The Illegitimacy Playbook: Inside the Private Plans for America’s “Refounding Moment”

Investigation. What 11 leaked recordings, and the speakers’ own public writings, show about a private plan for America’s “refounding moment.”

Former U.S. democracy-promotion officials spent 2026 discussing, in private, the criteria and contingency plans for declaring the federal government “illegitimate,” and what could be built in its place. In their own recorded words, a breakdown would be “a real window of opportunity” and a “refounding moment.”

This report examines 11 recordings released by the X account @DataRepublican beginning Oct. 19, 2026. Every quotation from the recordings was checked against the burned-in captions frame by frame. The speakers’ public writings and the public record were then used to test what the tapes mean.

The bottom line. A private network of former officials, working with a coalition its own organizers call “progressive coded,” assembled criteria and contingencies for declaring a sitting federal government illegitimate, drafted options for governors to act in its place, and described the resulting crisis as a chance to pursue a new constitution outside the amendment process Article V provides. The recordings do not show plans for violence or for causing unrest.

Key Findings

A crisis treated as an opportunity. Danielle Reiff, a retired 20-year USAID democracy officer and co-founder of the Democracy Renewal Group (DRG), told a March 25, 2026 forum that a midterm “meltdown” “could be a real window of opportunity.” She said organizers must “take advantage of the meltdown scenario.” On Aug. 13 she called a federal breakdown a chance for “a big structural reform, you know, refounding moment.”
A path outside the Constitution. Asked whether the goal was a new constitutional convention, Reiff answered “Yeah, definitely.” She described a sequence ending in “an extra constitutional process” once self-defined “red lines” were crossed.
A private posture that differs from the public one. In essays published Aug. 24 through Oct. 20, Reiff writes of “a legitimate, lawful process,” a “sober center” agenda and constitutional supermajorities. Those essays do not mention extra-constitutional steps, red lines or governors acting in place of Washington.
A contingency plan for governors to run “parts of the country.” Renew American Democracy (RAD) wrote an “options memo” for governors. A former State Department official, John Mongan, said it reached the governors of Massachusetts, California and Illinois. He described governors assuming federal functions, reaching out “to foreign governments” and walling off “illegitimate individuals.”
A non-public coalition sets the triggers. The United Democracy Alliance (UDA), which Reiff called “not public” and “progressive coded for sure,” is turning its red lines into “indicators and metrics” and building a situation room for the 2026 and 2028 elections.
Foreign activists invited to coach Americans. On July 9, civil-society leaders from Slovakia, Serbia, Brazil and Guatemala advised RAD. A RAD working-group member said that outside actors echoing a domestic coalition “could contribute to greater legitimacy.”
Retired national security officials war-gaming troops at the polls. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A), led by retired Rear Adm. Mike Smith, ran a Sept. 1 tabletop exercise in Washington. Smith speculated that the administration “might use ICE to provoke” unrest to justify troops.
Socialists in the room, with a new constitution already drafted in outline. The most detailed blueprint in this record belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Its 2026 program calls for a “new constitution” and a “democratic socialist republic,” with the Senate abolished and the president and Supreme Court made “subordinate to Congress.” A DSA member who spoke at the March forum has written that a socialist must be “an enemy of the US Constitution.”

What the recordings do not show: any plan to cause unrest, any call for violence, any RAD leader endorsing socialism, any funding totals, or any governor confirming receipt of the memo. Several of @DataRepublican’s specific claims are not found in these materials (see “Where DataRepublican’s Claims Go Further Than the Tape”).

Disclosure. This report relies on the recordings and on public records. The people named were not contacted for comment.

Related coverage: The Democracy Files, Explained, a short plain-English version of this report.

How the Recordings Surfaced and How They Were Checked

The recordings come from one source, @DataRepublican, and how she obtained them has not been independently established. That limits what can be proven, but the content of the clips can be checked, and it holds up.

The source. @DataRepublican is Jennica Pounds, a data analyst known for mapping federal grants to nonprofits. In August 2026, CBS and AP reported that she had been working as a Special Government Employee for the Defense Department since July. Pounds confirmed that on X, adding that her Pentagon press credentials had lapsed in June (The National Desk via KATV). Readers should weigh that background; it does not by itself make the recordings less authentic.

The archive. Pounds says she has backed up 312 gigabytes of material. She says the calls were published by mistake by Renew to Thrive (R2T), a group co-founded by Reiff. That account has not been confirmed. The video cards show several calls were “recorded on Walt Roberts’ Fathom,” a meeting-recording service; Roberts is an organizer who works with the network.

