The UnPopulist Turns Four!

Our mission to defend liberal democracy from authoritarian assaults is even more relevant and urgent now than when we launched

Sep 22, 2025

SAVE THE DATE: We will be hosting a belated birthday happy hour in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 16 at 6:30 p.m. We’ll share more details closer to that date.

The UnPopulist was launched exactly four years ago yesterday to defend liberal democracy from the rising tide of authoritarianism around the world. By now, we had hoped, the tide would have turned and we’d have returned to a more “normal” politics in which policy differences drove political debate, not existential questions about whether democracy itself would survive, and citizens could trust that losing an election wouldn’t mean losing their rights. We were too hopeful!

Indeed, in America, with Donald Trump’s reelection, the authoritarian tide has turned into a tsunami. On our last birthday, I warned, “Should Donald Trump and JD Vance win, America’s authoritarian moment may turn into an authoritarian era.” At the time, even those uneasy about Trump regarded that as a tad alarmist. But if Trump’s first eight months in office have proven anything, it is that this was not alarmist enough. Even those of us convinced that nothing good would come from reelecting a man who had incited an insurrection to overturn the results of an election had not fully anticipated the frightening speed with which Trump would move to decimate institutional checks and balances, consolidate his power, advance his retributive agenda, reward MAGA-aligned cronies, and enrich himself. We have been surprised afresh every day, even every hour, by his torching of our 249-year-old governing institutions.

To track these abuses in real time, we launched Executive Watch a month into the Trump presidency. Not only is this list showing no signs of stabilizing, but it is growing at an accelerated pace.

Just to give a partial recap of the last 10 days or so:

Brendan Carr, the head of Trump’s FCC, in total violation of the First Amendment, jawboned ABC into canceling Jimmy Kimmel for his commentary about Charlie Kirk, the slain MAGA provocateur. ABC just reversed its decision after widespread outrage. But Trump has also repeatedly threatened to revoke ABC—and NBC’s— licenses for allegedly providing more favorable coverage to Democrats than to him.
Trump issued an executive order to designate Antifa, a non-existent organization, as a domestic terrorist group, a legal designation that doesn’t exist but one that would potentially give him vast powers to crack down on dissidents and critics.
Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to invoke non-existent hate speech laws to censor non-MAGA voices critical of Kirk.
Vice President JD Vance threatened to go after the non-profit status of philanthropic organizations that the administration does not like.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired service members critical of Kirk, in a naked attempt to purge MAGA critics from the rank and file and stack the force with loyalists.
Trump’s corrupt deal with the U.A.E. was exposed. Under it, his administration will allow the Middle Eastern monarchy access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, despite national security concerns, in exchange for an investment worth $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency start-up founded by the Trump family.
The federal housing finance chief abused his office to go on a fishing expedition into the personal finances of Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor and a Trump critic, accusing her of lying on her personal mortgage application to justify her firing.
An MSNBC investigation revealed that the Trump FBI shut down an investigation against border czar Tom Homan for accepting $50,000 in bribes from undercover agents.
Trump accidentally posted on Truth Social his note to Attorney General Bondi demanding that she move faster to prosecute his political enemies, dropping even the pretense that the Department of Justice is motivated by good faith, non-partisan, rule of law concerns rather than his personal animus.
Trump issued a potentially illegal proclamation raising the fee on H-1B, high-skilled visas to $100,000, a 1,000 to 3,000% increase.

But even more dismaying than this litany is just how little resistance Trump has encountered as he goes on his authoritarian rampage. There was no hope that Congress would stand up to his executive overreach given that the Republican Party, over which he has an ironclad grip, controls both chambers. Lower courts have tried to hold the line only to be frequently undone by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, whose latest ruling greenlighting racial profiling by ICE will go down in infamy along with its previous immunity decision handing even more unchecked and unaccountable powers to the rogue president.

Most disappointing, however, has been the response of non-government entities such as Big Law, elite universities, media houses, and business leaders. To be sure, the administration has gone after them hard, targeting their businesses and livelihoods. But they have the motive and the means to stand up for themselves, democratic institutions, and the rule-based system on which their own mission depends. Yet, far too often, they have chosen to capitulate and bend the knee out of fear and opportunism. Shockingly, authoritarians in more fragile democracies have encountered more resistance than those in this strong and proud one. As a friend who studies comparative authoritarianism wryly observed to me, “Hungary is not looking so bad compared to America right now.”

