The color revolutions that have destabilized nations abroad may have finally made their way to American soil.
In the wake of President Donald Trump's re-election in 2024, there was chatter about former State Department officials, federal bureaucrats, and U.S. Agency for International Development alumni thumping the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual and apparently plotting to undermine the new administration.
'This country is in a cold civil war, but this kind of talk makes me think they don't want it to remain cold.'
Damning documents, audio recordings, and videos obtained by DataRepublican suggest that such subversives haven't given up their ambitions and may seek to orchestrate unrest and regime change in the coming weeks.
DataRepublican, the Utah software engineer who briefly worked for the Department of War and helped Elon Musk identify waste when the Department of Government Efficiency was in its heyday, has carefully mapped the Democratic Socialists of America network and analyzed its ties to other leftist organizations, showing her work in a political tracking database called DSA Explorer.
Through analyzing the movements and communications of DSA members and similarly minded radicals, DataRepublican has come across evidence of an accelerationist plot involving alumni from the now-defunct USAID and stratagems employed in color revolutions overseas.
Color revolutions — such as the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan — are political upheavals aimed at toppling supposedly illegitimate or tyrannical regimes and replacing them with supposedly liberal democratic regimes.
In many cases, color revolutionaries overseas were afforded help and/or direction by Western state actors and nongovernmental organizations.
The alleged plotters identified by DataRepublican appear intent on using those same tactics in America to delegitimize the Trump administration after the midterm elections and potentially shift perceived authority to Democratic governors.
"You've heard that the DSA is proposing structural reforms to America, including abolishing the Senate and imposing term limits," DataRepublican wrote on Sunday.
"What you not have heard is ... there is an operational plan to put it all into action," continued the analyst.
In the event of a blue wave in the midterms, DataRepublican suggested that the DSA will "become 'foot soldiers' in constant clashes with the administration."
These foot soldiers have an important role to play, she claims: escalating unrest to the point where the government will feel obliged to cross what liberals are now being brainwashed into regarding as a uncrossable "red line" — such as the use of the Insurrection Act.
'We can take that breakdown moment and leverage it for a big structural reform.'
"Then, a lot of coordinated responses kick off, including delegitimizing the federal government itself and handing that legitimacy to Democratic governors," continued DataRepublican.
This chaos will effectively make the 2028 presidential election a referendum on whether "to keep America governance as-is or to burn it all down to appease a 'young and brown' demographic," said DataRepublican.
In one of the audio recordings that DataRepublican has published — allegedly from a call held in August among persons linked to the NGO Renew American Democracy — USAID alumna Danielle Reiff can be heard identifying one potential path forward where:
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.
DataRepublican also published video from a call dated Sept. 8 where Reiff — who co-founded Renew American Democracy as well as the Renew to Thrive initiative — identifies three "crisis scenarios or democratic emergencies that we think that people should be aware of and preparing for": "an election meltdown scenario"; "potential militarization, the Insurrection Act"; and "an acute democratic crisis" that serves to delegitimize the federal government.
Reiff noted that she and her team have been thinking a great deal about the third scenario and discussing:
how can cross-partisan political leaders come together to think about provisional or transitional leadership for the country in case the federal government becomes illegitimate. Is there a cross-partisan group of governors that could step up and say, "You know, in the interim, we're just going to keep things going." Past presidents could — former President Bush and Obama — could they come together and say, you know, help us through a difficult situation like that.
Reiff did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment by deadline.
DataRepublican has highlighted the intellectual influence of Erica Chenoweth's "3.5% rule" on the apparent delegitimization conversations underway.
Chenoweth, who declined to comment, is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she directs the Nonviolent Action Lab — touted as "an innovation hub that uses social science tools and evidence to support movement-led political transformation."
According to Chenoweth — who has written extensively on color revolutions, political violence, and mass movements and had some of her work backed by USAID — "no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event."
Chenoweth suggested in a 2020 discussion paper that if a movement can mobilize 3.5% of a country's population, which would be around 12 million people in America today:
there are likely much larger proportions of the population that sympathize with and support the movement. Over time, such sympathy and support can translate into growing political pressure for the incumbent to leave office — even in autocracies — as has happened in scores of cases in the postwar period.
DataRepublican told Blaze News that "everyday Americans must be alert that thousands of NGOs are on the sidelines and prepared to take to the streets should President Trump cross an alleged red line."
She noted further that Americans "should be wary of attempts to condition them for the potential coming legitimacy crisis — there will be increasing frequency of reporting on how Trump will militarize voting or send troops into states, as Senator Slotkin has been doing."
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former CIA analyst and one of the Democrats who urged the military last year to "refuse" allegedly illegal orders from the Trump administration, recently joined the liberal media in suggesting that President Donald Trump might use a national security crisis — or the illusion of one — to impose martial law.
In her recent remarks, Slotkin characterized Trump as a corrupt "authoritarian" who is unwilling to lawfully cede power, and cited the president's efforts to secure American elections and prevent voter fraud as signs that something nefarious is afoot.
"We have to be prepared for the president to take even more aggressive action to losing in the next 34 days," said Slotkin. "The authoritarian playbook is very clear: When you're at risk of losing, you either, a) make up a threat that only you can protect the American people from, or b) find a way for federal law enforcement or the military to seize ballots or voting machines."
Slotkin also preemptively cast doubt on the legitimacy of future federal law enforcement efforts around the time of the elections, stating that Americans should "not let him get away with that."
DataRepublican believes that "Slotkin and others are engaging in classical pre-conditioning for a reason" — effectively coaching the public to regard any federal law enforcement action around the time of the election as illegitimate.
Slotkin did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.
Slotkin is not the only one publicly whipping up radicals about the Trump administration, even as roughly one-third of Democrats approve of assassinating the president.
Egged on in part by Trump's cryptic response in August when asked about declaring a national emergency for elections, other Democrats and some liberal activist groups have similarly fearmongered about the possibility of undemocratic and "potentially impeachable" actions around Election Day.
Speaking broadly of the delegitimization efforts underway, DataRepublican told Blaze News that plotters "have successfully framed Trump's few tools to deal with internal unrest as a 'red line,' and they can mobilize on the snap of fingers. President Trump is in a double bind here that isn't easy to break through."
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "What DataRepublican found is shocking but not surprising."
"The left is clearly on a mission to fundamentally overthrow the constitutional order in America. I don't know how much evidence the government needs to see to finally do something about it," continued Howell. "They have street armies that have obstructed and embarrassed federal law enforcement, they have an ascendant socialist wing openly talking about ending our system of government, and now they're talking about declaring the American government illegitimate?"
"This country is in a cold civil war, but this kind of talk makes me think they don't want it to remain cold," added Howell.
The White House did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment.
DataRepublican told Blaze News that Americans should "pray for the administration to handle challenging scenarios, such as rioting or defiance of orders, with wisdom and courage."
Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor at Blaze News.