What I Learned Writing 55 Articles Against Authoritarianism
One Year of Resist and Rise
A year ago, I launched Resist and Rise with a simple idea: thorough research and clear analysis could help us focus our collective attention on authoritarian overreach. Fifty-five articles later, I’ve learned more than I bargained for—about the forces reshaping America, about what actually resonates with readers, and about what it takes to keep this kind of work going.
This isn’t a victory lap. We’re not winning yet. But documenting, warning, and organizing for twelve months has taught me things worth sharing. And given me a clearer view of what’s coming.
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Follow the Ideology
The Christian Nationalism Series
The most important work I did this year was a ten-part investigation into Christian Nationalism. Its history, its strategy, its outsized influence on Project 2025 and the Trump regime. This wasn’t random. Early on, I realized that covering individual outrages without understanding the ideology underneath was pointless—like treating symptoms while the disease spreads.
The series started with basics. What Is Christian Nationalism—and Why It Matters Now laid out the movement’s core tenets and separated it from ordinary religious conservatism. Then I traced the ideology’s roots in From Doctrine of Discovery to Christian Nationalism: America’s Religious Political Roots. Turns out the theological justification for colonialism never disappeared. It evolved.
How the Cold War Shaped America’s Sacred Symbols examined how “under God” in the Pledge and “In God We Trust” on our currency weren’t ancient traditions. They were deliberate mid-century projects to fuse Christianity with American identity. This history matters because it reveals something crucial: what we’re fighting isn’t timeless American values. It’s a specific political project with a traceable origin.
Then the series moved to what’s happening now. Modern Christian Nationalism: How Religious Politics Is Reshaping America documented the movement’s current infrastructure and influence. White Christian Nationalism: Understanding Its Core Connection to Race in America tackled the uncomfortable truth that this movement has always been inseparable from white supremacy. The “Christian” nation its adherents imagine was never meant to include everyone.
Christian Nationalism and Economic Inequality explored how the movement weaponizes faith to dismantle the social safety net. Poverty becomes moral failure. Collective action becomes ungodly. Seven Mountains Strategy Explained decoded the explicit plan to dominate seven spheres of society: government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business.
The final three installments focused on where the rubber meets the road. Flashpoints and Fault Lines: How Christian Nationalism Is Reshaping State Education Laws documented the systematic campaign to inject religious ideology into public schools. Then I pivoted to hope. Christian Nationalism Resistance: Global Movements and Local Action That Works and How Local Organizing Is Defeating Christian Nationalism in Public Schools showed that this movement can be beaten. And is being beaten. When communities organize.
Here’s what I learned: You can’t effectively resist what you don’t understand. Christian Nationalism isn’t a label critics invented—it’s a self-described movement with explicit goals, documented strategies, and identifiable leaders. Every policy fight makes more sense when you understand the theocratic vision driving it. Abortion bans. Book bans. The weaponization of federal agencies. All of it.
Follow the Money and the Data
The Palantir Coverage
If Christian Nationalism provides the ideology, companies like Palantir provide the infrastructure. My coverage of Peter Thiel’s surveillance empire—Surveillance on Trial: The New Wave of Resistance Against Palantir’s Expanding Empire and Fighting Back Against Palantir: Organizing Against the Surveillance State—documented how a single company has become the nervous system of authoritarian enforcement.
Palantir’s software doesn’t just help ICE find people to deport. It integrates data across agencies, building comprehensive profiles that can track anyone. The company’s contracts with defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies have made it indispensable to the surveillance state. And there’s almost no oversight.
But the Palantir pieces weren’t just alarm bells. I documented how activists, tech workers, and lawmakers are fighting back. Winning some battles. Divestment campaigns, legislative challenges, grassroots organizing—they’ve shown that even the most entrenched surveillance companies can be pressured.
What I learned: Authoritarian movements need more than ideology. They need tools. Understanding who builds those tools, who funds them, and how they work is essential to resistance. The good news? Corporations, unlike true believers, respond to pressure on their bottom line.
Follow the Power Grabs
Executive Overreach and the Insurrection Act
From FELON47’s First Week Back in Office to Trump Executive Orders: Project 2025 Blueprint Transforms First 100 Days, I tracked the administration’s systematic consolidation of power. The two-part Standing Against Modern Fascism series (Part 2) provided a progress report on resistance efforts.
