes’ solution to Warre was the Leviathan. A singular, powerful presence (the state), to which society submits its authority in exchange for order. The Leviathan ends Warre by creating predictability and stability. Its power emerges from perceived legitimacy and, ultimately, from force. Society submits because the alternative is chaos.

Hobbes largely treats the Leviathan as a singular, rational actor whose interests align with social order. What his theory underestimates is the fallibility of the Leviathan. It is staffed by people, shaped by incentives, and insulated by power. Once authority is centralized, the question is no longer how Warre is avoided, but who controls the mechanisms of violence, coercion, and policy. Hobbes explains why societies submit to authority, but he offers few tools for understanding how that authority can rot, harden, or turn inward once submission has occurred.

This is the core pitfall of Hobbes’ theory. The same concentration of power that ends Warre also creates the conditions for domination. The Leviathan that protects can just as easily punish. The Leviathan that resolves conflict can manufacture it. Without sustained pressure from society, the logic that justifies absolute authority in moments of fear becomes the logic that excuses repression in moments of calm.

The Despotic Leviathan

Hobbes imagined a Leviathan that would protect its subjects, resolve disputes fairly, provide public services, and allow economic life to flourish. What history shows us instead is that the Leviathan does not have a single face. Alongside the protective state exists another, darker form. The Despotic Leviathan.

A despotic Leviathan wages war not against external enemies, but against its own people. Nazi Germany stands as an obvious example. So do regimes that pursued catastrophic policies while maintaining absolute authority, such as Mao’s Great Leap Forward or Stalin’s Holodomor. In these cases, the state retained enormous capacity. It could mobilize resources, enforce obedience, and suppress dissent. But it used that capacity to dominate rather than protect.

The despotic Leviathan silences its citizens and becomes impervious to their wishes. It imprisons, maims, and murders. It steals the fruits of their labor, or enables others to do so. It may still get things done, but what gets done serves repression, not liberty. As has been said of the Chinese Leviathan, much like the Leviathan of the Third Reich, it ends Warre only to replace it with a different nightmare.

Despotism flows from the inability of society to influence the state’s policies and actions. When society loses its leverage, the Janus-faced Leviathan takes hold.

The Absent Leviathan

Not all societies rely on a Leviathan. Stateless societies attempt to avoid Warre through social norms, like customs, traditions, rituals, and shared expectations of behavior. Norms determine what is considered right and wrong, which behaviors are discouraged, and when individuals or families will be ostracized and cut off from communal support.

These norms bond people together, coordinate collective action, and allow communities to respond to serious crimes or external threats. In the absence of a Leviathan, norms are critical to avoiding Warre.

But norms also impose a cage. Adherence to them reduces vulnerability to violence, yet demands conformity. Freedom is surrendered for collective protection, resulting in a form of voluntary servitude. 

Over time, subservient social statuses emerge and are justified by these norms. Beliefs about what is proper harden into custom. Norms are not arbitrary, but have evolved because they once served a function. These norms are often exploited by those in positions of power. In this way, the cage of norms can produce domination comparable to that of a despotic or absent Leviathan.

The Paper Leviathan

Some states occupy an even more precarious position. Common in parts of Latin America and Africa, paper Leviathans combine the worst traits of despotic and absent states. They are unaccountable to society, yet incapable of enforcing laws, resolving conflicts, or providing services. They are repressive while being weak.

Paper Leviathans appear powerful on paper but are too disorganized to rule effectively. They cannot become fully despotic because they lack the capacity to protect themselves from society or external forces. Instead of building institutions, leaders weaponize their incompetence, rewarding access to what should be a functioning bureaucracy to selective compliant individuals.

Citizens under a paper Leviathan have little influence over government decisions, receive minimal protection from Warre, and remain trapped in the cage of social norms. Repression is present, but welfare and security are not.

The Shackled Leviathan

Between despotism and anarchy lies the Shackled Leviathan. This is a state with the capacity to enforce laws, control violence, resolve conflicts, and provide public services, yet one that remains constrained by an assertive, well-organized society.

An effective shackled Leviathan can solve disputes fairly, enforce complex laws, and maintain a large bureaucracy, even if that bureaucracy is imperfect. It maintains a strong military without turning it against its citizens. It collects massive amounts of information but refrains from exploiting it for repression. It responds to public demands and can intervene to loosen the cage of norms, particularly for disadvantaged groups.

Crucially, bureaucrats are subject to oversight, and elected leaders are removed when citizens no longer approve of their actions. A shackled Leviathan creates liberty, but only so long as society remains willing to complain, demonstrate, and rise up when the state oversteps its bounds. These social shackles, not legal ones, are what prevent despotism.

The Red Queen Effect

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Alice meets and runs a race with the Red Queen. Alice noticed that both appeared to be running, only to remain in the same place. The relationship between the state and society resembles this concept of the Red Queen effect. Both the state and society must advance at roughly the same pace to preserve balance. 

If society slows down, becomes apathetic, fearful, or disengaged, the state’s growing capacity turns a shackled Leviathan into a despotic one. If the state slows down, failing to meet new economic, technological, or social challenges, frustration festers, legitimacy erodes, and instability follows.

This competition is not a zero-sum game. The goal is not for society to defeat the state, or for the state to overpower society. Compromise within competition is necessary. A state must expand and advance its role and capacity to meet new challenges, while society becomes more powerful and vigilant. Exhausting as this dynamic may be, it is necessary for the progress of society and liberty.

Defending Liberty

American liberty emerged from persistent social mobilization. Without an assertive society, constitutional protections are worth little more than the paper they are written on. Liberty depends on the shared belief that power remains balanced between state and society. 

If society allows elites and institutions to accumulate unchecked power, the Leviathan becomes despotic. If the state falls behind, it becomes absent. Liberty lives only in the narrow, unstable space between these extremes. It is maintained through constant effort, vigilance, and resistance. The Leviathan can be built, restrained, and rebuilt again, but only so long as society keeps running.

Authors note: The analysis in this article draws heavily from the framework of Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty.

In January 2026, large scale protests erupted across Iran following a convergence of economic strain, political exclusion, and accumulated grievances that had been building for years. Demonstrations appeared almost simultaneously in major cities and provincial towns, suggesting a mobilization pattern that exceeded spontaneous unrest. Protesters targeted symbols of state authority rather than individual policies, signaling a shift from reformist demands toward systemic rejection. The state responded within days through a coordinated campaign involving security deployments, communication blackouts, and mass detentions. Hospitals were monitored and information flows narrowed to state approved channels, creating an atmosphere in which repression was not improvised but executed through established routines.

The violence that followed was swift and structured. Security forces moved in layers, combining uniformed police, plainclothes Basij units, and elite formations tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Internet access was mostly severed, allowing authorities to monitor traffic while limiting coordination. Hospitals became sites of surveillance, funerals were restricted or banned outright, and families reported bodies withheld or returned under coercive conditions. The point was not only to disperse crowds but to fragment social trust and impose uncertainty. Killings, arrests, and disappearances followed a pattern that suggested rehearsal rather than improvisation. This was repression as an administrative process, calibrated to intimidate without triggering institutional collapse or international intervention beyond condemnation.

And while the uncertainty surrounding the death toll has been treated as evidentiary weakness in some quarters, it is better understood as a feature of the repression itself. Information blackouts, removal of bodies from hospitals, pressure on families to remain silent are not peripheral abuses. They are integral mechanisms of control. By fragmenting knowledge, the state limits collective mourning and prevents the formation of a shared narrative of loss. This strategy reflects an understanding that repression operates not only through physical coercion, but through the management of memory and visibility. The crackdown thus revealed a regime that relies less on persuasion than on procedural violence, sustained by institutions calibrated to suppress dissent while obscuring its human cost.

What distinguishes this latest onslaught is not simply the level of violence but its degree of institutional coordination. The Iranian state did not act as a monolith reacting to sudden disorder, but as a system activating preexisting mechanisms designed to contain dissent. Multiple security bodies operated in parallel, judicial authorities processed cases at accelerated rates, and state media framed events within familiar narratives of foreign interference and moral threat. The Iranian state has spent decades refining a system that relies on overlapping security mandates and ideological discipline. Authority is diffused across institutions in a way that discourages defection and blurs responsibility, while violence is deployed selectively enough to deter mass escalation yet visibly enough to instill fear. What unfolded this month was therefore less a moment of crisis than a demonstration of routine. The protests revealed a society willing to confront power despite the odds but also exposed a regime that no longer depends on consent and has learned how to survive without it.

Lethal violence does not appear to have been an aberration triggered by panic but a calibrated option deployed once protest persistence crossed an institutional threshold, after which the judicial system retroactively supplied legal rationales that converted killings and mass detentions into matters of public order enforcement. In this sense, repression functioned less as a deterrent aimed at restoring calm than as a performative assertion of sovereignty, signaling that the state reserved the right to decide not only who could assemble but whose injuries and deaths would remain legally intelligible.

Many protesters appear to have entered the streets with full awareness of the likely outcome, including arrest, injury, or death. Interviews, leaked messages, and family testimonies suggest that protest has shifted from a strategic act to a moral one. For a growing segment of Iranian society, especially younger Iranians, dissent has become a means of asserting personal agency in a political system that offers no institutional channel for redress. Protest, in this sense, functions less as a tool to extract concessions than as a refusal to consent to the conditions of everyday governance.

The social composition of the protests reinforces this interpretation. Demonstrations spread beyond traditional urban centers and university spaces into peripheral neighborhoods, provincial towns, and marginalized regions with long histories of state neglect. Participants included students, laborers, unemployed youth, and women whose daily encounters with state authority are often intimate and coercive. What united them was not a shared platform or leadership structure, but a shared experience of exclusion. The absence of centralized coordination did not weaken the movement. Instead, it reflected a political environment in which organization itself is treated as a criminal act. The resulting protests were fragmented in form but coherent in sentiment, bound together by shared grievances rather than shared commands.

