Dear friends

A year ago today, I published my first Substack post.

I had told none of my friends or family that I was writing here, as I wanted to see if my thoughts could stand on their own merit. My first six subscribers were all people I had met here on the platform, and only one of them opened that first email. It was a very quiet, very honest beginning.

What followed was a shift that I don’t think any of us could have imagined.

From a Quiet Beginning to a Global Conversation

Only a month later, over two thousand three hundred of you had subscribed. Two months after that, we reached some huge milestones together: a bestseller, number 1 on the Philosophy chart, and number 8 on the new bestsellers list — all on the same day! What began with a single open email had grown into a community spanning all 50 U.S. states and over 70 countries worldwide. To know that these words are reaching across so many borders confirms how many of us are searching for the same depth and clarity in a world that is becoming increasingly fractured.

Twelve months later, the 101 posts I have shared here have been read 485,000 times. To see the way you have shown up and responded to these words has been a deeply humbling experience for me. In the times when things felt most difficult, it was your presence — and the knowledge that these conversations mattered to you — that kept me going each day.

Throughout these past twelve months, providing work that supports you has been my primary focus. I believe it’s a divine appointment. Two decades ago, I had a precognition that the lessons I had been taught in Zimbabwe would one day be required to guide others through a dystopian season — one that would fall especially heavily upon both the United States and the United Kingdom. In January, Spirit guided me to set up a Substack and find my way around; then in March — very suddenly — to start writing on matters I had little apparent knowledge of.

In the months before I began writing here, I had been prescribed double the maxiumum recommended daily dose of two types of antihistamines and a mast cell stabiliser. The trade-off was stark. While the medication eased my physical symptoms, (I have Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, a chronic neuro-immunological condition), it left me cognitively and emotionally hollowed out. I decided to stop taking them so that I could write. I felt I could endure the physical toll — the burning blisters from my mouth to my small intestine, the painful joints and loss of mobility in my hands, and latterly, the sense that my skin is aflame — far more readily than I could the mental incapacity. I had a job to do, a task I had been waiting to carry out for over twenty years, so I needed clarity far more than I needed comfort. Throughout this past year, living with these and other symptoms has simply been part of my commitment to the work here.

I wrote “Three Fast Acting Tools to Help You Tackle Overwhelm” just two days after my partner was airlifted to the critical care unit following a motorbike accident. When an allergic reaction to sunlight meant I could not go outside, I spent my family holiday researching and writing for this space. I even discharged myself from an emergency hospital admission specifically so I could deliver “The Complete Guide to No Kings Protest Readiness and Safety” to you on time. Most difficult of all, I kept my promise to support you through the seven days before and after the big No Kings protest in October, despite my father-in-law being in intensive care following a freak accident from which he did not recover.

I share this because I want you to know my deep care for this community — and that my work here has been a sincere act of service that I have prioritised above all else for the last year. But I have been sitting with a difficult reality for some months now, trying to find the right way forward.

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Facing the Biological Threshold

We often talk about writing as a craft or a discipline, but lately, I have found that while I can still manage to produce work, doing so now carries a cognitive and energetic cost that has become too heavy for me to carry right now. I wanted to share what is happening, not because I’m looking for pity, but because I want you to understand why I need to make this choice.

A few weeks ago, I spent ten days deeply immersed in researching and writing this Spirit-guided piece.

As is most often the case here, I had no prior inkling of where the work was heading until the prompting came to begin the research. I was proud of my finished work and felt I had contributed something meaningful. But when I went back to look at it just a week later, I couldn’t remember it. I didn’t just forget the phrasing; I had no recollection of the research, the logic, or the act of writing it. In fact, when I read elsewhere of what had happened in Fulton County, I wondered how that had got past me. To look at your own work and see the output of a complete stranger is a disconcerting experience. This wasn’t the first time, and it’s been happening more and more frequently.

This isn’t a matter of me being tired or having a busy mind. Often, when I try to parse a sentence or process the sounds in a room, it feels as though I am labouring against a weight that won’t shift. It’s why sometimes you don’t get a response from me to your comments, though I deeply value your input. The simple act of following conversations or moving through different topics is becoming an exhaustive labour that leaves me physically and mentally spent.

We have discovered from recent tests that there is a specific biological reason for this. My system is dealing with extensive exposure to Ochratoxin A, a mold toxin that effectively targets the kidneys, the brain, and the way our cells produce energy. Our bodies rely on a series of complex internal processes to keep us functioning — things like the Krebs cycle, which is the engine that turns our food into the energy our cells need to survive. In my case, that engine has essentially stalled. My mitochondria, the tiny powerhouses that keep every part of us running, are in a state of dysfunction.

Because our brains are the most energy-demanding part of us, they are the first to suffer when the power fails. On top of this, this toxin has depleted the building blocks my body needs to create the chemical precursors that allow our nerves to communicate and our minds to focus. Without them, the chemical pathways that support my memory and language have become increasingly strained and unreliable — even though, remarkably, I still feel internally calm and at ease.

I am sharing this level of detail because I want you to understand why this isn’t something I can just “push through”. In truth, those test results came through in October, and I had been trying to push through even before then. But to continue demanding this level of cognitive output while in this state will only cause further harm. I have reached a threshold where, without immediate and focused intervention, these shifts risk becoming permanent, making long-term neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease a genuine concern.

A new treatment protocol has been waiting for me for the past three months; I need to start it. Alongside this, I must return to the tender but time-consuming work of restructuring my diet to eat only the foods that support me — freshly bought, and prepared from scratch at home. When you live 12 miles from the freshest produce, this is a task in itself. I need to prepare my own herbal supports, and reintegrate the movement and meditation that fell by the wayside while I was anchored to my desk. In short, the only way to recover the parts of myself I am losing is to turn my full attention to the deep, immersive work of detoxification and repair.

This means I need to take a proper step back from regular writing here on Substack. I need to move into a period of quiet so that my body can begin to clear these toxins and rebuild the chemical foundations I need to function.

But please understand that despite the weight of this, I am not fearful about my future. And nor should you be about yours.

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The Three Fleeces

My whole life is a Spirit-guided project. Last year, I laid not one, but three “fleeces” before God.1 If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, it’s like setting a very specific, tangible test for Spirit or the universe to meet, a way of asking for an external, observable confirmation when our own intuition or reasoning has reached its limit. It is essentially an agreement with the Divine that says: “If this specific thing happens, I will take it as my sign to move forward.” I used it because I wanted to be sure that my understanding of this direction was the right one, especially as the path felt much larger than my capacity to handle.

If this work is indeed a divinely appointed role, then firstly, I needed to understand exactly what is happening under Trump’s leadership. I wanted the specifics about where we’re headed, and to truly understand — at both a spiritual and practical level — what is behind it. This was why I had previously begun the work of analysing Executive Orders, though the cognitive impact of that daily research was ultimately why I stepped away. But on the eve of the Winter Solstice, out of nowhere, all of the pieces of the puzzle finally came together.

It is a complex picture, and I will need space to work through it slowly, building it out so that I can eventually share it with you. There is much I need to unpack: why Trump will stop at nothng to win the upcoming midterms and thefuller mechanics of how he plans to do it; the specific blueprints for silencing dissent both within the US and abroad, and why he will likely get away with it; and the reality of what he truly means by “Making America Great”. Most importantly, I need to show you how the legal infrastructure that makes this all possible has been quietly hiding in plain sight for over twenty year — the duration of time I have been waiting to do this work. And I will share it — piecemeal, if I have to.

The second fleece was that if this is indeed my “sacred contract”, then Spirit would need to do something about giving me the capacity to continue. It has been apparent to me for decades just how thin my capacity is, but by Christmas — when I found myself celebrating simply being able to spend the day “upright” — it was clear I was finally at my limit.

Spirit then guided me to a chiropractor who practiced a neurological approach — one oriented to how the nervous system controls the body, rather than the structural, “manipulative” approach I had always come to expect. To say I was sceptical is an understatement: when he told me I might need twelve weeks of treatment before I saw any difference at all, I responded that I’d give him four sessions. To my absolute amazement, at my very first session, he applied gentle pressure to two points on my neck, and my left knee — which has been “locked” and unable to fully extend since a bilateral knee injury four years ago caused me to have been assessed as disabled — unlocked. While the unlocking has not yet been permanent, the steady progress I experience with each treatment feels like a quiet, physical confirmation that I am moving in the right direction.

Alongside this, I was Spirit-guided to suggest my diagnosis to my doctor, which was then confirmed. I was Spirit-guided to send those tests to the U.S. in October, and to request the pharmaceuticals to help when the results came back positive. And I was Spirit-guided to create a diet and lifestyle protocol when regional healthcare experts admitted they do not know how to support me. This all provides me with a grounded sense of hope that my neuro-immunological condition might become manageable — or even, perhaps, find resolution — as I follow the healing path Spirit has set before me.

Finally, there is a third fleece: the need to be financially self-sufficient to continue this work. Although my commitment here has been full-time, my income from Substack has been a trickle. I am so deeply grateful to every single person who has supported the work financially over the past twelve months. Your generosity has been a direct support to everyone who reads this publication, as it has helped me to buy the equipment I’ve needed to keep the publication going. But it does not provide me with care. It does not help me buy the supplements, tests, or treatments I need to physically continue this work forward.

There is a spiritual law that everything of value comes at a price. I have honoured that law by offering this labour freely while living on government benefits, making sacrifices and trusting Spirit to bridge the shortfall. It is a beautiful way to live, though a precarious one, especially with a system already at its limit: when the provision remains a trickle, the uncertainty itself becomes a direct stressor. While my own sacrifice has been the price of building this mission, a community cannot truly benefit from a map of provision if they do not also participate in the law of reciprocity. Currently, the cost of this “free” resource is being carried almost entirely by the writer’s own physical stability, and that is unsustainable.

I am profoundly conflicted about the prospect of paywalls — restricting Spirit-guided work sits heavily with me. However, the reality is that for this work to survive what lies ahead, it must be on a firmer footing. This is the part of the map we must build together: the foundation must shift from the writer’s burden to a community’s shared investment. I am trusting Spirit to show us how we will ensure the viability of this work together, so that the resources are there for us all as we face what lies ahead.

Anchored Hope

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Anchored Hope for the Road Ahead

Taking this step back is the necessary act of putting on my own oxygen mask so that I can eventually return to helping you with yours. To continue with a regular posting schedule right now would be to ignore the clear physical boundaries my system has set, and I feel sure you understand why I must honour those limits. But while the consistent rhythm of this space will pause, I will not be gone completely. When Spirit provides the work and the capacity to share it, I will write — though it will be a quieter exception, given the restorative work I need to focus on right now.

We have built something here that goes far deeper than a regular posting schedule, and that shared sense of purpose remains even when the house goes quiet for a season. I am telling you this so you understand that despite how things appear — in the U.S., as well as in my body — I am not afraid of what’s happening now, nor of what’s around the corner. I know that Spirit is completely in control.

It gives me an anchored sense of hope to realise that Spirit saw this season coming long before we did, and I trust it offers you that same steadiness. The tools I was provided with more than twenty years ago were forged specifically for this time. If the map was drawn so long ago, then we should trust that the provision for the journey is already in place

With your leave, I hope to continue with my Tuesday posts until the end of the month, and then I shall return to this space to continue our journey together at the appointed times.

Kairos.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2025

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Dear friends

On Friday I wrote that the appointment of Kristi Noem as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas signalled a step up, not a step back. Since then, I have been stunned by the degree to which the mainstream media and the independent journalists here on Substack have simply repeated the statement that Noem has been "fired", “dismissed”, “ousted”.

The media has latched onto these terms simply because Noem was recently questioned at a congressional hearing. In their rush to confirm a narrative of disgrace, they have taken two plus two and made five. If we look at Trump’s own words on Truth Social, he never even used the word “fired” — he said she was being “moved”.

The world is reacting to a dismissal that has not actually happened, while the administration is quite openly repositioning its most loyal enforcer. Here is what everyone else is missing.

