In the fall of 2001, I was approaching my 30 year active duty mandatory retirement date. I had been serving as the Deputy of the Coast Guard’s Reserve & Training Directorate at Headquarters in Washington. My fifth floor office looked out across Ft McNair to the Potomac River and the Pentagon beyond. On the morning […]
By Mary Ellen Callahan What to Know About Cybersecurity Threats, Scams, and Infrastructure Risk in Elections In the United States, voter registration information and election results are secure. No cyberattack has ever changed a vote total in a U.S. election. Voting systems are not connected to the internet, paper receipts are common, and dedicated federal, […]
By Jenifer A.L. Smith September 11 began for me with a four-year-old, a favorite book, and an ordinary morning. Twenty-five years later, the question is whether we have forgotten lessons we learned that day—then, it was barriers between institutions. Now it is hollowing out the institutions themselves. It was a sunny September day. I had […]
There is more than one way to interfere with an election. You can redraw congressional districts, change the rules for mail ballots, demand new voter data from the states, or create enough uncertainty that voters and election officials no longer know which rules apply. As the 2026 midterms approach, all of these tools are in […]
Host John Sipher sits down with Fred Wellman, a West Point graduate, former Army Lieutenant Colonel, and current Democratic candidate for Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District. Wellman shares his journey from growing up in Kirkwood, Missouri, to flying scout helicopters in Desert Storm, serving three tours in Iraq, and later running a veterans-focused business, working with […]
Authors’ Names Withheld Photo By Scott Carter/Medium “When Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.” Sinclair Lewis, 1935 Authoritarianism rarely announces itself. It arrives incrementally—one norm broken, one institution weakened, one opponent demonized, one loyalist installed at a time. The pattern is now manifest in the United […]
The Steady State follows America’s cascade to authoritarianism. Reversing it begins with restoring what authoritarianism erodes: truth, expertise, due process, institutional independence, historical memory, public trust, and the active citizenship that makes democracy possible. What we have witnessed: The leader demands loyalty and independent expertise becomes disloyalty; institutions become targets; history becomes malleable; dissent becomes […]
Canadians can be extraordinarily gracious. But behind the courtesy is a country with formidable national pride, military history and strategic importance. Geography, history, economics and national security all point to the same conclusion: antagonizing Canada is not a display of American strength. It is an exercise in strategic stupidity. It is difficult to impossible to […]
PDF AVAILABLE HERE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 4, 2026 Washington, D.C. — The Steady State, a nonpartisan organization of more than 430 former national security officials, today asked the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to investigate whether Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel violated the Hatch Act by appearing, under their […]