If we can no longer count on large, established players to fight Trump’s rampaging authoritarianism, and if liberal democracy is to be saved, it will have to depend on new institutional voices like The UnPopulist, formed expressly to take on this threat. We will either provide you with fearless, uncompromising, and honest commentary and analysis—essays, podcasts, and videos—or go down fighting.

But we need your help and support: Although our publication is—and will remain—free, we urge you on our birthday to make a contribution to our parent organization, the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism.

Donate To Our Project

Your contributions will help not only in our fight against Trump and his global ilk but also in building a better future. Once the new authoritarians are consigned to the dustbin of history, we’ll need to undo the damage that they have done and rebuild our decimated institutions. But we can’t return to the status quo ante. We’ll need to construct institutions that are: One, less susceptible to authoritarian capture, and two, that deliver better governance to improve the lives of everyday people not by sacrificing moral progress, but by keeping it at the center of the liberal project.

To advance the first goal, we have already launched our Fireproofing the Presidency series to explore practical and concrete remedies to build stronger guardrails against executive abuse. We will continue to build on that.

But effectively constraining an executive is not enough to achieve the second goal. For that, we need to once again restore checks and balances so that every branch of government takes its role and responsibilities more seriously and guards its powers more jealously. We also need to build an economic consensus that can deliver widely shared prosperity. And we need to rejuvenate stronger civic norms so that politics is an arena in which we settle our disputes without any expectation of permanent victory, not mount a zero-sum death struggle for ultimate dominance.

To that end, The UnPopulist is launching a new project called the Reconstruction Agenda to comprehensively guide a post-authoritarian politics.

Andy Craig

, with whom readers are already familiar through his incisive commentaries for us, will anchor this project with essays, both his own and those commissioned from leading legal and constitutional thinkers, and with podcast conversations. So stay tuned for that.

Meanwhile, our senior producer,

Landry Ayres

, has created a powerful video with highlights from LibCon2025, ISMA’s “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference, also summarizing our mission and message.

And as a birthday gift to ourselves, we asked leading writers, thinkers, and readers who share our mission to say a few words about our value in these perilous times. It is gratifying that those whom we deeply respect use words like “fearless,” “independent,” “uncompromising and uncompromised,” and “resolute” to describe us. Their responses, both humbling and encouraging, are below, in alphabetical order.

We are going to strive to live up to their praise and trust in us—and yours. So please wish us luck in our fight to vanquish tyranny and autocracy and defend liberalism, the challenge of our times and, likely, of the next few generations.

And in addition to making a contribution to ISMA, please share, circulate our content and encourage liberal allies to subscribe to us.

Radley Balko

, investigative journalist and author of The Watch newsletter:

Few publications better articulate the urgency of this moment than The UnPopulist. That’s probably in part because its founder and many of its contributors have endured professional repercussions for refusing to play down the threat currently looming over American democracy. Agree with them or not, what you read at The UnPopulist is sincere and resolute. There’s no posturing or soft-pedaling to appease donors or political actors. In this era of fear, timorousness, and capitulation, it’s a reliable source of moral clarity.

Alan Elrod

, founder and CEO of The Pulaski Institution:

The UnPopulist delivers fearless and honest commentary and analysis that meets the moment. It’s a crucial part of the real opposition media. If you’re looking for lighthouses in the dark, The UnPopulist is one of those clear signals.

Jeremiah Johnson

, co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism and author of the Infinite Scroll newsletter:

It’s more important than ever to fight authoritarianism. The UnPopulist is an incredibly important voice, especially their Executive Watch vertical which tracks the Trump administration’s many attempts to consolidate power, retaliate against enemies, profit from the government, and trample American law.

William Kristol

, editor-at-large of The Bulwark and host of the Conversations with Bill Kristol podcast:

In only four years, The UnPopulist has become indispensable reading for those of us fighting authoritarianism. It has also become a key participant in the discussion of how to eventually create a strengthened liberal democracy. I look forward to its next four years, and trust that we’ll see more and more people imbibing its wisdom and following its lead.

