An alliance of leading pro-democracy organizations has launched a campaign to challenge anticipated Trump policies that pose economic, political and religious liberty threats to the nation.
Democracy 2025 is a coalition of more than 280 legal and advocacy groups representing millions of people determined to employ legal action to disrupt anticipated attacks against basic freedoms and the U.S. government and economy by the incoming president and his Christian nationalist allies.
The campaign is resourced by Democracy Forward and comprised of an expanding lineup of advocacy and legal groups forewarned by the policies of Trump’s first term and his promises to follow suit in the second.
Skye Perryman
“Within days of taking office in 2017, Donald Trump and his administration took a series of actions that undermined and violated the rights and well-being of the American people and threatened our nation’s greatest values. It has become clear that the Trump-Vance administration will waste no time doing the same in 2025,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, a Washington D.C.-based legal organization founded to advance democracy and social progress.
Participants have established “a multimillion-dollar war chest” to enable Democracy 2025 members to take legal action, represent clients pro bono, file lawsuits, argue in court and provide resources to aid the nation’s larger pro-democracy movement.
“Thanks to this growing and broad inclusive coalition of communities, lawyers, experts and advocates, we and our partners are ready to use every legal tool at our disposal should the Trump-Vance administration abuse the public trust and break the law,” Perryman said.
The breadth of the Democracy 2025 campaign belies the enormity of its challenge to check rightwing attempts to use presidential power for ultra-conservative policies like those in Project 2025, the white Christian nationalist blueprint for reshaping democracy and society into a theocracy led by pro-Trump white Christians.
Facilitated by the Heritage Foundation, the Project 2025 “playbook” calls for dismantling federal agencies. Federal civil service employees are to be fired and replaced exclusively with Trump loyalists. The 900-page document also targets immigrants, Critical Race Theory, public education, same-sex marriage, transgender people and what it calls “gender ideology.”
While Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during the campaign, he previously embraced it and some of his closest advisers contributed to the document. Trump’s campaign rhetoric echoed some of its goals, and many speculate his recent federal agency picks were chosen to carry out its aims.
Democracy 2025 is not alone in its pledge to take the incoming administration to court as often as necessary. Declaring “despair and resignation are not a strategy,” the American Civil Liberties Union recently announced its network of attorneys and activists are standing by to mount sweeping legal challenges to unconstitutional White House policies.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State said it will oppose Christian nationalist attacks against the separation of church and state. “Our team has a strategy for the next four years.”
Democracy 2025 organizers said the campaign devised a “Threat Matrix” currently tracking 221 “high-priority threats,” including some outlined in Project 2025 and far-right interests seeking executive branch actions.
“Organizations in the coalition are planning responses if a Trump-Vance Department of Justice abandons the DOJ’s role in defense of important federal policies and benefits being challenged by far-right attorneys general (Matt Gaetz), organizations and special interests or if it seeks to weaponize the DOJ against the American people,” the coalition says.
Kica Matos
The president-elect’s threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants will be fiercely opposed if it becomes a reality, said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, a Democracy 2025 member.
“Donald Trump’s election brings us to one of the most dangerous moments in our country’s history,” Matos said. “But there is too much at stake to succumb to despair. Instead, we will come together, lift up the courage and resilience of immigrant communities, and fight back with everything we have. We successfully fought Trump before, and we will do it again.”
The campaign also has developed a communications toolkit that includes prepared social media posts.
Interfaith Alliance President Paul Brandeis Raushenbush said the organization is mobilizing faith communities and leaders nationwide to speak up for democracy, the rights of women and girls and other vulnerable communities.
“The majority of faithful Americans are fully prepared to defend our constitutional right to religious freedom for all and to protect our democracy from the coercive and corrosive effect Project 2025 will have on faith in America,” he said.
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