What emerges from these accounts is a pattern of protest rooted in endurance rather than optimism. Participants did not describe themselves as revolutionaries or reformers, but as individuals who could no longer remain silent without internal cost. Silence itself had become a form of complicity. In this context, repression did not eliminate dissent but reshaped it, lowering expectations while hardening resolve. Protest persisted not because Iranians believed the system could be fixed, but because many no longer believed it deserved their compliance. That distinction helps explain why demonstrations continued even as the human cost escalated, and why fear, while still present, no longer operated as a decisive restraint.

Iranian government explanations for its response to the protests followed a familiar script, but its repetition was itself revealing. Officials framed the demonstrations as a coordinated foreign operation, variously attributed to the United States, Israel, and regional rivals, with protesters cast as either dupes or mercenaries. This narrative did not merely appear in speeches but was embedded across state media, producing a closed informational circuit in which dissent could only exist as sabotage. By collapsing political grievance into external conspiracy, the regime avoided engagement with social reality while reaffirming a worldview in which its sovereignty is permanently under siege.

This narrative was not only asserted but enforced. State media synchronized language and imagery, amplifying selective footage of property damage while erasing scenes of unarmed crowds and wounded civilians. Detainees were paraded in forced confessions that followed identical phrasing, suggesting authorship from above rather than testimony from below. Legal institutions reinforced the message by prosecuting protesters under national security statutes, transforming political expression into criminal disorder. The result was a parallel reality, constructed through repetition and intimidation, in which state violence appeared as defense rather than suppression.

Yet the regime’s narrative showed signs of exhaustion. Its claims persuaded fewer citizens even as they were broadcast more aggressively. The insistence on unity clashed with visible fragmentation, and appeals to sacred authority rang hollow amid mass funerals and silence from official channels. Narrative inflation became a measure of insecurity. When a state must explain everything as treason, it signals not ideological confidence but a shrinking capacity to command belief.

However, human rights reporting in Iran confronts an immediate epistemic problem in that the government has made uncertainty a governing instrument. Internet shutdowns, intimidation of medical staff, the rapid removal of bodies from public view were not accidental byproducts of unrest but deliberate measures designed to fracture the evidentiary record. Competing death tolls therefore do not signal confusion so much as method. The absence of a single authoritative number reflects the success of a system built to prevent accounting, one in which opacity functions as both shield and weapon.

Official Iranian statements acknowledge a limited number of deaths attributed to what authorities describe as violent unrest, while the UN, international human rights organizations, investigative journalists, and diaspora networks report figures that are exponentially higher. These competing tallies are not merely the product of methodological disagreement. They reflect fundamentally different political incentives and epistemic constraints. The state benefits from numerical minimization because numbers confer scale, and scale confers responsibility. By contrast, human rights documentation treats aggregation as an ethical obligation, even when precision is unattainable.

Despite these obstacles, a dense ecosystem of documentation has emerged in the days following Iran's restoration of the internet and other communications systems that allows events to be reconstructed with increasing confidence. Human rights organizations and open source researchers have triangulated information through hospital admission logs, leaked morgue footage, satellite imagery of suspected mass burial sites, and testimony from medical workers operating under threat. These methods mirror those used in other contexts of mass atrocity, where access is denied and witnesses are targeted. The result is not a single authoritative death toll, but a converging range of estimates that consistently point to nationwide lethal force deployed against civilians. Precision, in this setting, is less important than pattern. The repetition of similar tactics across provinces serves to establish intent and coordination.

For neighboring states and rival powers alike, the central question is not only whether the Islamic Republic might fall, but how internal unrest might influence its external behavior. Historical precedent suggests that domestic instability in Iran often coincides with outward assertiveness rather than restraint. The regime’s security institutions interpret protest as an extension of foreign pressure, a framing that collapses the boundary between internal dissent and external threat. As a result, the state’s regional posture becomes an arena for compensatory signaling, intended to project continuity and resolve even as legitimacy frays at home. Iranian leaders appear to view internal instability not as a reason to disengage abroad, but as a condition that must be managed alongside continued regional assertiveness. In practice, this has reinforced a long standing pattern in Iranian statecraft where its posture is used to signal strength when domestic authority is contested. The result is a foreign policy that seeks continuity rather than correction, even as the social foundations of the system weaken.

Tehran’s regional activity following the crackdown suggests an effort to deter adversaries without provoking full scale confrontation. Actions attributed to Iran or its partners have tended toward ambiguity and deniability, preserving leverage while limiting the risk of direct retaliation. This reflects a leadership keenly aware that a major war would compound domestic strain rather than resolve it. Internal unrest thus constrains Iranian behavior at the margins, shaping the tempo and visibility of regional operations rather than reversing them. The regime remains capable of projecting power, but it does so with increased caution.

On a broader level, the protests may underscore a paradox at the heart of Iranian geopolitics. The state retains the institutional, if limited capacity to act across the Middle East, yet it does so while governing a society increasingly alienated from its ideological claims. This gap between external ambition and internal consent carries long-term consequences. A foreign policy sustained by coercion at home and deterrence abroad is inherently brittle, even if it remains operationally effective.

For years, the Islamic Republic managed dissent by channeling frustration into reformist cycles that promised gradual change through elections and factional bargaining. That mechanism has now largely failed. The violence of the crackdown did not merely suppress demonstrations but has severed the remaining plausibility of reform as a pathway for political participation. This reflects a regime that increasingly governs without consent and compensates through coercion. Political sociology describes such systems as stable yet hollow, capable of enforcing obedience while unable to command loyalty. In Iran’s case, the expansion of surveillance, detention, and lethal repression has coincided with the erosion of ideological credibility. While state institutions still appear to function, what has weakened is the regime’s capacity to persuade citizens that its authority is justified or inevitable.

What Iran's violent response to the protests ultimately expose is not an omnipotent state, but a governing system that has narrowed its repertoire to coercion alone. Power in the Islamic Republic now operates with diminishing reliance on consent, persuasion, or even ideological resonance, substituting instead a mixture of force and fear. This is not repression as an emergency measure, but repression as routine governance, executed through institutions that no longer pretend to mediate between ruler and ruled. The result is a state that still commands obedience in the narrow sense, yet struggles to generate belief among the wider population, a distinction that matters because belief once functioned as the regime’s most efficient form of control.

Protest, in this context, should be understood less as an episodic challenge than as a cumulative social condition. The persistence of dissent despite lethal consequences suggests that repression has crossed a threshold where it no longer deters, but rather clarifies, the nature of the political order for those subjected to it. This latest crisis has not yet resulted in a decisive rupture, nor has it signaled imminent regime collapse, but it has further normalized a politics of refusal among broad segments of society. When citizens protest without credible expectation of reform or negotiation, the act itself becomes expressive rather than instrumental, a declaration that the existing system has forfeited moral jurisdiction over their lives.

The Islamic Republic remains capable of enforcing compliance and projecting authority beyond its borders, yet its domestic narrative has thinned to repetition and denial. What collapsed in January was not the machinery of the state, which continues to function with grim efficiency, but the plausibility of the story it tells about itself as a representative, moral, and divinely sanctioned order. In that sense, the protests mark another step in a slow historical shift from contested legitimacy to its quiet exhaustion, a condition far more destabilizing over time than any single uprising.

Why is the "out-party" so strong in midterm elections?

Following their defeat in the 2014 midterms and losing their grip on Congress, the Democratic Party was left in a state of disarray. In the House, Republicans increased their margin over the Democrats. In the Senate, Republicans seized control of the chamber from their political counterparts. By the time that the results were finalized, one thing was glaringly obvious: Democrats did not just lose—they lost handily.

The GOP had won 247 seats in the House, gained 13 seats over the Democrats, and achieved their largest majority in the lower chamber since 1928. The bounties in the Senate were even more dramatic, with Republicans winning nine races and claiming 54 seats in total—an unthinkable change by today’s standards, where only a handful of seats tend to flip each election cycle.

This outcome becomes even more jarring when comparing it to the makeup of Congress in 2009, just a mere five years prior. When Barack Obama first assumed the presidency, he was welcomed by Democratic majorities in both chambers of the Legislative Branch, with a filibuster-proof 60 members in the Senate, and 247 members in the House.

So, what changed between 2009 and 2014? How did Obama, whose feats included steering the nation through the Great Recession and signing the Affordable Care Act into law, end up with a Congress that had overwhelming Republican influence? Don’t incumbents typically have an advantage in elections?

Not necessarily.

While incumbents do share some inherent advantages in elections, such as increased name recognition and deeper coffers for funding campaigns, the party that controls the levers of power in the government at the time—the “in-party”—usually faces strong headwinds during midterm elections. This, in turn, provides the opportunity for the minority party—the “out-party”—to usurp control.

But what exactly causes the in-party to be in jeopardy in the first place? For the out-party to win elections, a few key factors are usually present, with them often overlapping:

1. Strong Challengers: High-profile individuals that have broad name recognition to match their incumbent opponents, such as governors, state representatives, and community leaders.
2. Weak Incumbents: Candidates that are either already unpopular or becoming unpopular within their own state or district. Perhaps they were caught in a scandal or they voted "wrongly" on a critical piece of legislation.
3. Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo: Voters often engage with politics like a thermostat. When the government moves too far in one direction, the public wants to "dial" it back the other way.

In the case of the 2014 midterms, these criteria can be readily applied.

