🚨🚨 THE ILLEGITIMACY PLAYBOOK / THE DEMOCRACY FILES: A PRIMER 🚨
I will be using this thread to track all drops, so bookmark it.
I spent most of yesterday backing everything (now 312 gigabytes) up in various sources and getting the materials out to others. I also produced an AI video (below) to explain the whole thing to others are not on 𝕏 - feel free to distribute.
Here's the primer:
USAID, the foreign aid agency, had a democracy office. Inside the agency, it was called DRG.
Officially, DRG administered "democracy assistance." They'd go inside countries they thought were sliding into authoritarianism and help the opposition there. That assistance included election monitoring, judicary support, independent media, and civil society building.
You may have heard the term "color revolution." The model comes from Serbia in 2000, where trained student activists brought down Milosevic with the help of Western governments, after sustained protests. With the help of USAID's democracy office, this model was implemented in many other countries to topple governments: Georgia's "Rose Revolution" in 2003, Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" in 2004, and many more.
Then last year, DOGE shut down USAID. But the USAID democracy office didn't stop. They formed a group called the Democracy Renewal Group, the same initials as their office (USAID Democracy, Human Rights, Governance). Their goal: apply their own playbook to the United States itself.
This goal became a plan, called Renew American Democracy (RAD). It invoked the "4 B's" framework. Block - use lawfare and protests to make life harder for the Trump administration. Bridge & Belong - control dialogue and win people over. The final and most important B is Build. Build means redesigning the American government itself, and the crisis is the opening.
In their own words:
"We can take that breakdown moment and leverage it for a big structural reform, you know, refounding moment." - Danielle Reiff, DRG lead.
Calls show DRG working alongside DSA on ideas of creating a different government, one that does away with the Constitution itself.
DRG does not run the Block operations. They hand it to UDA, the United Democracy Alliance. One organizer calls it a "huge galaxy": lawsuits, street protests, non-cooperation. They list No Kings, Indivisible, MoveOn, 50501, and many other mega-activist NGOs among their members.
Another organizer calls UDA Erica Chenoweth's project. Chenoweth is the Harvard professor behind the three-and-half-percent rule of regime change: get that share of a country's populace onto the streets, and historically, the movement wins.
The UDA is very "hush-hush." They have no website, no roster, no filings.
Then come the red lines: things the Trump administration could do, such as calling the Insurrection Act on protesters, that would mean that the federal government, in their words, "crosses the threshold into illegitimacy." Nobody voted on those lines. There was no public debate. These red lines were developed within secretive working groups, and in a paper addressed to governors and staff.
In the words of Reiff/DRG:
"So that if there is a red line crossed in terms of a Constitutional crisis, like everyone's already pre-organized. And so Mike Smith actually said, he goes, oh, you guys have the day after tomorrow plan."
Cross a line, and the paper's options include states refusing to lend their resources to federal officials, and governors convening what it calls a "Third Continential Congress."
Running the UDA's Insurrection Act working group: Rear Admiral Mike Smith (RET) of National Security Leaders of America (NSL4A). NSL4A is also credited with operationalizing UDA, the blocking operations. NSL4A consists of about 1,600 ex-officers, spies, diplomats. They're turning red lines into indicators and running a situation room to monitor them throughout the midterms and beyond.
The NSL4A's lawyers told them to stop recording meetings in case of subpoenas. But the rest of the network continued to record. DRG works in conjunction with Renew to Thrive (R2T), which ended up accidentally publishing 400+ calls and thousands of documents. These calls and documents were never meant for our eyes, but it's them, on tape.
Thousands of NGOs and billions of dollars are involved in this endeavor. Most of them believe they're saving democracy. The problem is that people who spent their careers deciding when other countries' governments had lost their legitimacy wrote that test for ours, in private, and planned for what comes after.
Who decides when your government is legitimate?
This is not even real… a group of retired admirals, ex-USAID bureaucrats and professional protest organizers got caught on their own recordings working out the conditions under which they get to declare the government of the United States illegitimate, and somehow we are supposed to believe they are the ones protecting democracy.
