107 Days

by Kamala Harris

What we the people must understand is that the dismantling of our democracy did not start with the 2024 election. The right-wing and religious nationalists have played the long game, working for decades to take over state houses, gerrymander districts, and dominate local government boards. Their think tanks like the Federalist Society created the blueprint for stacking the Supreme Court, while the Heritage Foundation created Project 2025. Their plans have been amplified by the rise of a right-wing media ecosystem built to operationalize their agenda through massive propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation. Trump was their vehicle, his road paved for him, years earlier, by a hot and pungent brew: Ronald Reagan’s celebrity, Newt Gingrich’s belligerent discourse, and Pat Buchanan’s nativism. Don’t be duped into thinking it’s all chaos. It may feel like chaos, but what we are witnessing is a high-velocity event, the swift implementation of an agenda that was written many decades ago. “This is how fascism begins,” warned Françoise Giroud, a journalist who served in the French Resistance. “It never says its name. It creeps, it floats. When it reaches the tips of people’s noses, they say: ‘Is this it? You think? Don’t exaggerate!’ And then one day it smacks them in the mouth, and it is too late to get rid of it.”