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The Nature of the Appointment: Authority and Autonomy

When a Cabinet Secretary is moved, the usual assumption is that they have fallen from grace. However, the specific mechanics of Kristi Noem’s shift from the Department of Homeland Security to her new role as Special Envoy suggest something quite different. This transition moves her from a position tethered by domestic bureaucracy to one that operates almost entirely within the orbit of the President.

The ‘At Pleasure’ Mandate

A Cabinet role is, by its nature, a heavy and often slow-moving piece of machinery. It is subject to intense Congressional oversight, constant budget hearings, and the friction of a massive federal workforce. By contrast, a Special Envoy is a direct extension of the Executive. Noem now serves at the sole pleasure of the President. This change effectively bypasses the traditional checks and balances that define a Secretary’s life. She is no longer required to justify her daily operations to a committee; she reports to the Oval Office. This shift is less about a loss of status and more about a gain in agility. It allows her to move through the Americas as a personal representative of the President, unburdened by the administrative weight of the DHS.

The 2026 NDAA Signing Statement

The long-term nature of this appointment is hidden in the fine print of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. When the President signed this legislation, he included a specific statement regarding the personnel provisions. He indicated that certain limits placed on the tenure and authority of special envoys would be treated as advisory rather than binding. By citing his constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs, the President has essentially insulated Noem from the legislative ‘expiry dates’ that usually apply to such roles. This suggests that her appointment is not a temporary fix or a face-saving exit, but a permanent fixture of a long-term regional strategy.

Constitutional Prerogative

The administration is clearly leaning on its broad powers over foreign policy to keep Noem as a central, if less public, instrument of its agenda. By framing her work as essential to national security and international relations, they have created a protective shield around her new office. In this capacity, she is shielded from the kind of domestic accountability that saw her face criticism over department spending or agency conduct. Instead, she has become an unaccountable envoy for the ‘Trump Corollary’ — a role that grants her the freedom to enforce American interests across the hemisphere with a degree of autonomy that her previous office simply could not provide.

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The Discrepancy in Official Documentation

If we were witnessing a genuine sacking, the paper trail would follow a well-trodden path of institutional distance. Usually, when a high-ranking official is forced out, the Department of Homeland Security issues a perfunctory notice of resignation or a formal letter of dismissal. This is the standard procedure for managing the optics of a failure — a clean break that signals the individual no longer speaks for the administration.

The Absence of a Resignation

In the cases of James Comey or Kirstjen Nielsen, the record was clear. There was a letter, a date, and a definitive end to their authority within the department. With Kristi Noem, this protocol has been entirely abandoned. As of 5 March 2026, the DHS has posted no dismissal letter and no formal notice of resignation. This absence is not a clerical oversight; it is a signal that the relationship between Noem and the President remains fundamentally intact. If the administration wanted to punish her for the controversies surrounding Federal agents or the advertising budget, they would have used the machinery of the department to do so publicly.

The Five-Page Commendation

Instead of a severance notice, the administration published a five-page commendation of her tenure. This document does not read like a farewell to a disgraced subordinate. Rather, it reads like a high-level diplomatic credential — a formal recommendation to foreign powers of Noem’s suitability for her new role. It highlights her loyalty and her adherence to the “America First” doctrine, essentially providing her with a gold-standard reference as she begins her work with leaders like Javier Milei and Nayib Bukele.

Institutional Continuity

This lack of a formal break suggests that the administration is not distancing itself from Noem’s record at DHS, but is instead using it as a foundation. By framing her exit as a successful completion of her domestic duties, the President has rebranded her as a proven enforcer ready for the international stage. This is institutional continuity by design. It ensures that when she arrives at summits or security briefings in Latin America, she does so not as a former Secretary who was “fired”, but as a trusted lieutenant who has been hand-picked for a more critical mission.

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The Shield of the Americas: A Prepared Leadership

The media narrative surrounding the “Shield of the Americas” summit in Miami has been notably detached from the official record. Several outlets, including Politico, reported that Noem attended the event without speaking - a detail that reinforces the idea of a disgraced official lurking in the shadows. This is factually incorrect. According to the State Department’s own releases, Noem was a lead participant in the working lunch alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Far from being a sidelined observer, she was positioned at the very heart of the proceedings.

Premeditated Diplomacy

The timing of her removal from the Department of Homeland Security - just one day before this major summit - suggests a choreographed transition rather than a sudden sacking. Looking back at her schedule throughout 2025, it becomes clear that Noem has been laying the groundwork for this regional envoy role for nearly a year. This was not a move made in haste to cover up domestic scandals; it was the final step in a long-term strategic pivot.

In July 2025, Noem travelled to Argentina to meet with President Javier Milei and other senior leaders. This was followed by high-level consultations in Chile with Security Minister Luis Cordero and Justice Minister Jaime Gajardo. Even earlier, in March 2025, she conducted a high-profile visit to El Salvador to meet with President Nayib Bukele. These were not the standard international trips of a domestic security chief. They were the actions of a regional architect establishing personal ties with the very “pro-Washington” leaders who now form the core of the new security bloc.

Strategic Foundation

The sheer volume of this international “pre-work” indicates that the administration had already decided Noem’s true value lay in the Western Hemisphere. By the time the Miami summit began, Noem had already secured the trust of the key players. She arrived in Florida not as a newcomer looking for a job, but as the established point of contact for a new era of American intervention.

When we look at these events in sequence, the “firing” narrative collapses. The administration did not wait for a scandal to find her a new home; they spent a year grooming her for a specific, high-stakes mission. Her removal from the DHS was simply the necessary removal of her domestic “L-plates”, granting her the freedom to lead a project that has likely been the primary focus since early 2025.

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The Envoy as the Architect of the ‘Trump Corollary’

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place during the working lunch in Miami. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, did not merely introduce Kristi Noem as a colleague; he presented her as the executive engine of the entire regional project. His statement was unambiguous: he confirmed that the President had appointed her as the Special Envoy dedicated specifically to this relationship.

He has appointed Secretary Noem as the special envoy dedicated to this relationship. And you will see a lot of her; she’ll be very involved with each of you at a personal level, and on a daily and weekly and monthly level, to ensure that what we talk about here today and the work we do together continues on, and we can build upon that.

So, I want to turn it over to our envoy, who will be doing this, and she’ll be running our program.

This is not the language used for someone being moved into a ceremonial or “face-saving” role. It is the language used for a project manager with a direct mandate. Rubio explicitly stated that Noem would be “running our program” to ensure that the work started at the summit continues. This places her at the very centre of what is being called the “Donroe Doctrine” — a modern, more assertive reinterpretation of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

Bypassing the Bureaucracy

By moving from the Department of Homeland Security into this envoy role, Noem has been liberated from the domestic friction of her former office. She is no longer responsible for managing the sprawling TSA or FEMA; instead, she is the primary interlocutor for a “minilateral” group of nations. Her role is to execute the administration’s most ambitious foreign policy goals: the “rip and replace” of Chinese technology, the establishment of “secure ports,” and, most crucially, the dismantling of cartels. Because she reports directly to the President, she can act with a speed and secrecy that a Cabinet Secretary simply cannot maintain.

The Enforcer of the New Doctrine

The “Trump Corollary” asserts that the United States has a right to intervene in the Western Hemisphere to protect its security and resources. Noem is now the face of that assertion. When the administration labels fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction or designates cartels as foreign terrorists, Noem will be the one who will walk into the offices of presidents in Bogota, Mexico City, or San Salvador to deliver the terms. She is the enforcer of a strategy that treats the fight against drugs as a legal justification for political and military intervention.

Where This Leads

The trajectory is clear. Noem is being positioned as a shadow Secretary of State for the Americas. While Rubio handles the global stage, Noem is the specialist focused entirely on consolidating a ‘pro-Washington’ bloc. This role is likely to see her coordinating everything from military special operations to the seizure of foreign assets.

And while the strategy begins with these regional alliances, the 2026 National Security Strategy indicates that the administration’s ambitions spread far wider. This explains Trump’s pressure for Canada to be absorbed as the fifty-first state and the renewed, aggressive pursuit of Greenland. If the President secures a victory in the 2026 midterm elections, there is likely to be no domestic check left to stop him. This is the mechanism by which he plans for the US to achieve total Western Hemisphere domination — and Kristi Noem has been positioned as one of its primary agents.

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The Hemispheric Blueprint: Exporting the DHS Model

The move of Kristi Noem from the Department of Homeland Security is the clearest signal yet that the administration intends to treat the entire Western Hemisphere — including Greenland, the North American Arctic, and the Atlantic approaches to West Africa and Europe — as a single, integrated security zone. Noem is not being sidelined; she is being tasked with exporting the domestic security infrastructure she spent the last year building.

The Donroe Doctrine in Action

This is the practical application of the Donroe Doctrine. By framing the Western Hemisphere as a space that must be controlled “politically, economically, commercially, and militarily,” the administration is asserting a right to intervene wherever its interests are at stake. Noem’s mandate is to roll out the same tactics among foreign governments that she implemented at home.

This means we should expect to see:

• The expansion of the “rip and replace” policy to remove non-American technology from every corner of the hemisphere.

• The implementation of American-led surveillance and “secure port” protocols that turn sovereign nations into an outer perimeter of the United States.

• The use of the “weapon of mass destruction” label for fentanyl to justify military strikes on foreign soil, exactly as the DHS has used emergency declarations to bypass domestic norms.

Continuity of Strategy

While Noem moves onto this international stage, Markwayne Mullin’s arrival at the DHS will ensure that the domestic side of the machine remains in motion. There is likely to be no shift in policy because the administration believes the “Noem model” is the gold standard. Mullin will continue to run the machinery she built, while Noem ensures that the rest of the hemisphere — from the Arctic to the Atlantic — falls into line.

Noem’s move is not a change of heart by the President; it is a scaling of his ambitions. By moving Noem into this role, he has created a shadow authority that can act with the speed and secrecy of an envoy, unburdened by the oversight of the American legislature. She is the lead representative for a strategy that treats the entire hemisphere as a protected American possession.

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The Importance of the Primary Source

The most troubling aspect of this story is perhaps not the reshuffling of a Cabinet official, but the ease with which the narrative of a “firing” was accepted. When Trump uses the word “moved” on Truth Social, and the Department of Homeland Security issues a five-page commendation instead of a resignation letter, the evidence is not hidden. It is simply being ignored in favour of a more sensational story.

If we rely on the interpretations of others — even those who claim to be independent — we risk missing the actual mechanics of how we are being governed. The details of Noem’s new role are tucked away in lunch schedules, diplomatic itineraries, and the fine print of signing statements like the 2026 NDAA.

If we do not commit to checking these primary sources ourselves, we will continue to be surprised by events, some of which have been clearly signalled months in advance.

The evidence suggests that Noem has been granted a broader, more flexible mandate than she ever held as a Cabinet Secretary. She has been positioned as the architect of a hemispheric reset, and her new role confirms that the administration views its domestic security policies as a blueprint for Western Hemispheric dominance. The fact that so many are willing to accept a story at face value suggests we are looking in the entirely wrong direction. To understand what’s happening in the world around us, we have to stop reading the headlines and start reading the documents.

Kristi Noem hasn’t been ousted; she has been unleashed. And if we’re waiting for a dismissal letter, we’re the ones being played.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

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Dear friends

Today the media is full of reports that Kristi Noem has been fired. While the news focuses on her perceived disgraces, I believe the reality is that Donald Trump is rewarding her for her evident loyalty. I have set aside my planned post for today because this move is far from a simple dismissal.

On 5 March 2026, Trump removed Noem from her position as the Secretary of Homeland Security. Senator Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma has been chosen to take over the role on 31 March 2026. The events that have been used to justify her removal are many, including the deaths of two citizens at the hands of Federal agents and the controversial use of $220 million in government funds for advertisements.

Noem was giving a speech to police officers when the news of her firing was shared on social media. She later wrote a message online to thank Trump for her new role as “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas”. This essay explains why Noem’s move is actually a promotion.

