“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3)

When most of us hear the word “coup,” we picture tanks in the streets and soldiers at the capitol. Modern coups don’t start that way. They start with a story, repeated until it feels like fact. Then they wait for a crisis.

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In the final weeks before the midterms, researcher Jennica Pounds, known online as DataRepublican, began releasing what she describes as thousands of transcripts and hundreds of recordings. They come from inside a network of former USAID democracy officials, retired national-security leaders, protest organizers, and constitutional “reform” activists. Laid beside the public record, they reveal a plan: provoke a federal crisis, declare the government illegitimate, and rewrite the Constitution.

That is why IFA has published its newest Special Report, The Red Line. Here are the top lines of what every intercessor needs to know.

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The playbook came home

For decades, USAID and allied agencies ran “democracy” programs overseas. In Serbia in 2000, a U.S.-funded youth movement helped topple Slobodan Milošević. The method was then exported to Georgia, Ukraine, and beyond. The playbook has five moves: grade a government as “backsliding,” fund and train activists, mobilize protest around an election, induce defections among police and soldiers, and transfer legitimacy to the opposition.

When USAID closed in 2025, the people who did that work didn’t retire. They turned their skills toward home. In July 2025, NOTUS reported that fired USAID and State Department officials were running “noncooperation” workshops for federal workers. In a recorded March 2026 Zoom call, former USAID official Danielle Reiff spoke of a coming “crisis of legitimacy.” The playbook didn’t change. Only the target did. Now it is us.

Five stages and a trap

According to the released materials, the strategy climbs in five stages. First, take the House in November. Second, put activists in constant confrontation with the administration. Third, wait for the President to invoke the Insurrection Act. Fourth, have governors refuse federal troops while Washington is declared illegitimate. Fifth, roll out a replacement government already designed by a group called Renew to Thrive.

Stage three is a trap built in advance. If the President does nothing, order collapses and chaos advances the plan. If he acts lawfully, he is branded “illegitimate.” Either way, the crisis moves forward. Remember that fifteen presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act, including Eisenhower at Little Rock. Lawful authority is being recast, ahead of time, as tyranny.

Who decides what is “illegitimate”?

On May 18, 2026, activist Paul Zeitz published an open letter to the nation’s governors setting out four “red lines.” One of them is the use of the Insurrection Act, which is federal law. The criteria in the October 20 release go further. As DataRepublican reads them, the government is illegitimate if it investigates election fraud, delays seating a disputed member of Congress, or acts against activist judges. Every one of those is something a lawful government is permitted to do.

On an August 13 call, the group discussed an options memo for governors. One former State Department official pitched a “Third Continental Congress” convened by governors. No one on that call holds elected office. Yet they wrote the triggers and the governors’ playbook before a single vote was cast.

Meanwhile, retired military leaders are rehearsing. National Security Leaders for America, led by Rear Adm. Mike Smith (Ret.), circulated a toolkit called “Managing Military Intervention in the Midterms.” Their own slide concedes that troops in their scenarios “would, at first, appear to be acting under lawful orders.” They are preparing to resist orders they admit may be lawful.

The groundwork is being laid in plain sight. Here in Washington, Free DC prepared a contingency for June’s primary: intersection blockades, a march on the Capitol, and “no work, no school, no shopping” if results were contested. Its leaders pledged to “enforce our election results.”

The endgame is in writing

This part needs no leak. In June 2026, the Democratic Socialists of America, about 120,000 members strong, adopted an official program pledging to “draft a new constitution.” It would abolish the Senate and the Electoral College. It would make the President and the Supreme Court answer to a single legislature. Article V makes such changes nearly impossible through lawful amendment. That is exactly why the movement needs a moment when the government can be declared illegitimate.

The battle behind the battle

It would be easy to see all this as a fight between two parties. It isn’t. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness” (Ephesians 6:12).

Marxism has always been a counterfeit religion. It puts the state where God belongs. Our founders understood that man is fallen and self-serving, so they divided power and placed it under God. As James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Remove those restraints, hand fallen men unchecked power, and history tells us where it leads.

What we do now

This is not a moment for fear. It is a moment for prayer and action.

Pray daily, by name, for the President, his national-security team, governors, the Guard, and election officials. Pray that every hidden plan is exposed (Luke 12:2) and that governors refuse any part in a pre-scripted rupture.

Act. Verify before you share. Ask your governor’s office whether it will uphold federal law in a crisis. Call your members of Congress at 202-224-3121 and ask whether oversight committees are examining organized “noncooperation.” Then vote on November 3.

The Red Line lays all of this out in full, across 31 pages. Every claim is labeled DOCUMENTED (published record) or RELEASED (researchers’ files), with sources and a strategic prayer guide for each section. Read it, share it, and pray it at IFApray.org.

“The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

What are you doing about this issue? Share your scriptures and prayers in the comments below.

Kris Kubal is IFA’s Chief Program Officer. Photo Credit: zpagistock via Getty Images.