Support the Court Challenges

The Courts Are Our Last Line of Defense

While new Presidents typically use Executive Orders liberally, Donald Trump has taken it to new extremes. Much of what he is doing is bad policy. But more importantly, many of his Executive Orders may also be illegal.

Executive Orders cannot create new law – that is what Congress does. The most effective and immediate response to the Trump overreach at this moment is through court challenges, although ultimately the safeguarding of our constitutional order must come from the insistence of the American people. So far, over 100 court actions have been brought by state attorneys general and many private organizations and individuals, and many are proving successful. Most rulings are preliminary, however, and Trump will almost certainly appeal any adverse final decisions. But here are some highlights so far:

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a lower court directive for USAID to restart payments to contractors for work already completed. Those payments had been unlawfully halted by DOGE.
A court ordered the head of the Office of Special Counsel – the agency that protects whistleblowers and federal employees from prohibited personnel actions – to be reinstated after Trump had terminated him without cause. An appeals court reversed it but it most certainly will head to the Supreme Court.
Trump’s executive order to deny birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants has been preliminarily enjoined by several courts.
Trump’s executive order suspending refugee admissions and processing has been preliminarily enjoined.
A court preliminarily denied DOGE-affiliated individuals access to any Treasury data systems containing non-anonymized [correct ?] personal information or confidential financial information.
A court preliminarily enjoined the Trump administration’s blanket freeze on the funding of federal grants, loans and assistance programs.
A court preliminarily enjoined ICE and CPB from generally conducting immigration enforcement in or near the plaintiffs’ places of worship

The full list of judicial challenges can be found HERE.

The Courts are our most effective immediate defense against illegal Trump and Musk activities. While the most critical cases may end up in a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives, recent cases suggest that at least two of those conservative justices may not write a blank check for Trump Administration actions.

To maintain this effort, P4D has identified three organizations whose work has been critical and effective:

Democracy Forward took the first Trump administration to court more than 100 times. It has now sued the second Trump administration to require the funding of federal grants and loans, to stop the unlawful termination of probationary federal employees, to prevent the elimination of federal employee civil service protections, to enjoin the dismantling of USAID and the CFPB, and to limit immigration enforcement officials from entering houses of worship for their enforcement actions.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) took Trump to the Supreme Court to hold him accountable for the January 6 insurrection. Now, it is suing DOGE to compel it to provide required transparency into its operations, and, with Democracy Forward, is suing to prevent the Trump administration from reclassifying federal civil servants as at-will employees.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) fought the first Trump administration’s unlawful policies in more than 400 cases. Now, the ACLU is suing the Trump administration to stop several executive actions, including a plan to massively expand fast-track deportations without a fair legal process, an executive order that withholds federal funds appropriated for gender-affirming care for people under 19, and an executive order that suspends asylum in the U.S.

If you are outraged by the illegal Trump Power Grab, here is your chance to do something. Please contribute to one of more of these litigating groups here:

[Contribute Here – link to Act Blue]