What was examined. Seven edited videos containing 11 recordings, made between June 30, 2025 and Oct. 14, 2026:

Date	Recording	Access
Jun 30, 2025	Post-conference huddle hosted by IMIP (a group tied to Roberts)	Private
Jan 15, 2026	RAD Forum on “emergency scenarios”	Private
Mar 25, 2026	Democratic Constitution Forum, hosted by John Mulkins	Private forum
Apr 27, 2026	Revolutionary Optimism podcast, hosted by Paul Zeitz	Public
Jun 4, 2026	DRG-RAD-TTUS “Synergy Huddle”	Private
Jul 9, 2026	“Lessons from the Frontlines” with foreign advisers	Private
Aug 13, 2026	RAD Dialogue: Structural Transformation and Deliberative Democracy	Private
Aug 31, 2026	Weekly R2T core huddle	Private
Sep 8, 2026	Thriving Together Washington State Civic Innovation Forum	Forum
Sep 25, 2026	Indivisible podcast with Erica Chenoweth	Public
Oct 14, 2026	NSL4A and Horizons Project toolkit session	Unlisted on NSL4A’s YouTube

How the quotes were verified. Machine transcripts of the clips contained errors, including looping text that erased three speakers. Every quote here was instead read from the videos’ captions, frame by frame. Speaker names come from the editor’s on-screen labels, cross-checked against Zoom name tiles and how participants addressed one another. Where the editor reordered clips, this report uses the in-call time stamps shown on screen.

Limits. Every clip is an excerpt. Some were cut or rearranged, which can change their meaning, and those cases are flagged below. No full-length recording was available.

Who They Are

The core of the network is a group of former USAID democracy officials who, by their own account, are now applying at home what they once did abroad. In Reiff’s words to foreign advisers on July 9: “We used to be the ones, you know, with a lot of money and sharing our model and our guidance and our support. Now, we are really grateful for those of you who are stepping up to provide a similar level of guidance and support for us.”

The organizations

Democracy Renewal Group (DRG). Its Substack says it was “founded out of the loss of the US Agency for International Development (USAID)” and calls itself “nonpartisan but explicitly pro-democracy” (DRG, May 4, 2026). Organizer Walt Roberts described it on tape as “300 people who used to be USAID people from doing democracy work and authoritarian pushback all over the globe.”
Renew American Democracy (RAD). The strategy platform, co-coordinated by Reiff and Paul Zeitz. Zeitz describes its framework as “Block, Bridge, Belong, and Build, with Power at the center” (Zeitz, Sept. 20, 2026).
Renew to Thrive (R2T). A related initiative Reiff co-founded; it co-hosted the July 9 call and holds a “weekly R2T core huddle.”
United Democracy Alliance (UDA). The “blocking” coalition. Zeitz listed “No Kings, Big Tent, 22nd Century, Indivisible, 50501. There probably many more.” Reiff called it “Erica Chenoweth’s project,” after the Harvard scholar of nonviolent resistance. That attribution rests on Reiff alone.
National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A). Zeitz described it as “1,600 retired cross-partisan military intelligence diplomats ambassadors” and said UDA’s work “is being led under” it. Its founder and president is retired Rear Adm. Mike Smith.
Horizons Project and Big Tent. Julia Roig’s Horizons Project is NSL4A’s partner on its military-intervention toolkit. The video editor describes Big Tent as a “coalition convened by the Horizons Project”; Reiff says Smith sits on its leadership team. The project’s co-lead, Maria J. Stephan, co-wrote Why Civil Resistance Works with Erica Chenoweth and previously worked at the State Department and the U.S. Institute of Peace (Wikipedia).

The people heard on tape

Person	Background (own bio or editor’s label)	Role in the record
Danielle Reiff	Retired diplomat; 20 years at USAID; co-founder of DRG, RAD and R2T (own bio)	Speaks in 7 of 11 recordings; author of the “refounding” and “extra constitutional” remarks
Paul Zeitz	Physician; rabbi; founder of #unifyUSA; RAD co-coordinator; author of Hit Refresh on the U.S. Constitution	Briefed on UDA, red lines, the situation room and the governors’ memo
John Mongan	Former career State Department official (editor’s label)	Described delivering the memo to three governors
Bryce Carpenter	Former USAID technology official; Army veteran; DRG	Co-leads RAD’s militarization scenario work; links RAD to NSL4A
Eric Manton	DRG; contributor to DRG’s 2026 “Democracy Assessment of the United States”	Sought a liaison channel to UDA
Melissa Hooper	Former USAID senior advisor; RAD International Solidarity Working Group	Argued outside actors can add “legitimacy”
Walt Roberts	IMIP and Thriving Together US	Several calls were recorded on his Fathom account
Mike Smith	Rear Adm., USN (Ret.); founder and president, NSL4A	Presented military scenarios; “war room”
Julia Roig	Founder, Horizons Project	Presented the toolkit with Smith
Luke Pickrell	DSA member, Marxist Unity Group caucus; the editor notes he is not a RAD organizer	Called for an “explicitly anti-constitutional” organization
Nadine Bloch	Training director, Beautiful Trouble	Reported a breakout’s view on power moving “from the right to the left”
Steve Hobbs	Washington Secretary of State, in office since 2021	Spoke after Reiff at a Sept. 8 forum

Four foreign civil-society leaders and four other organizers and hosts also appear; they are covered where relevant below.

The dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Harold Mendoza / Unsplash

Crisis as Opportunity: The Plan in Their Own Words

Across eight months of private calls, the network’s leaders describe a coming legitimacy crisis less as a danger to avoid than as an opening to use. Read in date order, the language becomes more specific.