Here is what @DataRepublican put out in Part 2 of the Democracy Files. The videos come from a group called Renew to Thrive, with Danielle Reiff and Paul Zeitz in key roles, and it sits inside a much bigger umbrella called the United Democracy Alliance, which she describes as the hush-hush control room for groups like 50501 and Indivisible, deciding when protests get deployed, the timelines and how to respond. National Security Leaders for America, 1,600 former military, intelligence and diplomatic officials led by retired Rear Admiral Michael E. Smith, is credited with operationalizing the whole thing. On tape they lay out a list of "redlines," and invoking the Insurrection Act against "peaceful" protesters is one of the most discussed… and as she lays it out, they shopped the idea around to governors who don't even have to sign anything, all a governor has to do is refuse federal troops and let the network do the rest.
Make no mistake about who Mike Smith is. His own organization's bio says he founded and led National Security Leaders for Biden, more than 1,100 members with an endorsement letter signed by 780 of them, and now he runs a "non partisan" group that just cares so deeply about the oath. But hey… I am sure it is totally nonpartisan this time.
And the very same morning the Washington Post runs a story about a small group of current and former Defense Department officials quietly advising governors, election officials and lawmakers in 10 states on how to prepare for the Trump administration "interfering" in the midterms, rehearsing what to do if a federal agent asks for access to ballots or machines. Different names, same message… the elected federal government is the threat, and the people who run the elections are the ones who need protecting from it.
Let me put it to you like this. They are building the excuse before the event even happens. They coordinate the protests, they decide in advance which government response crosses their line, and then they hold that response up as proof the whole government is illegitimate and the governors should take over. How exactly is that defending the Constitution? If a room full of retired conservative officers got caught on tape role playing how to declare a Democrat president illegitimate, the FBI would be knocking on doors before the coffee got cold and every network in the country would run it wall to wall.
I am angry about this, and I think most of you are not angry enough. These people swore an oath to the Constitution, not to a party, and they are treating the legitimacy of an elected government like a privilege they get to revoke the minute the voters pick somebody they don't like. As DataRepublican puts it, almost any effective pushback against their NGOs counts as illegitimate in their book. Where is the outrage from the people who spent five years lecturing you about threats to democracy?
Admiral Smith, Ms. Reiff, Dr. Zeitz… release every recording in full and explain to the American people, under oath, exactly what you were planning for the day after.
James Justice a Republican Senator from the State of West Virginia has opened and quickly closed the U.S. Senate. Another Senator who is making sure that President Trump does NOT make recess appointments while the Senate is on a long vacation.
Patriots you know how to make this loser famous.
@SenCapito The vote to defund the USADF should have been simple (didn’t their CEO call for defunding because of blatant fraud and corruption?), but you voted against it. Please don’t use your words to say you are helping West Virginians when you frequently vote with Democrats. Disgusting.
Six weeks ago, Senator Mark Kelly — and five other members of Congress — released a reckless and seditious video that was clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline. As a retired Navy Captain who is still receiving a military pension, Captain Kelly knows he is still accountable to military justice. And the Department of War — and the American people — expect justice.
Therefore, in response to Senator Mark Kelly’s seditious statements — and his pattern of reckless misconduct — the Department of War is taking administrative action against Captain Mark E. Kelly, USN (Ret). The department has initiated retirement grade determination proceedings under 10 U.S.C. § 1370(f), with reduction in his retired grade resulting in a corresponding reduction in retired pay.
To ensure this action, the Secretary of War has also issued a formal Letter of Censure, which outlines the totality of Captain (for now) Kelly’s reckless misconduct. This Censure is a necessary process step, and will be placed in Captain Kelly’s official and permanent military personnel file.
Captain Kelly has been provided notice of the basis for this action and has thirty days to submit a response. The retirement grade determination process directed by Secretary Hegseth will be completed within forty five days.
Captain Kelly’s status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability, and further violations could result in further action.
These actions are based on Captain Kelly's public statements from June through December 2025 in which he characterized lawful military operations as illegal and counseled members of the Armed Forces to refuse lawful orders. This conduct was seditious in nature and violated Articles 133 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to which Captain Kelly remains subject as a retired officer receiving pay.
Why does @Meta allow hackers to change a Facebook account without notifying the account of any changes? Absolutely no recovery possible and much fraud enabled. Infuriating.