Ten Reasons for Optimism: Prosecutors, Statehouses, and Local Organizations Are Producing Wins You Can Date and Source

The news supplies reasons for pessimism on a daily schedule. What follows is a list of reasons for optimism, each one something I have directly observed or can date and source.

Jul 18, 2026

ICE agents charged in Minneapolis, a bipartisan election bribery referral in Wisconsin, universal child care in New Mexico, a ballot seizure felony in California, city-owned groceries in New York, Hawaii ending corporate election spending, 75 data center projects blocked in a single quarter, and citizen grand jury statutes verified in six states. The wins are accumulating.

The news supplies reasons for pessimism on a daily schedule. What follows is a list of reasons for optimism, each one something I have directly observed or can date and source.

As I travel the country, I meet county Democratic chapters, state Democratic chairs, Indivisible chapters, and other activist organizations adopting the strategies and tactics we promote at The Existentialist Republic. These are organized groups with budgets, meeting schedules, and election plans, and the methods are being both enthusiastically promoted and adopted.
Tens of thousands of activists have joined our daily calls to action, from the state prosecution campaigns to the six-state grand jury petitions.
Nationwide we are seeing state representatives and city council members contacting The Existentialist Republic to understand our model legislation, some to bring it up for votes in upcoming sessions and some to implement it at the city or state level.
Legal theories we published are appearing in filed cases. In January we argued that states can charge ICE agents under state criminal law. In April and May, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged two ICE agents with assault under Minnesota law. On July 9, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, a body of three Democratic and three Republican appointees, voted 5 to 1 to refer two complaints to the Brown County district attorney after finding probable cause that Elon Musk violated the state election bribery statute. On July 14, Mahmoud Khalil filed a lawsuit under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 naming senior presidential adviser Stephen Miller and other officials. The dates are listed in order, without a claim that the articles caused the filings. The short interval between publication and prosecution on the same theory is itself the reason for optimism.
Laws in accordance with the Oppositonal Federalism/Soft Secession framework have been promoting with increasing volume, such as those that use felony penalties and appropriations to defend elections or better the lives of residents, they are now passing at the state and city level. California made it a felony to seize ballots from county election officials, a law Governor Newsom signed on May 27 after the Riverside County sheriff seized more than 600,000 cast ballots, and it took effect immediately, before the June 2 primary. New Mexico became the first state to guarantee no-cost universal child care, launched November 1 and signed into statute in March, with about 30,000 families and 44,000 children on track for free care this year and average savings near 12,000 dollars per child per year. New York City committed 70 million dollars to open a city-owned grocery store in each borough, the first expected in late 2027, in a city where grocery prices rose nearly 66 percent over the past decade.
States are rewriting their own antitrust law instead of waiting for federal enforcers. In February, California Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry introduced the COMPETE Act, which would let the state prosecute monopoly conduct by a single firm. The Cartwright Act cannot currently reach that conduct because it requires an agreement between two or more companies, and California is the largest state economy in the United States. New York’s Twenty-First Century Antitrust Act, which would create the first abuse of dominance standard in the country, has passed the state Senate more than once and is pending in the Assembly, and Massachusetts has companion bills adopting the same standard. A tech industry trade group opposing these bills commissioned research covering seven states that have considered them, a count of the idea’s reach supplied by the opposition itself.
The campaigns are locating usable legal mechanisms. For six months our DOGE campaign has asked county prosecutors and attorneys general in all fifty states to investigate the former DOGE employees who mishandled the Social Security records of hundreds of millions of Americans, conduct the federal government has admitted in a court filing. That process also involved ER activists filing local police reports over DOGE conduct. While researching that campaign, we found that six states, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, allow residents to convene a criminal grand jury by petition, and we verified the requirements by statute in all six. No prosecutor has to agree. Volunteers showed up to run petition intake, and the path from signature sheet to a state indictment, which no presidential pardon can reach, is written in statute. We will be there with those activists every step of the way, as an organization and as a larger community of activists.
Researchers and institutions with policy influence are citing the frameworks. Brookings cited the soft secession framework in its analysis of state and federal conflict, national outlets covered the work, and the papers are posted on SSRN, where attorneys, academics, and policymakers download them. The readership for these ideas now includes people whose work legislators and courts read.
Communities keep blocking data centers, and the opposition crosses party lines. At least 75 projects worth roughly 130 billion dollars were stalled or blocked in the first three months of 2026, and more than 800 local groups across 49 states are organized against roughly 1,500 planned facilities. In June, voters in Monterey Park, California approved a ballot measure permanently banning data centers. New York’s legislature passed a one year moratorium on large-scale data centers, the first of its kind, and protesters in St. Paul rallied at the Minnesota capitol for a two year state moratorium. In Box Elder County, Utah, where Trump won nearly 80 percent of the vote, rural conservative voters are fighting a 40,000-acre project backed by Kevin O’Leary, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott urged his legislature to regulate the industry. An investor newsletter that tracks moratoriums as a business risk reports that Kansas and Indiana, both Republican-leaning, host the most active ones. Gallup finds 70 percent of Americans oppose building them locally, 75 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans, and a Yale survey found conservative Republicans oppose them at higher rates than moderate Republicans. Large majorities in both parties want the same outcome here. When elected officials approve the projects anyway, campaign money is part of the explanation, and the public already believes that about money in politics: in a national YouGov survey, 79 percent of respondents, including 74 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats, agreed that large independent spending by wealthy donors and corporations produces corruption or the appearance of it.
That agreement is already winning votes. On May 14, Hawaii Governor Josh Green signed a law providing that the state no longer grants corporations, LLCs, partnerships, and other artificial persons the power to spend money on candidates or ballot measures. It passed the Senate unanimously and the House with 41 Democrats and nine Republicans in favor and one vote against, and lawmakers credited Indivisible Hawaii, now nine chapters statewide, for helping pass it. Montana is taking the same approach directly to voters as the Montana Plan, Ballot Issue 10, after the state Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the pre-election challenge in April. Signature gathering for the November ballot is underway, and public backers include Marc Racicot, a former Republican governor of Montana and former chair of the Republican National Committee. Legislators in 14 other states introduced similar bills in 2026, six in Democratic trifectas, four in Republican trifectas, and four under divided government.

