Inform Your Resistance

In this episode, Koki speaks to PRA Principal Research Advisor Steven Gardiner and PRA Senior Research Analyst Ethan Fauré on past attempts and possible attempts by the Trump administration to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections—from deploying armed law enforcement to polling stations, to perpetuating conspiracy narratives that undermine electoral results after the fact. Gardiner and Fauré discuss ways to insulate the election and results from these attacks, how organizers can work with their communities to support the democratic process, and the implications of the 2026 midterms for the Trump administration’s plans in 2028. 

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In this episode, PRA Senior Research Analyst Ben Lorber reflects on the contemporary status of the U.S. Christian Zionist movement, embodied by its largest organization: Christians United for Israel. Popular support for Israel has faltered as the U.S. war on Iran grinds on, and influential corners of the Far Right are espousing increasingly vehement critiques of Israel fueled by pervasive antisemitism. 

Lorber parses the viability of the Christian Zionist movement in the medium and long term and highlights the growing religious Left that is organizing to counter Christian Right power. 

Ben Lorber is a...

In this episode, Koki sits down with PRA Principal research advisor, Steven Gardner, to discuss the recent March 2026 verdicts in the Prairieland case from North Texas when 9 protestors were found guilty of a variety of charges ranging from providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, to concealing a document or record and discharging a firearm. The charges stem from an investigation following a noise demonstration and confrontation with local law enforcement outside a North Texas ICE detention center on July 4, 2025. 

In court, the case hinged on accusations that these defendants belonged to a...

In this Season 4 bonus episode, Koki sits down with PRA’s Principal Research Advisor Steven Gardiner to discuss the outset of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran, how the war compares to a history of U.S. imperial violence, and what it signals about the second Trump administration and its authoritarian project. Gardiner provides analysis of how the lack of support for the war signals possibilities for meaningful rupture in the MAGA coalition and adds significant complexity in the lead up to the 2026 midterm elections.

The conversation concludes with an evaluation of what this war mean...

In this bonus episode, PRA researchers discuss the deadly ICE crackdown in Minneapolis and the powerful resistance we’ve seen on the streets. ICE continues to kidnap thousands with impunity, and the brutal murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti show the naked brutality of this authoritarian administration. But everyday people continue to defend their neighbors and communities: by organizing in neighborhoods, on street corners, at airports, and at City Hall; and by grinding business as usual to a halt and showing the entire country, and the world, what it takes to stand up in this moment. 

To...

In this season bonus episode, Koki talks to Steven Gardiner, PRA Principal Research Advisor, about the Trump administration’s early-January attack on Venezuela and escalating domestic confrontations around ICE enforcement, including the Minneapolis protests around the murder of Nicole Good. Gardiner describes how the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro represents both a familiar extension of U.S. imperial power and a dangerous acceleration of presidential authority, bypassing Congress and normal democratic oversight. He explains that this belligerence largely resonates with the MAGA base, which accepts violent action when framed as efficient, hypermasculine, and rooted in authoritarianism rather tha...

In this season finale episode, Koki talks to Steven Gardiner, PRA Principal Research Advisor, to reflect on the first year of Trump's second term and its implications for U.S. democracy. While the MAGA base remains about 15% of the U.S. and Trump’s approval ratings remain low, the Trump administration has chipped away at democratic norms, maintained control over the Republican party, decimated the bureaucratic state, and is poised to interfere with the 2026 midterms and likely 2028 elections beyond through strategies of “contested authoritarianism.” 

But the highly visible actions of immigration enforcement, violations of the constitution, and nods to...

In this episode of Inform Your Resistance, Koki reads “Florida Is the ‘Tip of the Spear:’ How 287(g) Expansion Fuels Mass Deportations” by Jessica Pishko, as part of our ongoing From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA’s more than 40 years of publishing. This article was published in the Fall 2025 issue of The Public Eye magazine.

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How is ICE mobilizing on our streets today? What role does local law enforcement play in Trump’s immigration crackdown? And what are local organizers doing about it?

This episode is guest hosted by Cloee Cooper, PRA Research Director and host of The Insurgence: Sheriffs, a podcast series that uncovers how a national network of far-right sheriffs is mobilizing to create a White Christian republic, one county at a time. This episode features Felicia Arriaga, Jessica Pishko, and Camilo Garzón.

Felicia Arriaga, who is featured in episode four of The Insurgence: Sheriffs, is the aut...

In this episode, Hialy Gutierrez, PRA Deputy Research Director, and Claudia Espinel, discuss the connections and contradictions between prevailing economic systems, political infrastructure and ideology, and rising authoritarianism. We touch on the various ways that corporate power intersects with government, civil society, and media to prioritize profit accumulation and market dominance over human and environmental dignity and wellbeing. We also identify ways to sharpen movement strategy so that we can more effectively and more coherently fight back, not just against authoritarian leaders and governance, but also against the economic systems that keep enabling them. We highlight the urgent need...

