The road to opposing President Donald Trump’s executive overreach runs straight out of Waco, Texas.
That’s the hometown of Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, the legal advocacy group that is leading the charge in federal court against Trump’s blizzard of executive orders — and winning.
Her Washington-based organization has filed about 30 lawsuits against the Trump administration in the past eight weeks.
Perryman’s political education began by watching what Republicans Karl Rove and Tom DeLay did to her home Congressional district in Central Texas, she recently told Texas Monthly. While the antics of Rove and DeLay may seem mild compared to the Trump era of the Republican Party, they were a wake-up call to Perryman as a future litigator.
“I saw the opposition impose a narrow and rigid religiosity. Those are all parts of the playbook.”
“We saw the use of culture-war tactics … the misrepresentation of the nature of reproductive health care and academic freedom — the ability to read and think and engage with ideas,” she told Texas Monthly. “There was also an attempt to misappropriate religion. I saw the opposition impose a narrow and rigid religiosity. Those are all parts of the playbook.”
Taking Project 2025 seriously
In the runup to the 2024 presidential election, she and her staff of lawyers took seriously the threat of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-funded playbook for a second Trump administration. And they began crafting their own ideas on how to stop Project 2025 if Trump were elected and began implementing it, she told Huffington Post recently.
“A big reason this organization has been so adept at countering Trump in court is because it spent the last 18 months gaming out legal strategies for responding to countless policy plans laid out in Project 2025, the far-right policy blueprint that the Heritage Foundation put together in preparation for a second Trump presidency,” the news outlet reported.
“Democracy Forward staff indexed the entire 900-page policy playbook, broke it down into different categories, put it in a spreadsheet and meticulously laid out what legal actions they should prepare to take based on how the Trump administration was likely to proceed with various policies, whether it be through executive orders, statutes or regulations.
“They also coordinated with more than 450 civil society groups and state attorneys general to prepare for different scenarios where certain groups would be impacted by Project 2025 policies, and figured out when they should team up to defend the rule of law.”
Remember also that Trump denied knowing anything about Project 2025, even though most of the people working on it were former staffers of his first administration.
By most accounts, it is the draft work of Project 2025 that has allowed the second Trump administration to move with lightning speed to — as Steve Bannon declared — “flood the zone with shit.”
The common thread to the lawsuits is the allegation that Trump lacks the legal authority to do what he says must happen.
Those rapid-fire actions from the White House so far have elicited more than 130 lawsuits and even more investigations. The common thread to the lawsuits is the allegation that Trump lacks the legal authority to do what he says must happen.
In normal times, Congress would seek to reign in a president’s abuse of power. But in the current moment, the Republican-led Congress has abdicated its own authority in deference to the president they both fear and adore.
That leaves the courts as the first line of defense against the White House. And on that count, there is no single group raining on Trump’s parade more frequently than Democracy Forward.
“Of all the groups that were warning about Project 2025, they were systematically planning for the legal fight in the event that Trump were elected,” Daniel McNeil, general counsel at American Federation of Teachers, told Huffington Post. “For months in advance, they were thinking in a way that was like, ‘How do we challenge an executive order that does X? Who is the right party to challenge if Y happens?’ I think that’s what makes them different.”
Perryman has assembled an all-star team of lawyers and former government officials who know the ins and outs of Washington and who have been ready to respond within hours of an executive order or presidential proclamation.
For example, when Trump last week mandated a process that would lead to dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, Democracy Forward quickly sent out a warning.
“Across America, in red and blue states, children rely on the Department of Education for critical support and for an opportunity for a fair chance to grow and thrive,” Perryman said. “President Trump is again prioritizing callous ideological actions over the needs of people in seeking to dismantle the Department of Education.
“As we have made clear from the start of this administration, attempts to accelerate dangerous and harmful policies from the Project 2025 playbook will be swiftly challenged in court. That goes for this attempt to undermine educational resources for all. We will be filing litigation against this action and will use every legal tool to ensure that the rights of students, teachers and families are fully protected. Since Inauguration Day, the Trump-Vance administration has been taken to court more than 100 times, and we will do it again this time.”
This matters, she added, because eliminating the Department of Education “would cut off vital funding streams that help the most vulnerable members of our society, harming over 7.4 million students with disabilities, 26 million students from low-income backgrounds, 9.8 million students from rural schools, and many other communities. Any effort to dismantle the Department of Education not only threatens the immediate welfare of students and teachers but undermines the long-term prospects for communities across the nation. The consequences of such a move are far-reaching, impacting educational access, community support and economic stability.”
Democracy Forward already has sued the administration to stop ICE raids in houses of worship; to stop attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs; to protect federal employees fired by Elon Musk and DOGE.