There is a lot of work to be done and the future is never guaranteed. Still, what do you do when there’s fascism in your town? You show up for your community and go on the offensive for democracy, humanity, and justice.

Thanks for showing up, folks.

See you in the streets.

Chris

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THE CALL TO ACTION

Category: campaign finance reform.

Difficulty Rating: 7/10. It can be stressful reaching out to an organization and following this sort of CTA that can involve educating others and advocating for ideas. It’s ok if this isn’t the action for you. Maybe in the future, maybe never, but at least give it a look and who knows if you might know someone who is up for the task.

Who you are contacting and how: your county Democratic Party chapter, your local Indivisible chapter, or any organized group you belong to, by email to the chair or in person during the new business portion of the next meeting.

What you are asking for: three commitments, each by recorded vote. First, endorse the Montana Plan as an organization and call on your state legislature to bring it up for a vote. Second, announce the endorsement to the full membership. Third, make vocal support for passing it in your state a standing requirement for every candidate and officeholder the organization endorses, now and in the future.

A script you can read at the meeting or paste into an email:

“I am asking [organization name] to make three commitments by recorded vote.

First, endorse the Montana Plan as an organization and call on our state legislature to bring it up for a vote.

The Montana Plan ends corporate spending on candidates and ballot measures by no longer granting corporations the power to spend. Hawaii signed the same approach into law in May with near-unanimous bipartisan support, legislators in 14 other states introduced versions this year, and national polling shows 74 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats agree that this kind of spending produces corruption or the appearance of it, so the endorsement matches what our members already believe.

Second, announce the endorsement to our full membership.

Third, make vocal support for passing it in our state a standing requirement for every candidate and officeholder this organization endorses, now and in the future, with support voiced at the state level by those who serve there and voiced from federal or statewide office for our state adopting it. The plan is laid out at montanaplan.org. I move that we vote on this today or place it on the agenda for the next meeting.”