By Jillian Butler | The Daily Caller News Foundation
A collection of non-governmental organizations staffed by former members of the military, federal government, and intelligence community is reportedly working to undermine the Constitution following the midterm elections.
The alleged network of former military officers, intelligence officials, and ex-USAID personnel is coordinating to advise state governments on scenarios involving military intervention during the 2026 midterm elections, according to investigative researcher Jennica Pounds, better known online as DataRepublican.
The groups, which include Renew to Thrive and National Security Leaders For America (NSL4A), have backed anti-Trump protests, discussed when the federal government could be declared illegitimate, and entertained the idea of “extra-constitutional” measures, raising questions about whether they are preparing for a constitutional crisis or actively working to manufacture a color revolution, a series of non-violent, mass public protests, and civil disobedience movements.
🚨🚨 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?
— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) October 22, 2026
Danielle Reiff, a former USAID democracy officer, among other colleagues from the agency, has reportedly been operating through various grassroots organizations working to undermine the Trump administration since USAID’s closure in July 2025, according to Pounds.
“Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We’ve become one … they were so quick to disband [The U.S. Agency for International Development], the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions,” one former employee reportedly declared. “But they’ve done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime.”
🚨🚨THE DEMOCRACY FILES, PART 2: WHEN AND HOW TO DECLARE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ILLEGITIMATE 🚨
Some questioned whether a group of 200 ex-USAID officials could actually pull off their ambitions to rewrite the Constitution.
Here, they describe exactly how it works. They aren’t working alone.
The videos all come from Renew to Thrive (R2T) group and associates. Danielle Reiff and Paul Zeitz play key roles within R2T.
R2T sits inside a much, much larger umbrella called United Democracy Alliance (UDA), which is an extremely hush-hush control plane of leaders from major “blocking” NGOs such as 50501 and Indivisible fulfilling various functions. UDA decides when protests get deployed, timelines, how to respond, all that.
R2T’s role within UDA is concerned with “the day after tomorrow” – in other words, their function is to conceive what a rewritten American government will look like after the rest of UDA fulfills its purpose. As will be shown, Erica Chenoworth is credited with conceiving UDA in the first place under the Horizons “Big Tent” initiative.
Note here that National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is credited for operationalizing UDA. NSL4A is a group of 1,600 ex-military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials. They are led by Rear Admiral Michael E. Smith (Ret). NSL4A also played a key role in the “illegal orders” messaging which targeted Pete Hegseth. Zeitz is also a member of NSL4A.
It must be emphasized that the choice of a military-oriented organization to coordinate NGOs across domestic protests is an interesting one all in itself – especially in an umbrella conceived by a regime change expert like Chenoworth.
You will have a hard time finding any mentions of UDA in the public. They are extremely hush-hush and selective who they talk to.
Mike Smith himself makes a personal appearance in other calls, coordinating Insurrection Act exercises and roleplaying with R2G as one of the participants.
As the audio transcript shows, they have outlined a sequence of “redlines” in which case the federal government should be declared illegitimate. Invoking the Insurrection Act against “peaceful” protesters is one of the most discussed redlines. I will post the illegitimate criteria below, but basically, almost any effective pushback against NGOs is a measure of illegitimacy according to them.
Important to understand:
The audio shows they shopped this idea around governors, but the reality is that governors do not have to explicitly sign on to the pact to play their role in the coup. All they have to do is refuse troops in their state and let UDA / R2G do the work of dissolving the federal government.— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) October 20, 2026
Others reportedly shared the CIA’s “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” with government officials perceived as potential allies.
Reiff and others allegedly have turned their efforts from undermining the administration of President Donald Trump towards the upcoming midterm elections.
Representing her new organization, Renew to Thrive, Reiff has spoken at Zoom meetings hosted by the Democratic Constitutional Forum, an organization which has regularly platformed speakers advocating for creating a new American Constitution.
Renew to Thrive, composed of former USAID and USAID-backed NGO officials, has direct ties to protest groups including 22nd Century Initiative and No Kings, Pounds reported. Their strategy is to “block, bridge, belong, and build.”