January 15: three scenarios. Opening a RAD forum, Reiff named the “three emergency scenarios” in RAD’s strategy: militarization, “election meltdown,” and “an acute constitutional crisis.” Her definition of meltdown matters. It “could happen in any number of ways. We could have a perfectly clean election, and then half the country or 25% of the country doesn’t trust the results.” A meltdown, in other words, does not require fraud. It requires distrust.

Every breakout room that day received the same written question: “How do election meltdown and/or militarization scenarios impact our strategic objective?” That objective is not stated in the clips. Reporting back for one room, Beautiful Trouble trainer Nadine Bloch said there was “kind of an understanding that there’s not a clear possible transfer of power at the national level from the right to the left given current circumstances unless things change dramatically. That’s a big deal.”

March 25: “take advantage.” At a forum on a “democratic constitution,” Reiff said: “I’m foreseeing a crisis of legitimacy around the November election.” Then: “I think the midterms, especially if there’s a meltdown around the midterms and a crisis of legitimacy, could be a real window of opportunity for us to say, OK, some red lines have been crossed. And we can say, but, you know, what we really need to do is transform our system.” And: “In order to do that in November and take advantage of the meltdown scenario, we have to get super, super organized in the next seven months. So I think this is a plan that needs to be on steroids.”

The host then asked whether her and Zeitz’s work aimed at a new constitutional convention. “Yeah, definitely,” Reiff said. “The conversation broadly that we’ve started is what happens if we need to go extra constitutional to create the kind of transformation that we’d all like to see.” She laid out the sequence:

“An important convening, maybe like a third continental Congress,” issuing “a declaration that says, here are the red lines.”
“If these red lines in our democracy are crossed, we will move into an extra constitutional process.”
Then “maybe you go right into a constitutional convention or maybe there’s a national dialogue in between.”

She added a caution: “jumping straight into a constitutional convention too soon before the situation is ripe could actually be dangerous.” The aim, she said, was reform “with broad support and legitimacy so that it’s not just sidelined as partisan.”

August 13: “refounding moment.” On a RAD call titled “Structural Transformation & Deliberative Democracy,” Reiff said the country could “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.”

September 8: the public version. Speaking to a Washington State civic forum, Reiff kept the scenarios, but the released portion contains none of the opportunity language. She asked whether “cross-partisan political leaders” could provide “provisional or transitional leadership of the country in case the federal government becomes illegitimate,” naming “a cross-partisan group of governors” and “former President Bush and Obama.”

What “extra constitutional” means

The Constitution already provides a legal route to a convention. Article V lets two-thirds of state legislatures call one, with any amendments ratified by three-fourths of the states (Article V). A process that is “extra constitutional” is, by definition, one that operates outside that route. Reiff did not explain what that process would involve.

The public essays say something different

Reiff’s published writing presents a far gentler project. Her Aug. 24 essay defines a “Fourth Founding” as “renewing our social contract” and “entrenching the deepest common-ground reforms into the Constitution before a significant violent rupture.” It insists this “would not entail enshrining one faction’s agenda” and would look “less like any party’s platform than like the sober center.” It calls for “a legitimate, lawful process” (Reiff, Aug. 24).

Her Oct. 20 essay goes further, conceding that deep reforms need two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states, and that “by design, there is no partisan road to those numbers” (Reiff, Oct. 20).

None of the published essays reviewed for this report mentions red lines, an extra-constitutional process, a third continental Congress, or governors assuming federal functions. The public plan runs through Article V. The private one, as described on tape, has a second track for when a crisis arrives.

The Legitimacy Machinery

Declaring a government illegitimate takes more than an opinion. It takes criteria, monitoring, a coalition to announce the verdict, and outside voices to confirm it. The recordings show the network assembling each piece, and show that no public body sets the criteria.

1. Criteria: the red lines. On Aug. 13, Zeitz said UDA had “developed a set of red lines that are now being refined in terms of indicators and metrics.” He described the trigger plainly: “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.”

Who draws those lines? UDA. On June 4, Reiff said of UDA: “They are not public.” On Aug. 31 she added that UDA declined to appear at her forum “because they’re keeping that very hush-hush,” and concluded: “it’s secret.” No public process for setting or reviewing the red lines is described anywhere in the record.

2. Monitoring: the situation room. Zeitz said UDA is “working on creating a situation room” to give “real-time updates, real-time information to the movement of movements, so that we can respond, you know, 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 gonna have to deal with now.” The planning horizon runs through the next presidential election.

3. The coalition: “progressive coded.” On June 4, an unnamed participant asked whether UDA would “block and do so by othering,” or reach “into the right-leaning area.” Reiff answered: “I mean, these are… It’s progressive coded for sure… No Kings and the 50501, so it’s like that on steroids.” The body that would judge the federal government’s legitimacy is, by its own organizers’ description, a coalition of one side.

4. Outside confirmation. The July 9 call was built around foreign experience. Ana Claudia Santano of Brazil’s Transparência Eleitoral described what followed Brazil’s disputed 2022 election: “a fast strategy of recognition of results inside and outside the country. So all the embassies were aware.” A civil-society coalition ran “a situation room which had all types of information of what was going on.”

