The Existentialist Republic’s First Year: What 60,000 Readers Accomplished

Twelve months of absolutely and relentlessly getting after it.

Aug 27, 2026

The Existentialist Republic is one year old, and in that single year this community grew to 60,000 readers across our platforms, put a disbarment complaint against the Chief Justice of the United States onto the D.C. Bar’s docket, campaigned for the Minneapolis prosecutions that have now charged two federal agents, drafted eight pieces of model state legislation, and began building citizen grand jury petitions in seven states. This is the record of that year, and the credit for every line of it is yours.

In April I filed a disciplinary complaint against Chief Justice John Roberts with the D.C. Bar, documenting 16 years of federal financial disclosures in which Roberts characterized more than $10 million of his wife’s commission income as salary, and the Bar docketed it as complaint No. 2026-U795. The Board on Professional Responsibility meets on it September 10, which means that whatever happens next, the Chief Justice’s conduct is now before the body that licenses him to practice law.

We drafted eight pieces of model state legislation this year and fully packaged four of them with bill text, advocacy guides, and mailing lists, which is everything a legislator needs to introduce them, and then you funded the delivery. With more than $10,000 of your money, the Make Corrupt Politicians Pay Act is being printed and mailed to Democratic legislators in every trifecta state right now, while volunteers email every Democratic state legislator in the country, all 3,224 of them.

We also launched a series on state-level leaders who deserve more national exposure, because our readership can widen their reach and strengthen their hand where they legislate, and Virginia Delegate Jackie Glass and North Carolina Senator Woodson Bradley were the first two. Delegate Glass then came to us and walked our community through the E.A.R.R. model.

Throughout the year I sent 256 calls to action, which averages one every day and a half, and you kept answering them. Those calls now travel well beyond this community, because BigTentUSA sends them to their own email list, a partnership we launched in a livestream with Rick Wilson.

When the Department of Government Efficiency accessed Social Security records covering more than 70 million Americans, we found the opening in state law: computer crimes are prosecuted where the victim lives, which makes you a victim in your own county and your local police department the place to report it. We wrote report templates citing each state’s criminal statutes, and thousands of you filed them while contacting attorneys general, district attorneys, and police departments in all 50 states. The Supremacy Clause protects federal agents performing their official duties, and taking citizens’ data is part of no one’s official duties.

Then we put a questionnaire to every state attorney general in America, asking whether any law, ruling, or constitutional provision grants a sitting president total immunity from state investigation and prosecution for breaking that state’s laws, and whether their office would commit to reviewing documented evidence of state crimes by a president or cabinet member and taking it to a grand jury. All 50 of them had the chance to say that no one is above the law, and not one of them answered it directly.

So we went further, because six states still allow citizens to convene grand juries themselves, and we organized petition drives in those six states while adding Pennsylvania through its private criminal complaint process. We just finished our first round of interviews with potential petitioners.

In January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis shot and killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and this community responded immediately and kept responding for months. Thousands of your emails reached Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office, Existentialist Republic members stood on Minneapolis sidewalks for weeks handing flyers to thousands of their neighbors, and we published a complete prosecution memorandum for Jonathan Ross, the agent who killed Renee Good. That memo relies only on evidence that is already public, it lays out charges carrying a combined maximum of more than 40 years, and it grounds every count in materially identical cases, which is why hundreds of you sent it directly to Moriarty’s office.

Charges followed, and Moriarty has now charged two ICE agents from that same operation. When the federal government withheld the evidence in the killings, she said it on the record: “We are not giving up. We are going to see this through.” And in July the federal government turned that evidence over, the body camera footage, the agent statements, and the vehicle Renee Good was driving, so much of it is finally with Minnesota investigators.

I went to Minneapolis myself, along with my brother Basheer, where we marched, met with legislators and activists, and handed out flyers alongside our members there, and when I went on ICE watch, ICE agents threatened my life for it. I’d do it again tomorrow.

While those campaigns were in progress, I traveled the country for about a dozen in-person town halls and talks with Indivisible chapters, county Democratic parties, and other organizing groups, from Methow Rising in rural Washington to Indivisible Charlotte in North Carolina, plus Zoom sessions with more groups than I can list here. The Yakima Herald-Republic even wrote about the talk I gave in Yakima to open the Voices of Democracy speaker series.

Over the last year, I’ve even sat down face to face with dozens of elected officials to discuss how their states can use the strategies explained in my academic work and ER publications.

The arguments underneath all of it went out through every channel I could reach. Verfassungsblog and the Brennan Center’s State Court Report published the legal case, among others, the full taxonomy of oppositional federalism went up on the Social Science Research Network and then to the Harvard Law Review, The Nation interviewed me, and Mother Jones, NPR, PBS, and the Brookings Institution all cited the work. I made regular radio appearances with Thom Hartmann, on Laura Flanders and Friends, and on WCPT Chicago, the soft secession article that started so much of this reached its first anniversary, and I published two books, The American Reformation and Toppling Tyrants; free and paid versions available at the bottom of this article.

We opened a Discord server too, and 1,000 of you joined so quickly that scammers and bad actors followed, so we closed new membership to protect people. We’ve spent months rebuilding the server properly, and we’ll relaunch it as soon as we can confidently do so.

If you want one of those events for your own group, virtual or in person, just send me a direct message here on Substack, and don’t worry about the cost, because I often pay for the travel myself. Everything we make has a free version, my books included. The ER builds tools for fighting fascism, and I refuse to let money be the reason anyone goes without them.

One more thing from this year that has nothing to do with strategy. I got my mother onto Substack, and watching her progress has been one of the real joys of the year, because I always knew she was brilliant and now everyone else can see it too. She writes as W. A. Lawrence at Glass Empires, and you should go follow her. My older brother Basheer Ali is on here too, though he hasn’t had as much time to write; mom and I hope to help Basheer build more confidence to share his thoughtful insights on our current moment in history. Feeling like coworkers with my own family is not something I expected out of any of this, and I love it.

My cats, Princess Nandor, Zelda, and Enron, have now turned up in enough interviews and livestreams that they’ve logged more national television time than most cable pundits.

I wrote this piece for one reason, which is that we are making serious progress and you should take the time to feel proud of it. Every docket number, every charge, and every campaign in this record began with readers who gave money, made calls, filed reports, and handed out flyers, and I’m grateful for every one of you. And I want you to know that we are just getting started.

Almost everything you just read about was funded by our Substack subscribers, Buy Me A Coffee page, and our recent GoFundMe campaign.

Don’t let this be the reason you skip a meal or miss rent.

If you can be a subscriber or contribute on BMAC, you expand our capacity to do even more of the work this community has done over the last year. Thank you all for being here, I can’t wait to see how much we get done in the coming years, together.

- Chris

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