Blocking, in particular, involves citizens “safeguarding the 2026 and 2028 votes, defending free speech and peaceful assembly, exposing corruption in both political parties, and refusing to let intimidation become ordinary.” In other words, civil disobedience.
Building, on the other hand, involves facilitating a replacement government. “Guarding the old system is not enough,” their strategy reads.
Declaring the government illegitimate and rebuilding a different government is a recurring theme within Return to Thrive discourse.
“I’m seeing a crisis of legitimacy with the November midterm election … what we really need to do is transform our system,” Reiff stated in a recording of a March 25, 2026, obtained by Pounds.
In a 2025 22CI meeting attended by Reiff, Marcia Mundt, another former USAID employee, discusses applying the USAID framework for assessing what qualifies as an “illegitimate government” to America.
“We were never allowed to analyze the United States in this way before because there is this big dividing line between foreign assistance work and domestic work, so I never got to use it for a U.S. context, but now that I no longer have a job, I can use it for whatever I want,” Mundt appears to state in another recording shared by Pounds.
Return to Thrive also connects with democracy experts from countries that have undergone American-backed regime changes, including Brazil, Guatemala, Serbia, and Slovakia, according to their strategy.
🚨 THE DEMOCRACY FILES / ILLEGITIMACY PLAYBOOK, PART 4: YES, MANY ARE AWARE OF THE GOALS 🚨
This one is a thread because there are multiple materials.
On January 15, 2026, Renew American Democracy (RAD), the strategy built around the Democracy Renewal Group’s (DRG) ex-USAID democracy officers, held planning exercises for “emergency scenarios” and how it’d affect their “strategic objectives.”
RAD’s explicit goal is in catalyzing those so-called “emergency scenarios” to manifest “structural reform” – the rewriting of American governance which the previous drops have covered.
RAD/DRG hold the unique role within the wider blocking / protest alliance of defining what the new government looks like, presumably because they are made of ex-USAID officers who have specialized in installing new governments. As @MikeBenzCyber last night said on his stream, these DRG members come from the CIA coup parts of USAID.
It’s been suggested that DRG is just a fringe group within the much larger blocking/protest ecosystem. This morning’s interim video mentioning Mike Smith disproved that. And PART 4 disproves that further – the wider network is well aware of DRG and that its goal is to secure a new government.
They will dress it in the language that it’s Trump who will provoke it, and they’re only preventing a true Constitutional crisis. In reality, there’s a million ways to interpret what a “red line” is, and many ways to get Trump to cross it. Already, articles everywhere are telegraphing that Trump *will* cross it in the form of the Insurrection Act or martial law, softening us up for the coup ahead.
The materials I’m showing you are from a RAD/DRG-ran planning exercise in January 2026. Groups represented by participants include:
· National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A)
· Freedom Trainers / Beautiful Trouble
· Team Democracy
· Federal Workers Alliance for Democracy
· Civil Service Strong
· Project 2029
· Braver Angels
· Indivisible
· Better Together America
· Center for Collaborative Democracy
· Democracy Accelerator
· Paths to Understanding
· Co-Intelligence Institute
· Cohesion Strategy
· Community-Vision SolutionsOne of the working groups concerned “National Deliberations” – which lays the groundwork for structural reforms post-crisis. So every single participant in this forum was well aware the end point is rewriting our governance.
Even more interesting, Tanya Alfredson of @BraverAngels participated in this particular working group – which should give pause to anyone who believes Braver Angels simply wants better dialogue.
As you watch the videos, watch out for the code language they use to hint towards the ultimate end goal.
As always, patience as I pull together the thread. 👇
— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) October 21, 2026
“What I think is needed is prebunking and inoculation, you know, anticipating some of these narratives before they actually dominate the information space,” Rast’o Kǔzel, executive director of Slovakian NGO Memo 98 Media and Election Monitoring, advised during a July 9 call hosted by Reiff, according to Pounds.
Memo 98 was established by the USAID-backed National Democratic Institute. “We need to be present at every polling station,” Raša Nedeljkov of the Serbian NGO CRTA asserted. CRTA is also USAID-backed according to European Correspondent.