This episode is the second in PRA’s panel discussion series, The First 100 Days of Authoritarian Gains: Key Analysis to Inform Our Resistance. This second part discusses how MAGA weaponizes gender to entrench authoritarianism. Looking at the essential role that anti-LGBTQ, particularly anti-trans organizing and policy and anti-reproductive healthcare access and abortion restriction play in reinforcing authoritarian norms and politics.

Research Analysts, Annie Wilkinson, Chancie Calliham, and Mary Reynolds are joined by reproductive justice movement leader Norbese Flint, for this focused discussion of the ways that gender and bodies are reified restricted and deployed by the U.S...

Inform Your Resistance is coming to you this week in between regularly scheduled episodes to introduce you to a new podcast series, Lifting the Curtain on Antisemitism. This collaboration between Political Research Associates and Diaspora Alliance explores how to understand antisemitism and its weaponization and to fight for collective liberation. Amidst rising authoritarianism and Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this series offers a rigorous analysis of how authoritarians uses antisemitism and its weaponization as a tool to repress progressive movements and to dismantle democracy itself.

You can find all six episodes of Lifting the Curtain on Antisemitism on...

Our collective freedom is at stake. How do we prevent the most vulnerable from being excluded, targeted, or taken advantage of, while providing values, moral clarity, and the most strategic inputs possible? In this first of a two-part series, we share insights from PRA’s researchers about how to move beyond the work on blocking rising authoritarianism, to the work of building power, vision, and solidarity. Steven Gardiner, Ethan Fauré, and an unnamed PRA researcher in conversation with the Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart describe the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, and how to respond. 

Our panelists provi...

Today’s episode welcomes Jiva Manske. Koki and Jiva lay out key ways that the Left can and must build a shared vision of democracy, all while the pro-democracy movement is in a moment of extreme crisis. They talk through the “what is to be done?” about this moment, drawing inspiration from key strategies such as mobilizing, non-compliance, non-violent direct action, and alternative institutions like mutual aid, collective care, and infrastructures of solidarity. In discussing a range of accessible, non-violent actions both historic and current—from the 1930 Salt March across India to the street theater of 1970s Chile to the rece...

In this episode of Inform Your Resistance, Koki reads “Gender and Authoritarianism: A Framework for Analysis and Action” by Annie Wilkinson, as part of our ongoing From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA’s more than 40 years of publishing. This article was published in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue of The Public Eye magazine, and you can read the article here.

In conversation with PRA’s Principal Research Advisor Steven Gardiner, he and Koki discuss the wide-ranging practices, policies, and ideologies underlying the antidemocratic goals of the Neoreactionary Right—and how to resist them. Diving into the foundations of white nationalism and Christian supremacy that prop up the billionaire agenda under Trump, their conversation pieces together the connections in topics ranging from privately owned micro states and the tariff regime intended to re-industrialize a post-industrial United States, to the fascistic, curtailing of opposition and checks on power.

Steven Gardiner is Principal Research Advisor, and formerly Research Director, at Poli...

In this episode, Koki interviews PRA’s former Executive Director Tarso Luís Ramos, who stepped down from his role in December 2024 after nearly two decades at the helm of the organization. With over 30 years of experience working, researching, and leading in the Fight the Right sector, Tarso has had an indelible impact in the social justice Left, informing the ongoing and evolving fight against White, Christian, patriarchal supremacy. In our conversation, he reflects on the fascinating ways that the terrain of contestation between Left and Right has shifted over three decades, what this evolution tells us about the pos...

In this episode, Koki speaks with researchers Mariel Cooksey and Amy Mack about the Far Right in Canada today. They discuss the evolution of the Far Right and its disparate movements, the current rise to prominence of the Far Right in provincial politics, and the discordance between a rich history of anti-democratic organizing and a profound global reputation for progressive liberalism. Is Canada as exceptional as it seems?

Mariel Cooksey is the Executive Director of the Canadian Institute for Far Right Studies. Her research background focuses on Christianity and far-right extremism in the United States and Canada...

In this episode, Naomi Washington Leapheart explores the role of community and solidarity in creating responsive and durable strategies of contestation—of resistance—in our contemporary political moment. As PRA's Strategic Partnerships Director, Naomi presents empowering stories of how we at PRA inform our resistance movements, and as a reverend and community organizer, she breaks down the philosophical concept of community organizing to present a vision and plan for self actualization, collectivized risk, and the possibility of triumph through solidarity.

Naomi Washington Leapheart, PRA Strategic Partnerships Director, is a Black queer daughter of Detroit, and a minister, prof...