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The “Shield of the Americas” Summit

The “Shield of the Americas” summit is a major diplomatic event scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, 7 March 2026. It will be held at the Trump National Doral resort in Miami, Florida. The summit is intended to formalise a new security and economic bloc — a group of countries that work together — composed of nations that are closely aligned with the “America First” agenda of the United States.

Attendees: The summit focuses on what the administration calls "pro-Washington" leaders.

Confirmed attendees include Javier Milei of Argentina, Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador. Other leaders expected to attend are José Raúl Mulino of Panama, Santiago Peña of Paraguay, and Rodrigo Chaves of Costa Rica. Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic, José Antonio Kast who is the President-elect of Chile, and Rodrigo Paz of Bolivia will also be there. The list is completed by Nasry Asfura of Honduras, Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana, and Kamla Persad-Bissessar who is the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.

Leaders from the three most populous nations in Latin America — Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia — are not expected to participate.

The summit agenda: The primary goal of the summit is to establish a minilateral group, a small and focused alliance of nations who can act quickly on United States priorities.

One key topic is the administration’s plan to provide financing for ports, energy grids, and highways. This is intended to reduce the influence of Chinese investment in the region. A "rip and replace" policy will be discussed to remove Chinese-made telecommunications equipment (such as Huawei) and replace it with technology from the United States.

The group may also establish “secure port” certifications and common rules for trade. These measures are designed to protect the production of medicine, semiconductors, and critical minerals. Furthermore, the United States will encourage its partners to share information regarding the activities of Russia, Iran, and China in the Americas.

The focus of this essay is the plan for drug enforcement — an area where Kristi Noem will now feature. In her new role as Special Envoy, she will focus on a “big agreement” regarding drug enforcement, working closely with Rubio and Hegseth to dismantle drug cartels across the entire Western hemisphere.

This role is likely to place Noem at the centre of a massive international security project that bypasses the domestic bureaucracy of her former department.

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Counter-narcotics as a cover for regime change

In recent months, the American government has changed how it interacts with its neighbours in the Americas. Instead of using traditional diplomacy, it is now using the fight against drugs as an excuse to intervene in the politics of other nations. The 2026 National Defense Strategy now treats drug trafficking as a direct attack on the United States, even labelling fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction — a term normally reserved for nuclear or chemical weapons. Using it in this context is intended to create a justification for the American military to operate in the Americas just as they once did in the Middle East.

This strategy relies on specific legal labels to bypass international standards. By designating criminal groups and foreign leaders as members of Foreign Terrorist Organisations, the American government claims it has the right to use military force against them. The administration uses this framing to act without the permission of the United Nations or other international bodies. It also uses these designations as a reason to seize money and property belonging to these leaders. While the official story is about stopping drugs, the actual intention is for the United States to control who runs these countries.

Venezuela

In January 2026, the United States launched a military mission in Venezuela. American special forces and intelligence officers entered the country and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration described this as a law enforcement action, charging Maduro with drug trafficking and narco-terrorism. By framing the capture as an arrest for a crime, the administration created a narrative intended to shield the action from being classified by the international community as an invasion or an act of war.

In Venezuela, the Trump administration has suggested it will run the country until a new government is formed that it likes. The aim of this intervention is to ensure that leaders in the region are friendly to American interests and willing to let American companies access their resources, such as oil. This was further highlighted when Donald Trump posted an image of himself to social media with the caption “Acting President of Venezuela” shortly after the operation.

The Trump administration is applying similar pressure to Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Canada. They are using the argument that these countries are either unable or unwilling to stop the drug trade to justify interfering in their internal affairs.

Colombia

In Colombia, the Trump administration has focused on President Gustavo Petro. In late 2025, the United States placed him and his family on a sanctions list, accusing him of being a leader of the drug trade — without providing evidence. This appears to be a deliberate attempt to weakens Petro’s political standing before the 2026 elections. The Trump administration is using the high levels of coca produced in Colombia as a reason to demand that Colombia changes its laws and allows the American military to operate there.

Mexico

In Mexico, the American government has changed how it labels criminal groups, having designated several drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organisations. They have also labelled fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. The Trump administration is using these labels as an excuse for the American military to plan strikes on Mexican soil. The goal of this pressure is to force the Mexican President, Claudia Sheinbaum, to follow American orders or risk seeing her country become a battlefield for American troops.

Cuba

The Trump administration does not label Cuba as a major producer of drugs in the same way it does with Colombia or Mexico. Instead, it uses a "narco-terrorism" narrative to link the Cuban government to the criminal charges it has brought against the leadership in Venezuela. The administration argues that by supporting the "narco-state" in Venezuela, Cuba is effectively a hostile regime, and part of a criminal network that threatens American safety.

Cuba depends on Venezuela for much of its oil. Since the American military now controls parts of Venezuela, the United States has cut off these oil shipments. The American government is combining this economic pressure with the narco-terrorism narrative to push regime change in Cuba, without admitting it is a political intervention. They have told Cuban leaders to make a deal or face consequences, which many believe refers to a military operation.

Canada

The American government is applying similar pressure to Canada by framing the northern border as a major security threat. In 2025, Trump declared a national emergency and claimed that Canada was failing to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States. To “punish” Canada, the American government has imposed high tariffs on Canadian goods that started at twenty-five percent and have since increased to thirty-five percent.

By labelling fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, the Trump administration has created a pretext to use military resources to intervene at the border. It argues that Canadian laboratories are producing the drug and that the Canadian government is choosing not to stop them. This is used as a justification for the United States to take direct action inside Canada.

While Canada has traditionally been a close ally of the U.S., the Trump administration now treats it as a subordinate, having pressured Canada to increase military spending and to change how it sets the prices for medicines to favour American companies. Mark Carney, has tried to resist this, but the United States continues to use economic threats and sanctions to force a change in how Canada is governed. The ultimate goal is to ensure Canada remains a source of natural resources while ensuring its government follows American policies.

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The return of the Monroe Doctrine

To understand these current events, it is necessary to look back at the Monroe Doctrine, a policy first set out by President James Monroe in 1823. At that time, the United States declared that any attempt by European powers to interfere in the Americas would be seen as a hostile act. While it began as a way to protect newly independent nations from old empires, it has often been used by the United States to justify its own influence over its neighbours.

In late 2025, the administration introduced what it calls the “Trump Corollary”, a new policy that explicitly states that the United States will reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere to protect its own security and access to resources. By reviving this old doctrine, the American government is claiming a legal and moral right to act as the primary authority for all nations in North and South America.

Kristi Noem’s new title as the Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas — Western Hemisphere puts her in a position within this strategy. By moving from a cabinet office into this envoy role, Noem is being positioned as a primary official in the administration’s regional strategy. A Special Envoy often reports more directly to the President or the Secretary of State, which would allow her to focus exclusively on this international initiative. The stated goal of this project is to dismantle cartels, but it also provides a framework for the American government to ensure that the policies of its neighbours remain aligned with its own interests.

This change in role suggests that Noem will now be a lead representative for a strategy that uses the fight against drugs as a reason to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries. While the full extent of her new powers will be made clearer at the summit tomorrow, the administration is already presenting her as a central figure in this new “Donroe Doctrine”.

Despite the narrative being presented by the media — that we have seen the end of Kristi Noem’s influence — her new role suggests she will be a key figure in the events to come. We must pay much closer attention to what is unfolding here, as the consequences for the U.S.’s neighbours may be significant.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

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References:
The Associated Press: 8.09GMT Noem reacts to her ouster 8.13GMT What is ‘The Shield of the Americas?’ Reports on Trump’s announcement of Noem as the "Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas" and her Nashville speech mentioning the "big agreement" . https://apnews.com/live/kristi-noem-markwayne-mullin-trump#0000019c-bf9e-dc4b-adbe-ffbeee0e0000

L.A. Taco: This report details that Noem’s new role as "Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas" is specifically designed to draft and lead an agreement focused on "combating cartels and drug trafficking in the entire region." https://lataco.com/donald-trump-reassigns-kristi-noem

Peoples Dispatch: Details the “Shield of the Americas” summit in Doral and the “Doral Charter,” describing it as a tool for American dominance in the region. Describes Noem as overseeing the upcoming summit and the signing of the Charter. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2026/03/06/trumps-regional-allies-to-gather-in-miami-for-shield-of-the-americas-summit/

Department of Homeland Security Official Statement: A press release titled “Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, America is Safer,” which praises her record and confirms her transition to the new Envoy role. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/03/05/thanks-president-trump-and-secretary-noem-america-safer

Livemint / NPR: Coverage of the Nashville law enforcement event where Noem outlined the upcoming anti-cartel strategy for the Western Hemisphere. https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/what-is-the-shield-of-the-americas-kristi-noem-named-special-envoy-in-new-security-initiative-11772742835551.html

The Independent: Confirms that Noem intends to join the President and other top officials at the summit in Doral this Saturday: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/shield-of-americas-kristi-noem-envoy-b2932947.html

Dear friends

When we read about the US strikes in the Middle East and the subsequent responses from Iran, there is a very real, visceral reaction within us. It is a quiet tension that sits in the chest; a tendency to hold our breath as we wait for the next report. These are significant events that impact our sense of safety and our hope for a stable future. In these moments, it is easy to feel that we are simply being carried along by circumstances far larger than ourselves, with no way to steady our own internal state.

I was thinking about this during my daily walk to our local community wood this morning. We’ve had weeks of heavy grey skies, biting cold, and what has felt like constant rain, so when the clouds parted for a brief glimpse of blue and some sunlight I was looking forward to a moment of quiet after so much gloom. The wood is a favourite place of mine — a sanctuary where nature provides a consistent, calm presence.

During my walk, I encountered Scott, a man from the village. Scott was evidently feeling disgruntled, because he swiftly pointed out three “workers” who were there to clear fallen trees. To Scott, however, they were doing little more than talking. When I suggested they might be taking their elevenses, he told me that they walk the 15 minutes to the village shop to buy food during their break time, then eat it when they return, when they should be back at work. And they do the same thing at lunch and in the afternoon, before finishing early for the day.

I could have taken Scott’s story as my own and allowed it to lower my mood. Instead, I shrugged apologetically and smiled, saying it was great that the paths were being cleared regardless, before wishing him an enjoyable walk on such a beautiful day, and continuing on.

Shortly after, I came across the men myself. They had just started a chainsaw, but they stopped to talk when they saw me. I recognised them immediately. They were volunteers, not paid “workers” — three local men giving up their Monday and using their own equipment to clear fallen trees from paths, and prepare the timber for sale to raise funds for the woodland’s upkeep. I thanked them for their time, for the effort they put into maintaining the wood for the community, and continued my walk —happy, grounded and grateful.

This brings me back to the ABC model I shared a couple of weeks ago: the idea that our emotional responses (C) are rarely caused by events themselves (A), but by the internal beliefs and stories we use to make sense of them (B).

Scott and I both witnessed the same “activating event” A — three men in the wood, working at their own pace and pausing as they saw fit. However, our internal responses were worlds apart. Scott’s reaction was one of resentment and frustration. Mine was one of gratitude and connection. That difference came simply from the narratives we constructed around that event.

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We can see this same pattern in how we process current affairs, just as much as in our personal encounters. Two more personal experiences from just a couple of weeks ago illustrate this well.

I read a Substack post about Deepak Chopra being mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein files. I wasn’t familiar with the author, but based on their background, they seemed to have more reason to defend Chopra than to criticise him, so I felt the piece deserved my attention. The content caused me to catch my breath, and my heart to sink. I was so unsettled by it that I actually misinterpreted some of the details — a common cognitive response when we are feeling stressed. I finished the post with a sense of genuine despair.

If it was as it appeared to me — that Chopra knew what Epstein had been doing but had certainly continued his friendship with Epstein, regardless; that he had remained silent once the files were released, and that some twenty other people we look to as spiritual or motivational leaders had failed to speak out on Chopra’s position — then what hope did we have of any kind of moral reckoning? The article weighed heavily on me for the rest of the day.

