The Next Move’s 2025 In Review: September
A test of our commitment to fundamental freedoms.
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!
September saw Americans’ fundamental freedoms under severe strain. The assassination of Charlie Kirk represented a violent abrogation of the social contract—resorting to bloodshed instead of the democratic process to resolve our differences. In the wake of Kirk’s murder, The Next Move exposed how authoritarian actors were exploiting the tragedy.
The shooting of Charlie Kirk at a Utah college was a tragedy that endangered our democracy. Renew Democracy Initiative’s Uriel Epshtein affirms that when we turn to violence, we are surrendering, conceding that our institutions don’t work, and making politics a matter of survival of the fittest.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination and political violence in the United States have Russian propagandists downright giddy. It’s all fodder for a war being waged on social media. RDI’s Evan Gottesman explains how Moscow’s agents tried to turn an American crisis into a Russian victory.
Censorship is central to the story of Russia’s descent into KGB dictatorship. Garry Kasparov explains how press and speech freedoms can die with a whimper rather than a bang.
1. Please see full rules and regulations for The Next Move December 2025 raffle.