In this episode, PRA Principal Research Advisor Steven Gardiner provides astute analysis on what has led us to this moment in history—when Donald Trump and the Republican Party have so decisively won the presidency and both houses of congress. Steven shares likely scenarios that may play out in Trump’s first year back in office, the implications of his chaotic cabinet picks for the implementation of both mundane and reactionary policy, and, most importantly, on the opportunities available to resisting the fascistic capture of the U.S. state. 

Steven Gardiner is Principal Research Advisor, and formerly Resea...

In this episode of Inform Your Resistance, Koki reads “From Palestine to Atlanta, Outside and Foreign: The Institutional Policing of Dissent” by Habiba Farh, as part of our ongoing From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA’s more than 40 years of publishing. This article was published in the Spring 2024 issue of The Public Eye magazine, and you can read the article here.

This interview with Savera Coalition partners Safa Ahmed and Pranay Somayajula dives into an expose on the immensely influential Hindu American Foundation, or HAF, as a Hindu supremacist institution masquerading as a civil rights organization. We discuss HAF's reputation as a leader in civil rights and its true agenda to perpetuate caste discrimination and support for the authoritarian Indian Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP regime in the United States.

We discuss HAF's roots in the Hindu supremacist or Hindutva movement and its recent, more explicit shift towards the broader U.S. multiracial far right. We conclude with...

Koki talks with Ramah Kudaimi about U.S. imperialism and state violence, and its reverberations both domestically and abroad. From the global war on terror, to genocide in Palestine, to anti-Muslim policing and surveillance in our communities, we discuss the ways that imperial power, capitalist interests, and far-right organizing intersect in ways that compound harm and entrench systems of oppression. 

We discuss the ways in corporations profit not only from war and militarism, but specifically from Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry and violence. Ramah unpacks the concept of “terror capitalism” or the idea that corporations reap massive profits from...

This episode with guest-host Jack Gieseking features an in-depth discussion with Frederick Clarkson about the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a significant and influential movement within the Christian Right. Clarkson explains the background and history of NAR, as well as its contemporary political significance. The conversation also touches on the relationship between NAR the January 6th 2021 Capitol insurrection, NAR’s relationship with Israel, and their strategy to build their voting block and flip districts, as well as the broader and far-reaching implications NAR has for democracy and religious freedom. 

Clarkson emphasizes the importance of understanding this movement, given its...

Inform Your Resistance is coming to you this week in between regularly scheduled episodes to introduce you to a new podcast series, The Insurgence: Sheriffs. This collaboration between Political Research Associates and Cuentero Productions uncovers how a national network of far-right sheriffs is mobilizing to create a White Christian republic, one county at a time.

Subscribe today, wherever you get your podcasts to catch the rest of the episodes in the series.

In this episode of Inform Your Resistance, Koki reads “Nativist Bedfellows: The Christian Right Embraces Anti-Immigrant Politics” by Tarso Luís Ramos and Pam Chamberlain, the fourth in our new From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA’s more than 40 years of publishing. This article was published in the Summer 2008 issue of The Public Eye magazine, and you can read the article here.

This week we're also excited to announce the launch of a new podcast series. The Insurgence: Sheriffs is a podcast...

In this first episode of Season 3, we are back with a conversation about the origins, unlikely intersections, and influence of the contemporary anti-immigration movement. Ethan provides us with a fascinating overview of how this movement developed, from its White Nationalist origins, with significant bipartisan and centrist support. We discuss John Tanton’s network of organizations, funding sources for the anti-immigrant movement, significant legislation impacting the immigration landscape, intersections with other movements (not all right-wing) like the environmental movement and Christian nationalism, and Project 2025’s vision for immigration policy in the U.S. We end on a high note, discussing loca...

Uncover the disturbing realities of racial capitalism and state violence with host Koki Mendis and Saqib Bhatti, co-executive Director of the Action Center on Race and Economy (ACRE). Bhatti’s insights illuminate the distressing crossroads where austerity programs, mass incarceration, and a negligent police state meet. Throughout the conversation, Bhatti exposes the dangerous influence of corporations on public services and their contribution to the rise of a racialized policing system. We discuss ways in which over policing and mass incarceration uphold racist wealth and inequality and strategies available to us on the left to contest power and advance redistribution. We...

Who are the abortion abolitionists? What drives them, and how do their tactics overlap with those of other far-right movements? Join host, Koki Mendis, and PRA Senior Research Analyst, Cloee Cooper, as we uncover the differences between the broader pro-life movement and the abortion abolitionist movement.

The abortion abolitionists are a nationwide network of militant anti-abortion far-right activists who want to eradicate all abortion. They would like to see the death penalty for those involved in abortion. They draw on the militant anti-abortion movement from the 1990s that was responsible for violence against abortion clinics and providers...

