Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Fighting back against authoritarianism

Fighting back against authoritarianism
Getty Images

Orekondy is an attorney originally from Australia and is the Coalitions Director at Rank the Vote. The views expressed here are his personal opinion.

Many of us in the democracy reform movement see a need to fight authoritarianism.


While this need is obvious, such a framing puts us at risk of merely fighting the symptoms and not curing the disease.

To find the solution to authoritarianism, we must understand its causes.

First, American democracy is not representative. It should surprise none of us that alternatives to democracy are being considered by a public starved of meaningful representation. The solution to this is clearly democracy reform, yet achieving this on a large scale requires much deeper levels of organizing than the pro-democracy movement has (yet) been able to muster.

Second, we need to recognize that this isn’t a uniquely American problem. Authoritarianism is experiencing a surge of popularity across the world. The cause of this likely has deep roots in globalization. Since the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s idea that there is no such thing as society, only collections of individuals, has seeped into every nation and economy, shredding what was left of community, atomizing us all and stripping us of our collective power.

We are now a collection of 8 billion individuals, taught that the only path to self-worth, fulfillment, security, and happiness comes through our ability to clamber over one another up the economic ladder, and throw down anyone who gets in our way.

It should be no surprise that the planet has revolted against this philosophy of extreme individualism by asserting the most visceral forms of collective identity. Racism, sexism, fanaticism and fascism are being espoused more openly in public and exhibiting high levels of political organization. The authoritarian impulse is, at its heart, an expression of desire for community, and the adoption of whatever communities are immediately available.

To cure authoritarianism, we must meet the need for community. This is done most easily at the local level, as that is where individuals most often connect to each other and find shared values. It is on top of such communities that we will find the organizing power to win democracy reform.

As advocacy organizations, we need to begin facilitating connections between our people on a local level. While people form all sorts of groups on the local level, from sporting groups to your local Dungeons and Dragons group, the organizations with most potential for democracy defense are constituency groups (based on shared ethnicity, religion, political values, etc) and advocacy organizations (single or multi-issue groups).

The process of forging such local groups into a singular community would best be achieved by bridging organizations, which have a process for creating common ground amongst disparate and often conflicting groups. While bridging organizations have often focused on bringing together individuals with conflicting opinions, they would be well served to partner with civic organizations in their area as well and attempt to forge relationships between their members. Ideally, these conversations would result in concrete action plans, geared towards strengthening the local community and the defense of democracy.

Read More

When Good Intentions Kill Cures: A Warning on AI Regulation

Kevin Frazier warns that one-size-fits-all AI laws risk stifling innovation. Learn the 7 “sins” policymakers must avoid to protect progress.

Getty Images, Aitor Diago

When Good Intentions Kill Cures: A Warning on AI Regulation

Imagine it is 2028. A start-up in St. Louis trains an AI model that can spot pancreatic cancer six months earlier than the best radiologists, buying patients precious time that medicine has never been able to give them. But the model never leaves the lab. Why? Because a well-intentioned, technology-neutral state statute drafted in 2025 forces every “automated decision system” to undergo a one-size-fits-all bias audit, to be repeated annually, and to be performed only by outside experts who—three years in—still do not exist in sufficient numbers. While regulators scramble, the company’s venture funding dries up, the founders decamp to Singapore, and thousands of Americans are deprived of an innovation that would have saved their lives.

That grim vignette is fictional—so far. But it is the predictable destination of the seven “deadly sins” that already haunt our AI policy debates. Reactive politicians are at risk of passing laws that fly in the face of what qualifies as good policy for emerging technologies.

Keep ReadingShow less
President Donald Trump standing next to a chart in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Donald Trump discusses economic data with Stephen Moore (L), Senior Visiting Fellow in Economics at The Heritage Foundation, in the Oval Office on August 07, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Win McNamee

Investor-in-Chief: Trump’s Business Deals, Loyalty Scorecards, and the Rise of Neo-Socialist Capitalism

For over 100 years, the Republican Party has stood for free-market capitalism and keeping the government’s heavy hand out of the economy. Government intervention in the economy, well, that’s what leaders did in the Soviet Union and communist China, not in the land of Uncle Sam.

And then Donald Trump seized the reins of the Republican Party. Trump has dispensed with numerous federal customs and rules, so it’s not too surprising that he is now turning his administration into the most business-interventionist government ever in American history. Contrary to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” in the economy, suddenly, the signs of the White House’s “visible hand” are everywhere.

Keep ReadingShow less
Cuando El Idioma Se Convierte En Blanco, La Democracia Pierde Su Voz

Hands holding bars over "Se Habla Español" sign

AI generated

Cuando El Idioma Se Convierte En Blanco, La Democracia Pierde Su Voz

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a 6–3 decision from its “shadow docket” that reversed a lower-court injunction and gave federal immigration agents in Los Angeles the green light to resume stops based on four deeply troubling criteria:

  • Apparent race or ethnicity
  • Speaking Spanish or accented English
  • Presence in a particular location
  • Type of work

The case, Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, is still working its way through the courts. But the message from this emergency ruling is unmistakable: the constitutional protections that once shielded immigrant communities from racial profiling are now conditional—and increasingly fragile.

Keep ReadingShow less