The Democracy Files, Part 13

🚨🚨 DEMOCRACY FILES / THE ILLEGITIMACY PLAYBOOK, PART 13: THE NEW FOUNDING 🚨 The "democracy" ecosystem is mostly decentralized. There's competition sometimes (as this drop will show). But when a direction has been set by funders, actors converge towards a common goal. And that goal is: American government must be rewritten from scratch, and soon. RAD, the project of ex-USAID workers we've been tracing in the Democracy Files, represents one plan. PolicyLink represents another plan. What is PolicyLink? Towards the end of UNELECTED, I write about PolicyLink - a highly connected NGO which receives more than $50 million annually in funding. There, I describe its "soul work" - engineering the human soul to create a renewed democracy. That's not an exaggeration; that's how they describe it, in their own words. PolicyLink appears again in the Democracy Files. Here, you can see PolicyLink personnel use the same language we've seen in prior drops: founders, a new founding, redesigning the federal government. PolicyLink has over $100 million in assets and receives its funding from all the usual suspects - Rockefeller, Open Society, Ford, Gates, etc. It has worked closely with Democratic administrations in setting policy. RAD and PolicyLink compete for the same funders and the same space. But they say the same thing: a "new founding," drafted by people no one elected, ready "before the window opens." RAD is perhaps simply more honest about how that window will open.

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) November 2, 2026

… that goal is: American government must be rewritten from scratch, and soon.

RAD, the project of ex-USAID workers we've been tracing in the Democracy Files, represents one plan. PolicyLink represents another plan.

What is PolicyLink?

Towards the end of UNELECTED, I write about PolicyLink - a highly connected NGO which receives more than $50 million annually in funding. There, I describe its "soul work" - engineering the human soul to create a renewed democracy. That's not an exaggeration; that's how they describe it, in their own words.

PolicyLink appears again in the Democracy Files. Here, you can see PolicyLink personnel use the same language we've seen in prior drops: founders, a new founding, redesigning the federal government.

PolicyLink has over $100 million in assets and receives its funding from all the usual suspects - Rockefeller, Open Society, Ford, Gates, etc. It has worked closely with Democratic administrations in setting policy.

RAD and PolicyLink compete for the same funders and the same space. But they say the same thing: a "new founding," drafted by people no one elected, ready "before the window opens."

RAD is perhaps simply more honest about how that window will open.