In this conversation with Lauren Jacobs from PowerSwitch Action, the discussion focuses on the role of worker power in combating authoritarianism. Lauren and host Koki Mendis explore the allure of reactionary anti-state narratives in explaining worker precarity and how labor organizing can present counter-narratives and options for reducing worker suffering. They also discuss the barriers to unionization posed by corporations, the relationship between worker organizing and the presidential administrations, and the impact of municipal and county governing structures on worker power formation.

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In this eye-opening interview, Dr. Chrissy Stroop peels back the layers of Christian dominionism, and explains how this ideology is deeply woven into the fabric of Christian homeschooling.

Dr. Chrissy Stroop is both a former insider and an expert scholar. She has long written and shared candid stories of growing up in a Christian educational environment. Here, she recounts the ways in which evangelical ideology was deeply woven into her own educational experiences. Her experiences are a prism for a deep exploration into the world of Christian homeschooling and its dominionist influence throughout the country. As Dr...

In this episode, Koki reads “The Spirit of January 6th: The Theology of This Seldom Discussed Movement Animates the Growing Threat to U.S. Democracy” by Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné, the third in our new From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA's more than 40 years of publishing. 

In this article, Clarkson and Gagné offer a peek into a shadowy, dramatic, and hugely influential corner of the Christian right. The New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, is populated by modern day apostles, prophets, and demons, and is a key...

In this episode, Koki interviews Laura Pulido, Collins Chair and Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon, who studies race, environmental justice, and cultural memory. They discuss the intersection of racial and climate denialism, and how these realms of politics, understanding, and identity buttress one another. Laura and Koki dig into some of the key insights from Pulido's work, an invaluable vocabulary with which to parse the salience of emotion, identity, and belonging in crystallizing and simultaneously mobilizing oppressive political ideologies and practice in the face of environmental injustice. 

In this episode, Koki sits down with Shane Burley to discuss some of the most peculiar, and—at times, most influential—corners of the Far Right, capturing a spectrum of White nationalist, misogynist organizing that spans the neopaganist Wolves of Vinland to the multiracial, hypermasculine Proud Boys to the highly suspect community of so-called Formers.

Shane also provides timely updates on his seminal pieces written for PRA on these movements and we discuss their significance for the broader landscape of White nationalist organizing. He also shares a clear-eyed defensive, preventative strategy for disrupting the continued growth of the...

In this episode of Inform Your Resistance, Koki reads “Total Life Reform: The Real Consequences of the Far Right’s Self-Help Grift” by Shane Burley, the second in our new From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA’s more than 40 years of publishing. This article was published in the Fall 2020 issue of The Public Eye magazine, and you can read the article here.

In this episode, Koki is joined by Aidan Orly, one of a handful of U.S.-based researchers writing and speaking about Christian Zionism: the right-wing domestic and international movements that use a Christian biblical interpretation to promote and endorse Jewish nationalism. Christian Zionism forms the largest political base of support for the state of Israel in the U.S. Koki and Aidan focus on the authoritarian nature of Christian Zionist movements, and discuss their key leaders, organizations, and financial and cultural engines (including tourism and popular media). They also speak to the ways the Left can both unintentionally...

In this episode, Koki reads “Why Are Gen Z Girls Attracted to the Tradwife Lifestyle?” by Marielle Cooksey, the first in our new From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA's more than 40 years of publishing. In this article, Cooksey explores the growing online Tradwife subculture, one with deep ties to White nationalism, Christian nationalism, and anti-feminism. This article was published in the Spring/Summer 2021 issue of The Public Eye magazine, and you can read this article online at politicalresearch.org.

Mariel Cooksey is the Co-Founder and...

This week, Inform Your Resistance is on a mid-season break. Instead of interviewing a guest, host Koki Mendis shares some quick takes on incredible new content from our quarterly magazine, The Public Eye. See links to the pieces she discusses below, and listen to the episode for Koki’s analysis!

In this episode, Koki interviews Peter Montgomery, Research Director at People for American Way, to discuss Project 2025, the Right’s playbook to remake the U.S. government as we currently know it toward authoritarianism. Peter discusses the architects of this plan, the people and movements who have signed on to it, and the implications for the American public if it should be put into place. Koki and Peter discuss how the Right has stitched together such disparate tensions and factions in the Right, in Peter’s words, with the am to do so “long enough just to get the power...

In this episode, Koki talks with Alex DiBranco, executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism. Alex breaks down for us: What is male supremacism? What is its relationship to other supremacist ideologies and movements? And how does male supremacism form part of a political strategy? 

We discuss both the religious and secular versions of male supremacism; its intersection with other right-wing movements; how male supremacism is central to the culture war; its relationship with anti-trans figures on both the Left and the Right; as well as its notorious conspiracism and how that has impacted w...