April 22nd, 2025 Tracker Update

April 22nd 2025

Authoritarian Descent Tracker + Resistance Overview

Stage 1: Soft Authoritarianism — ✅ COMPLETE

  • ✅ Disregard of court orders (SCOTUS defied on deportations, Judge Xinis ignored)
  • ✅ Emergency powers without checks
  • ✅ Mass disinformation (DOGE data manipulation, conspiracy networks)
  • ✅ Journalist shadowbanning and targeting (e.g. CBS, NYT suppression, credential removal)
  • ✅ Legal residents deported without due process (CECOT cases, ICE abductions)
  • ✅ Retaliation against whistleblowers (NLRB case, threatening notes, drone surveillance)
  • ✅ Surveillance of private communication (ICE/Palantir, Starlink in gov buildings)

Status: Stage 1 is fully met and has escalated further.


Stage 2: Escalation and Consolidation — ✅ COMPLETE

  • ✅ Criminalization of protest (GOP town halls using force, mass protest suppression)
  • ✅ Military/police at borders and cities (troop redeployments, ICE raids)
  • ✅ Litmus tests and firings (Schedule F expansion, loyalty vetting, reclassification orders)
  • ✅ Financial surveillance (SSA/IRS data sharing, CMS used to find immigrants via Medicare)
  • ✅ Exit bans/travel blocks (customs monitoring, exit tracking)
  • ✅ DOJ politicization (targeting Letitia James, court manipulation)
  • ✅ Healthcare revocation (Clinical trials ended, Medicaid/SNAP targeting)
  • ✅ Clinic and federal agency access restrictions (NLRB data breaches, DOGE overreach)

Status: Consolidation is entrenched across government, healthcare, and data infrastructure.


Stage 3: Authoritarian Entrenchment — ✅ IN FINAL PHASE

  • ✅ Mass detentions (CECOT normalized, ICE operations expanded)
  • ✅ Border closures for dissidents (non-reentry, deportation of legal residents)
  • ✅ Labeling of dissenters as enemies (Letitia James, Harvard, and governors)
  • ✅ Biometric tracking & surveillance (Palantir systems, airline scans, Starlink access)
  • ✅ Asset freezing / retaliation (IRS weaponized, SSA freezes, SNAP threats)
  • ✅ State media behavior (Trump social disinfo, media intimidation)
  • ✅ Medical denial as control (Medicaid weaponized, CMS used for ICE targets)
  • ✅ Judicial nullification (Boasberg contempt findings, DOJ refusal to act)
  • ✅ Disappearances & extrajudicial transfers (e.g. Mr. Prada, undocumented locations)

Status: Entrenchment nearly complete. Judiciary erosion now visible.


🔹 Stage 4: Loyalty Consolidation — 🔴 NOW UNDERWAY

  • ✅ Elections reframed as loyalty tests
  • ✅ IRS and DOJ used against schools and state attorneys general
  • ✅ Governors coerced under federal threat (Maine, California)
  • ✅ Loyalty oaths or blacklisting enforced through hiring/promotion filters
  • ✅ Federal funding conditioned on ideological compliance (Harvard, Voice of America)
  • ✅ Cultural institutions targeted for ideological reshaping (Musk team probing National Gallery of Art)
  • ❌ Formal one-party rule not yet declared
  • ❌ National narrative not fully centralized, but rewriting underway

Status: Loyalty consolidation now visible in institutions. Expected to harden within weeks.


Resistance Tracker — ⚠️ FRAGILE

  • ✅ Sen. Van Hollen visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador
  • ✅ Appeals court upheld Judge Xinis’s ruling
  • ✅ NLRB whistleblower went public despite threats
  • ✅ Protests (~4M) occurred nationwide, ignored by major press
  • ✅ Harvard filed lawsuit defending First Amendment, medical research, and autonomy
  • ✅ 180+ universities issued joint condemnation of regime interference
  • ✅ Judge blocked dismantling of Voice of America
  • ✅ 4 House Democrats traveling to El Salvador in defiance of WH
  • 🟨 Conservative legal voices remain scattered but critical
  • ❌ Democratic leadership mostly silent or reactive
  • ❌ Major media under pressure; disinfo continues to spread
  • ❌ Civil disobedience and coordinated resistance remain limited

Status: Sparks of resistance persist but lack cohesion, institutional backing, and protection.


✨ Key Developments: April 22, 2025

  • Markets rebounded after sharp declines last week; gold remains elevated at $3500/oz
  • White House attempting to dismantle IRS direct-file tool; targeting tax independence
  • EPA regulation rollback expected to increase preventable deaths
  • Top '60 Minutes' producer resigns citing loss of editorial control
  • RFK Jr. pushing for autism registry tied to national ID
  • Missing detainee raises alarm: ICE admits immigrant “disappeared” after removal
  • Migrant children appearing in court without lawyers after DOJ defunds rep programs
  • SCOTUS appears poised to allow LGBTQ opt-outs in public schools
  • Pentagon chaos worsens: loyalty vetting, strip club meetings, personnel purges
  • DOGE data breach confirmed—manual deletion, Russian IP access, whistleblower threatened
  • DOGE building centralized mega-database (SSA, IRS, USCIS, state voting rolls)
  • Musk operatives now probing National Gallery of Art’s legal status
  • DOJ grants Musk-aligned staffers access to ECAS immigration records—highly sensitive, life-cycle data
  • White House seeks to strip Harvard of $2.2B+ in grants; Harvard sues to stop authoritarian overreach
  • Higher education leaders issue joint statement denouncing regime attacks on university autonomy
  • Pope Francis died yesterday at 88; final wave delivered at Easter mass
  • VA-wide loyalty initiative launched under EO 14202 to root out “anti-Christian bias,” enforcing Christian supremacy framework

Conclusion: Strategic erosion continues—legal rights, medical research, cultural autonomy, and press independence all under direct assault. The regime is testing compliance thresholds through forced disappearances, data abuse, religious purification mechanisms, and retaliatory funding seizures. Resistance grows in visibility, but power remains concentrated and unchecked.

Why Mr. Prada’s Disappearance Matters

The case of Ricardo Prada marks a chilling milestone: it’s not just a wrongful deportation or a defiance of court orders—it is the first confirmed disappearance of a person by the U.S. government, with no official record of where he was taken or what became of him.

Mr. Prada was legally in custody. He had loved ones. He was known. And yet he has now vanished without documentation—his name not listed among those rendered to CECOT, nor recorded as transferred to any facility. The government has confirmed he was removed from the U.S., but refuses to say to where.

This is different from exile. This is erasure.

When a regime begins to make people “disappear,” it signals a shift from overt authoritarianism to covert terror. It weaponizes uncertainty: families don’t know who will vanish next, courts are rendered powerless, and the record itself becomes unreliable. History, evidence, even identity—these can now be altered, deleted, or denied.

This is the moment where fear stops being symbolic and becomes a fact of life. The threat is no longer just losing rights, but losing existence in the eyes of the state.