The next morning, after some rest, I decided not only to return to the text, but to go to the Epstein files directly and verify the facts of the connection myself. I then realised that the author of the piece had presented his “story” — his personal interpretation of the association, filtered through his own thoughts, beliefs and assumptions — instead of an objective account. And I had met his reactive narrative with a reactive response of my own. The inevitable result was my own distress.

The second event happened the following day, when a friend mentioned that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had been arrested. I was elated, thinking that at long last, there might be some accountability for what had happened to those young girls. My heart lifted, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was only when I checked the facts later, that I realised the arrest was focused on protecting the state’s trade secrets — a far cry from protecting the victims of sex trafficking.

These events remind me of lessons that are easy to lose sight of:

1. We should always try to check the facts behind a situation — or an “activating event” — whenever we can.

2. We can recognise that we might not have the full picture right now — and may never have it — and accpet that is just the way things are sometimes.

3. We can understand that the story we tell ourselves about what is happening is most often what actually creates our emotional response. If we feel a sense of dread or despair, we have the power to tell ourselves a different story. I’m not suggesting we should make things up, but perhaps we can give ourselves time for more facts to emerge before leaning into a story that will only cause us distress. Perhaps we can simply accept that this is how things stand — for now.

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Last week, we focused on noticing physical tension in response to an “activating event”.

This week, I’m going to ask you to simply extend that awareness. In addition to any sense of physical tension you feel following an activating event, try to pay attention to your heart and your breath.

Does your heart rate increase or slow down following an activating event? Does it feel as though your heart lifts or falls? And do you catch your breath — a sign of increased stress — or do you slowly exhale, a signal of release of tension?

Working through the ABC practice until it becomes second nature is one of the best ways for us to stop being emotionally buffeted by every political conversation we have or every piece of news we read. It also helps us recognise when others are sharing the facts we need to prepare for what lies ahead or stay steady, and when they are writing through the lens of their "story", with all the transferable emotional baggage that generally goes along with that.

The escalations between the US and Iran are deeply unsettling, and it is only natural to feel a sense of dread when the global situation feels so precarious. However, by reclaiming the space between what we hear and how we respond, we can move from a state of constant, exhausting reaction to one of quiet stability. This will allow us to preserve our internal reserves for the things that truly matter, rather than letting them be depleted by every passing headline. When we are steady within ourselves, we are much better equipped to face the world as it is, and to be present for those who might need our support.

We will continue to expand on this practice next Tuesday. Before then, on Friday, I will be sharing another supportive herb to help steady your system.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

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Your Time Starts Now

A practical toolkit for staying human, functional, and clear-headed under accelerating authoritarianism. Stay grounded under pressure, recognise systemic shifts early, and gain the clarity to act with integrity.

By Lori Corbet Mann

Dear friends

Last Friday, I asked whether you might like me to share information on herbs that support the nervous system, to help us better navigate this challenging time. Your response was resoundingly in favour, with 86% of you saying “Yes!” Today we begin with green oat herb — the vibrant stems and leaves of the oat plant, harvested before the grain matures.

To understand how green oat herbs (Avena sativa) support us, we must look at how they move beyond a simple breakfast cereal to physically rebuild the structures of our nervous system. This is a process of restoration that addresses both the physical “hardware” of our nerves and the chemical “software” that governs our mood and stress levels.

Deep nourishment for depleted nerves

Green oats act as a trophorestorative, a term used to describe a substance that provides specific, functional “food” to a particular organ system. When we are pushed to the brink by chronic stress, our neurons — the fundamental cells of the brain and spinal cord — can become depleted and less efficient at sending signals. The herb provides a concentrated source of minerals and specific compounds that help to rebuild these tissues. This is particularly helpful for those of us feeling “wired but tired,” where our bodies are exhausted but our minds remain in a state of hyper-vigilance.

Efficient neuronal communication

The herb is a dense source of minerals like calcium and magnesium, which are essential for the action potential of our neurons. The action potential is the electrical spark that allows a nerve cell to fire and transmit a message. When our mineral levels are low, the nervous system has to work much harder to send the same signals, which eventually leads to a state of systemic fatigue. By providing these electrolytes in a form our bodies can easily use, green oats help to recharge our “cellular batteries,” allowing our system to operate with much greater efficiency and less strain.

Restored insulation

The integrity of our nervous system signalling depends heavily on the myelin sheath — the fatty, protective insulation that surrounds our nerve fibres. If we think of our nerves as electrical wires, they require this robust layer of insulation to transmit signals clearly. When this coating is compromised through stress or depletion, it can become “frayed,” and signals can misfire. This often manifests as feeling “exposed” or overly sensitive to sound and light. Green oats are one of nature’s richest sources of soluble silica, a foundational element for maintaining this insulation. By providing this building block, we help the body physically mend our neural wiring, helping us to feel more contained and less reactive.

Gentle quietening of the mind

Green oats are a source of a compound called apigenin. This constituent is valued for its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and interact with GABA receptors. These receptors act as the primary “brakes” of our nervous system, responsible for dampening over-excitation and allowing us to feel calm. Unlike synthetic substances that can cause grogginess, apigenin acts as a gentle modulator. It helps to quiet the background “chatter” of an overactive mind, lowering our baseline of anxiety and allowing for the state of internal stillness essential for deep recovery.

Cellular protection against mental fatigue

A constituent called isovitexin within the herb acts as a guardian for our neurons. Chronic stress produces free radicals — unstable molecules that can damage our mitochondria, which are the tiny power plants within our cells. Isovitexin serves as a protective agent, neutralising these molecules and ensuring that our brain cells can continue to produce energy efficiently. This support of a stable energy supply is essential for overcoming “brain fog,” as it allows the nervous system to maintain its stamina without the cellular “rusting” that often follows periods of intense mental exertion.

Clearer thinking through improved circulation

Restoration cannot occur without the delivery of oxygen and the removal of metabolic waste. Green oats are the only known botanical source of antioxidants called avenanthramides. These compounds stimulate an enzyme in the lining of our blood vessels to produce nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator, which signals the smooth muscles around our arteries to relax and widen. This increases the volume of blood reaching the brain and peripheral nerves, ensuring our neurons are well-fuelled and that waste products are cleared away, removing the heavy feeling of “brain fog.”

Sustained motivation by protecting dopamine

In a state of chronic stress, we often break down our “feel-good” chemicals faster than we can create them. Dopamine is a precious resource that gives us the motivation to face the day. Green oats gently inhibit an enzyme called monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B), which is responsible for breaking down dopamine once it has been used in the gaps between our nerve cells. By slowing this enzyme, the herb allows the dopamine we already have to stay active for longer. This prevents the “dopamine dip” that leads to emotional fatigue, allowing our baseline mood to stabilise while the deeper work of tissue repair takes place.

A shift into a state of relaxed alertness

Observation of brain activity shows that green oats encourage the production of alpha-2 brain waves. These waves are the signature of “relaxed alertness” — a state where we are mentally calm but cognitively sharp and present. By shifting the brain away from the jagged, high-frequency “beta” waves associated with anxiety and panic, the herb moves us towards a more rhythmic, grounded state. This shift allows us to process information with more ease and less emotional friction, reducing the internal heat that leads to mental exhaustion.

A calmer state through reduced inflammation

Chronic stress creates a pro-inflammatory state in the body. This can lead to the release of cytokines, which are signalling proteins that trigger inflammation in the brain — a leading cause of low mood. The combination of apigenin and avenanthramides in the herb helps to inhibit the pathways that produce these inflammatory markers. By lowering this internal “heat”, the nervous system can shift out of a defensive position and back into a state of growth and repair, leading to a more resilient mood.

Long term resilience and balanced responses

Because the green herb works cumulatively, its true value lies in its ability to re-educate the HPA axis — the complex communication network between our brain and our adrenal glands that governs our stress response. Over time, the synergy of these minerals and compounds supports “synaptic plasticity,” which is the brain’s ability to create new, healthier pathways. By supporting the way our nerves fire and signal, we help our nervous system “unlearn” the chronic stress response and re-establish a baseline of balance, where our body can focus on repair and maintenance rather than just survival.

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Sourcing, using and dosing

The two best delivery methods for green oat herbs are by tincture and long infusion.

Using a tincture

• The most critical requirement is that a tincture is made from the freshly harvested green herb. If the plant is dried, the plant’s most potent constituents can oxidise or break down, significantly reducing their ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and lower neuro-inflammation. The tincture should be deep olive-green and carry a fresh, grassy scent.

• Look for a 1:2 extraction ratio on the label. This means that one part of the fresh herb was steeped in two parts of the liquid solvent. This concentrated ratio is necessary to ensure the final tincture is sufficiently “loaded” with the minerals and flavonoids we need. A more dilute preparation, such as a 1:5 ratio, may not provide a high enough concentration of protective compounds.

• Take a dose of 3ml to 5ml three times a day. After 4-6 weeks, you may notice you are no longer “crashing” by mid-afternoon. For the physical mending of the myelin sheath a three-month protocol is far more realistic.

• If you are feeling particularly “jangly” or overwhelmed, you can take the tincture sublingually — placing the drops directly under the tongue and holding them there for a minute. This allows the small molecules to pass through the thin membranes of the mouth and enter the bloodstream directly, bypassing the digestive system and the liver’s initial processing. This method provides the fastest route to the brain’s GABA receptors.

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Long infusion

Alternatively, you can prepare a long infusion. This method is specifically designed to extract the dense mineral profile — especially the silica — that is otherwise locked within the tough, fibrous cell walls of the green oat herb.

• To find the high-quality material you need for infusions, search for Green Oat Straw or the botanical name Avena sativa. Look for a herb that is a vibrant, meadow green — this confirms the plant was harvested while it was still full of life. If the straw looks yellow and bleached, it was likely left in the field too long, so the active compounds will have largely degraded. The straw should be “nutri-fine” or “chaff” style, which provides the high surface area needed for the water to penetrate the tough cellulose.

• Start by weighing out approximately 15 to 20 grams of the dried green herb — this is generally a large, dense handful. Place the herb into a 0.5-litre glass mason jar. Using this volume allows you to create a highly concentrated mineral “soup” that you can realistically consume within a single day.

• Fill the jar to the very top with boiling water that has been allowed to cool for 10 minutes. It is essential to cap the jar tightly immediately after filling as many of the constituents that help quieten the nervous system are volatile and will escape in the steam if the jar is left open. By sealing it, you force these gases back into the liquid as it cools, ensuring you retain the chemistry needed to support your nervous system.

• Leave the jar to sit on the counter for at least eight to ten hours, or ideally overnight. This extended time is the only way to break down the plant’s cellular structure and release the orthosilicic acid — the bioavailable silica required to mend the “frayed” insulation of your myelin sheath. A quick steep will only provide a pleasant flavour; only a long infusion provides the structural nourishment.

• Once strained, drink the half-litre of infusion at room temperature throughout the following day. You should finish the batch within 36 hours max, as the organic minerals and antioxidants will begin to oxidise and lose their potency beyond this point. For the best results in clearing “brain fog,” you should aim for a fresh batch every 24 hours.

• Bonus Tip: After straining the first batch for drinking, you do not need to discard the herb immediately. You can pour more hot water over the same straw to create a second, lighter infusion. Once cooled, this can be used as a hair tonic or final rinse after washing. The silica that strengthens our internal neural “wiring” is also effective at reinforcing the structural integrity of our hair.

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When we begin to support a nervous system that has been overtaxed for months, or even years, we need to have patience. These practices — the slow overnight infusion or the regular dose of tincture — are reliable and practical ways to reinforce our internal structure from the inside out. But it takes time for the silica to bolster our wiring and for the minerals to replenish what has been lost. We should try to be as steady and patient with ourselves as we are with the process, acknowledging that physical repair happens at its own pace.