Don Moynihan

, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan and author of the Can We Still Govern? newsletter:

The UnPopulist has been unwavering in its focus on the big threats to a peaceful and prosperous society. As these threats incorporate authoritarianism and government threats, it is more important than ever to have independent and thoughtful voices to remind us of the core values needed to protect against illiberalism. I read The UnPopulist for its mixture of nuance and principle, insight and perspective. It encourages dialogue and understanding at a time when each is in short supply.

Walter Olson

, senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and author of a Substack newsletter:

The UnPopulist has made for uniquely trenchant reading during the crisis, and I think it’s because it’s both uncompromising in tone and uncompromised in the liberalism that grounds its underlying editorial stance. In responding to the threats of the moment it isn’t trying to promote some alternative kind of illiberalism—nor does it seek to flatter the popular errors of the day to better appeal to all comers. It specializes not in group statements but in the vigorous work of individual minds. It’s right there in the name, really—populist movements always entail a dumbing down, and this is The Un-Populist.

Tom G. Palmer

, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and George M. Yeager Chair for Advancing Liberty at Atlas Network:

The UnPopulist breathes cool mountain air into the humid and fetid swamp of resurgent authoritarianism. If we are to survive this un-American, unpatriotic, and self-destructive turn toward revenge politics and arbitrary and unconstitutional power, it will be because enough people had the courage—and the platform—to speak truth to power. The UnPopulist provides a platform. We, as citizens, must provide the courage.

Greg Sargent

, staff writer at The New Republic and host of the podcast The Daily Blast:

The UnPopulist has carved out a unique place among websites that are devoted to serious political theorizing. Its writers regularly grapple with the ideas driving today’s movements on the right. But it also seeks to articulate a positive liberalism that can stand as an alternative ideological vision to the right’s noxious offerings. The UnPopulist has become essential reading for those seeking to truly understand our current slide into authoritarianism.

Charlie Sykes

, co-founder of The Bulwark, MSNBC contributor, and author of the To the Contrary newsletter:

For the last four years, The UnPopulist has been an oasis of principle and sanity. With intelligence, wit, and an unrelenting commitment to democratic norms, it has been an essential voice in the fight against authoritarianism and illiberalism. From Day One, it has been a must-read. As the clouds gather, its voice is now more important than ever.

We got birthday praise from our readers, too:

Laura Holmes Jost:

I’ve been a reader and supporter of The UnPopulist since its inception. I highly recommend it to everyone as it provides unvarnished, independent, and timely analysis of the grave authoritarian threats facing our country and the world. The UnPopulist and its authors fearlessly speak the truth. And the catalogue of ongoing government abuses they are maintaining is an invaluable resource.

Jeffrey Quackenbush

Increasingly, populist movements in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world threaten the prosperity and freedom of the very majority they purport to represent. More than ever, we need liberal institutions and strong voices within those institutions to confront these movements. This is why publications like The UnPopulist are so vital. If media organizations are not dedicated to liberal ideals and topics, there is no one to speak to the values in liberalism, the process of liberalism, the fight in liberalism, the light of liberalism. In this, The UnPopulist has been unstinting. This week we should celebrate its birthday and its writers and editors, glad in the knowledge that they represent the best in liberal institutions.

Neera Badhwar, professor emeritus:

Happy fourth birthday to The UnPopulist! In just four years, The UnPopulist has elevated itself from being the new kid on the Substack block to a powerful voice for freedom and against authoritarianism. Many people who are now appalled by Trump’s lawless and tyrannical actions spent years downplaying his threats to take revenge on his critics, including law firms, universities, and the media, to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters, to wage war on immigrants, to impose tariffs on almost every country in the world—in short, to do whatever-the-hell he wanted as the “King” of the United States. They ignored his attempts to overthrow the 2020 elections, and his open admiration for the tyrants of the world, from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and China’s Xi Jinping to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. They even ignored—if not admired—Heritage’s Project 2025, the roadmap for the Trump government to fundamentally change the character of our country from a rights-respecting constitutional democracy to a Christian theocracy. The UnPopulist was and is one of the few publications to see the threats to our liberties clearly and speak out against them.