What We're Up Against

This Is a System, Not a Collection of Bad Actors

The organizations documented in this section did not appear suddenly. They were built deliberately, over more than fifty years, by a network of ideologues, industrialists, and legal strategists who understood that lasting political power requires permanent infrastructure — not just winning elections.

That infrastructure now includes:

• Think tanks that write the policy

• Legislative networks that pass it into law

• A judicial pipeline that installs the judges who protect it

• Dark money networks that fund all of the above

• Surveillance and enforcement technology that executes it on the ground

• State-level organizations that replicate it in every state simultaneously

Each piece was designed to reinforce the others. Together they form a system that can survive any single election, any single court ruling, or any single act of public resistance — unless that resistance is sustained, layered, and strategic.

That is exactly what this library is built to support.

The Administration · The Blueprint · The Enforcement Technology · The Network

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🏛️ The Trump Administration — The executing hand. 225 executive orders signed in 2025 alone. 53% of Project 2025's domestic agenda initiated or completed as of February 2026 — 283 of 532 recommended actions across 20 federal agencies. Center for Progressive Reform The V-Dem Institute — whose data goes back to 1789 — identifies this as the most severe democratic backsliding ever recorded in United States history. V-Dem Institute

→ Read the Threat Assessment

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📄 The Powell Memo (1971) — The Original Blueprint. Before Heritage. Before the Federalist Society. Before Fox News. In 1971, corporate lawyer Lewis Powell wrote a secret memo to the Chamber of Commerce laying out a 50-year plan to capture America's courts, media, universities, and legislatures for corporate and conservative interests. Everything on this page flows from that document. 

→ Read the Powell Memo 

📋 Project 2025 — The Blueprint Being Executed Right Now. A 900-page governing manual written by more than 100 organizations and former Trump officials, designed to be operational on day one. The people who wrote it are the people running it. Center for Progressive Reform

→ Read the Threat Assessment

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🛡️ Palantir Technologies — The enforcement infrastructure. Built the ELITE tool that assigns confidence scores to home addresses for ICE raids. Built ImmigrationOS. Has employees inside the Trump administration. Published a 22-point manifesto rejecting pluralism in April 2026. 404 Media

→ Read the Threat Assessment

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📋 The Heritage Foundation — The Architect. The federal policy blueprint. Mandate for Leadership has guided every Republican administration since Reagan. Heritage describes its current mission as completing "the second American Revolution." ACLU

→ Read the Threat Assessment

⚖️ The Federalist Society — The judicial capture operation. All six conservative Supreme Court justices have official Federalist Society ties. Leonard Leo delivered the list. The judges serve for life. ProPublica 

→ Read the Threat Assessment

💰 The Koch Network — The connective tissue. $548 million spent in the 2024 election cycle. Offices in 36 states. 20 million doors knocked. Americans for Prosperity funds Heritage, ALEC, the Federalist Society, the State Policy Network, and state-level electoral operations simultaneously. OpenSecrets 

→ Read the Threat Assessment

🗺️ ALEC — The Corporate Bill-Mill. American Legislative Exchange Council. Corporations sit alongside state legislators, vote on model bills, and watch them introduced in statehouses across the country — without disclosure. Approximately 200 ALEC-derived model bills become law each year. Center for Media and Democracy 

→ Read the Threat Assessment

🏛️ The State Policy Network — The 50-state replication machine. Sixty-four affiliated think tanks — one in every state — produce local research that makes nationally-coordinated corporate policy appear to be homegrown state initiative. ALEC's biggest ally in the states. SourceWatch 

→ Read the Threat Assessment

🎯 The Bradley Foundation — The dark money backbone. Nearly $1 billion in assets. $1.3 billion in grants since 1985. Funds Heritage, ALEC, the Federalist Society, SPN, and Americans for Prosperity simultaneously. The financial infrastructure the entire network depends on. Wisconsin Democracy Campaign 

→ Read the Threat Assessment

🔒 Citizens United — The legal infrastructure that funds everything else. The 2010 Supreme Court decision that eliminated limits on corporate political spending. Outside spending has exploded more than 28-fold since the ruling — from $144 million in 2008 to more than $4.2 billion in 2024. Brennan Center 

→ Read the Threat Assessment

The Full Research Library

Each organization profile in the Corporate Collaborators folder of the toolkit contains:

• A complete organizational overview with key facts

• How it works — the mechanisms of influence

• What it has produced — documented policy outcomes

• What can be done — specific pressure tactics and counter-organizations

• Full source citations from public records, peer-reviewed research, and credible investigative reporting

→ Get the full toolkit

You are not powerless. You are not invisible. You are not alone.

History is not made only by the loud or the fearless. It is made by people who kept showing up in manageable ways.