President Obama’s approval rating was consistently poor at that time, with some polls showing it as low as 40% in the weeks leading up to the election. Upon closer inspection, voters were particularly disgruntled with the state of the economy, the administration's handling of immigration , and the failed rollout of the Obamacare website.

The GOP took advantage of this national sentiment by offering voters a strong slate of candidates while tying the Democratic incumbents to the unpopular administration in the White House. In Colorado, for example, Democratic incumbent Mark Udall was ousted by then-Representative Cory Gardner, who won by almost two points. In Iowa, then-state Senator Joni Ernst swiftly beat the Democratic nominee, Representative Bruce Braley, by just over eight points in a contest to replace Democratic Senator Tom Harkin. While Ernst entered the race strongly by showing up to NRSC training sessions and focused messaging about her service in Iraq, Braley’s campaign was marred by controversies such as airing a sexist ad and deriding Republican Senator Chuck Grassley as “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” In this instance, Ernst demonstrated to an upset electorate that she was a sensible choice over an irresponsible candidate from the lackluster party that was already in control.

Revisiting the 2014 midterms is not just a trip down memory lane—it is meant to be both a cautionary tale for Republicans and a sign of hope for Democrats by highlighting one thing: that the same forces that put Republicans on the map in 2014 are the same forces that can wipe them from it in 2026.

Key Senate Races in 2026

While the Democratic Party, currently considered the “out-party,” is widely considered to have a strong chance of reclaiming the House, there are a lot of hurdles for them to clear if they want to extend their victory into the Senate. The stars are aligning, however, for them to take back Congress despite those challenges.

First and foremost, voters widely disapprove of Donald Trump and his handling of important policy issues. As of January 24, 2026, the Silver Bulletin has President Trump at the lowest approval rating of his second term: 41.3%. Moreover, they disapprove of his approach to issues ranging from immigration (-11.7%), the economy (-18.1%), and inflation (-28.7%)—all of which were fundamental issues that he campaigned on in 2024. It is this type of national environment that leaves voters desiring a change in leadership, with hints of that being demonstrated in the 2025 election cycle, where Democrats won elections across the nation with significant margins.

In addition to voters’ dissatisfaction bubbling to the surface, the Democratic Party is making otherwise noncompetitive races attainable by supporting powerful candidates:

• North Carolina: Republican incumbent Thom Tillis is retiring, leaving Mark Whatley, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, to run in his stead. However, former Governor Roy Cooper has stepped up on behalf of the Democrats. Cooper, who has widespread name recognition within the state, has consistently led Whatley in the polls, with the Carolina Journal reporting his most recent lead being eight points.

• Ohio: When J.D. Vance became vice president, then-Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted was appointed to replace him until a special election is held to determine who will fill the remainder of his term. Democrats are poised to make this race competitive, with former Senator Sherrod Brown looking to reclaim the seat he previously held for 18 years before he lost it to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024 by about 3.6 points. Recent polling shows Husted ahead of Brown by anywhere from 3 to 6 points, but given Brown’s broad popularity and name recognition, this race is sure to tighten.

• Alaska: Democratic challenger and moderate Mary Peltola is hoping to remove Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan. Prior to her bid for the Senate, she won a special election to represent Alaska’s sole seat in the House by a 55% - 45% margin over Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick for vice president during his 2008 presidential campaign. While Peltola lost her campaign for reelection to the House in 2024, her ability to win any race in Alaska—a solid Republican state—in combination with polls showing that she leads Sullivan by two points, gives Democrats a reason to believe that the seat can be claimed.

• Maine: While the Democratic front-runner, Janet Mills, is a solid candidate due to her name recognition as governor of the state, she has struggled to take a definitive lead over her opponent in the primary, Graham Platner, who faced several controversies surrounding questionable comments online and having a tattoo depicting a Nazi symbol. In fact, some polls show Platner ahead of Mills by considerable margins. The reason that Maine is more competitive than usual, however, is less about the quality of the Democratic candidates and more about the vulnerability of the Republican candidate, Susan Collins. Collin's popularity has waned, with some polls showing only 38% of voters showing support for her. However, if she can manage to keep Trump at arm's distance and the Democratic primary gets messy, her 29 year run could very eassily continue.

These races are still in their early stages (there are still plenty of primaries to get through), but there they all hint at the same factors that led to the Democrats losing control in 2014. President Trump and his policies are overwhelmingly unpopular, and with a Republican Party that moves in lockstep with him, it will be nearly impossible for voters to view the Republican incumbents as anything but an extension of the president.

That opposing current, in combination with the fact that Democratic Party is laying the foundation for candidates with strong name recognition, popularity, and moderate platforms, might just cause the GOP to suffer the same fate as their Democratic colleagues did just over a decade ago.

The DGG Political Action, The Pragmatic Papers, The DGG Subreddit, and DGG Discord are excited to announce Sam as this month’s winner of the DGG Political Action Award. The DGG Political Action Award is a monthly award given to one member of the community who has performed real-life political action. Winners receive an article, a Discord shout-out, a pinned Reddit post, and an appearance on stream! 

To nominate yourself or someone you know, fill out this google form.

Sam was selected for this month’s award because of his exemplary work spearheading the midterm research initiative for Digital Ground Game(DGG Pol). Sam is also the Northeast Coordinator for Digital Ground Game.

Sam joined DGG Political Action not knowing how big a difference he could make. Very quickly however Sam made his research skills and Initiative known leading to his role in the Midterm project and Northeast Squad. 

Sam’s project - the Midterm research project aims to generate a full report identifying the best places for Dim DGG to go canvassing—this report, combined with our funding, will determine where we deploy.

If any readers would like to help with this research, please join the DGG Political Action Discord server and reach out to join the Research Team.

Sam’s story is like so many others in this community. It demonstrates that the quickest path to making a change is to just get involved. Sam had an idea, pitched it, and is now making it a reality. He is a strong example of how one can bridge the gap between online keyboard warrior and real-life changemaker.

To learn more about Sam visit this reddit post.

If you would like to make a difference please join the DGG political action discord at discord.gg/dggpol

Congratulations again to Sam for winning the 3rd DGG Action Award!

by Stone Steinert

Thermostatic politics is the idea that that public opinion reacts to government policy like a thermostat. When a government pushes too far in one political direction, the public "adjusts the temperature" by voting for the opposite party to restore balance. The nature of thermostatic politics has never been more clearly demonstrated than by the results of the November 2025 elections. The correction was so severe that seats thought unwinnable for half a century were flipped. As we move deeper into the second Trump administration, it has become increasingly obvious that the president has no intention of slowing down, even as popular opinion rebukes his every move. Without an extreme moderating event, it would be a safe assumption that the margin of undecided voters in 2028 will be significantly larger than 2024. One issue frequently voiced after the last presidential election was a lack of a clear and consistent policy platform, so creating a widely appealing policy agenda ahead of time is a good way to keep the party on message. Here, I’ll lay out policy proposals on an expanding scale with the goal of appealing to formerly conservative voter bases without abandoning the values of the Democratic Party. Some of these will require more democratic power than just the White House, but would still be effective if pitched on the campaign trail.

Budget hawks and small business

The simplest adjustment to messaging should be increasing the Democratic Party’s stated concern over the national debt. The Trump administration is practically serving this issue to us on a silver platter with their utterly reckless spending practices—no amount of government service cutting will be able to keep up with their pace. The easiest policy to address this problem is a strategy initiated (but poorly explained) by the Biden administration: increasing the IRS enforcement budget. According to a 2021 CBO report, every dollar invested in the IRS for enforcement returns $5-$9 in tax revenue. Addressing this requires a more aggressive messaging strategy combined with direction to the IRS to silently redirect focus away from filers in the bottom 3 tax brackets. A complementary policy to accompany this program is finishing and strengthening the free E-file online service, with a goal of an average filing time of under 20 minutes. If we can communicate to the average person that filing taxes is a quick and painless process that you can do online then more people will be likely to file their taxes. Part of the goal in this strategy is to reduce the distrust in the IRS and a relatively simple example of this would be taking a portion of additional tax revenue and loudly redirecting it into infrastructure projects so that voters see a more direct impact of the increased enforcement budget. We need to take a note from Trump signing the stimulus checks, any time a bridge is built using the enforcement revenue increase we need to put a plaque on that bridge explaining how the funding for its construction was acquired. Aggressive tax reform can be thoroughly considered after these policies gain popularity, ideally by the back half of the first term.

The majority of the democratic party are capitalists and we can't be afraid to own that in our messaging. A capitalist market can be extremely fruitful for all participants when properly tended, but if you don't properly regulate then weeds like rent seekers and monopolies can quickly overtake the market and kill competition or artificially boost prices. With such concepts in mind, we need a strong FTC ready to bust anything that even smells like a monopoly and be prepared to pair these actions with messaging that explains how breaking apart these companies will help small businesses and lower prices in the long-term by increasing market competition. This strategy has a dual benefit of appealing to strong capitalist fiscal conservatives as well as immigrant voters who are more likely than American born citizens to own a business. After bolstering our finances, we can begin to expand our view and address our withering relationships with our neighbors both north and south.

Neighbor relations and fixing the border

Following the Trump administration’s hostile stances toward Canada and Mexico, it will be important for us to take active measures to rebuild trust. In the case of Canada especially, we should begin by granting them overly favorable trade terms on a temporary basis not only as a sign of good faith, but also as an effort to reduce their reliance on China. We can also propose expanding the number of US/Canada and US/Mexico collaborative research grants to stimulate international university cooperation. This will improve our relationship with our neighbors by offering funds they might not otherwise have, as well as benefit our own students by giving them opportunities to gain experience working internationally. Universities participating in these programs also improve their global reputation as an organization willing to collaborate outside their country to solve problems— a fact which increases their appeal as candidates for international grants in the future. 