Melissa Hooper of RAD’s International Solidarity Working Group drew the lesson for the U.S.: “If there were both within the US a broad coalition saying, ‘We have seen this, you know, bad act, and we think that it’s impacted the election in this way,’ and there were outside actors saying the same thing, that that could contribute to greater legitimacy.”

Raša Nedeljkov of Serbia’s CRTA credited Americans with teaching him, “two decades ago,” to be “present at every polling station.” Edgar Ortiz Romero of Guatemala advised pairing street mobilization with lawsuits, because judges “are also looking at the streets.”

Why this matters

Each element has a defensible use. Election monitoring, legal hotlines and coalition statements are standard in democracies. Put together, though, they form a complete system for producing and validating a verdict of illegitimacy: private criteria, a partisan coalition, a real-time monitoring center and foreign confirmation. And the network’s own definition of a “meltdown” includes a “perfectly clean election” that a quarter of the country distrusts.

The question this raises is not whether these officials fear abuse of power. It is who appointed them to decide when America’s government has lost its legitimacy, and what they intend to do next.

The Governors’ Contingency

RAD drafted an “options memo” telling governors how to govern if Washington is deemed illegitimate, and its members say it reached at least three sitting governors. The memo itself has not been released, and no governor has confirmed receiving it.

What it assumes. Zeitz, Aug. 13: “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.”

Who received it, according to RAD.

Recipient	Status, as described on tape	Speaker
Governors Safeguarding Democracy	“They’re reviewing it and considering it”	Zeitz
Governor of Massachusetts	“Didn’t want to touch it”	Mongan
Governor of California	“Interested in getting involved if someone else would take the lead”	Mongan
Governor of Illinois	“Interested in getting involved if someone else would take the lead”	Mongan
Governors of Wisconsin, Utah, Washington	“Direct outreach to try to get it to” them; outcome not stated	Zeitz

Mongan prefaced his account with “while we’re in the safe space here.”

What governors would do. Mongan, about five minutes later in the same call: “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.”

The Illinois connection. Governors Safeguarding Democracy launched on Nov. 13, 2024, as “a historic nonpartisan coalition of governors,” co-chaired by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (Colorado Governor’s Office). It pledged to develop “playbooks” for governors facing “emerging threats.” At its launch, Pritzker said, “we reserve the right to respond in our own ways,” and he said there had been “outreach to Republican governors” but declined to name any (NPR Illinois). Illinois is therefore tied to the memo twice: through its governor’s office directly, by Mongan’s account, and through the coalition Pritzker co-chairs, by Zeitz’s. Both claims come only from RAD members describing their own outreach. NSL4A, whose work Zeitz says the red-lines effort is “led under,” endorsed Pritzker’s reelection on Oct. 9. None of the 2026 endorsements listed on its endorsement site is a Republican (NSL4A endorsements). One outreach target cuts the other way: Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, is a Republican.

The constitutional problem

The plan’s most serious feature is its foreign dimension. The Constitution bars a state, without the consent of Congress, from entering “into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power” (Article I, Section 10). A governor conducting “outreach to foreign governments” in order to keep running “parts of the country” while walling off federal officials would test that limit directly. Mongan’s disclaimer that this is “not a concept for a secession” does not resolve it. A state that stops recognizing federal authority and seeks foreign support is doing much of what secession involves, whatever it is called.

NSL4A, the Insurrection Act and Troops at the Polls

The network’s military planning runs through National Security Leaders for America, and its link to RAD goes back at least to January. On Jan. 15, DRG member Bryce Carpenter told a RAD forum that NSL4A is “led by Mike Smith, who was here today as well. But he put most of this together.” On Aug. 13, Zeitz said UDA’s red-lines work “is being led under” NSL4A.

The scenarios. On Oct. 14, Smith and Horizons Project founder Julia Roig presented NSL4A’s toolkit, “Managing Military Intervention in the Midterms,” on a Zoom later posted unlisted to NSL4A’s YouTube channel. Smith opened: “We won’t record any question and answer for security purposes.” Then, in order of the session’s own time stamps:

3:21 “We assessed that in this case, for the midterms perhaps, that might be in a situation where they feel that the cost of the political pushback of using US military to impact domestic elections could be outweighed by the benefits perhaps of being able to maintain the Senate.”
6:25 “Last month we did the tabletop exercise… We brought in representatives from all of the pillars. We had an in-person tabletop in Washington, DC.” The toolkit slide dates it Sept. 1, 2026.
8:01 “The one is to deploy the military to, for example, a blue city in a red state to add fear to the environment and suppress voter turnout in that city… If this is in fact a plotted scenario, then the administration might use ICE to provoke that civil unrest and then claim that the local laws are not being enforced… so that that triggers the Insurrection Act.”
10:21 A scenario in which “the president claims at a very high level of security… of classification that a foreign actor, be it Iran or China, has in fact corrupted those voting machines and now he’s sending the colonel to the voting site to confiscate the machines.”
33:22 “We’ve talked to key Senate staff about getting that senator to stand up and say, ‘I have not seen this intel.’” The senator and party are not named.
37:22 “We’re not publicizing this, and that’s why we’re standing up the war room. That’s why we’ll have this information to respond to an elected official if the worst case happens.”