The National Guard deployments to Chicago, Portland, Memphis, and other cities weren’t random strongman theater. They were test runs for something larger. My coverage of Illinois officials challenging federal military deployment showed that state and local resistance matters, even when it doesn’t immediately succeed in court.
The Insurrection Act looms over all of this. The administration’s willingness to deploy military force against American cities—and to ignore judicial rulings blocking such deployments—represents a fundamental challenge to constitutional governance.
Power grabs happen incrementally, then all at once. Each overstep that goes unchallenged becomes precedent for the next. Documenting these moves in real time—and highlighting the resistance at every level—helps prevent normalization.
Follow the Disenfranchisement
Voting Rights and the SAVE Act
SAVE Act 2025: How New Voter ID Laws Could Restrict Voting Rights examined how legislation framed as election security actually functions as voter suppression. The pattern is consistent. Create barriers that disproportionately affect young voters, voters of color, and low-income voters. Then claim you’re protecting democracy.
This connects directly to the Christian Nationalism series. The movement knows it represents a minority position on most issues. Can’t win majorities fairly? Shrink the electorate to a more favorable composition.
The takeaway: Every policy fight is ultimately about who gets to participate in democracy. Voter suppression isn’t separate from the other issues. It’s the mechanism that makes all the other abuses sustainable.
Covering the Full Spectrum
Beyond these core themes, this year’s coverage ranged widely. Presidential Mental Health: Historical vs Modern Media Coverage examined why we fail to address cognitive fitness in our leaders. Trump’s Tariff Saga and How to Torpedo the Global Economy in One Easy Step tracked the economic chaos of “Liberation Day.” Climate-Smart Parks and Tribal Co-Management offered a model for what constructive governance could look like.
The Dangerous Nomination and The Enemies List Part 1 documented the personnel choices that signal intent. Because in any administration, personnel is policy. And this administration’s personnel choices told us exactly what was coming.
A Note of Gratitude
Building Resist and Rise has been a community effort. I’m particularly grateful to Walter Rhein and his Substack I’d Rather Be Writing for consistently recommending this publication. Most new subscribers have found their way here through Walter’s generous support. That kind of solidarity among independent writers is what makes this ecosystem work.
To everyone who has read, shared, commented, and subscribed over this past year: you’ve made this work sustainable and meaningful. Writing into a void is exhausting. Writing to an engaged community is energizing.
What I’m Watching in Year Two
A year of research and immersion in political analysis has given me a pretty clear picture of where this is heading. Here’s what I expect before the 2026 midterms:
Mass Republican defections and distancing from Trump. The chaos is unsustainable. Self-preservation is a powerful motivator. Watch for Republicans in competitive districts to start creating daylight between themselves and the administration. The defections will start slowly, then accelerate as polling data makes the political cost clear.
The Supreme Court will ultimately rein in executive overreach. Even a conservative court has institutional interests in maintaining judicial authority. The administration’s pattern of ignoring court orders represents a direct challenge to the court’s legitimacy. Expect the justices—including some Trump appointees—to draw lines around executive power that the administration won’t like.
Mike Johnson will lose the House Speakership before the midterms. His razor-thin majority and the Freedom Caucus’s appetite for chaos make his position untenable. Whether through a formal vote or a resignation under pressure, he won’t be holding the gavel when voters go to the polls in November 2026.
The administration will continue ignoring judicial rulings. This is the most dangerous trend to watch. Each time a court order is defied without consequence, constitutional governance erodes further. The question isn’t whether they’ll keep doing it. It’s whether institutions and citizens will impose consequences.
Protests will keep growing and exceed the 3.5% threshold. Research on nonviolent resistance shows that movements involving at least 3.5% of the population in sustained action have never failed to achieve significant change. The NoKings movement and related protests are building toward that threshold. Expect a state of continual resistance that becomes impossible to ignore or suppress.
At least one impeachment before the end of 2026. The accumulating constitutional violations, defiance of court orders, and abuse of power will eventually produce articles of impeachment. Whether it results in removal is another question. But the House will be forced to act.
The Work Continues
A year ago, I wrote that my hope was for Resist and Rise articles to “provoke thought, which will in turn inspire righteous action.” That remains the mission.
We are not powerless. The forces arrayed against democratic governance are formidable, but they are not invincible. They have ideology, infrastructure, and institutional capture. But they don’t have legitimacy, they don’t have majority support, and they don’t have history on their side.
Year two begins now. Together, we will continue to be the persistent opposition.
— James Cruce
November 2025