Increasing the number of work visas we issue will increase our international standing and expand our workforce. This will boost productivity and output, but also increase demand as all workers are also consumers in our system. This leads to boons in local industries through opportunities to expand their workforce beyond the pool of applicants in their immediate vicinity. If flatly expanding the number of visas offered is too unpopular of a policy to implement, then identifying industries suffering from worker shortages and offering specific visas for those fields works as a compromise.

While the “threat” of undocumented immigrants is overstated, our immigration programs have been intentionally impaired by cynical actors seeking to use the border as an issue to run election campaigns on. This needs to be addressed. A safer and easier immigration process will lead to less illegal immigration. The current backlog of immigration cases is over 3 million with a wait time of multiple years due to a massive shortage of immigration judges and associated staff. Offering government incentives to those willing to work in this fields assists in reducing this burden. It would be simple to redirect the excessive funding from ICE to hiring judges.

Another aspect of the border problem is the need for increased scrutiny of asylum claims, which could warrant the establishment of a panel of human rights experts to identify specific problem countries whose asylum seekers would temporarily merit lower barriers to claims. The second theater of this problem will require a significantly more direct approach but for this reason might be the most appealing to voters who have large concerns about immigration. This strategy would aim to make it harder to be smuggled into the US by organized groups such as the Mexican cartel. Currently we have an arrangement between the FBI and Mexican law enforcement to exchange intel regarding the cartel but we should be able to create a force to work more directly with the Mexican government, bolstering their infrastructure with the goal of rooting out and removing the cartel to the largest extent possible. Enabling our allies to address crime on their own soil increases our international standing and strengthens our relationships. This operation would serve multiple purposes including addressing human trafficking over the border, dampening the drug trade, and ultimately would serve to make our neighbor a safer and more prosperous ally, benefitting us long-term, internationally and economically. An aspect of this project would include a group of mutual aid and governmental structure experts to assist Mexico in expanding the reach of their government programs so that rural towns don't feel the need to rely on the cartel to support their communities. With this more direct approach in mind we can expand the aperture again into an altered strategy in foreign policy.

Strong Resolve Overseas and NATO Reform

Before more complex global policy can be addressed, the next administration will have to rebuild voter trust in our foreign policy competence. The most direct method for this is to take a comprehensive stance at the outset of foreign involvement and clearly communicate this to the American people. We can see a lack of transparency manifesting distrust following the conflicts addressed during the Biden administration.

The initial degree of support shown to Ukraine was appropriate, but partisan bickering and bad actors sowing distrust resulted in a lack of follow through. Whether there was reasonable justification or not, the lack of transparency on the weapon use restrictions led to bipartisan criticism and a kneecapping of Ukrainian defense capabilities. Because understanding of how aid money is spent in Ukraine is generally quite poor amongst the general population, fundamental clarity regarding aid use could have significantly prolonged voter support in the funding. Voters skeptical of the amount allocated to Ukraine would likely be more amenable to the decision if informed that around 70% of that money was spent within the United States supporting our companies and creating American jobs. In order to ease concerns on this conflict in a future election, we can rebuild a program like USAID or provide an expert group to be stationed within Ukraine to oversee use of US assistance to address lingering corruption concerns, now reignited over the recent New York Times reporting. One thing is certain: the Trump administration’s insistence on Russian appeasement is a surefire way to arrive at an unjust conclusion and does nothing to show voters strength in leadership. Once Democrats are able to begin restoring faith in their leadership on international relations, we can bring larger scale alliance reforms into the public eye.

The reality of the global climate is that war will occur whether we involve ourselves or not. Keeping allies requires that we not seclude ourselves as liberal democracy and post-world war order are demolished by our enemies. In order to court these more isolationist voters, it’s worth floating new and loftier global policies that prevent us being drawn into foreign conflicts in the long-term. One of the most reliable indicators that a country’s sovereignty will be respected is whether they are a member state of NATO; for the sake of future global peace, our moral prerogative is to create a means by which as many countries can join as possible. Enforcing Article 5 becomes harder the more members join. One option for this could be to create a tiered membership system where lower tiers can petition NATO leadership for varying levels of assistance. There might also be value in adding more extensive economic perks like favorable trade relations to member states to entice countries that wouldn't otherwise be interested in the value of NATO membership. Hostile countries like Russia have stated that NATO expansion is a red line for them, but they clearly intend to invade countries that aren't members even if we don't expand. With this in mind, these threats should be loosely monitored moving forward. We need to show bully nations that their bad behavior will not be rewarded. Organizing envoy groups to be sent to prospective member states to help get their government structure up to standard in terms of corruption and democratic rights would also be an important element of this policy. Domestically messaging this policy as a means to reduce the need for American involvement in foreign conflict long-term could be appealing to voters who are off-put by our need to send aid to warring countries, but it would be important to emphasize that the fruit of these efforts wouldn't be borne overnight.

In conclusion, the underlying rule for choosing to highlight these ideas is that they don't generally conflict with existing Democratic Party policies so that a candidate can bring them up while code switching in conservative areas without coming across as disingenuous. The expanding population of unaligned voters is likely to be the make-or-break element of the 2028 election so it's paramount that the Democratic party formulate a plan to address their interests in advance.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Contact the author at sstonewrite@gmail.com

Late Sunday night, Chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell released an unprecedented statement, just 13 hours before markets open Monday morning. The Department of Justice, without a doubt under President Trump’s direct influence, served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas.The entire financial world is being shaken by the previously unthinkable news that the independence of the Federal Reserve is being attacked directly at its core. In the past, Donald Trump has been openly hostile in speeches towards Powell, but with this move, Trump has taken tangible steps to punish Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates as Trump has demanded. Although this move is unlikely to sway the current Federal Reserve Chair in the remaining four months of his term, this assault sets a precedent for Powell’s successor that Trump will commit impeachable offenses to make good on his demand that the next Fed Chair listens to his advice in setting interest rates. 

If Jerome Powell follows through on his pledge to continue to do the job he was confirmed by the Senate to perform, and if Senate Republicans push back aggressively on this overreach that neither they nor their donors support, then it is possible that a greater disaster can be avoided.

However, this blatant move against Fed independence is the equivalent of the United States lowering the Danish flag on our base in Greenland and proclaiming our base to be United States territory. It is a move that even if retracted has the potential for permanent damage, where the TACO refrain “Trump always chickens out” provides cold comfort, as there’s no denying that an irrevocable step has been taken.

The Intangible Value of Federal Reserve Credibility

Independence in the conduct of monetary policy is at the core of advanced modern economies. And it can be too easily forgotten by those who have only known its benefits. If the Federal Reserve lost its independence, its hard-earned credibility would quickly dissipate. The costs to the economy would be incalculable: Higher inflation, lower standards of living, and a currency that risks losing its reserve status.

• Governor Kevin Warsh in “An Ode to Independence” on March 26, 2010 (https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/warsh20100326a.htm)

…monetary policy-makers will generally find it advantageous to commit publicly to following policies that will produce low inflation. If the policymakers' statements are believed (that is, if they are credible), then the public will expect inflation to be low, and demands for wage and price increases should accordingly be moderate. In a virtuous circle, this cooperative behavior by the public makes the central bank's commitment to low inflation easier to fulfill. In contrast, if the public is skeptical of the central bank's commitment to low inflation (for example, if it believes that the central bank may give in to the temptation to overstimulate the economy for the sake of short-term employment gains), then the public's inflation expectations will be higher than they otherwise would be. Expectations of high inflation lead to more-aggressive wage and price demands, which make achieving and maintaining low inflation more difficult and costly (in terms of lost output and employment) for the central bank.

• Governor Ben Bernanke Remarks on October 8, 2004 (https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/20041008/default.htm)

Inflation and the Interest Cost of U.S. Treasuries

While many commentators observe the impact of the swings in American interest payments on our federal deficit, the rate at which our national debt is eroded by inflation is less remarked upon.

If inflation in America runs higher, then the market interest rates will increase, increasing our government deficit. However, at the same time, the rate that our national debt is eroded by inflation also will increase, roughly canceling out the fiscal impact on the ledger. The true cost of inflation comes in the form of a tendency of slower real economic growth through a less stable economic environment. It is also very unpopular with the public at large

Instead, the real cost of borrowing in the long term is better approximated by stripping out inflation from the yield of Treasuries. To understand the real danger, we have to look beyond the headline interest rates and look at what investors demand to be paid over and above inflation. In fact, there is a special Treasury bond that does that, the TIPS or Treasury Inflation-Protected Security. See below the yield of the 10 year TIPS over the past 20 years.

These consistently modest real burdens of government borrowing are dependent upon the credibility of the Federal Reserve to keep inflation under control. While expected inflation rates may not materially damage the real cost of the U.S. debt, the risk for unexpected and uncontained inflation will see lenders demand higher returns than expected inflation to compensate them for the risk of serious loss if their dollars lose value.

Impeachable

The mandate given to the Federal Reserve by Congress is independence. Destroying that independence is an impeachable offense.

Call your representatives, whether Republican or Democrat. Reach out to your newspapers and let them know this story matters. Every day that this is not contained and reversed does potentially irreversible damage to the future of American prosperity.

By u/Wormtalk94

Freedom of choice has never meant freedom of consequences. People choosing to drink and drive can see insurance rates jump from 28%-371% after a DUI(1) reflecting the higher statistical likelihood of accidents and harm. Similarly, anti-vaccine choice creates predictable, and preventable costs for the healthcare system. Consequently, there is a moral and pragmatic imperative to assign the financial burden of this choice to those who voluntarily incurred it rather than transfer this cost to the rest of society.

