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Impact Report: March 2025
March 11, 2025
The ACLU – all of us – must fight this war for the soul of our country. We must continue to challenge specific actions by Trump and his administration that target vulnerable people and groups. And, we must keep our eyes on the ultimate prize of reforming our democracy so that the rule of law does a better job of protecting all Americans, regardless of race, religion, gender, gender expression or identification.
- Letter From Our Executive Director
- ACLU of Illinois Legal Director Announcement
- Resisting the Trump Administration’s Agenda
- Illinois Legislative Updates
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- Ask the Expert
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Letter From Our Executive Director
“Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” remains a powerful motto for these challenging times.
This African American folk/gospel song kept civil rights movements of earlier times focused on the ultimate goal of reforming our democracy to provide equal justice under the law for all Americans. We must retain this focus on equal justice under the law, despite Trump’s attempt to divert our attention from his goal of disemboweling our democracy and replacing it with an autocracy of billionaires and bigots.
Trump’s early flurry of Executive Orders targeted transgender people and immigrants. This is a calculated repetition of his campaign strategy of demonizing “others” – trans folks, immigrants, people of color, women. Trump then uses the fear of “others” that he has generated to divide Americans.
Trump hypes his divisive orders with a frequency and a fury that distracts us from the comprehensive nature of his attack on our democracy and the rule of law. And herein lies the real danger – sliding down the slippery slope toward autocracy.
Many of Trump’s other Executive Orders are a blatant attack on the rule of law.
- He has politicized and weaponized the Department of Justice (DOJ) to punish his critics, threatening Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez with a criminal investigation for doing a Know Your Rights presentation for immigrants. A DOJ henchman tried to freeze the corporate assets of a company that had lawfully contracted with the federal government for a clean energy project during the Biden Administration.
- He has thumbed his nose at the constitutional requirement that the Senate exercise its “advise and consent” power to confirm presidential nominees, unilaterally granting Elon Musk and his DOGE service the power to “remake the federal government.t” This is code for slashing the federal workforce, cutting agency budgets that were appropriated by Congress, accessing and then controlling Treasury, IRS, and Social Security data bases – threatening the personal privacy and financial security of literally all Americans.
- He has disregarded the explicit protections of the First Amendment with his expulsion of the Associated Press from the White House briefing room for refusing to genuflect to his sophomoric effort to rename the Gulf of Mexico. In another affront to the First Amendment, he has threatened to withhold money from U.S. colleges and universities that allow “illegal” protests (which he did not define) and threated to expel and prosecute students who participate in those protests.
- He has discounted the specific language of the Fourteenth Amendment that says that all persons born in the United States are “citizens of the United States” and, in so doing dishonors not only the Constitution itself but the thousands of Union soldiers who sacrificed their lives in the Civil War.
- He “paused” spending of billions of dollars of federal money and grants that had been appropriated by Congress.
- In Illinois, that pause froze almost $2 billion dollars in federal funds across 14 state agencies, boards and commissions. These dollars — appropriated by Congress — were intended to improve, among other things, Illinois bridges and roads. Every Illinoisan who travels roads in need of repair is affected by this funding “pause.”
- Similarly, Trump’s unilateral halt of funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development stopped work at the University of Illinois flagship campus that was dedicated to establishing soybean markets in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions. Illinois farmers — the No. 1 producers of soybeans — are hurt by this abuse of power, as are farming communities and the entire state.
- Illinois also suffered the “pause” of reimbursements for the “Local Food Purchase Assistance Program” which bought fresh products from Illinois farmers and then distributed this food via food pantries and similar programs to help people in need. More than 170 Illinois farmers distributed food to 883 food pantries and outlets under this program.
The real story here is that Trump believes he is the law and can use that law to punish anyone who disagrees with his views. Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is king and thus “is the law.” These presidential fantasies of unchecked power often are dismissed as fanciful or rhetorical. But the truth is more alarming: his claims are an orchestrated effort to subvert the Constitution and inflict his distorted ideology on all Americans.
He seeks this dominance especially when a state or local government, like those in Illinois, have differing priorities – whether those differences are about enforcement of federal civil immigration law or providing gender-affirming care. Because Trump cannot achieve his national policy aims by democratic means – by acting through Congress – he is attempting to use federal funds to punish cities and states that don’t bend the knee to this wanna-be monarch.
We must do everything in our power to resist this rush to autocracy. The most dangerous thing is for good people to do nothing in the face of such threats.
- We must be truth tellers. We must call out Trump’s handmaidens in Congress when they repeat his lies and when they abdicate their constitutional duties. We must challenge these same members of Congress if they enact a budget with massive cuts to life-saving programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. More than 3.4 million Illinoisans, including 1.4 children, participate in the Medicaid program.
- The ACLU must continue to challenge the systemic threats Trump 2.0 pose to our democracy. We will litigate Trump administration actions that conflict with the U.S. and federal law.
- We must continue to work with Illinois officeholders who want to enhance our state’s firewall protections of civil rights and civil liberties. We must urge those officeholders to enforce, not weaken, such Illinois laws as the Trust Act, which allows state officials to prioritize local public safety needs and to decline to participate in federal civil immigration enforcement.
The ACLU – all of us – must fight this war for the soul of our country. We must continue to challenge specific actions by Trump and his administration that target vulnerable people and groups. And, we must keep our eyes on the ultimate prize of reforming our democracy so that the rule of law does a better job of protecting all Americans, regardless of race, religion, gender, gender expression or identification.
