In case you missed it earlier, take a quick look at our plan — copied below — for confronting a second Trump term.

- Lisa Gilbert, Co-President of Public Citizen

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Donald Trump is a habitual, unrepentant liar.

But when Trump says he wants to be a dictator for a day, weaponize the Department of Justice, turn on the spigots for Big Oil, roll back the achievements of the Inflation Reduction Act, fire federal workers who choose to honor their agency’s mission rather than function as Trump loyalists, and more, we should take him seriously.

When his associates publish a detailed agenda of what they hope to achieve in a second Trump presidency — Project 2025 — we should believe them.

And when Trump and his acolytes say they intend to govern much more ruthlessly than they did in his first term, we should assume they aim to do exactly that.

The good news is, we have our own playbook for dealing with Trump.

Public Citizen was enormously effective in confronting Trump in his first term.

• We helped drive three of Trump’s cabinet secretaries from office.

• We generated a major focus on Trump’s personal conflicts of interests and the corporate capture of his administration.

• We won multiple lawsuits against the administration, including to force disclosure of the White House visitor log and to preserve a teen pregnancy prevention program.

• We sued and forced the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots in a timely way.

• We helped lead massive mobilizations to hold Trump accountable, including to support both Trump impeachments.

• We built the Not Above the Law coalition and a network that ended up with more than half a million people signed up to take to the streets in more than 1,500 cities — in a broad coalition that spanned labor, environmental, civil rights, women’s, LGBTQ, and many other organizations.

We’re doing deep research on potential Trump appointees. We’re monitoring if, how, and when specific elements of the Project 2025 agenda are put into action. We’re preparing legal theories to challenge Trump’s dictates. And we’re readying our coalitions for activation.

We are preparing to:

• Call attention to Trump’s and his family’s conflicts of interests, involving everything from a new Trump cryptocurrency to billions in Saudi investment capital managed by Jared Kusher.

• Highlight ethical breaches, conflicts of interest, and abuses by cabinet nominees — and campaign to defeat as many outrageous nominees as possible.

• Activate our coalitions — and expand them even further — to defend the rule of law and fight against all manner of Trump authoritarian actions.

• Lobby and pressure our friends on Capitol Hill to stay unified and try to hinder or block Trump’s legislative agenda.

• Sue the administration to obtain documents and block all manner of illegal action.

We are hard at work on detailed plans for each of these areas.

Here’s one example: During Trump’s first term, we litigated effectively to block the administration’s authoritarian maneuvers and corporate giveaways. We are preparing to do even more in a second Trump administration.

Right away, and throughout Trump’s second term, we will provide training for nonprofit allies — including environmental justice and grassroots groups — on the use of the Freedom of Information Act. And we will be prepared to represent various groups, reporters, and researchers in litigation if and when the administration refuses to respond to open records requests.

Similarly, we will provide training for nonprofit allies on administrative law and regulatory practice, focusing on key concepts that may form the basis for legal challenges to Trump’s anti-regulatory action. We’ll give them guidance on how to identify strong cases, and we’ll be available to provide representation if needed.

We’re doing work now to prepare legal challenges to Trump actions in three areas that are highly likely to come into play:

EMERGENCY POWERS
We sued Trump over his funding for the so-called border wall, which took money from other purposes based on a purported emergency. We expect that a second Trump administration will make more widespread claims to emergency powers, particularly on matters relating to energy and immigration. On our own and with colleague organizations, we anticipate litigating to block the invocation of emergency powers to justify otherwise illegal actions.

IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT
Trump and his minions have already signaled that they will refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress for purposes they don’t like, such as renewable energy or grants for climate- or health-focused work. If they do so, we are prepared to sue for violation of the Impoundment Control Act, which restricts the president’s ability to refuse to spend appropriated funds.

ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS
Project 2025 announces a long list of regulatory protections that Trump will try to undo. Under administrative law rules, however, the administration cannot act in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner — it must be able to justify its actions based on facts. We have long challenged agency action that fails to meet that standard, and we are preparing to do so aggressively going forward.

Against this backdrop, we’ll be closely monitoring existing and proposed rules we expect Trump’s gang of corporate-friendly regulators to try to roll back — from heat protections for workers to standards for banks to account for climate risk, from Medicare drug price negotiation to safeguards against consumer fraud, and much more — and we’ll be ready to rush into court to stop them.

Make no mistake, we know exactly how dangerous Trump will be in a second term and we’re appropriately frightened for our nation and the world. But we are even more determined to mitigate the damage and confront his authoritarianism head on.

We can’t do it alone, however.

We need your help.

And right now, that means building up more financial strength than we’ve ever had before.

If you can, please donate to Public Citizen right now.

Anything you can chip in — $5 or $25, $50 or $100, $500 or even more — will help us confront what’s coming from a second Trump term.

CONTRIBUTE NOW
Or join our popular Monthly Giving program (if you haven’t already) to help make sure we have the ongoing financial resources to fight Trump day after day after day.

Thank you for reading this, and thank you for everything you do as part of Public Citizen.

For progress,

- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
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