Discussion on Legitimacy Crisis in Government

There's also the path, and John I think will talk a little bit

more about this, is

that we end up in a very acute legitimacy crisis

sometime in the next few months or the next few years where literally

our federal government becomes illegitimate.

And in that moment, I believe, and what we know from

experiences around the world, is that we can take that breakdown moment

and leverage it for a big structural

reform, you know, refounding moment.

I wanted to just say that the United Democracy Alliance,

which is a

huge coalition of the blocking movement, the people that are doing all the

lawsuits and the civil resistance and the non-cooperation, they are

all organizing and converging under the banner of what's called the United

Democracy Alliance. And they have developed a set of red

lines

that are now being refined in terms of indicators and

metrics, and

they're working on creating a situation room so that as we go into the

midterm election, they're going to be able to provide

real-time updates, real-time

information to the movement of movements

so that we can respond

to whatever might unfold,

either in 26 or when we go into the 28 elections as

well, which people think will be even worse than

whatever we're going to have to

deal with now.

So these folks are organizing.

It's being led under the organization called the National Security Leaders of

America. It's 1,600 retired

cross-partisan military intelligence

diplomats, ambassadors that are all

working on protecting our democracy.

These are pro-democracy leaders that are leading all this

work that we are now connected to. I know, Ro, you're connected.

Danielle and I are connected,

and others are connected for that work.

So what I think RAD is offering uniquely is this space

around the constitutional legitimacy moment and

what are the ways that we can respond.

The memo that Danielle or I will put up in the chat

is a memo of an options memo that we created

for governors, because if the federal government's deemed to be

illegitimate

by whatever crossing of whatever red lines and everyone

agrees to that, then the governors become the leading

governing authority under the current republic framework

of our constitution. So this memo was designed for them.

We've gotten it to governors safeguarding democracy, and they're reviewing it and

considering it. We also have done direct outreach to try

to get it to

governors in Wisconsin, Utah, and

Washington State.

I had previously been able to get it

while we're in the safe space here to the governors of Massachusetts, California,

and Illinois.

Massachusetts didn't want to touch it.

California and Illinois both were interested in getting involved

if someone

else would take the lead on it. To make that a

credible statement,

governors and other leaders would need to start making plans now for

what functions of government they would have to assume, how they would

coordinate with each other, how they would make outreach to foreign

governments,

and all the other things they would have to do to basically wall off these

illegitimate individuals and keep on trying to run the country

or at least parts of

the country

in the absence of a functioning federal government.

And I really want to emphasize this is not a concept for a

secession. No one is talking about leaving the United

States.