The Power of Clarity

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Parisa Vinzant
November 24, 2025

With the global trend of democratic backsliding particularly rapid in the United States, new tools are needed to identify dangerous authoritarian tactics as they occur in real time. Individual awareness and action are crucial since much of mainstream press in the US has been hollowed out by corporate interests and local and nonprofit news groups are struggling against the dismantling of knowledge infrastructure at all levels.

According to a November 2025 article by Dean Jackson and Samuel Woolley, we are facing a “complex and multidirectional” assault on “the infrastructure of knowledge.” This assault is being executed by “politicians and other powerful individuals and organizations enabled by technology companies” for the purpose of “instigating a dark age for science, transparency, and education.”

Why is this happening? From Ruha Benjamin’s recent Mozilla Festival 2025 keynote address, “Who owns the future?” she observed there is “a small sliver of humanity imposing their vision on the rest of us. A tech oligarchy who is desperate for us to believe that democracy is an outmoded software.” Benjamin said one way to counter this is by strengthening our critical and creative vision.

Yet additional resources are urgently needed. To the detriment of democracy, the current administration’s actions are largely succeeding to “capture official knowledge-producing institutions and the elimination of independent verification mechanisms.” Public administrators must consider the harmful effects of these actions on their ability to effectively, equitably, and ethically carry out their work because the endgame, according to agnotology scholars, may be “to corrode the processes and authorities that adjudicate truth.”

Against this backdrop, Timothy Snynder’s lessons on tyranny to “defend institutions” and “believe in truth” stand out because corruption in either undermines our collective freedom.

Significantly, a statement by the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) on November 17, 2025 warns that “the Trump administration’s trifecta of agency closures, mass firings and layoffs, and use of rescission authority to re-appropriate previously allocated spending creates a chaotic, disruptive, and uncertain work environment.” Further, ASPA identifies the executive branch’s re-prioritization of previously appropriated funds as upending “the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches and the established checks and balances on executive actions” thereby “placing at risk global health, development, humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping efforts without congressional consent.”

The stakes for our democracy are alarmingly high as authoritarianism continues to build momentum. It is important that we remain clear-eyed about this reality and prepare ourselves to face it unflinchingly. Of interest, global authoritarianism and democracy experts developed a framework called the Authoritarian Playbook to empower journalists but with practice, this tool could be used by the greater public. Specifically, the Playbook helps to discern authoritarian threats by analyzing symptomatic “events” through a framework or answering a series of questions.

As a micro-case study, let’s apply the Playbook to gain clarity if the Trump administration’s use of rescissions, and particularly the pocket rescission, meets any of the criteria of authoritarianism.

When analyzing an “event,” the first question of the Playbook is whether it fits into one of seven listed categories: scapegoating vulnerable communities; corrupting elections; stoking violence; politicizing independent institutions; spreading disinformation; aggrandizing executive power; and quashing dissent. In the case, it seems clear that they aggrandize executive power by expanding it beyond constitutional limits.

Next, the Playbook addresses the second question: “How significantly does this event deviate from modern precedent?” In this example, the deviations are significant as the manner of their use reveals a clear pattern of disregard for the constitutional limitations of the powers of the executive branch. In particular, the “pocket-rescission” apparently has been used to circumvent Congress in order to cancel $4.9 billion in funds it previously allocated. In fact, no administration in around 50 years has utilized a pocket rescission, a practice the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has called illegal. And yet, since the administration submitted the rescission request to Congress on August 28 close to the end of the fiscal year in September 2025 and the Supreme Court’s swift intervention in September 2025, the result was that “Trump effectively unilaterally canceled the funding.”

Then the third question to be answered from the Playbook: “With what frequency and degree is this happening?” President Trump has attempted rescissions several times, once unsuccessfully in his first term, and two so far successfully in his current term. Of these, the pocket rescission was condemned across the aisle. Prior to the pocket rescission, the GAO had found five examples of unlawful delay or withholdings of congressionally approved funds.

Last, the Playbook requires evaluating a multi-part question to determine if the “event” presents a systemic risk.

• Does this concentrate and consolidate power?” Yes, their strategic use of rescissions is concentrating and consolidating presidential power.
• “Is the actor acting alone? How are their allies reacting?” No, the administration is well supported by political allies in government, the judiciary, business, and media.
• “Is the system responding to constrain the actor?” No, the larger system has not effectively constrained presidential power.

The rescissions clearly demonstrate systemic risk and the likelihood of escalation. Arguments might reasonably be made that the current administration is also in violation of other Playbook categories but that goes beyond the scope of this piece.

We must not allow rising authoritarianism to go unchecked. Empowering ourselves with the tools needed to better identify and respond to authoritarianism can make a vital difference in the future of our democracy.

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Author: Parisa Vinzant, MPA, works as a private and public sector strategist. She provides coaching to ICMA members. She served as a technology/innovation commissioner in Long Beach, CA. Parisa applies an intersectional equity lens in her writing on topics such as technology, ethics, and democracy. Connect with her by email at [email protected] or on Bluesky @pvinzant.bsky.social. Signal contact by request.

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