Return to Thrive also reportedly partnered with the National Security Leaders for America, whose over 1,400 senior military and intelligence officials allegedly conduct public outreach and advise policymakers.
The 501(c)(4) organization’s website notably publicized a toolkit for “managing military intervention” during the election.
Its founder, retired Rear Adm. Mike Smith, runs the “Insurrection Act Working Group” alongside Reiff.
“Everyone is already organized, they’ve identified the red lines and everyone on the streets — the entire blocking community,” Reiff claimed, according to Pounds.
Regarding an Aug. 6 conversation she had with Smith, Reiff claimed he said “the research all shows you that the blocking community can, like, rid us of a dictator, and the renewal will not happen if there’s not a positive vision and a plan for what to do on the day after,” according to Pounds.
In the same meeting, Reiff also referred to her red lines and claimed “we can take that breakdown moment and leverage it for a big structural reform, you know refounding moment.”
“The conversation centers around what’s going to happen if we go extra-constitutional to create the kind of transformation that we’d all like to see,” Reiff reportedly claimed March 25 when discussing a post-midterm vision.
First published on The Daily Caller
The Democracy Files: DataRepublican Exposes the Illegitimacy Playbook | The Rob Maness Show
If you think the left’s warnings about “saving democracy” are just campaign slogans, you have not seen the Democracy Files. For the past week my guest has been publishing the receipts: recorded Zoom calls, chat logs, handouts and strategy documents from a network of former USAID democracy officers, retired flag officers and protest groups.
In their own words, they discuss “red lines” for declaring our elected federal government illegitimate, war-game an “election meltdown,” draft an options memo for governors, and talk about consulting federal workers on “blocking” inside their own agencies.
I call it the Illegitimacy Playbook.
None of this asks you to take anyone’s word for it. The tapes and documents are posted for anyone to check, and when she got one attribution wrong, she corrected it publicly that same night. That is why her credibility holds, and why her critics have gone quiet.
My guest calls herself just a tool builder. Her website opened federal grant spending to ordinary citizens, and her new book, Unelected, explains how this network evolved over a hundred years. She does not dig alone. Her Democracy Files partners, SKDoubleDub33 and Lisa Logan, deserve credit too. With Election Day one week from today, every voter needs to hear this.
The Color Revolution plot includes CURRENT EMPLOYEES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
Stop for a second and think about that.
Your tax dollars are paying arrogant federal bureaucrats, whose standard of living, salary and benefits generally exceed the median standards of our nation, and who possess job security that is unheard of in the private sector, to actively seek to overthrow our Constitutional order.
They are undermining YOUR CHOICE as American voters because they know what is best for you even if you do not (or so they believe).
The arrogance is breathtaking.
Besides the fact that we need to root these people out and fire them, we need to outlaw public sector unions. It is the union dues that ultimately come from YOUR TAX DOLLARS that are fed back to Democrat politicians as campaign contributions that perpetuate this noxious self-licking ice cream cone.
GRRRRRRRR. This makes me ANGRY like few other things do, maybe because I faithfully served under Democrat presidents I despised but I always remained true to my oath!😡😡😡😡
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) October 25, 2026
I’ve been cranking all day on this.
Some things are so important that they need to be explored in depth, and in real time.
The shocking revelations from Data Republican regarding the plot to overthrow our Constitution is such a thing and now is such a time.
We are facing a color revolution. This article explains how color revolutions have worked overseas in the past at the hands of the CIA and USAID, and how those now ex-USAID employees, now ensconced in well-funded NGOs, are currently using the same tactics against our own nation.
It’s a long article, almost 2,500 words.
If you care about this, please read. It’s a very complex set of concepts, and takes more than a few words to explain adequately.
Thanks.
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) October 21, 2026
Col. Rob Maness: Planning and a Plot
Col. Rob Maness details planning by former USAID officials and National Security Leaders for America—1,600 senior officers and national security figures led by retired Admiral Mike Smith—to treat a midterm election crisis as the opening for governors to declare the federal government illegitimate and advance a third Continental Congress that discards the Constitution.
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