Roig closed her portion: “We have a commitment to nonviolence. We have a commitment, you know, to this kind of C3 action that we’re all organizing around, that is not a partisan goal of winning a particular election, but really protecting the process.”

What the toolkit recommends. Its slides urge daily press conferences if unrest begins, pre-approved chain-of-custody checklists, keeping “every polling place open,” and to “not physically confront troops, continue voting, and let the courts determine the legality.” Its nine “focus states” are Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

Not as secret as the drop implies. NSL4A posted the toolkit publicly on Oct. 19 with a free download, describing two scenarios and stating that it “does not assume that military intervention will occur” (NSL4A, Oct. 19). In the edited video, the “not publicizing this” line appears right after the ICE scenario, so “this” seems to mean the scenario. In the session, it came 29 minutes later, while a slide asking civil-society groups to sign up for “rapid response” was on screen.

The Post’s account. On Oct. 20, The Washington Post reported that a small group of national security officials had been “discreetly advising state governments and congressional lawmakers,” including counseling Republicans “to be prepared to publicly oppose” interference (as quoted on the video’s cards; the article itself could not be retrieved for this report). The Post did not name the group. The video’s own editor notes that the Post describes “current and former” officials and 10 states, while the slides list nine states and no presenter claims to hold office. The match is plausible but unconfirmed.

Two factual problems inside the network

Who would provoke the unrest. The only scenario in these recordings where unrest is deliberately created assigns that role to the administration, through ICE. Smith presented it as a hypothesis (“if this is in fact a plotted scenario”). It is speculation by a private group about the motives of an elected government, offered without evidence on the tape.

What the Insurrection Act requires. On Sept. 8, Reiff told a public forum that the Insurrection Act applies “if there is deemed to be some foreign threat.” The statute says otherwise. It allows troops when “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws” through the courts (10 U.S.C. 252). NSL4A’s own toolkit separates the two scenarios, placing a foreign attack under a different exception. RAD’s co-coordinator described the law inaccurately to a public audience that included Washington’s chief election official.

What Their New Constitution Would Look Like

The recordings never describe a finished constitution. What they describe is a route to one. But the people in the room have written about the destination in public, and two very different blueprints emerge: a detailed socialist one from DSA, and a vaguer “common ground” one from RAD’s leaders.

What was said on tape

The route (Reiff, Mar. 25): a convening, “maybe like a third continental Congress”; a declaration of red lines; “an extra constitutional process” if they are crossed; then a “national dialogue” and finally “a democratic constitutional convention.”
The DSA goal (Pickrell, Mar. 25): DSA’s program “says our ultimate goal is a democratic constitution based on universal and equal suffrage and a unicameral legislature.” A one-house legislature means no Senate.
The DSA method (Pickrell, Mar. 25): “We have to be the ones who are creating an organization that is explicitly anti-constitutional.”

Blueprint 1: the socialist constitution (DSA and the Marxist Unity Group)

DSA’s 2026 national program, Workers Deserve More!, states the aim directly: “win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.” It calls for “replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” according to City Journal, as quoted by Legal Insurrection and the Daily Signal. Reported planks also abolish the Senate and the Electoral College. Even the center-left Washington Monthly called the program “fundamentally incompatible” with the U.S. Constitution (Washington Monthly).

Pickrell, who spoke at the March forum, has spelled out more. In a May 2023 essay he called for (Cosmonaut):

“a single legislative assembly elected by proportional representation”
“the abolition of the independent presidency”
an end to “the Supreme Court’s right of judicial review”
“the election of judges and other state officials,” recallable by voters
“the abolition of police and standing army in favor of a people’s militia”
“the immediate convening of a constitutional convention based on universal suffrage”

He wrote that “in preparation for the Third American Revolution, to be a socialist in this country is to be an enemy of the US Constitution.” The essay treats this republic as a first step, with communism as the final goal.

In December 2024, Pickrell and Harlei Morency set out a “People’s Petition” for DSA: a unicameral legislature, proportional representation, no presidential veto, no Electoral College, public financing of all elections, a voting age of 16, and “a democratically-elected constituent assembly to draft a democratic constitution” (Democratic Constitution Blog). Pickrell’s caucus, the Marxist Unity Group, held three seats on DSA’s national board after the 2025 convention and calls the current document a “slaveholder’s constitution” (InfluenceWatch).

