Anna Culbertson had just finished the clearance paperwork to join the federal workforce with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in November 2024, a relief after seven months of unemployment and working as a contractor for the agency. That same month, Donald Trump won the US presidential election. The election results put her on edge. “I didn’t know how it would impact my new job,” Culbertson said in an interview with NPQ.
She had read parts of Project 2025, a political initiative published in April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation to advocate for right-wing policies, which the Trump administration is now using as a playbook. Project 2025 calls for the replacement of career civil servants with political appointees, rolling back abortion access and LGBTQ+ protections, dismantling diversity and equity programs, and weakening environmental and climate regulations. This left Culbertson both disappointed and nervous.
Across federal agencies, thousands of workers were dismissed….By the end of 2025, the federal workforce shrank by 300,000 people.
At the time, it wasn’t clear how seriously it would be taken. Though she sensed that the deterioration of US values and democratic processes was on the horizon, the pace surprised her. “I did not foresee today,” she said.
Silicon Valley billionaires were seated prominently at Trump’s inauguration ceremony, signaling that this administration prioritized wealthy elites and corporations over the people.
One of the quickest actions to come out of the Trump administration was led by Elon Musk, appointed as special advisor, who established an entirely new agency—the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As the name suggests, it existed to cut out the “redundancies” in the federal system.
This affected Culbertson directly. In early February, barely a month into her formal start at the NIH, Culbertson was placed on leave. By May 8, 2025, she was officially separated from the agency. “I was a fired probationary employee from the National Institutes of Health,” she said, “I don’t work there anymore.”
Across federal agencies, thousands of workers were dismissed. At the State Department alone, more than 1,400 employees were terminated by midsummer. By the end of 2025, the federal workforce shrank by 300,000 people. “We were just in the office one day. We got an email and we were told to leave by the end of the day,” a former employee who requested anonymity said. “It felt so disrespectful to be discarded like that.”
Parallel institutions, or alternative institution building, have deep roots in civil resistance history, from colonists in New England resisting British rule…to India’s fight for independence.
Prominent educational institutions felt the force of the administration early on. At Columbia University, a hub of pro-Palestine protests, the administration canceled roughly $400 million in federal grant funding. Many government websites stopped working. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) projects were scrutinized or removed. Researchers, journalists, and others lost access to up-to-date data and information.
Culbertson felt called to action. “I knew I needed to do something,” she said. The day after she was dismissed, she started a website, 27UNIHTED, a grassroots resource hub by and for former NIH workers and community allies, featuring guidance, advocacy opportunities, and mutual aid. Culbertson saw it as a way to provide some semblance of resource sharing, community, and structure. With almost 30 dedicated volunteers and almost 50 temporary ones, she continues her work today.
Parallel Institutions as Civil Resistance
Parallel institutions, or alternative institution building, have deep roots in civil resistance history, from colonists in New England resisting British rule in the 1700s to India’s fight for independence in the 1800s and 1900s. It involves creating parallel structures—such as schools, media, cooperatives, and governing bodies—that challenge unjust systems and address societal gaps.
Unlike civil society or NGOs, which operate within existing institutions, these parallel movements build independent social orders that create the society activists seek. They are less risky than street protests, avoiding mass exposure while strengthening community self-organization and resilience over the long term. For example, Operation Life was a critical grassroots clinic in Las Vegas that was started and run by lower-income Black women organizers in the 1970s. At that time, nationwide implementation of WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) was sporadic, left largely up to the states. By 1973 Nevada was the only state that had not applied for WIC benefits, bending to the dominant conservative narrative at the time that poverty was a result of immorality. Children in low-income families continued to go hungry. The Operation Life leaders saw the dire need in their home state, wrote their own WIC plan proposal for Nevada, lobbied, and were eventually able to bring it to the federal government.
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When democracy is on the path to erosion or fails to work for people on the margins, parallel institutions like Operation Life have stepped up. Saul Levin, a democracy researcher, had spent years studying democratic backsliding. “In Trump’s first week, it became clear that he was not going to follow the law,” Levin said in an interview with NPQ. “He was going to appoint loyalists.” Like Culbertson, what alarmed Levin was the speed rather than the chaos. He began organizing political education training in early February 2025 to help people understand what was really unfolding in the United States.
When the Centers for Disease Control’s main website was compromised, volunteers set up a parallel website, RestoredCDC.org, which archived thousands of datasets and public health guidance that had been taken down or could no longer be accessed.
Levin views the current consolidation of political power in the United States in the international context of Hungary under the rule of Viktor Orbán and forays into martial law in South Korea. He strongly pushes against the popular belief that “authoritarianism can’t come to America.” Initially, Levin participated in protests, as he put it, to “take up space, use our protected rights.” Meanwhile, parallel institutions were starting to crop up all over the country.
According to Levin, when formal systems break down or openly violate the law, “what we can do is set up robust systems to take care of each other.” That can mean monitoring air quality, organizing childcare, setting up carpools so people can look for work, or formalizing mutual aid networks. “You’re adding order to neighborly behavior,” he said, “and that keeps people safe.” For Culbertson, the same sentiment applies. For her, parallel institutions are intended to “build a trusted place to go to when there are changes happening and when people need reliable resources.”
How Parallel Institutions Showed Up
When the Centers for Disease Control’s main website was compromised, volunteers set up a parallel website, RestoredCDC.org, which archived thousands of datasets and public health guidance that had been taken down or could no longer be accessed. Other entities, like the National Public Health Coalition, directly pushed back and criticized Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for dismantling his department.
A former federal official, who requested anonymity, spent years working in international relations. Their role focused on refugees, diplomacy, and humanitarian crises. After being abruptly fired from the federal government, they began sharing information they believed was important to be highlighted and documented decisions they saw as illegal or harmful, pushing them into the public domain. In one case, they said their group raised early alarms about US boat bombings in the Caribbean and the Pacific; the issue was later reported by the press and taken up in Congress.
For that former official, the work is about informing lawmakers, demanding accountability, and upholding scrutiny when formal channels fail. While the Trump administration continues to challenge First Amendment rights, often through violent means, social media advocacy and community conversations are keeping the work of parallel institutions alive.
In a 2019 award acceptance speech, Indian journalist Ravish Kumar said, “Not all battles are fought for victory—some are fought simply to tell the world that someone was there on the battlefield.” That ethos animates the parallel institutions movement. The belief is not that Trump will be easily defeated, or even that Trump himself is what the movement is about. This movement is a refusal to disappear that goes beyond the current administration. It is, as Levin put it, “an anti-authoritarian project…at odds with the oligarchy taking over our federal government.”
Levin continues to believe that the movement exceeds this moment. The current chaos is an opportunity to envision a future with “joy and creativity,” a future where people have food, shelter, transportation, and other basic needs, which our current systems do not adequately provide.
As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in How Democracies Die, democracies rarely fall to coups. Rather, they erode gradually. Democratic backsliding happens slowly, as institutions are hollowed out, credibility is questioned, and harmful narratives are repeated until erosion feels inevitable. Parallel institutions are an answer to that erosion.
The parallel institution movement is resistance through a collective, through the strength of numbers and information. In some sense, it is a fight for US values: freedom, liberty, and e pluribus unum—out of many, one.