And late last week, Democracy Forward threw down a gauntlet against Trump’s efforts to intimidate lawyers and judges.
“The administration’s attacks on the legal profession should concern every single American regardless of political or ideological affiliation, as they are designed to deter people and communities across the nation from defending their rights and seeking their day in court,” Perryman said.
“We will not allow intimidating tactics in or outside the courtroom to deter our work.”
“As a national legal organization dedicated to democracy and social progress, Democracy Forward will continue to use the law to protect the rights of people and communities. We are in solidarity with all who respect the rule of law and those sworn to uphold it,” she declared. “We will not allow intimidating tactics in or outside the courtroom to deter our work, abridge our solidarity, or undermine the purpose of our profession. We urge all lawyers to fulfill their duty to defend and protect the Constitution.”
As a result of Democracy Forward’s work, more than 5,000 people got their jobs back at the U.S. Department of Agriculture after a government employee oversight board concluded they had been illegally fired by Musk and DOGE.
As a result of Democracy Forward’s work, congregations and ministries affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship — along with a number of Quaker congregations and a Sikh temple — won a restraining order against immigration law enforcement entering their sacred spaces.
A week ago, Democracy Forward joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of District of Columbia to sue the Trump administration over the president’s “unlawful and unprecedented” invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to remove people from the country without due process.
The organization’s website is updated daily with new information about its legal actions and the results of those actions.
Who is Skye Perryman?
Skye Perryman (Photo by Shannon Finney)
Perryman is the daughter of Ray Perryman of Odessa and Nancy Perryman of Waco. Her father, a noted economist, previously taught at Baylor.
Even as an undergraduate at Baylor — studying economics and philosophy — Perryman stood out as a leader. In 2002, she was among 64 students from U.S. colleges and universities named a 2002 Truman Scholar by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.
Honorees were chosen on the basis of leadership potential, intellectual ability and likelihood of “making a difference.”
In addition to her studies at Baylor, Perryman coordinated Project Democracy at Carver Academy, a debate program funded through a $6 million GEAR UP Waco grant from the Department of Education to serve at-risk youth in six Waco schools.
She also co-founded the “Light Up the Night Walk,” a leukemia foundation fundraiser, and helped organize the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.
“Skye is a dynamic leader. Every project I’ve known her to be involved in has been made better by her presence and her commitment to fostering civil society,” said Elizabeth Vardaman, Baylor’s Truman Scholarship representative, in 2002. “Skye has flourished academically at Baylor, and she believes all students, if given opportunity, can achieve great things. She has volunteered countless hours to help young people in Waco become educated, productive citizens. Skye is a change agent who makes good things happen wherever she goes.”
“Skye is a change agent who makes good things happen wherever she goes.”
After Baylor, she headed to Georgetown University Law Center, where she earned a law degree. Ironically, that is the same law school recently targeted by a Trump official who threatened to block the school’s students from D.C. internships if the school didn’t purge its curriculum of DEI. The dean pushed back and said the Catholic school would not be intimidated.
Perryman worked for two D.C. law firms before joining Democracy Forward as senior counsel upon its founding in 2017. Then she worked as chief legal officer and general counsel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She returned to Democracy Forward as president in June 2021 and has grown the organization into a D.C. powerhouse.
Its new office space has a direct and unobstructed view of the Washington Monument.
Building a staff
Both before the 2024 election and since, Democracy Forward has been on a hiring spree. Its staff today numbers more than 75 people, including dozens of lawyers.
One of those hires is Joel McElvain, who was acting deputy general counsel at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was responsible for legal advice on Medicare and Medicaid statutes and the Affordable Care Act. Another is Michael Waldman, who was special counsel at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The organization’s legal director is Audrey Wiggins, a career civil rights attorney who previously served as senior adviser to the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as deputy associate general counsel in the HHS Office of General Counsel Civil Rights Division. At HHS, she was executive chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Work Group, which she founded.
Armond Baboomian, chief of staff and deputy general counsel, previously worked at the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst and an assistant general counsel.
Rachel Homer leads an effort called Democracy 2025. She previously served as chief of staff at the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Education.
And the list goes on and on with staff members who understand how to sue the federal government because they used to be the federal government.
Democracy Forward is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, but its primary funding comes through the Democracy Forward Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by individual donors and philanthropic institutions.
Huffington Post reports the foundation’s major donors include the Sandler Foundation, which gave $16 million from 2018 to 2023, and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which gave $5.6 million from 2021 to 2023.
Democracy Forward listed an annual operating budget of $12.4 million in 2023, the most recent year of tax filings publicly available.
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