Annie Tsai

We often recognize political turning points in hindsight, but erosion doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in small, quiet steps and over time the foundational truths of American democracy are  worn down until the unimaginable becomes policy and the fringe becomes mainstream.

The rollback of Roe v. Wade, the push to end birthright citizenship, and the emerging push for unregulated artificial intelligence may initially seem like disconnected developments. Viewed together, however, they reflect a long-standing and deeply strategic effort to reshape public understanding, redefine constitutional norms, and consolidate power by steadily redrawing the boundaries of what Americans accept as truth.

This strategy is not new. It became particularly visible in the 1960s, when political leaders responding to the Civil Rights Movement adopted what came to be known as the Southern Strategy. Rhetoric around “law and order” and “states’ rights” was used to reframe racial opposition in a way that felt palatable to broader audiences. The power of this approach wasn’t just in what it opposed, but in how it gradually reshaped the narrative around who the government was for and what justice meant.

When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, Americans across the spectrum of beliefs came to accept legal abortion as a settled right. But over the following decades, a movement to reverse Roe emerged with deep investment and deeper pockets. It was a sustained, institutional campaign involving legal foundations, media platforms, churches, and political operatives. By the time Roe was overturned in 2022, the groundwork had been quietly and methodically laid for years under the guise of increasing power to the states.

Today, we’re seeing birthright citizenship face similar pressure. Once widely accepted as a core principle of the 14th Amendment, it’s now being questioned at the highest levels. Proposals to end it would have seemed unfathomable not long ago, but now circulate freely in mainstream discourse. The goal is not necessarily to win the legal argument right away, but rather to shift the conversation, reframe the debate, and chip away at what people once believed was unshakable.

Alongside these cultural and constitutional shifts, a new destabilizing force is emerging: AI deregulation. As artificial intelligence advances, the lack of reasonable federal guardrails creates fertile ground for misinformation, manipulation, and rapid erosion of what’s left of a shared understanding of reality. When truth becomes impossible to verify and reality itself can be manufactured, those with influence and resources are best positioned to shape public perception.

If there’s a common thread across all of these issues, it’s that erosion happens slowly. And, it’s not always easy to see until something big gives way.

The challenge for those who want to protect democratic norms – regardless of party – is recognizing the need to act earlier, communicate more effectively, and think beyond the next election cycle. In many cases, political leaders and movements committed to rights and pluralism have placed their faith in precedent, public opinion, or institutional resilience. And while those forces matter, they clearly are not enough on their own.

Winning hearts and minds in today’s climate requires more than policy. It requires emotional resonance, cultural pervasiveness, and consistent investment in “in-the-trenches” storytelling. The other side of the aisle has often been more consistent in these efforts not because of better ideas, but because of a more disciplined focus on building stacked influence over time across courts, media, education, and regional politics.

Right now, investing in cultural infrastructure matters the most. Nurturing platforms, voices, and institutions that can articulate shared democratic values clearly and repeatedly. Increasingly generationally divergent beliefs make it trickier, but there must be singular themes that any person can recall and take pride in. Birthright citizenship isn’t a legal doctrine, it’s the embodiment of America’s core idea that anyone born on our soil belongs here. Roe v. Wade isn’t about abortion, it’s about personal freedom and dignity. AI regulation isn’t about innovation versus bureaucracy, it’s about whether technology strengthens or undermines public trust.

This moment is about keeping the conversation focused on a core messaging strategy up and down the ticket and not veering away to the thousand other potential priorities. As an example, spend a few days in Texas and you’ll have seen dozens of billboards and commercials on repeat with the same slogans and celebrating shared mindset – a unified identity. If we want to protect hard fought precedent, we must make the stakes of change feel broadly personal and identity changing for all, even in transactional disagreement. It must be pervasive, and not assumed.

This moment requires recognizing the pattern, understanding the strategy, and executing  something more effective in response. Yes policy, but also yes for oversimplified clarity, singular strategy, pervasive and unified messaging, and long game that does not change the next cycle. Is not defending our democracy and republic the very preservation of our Constitution?