Blueprint 2: the “Fourth Founding” (RAD’s leaders)

Zeitz and Reiff describe a process more than a product. In public they say:

The goal: “co-create a refreshed U.S. Constitution” and “reconstruct the Constitution from the ground up” (Zeitz, June 2025, #unifyUSA). His March 2026 book, Hit Refresh on the U.S. Constitution, calls for a “Second American Revolution” that is “not of violence, but of visionary renewal” (Zeitz).
The vehicle: citizens’ assemblies chosen by lottery, a 70% consensus threshold, and “a national people’s convention to create a new constitutional framework” (Zeitz, Dec. 2024 podcast and Sept. 2026).
Possible contents: social and economic rights added “alongside civil and political rights,” a revised preamble with “thriving-together” language, restored congressional authority, and anti-corruption laws (Zeitz, Sept. 2026).
The timeline: a “People’s Proposal” by late 2027 or early 2028; a possible “National Citizens’ Assembly and National People’s Convention” in the first quarter of 2028; the proposal entering the 2028 campaign; and a “structural reform window” in 2029 (Zeitz, Sept. 2026).
The tone: “less like any party’s platform than like the sober center” (Reiff, Aug. 2026).

Side by side

Feature	Current Constitution	DSA / Marxist Unity Group	RAD leaders (public writings)
Legislature	Two houses; Senate gives each state two votes	One house, proportional representation; Senate abolished	Not specified; “restoration of Congress’s Article I authority”
President	Independently elected executive with veto	Executive “chosen by and subordinate to Congress”; no independent presidency; no veto	Not specified
Supreme Court	Life tenure; judicial review	Judiciary “chosen by and subordinate to Congress”; judicial review ended; judges elected	Not specified
Electoral College	Yes	Abolished	Not specified
Rights	Civil and political rights (Bill of Rights)	Expanded speech protections; abolition of copyright; jury trials (Pickrell)	Social and economic rights added (Zeitz)
Armed forces and police	Standing army; Congress funds it	Police and standing army replaced by “a people’s militia” (Pickrell)	Not specified
Economy	Property protected; no economic system mandated	“Democratic socialist republic”; public ownership of largest industries (as described by City Journal)	Not specified
How adopted	Article V: two-thirds proposal, three-quarters ratification	Constituent assembly elected by universal suffrage; Article V’s state-by-state ratification described as an obstacle	Public: supermajorities and Article V. On tape: “an extra constitutional process”

What the March 25 forum shows

The recordings do not show RAD adopting DSA’s blueprint, and Reiff’s public essays reject a factional agenda. But the two camps met at the March 25 forum. There Pickrell called for an “anti-constitutional” organization, and Reiff, later in the same forum, said “Yeah, definitely” to a new convention and described an “extra constitutional” path to it. On that day, at least, the socialist blueprint and RAD’s leadership were discussing the same structural move: replacing the Constitution rather than amending it, through a process outside the one Article V provides.

Socialism or Reform? What the Record Shows and Does Not Show

Many readers will see in these recordings a plan to use unrest, real or manufactured, to install socialism under a new constitution. The evidence supports part of that reading strongly, part of it weakly, and part of it not at all.

Strongly supported

They want a new constitution, not amendments. Reiff (“Yeah, definitely”), Zeitz (“reconstruct the Constitution from the ground up”) and Pickrell (“a democratic constitution”) all say so.
They see a crisis as the opening. “A real window of opportunity.” “Take advantage of the meltdown scenario.” “Leverage it for a big structural reform, you know, refounding moment.”
They have discussed a route outside the Constitution. “An extra constitutional process” if self-defined red lines are crossed.
The coalition is of the left. UDA is “progressive coded for sure.” One breakout framed the problem as the lack of a path for power to move “from the right to the left.” Indivisible’s co-executive director, Ezra Levin, said publicly that Chenoweth, whose research measures what it takes, in Scot Nakagawa’s on-tape words, “for movements to topple dictators,” “in many ways has been the intellectual foundation for a lot of the strategy” since “we approached a Trump trifecta.”
Socialists are part of the conversation. A DSA member called for an “anti-constitutional” organization at a forum where RAD’s co-coordinator spoke. DSA’s own program calls for “a democratic socialist republic.”

Weakly supported

Socialism as RAD’s goal. No RAD leader endorses socialism on tape. The socialist blueprint belongs to DSA and Pickrell. What ties it to RAD is proximity, shared language about a new constitution, and Reiff’s agreement to the convention question at a forum devoted to a “democratic constitution.” Zeitz’s proposal to add “social and economic rights” to the Constitution moves in a left direction but stops well short of a socialist state.
“Or worse.” Pickrell’s 2023 essay treats the democratic republic as a stage on the way to communism and calls a socialist “an enemy of the US Constitution.” That is his view and his caucus’s. It is not shown to be RAD’s.

Not shown in these recordings

Creating unrest. No speaker in these 11 recordings proposes causing disorder. The only scenario of deliberately created unrest is Smith’s speculation that the administration might use ICE to provoke it. The tapes show plans to respond to, and use, a crisis, not to cause one.
Violence. Speakers repeatedly reject it: Roig’s “commitment to nonviolence,” Zeitz’s “not of violence,” Mongan’s “not a concept for a secession.”

One caution on the third point: a second-hand report says other, unreleased material describes DSA members as “foot soldiers” in confrontations meant to provoke the Insurrection Act (Shasta Unfiltered). That claim is not in the materials reviewed here and has not been verified.

