For years, these officials were stationed across the globe actively supporting opposition movements in autocratic nations. Now they’ve turned their awful skills on …..us.
Simple sabotage.
Former USAID employees and current government officials shared with NOTUS that they are using their regime change skills to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency. NOTUS: Some of the democracy-building experts President Donald Trump fired this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department are now reapplying the skills and knowledge they built up over decades to undermine Trump’s power. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime.” Tucci was previously the director of the USAID Center for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance. Now she’s teaching these workshops on what she calls “Authoritarianism 101” and ways to resist it. “Getting people to understand that it’s part of a process is the training,” she told NOTUS. “It feels silly. ‘Why are we going to get ice cream?’ You’re building up that muscle and that bravery, and you’re building up your numbers. Today it starts with four, but tomorrow it’s 10. We’re helping them understand that is the organizing, and that is the process to get to a massive strike.” For years, these officials were stationed across the globe actively supporting opposition movements in autocratic nations. Now they’ve got time, a network of former colleagues and a growing sense of moral indignation. (NOTUS).
NOTUS (“News of the United States”) is a digital news outlet owned by the Albritton Journalism Institute, a nonprofit organization founded by Robert Allbritton in 2023.
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NOTUS, July 7, 2025:
Some of the democracy-building experts President Donald Trump fired this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department are now reapplying the skills and knowledge they built up over decades to undermine Trump’s power.
For years, these officials were stationed across the globe actively supporting opposition movements in autocratic nations. Now they’ve got time, a network of former colleagues and a growing sense of moral indignation.
“Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We’ve become one,” said a currently employed federal official, who spoke to NOTUS on condition of anonymity. “They were so quick to disband AID, the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions. But they’ve done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime.”
The former officials tell NOTUS they’re holding workshops on a tactic called “noncooperation.” They’re building a network of government workers willing to engage in even minor acts of rebellion in the office. And they’re planting the seeds of what they hope could become a nationwide general strike.
Some in the informal network of Trump opponents are sharing an old CIA pamphlet with allies who still work in the government: It’s called “Simple Sabotage.”
“Widespread practice of simple sabotage will harass and demoralize enemy administrators and police,” it says. “The saboteur may have to reverse his thinking… where he formerly thought of keeping his tools sharp, he should now let them grow dull; surfaces that formerly were lubricated now should be sanded; normally diligent, he should now be lazy and careless.”
The community is composed of diplomats and human rights activists who were once on the U.S. government payroll encouraging Latin American dissidents to fight dictators and supporting African independence movements. They were involved to varying degrees with an ultimately successful uprising in the Middle East.
Some have found post-government work in academia and nonprofits. Others are still looking for jobs. Several have begun moonlighting as strategic advisers to American activists, protest organizers and federal employees willing to engage in civil disobedience.
One group that has, until this story, remained under the radar but is starting to play a prominent role in this space is “DemocracyAID.” It has no website or formal legal entity — yet. But it’s already hosting invite-only workshops with federal employees who hear about them from friends, vetting each person before they’re allowed into a trusted circle and teaching them case studies, like the Danish underground insurgency against Nazi occupation. The lesson from Denmark is that what starts as office socializing can morph into trusted networks; seemingly uncoordinated work slowdowns transition into long lunch breaks that annoy the bosses as everyone goes home to “tend to their gardens.”
“The whole point of it is to start off slow. People are just taking coffee breaks together. And that’s what we’re encouraging them to do,” said Ro Tucci, who co-leads DemocracyAID.
Tucci was previously the director of the USAID Center for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance. Now she’s teaching these workshops on what she calls “Authoritarianism 101” and ways to resist it.
“Getting people to understand that it’s part of a process is the training,” she told NOTUS. “It feels silly. ‘Why are we going to get ice cream?’ You’re building up that muscle and that bravery, and you’re building up your numbers. Today it starts with four, but tomorrow it’s 10. We’re helping them understand that is the organizing, and that is the process to get to a massive strike.”
DemocracyAID is the brainchild of Danielle Reiff, another former USAID diplomat who retired from government work in late 2024. As Trump targeted her former agency this year, she started a group chat on the encrypted app Signal to “keep the community together.”
“We started to have really robust, good conversations, and we realized this was not going to be a quick incident. We really needed to start organizing for the longer haul,” she told NOTUS.
The focus quickly shifted from salvaging the foreign assistance infrastructure to redeploying inside the United States. Reiff and Tucci joined forces, held dozens of meetings, sketched out a general structure and split it up into working groups that concentrate on separate missions like communications and training. They now have 200 volunteers and an Instagram account, @friendsofUSAID, with over 88,000 followers. A recent post shared “5 ways to keep up the momentum” of last month’s “No Kings” protests.
Reiff said that some of the training sessions are “just letter writing: how to write op-eds to a local newspaper for a local story.”
“We’re democracy officers at the end of the day. We’re still in a strategic planning process. We’ve got a lot of different irons in the fire,” she told NOTUS.
Deputy White House press secretary Anna Kelly attacked the effort in a statement to NOTUS. “It is inherently undemocratic for unelected bureaucrats to undermine the duly elected President of the United States and the agenda he was given a mandate to implement,” she said.
The people taking part in these groups are already taking precautions: leaning on personal recommendations to vouch for newcomers, leveraging encrypted chats for communication and allowing participants to wear masks and remain anonymous to others who are present.
“For all of us who are conflict experts, everything is blinking bright red. We’re well beyond early-warning signs here in the U.S.,” said one person who spoke to NOTUS on condition of anonymity.
There are already signs that the Trump administration knows this kind of resistance is underway and is pushing to counter it. When David Richardson, the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, held his first all-hands meeting, he warned staffers that engaging in “obfuscation, delay, undermining” wouldn’t work.
“Don’t get in my way,” he said, according to CBS News. “If you’re one of those 20% of the people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not, because I will run right over you. I will achieve the president’s intent.”
At least Trump’s staff is aware of these subversives. Democracy, in spite of their declarations, is not their goal. They want a return to the good old Dem oligarchy days where they could dictate and influence government power to support their agenda.
When President Trump shut down USAID’s money laundering haven for terrorists, grifters, groomers, and perverts, the employees had fits and the Dems spewed rhetoric, death threats, and called for violence.
The FBI and DOJ needs to track down these seditious fuckstains, arrest them and charge them.