There is a quiet reassurance in knowing that we are finally giving the nervous system the materials it has been lacking. As the days go by, we may find that our reactions feel a little less urgent and our rest feels a little more restorative. By maintaining this consistent care, we can help ourselves to gradually find a much firmer and more reliable sense of internal calm for the demanding months ahead.

I look forward to sharing another plant ally with you next Friday.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

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Your Time Starts Now

A practical toolkit for staying human, functional, and clear-headed under accelerating authoritarianism. Stay grounded under pressure, recognise systemic shifts early, and gain the clarity to act with integrity.

By Lori Corbet Mann

Dear friends

In last Tuesday’s conversation, we began to unpick the ABC model — the understanding that a generally invisible filter of beliefs, thoughts and assumptions (B) sits between the things that happen to us in the world (A) and the emotional consequences we feel as a result (C). We talked about how this “B” is assigned by our minds to give our world its meaning. However, for many of us, even attempting to find that middle step feels like a significant, perhaps even impossible, task. We want to find a steadier footing, only to realise that we simply do not have the mental capacity to do so right now.

That’s understandable: it feels like we have spent the last eighteen months holding our breath. The weight of Trump’s second term has become a physical atmosphere. It is the low hum of anxiety when the phone pings, the way we brace ourselves before opening a news app, and the quiet, corrosive weariness that comes from wondering which part of daily life will feel less certain today.

Most of the time, our beliefs are like a film score — they are playing in the background, dictating the mood of the scene, but we are so focused on the action that we don’t even hear the music. We only realise something is wrong when we find ourselves mid-spiral, feeling the “C” of the ABC sequence: the anger, the frustration, the anxiety, the dread. In this kind of environment, our “B” — our internal beliefs and assumptions — are being triggered dozens of times a day as a survival mechanism. It’s exhausting.

When we feel utterly drained, our minds constantly scanning for every possible threat, asking ourselves to suddenly “think differently” can feel like an impossible task.

Instead, might we simply sit with the idea that our bodies often know we are in trouble long before our conscious minds?

That familiar, sharp tightening in the chest or the way the breath hitches when you see a particular name in a headline — these physical twinges aren’t just passing responses. They are our early warning system, the first messengers telling us that the mind has just filtered an event and assigned it a meaning that the nervous system finds threatening.

Today, I’m not asking for you to make any big shifts in perspective — we are not going to try to change our thoughts or “fix” our reactions. We are simply going to practice the art of noticing our physical responses.

For this coming week, our task is to start treating these physical sensations as a gentle “ping” of awareness. If you can learn to say to yourself “Ah, my heart is racing because I’ve just told myself a story about what this news means,” you have created a tiny, vital sliver of distance. By focusing on your body, you ground yourself in the present moment, which is the only place where you can actually find our footing.

You may think this is a very small thing, but in a world that feels as though it is constantly pressing in on us, that tiny gap can be a sanctuary. It allows you to be a whole person who is observing a reaction, rather than just being determined by the reaction itself.

This is how you find a small, quiet space inside the storm. It respects the gravity of what you are navigating while offering a tangible way to stop your nervous system from being quite so overwhelmed by every passing wave. It moves you out of the role of the person being swept away by the wave, and into the role of the person who sees the wave forming.

Make no mistake: this is nothing short of a small, quiet, and deeply radical act of reclamation.

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3 Minute Body Scan

This practice is about becoming an investigator of our own physical sensations. Research into interoceptive awareness1 — the ability to sense our internal state — suggests that this type of systematic check-in is essential for long-term emotional resilience.

You can do this quick ‘mapping’ exercise while sitting or standing. I’d recommend doing it once now, to gauge your “baseline”, and then at any point during your day when you feel a shift in your mood.

Research shows that our facial muscles are often the first to respond to a perceived threat, creating a feedback loop between our expression, and our emotional state. Bring your attention to your forehead and the space between your eyebrows. How does it feel in this moment? Does it feel knotted, furrowed, or pulled tight? Perhaps there is a sense of heaviness or pressure here. Or does it feel smooth, expansive, and relaxed? You are simply noticing what is present, without trying to change it.

Moving your attention to your eyes, notice if the muscles around the sockets feel hard or strained, as if you are squinting to see a problem more clearly. Then let your awareness move to your jaw. Is it clenched tight? Are your teeth pressing together, or is there a space between the upper and lower teeth? Are your lips pursed or held in a thin line? The jaw is a primary site for holding tension related to resistance or the need to “brace” ourselves. By recognising the state of our jaw, we are identifying a clear physical indicator that an internal “alarm” has been tripped.

Slowly move your attention down to the tops of your shoulders and the back of your neck. Do your shoulders feel raised, as if they are trying to reach your ears? Do they feel rigid and “armoured,” or do they feel dropped and heavy? Notice the muscles at the base of your skull — do they feel strained or tight? For many of us who have been under sustained pressure, this area becomes a permanent “holding zone” for the weight of our responsibilities and concerns. Recognising this tension allows us to see that a belief about our burden has been activated.

Shifting your focus to the centre of your chest, observe the movement of your breath. Does your chest feel tight, as if there is a band constricting it? Does your breathing feel shallow, staying high up in chest and collarbones? Or does your chest feel open and the breath move easily? When our internal filters perceive a crisis, the body naturally restricts the breath as part of the survival response. Studies show that becoming aware of this restriction is a key step in interrupting the cycle of automatic reactivity.

Now, bring your awareness to your upper abdomen. Does your stomach feel knotted, hollow, or “fluttery”? Is there a sense of “sinking” or “flipping” in the gut?

Finally, check your hands — are your fingers curled into a grip or a fist? Are your knuckles white from tension, or are your palms open and soft? The gut and the hands are often where our most visceral reactions to news or conflict are stored.

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Taking the time to sit with these physical sensations is a profound act of self-compassion. It is a way of acknowledging the weight we carry in a world that rarely asks us to pause. We are living, breathing people whose systems require quiet and care to function, especially when the atmosphere around us feels so charged. This gentle awareness is a necessary step toward finding a more sustainable way to exist in these taxing times.

I will be back on Friday to share my first piece on herbal supplements. We will look at how a specific plant ally can help to soothe a nervous system that has been stretched thin, offering a bit of physiological support alongside the mental work we are doing. I often find that when our bodies feel a little more supported from the inside, the external world can feel just a fraction less overwhelming.

I look forward to welcoming you back then. In the meantime, I hope you find the space to be kind to yourself as you navigate the rest of your week.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

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1

Price, C. J., & Hooven, C. (2018). Interoceptive Awareness Skills for Emotion Regulation: Theory and Approach of Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT). Published in Frontiers in Psychology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5985305/

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About the Author:

Hi, I’m Lori, the writer behind Your Time Starts Now.

I learned authoritarianism the hard way. Eleven years in Zimbabwe under the Mugabe regime taught me that our most vital infrastructure isn’t the power grid or the economy — it is the human nervous system. When the world becomes volatile, our biology is the first thing to be weaponised. If we cannot regulate our anxiety, fear, and moral outrage, we will lose our ability to think, discern, and act with integrity.

I’ve spent twenty-five years at the intersection of nervous system regulation and mind-body medicine, learning how to stay functional when external safety disappears. I write for those who stand against the same authoritarian patterns now emerging in the West and want a strategy for resilience that goes deeper than “just breathe”. I offer a map for staying grounded, capable, and ethically clear-headed in a time of accelerating pressure.

If this sounds like something you’d welcome, I warmly invite you to subscribe.

Your Time Starts Now

A practical toolkit for staying human, functional, and clear-headed under accelerating authoritarianism. Stay grounded under pressure, recognise systemic shifts early, and gain the clarity to act with integrity.

By Lori Corbet Mann

Dear friends

I wanted to share something with you that has, until now, stayed in the background of my life. During the years I spent studying nervous system regulation and mind-body medicine, I also trained as a Master Herbalist. I never intended to practice in a clinical sense — I sought instead to gain a precise, technical understanding of how medicinal herbs support our bodies, especially the nervous system. Living with a chronic medical condition, I felt it was vital to be able to make fully informed, safe, and independent choices about my own health and the wellbeing of those I love. But it is now becoming clear that this knowledge could offer meaningful support to us all as we navigate these difficult times together

When we find ourselves under the weight of prolonged stress, it often feels as though our internal resources have been entirely depleted. While cognitive therapy — the “thought work” we have begun moving through on a Tuesday — is an incredible tool for organising our thoughts and developing healthier coping mechanisms, it does require a certain level of mental energy and physiological stability to be fully effective. This is where herbal medicine can serve as a gentle, grounded partner. By addressing the physical toll that chronic stress takes on our nervous and endocrine systems, these herbal medicines can create a more resilient internal environment. They help the “thought work” feel like a natural progression rather than an exhausting uphill struggle.

Adaptogens for Long-Term Endurance

At the heart of this relationship is the concept of adaptogens. These are a specific class of herbs that work by non-specifically increasing our resistance to stressors. When we are stuck in a state of hyper-vigilance or “burnout,” our hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis becomes dysregulated — this often manifests as that “wired but tired” feeling where we are exhausted yet unable to truly rest. Adaptogens help to smooth out these physiological peaks and troughs. By moderating the output of cortisol and adrenaline, they stabilise the physical symptoms of the stress response so that we have the mental energy and focus we need for the long term. These plant medicines also help us to process the realisations we arrive at during our thought work. It is much easier to unpack our subconscious beliefs when the heart isn’t racing and the muscles aren’t perpetually braced for impact.

Nervines for Restoring the Frayed System

Beyond the systemic balance provided by adaptogens, nervines are used to repair and soothe a nervous system that has been shredded by constant threat and systemic instability. These herbs can be used to widen what psychologists call our “window of tolerance”. When our nervous system is too agitated, we might find ourselves reacting defensively or feeling overwhelmed by the world around us. Nervines help to lower that baseline agitation, allowing us to stay present and engaged rather than retreating into emotional numbness or panic. In the context of cognitive therapy, nervines help quickly lower the “physical static” of acute anxiety — the tightness in the chest or the racing thoughts that make it impossible to concentrate. By dialing down that immediate physical distress, they create a sense of calm that allows us to apply our mental tools without being hijacked by the body’s panic response.

Heart-Centred Herbs for Grief and Courage

When stress is accompanied by a sense of profound loss — such as the loss of a democracy or a community space — it often manifests as a heavy, hollow ache in the chest. This can make working on our thought process feel quite abstract or even futile. In these moments, the physical and emotional heart benefits from specific, targeted nourishment to avoid the feeling of “breaking” under the strain. Heart-focused herbal medicines have a long-standing reputation for providing a sense of containment and protection when we feel emotionally exposed or depleted. Some also help us stay soft and open-hearted, preventing the hardening that so often follows profound disillusionment. By soothing the physical tension and the “thumping” anxiety that often accompanies a sense of loss, these medicinal herbs help us maintain the emotional stamina needed to stay engaged with our values. They help us find the courage to continue participating in the world, even when the broader landscape feels deeply fractured.

Nootropics for Cognitive Restoration

When we are depleted by prolonged stress, mental clarity is often one of the first things to go, leaving us feeling foggy, indecisive, and disconnected from our own reasoning. Nootropics serve as a bridge in these moments, helping to restore the cognitive function that stress has compromised. This in turn makes the “thinking work” we are doing more accessible and effective. When we are trying to learn new cognitive patterns or break old thinking habits, we are essentially asking our brain to build new physical pathways. By supporting synaptic plasticity, these plant medicines make the brain more readily able to adapt to the changes we are trying to implement. By improving executive function and mental stamina, herbal supports also provide us with the clarity and focus needed to stay present during difficult moments, ensuring that we can process complex emotions without being immediately overwhelmed by cognitive fatigue.

Another way nootropics can assist us is by fostering a state of “calm alertness.” Many of us find that chronic stress makes our thoughts race in a way that feels productive but is actually just circular. Nootropics can help us filter out the physiological static of anxiety, granting us the objectivity we need to distinguish core truths from reactive impulses. This creates a more resilient internal environment where the insights we gain from our “thinking work” can be integrated and sustained, ensuring they are not lost to the persistent haze of exhaustion.

