As the country faces a second Trump administration, the threats on rights and liberties grow by the day. Based on his previous term, and his rhetoric on the campaign trail, President-elect Trump has signaled he plans to dismantle democracy as we know it. But the ACLU is better prepared than ever to confront efforts to undermine our democracy – during his previous term, we filed more than 400 legal actions against the Trump administration, and we’re ready to fight back again. With more than 100 years of experience across 19 presidential administrations, we are prepared to do all we can to preserve, protect, and advance civil rights and civil liberties.
New Jersey has shown that it is possible to achieve meaningful change in the face of national challenges. Since the beginning of the previous Trump administration, as rights remain under attack unlike ever before, the Garden State has enacted new protections to safeguard reproductive freedom, advance immigrants’ rights, and achieve fairer elections. New Jersey has legalized cannabis in a way that centers racial and social justice, released more than 9,000 people from state prisons and jails, and continues to provide a leading example for the nation on advancing civil rights. Over the course of the past several years, the ACLU-NJ has impactfully advocated for fundamental rights in the courts, in the legislature, and in communities across the state at unprecedented rates. We are uniquely positioned to combat attempts to slash individual freedoms, and we will spend the next four years doing all we can to defend them.
As President-elect Trump attempts to implement Draconian policies, including those outlined in Project 2025, we know there will be a flood of attacks across nearly all civil rights and liberties, including on immigrants’ rights, voting rights, reproductive freedom, and more. But take us at our word: the ACLU is more prepared than ever to ensure Trump is held accountable for any policies that undermine individual freedoms.
We will challenge family separation, mass deportation, and unjust immigration detention. We will fight back against any attempts to ban abortion. We will challenge any targeting of protestors or dissenting voices. We will fight voter suppression. And in every state we can, we will build a pro-civil rights firewall to protect those at risk of harm by the federal government.
In New Jersey, that means passing the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act to expand access to the ballot box; enacting the Immigrant Trust Act to ensure local resources aren’t used in federal immigration enforcement; expanding abortion access for all; ending mass incarceration by releasing people from prison at the largest scales, including through categorical clemency; and prioritizing data-driven, human-centered solutions to bolster public safety while rejecting tough-on-crime approaches to public policy.
These strategies will help us block dangerous executive action in some cases and mitigate the harm in others. We know there will still be unforeseen, egregious threats to rights and freedoms that may not be covered in our roadmap, but despite the pain and despair felt among communities in this moment, the ACLU and our partners are ready to do all we can to ensure communities thrive and democracy prevails.