Insurance exists as a shared pool of risk. We all pay into it hoping that we never need it with most favoring preventive care, safe driving, and early medical planning to avoid unnecessary insurance interactions. Each step is taken to prevent the possibility of premium hikes or overt coverage denial. As such we opt in to taking these bare minimum actions acknowledging the inability of insurance to make everyone whole following catastrophe.

Anti-vaccine advocates have chosen to opt out this social contract, asserting that their personal convictions outweigh medical consensus. They are shielded from the consequences of their actions, benefiting from a system that they burden without personal accountability.

As of December 9th, 2025, 1,912 confirmed cases of measles were reported in the United States this year. The CDC estimates that 1 in 5 measles cases will require hospitalization at an average cost of $43,000 per patient (2,5). 92% of these cases were from unvaccinated individuals (3), with this outbreak representing the highest measles case load in over 30 years (4). The result: an estimated $16 million in preventable medical expenses. This likely represents the lowest number we will see in the coming years as national vaccine rates have plummeted since COVID (6), eroding herd immunity and amplifying future costs.

Insurance isn’t a bottomless pool. Certain treatments and procedures go uncovered, with reports suggesting that 15% of all claims submitted are denied (7). This includes people undergoing cancer treatment, accidents, autoimmune disorders and mental health crises. The pool is limited, and every unnecessary expense removes resources that could go to someone else’s coverage. Thus, it is fair to question why avoidable illnesses resulting from voluntary vaccine refusal should compete with unavoidable medical needs.

Anti-vaccine advocates have always been present, though till recent their rarity has made their impact minimal and mostly unnoticed. These people have been shielded by their contemporaries, as herd immunity has prevented widespread disease outbreaks protecting the vulnerable. This is no longer the case. MMR vaccine rates have fallen below the 95% threshold to prevent outbreaks, with other disease like pertussis (whooping cough) bordering essential thresholds (6). As such, they are no longer protected, nor are the people who have actual medical exemptions or medical conditions that lessen the efficacy of the vaccines.

The current system subsidizes the anti-vaccine movement, and in a coldly rational world preventable diseases resulting from the refusal of preventative care might be denied coverage. However, such a stance could be deemed cruel and counterproductive as completely denying coverage to people could cause life threatening harm and impose cost for the system. Whereas I believe risk-adjusted premium increases are virtuous from both a moral and pragmatic standpoint. People who willing opt-out of the public health social contract will require some proportion of funds, which if preemptively accounted for will prevent their choices from disenfranchising others.

This is not a vindictive stance, its holding people accountable for their choices. Numerous other lifestyle choices are met with increased insurance premiums, such as speeding in a car or smoking. Yet getting vaccinated is a minor effort, typically just two or three brief visits to a doctor, unlike lifestyle changes like quitting smoking, which require months or years of sustained effort. No one should be forced to take a medical treatment against their will. Opting out of proven medical treatments should, however, be viewed in the same light as other behaviors that increase risk. If one truly believes that vaccines ‘cause more harm than good’, then this proposition should not be controversial.

Vaccine-preventable illnesses are reemerging, and based on current trajectories are likely to become a larger burden in the coming years. If the system doesn’t start to preemptively account for this, foreseeable cost will occur adding undue stress on a system that is already understood to have coverage issues. Freedoms are self-evident but not free, and thus far the responsibility of these choices has been shifted from the beholder to the rest of society. Risk-adjusted premiums aren’t punishment, they’re fairness, and the only way to ensure that one’s freedom to choose does not infringe on someone else’s.

1. https://www.insure.com/car-insurance/drunk-driving-penalties.html
2. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/resources/measles-isnt-just-a-little-rash-infographic.html#:~:text=Measles%20can%20be%20serious.,people%20with%20measles%20will%20die.
3. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/us-measles-outbreak-tops-1800-cases-respiratory-illness-surveillance-returns#:~:text=Nationally%2C%2092%25%20of%20measles%20patients,vaccine%20or%20two%20full%20doses.
4. https://www.statista.com/statistics/186678/new-cases-of-measles-in-the-us-since-1950/?srsltid=AfmBOooPOVMdC1_wh9IAk55M1gU5Vk2yiLfhGIzZgKF3RRABtZZkQ7xz
5. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/ivac/2025/estimating-the-financial-costs-of-measles-outbreaks
6. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/ivac/2025/across-the-us-childhood-vaccination-rates-continue-to-decline
7. https://www.aha.org/aha-center-health-innovation-market-scan/2024-04-02-payer-denial-tactics-how-confront-20-billion-problem

Interview with Andi, one of Renée Good's neighbors. Conducted by Marlow

When I was a sophomore in my undergrad, I organized a group to hike to a place called the "Lake of the Crags" in Grand Teton National Park (see Figure 1). As I was prone to in that time of my life, I placed myself in a precarious position. An alluring escarpment that the trail looped over a mile to get to the top of was a temptation too great for me at the time to ignore. I told the group I’d rendezvous with them at the top, and they continued on the trail as I began to scale the cliffs. The stone was relatively broken up, and the climb was easy going. The weather that day was teetering between sunny and overcast, and, as things go in the mountains, good weather can very quickly become bad weather. As I neared the top, I began to feel the raindrops. My arrogant pleasure quickly soured as I apprehended my predicament: I was over a hundred feet in the air on rock that was beginning to wetten. My leisurely pace quickened as I raced to the top before I lost my traction. As luck would have it, about two feet from the top I found myself stuck. I had a good foothold but the rock at that point was too slick to advance. Draping over the edge was an old branch. I had no idea what it was attached to or how strong it was. I looked for another option, but the slick rock foiled all attempted downclimbing and repositioning. I began to get cold from the rain, and my forearms began to burn from the position I was holding for so long. Weighing my options, I decided to grab for the branch and pull myself up. Fortunately, it held. 

In positions that make us feel trapped, there are usually precious few safe or good options. The current global political climate seems to be in a state of chaos and instability. In Europe, a land war with an imperialistic madman continues to rage while the alt-right is on the rise, fueled by xenophobia. In the Middle East, the exposed sores of war continue to fester. Africa has seen its plethora of civil wars, and acts of political violence increase as foreign resource exploitation ramps amid cuts to aid. Asia is on edge as civil wars rage, and China continues to beat the ancient battle drums of ethno-nationalism. And in my home, the United States, a seeming state of self-dissolution looms as a fascistic MAGA coalition rips apart our institutions, international relations, economic system, and rule of law. It's easy to feel that our predicament is choking, all-encompassing— that we're impotent and directionless. The recent shooting of Renee Good seems to be just another lashing amongst the batterings we have all collectively experienced in the past several years. On January 7th, Renee Good was killed, by all accounts, in a completely unjustified and malicious act of violence by ICE officer Johnathan Ross [1]. Ross, a veteran of the Iraq war, served as a border patrol agent from 2007 to 2015 and as an ICE agent from 2015 to the present [2]. Unlike many of his compatriots— most of whom have been practically scooped off the street and handed a firearm and tactical gear —Ross, a firearms trainer [3], has been in law enforcement long enough to exclude him from the benefit of the doubt one might extend to the droves of incompetent new ICE recruits. 

ICE's blatant disregard of regulations, rule of law, and human decency does not exist in a vacuum; it is the culmination of a long train of abuses in the city of Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota. Gregory Bovino (see Figure 2), one of the leaders of “Operation Metro Surge" (the swarming of 2,000 ICE agents in Minneapolis [4]) has a long history of fomenting a culture of cruelty and excess during his time in border patrol [5]. This deliberately-cultivated environment is a culmination of the ideology of cruelty that has taken root in the Trump administration— it would have inevitably led to death. Renee Good just happened to be there. Protests against the killing of Renee and wider grievances with ICE’s brutality have erupted in Minneapolis and in cities and towns across the country. People are angry, tense, and afraid of what has happened and what the Trump admin is promising. 

The recent protests in Minneapolis have been both striking and hopeful. Digital Ground Game member Andi, a PhD student living near where Renee Good was murdered, was able to attend the Vigil the night of the 8th, the subsequent protests at the Whipple building, and the march in Powderhorn Park on the 10th. 

“It's kind of crazy because, I mean, it's literally my neighborhood. This happened in my neighborhood. You know, she was basically my neighbor and she was killed by these people. And so it's crazy to be out here, and crazy how this has become a whole national story.” (Andi)

The protests are widespread and ongoing, but most striking from Andi's accounts was how the march at Powderhorn Park— organized by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (see interview disclaimer)—unfolded. The protests were mostly people of the Powderhorn Park community going out to voice their outrage at the tragedy that had defiled their community. 

“But this is just any other neighborhood. And to see just like thousands and thousands of people out in the streets and in a regular neighborhood like this, it was really incredible to see. And, you know, a lot of these people were just people who live in the neighborhood who were showing up, right? As I was walking to the protest, there were tons of neighbors who were coming out from their houses to come join. You know, like it was really, really cool to see. So yeah, tons of just, you know, regular, you know, people who love America, who love the Constitution, and who don't want to see their fellow Americans get gunned down in the streets by unaccountable agencies.” (Andi)

What was most striking about this march was how the intent of the people living there dominated the tenor of the event. People were not sloganeering the cause of micro states abroad; they were not asking for the complete restructuring of society— they were not virtue signaling their niche causes. They were angry at the violence enacted in their home by an out-of-control state, and they wanted those perpetrating it to stop and leave. 

“You know, there was tons of people waving American flags. The message from almost everyone was simply focused on anti-ICE. We don't want ice killing people. We don't want ice, you know, dragging people out of their homes who haven't done anything wrong. Yeah, that was kind of the singular message of basically everyone there.” (Andi)

As of the writing of this article, protests are continuing. Andi has gone to more protests at the Whipple building (the federal building where ICE is headquartered in Minneapolis) and has seen ICE continue to escalate tensions and violence.