Vital Tonics for Physical Resilience

Under prolonged stress, we need to ensure that our physical bodies remain a strong vessel for the mind and spirit; these tonics ensure that our basic biological fires continue to burn. Some herbal medicines support the liver and the digestive system, which are often the first to react sluggishly to the environment of social stress and poor nutrition. Others might help provide the iron, magnesium, and vitality needed to pull us out of the “freeze” response and back into active participation. Others still settle a “nervous stomach” or wake up an appetite that has been lost to grief, ensuring that we are physically absorbing the nutrients needed for the fight. Systemic circulation can be improved to help prevent the cold, stagnant feeling that comes with a loss of hope. Lymphatic tonics can help keep things moving in the body, preventing the physical and mental stagnation that occurs when we feel trapped and unable to act.

Restorative Support for Neurological Recovery

The impact that prolonged stress has on our sleep architecture is a vital consideration in our healing. When we are caught in a cycle of hyper-vigilance, our bodies often lose the ability to navigate the transition from the noise of the day into the silence of the night. Often, our nervous system remains on sentry duty even when we are physically exhausted, making it difficult to find true stillness. Gentle herbal medicines support the body’s natural descent into deep, restorative sleep by quieting the internal chatter and easing the physical tension that keeps us tethered to our anxieties. This offers a way to find rest that avoids the heavy, chemical sedation often induced by synthetic alternatives, which can leave us feeling mentally clouded the following morning.

This deeper level of rest is where the recovery of our cognitive function happens. During these hours of stillness, the brain is able to process the emotional realisations we have uncovered during our “thought work”, moving them from the fragile space of short-term memory into the stable foundation of our long-term understanding. Without this restoration, our efforts to reshape our thinking patterns lack the physiological stability they need to become a permanent part of our daily experience. When we wake up feeling truly refreshed, we possess the mental clarity and emotional stamina needed to face the deeper, often uncomfortable work of self-reflection.

Intentional Rituals for Integrated Healing

There is also a significant, symbolic synergy in the act of using herbal medicine alongside our “thought work”. Taking a tincture or brewing a specific cup of tea becomes a ritual of self-care — the physical manifestation of the commitment we have made to our own healing. This ritual acts as a grounding bridge between our more abstract “thought work” and our daily lives. We are a biological whole that requires nourishment and tenderness, existing as much more than a collection of thoughts to be analysed. By supporting our bodies, we can give our minds the grace they need to change, ensuring that the progress we make in our thought sessions is built on a foundation of physical stability.

I have been considering sharing more specific advice on supplementing with herbal medicines here — brief weekly posts offering practical insights into the plants that can help us maintain our centre. I’d love to know if this is something you would welcome; it will help me understand how I can best support you as we move forward.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

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About the Author:

Hi, I’m Lori, the writer behind Your Time Starts Now.

I learned authoritarianism the hard way. Eleven years in Zimbabwe under the Mugabe regime taught me that our most vital infrastructure isn’t the power grid or the economy — it is the human nervous system. When the world becomes volatile, our biology is the first thing to be weaponised. If we cannot regulate our anxiety, fear, and moral outrage, we will lose our ability to think, discern, and act with integrity.

I’ve spent twenty-five years at the intersection of nervous system regulation and mind-body medicine, learning how to stay functional when external safety disappears. I write for those who stand against the same authoritarian patterns now emerging in the West and want a strategy for resilience that goes deeper than “just breathe”. I offer a map for staying grounded, capable, and ethically clear-headed in a time of accelerating pressure.

If this sounds like something you’d welcome, I warmly invite you to subscribe.

Your Time Starts Now

A practical toolkit for staying human, functional, and clear-headed in a volatile world. Gain the clarity to recognise systemic shifts early, the biological resilience to stay grounded under pressure, and the spiritual discernment to act with integrity.

By Lori Corbet Mann

Dear friends

Today I’d like to begin unpacking a simple but powerful psychological approach to help us keep our footing and find the stamina to remain steady — and even compassionate — despite the weight of what’s happening around us.

It is a common misunderstanding that our emotions arise as a direct result of the things that happen to us. How many times have we blamed a neighbour who voted for Trump for our anger, or a sharp retort from an ally for our sense of inadequacy, and even a withdrawal? We seem to believe that there’s a straight line between the external world and our internal state — a simple cause and effect that leaves us at the mercy of our circumstances.

In reality however, there is a vital — and generally invisible — step tucked between the event and our emotional response. Our minds instantly filter whatever’s happening around us through a lens of personal beliefs, past experiences, and ingrained assumptions to give us a sense of meaning. The reality is that many events are themselves neutral until they pass through the filter of our own minds. Most often, it is not the event itself that generates the feeling, but rather the specific meaning we assign to the event.

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The ABC Model

We can look at this through a framework called the ABC model, which is often used in cognitive therapy. The model matches an ancient Stoic philosophy: it isn’t the facts that upset us, but rather the way we view those facts. If we imagine a sequence where A is the activating event and C stands for the Consequences, which are the emotions we feel and the ways we subsequently behave, we generally overlook B — our beliefs.

Imagine you are a woman alone in her home at night, who is woken suddenly by a loud noise in the hallway. You feel intense fear — your heart is pounding, chest feels tight, can’t catch your breathe, and you’re hot and clammy. Your first conscious thought is: ‘It’s a burglar!’” which is swiftly followed by, “What if he hurts me? I need to call the police!”

In ABC terms the noise you hear is A, the activating event, while the vigilant thoughts are B the ‘belief’ and your intense fear is the consequence, C.

As you reach for your phone, you remember something from earlier that day: you ran into your best friend from high school, who is in town for a couple of days on business. You invited your friend to stay at your house so you could catch up over breakfast. Because your friend would finish-up late, you gave her a key.

The moment you realise this, you stop dialling. Your thoughts change to, “Oh, it’s Louise!” Your fear is swiftly superceded by relief, then joy — you are going to catch up with your dear friend!

C — your emotional response — is now completely different, having shifted from fear to joy in less time than it would take to swallow a tranquiliser. But A is the same — the noise you heard has not changed. What has changed is B — the thoughts and beliefs you held about the event.

The fact is that sometimes our beliefs are accurate, but often they are not. Our inaccurate beliefs can come from irrational thought patterns that have subconsciously been reinforced over time. When we look at the world through the lens of these irrational beliefs — psychologists call them “cognitive distortions“ — it can have a negative impact on our emotional health, making us feel unnecessarily anxious and depressed. Catastrophising is a well known example of a cognitive distortion.

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Reclaiming Our Reserves

By simply recognising this middle step, we gain a sense of agency. We realise that while we cannot always control the activating event, we do have the power to examine, dispute, and even change the beliefs that have led us to experience such painful consequences. When we are able to change the beliefs, we can ultimately change our emotional responses.

Recognising that our feelings are mediated by our thoughts offers a doorway to a more stable internal life, even when the external landscape feels increasingly precarious. When we see the B in our own ABC sequence, we need no longer simply react to the pressures of the world — we can quieten the alarms within our nervous system and start protecting our inner reserves.

The real power of the ABC model lies in how it helps us dismantle the specific mechanisms that drain us. When we pinpoint the specific beliefs that turn external events into paralysing anxiety or internal spirals of hate, we find ourselves doing far more than simply adjusting our thoughts — we are actively safeguarding our composure and keeping our dignity intact, even when we have very little else left to give.

Next Tuesday, we will begin walking through the process together to help us identify and challenge these internal triggers, so we can reclaim the reserves that fear and anxiety are taking from us.

In the meantime, I’ll be taking a slightly different tack on Friday, as we look at a more tangible — and deeply ancestral — way to return ourselves to a steadier, more functional whole.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

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About the Author:

Hi, I’m Lori, the writer behind Your Time Starts Now.

I learned authoritarianism the hard way. Eleven years in Zimbabwe under the Mugabe regime taught me that our most vital infrastructure isn’t the power grid or the economy — it is the human nervous system. When the world becomes volatile, our biology is the first thing to be weaponised. If we cannot regulate our anxiety, fear, and moral outrage, we will lose our ability to think, discern, and act with integrity.

I’ve spent twenty-five years at the intersection of nervous system regulation and mind-body medicine, learning how to stay functional when external safety disappears. I write for those who stand against the same authoritarian patterns now emerging in the West and want a strategy for resilience that goes deeper than “just breathe”. I offer a map for staying grounded, capable, and ethically clear-headed in a time of accelerating pressure.

If this sounds like something you’d welcome, I warmly invite you to subscribe.

Your Time Starts Now

A practical toolkit for staying human, functional, and clear-headed in a volatile world. Gain the clarity to recognise systemic shifts early, the biological resilience to stay grounded under pressure, and the spiritual discernment to act with integrity.

By Lori Corbet Mann

Dear friends

Authoritarianism advances by attempting to colonise our thoughts and emotions, working to create a constant sense of unsteadiness within us. It thrives when we are reactive, when our nerves are frayed, and when our first instinct is one of self-protection or aggression. It makes us look for strong leaders or simple answers.

Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela knew this intimately — they lived under systems that were designed to break their composure every single day. For them, the decision to govern their thoughts and emotions was a way of reclaiming their agency. And they understood that if they met the harshness of their world with an equal internal harshness, the “solution” would merely be a mirror image of the system it opposed.

In our lives today, we can see this same dynamic playing out. We are often surrounded by voices that want to pull us into a state of constant, low-level agitation. This creates an environment that makes it very difficult for us to think for ourselves or to act with genuine compassion. When we follow the example of these leaders, we are choosing to build a foundation of inner quiet that the chaos outside cannot easily reach. This isn’t about being passive or ignoring what is happening — it is about ensuring that when we do speak or act, it comes from a place of strength rather than a place of panic.

There is a real, tangible weight to this kind of self-governance; it requires that we look at our anger and our fear with honesty. Instead of letting those feelings drive our actions without thought, we must learn to hold them and ask what they are trying to tell us. Madiba spent 27 years in a prison cell doing exactly this. He looked at his own resentment and realised that it was a weight he simply could not afford to carry if he wanted to be free. He chose to cultivate a different kind of internal atmosphere, one where he remained the master of his own reactions. This allowed him to walk out of prison and speak to his captors with a dignity that they could not possibly match.

We find our own version of this when we choose to step back from the frantic pace of the world and reconnect with what we know to be true. When we are grounded in our own values and our own sense of peace, the tactics of authoritarianism — the divisiveness, the fear-mongering, and the demands for total loyalty — lose their grip on us. We become much harder to manipulate when we are no longer looking for someone else to tell us how to feel or who to fear. We act instead from a sense of internal wholeness that is inherently resistant to being controlled by outside forces.

This is a shared effort, too. When we show up for one another with this kind of emotional steadiness, we can create a community that feels safe and solid. We can provide a space where others can also catch their breath and find their footing. This is how the “beloved community” that King spoke about starts to take shape. It begins in the quiet, disciplined choices we make about how we handle our own spirits, and it grows into a collective resilience that can stand up to even the most daunting pressures. When we learn to regulate our thoughts and emotions, we are essentially saying that we refuse to let the world turn us into people we don’t want to be.

I first learned how difficult — yet how necessary — this work is while living in Zimbabwe under Mugabe’s regime. That was my proving ground. In an environment specifically designed to keep us off-balance, reactive, and afraid, I realised that maintaining my composure wasn’t just about my personal well-being; it was the only way to retain my agency. It was there, amidst the constant pressure to succumb to either despair or rage, that I began to learn the specific tools required to stay steady.

These are not abstract theories to me. They are the practical survival strategies that kept my spirit intact when the world around me felt like it was fracturing.

On Tuesday, I will start sharing these tools with you. We will begin with the invisible filters that colour our reality, and how we can use these to stop our environment from dictating our emotions.

I hope you’ll join me as we move from understanding the importance of this inner quiet to the actual practice of building it.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

📌 Please like, comment, and share this post if you find it of value. This helps more of our civic neighbours find their way to it.

