Defiant ACLU Has a 3-Part Plan to Obstruct Trump

Note: I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

“We are Donald Trump’s biggest nightmare,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director. The ACLU has 2,200 staff and lawyers in 50 states.

“We are the American Civil Liberties Union, and we’re not moving to Canada,” Romero said in a recent online Town Hall. “So, rest assured that when you target immigrants, dissidents, and your political opponents, we will challenge you in the courts, at state legislatures, and in the streets.

“When he tries to shut down abortion services at the national level, we will be there. When he fearmongers on the backs of trans kids, we will be there. What’s going to save us are the American people, activists, the card-carrying members, those wonderful people, over a million of them.”

Three-Part Plan to Stymie Trump

“We took legal action against Trump’s administration more than 430 times when he was first in office. Romero says we have the playbook to fight back – and win – once again. “We’ve seen 105 years and 19 presidents. Trump’s got to get past all of us.”

The ACLU playbook includes:

• Litigation. “Not all lawyers are created equal, and we’ve got the best of the bunch out there doing this important work,” Romero said.
• The Firewall of Freedom. This 98-page plan focuses on the states, the governors, the attorneys general, and the mayors becoming protagonists, with state laws, executive orders and directives that states can pass.
• Dissent and Debate. Calling on the one million card-carrying ACLU members, the ACLU will protect protestors, produce “know your rights” materials, defend whistleblowers and protect Trump critics.

“We’ve spent the last 105 years scaling this organization to meet this moment. We have staff in every state. We have a political arm. We have a litigation arm. We have a multi-issue agenda. We can pivot quickly when Trump targets immigrants. We will be there,” he said.

Cecillia Wang, ACLU National Legal Director, noted that Trump appointed 246 federal judges, and Biden is on pace to get 212 confirmed. She said that even Trump-appointed judges rule for the ACLU in cases against Trump’s immigration policies.

And in the US Supreme Court, which has a 6 to 3 hostile majority, the ACLU has prevailed in 38 cases and lost 30. “We won in more than half of the cases,” she said. “Not a bad batting average.”

“We have pioneered a state Supreme Court initiative using state court litigation to pursue state constitutional claims. That is a potent tool as a firewall against what the federal courts and, particularly, the US Supreme Court can do. We can use state courts to build that firewall so that states that don’t want to participate in immigration enforcement, or abortion restriction enforcement can put up a firewall and say, “Our state doesn’t do that.”

Advocacy at the polling place, in the streets

Deirdre Schifeling, ACLU Chief Political & Advocacy Officer, said the ACLU fielded tens of thousands of volunteers in the ten states with abortion rights ballot initiatives. Seven initiatives protecting abortion passed, including red states like Missouri and Montana, purple states like Arizona and Nevada, and blue states like New York and Colorado.

“The ACLU was the biggest organizational contributor to these ballot initiatives in the country. We had our state litigators going to court to beat back right-wing attacks on these initiatives and attempts to throw reproductive rights off the ballot altogether. We had our organizers mobilizing tens of thousands of volunteers to collect signatures to get these initiatives on the ballot,” she said.

“It takes a lot of work. It takes months and months of people going door to door, standing in front of grocery stores, and passing petitions at churches. And ACLU volunteers were front and center in driving that forward.”

She pointed out that Trump can’t actually deport millions of people without the help of the states. Mayors and city councils can protect rights and freedoms by saying that they don’t want to participate in abortion restriction enforcement and say, “Our state doesn’t do that.”

Join the ACLU

John Gilbert, ACLU National Organizing Director, said it is activating a grassroots mobilization at www.aclu.org/47, where people can take action to stop the mass deportation of immigrant families, repeal reproductive health restrictions, and oppose the weaponization of the federal government against protesters and political opponents.

People can volunteer to join the ACLU’s platform for grassroots action. “Our volunteer teams help mobilize and organize communities all across the country to defend our civil liberties by making calls, sending texts, or writing letters,” Gilbert said.

“We want to be able to plug in what we know is a vast and diverse and unique and beautiful community of activists into the very specific and urgent needs that exist,” he said.