The narrower finding

The evidence supports a finding that is narrower than “a socialist coup” but serious on its own terms. Former U.S. officials, working privately with a left-coded coalition, assembled the means to declare a sitting federal government illegitimate, drafted options for governors to act in its place, and spoke of the resulting crisis as a chance to rewrite the Constitution outside its own amendment process. Socialists were among the people they were working with. What kind of constitution would emerge is, by their own design, left to a process they intend to convene.

Their Defense

The people on these tapes would describe themselves as defenders of democracy preparing for an administration they believe may abuse power. The record gives them several real arguments, and a fair reader should weigh them.

They frame the trigger as the administration’s conduct. Every scenario begins with a federal action: troops in cities, seized voting machines, elected members of Congress not seated. Reiff’s “acute constitutional crisis” example is newly elected members “not seated promptly.”
They reject violence and secession. Roig: “We have a commitment to nonviolence.” Mongan: “this is not a concept for a secession. No one is talking about leaving the United States.” Zeitz describes a revolution “not of violence, but of visionary renewal.”
They insist on cross-partisan legitimacy. Reiff, Sept. 8: “if anybody responds to these crises from a purely partisan perspective… then we just stay in this very toxic, just very toxic tug-of-war.” Her published essays say constitutional change needs supermajorities that no party can reach alone.
She urged caution. Reiff, Mar. 25: a convention “too soon before the situation is ripe could actually be dangerous.”
The NSL4A toolkit is mostly defensive and now public. It tells officials to keep polls open, protect chain of custody, avoid confronting troops and let courts decide. NSL4A published it on Oct. 19 and states it “does not assume that military intervention will occur.”
Their concerns are shared by sitting officials. In August, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) asked the Defense Secretary to confirm that troops would not go to the polls or “seize election materials of any kind” (WJLA). The Post reports similar worries among officials “from both parties” (as summarized by NewsCord).
The foreign advice is mostly standard election practice. Poll watchers, legal hotlines and countering false narratives are routine in election observation.
They are far from ready. Reiff, Aug. 31: “I don’t even think they’re all that organized themselves quite yet.” Governors were interested only “if someone else would take the lead.”

Why the defense is incomplete

Contingency planning against a feared abuse of power is not, by itself, illegitimate. These points answer the charge of violence. They do not answer the central question. A movement that says it defends constitutional order should not need an “extra constitutional process,” non-public red lines or plans for governors to “wall off” federal officials. Nor would it describe a national crisis as “a real window of opportunity.” The public essays call for patience, supermajorities and a lawful process. The private calls describe a second track for when a crisis arrives. Which track the network would follow is the question these recordings leave open.

Where DataRepublican’s Claims Go Further Than the Tape

Most of @DataRepublican’s core claims hold up against the recordings, but several specific ones do not appear in the released material, and the video editing sometimes sharpens what was said. Conservative readers are best served by an account that cannot be knocked down on details.

Claims the recordings support: former USAID democracy staff formed DRG; Reiff’s “refounding moment” quote; UDA as a non-public blocking coalition that a RAD leader called “Erica Chenoweth’s project”; NSL4A’s role, roughly 1,600 members and situation room; and an options memo for governors.

Claims partly supported or not found:

Claim in the primer	What the recordings show
DRG works “alongside DSA” on a government that “does away with the Constitution”	The “anti-constitutional” remark came from a DSA member at a third-party forum; the editor labels him “not a RAD organizer.” Reiff spoke of an “extra constitutional process” toward a “democratic constitutional convention.”
UDA is a “huge galaxy”	Zeitz said “a huge coalition.”
UDA members include MoveOn	Zeitz listed No Kings, Big Tent, 22nd Century, Indivisible and 50501. MoveOn is not mentioned.
Red lines mean government “crosses the threshold into illegitimacy”	The phrase is not on tape. The concept is: “deemed to be illegitimate by whatever crossing of whatever red lines.”
Mike Smith: “you guys have the day after tomorrow plan”	Not in any of the 11 recordings.
Options include states refusing resources to federal officials	Not on tape. The closest is “wall off these illegitimate individuals.”
Governors would convene a “Third Continental Congress”	Reiff floated “maybe like a third continental Congress,” but never tied it to governors or the memo.
NSL4A’s lawyers said to stop recording because of subpoenas	Smith said Q&A would not be recorded “for security purposes.” No lawyers or subpoenas are mentioned.
“Thousands of NGOs and billions of dollars”	No figures appear in the recordings.

These claims may rest on documents in the larger archive that were not released with these videos. Until they are, they should be attributed to @DataRepublican, not to the tapes.

Editing choices that change meaning:

The “war room” line was moved 29 minutes earlier, next to the ICE scenario (see the NSL4A section).
The foreign-advice video pairs each piece of advice with a later New York Times headline as “put into practice.” Two of the five U.S. actions came first: Senate Democrats’ observer program was reported June 25, and the attorneys general’s tabletop exercises took place in May. The July 9 call could not have caused them.
The Washington State video is titled as if Secretary Hobbs “weighs in” on the plan. He praised Reiff’s talk and described similar conversations with German and Japanese officials. He endorsed no plan, and the editor’s own card shows five minutes of Reiff’s remarks were cut before he spoke.
The “intellectual foundation” line about Chenoweth is presented among private-call clips. It is Indivisible’s Ezra Levin, speaking on a public podcast.
The “right to the left” line comes from an outside trainer summarizing one breakout room, not from a RAD leader.