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Leave a comment

Share Your Time Starts Now

Hi, I’m Lori, the writer behind Your Time Starts Now.

Eleven years in Zimbabwe under the Mugabe regime taught me that our most vital infrastructure isn’t the power grid or the economy — it is the human nervous system. When the world becomes volatile, our biology is the first thing to be weaponised. If we cannot regulate our anxiety, fear, and moral outrage, we lose our ability to think, discern, and act with integrity.

I’ve spent twenty-five years at the intersection of neuropsychology and spiritual practice, learning how to stay functional and “spirit-led” when external safety disappears. I write for those who see the same patterns emerging in the West and want a strategy for resilience that goes deeper than “just breathe”. I offer a map for staying grounded, capable, and ethically clear-headed in a time of accelerating pressure. If this sounds like something you’d benefit from, I warmly invite you to subscribe.

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Your Time Starts Now

Gain the clarity to recognise systemic shifts early, the biological resilience to stay grounded under pressure, and the spiritual discernment to act with integrity. The practical toolkit for staying human, functional, and clear-headed in a volatile world.

By Lori Corbet Mann

Dear friends

On Thursday, Senator Ruben Gallego issued a stark warning on the Court of History podcast, urging Americans to prepare for a worst-case scenario. His “worst case scenario” was that “they try to either capture the ballot box as ballots are being counted, they try to stop the count, they try to surround polling places“.

This kind of thinking — that democracy will be defended or lost in the streets this November — is not only dangerously behind the curve, it’s likely to result in the midterms being lost before a single ballot is cast. Because while leaders like Gallego are bracing for a tactical, physical assault on the vote, the administration is already finishing the assembly of a much more effective, administrative machine.

We need to look at the recent events in Fulton County and Minnesota not as isolated incidents of administrative overreach, but as early tests of how far the federal government can push into election administration. Because while the media has been focused on Epstein, ICE and the legislative gridlock in the Senate, the administration may be building the kind of practical machinery that changes what an election feels like on the ground — less a democratic contest, more a managed administrative process.

What we appear to be watching is the federal government testing the boundary of American federalism in elections. By using the FBI to seize election materials, with the visible involvement of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the administration is moving from arguing about past results to building leverage over future ones.

A key shift is the way “election integrity” is now being treated less as an ordinary electoral or civil process question, and more as an “election security” matter. Framed this way — as “critical infrastructure” exposed to foreign and domestic interference — it becomes easier for the executive branch to pull intelligence and federal law enforcement closer to election administration, even where states have traditionally guarded sovereignty.

What we’ll cover here:

• Intelligence Operations as Domestic Enforcement: The structural crossing of roles between the DNI and local law enforcement.

• The Federal Campaign for Person-Level Data: The drive for unredacted voter rolls and the centralisation of sensitive identifiers.

• The Use of Federal Presence as Administrative Leverage: Analysing the “ransom letter” tactics used in Minnesota.

• Mechanisms for Engineering Future Outcomes: How the environment is being shaped without touching a single ballot.

• What to Do Now: A borderless framework for direct accountability and resistance.

• Indicators to Monitor Before November: The specific administrative red flags to watch.

• The Reality of Forensic Forecasting: The methodology behind forensic signal-matching, and a special offer for subscribers.

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Intelligence Operations as Domestic Enforcement

The presence of Tulsi Gabbard at the FBI seizure of 2020 election materials in Fulton County on 28 January 2026 is a striking crossing of roles. The DNI is not a domestic law-enforcement office. It is a national intelligence coordinating role, typically associated with foreign threats. That is why her appearance at an on-the-ground search warrant execution immediately raised alarms.

• The Fulton County seizure: FBI agents executed a search warrant at the county election hub in Union City and removed “hundreds of boxes” of 2020 election materials, including ballots and other records. Fulton County officials later challenged the seizure in court and sought the return of materials and the unsealing of the warrant affidavit. Some local accounts put the number of boxes at roughly 700; Reuters reports it as “hundreds”.

• The stated justification: Gabbard has said she attended because the President asked her to be there, and the administration has defended her presence as related to “election security”. That defence makes this episode structurally significant: it is an attempt to make intelligence-community proximity to a domestic election enforcement action look normal.

• The personal link: Gabbard has said that she facilitated a brief phone call between the President and FBI agents who carried out the search, although she insisted neither she nor the President issued directives about the investigation. Regardless of how it is described, this places the President in direct contact with agents on a specific, politically charged investigation in a way that is rare and institutionally provocative.

By having the FBI seize 2020 election materials in Fulton County with the DNI physically present, the executive branch has shown a willingness to pursue election claims through federal enforcement power, not only through litigation and public argument. That does not, by itself, prove a plan to pre-engineer future outcomes, but it does show a workable route. Generate “official” security findings through processes that are harder to test in public — and then use those findings to justify more federal control over how election disputes are defined and handled.

The point is not that ballots can be linked to individual votes — US ballot systems are designed to prevent that. The point here is that custody of election materials, and the ability to frame election administration as a security problem, can shift power away from state and local election authorities and towards executive agencies.

The Federal Campaign for Person Level Data

While the DNI manufactures the narrative of a “breach”, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing a three-pronged approach that would give the federal government access to highly sensitive, unredacted voter-registration data.

1. Federal Litigation

As of February 2026, the DOJ says it has sued 24 states for refusing to hand over unredacted voter registration rolls.

The DOJ is demanding full names, residential addresses, dates of birth, and partial Social Security numbers. Judges in California and Oregon have thrown out the suits, calling the demand “unprecedented and illegal”. That matters because it clarifies what DOJ is trying to obtain: not a narrow compliance dataset, but person-level voter files with sensitive identifiers.

Whatever the stated justification, centralised federal access to unredacted voter files changes the balance of power in a decentralised election system. It creates the practical conditions for a national-scale voter dataset. It also makes it easier for the federal government to run its own eligibility checks and then lean on states to act on what the federal government claims it has found.

The Targeted Map: 2026 Swing States: These suits and seizures are not happening in the abstract. They land hardest in contested jurisdictions, where small administrative shifts can decide control of Congress.

• Arizona: Sued in January 2026. The DOJ is demanding full data; state officials are resisting, calling it a “data grab.”

• Georgia: The Fulton County raid serves as the physical version of the digital data demand. There is no need to claim the litigation campaign and the raid are formally coordinated. The point is simpler: both routes converge on the same prize — custody of sensitive election records.

• Wisconsin: Sued over access to unredacted voter registration data, framed as “list maintenance” enforcement.

The stated purpose is “list maintenance”, but this label can cover a process that changes who is able to vote — not by touching ballots, but by deciding who stays registered.

US law does set limits. The National Voter Registration Act restricts large-scale, systematic removals close to a federal election, and it requires notice-based procedures for many types of removal. Those safeguards exist because large matching exercises routinely sweep up eligible people, and the burden of putting things right tends to land on the voter — time, paperwork, and repeated proof — rather than on the agency that triggered the flag.

The point is that “list maintenance” is the respectable label for a process that can be used to change who is allowed to vote — not by touching ballots, but by deciding who stays registered. If the federal government gets unredacted voter files with strong identifiers, it can generate large numbers of “ineligible” flags through database matching and then lean on states to act on them. Even if only a small share of those flags are wrong, the practical effect can be large, because removals and delays land unevenly and the burden of correction sits with the voter. People miss deadlines, cannot get through the paperwork in time, or decide it is not worth the hassle. That is how turnout is shaped without anyone needing to falsify a single vote.

2. Cross Agency Linkage and the End of Decentralisation

The significance of the DOJ demanding unredacted voter files — particularly partial Social Security numbers (SSNs) and dates of birth — cannot be overstated, especially when we consider the administration’s broader posture on federal data access and de-siloing. Even without a formally announced “master database”, wide cross-agency access to person-level datasets can create something close to an integrated identity record assembled from multiple systems.

In that context, unredacted voter files are not just election data. They function as a linkage tool.

• The Power of “Unique Identifiers”: Names and addresses are “noisy” — people move, and many people share the same name. A partial SSN and a date of birth make matching far easier. If the DOJ obtains that combination at scale, it gains the technical capacity to cross-reference state voter rolls against other federal identity and eligibility systems.

• Algorithmic purging: When list maintenance is driven by cross-database matching, the predictable danger is that eligible people will get swept up, people like naturalised citizens, people with hyphenated names, and infrequent voters. The core risk is not that mistakes happen — mistakes always happen — but that the matching process is opaque, the incentives run one way, and the path to correction is slow and draining.

• The Impact of Centralisation: Traditionally, the United States has a decentralised election system. Each state controls its own voter data precisely to avoid a single point of failure or control. A federal campaign to obtain unredacted voter files at scale pushes in the opposite direction: nationalised access to the raw inputs. Combined with broad cross-agency identity linkage, this expands the federal government’s ability to connect voter-registration records to other identity-linked datasets.

This is about identity linkage and administrative leverage, the risk being what can be done with registration-level identity data when it can be matched and acted on at scale.

• Voter intimidation: Whatever the intention, the effect can still be chilling. If people believe the federal government is screening them through an enforcement lens, some will step back from participation rather than risk being flagged — especially in communities already living with fear and heightened scrutiny.

• Predictive Modelling: Once voter-registration data can be linked to wider identity datasets, it becomes possible to shift from retrospective checks to targeted pressure: concentrating “integrity” scrutiny in communities and counties likely to oppose the administration. This does not require the declaration of a plan; it simply follows from what integrated datasets allow. In practice it often looks like administrative friction — more audits, more paperwork, more delays, more reviews — applied unevenly.

And once identity records can be linked across agencies, it also becomes possible to use ordinary administrative systems as leverage against people who have been flagged — rightly or wrongly. That leverage does not have to look like a dramatic sanction. It can look like a routine “verification” step that freezes a payment until extra documents are produced, a standard review that turns into weeks of delay, or a sudden demand to re-prove eligibility for something you have received for years. When someone is ‘wrongly’ flagged — or when the criteria are broad, or applied selectively, so that eligible people are pulled in anyway — the burden of clearing it falls on the individual, slowly, through processes that are hard to navigate and easy to exhaust.

That is not to say this will happen, but it is a foreseeable abuse pathway when datasets are integrated and oversight is weak.

3. Federal Presence as Administrative Leverage

While the DOJ pursues the states in court, a more direct form of pressure has emerged in Minnesota. On 24 January 2026, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent what has been described as a “ransom letter” to Governor Tim Walz that essentially linked the federal law enforcement posture in the state to the surrender of voter rolls.

The communication signalled that the “restoration of the rule of law” — specifically regarding the surge of federal agents in Minneapolis—was effectively contingent on state “cooperation” with federal data demands.

• The Tactical Pivot: This move bypasses the judicial setbacks the DOJ faced in California and Oregon. If the courts will not grant the federal government access to unredacted voter files, the administration is demonstrating it can find other, more immediate pressure points.

• Negotiating Sovereignty: By tying the presence of federal law enforcement to administrative data sharing, the executive branch is treating state sovereignty as a negotiable commodity. It puts governors in a position where they must weigh the privacy of their voter rolls against the continued escalation of federal intervention in their jurisdictions.

• The Framing of Obstruction: Refusal to hand over the data is framed not as a defence of privacy, but as “obstruction” of federal security efforts. This allows the administration to shift the conflict from a technical dispute over database access to a high-stakes debate over public safety and federal assistance.

This indicates that the administration’s goal is not merely to win a legal argument about voter rolls, but to make the cost of local resistance high enough that state officials view surrendering the data as a necessary trade-off to reduce federal pressure.

Now we need to consider the question of what becomes possible once that data is centralised.

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Mechanisms for Engineering Future Outcomes

While none of this proves that the administration plans to rig future elections, it shows they are building a toolkit. Once federal agencies can take custody of election materials, demand sensitive voter identifiers at scale, and frame election administration as an “election security” problem, the range of plausible interventions expands sharply.