Late 2024 and early 2025 were probably when I felt the most demoralized. The people who had screamed for four years from the pulpit their malicious intent began to enact it. And I felt powerless. I didn't know what to do. That black hole in my chest sent me on a search to try and find out what I could do. That, too, was a demoralizing process. Everyone seemed aimless, and I wanted to change things now. I spent months looking for a silver-bullet-cause behind which I could throw my weight. This mentality left me more demoralized than when I started, and I started to drift into a realm of nihilism. What pulled me back was some good council from a close friend— I needed to stop trying to find the perfect movement to get behind, and just start doing something. Opportunities would only come when I was engaged in an environment that allowed them to. I began looking with the intent of involving myself first, rather than solving first. It was a humbling but necessary step in the right direction. 

In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, there is a great lesson on fighting an all-encompassing, encroaching enemy. For those who have just watched the films, the assault on the free peoples of Middle Earth was not just constrained to the titular nations in the films. It was an assault on all peoples at once, tying everyone down so no one could help each other, leaving all to fend for themselves. Everyone was stretched thin, faced with an assailant in their own backyard. It is easy to overlook the many battles, sacrifices, and lives lost to hold the enemy at bay long enough for the titular heroes to complete their quests, but those efforts were just as important to the success as the heroes of the story. It is an important lesson to learn that all levels of action are essential and that you are needed where you can help. When thinking of the American civil war, it's easy to focus on the strategies of Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln while forgetting that they were carried out through the sacrifices and efforts of thousands of hands now forgotten— as Tolkien penned: “... such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.” [7]

The year we now enter will be a decisive year. It will ask us to act in opposition to a dishearteningly large threat. The upcoming Midterms Election seems overwhelming; asking “what can I do about it?” is a daunting question. The answer of how the wheel will turn is through many hands working where they stand with the means they have. Our victory calls for many levels of participation and many avenues to help. If you are still unsure how to best help, I invite you to simply start volunteering your time. If you haven't done so yet, Digital Ground Game has weekly calls to actions (CTAs) you can participate in. Currently, there is a Digital Ground Game CTA to participate in a local anti-ICE protest. Look where you can volunteer locally: there is always a deficit of hands needed. Something as simple as a food drive could be your open door into political action. 

To those who are gripped by disillusionment and apathy as a result of the state and direction of the world, I want share the following passage from Vasily Grossman:

"I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never be conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer." [8]

The villains of The Lord of the Rings, the leaders of the confederacy, the fascist movements of the 20th century, and our current fascistic government all share the intent to dominate and crush those qualities and traits that make us human. Disillusionment, apathy, and nihilism are the goals of this administration. They want us all feeling isolated, thin, and stretched so we withdraw into ourselves. The cure is the very thing they seek to crush, simple kindness, of trying to help where you can. I cannot promise that things are going to be alright, that things will get better, or that it's uphill from here. But what I know is that the wheel of history is turned by the uncounted, small, and unseen hands that lift where they stand with what means and measure they have. 

"Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." —J.R.R. Tolkien 

Sources

[1] - Andi

[2] - ABC News Minneapolis ICE shooting: A minute-by-minute timeline of how Renee Nicole Good died- https://abcnews.go.com/US/minneapolis-ice-shooting-minute-minute-timeline-renee-nicole/story?id=129021809 

[3] - NBC News: The ICE officer who killed a Minnesota woman is a war veteran who spent over a decade working for DHS https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-officer-jonathan-ross-veteran-spent-decade-dhs-rcna253254 

[4] - Wired - ICE Agent Who Reportedly Shot Renee Good Was a Firearms Trainer, Per Testimony https://www.wired.com/story/ice-agent-jonathan-ross-renee-good-shooting-firearms-trainer-testimony/ 

[5] - PBS - 2,000 federal agents sent to Minneapolis area to carry out 'largest immigration operation ever,' ICE says -  https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/2000-federal-agents-sent-to-minneapolis-area-to-carry-out-largest-immigration-operation-ever-ice-says 

[6] - POGO Investigates - Greg Bovino’s Border Patrol Agents Use Disproportionate Force, Data Shows by Nick Schwellenbach and Will Sytsma - https://www.pogo.org/investigates/greg-bovinos-border-patrol-agents-use-disproportionate-force-data-shows 

[7] - The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R Tolkien

[8] - Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman

“No country can rest on a crooked relationship to the truth.”
— Robert Musil

The MAGA Republican Party has fundamentally altered our nation’s ability to discern right from wrong and fact from fiction. Decades of inflammatory rhetoric from Rush Limbaugh to Tucker Carlson have cultivated a fervent base of individuals insistent that tyranny, corruption, and abuse are far preferable to the vision offered by the Democratic Party. The consistent destruction of social and democratic norms, particularly over the past decade, has resulted in an incentive structure dedicated to protecting a singular individual: Donald Trump.

The success and protection of a party’s chosen candidate is to be expected. However, the selection of a narcissistic demagogue has proven deeply toxic to the moral underbelly of the nation. Pundits and politicians alike are required to realign their messaging to ensure lockstep protection of the party leader. Lawlessness is reclassified as plenary authority [1], insurrections are transformed into patriotic protests [2], and Jeffrey Epstein was only into “very young teen types” [3]. Narratives are re-shaped to protect the party and satiate the base, regardless of the destruction inflicted upon the country.

The MAGA Party has an ongoing struggle with both moral reasoning and factual reality. That struggle manifested grotesquely in the reaction to the murder of Renee Good.

On January 7, 2026, Renee Good was shot and killed in Minneapolis by an ICE agent later identified as Jonathan Ross [4]. The response from the right-wing political sphere that followed was openly anti-social.

As videos of the shooting began circulating, the Trump administration moved quickly to control the narrative, insisting that the nation must reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Immediately after the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” and publicly defended the actions of the ICE officer, despite the absence of a completed investigation [5].

The following day, Vice President JD Vance addressed the American public. The press conference was opened by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who highlighted “radicals in the Democratic Party” opposed to the enforcement of immigration laws. Vance then launched into a five-minute diatribe about “failed politicians” and federal programs being “defrauded by Somali immigrants,” state-sanctioned propaganda that bore little relevance to the stated purpose of the briefing: the killing of an American citizen by a federal agent.

Only after this digression did Vance turn to “what happened in Minneapolis.” He did so by referencing a photograph of a CNN article that had been sent to him. Pulling out his phone, he read the headline aloud to the press pool: “Outrage after ICE Officer Kills US Citizen in Minneapolis.” Rather than addressing the substance of the killing, Vance used the headline to chastise the media for its framing. He did not urge caution. He did not acknowledge that an investigation was ongoing. He offered no condolences.

Instead, he spoke with certainty and righteous indignation, asserting—without evidence—that Good was part of a “broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault, and to make it impossible for ICE officers to do their job.” He made no concessions. The killing was not a tragedy; it was a justified response [6].

The administration remained firm in the construction of this narrative, and dehumanizing rhetoric from the broader right-wing commentary ecosystem followed in waves. Twitch streamer Asmongold reacted to footage of the shooting by jeering, “and then he shoots her; Gotchya bitch! And then he shoots her a few more times to finish her off,” followed by chuckles [7]. Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire referred to the deceased victim as a “lesbian agitator” who “gave her life to protect 68 IQ Somali scammers” [8]. Fox News pundit Jesse Watters described Good as “a self-proclaimed poet with pronouns in her bio” who “leaves behind a lesbian partner” [9].

The continual need to identify the victim’s sexuality is a concerted effort to place her in the “other” category. Watters and Walsh alike assure their audiences that it is acceptable that she is dead because she is not like us; she is like them.

The current Republican Party embodies a culture in which callous disregard for human life becomes acceptable when that life exists in opposition to the party. Death no longer demands recognition for those who do not obey their rule. Following a state-sanctioned killing, there has been no offer of restraint, uncertainty, or acknowledgment of loss.

It would be comforting to believe that the administration responsible for such levels of cruelty and inhumanity was behaving irrationally—but it is not. The statements are calm and confident. These actors are behaving rationally within a system that rewards their inhumanity in service of this President.

Sources

1. https://youtu.be/vWudXaj60rU?si=xxsdnF3ZiwmgH_cR
2. https://youtu.be/bTBvtoIJBKA?si=oDbn6ViWFnbUlszc
3. https://youtube.com/shorts/dTVLkNmKdmM?si=FdNADPIs41PVQEjj
4. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-officer-jonathan-ross-veteran-spent-decade-dhs-rcna253254
5. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-noem-holds-news-conference-in-minneapolis-after-fatal-ice-shooting-of-woman
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHhN7Me0yJY
7. https://photos.app.goo.gl/qR8AWrR3qMHUsU7i8 
8. https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/2009291350735237277?s=20
9. https://youtu.be/PGknDB9fGLY?si=nvoNukJN7W3CRdwq

Of all the nations in the world that have fallen to dictatorship, Venezuela is the closest analog to the United States. If we fail to turn around our trend of democratic decline, the hope of a Venezuelan resurgence is America’s hope of a future resurgence.

Americans have likely only heard much of Venezuela since the recent waves of refugees and Trump’s fearmongering of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization. So, it may be surprising that Venezuela would have much relevance to us. 

Venezuela is not just another fucked up Latin American country. It is a country with a long history as a rich, democratic nation. This club is small, and Venezuela is the only example of falling from this exalted club into hell.

See below a view of the world in 1960 through the dual lenses of electoral democracy and economic prosperity. If you can’t find it on the map, it’s the nation at the north-most part of South America’s coastline.