“Funding ties” cards. The foreign-advice video links speakers to funders such as Open Society, NDI, NED and USAID through their organizations. None of the cards alleges that a speaker or RAD was paid for this work, and the cited funding sources should be checked before repeating them.

Timeline

In the public record, the network’s planning runs from the governors’ coalition in late 2024 to a “structural reform window” in 2029. Recordings are marked (tape); everything else is from public sources.

Date	Event
Nov 13, 2024	Govs. Pritzker and Polis launch Governors Safeguarding Democracy
Dec 2024	Zeitz podcast promotes “a national people’s convention to create a new constitutional framework”; Pickrell and Morency publish DSA “People’s Petition”
Jun 13, 2025	Zeitz’s #unifyUSA calls for citizens’ assemblies to “reconstruct the Constitution from the ground up”
Jun 30, 2025	(tape) Organizers discuss reaching 3.5% sustained participation
Jan 15, 2026	(tape) RAD forum on three emergency scenarios; NSL4A’s Mike Smith attends
Mar 12, 2026	Zeitz book Hit Refresh on the U.S. Constitution promoted
Mar 25, 2026	(tape) Reiff: “window of opportunity”; “extra constitutional process”; Pickrell: “explicitly anti-constitutional”
Apr 27, 2026	(tape, public podcast) Nakagawa: movement “right up around” the 3.5% threshold
May 4, 2026	DRG launches its public Substack
Jun 4, 2026	(tape) Reiff: UDA is “Erica Chenoweth’s project,” “not public,” “progressive coded”
Jun 2026	DSA’s National Political Committee approves a new program calling for “a new constitution” and “a democratic socialist republic” (launched July 14, per press reports)
Jul 9, 2026	(tape) Foreign civil-society leaders advise RAD; Hooper on outside actors and “legitimacy”
Aug 13, 2026	(tape) Reiff: “refounding moment”; Zeitz and Mongan describe the governors’ memo
Aug 18, 2026	Sen. Slotkin asks the Pentagon to keep troops away from the polls
Aug 24, 2026	Reiff publishes “The Path to a Fourth Founding”
Aug 31, 2026	(tape) Reiff: UDA “very hush-hush” and not ready
Sep 1, 2026	NSL4A and Big Tent in-person tabletop exercise in Washington on the Insurrection Act
Sep 8, 2026	(tape) Reiff speaks at a Washington State forum; Secretary of State Hobbs responds
Sep 17, 2026	RAD Strategy Forum, per Zeitz
Sep 25, 2026	(tape, public podcast) Levin calls Chenoweth “the intellectual foundation” of strategy
Oct 14, 2026	(tape) NSL4A and Horizons Project toolkit session; “war room”
Oct 19, 2026	NSL4A publishes its toolkit; @DataRepublican begins the “Democracy Files”
Oct 20, 2026	Washington Post reports unnamed officials advising states; Reiff publishes “A Third Force”
Nov 3, 2026	Midterm elections
Late 2027 to early 2028	Target for RAD’s “People’s Proposal” (Zeitz)
Q1 2028	Possible “National Citizens’ Assembly and National People’s Convention” (Zeitz)
2029	“Structural reform window” (Zeitz)

Unanswered Questions

The recordings raise questions that only the network’s documents, or its members, can answer. These are the most important.

What is the “strategic objective”? Every breakout room on Jan. 15 was asked how the scenarios affect “our strategic objective.” It is never stated in the clips.
What are the red lines? UDA has turned them into “indicators and metrics.” Who wrote them, and who decides when one is crossed?
What does the governors’ memo say? Zeitz said it would be posted in the Aug. 13 chat. Did Governors Safeguarding Democracy review it, and did California and Illinois act on it?
What is “an extra constitutional process”? Reiff named it but did not describe it. Who would convene the “third continental Congress,” and by what authority?
What is DSA’s role? Was Pickrell’s appearance an isolated forum exchange, or are DSA members part of RAD’s or UDA’s planning?
Is UDA really Erica Chenoweth’s project? Only Reiff says so, and Zeitz said he did not have “full eyes on UDA.”
Who is in the war room, and who are the “key Senate staff”? Smith named neither the senator nor the party.
Did UDA launch in September as Zeitz expected?
How did the recordings become public? The account that Renew to Thrive published them by mistake has not been confirmed.
Are the nine focus states also the states with the closest 2026 races? The Post reports the effort “focuses on states and jurisdictions where tightly contested races will determine control of Congress” (as quoted on the video’s cards).
What did Secretary Hobbs discuss with the German and Japanese governments, and when?

Sources

Primary materials: @DataRepublican, “The Democracy Files” Parts 1, 2, 3, 3.5, 4, 5 and 6 (videos, captions and on-screen cards), and “The Illegitimacy Playbook / The Democracy Files: A Primer” (X post).

Writings by people in the recordings

DSA program coverage

Officials, law and other reporting

Top photo: Anthony Garand / Unsplash