The interventions do not have to look like ballot-stuffing. A more realistic route in modern election interference is administrative: changing who is on the rolls, where friction is applied, which jurisdictions are put under extraordinary scrutiny, and which narratives are treated as official security findings rather than contested political claims.

There are three ways this can shape the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

First: if the federal government gets centralised access to unredacted voter files, it can start doing eligibility checking at scale.

If the DOJ obtains statewide records that include dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers, it becomes much easier to run large cross-checks against other databases and then press states to act on the results. That is where purge-like outcomes show up in real life: not one mass deletion, but a steady rise in people being flagged, challenged, removed, or told to prove eligibility again — especially in places where small changes in turnout can swing a race.

Courts have already treated these demands for sensitive voter data as legally suspect. Judges have warned that pulling this information into federal hands can chill participation and invites misuse.

Second: custody matters. Who physically holds election materials has power, especially once an election moves into recounts, audits, certification fights, and post-election disputes.

Fulton County shows the federal government is willing to treat election infrastructure as something it can take control of through law enforcement — under a sealed warrant, with little immediate public visibility into the rationale. If that posture carries into 2026 or 2028, the pressure point is not “changing votes”. It is controlling the dispute environment: what gets seized, what gets examined, which claims are treated as “security” concerns, and which local officials find themselves under investigative pressure.

The more election administration is described as “critical infrastructure under attack”, the easier it becomes to justify extraordinary federal involvement and unusual secrecy.

Third: when election administration is framed as a national-security problem, it becomes easier for the executive branch to justify exceptional measures.

“Security” language changes what people will accept by default. Secrecy starts to look normal; urgency starts to sound self-evident; and federal intrusion can be presented as protection rather than interference.

That is why the visible involvement of DNI leadership in a domestic election seizure matters. It pushes intelligence-community proximity to election enforcement towards something that looks routine, rather than something that should trigger immediate alarm.

Put bluntly, these are the ingredients for engineered outcomes without the need to engineer ballots.

An engineered outcome might look like tighter eligibility rules in the places that matter; more people removed or challenged on the basis of opaque matching; longer and harder processes to get a mistake corrected; and a lot more fear in communities that already feel exposed to enforcement pressure. It may look like selective “integrity” saturation — some counties living under constant federal scrutiny and repeated interventions, while others are left to run elections in relative peace. Or it may look like narrative engineering: disputed claims being turned into official “security” findings, and then used to justify the next round of centralisation.

None of that depends on anyone being able to see how an individual voted. The vulnerability is upstream and adjacent to the vote: whether you are kept on the rolls, whether you can clear being flagged in time to vote, whether election offices are operating under investigative threat, and whether the whole thing is being pushed into a security frame rather than treated as a civic process.

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What To Do Now

If we accept the framing of elections as a “security problem”, we concede the high ground to the executive agencies currently centralising control. Resistance to this process must be as decentralised as the election system we are trying to protect.

• 1. Force the issue with representatives: Do not simply “ask” representatives to look into this; provide them with the evidence. Copy and paste the core of this analysis into a direct communication to every member of the House Committee on Administration and the Senate Rules Committee, regardless of their state. They are the national gatekeepers.

  • The Question: “Are you aware of the DOJ’s demand for unredacted voter files, and what is your specific plan to prevent the federalisation of registration rolls?”

  • The Follow-up: If they are not talking about the Fulton County seizure or the Bondi letter, assume they do not understand the gravity of the situation. Publicly tag them on Substack and other platforms with this post and demand a public statement.

2. Leverage Substack for direct accountability Substack is now the intellectual headquarters for many elected officials and those standing for office. Use that proximity.

• Restack this post and tag high-profile Governors, Attorneys General, and Secretaries of State — especially those in jurisdictions like Arizona, Georgia, and Minnesota where the pressure is highest. They need to know the global community is watching.

• Restack and tag those committed to democratic defense: This is a national-scale seizure; every representative and observer is a pressure point. Restack this post and tag the official accounts of organisations, analysts, and writers tracking these institutional shifts. They need to see the administrative receipts.

• Audit the candidates: Visit the “Notes” and posts of candidates running for federal office across the country. If their platform is focused solely on “physical polling place security,” they are fighting the last war. Interrupt that narrative. Share this post and ask them: “How will you stop the Department of Justice from using ‘list maintenance’ as a tool for administrative disenfranchisement? What is your specific plan to protect unredacted voter data from federal seizure?”

3. Engage your State Attorney General (AG) The Attorney General is the primary legal shield against federal overreach.

• Demand a “Data Protection” posture: Write to your AG’s office. Specifically cite the California and Oregon rulings that found the DOJ’s demands “unprecedented and illegal”. Ask if your state is prepared to litigate to protect unredacted voter data (including partial SSNs) from federal seizure.

• Monitor the “Agreements”: Ask for transparency regarding any “voluntary” data-sharing agreements between your state’s election board and the DOJ or DHS.

4. Protect your own status Since the goal of this centralisation is often “list maintenance” that triggers administrative friction, you must be proactive.

• Verify your registration monthly: Do not wait for a “flag” to arrive in the mail. Check your status on your Secretary of State’s website regularly.

• Document everything: If you or anyone you know receives a registration challenge or “ineligible” flag that appears to stem from a federal data match, make it public. Save a copy of the notice, the timestamp, and any correspondence. Share these documents with local investigative journalists or civil rights groups. Upload a redacted version of the notice to Substack and tag them. When these errors are seen in aggregate, the “efficiency” narrative will collapse into a visible pattern of interference.

5. Support the “Resisters” Governors and Secretaries of State who are currently fighting these lawsuits are under immense federal pressure. They need to know that their constituents view “cooperation” with the DOJ as a breach of trust. Send a brief note of support to the offices of officials who are actively resisting the data grab—it reinforces their political mandate to keep fighting.

The goal is to make the administrative capture of our elections visible, noisy, and politically expensive. If they want to treat the census of our democracy as a “security breach”, we must treat their intrusion as the primary threat.

Escalations To Watch for Before November

If the administration continues on this path of centralisation, the following developments are not just possible, but the logical next steps in the assembly of this machine:

• The “Security Emergency” Declaration: The executive branch may use a specific, perhaps minor, local administrative error to declare a broader “election security emergency”. This would provide the pretext for expanded federal “oversight” in swing jurisdictions, framed as a protective measure.

• The “Scrubbing” Narrative: Expect a coordinated cross-agency campaign to “cleanse” rolls using DOGE-led matching. This will be presented as an efficiency drive, but the practical effect will be a surge in administrative flags and challenges issued to voters in specific, contested postcodes.

• Increased Use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs): We may see federal agencies require state election officials to sign NDAs as a condition for receiving “intelligence briefings” or federal security grants. This creates a wall of secrecy between local officials and the public they serve.

• Targeted Audits of “Non-Cooperative” Jurisdictions: Expect the DOJ or FBI to launch “integrity audits” or civil rights investigations specifically into the counties and states that have resisted data-sharing demands. The goal is not a conviction, but the creation of investigative pressure that exhausts local resources.

• The Normalisation of the DNI: Further appearances by the DNI or other intelligence officials at domestic administrative sites will be used to cement the idea that the intelligence community is a standard stakeholder in domestic election management.

These are not speculative theories; they are the standard operational steps for an administration that has already moved from litigation to enforcement.

I’ve spent the last week pulling these threads together because I believe that clarity is one of our best tools for resistance. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by a machine this large, but remember: the very fact that this capture is being attempted is an admission that the system only works for the administration if every variable is controlled.

By staying sharp, refusing to be distracted by the theatre, and protecting the integrity of our own local processes, we refuse to be passive variables in an administrative exercise. We still have time to hold the line, but only if we stop looking for agents at the ballot box and start looking at the registration rolls in our own backyards.

This fight is a global one, and right now, the American system is the front line for the future of democracy. On behalf of all those around the globe with our eyes on America, thank you for reading and for staying in the fight.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026

📌 Please like, comment, and share this post if you find it of value. This helps more of our civic neighbours find their way to it.

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The reality of forensic forecasting

The kind of analysis and forecasting I provide here isn’t something you’ll find from traditional commentators or the standard churn of digital media. There are three very real reasons for that.

First, this level of pattern matching requires a steady, grounded nervous system and the capacity to switch the brain out of the frantic “beta” mode into a deep state of gamma activity. In our current environment, the focus required to process these disparate signals is a rare commodity. Second, the sheer volume of time it takes to verify the facts is immense. Third, and perhaps most importantly, my perspective is shaped by personal experience — 11 years of living under authoritarian rule. I know what the early administrative tremors of a closing society look like because I have lived through them.

Ordinarily, this level of forensic forecasting is the domain of private intelligence and comes at a premium of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. I am not here for my own benefit; I am here to inform you who stand in the fight for democracy alongside me. However, I must be able to support myself. Because of the intensity and weight of this work, from the end of February, these forecasts will be reserved for my patrons — paid subscribers.

If you have found value in these insights, now is the time to join us. For a limited time, I am offering 30% off the annual subscription price, locked-in for life, for those who sign up now. I warmly invite you to join the people who make this work possible.

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A note on perspective: I am not a lawyer, a constitutional scholar, or a professional election administrator. I am a researcher looking at the mechanics of power. This analysis is based on publicly available filings, reports, and observable administrative actions; it is intended to provide a framework for understanding the current landscape, not as legal or professional advice. Always consult official state sources regarding your specific voter registration and local laws.

References:

Legislative & Congressional Sources

• Senator Maria Cantwell Press Release (2 Feb 2026): “Cantwell Tells DOJ to Cease Pressure Campaign to Obtain States’ Sensitive Voter Data.”

• Senator Alex Padilla Press Release/Letter (29 Jan 2026): Formal follow-up letter to AG Bondi documenting the “apparent ransom” of Minnesota.

• John Larson House Press Release (22 Jan 2026): “Democrats, advocates probe DOGE coordination with election deniers as outrage grows.”

Official Government Portals & Filings

• U.S. Department of Justice (6 Jan 2026): Official announcement of lawsuits against Arizona and Connecticut for voter rolls.

• Social Security Administration (SSA) Legal Response: Filings confirming DOGE staffers used unauthorized servers to share citizen PII.

News & Investigative Journalism

• The Washington Post (4 Feb 2026): “‘Confidential’ Agreements Show Trump Administration’s Plans for States’ Voter Data.” (As syndicated/referenced by Brennan Center).

• AP News (23 Jan 2026): “Judge rules US Justice Department Filed a Lawsuit over Georgia Voter Data in the Wrong City.”

• Mother Jones (26 Jan 2026): “DOJ’s ‘Ransom’ Letter to Minnesota Reveals How Trump Plans to Rig the Midterms.”

• The Texas Tribune (9 Jan 2026): “Texas hands over complete list of registered voters to Trump administration.”

• Truthout (31 Jan 2026): “Trump DOJ Sues to Force States to Share Confidential Voter Data.”

• The Guardian (21 Jan 2026): “DOGE improperly shared sensitive social security data, DOJ court filing reveals.”

• People’s World (23 Jan 2026): Reporting on federal overreach and the Minnesota “Operation Metro Surge” fallout.

• Mashable (21 Jan 2026): “Did DOGE sign a ‘voter data agreement’ with election deniers?”

Think Tanks & Legal Advocacy

• Harvard Ash Center (2 Feb 2026): “Understanding DOGE and Your Data.”

• Common Cause (21 Jan 2026): “Common Cause Challenges Trump’s Demands for Voter Data in 14 States.”

• Elias Law Group (15 Jan 2026): “Federal Court Dismisses DOJ Lawsuit Seeking Sensitive Data of 23 Million California Voters.”

• Brookings Institution: Policy analysis on the expansion of the SAVE program and voter data error rates.

• Center for Racial and Disability Justice: Analysis of the impact of automated purges on marginalized communities.

• Democracy Docket: Ongoing litigation tracker for all 24 DOJ lawsuits.

Professional Legal Commentary

• Joyce Vance - Civil Discourse (31 Jan 2026): “Today Fulton County, Tomorrow???”