The Path from Liberty and Fortune to Hell

If we were to transpose Venezuelan history onto America’s current trajectory of democratic decline, we would place ourselves into Venezuela in the early 90s.

A prior decade of economic tumult from the sharp decline of oil prices in the 80s hit Venezuela hard, as a country with a major energy sector.

While market forces provided the impetus for growing civil discontent and a growth in the popularity of populist politics in Venezuela, in America our political dysfunction and media environment have created the seeds of democratic decline, now amplified by post-COVID lingering discontent.

In Venezuela, this civic discontent and the rising populist energies arrived at a critical point when a coup attempt was launched by Hugo Chavez in February, 1992.

(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/05/hugo-chavez-venezuela-failed-coup-1992). 

Unsuccessful coups are an interesting theme of the last few decades of Venezuelan history, tempting comparisons to other failed Central and South American states. Certainly, due to proximity, the idea of military coups was politically prominent enough to inspire various Venezuelan political actors. However, what is notable is that they have all utterly failed, whether against liberal governments or against Chavista regimes. The Venezuelan military has not functioned as a fourth branch of government but instead as a servant of the state, similar to the military’s place in the United States.

The futile and unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992 by Hugo Chavez bears a chilling resemblance to the insurrection attempt of January 6th, 2021 by Donald Trump. Instead of ending in punishment and disgrace, a mythology was formed celebrating the criminal act (https://youtu.be/HR_FAdVPPuw?si=vsz6uD_FlnKX9oau), eventually named the “Day of Dignity.””. In the years following, the government granted pardons to the participants in the coup attempts, including Chavez in 1994 (https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12459&context=notisur). This troublingly resembles the history, so far, of the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection. While initially condemned, the right has come to revere the motivations of January 6th, Donald Trump was reelected, and pardons were issued for the participants.

We can pray that January 6th is never set as a national “Stop the Steal Day”.

The Populist Era of Hugo Chavez

Thankfully in our current and growing democratic decline, the United States has not yet elected a political figure like Hugo Chavez. Donald Trump is a symptom of our societal rot, but we have yet to find a populist figure that appears like a solution to it.

In the 1998 election, Hugo Chavez won the election by 16 points with both major moderate parties unifying against him (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Venezuelan_presidential_election).

In a moment of fortune that surely felt like the world bent itself to serve Hugo Chavez, upon taking political leadership in Venezuela, the long troublesome energy sector of the Venezuela economy began to rebound off of higher global energy prices until his death 14 years later.

Because of this stretch of good fortune, it may have been difficult for democratic Venezuela to separate the god-send from global markets and the populist economic policies of the Chavez administration. The rising tide of oil sales was able to paper over any defect in economic policy, and Chavez was politically dominant until his death in 2013. 

Hugo Chavez wielded the bully pulpit of a state apparatus that spread propaganda wide attributing the recovery in the 2000s to Chavista reforms. As center left and right parties were blamed for not adequately turning around the hang-over of the crash in oil prices in the 80s, Chavez was getting political rewards for their upward march.

However, on the back of the political power Hugo Chavez was granted, he had time to transform the Venezuelan government into one that could fall to dictatorship, although it is unclear whether Hugo Chavez had that possibility in mind. Despite being weakened by populism, when Hugo Chavez died, Venezuela was still a democracy, neither poor nor authoritarian. 

It is easy to see the fall of Venezuela as preordained knowing what we know now. Place yourself in the mind of a Venezuelan citizen, however. You had lived in a prosperous democratic nation your entire life, unlike any neighboring country. The past three decades had been tumultuous, but even the elderly were too young to remember a time when Venezuela was not a place of productivity, of liberty, with a government that, however imperfectly, served the Venezuelan people. No tyranny or dictatorship has taken hold over any other people who could say that, and how it happened may say a lot about how it may eventually happen to us.

In fact, it happened in just four years.

Rushing into Hell Without Restraint

What is shocking about Venezuela’s decline to hell in a matter of years of the death of Hugo Chavez under Nicolas Maduro is that it was allowed to happen at all. Ironically, a more unstable society would have rejected the disastrous economic and political moves of the Maduro regime. The double edged sword of a society with no institutions prepared to challenge the law is that if the government and law becomes the enemy, then you are more helpless than a Banana Republic.

Already dealing with a recession after the global financial crisis of 2008, Maduro was dealt a devastating blow shortly after his narrow election win as Hugo Chavez’ chosen replacement as head of the Chavista party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Venezuelan_presidential_election). The oil market fell. Adding to that, the major customer of Venezuela, the United States, had its fracking revolution becoming a major producer of domestic energy.

As an inexperienced leader with a narrow political mandate, Maduro was immediately thrust into an economic and political crisis in 2014 into 2015 (https://backend-live.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2015/03/CPM_Update_Venezuela.pdf). There was a genuine economic crisis in Venezuela, and the government steps to maintain civil order are not dissimilar to past events under liberal regimes after the 1980s oil price declines (https://www.deseret.com/1989/3/5/18797401/venezuelan-riots-show-gravity-of-latin-america-s-debt-troubles/). 

However, Maduro’s policy response to the economic crisis and his later authoritarian moves threw Venezuela from a disaster into a cataclysm.

Economic Suicide

Economically, Maduro doubled down on Chavista economics through legislating higher wages, implementing price controls, and effectively crushing any business model for domestic Venezuelan business, pushing Venezuelan inflation from a crisis to a hyperinflation nightmare. 

The more of a depression Venezuela sunk into with a reduction of business activity, the harder Maduro squeezed the business community to hold off a deterioration in the quality of life of Venezuelans. This supply side inflation was also enabled by the ending of the central bank’s independence in 2007 (https://archive.ph/l7Efd). 

The market forces of rising inflation and shortage should have been the mechanism for new business opportunity and a revival of prosperity in Venezuela, but instead it was used as a policy justification to send Venezuela into hell. Specific inflation numbers become challenging to assess when business activity becomes unviable and remaining economic activity functions on a model of rationing versus a functioning market.

Dicatorship

The Chavista party fell out of favor due to the absence of the leadership of Hugo Chavez and the increasingly dire economic situation in Venezuela beginning to emerge. In the 2015 parliamentary elections, the first since the death of Hugo Chavez, the anti-Chavista party won the election by a similar margin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Venezuelan_parliamentary_election) that Hugo Chavez did when he rode into power in 1998.

At this critical moment for the future of Venezuelan democracy, the Venezuelan parliament had a strong Chavista majority, elected 5 years prior when Hugo Chavez was politically dominant and currently Nicolas Maduro was president. The day after the election, they began using their power to vacate the existing judges on the Supreme Tribunal of Venezuela and appoint new Chavista party members to the court (https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2015/12/22/inenglish/1450795287_909403.html?outputType=amp). By doing this, against the popular will, the Chavista party was able to maintain partisan control of 2 branches of government.

Not unlike some moves we have seen in some U.S. states, the Maduro regime used its existing partisan control of most of the branches of government to strip the power of constitutional authorities of their opposition. The Maduro regime reached for emergency power and the partisan court blessed it. The opposition Congress passed laws, and the court ruled them illegal.

For the following decade to the present, the politics of Venezuela have devolved ever downward, with domestic international pressure both serving as a source of instability to the Chavista government and also as a source of provocation used as justification for further political entrenchment.

Saving Venezuela

The lesson for America in our democratic decline is somewhat dispiriting because Venezuela’s past is so easily imaginable as our future. What we must hope to avoid is the emergence of a populist figure of the kind of popularity we last saw with FDR, but with little regard for America’s democratic, liberal tradition. If we do, hopefully that leader will not be blessed with good fortune that will allow for the weakening of the institutions that would resist the political movement when a peaceful transition of power is eventually called for.

For Venezuela today, the past decade has been a nightmare, but has been short enough that it is a nightmare they can wake from. The civil servants are still alive, the capable productive civilization is still there, and the expectation and demand for democracy, liberty and law is present.

A pathway to a free Venezuela is a potential precedent to a pathway of freedom to ourselves in countries with long rich democratic histories.

This report is only a summary and editorial regarding the executive orders (“EOs”) signed by the Trump Administration during the last month. EOs are not legislation or court opinions. They do not carry the weight of law, and are merely statements of policy within the executive branch. That is not to say they cannot be cited in court or legal pleadings, or aren’t relevant to the application of law, only that they are almost never controlling outside of internal executive branch administration.

The goal will be to give you an easy access to the EOs and a general understanding of what is contained within. Important or especially impactful EOs will likely have a longer summary.

While I am a licensed attorney, this is not paid legal advice.  Nothing in this communication is intended to create an attorney-client relationship.  Unless expressly stated otherwise, nothing contained in this article should be construed as a digital or electronic signature, nor is it intended to reflect an intention to make an agreement by electronic means.

Executive Order 14357 - Modifying Duties Addressing the Synthetic Opioid Supply Chain in the People’s Republic of China

Signed: November 4, 2025

Published: November 7, 2025

Summary: This EO reduces the tariff on some Chinese goods from 20% to 10%. Trump claims that this is on the back of a commitment of China taking stronger measures to prevent the shipment of Fentanyl and other illicit drugs to America. Trump has also claimed that this agreement is the basis of a much-needed resumption of Chinese purchase of American soybeans. China is committed to purchasing roughly 12 million tons of soybeans for the rest of 2025, and a further 25 million per year through 2028. However, since this announcement, Chinese purchasing has not kept up with these claims.

In the ten months since the start of this administration, the Chinese-US trade relationship has continued to degrade. American farmers rely on exports to China, and they are the ones suffering the most. While this agreement may provide a resumption of trade of soybeans in the next few years, it is clearly not sufficient to heal the damage. Now the Trump administration is looking to make a $12 billion welfare payment to farmers affected by this disastrous policy.

