As we discussed at EAG B, the material change between the 1st term and 2nd term is that there were many "adults in the room" who kept the former president from fulfilling his worst instincts. Whereas now there has been a 4-year effort to cultivate a pipeline of loyalists to staff the government. Ezra's episode on Trump and his disinhibition is a good piece on the topic.

The nominations for the national security apparatus are the strongest signal that he wants power consolidated and will test GOP Senators out the gate if they will be a check on his power.

I think Ezra's start to the podcast that Michael linked was apt. If someone two months ago said that Gaetz, Gabbard, and Hegeseth were going to be nominated for DoJ, DNI, DoD, it would have been framed as hyperbolic doomer Liberal talk. However that is the universe we are in.

Have the nominations and the proposal to purge military generals updated your priors at all since EAG B?

A post/submission I wrote to OP two years ago has some thoughts on this:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kmx3rKh2K4ANwMqpW/destabilization-of-the-united-states-the-top-x-factor-ea

It has some recommended readings and outlines potential interventions.

I'm still distilling what I would add to it in the present day.

The top thing on my mind is the proposed board to purge generals. (Note: presidents already have the authority to dismiss generals, however the implication of this proposal is that they want to purge so many generals that they need a systematic vehicle to do it.) As I wrote in my piece, our biggest bulwark against an authoritarian power grab is that the United States Military is very strong, professional, competent, and apolitical. Any changes away from that status quo should raise alarm bells.

The nominations to the military/national security apparatus are clearly about total loyalty over competence. These are the military and intelligence services that when captured in other countries by authoritarians have cemented regimes.

Interventions in the immediate term targeted at disrupting the consolidation of power (in the aforementioned moves) could be very high leverage.

For a longer-term intervention that focuses more on the upstream drivers of our political dysfunction which enables authoritarians, I still back the idea of doing local/state ballot initiatives to reform the political system. A gap I see in the space is that political system reform via initiatives is pursued piecemeal instead of comprehensively. Also, anti-establishment sentiments poll very high amongst Americans including the Left and Right, yet that bi-populist agreement is not being effectively tapped. Not only could mobilizing it help get initiatives over the line, but it would create depolarizing interactions between regular citizens.

I think one of the most compelling cases is using voter initiatives for political system reform.

The short argument is that a large portion of EA has bought into policy as high EV because the high-leverage impact more than compensates for the hits-based nature of it. However, upstream of policy is politics. Generally, the problem is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will. Yet, even upstream of politics is the political system which creates the selection effects for who gets into office and the incentives that act on them while in office.

Political system reform, while more challenging to quantify, theoretically has very very very high ROI because you are addressing the coefficient of a coefficient acting on policy.

However, legislators have proven resistant to changing the rules of how they got to power. Hence, prominent people/organizations in the money-in-politics and electoral reform space have opted to use ballot initiatives to circumvent the legislature.

I'm of the opinion EAs are underutilizing ballot/voter initiatives. This is something I plan on writing up on the Forum at some point. (If anyone is interested in exploring voter initiatives as an intervention, please reach out)

The veto of SB 1047 should also raise the salience of ballot initiatives in EA.

I see one piece of important analysis is missing: the money differential

Campaigns that lost in 2024 (TLDR: 4 of the 5 were outspent)

• No on Measure J (California) outspent the yes campaign 8 to 1 (according to the yes campaign). Measure J is losing by 70 percentage points with 75% of the vote reported.
• As of Sept 30: in favor of Initiatives 308 & 309 (Colorado) spent $244,000; Hands off my Hat (this biggest group opposing 308 and which also opposes 309) spent $368,000. 308 lost by 16 percentage points.
• As of Nov 4: proponents of Iniaitive 309 spent $0.6 million whilst opponents spent $3.8 million. 309 lost by 30 percentage points.
• Proposition 127 (Colorado) had $2.3 million spent against it and had $2.8 million spent for it. It lost by 10 percentage points.
• Yes on Amendment 2 (Florida) outspent the opposition $1.1 million to $0.1 million. It won by 34 percentage points.

Previous campaigns that won (TLDR: 0 of the 3 were outspent)

• Advocates for Proposition 12 (California, 2018) outspent opponents $12.5 million to $0.3 million. It won by 26 percentage points.
• Advocates for Question 3 (Massachusetts, 2016) outspent opponents $2.7 million to $0.3 million. It won by 55 percentage points.
• Advocates for Proposition 2 (California, 2008) donated $10.6 million to $8.9 million donated by its opponents. It won by 26 percentage points.

The correlation between money spent/outspending your opponent is clear. 

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