The Next Move’s 2025 In Review: August
Turning words into action.
A note from The Next Move: Happy holidays! To celebrate the end of a successful first year on Substack, we’re giving away five chess boards signed by RDI’s Garry Kasparov. Anyone signed up as a premium subscriber by December 31, 2025 will be automatically eligible to win.1 Sign up for a premium subscription in the next two weeks, and you’ll also save 30% off of the regular rate!
At The Next Move, we don’t just talk about the values of freedom and democracy: we act on them. The Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move, is bringing the fight to authoritarians at home and abroad.
In August, we showcased some of the ways we’re doing that.
RDI Chairman Garry Kasparov and CEO Uriel Epshtein filed declarations in federal court in support of a lawsuit challenging the secretary of state’s authority to revoke legal immigrants’ visas over constitutionally-protected speech—even speech that we disagree with. As Garry and Uriel write, “conditional liberty is not liberty at all.”
The kids are right to be concerned about our country’s direction, but social media-fueled despair and false equivalence won’t help us. Caitlin Forrest lays out how RDI’s Frontlines of Freedom program raises the voices of political dissidents and gives young Americans something worth fighting for.
When China, Qatar, and even our own federal government threaten academic freedom, we’re all responsible for fighting back. FIRE free speech scholar Sarah McLaughlin explains how America’s campuses became a frontline in the fight for liberty.
1. Please see full rules and regulations for The Next Move December 2025 raffle.