Executive Order 14358 - Modifying Reciprocal Tariff Rates Consistent With the Economic and  Trade Arrangement Between the United States and the People’s Republic of China

Signed: November 4, 2025

Published: November 7, 2025

Summary: As with previous EOs of this category, this EO extends the suspension of tariffs on Chinese imports laid out in EO 14257. This EO extends these suspensions until November 10, 2026. The Trump administration is clearly trying to make the most of the, frankly, inconsequential "deal" described in the previous EO. The Chinese tariffs are extreme, and have been suspended for the most part, as even the Trump administration realizes the danger of implementing them. Previously, the suspensions were for a few weeks or months; this is the longest extension we have seen so far. It is likely that the Trump administration is putting it so far out so as to find a discrete time to remove them. It's also of note that the expiration is immediately after the upcoming midterms. Trump might be hoping to use these tariffs as a threat to Democrats in case of a potential loss of the legislature.

Executive Order 14359 - Fostering the Future for American Children and Families

Signed: November 13, 2025

Published: November 19, 2025

Summary: This EO aims to help modernize and improve the foster care system in America. While facially this sounds great, there is obviously much to be suspicious of. First, the EO appears to create a greater level of intrusiveness by the government into the homes of foster carers, and state information about them. It also aims to relocate unallocated funds, often a term that results in friends of the administration profiting. 

It also orders more coordination with “faith-based organizations and houses of worship.” While religious institutions have always worked to help facilitate and support foster care systems, the current administration's uncomfortable and likely unconstitutional relationship with religion rightfully makes this line suspicious. Some claim that this will open up religious discrimination in foster care programs. This EO is a great example of the simple positive messages that the Trump administration will use to Trojan-horse their malfeasance and corruption into every part of the government.

Executive Order 14360 - Modifying the Scope of the Reciprocal Tariffs With Respect to Certain Agricultural Products

Signed: November 14, 2025

Published: November 25, 2025

Summary: This EO modifies the scope of products that have been subjected to the tariffs under EO 14346. The adjustment mostly had to do with agricultural products, especially tropical products.

Executive Order 14361 - Modifying the Scope of Tariffs on the Government of Brazil

Signed: November 20, 2025

Published: November 26, 2025

Summary: Because of Trump’s friend and fellow authoritarian’s conviction and subsequent imprisonment in Brazil, Trump signed EO 14323 in July of 2025. This placed heavy tariffs on Brazil. Recently, after speaking with the Brazilian government and seeing the harm to the American economy with no real point, the Trump administration has begun relaxing these tariffs. This EO removes a significant amount of agricultural tariff imports to the US.

Executive Order 14362 - Designation of Certain Muslim Brotherhood Chapters as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists

Signed: November 24, 2025

Published: November 28, 2025

Summary: This EO is pretty straightforward and directs the AG and DNI to assign the Muslim Brotherhood, especially those found in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

Executive Order 14363 - Launching the Genesis Mission

Signed: November 24, 2025

Published: November 28, 2025

Summary: This EO initiates the “Genesis Mission,” a very generic and unclear scientific endeavor for the Trump administration. It will use Federal scientific datasets to solve the most challenging problems of the century— whatever that means. More likely, it will be an avenue to channel funds and other forms of graft to AI companies, while also compromising significant amounts of government-held data.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has made waves recently for his double tap on supposed narco drug trafficking boats. He has tried to shift the blame onto Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, but doesn’t help his case as Hegseth continues to strike boats after replying to yes men on twitter. This is part of an overall rise in hostility against the Venezuelan state, beginning to raise suspicion of a major military operation against the Latin American country. 

Starting in the early fall, the US began ramping up its military presence in the Caribbean and began the infamous boat strikes. On the 29th of November, Trump warned that the airspace around Venezuela should be considered closed, but has not taken any steps to ensure a no fly zone. He has been warning of action “soon” against the state, and said he believes Maduro’s “days are numbered”. 

Despite the strikes being against US and international law, and polls finding that most would oppose direct military action, many Venezuelans in America support the efforts. Regime change, to them, is the ultimate goal of these escalations, something they await with fervor. “We’ve marched” a source told Newsweek. “Nothing changed”. 

Long overdue

Nearly 770 thousand Venezuelans live in America, with a fifth of those concentrated in Florida. And in Doral, a suburb in Miami, live 27 thousand of them. Doral has the highest concentration of Venezuelans in the country, and many there see Trump and Rubio’s promise of toppling Maduro as a godsend. Legal protections and the termination of Temporary Protection Status (TPS) have led to many fearing their immigration status, but still hold desperately to the belief that Trump will save their country. As long as Maduro is gotten rid of, all will be forgiven. 

Trump’s anti-socialism message resonates with the Cuban and Venezuelan residents of Miami, which surged red in 2024 as a result. Many of the older immigrants come from these countries, destroyed by bad policies, wishing for a better future. They are attracted to right wing messaging that validates their hatred of socialism like no other party could. In 2024, 60% of Doral voted for Trump, and they even made the MAGA classic, “We will vote for Donal Trom”.

Many Venezuelan immigrants who came in the 2000s wave, escaping Hugo Chavez, were well off. They were doctors, lawyers, people with means to establish themselves in the community and integrate seamlessly with the Republican party. Their hatred of Chavismo, Chavez’s brand of socialism, is rooted in their identity as refugees. 

When Chavez’s protege, Nicolas Maduro, caused his economic crisis, yet another wave of Venezuelan migrants moved to the US. Refugees fled the hyperinflation and collapsing economy. Desperate to escape, they relied on TPS rather than visas. These working class migrants began working in fields like construction or food service, making the backbone of South Florida’s service industry. 

Though the generations can clash with each other, with older generations seeing the newcomers as uneducated and supportive of the regime. Younger generations, who have had their protection statuses slashed and immigration status up in the air, remain skeptical of Trump and his promises. 

The two, however, seem to agree on drastic regime change action in Venezuela. The mood is generally tense, seeing politicians as all talk and no action. Venezuelan migrants in the US are clear - They want drastic action against the Venezuelan state. They see the promises of the GOP of regime change as empty promises. Sanctions and strong words have done nothing. But whether this means forceful action needs to take place seems to divide the generations. 

Some, usually older, Venezuelans, see force as the only option. Elliot Abrams wrote for Foreign Affairs and laid it out succinctly - “Why regime change is the only way forward in Venezuela”. 

Others, usually younger generations, see democratization as an avenue of change, fearing the potential devastation a war could bring to Venezuela. 

Adelys Ferro, a Venezuelan activist for migrant rights, told Yahoo news she doubts Trump’s intentions. "In the midst of our desperation and desire for freedom, we have minimized what a war means," she said. She favors using the current tensions as leverage, to peacefully force Maduro into beginning a democratization process for the country. 

This does not mean, however, that MAGA has lost the Venezuelans. There are many who support him, and see the immigration and ICE crackdowns as simply a negative. As long as he gets rid of Maduro, anything goes. Andrea Gonzalez, another person interviewed by Yahoo news, said it best. 

"The same people who have been deported wouldn't hate him so much if he achieved that [Overthrowing Maduro],". 

The Right Flank

As Venezuelans urge Trump to do more about Maduro, some on the America First side of the right wing has begun clashing in their messaging. America First sees the escalation as a betrayal of their non-interventionist values. Their name is America First, after all. 

Right wing Venezuelans see the issue differently. Lourdes Ubieta, a Venezuelan-born conservative radio host in Miami, told the Washington Post, “When you think of America First, you need to think of national security first, and the Venezuelan regime is a threat to our national security,”. 

Ubieta, alongside Elliot Abrams, do not see the need for US boots on the ground. They know US lives lost would lead to a catastrophic loss of support. Instead, that remains as a last resort, seeing airstrikes as the key pragmatic solution. No country has ever had a regime toppled through airstrikes alone, however. Thus, according to Abrams, leveraging the strikes alongside negotiations could convince Maduro to step down. 

Non intervention is the cornerstone of America First. When Trump bombed nuclear sites in Iran, it showed a split in the base, with many America First style influencers disapproving of the strikes. Republican strategist Steve Cortes said, “While Maduro creates instability for America … by no means is this some imminent threat that we have to take serious, tangible action to depose him…” Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted out against regime change in Venezuela, in the midst of her feud with the majority MAGA base. 

These cracks in the MAGA armor seem to rise more and more. And while Hegseth coyly kills more innocent people to look cool on X, support for these antics could be dwindling in the rise of the more populist, nationalistic movement. As these factions drift further apart, the tension is beginning to rise in the party. Pro-Regime change Venezuelan conservatives are unlikely to yield ground, and America First influencers, energized by a growing populist skepticism of foreign entanglements, are unwilling to compromise. If Trump continues down a path that appears interventionist, he risks alienating a vocal portion of his base that sees any regime change actions as a betrayal of his America First values. But if he backs off, he risks angering the very Latino conservatives who have proven crucial to his political coalition in Florida and beyond. Though with his deployment of ICE to different cities as a show of force against illegal immigrants, one could argue which way he is leaning. 

Trump is simply unlikely to truly care about this outcome. Whether he is posturing like this to seem like a tough strongman or to distract from the Epstein files is anyone’s guess. However, he is unlikely to seriously follow through on efforts to depose Maduro. While backing off could hurt his ego, he wouldn’t dare risk American lives in a ground war against the country, nor does it seem like he cares at all about the Venezuelans that won him Miami. 

Venezuelans, for now, still mostly support Trump, despite taking away their protected status and deporting many of them. But as tensions escalate with Venezuela, it could rise as a result of his strong actions, or decrease if Americans begin losing their lives, or the escalations yield no results. For better or worse, Venezuelans still have Trump’s back.