The Steady State Urges Republican
July 21, 2025 (reposted November 30, 2025)
To the Republican Members of the United States Senate:
I write on behalf of The Steady State, a nonpartisan organization of more than 300 former senior national security professionals who have collectively served every President of the United States–Republican and Democrat–over decades. Our members include former Ambassadors, CIA Chiefs of Station, Flag Officers, FBI Special Agents, Defense Department officials, Inspectors General, Oversight Officers, General Counsels, and senior Intelligence Analysts.
Many of us have spent our careers, observing, assessing, and countering authoritarian regimes, military juntas, and autocratic movements. We have advised presidents, briefed members of Congress, and overseen programs designed to strengthen democratic governance in fragile states. The perspective we bring is informed by firsthand experience watching democracies slide into autocracy—often gradually, and often at the hands of leaders who claimed to represent “the people” even as they hollowed out the institutions meant to protect them. We know the warning signs.
We never expected to confront these same warning signs at home.
A Dangerous Shift in the United States
President Donald Trump and his inner circle are now openly adopting methods we have seen abroad:
Politicization of security institutions: Career law enforcement officers, intelligence professionals, and diplomats are being removed, sidelined, and even subjected to farcical criminal “investigations,”– then replaced by individuals selected for personal loyalty rather than competence.
Demanding loyalty oaths and ideological purges: Senior officials are being forced to demonstrate fealty to President Trump personally, a fundamental violation of the nonpartisan ethos that underpins the U.S. national security enterprise.
Attacks on the rule of law: Judges, prosecutors, and lawyers face public vilification, selective investigations, and retaliatory measures for upholding lawful processes.
Weaponizing disinformation: Systematic campaigns to undermine trust in the media, the judiciary, and even the intelligence community mirror tactics we have observed in states like Russia, Hungary, and Turkey.
These are not abstract concerns. This is the very pattern of institutional capture and creeping authoritarianism that we have spent our careers countering overseas. Once a leader gains control of the organs of national security—intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomacy—the slide toward autocracy accelerates.
All of us have served under the oversight of the United States Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike. We have briefed, consulted, and testified before multiple Committees of the Senate–Intelligence, Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Judiciary and Appropriations–and Senate leadership. We have always regarded the Senate as a stabilizing institution—one that transcended partisanship when it came to matters of national security. Oversight, although sometimes painful, was welcome and, in our view, essential to the legitimacy of our institutions and the work we do, and protects the nation from the dangers posed by security elements we have seen abroad.
Even in periods of sharp political division, we trusted that senators of both parties would uphold their constitutional duty to act as a check on executive overreach. That trust is now in jeopardy.
For generations, we have been able to tell our foreign counterparts that America’s strength lies not in one president or one party, but in its enduring institutions and in leaders—especially in Congress—willing to defend our core principles, laws, and constitution. When those institutions are weakened, the consequences are not theoretical:
Our allies lose confidence in America’s reliability and independence.
Our adversaries are emboldened, seeing an opportunity to manipulate or outlast us.
Our national security agencies are weakened as experienced professionals leave in droves, and those who remain are pressured to serve political ends rather than the Constitution. It will become increasingly difficult to recruit new talent to staff these agencies or to retain the expertise we currently have.
A Respectful but Urgent Plea
We are not naïve. We recognize that partisanship is a fact of political life, and we are not asking you to abandon your party. What we are asking—respectfully but firmly—is that you take stock of where we are heading and the role you, as senators, play in this moment.
The United States Senate has long been described as the world’s greatest deliberative body. It has also been, at its best, a bulwark against the abuse of power. But that role depends on Senators being willing to say “no” to a president, even one of their own party, when the Constitution and the safety of the Republic are at stake.
You know better than most that our system of government was designed to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of one individual. That is the core of the separation of powers—and the essence of your constitutional oath.
History Will Remember This Moment
Every one of us who signs this letter has sworn an oath—often multiple times—to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Many of us have risked our lives for that oath. You each swore that same oath. We ask you now to reflect on the words of that oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Future generations will ask where each of us stood at this moment. You have the power to stand for the Constitution, for the rule of law, and for the national security institutions that have kept this nation safe and free for nearly 250 years.
We urge you: Please do not remain silent. Please do not look away. The Senate must act as the check and balance it was designed to be. And there a concrete steps that can, and should, be taken:
Hold hearings in the Committees of Jurisdiction, ask tough questions, demand real answers.
Embrace the history and legacy of the United States Senate, its authorities, responsibilities and prerogatives. Recall the “lions” of the Senate, from both parties: Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Robert C. Byrd, John McCain, Sam Ervin, Arthur Vandenberg, and the many others who preceded you.
Restore civility – effective oversight requires civility, and it is critical that pervasive crassness and childish viciousness of many in the Administration does not infect the U.S. Senate.
Respectfully,
Steven A. Cash
Executive Director
The Steady StateThe Steady State