Quoted in To Set the Captives Free: Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen and the struggle for freedom in central New York 1835-1872, by Carol Hunter, a biography of Loguen.
Trump has repeatedly stated his intent to cut funding to schools teaching about racial and LGBTQ+ issues, and to implement “strict prohibitions” on teaching this subject matter. The 1619 curriculum aims to engage students with the ingrained history of racism in the United States by starting a study of history with the year that enslaved Africans first arrived in the American colonies.
To Set the Captives Free: Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen and the struggle for freedom in central New York 1835-1872, by Carol Hunter, a biography of Loguen.
Trump has stated his intent to act as “dictator” long enough to close the border and increase oil drilling. In the same interview, he refused to say he would not use his powers to seek revenge against rivals.
Trump has named a long list of political rivals, judges, and others as deserving of criminal charges or execution. If he returns to office, one likely Department of Justice appointee is Mike Davis, who has stated his desire to “rain hell on Washington,” indicting Joe Biden and his family members, pardoning all January 6th offenders, and firing many executive branch staff. Trump has a track record of using “acting” appointments to fast-track loyalists like Davis into positions of power.
See more lessons about stopping coups from Choose Democracy.
For U.S. government employees, Takoma Park Mobilization has created this resource covering rights under the law as well as strategies for effective action and defense of institutions.
In January 2017, in the last days before Donald Trump took office, I witnessed the work of one group of volunteers coordinating with a nationwide “hackathon” to duplicate and preserve EPA data. Volunteer archivists, librarians, and computer scientists worked to retrieve government data such as ice core data from NOAA, several years of air quality results from the EPA, and a detailed map of the factories and power plants emitting the most carbon.
Trump has signaled repeatedly that he will use the Insurrection Act, a law last updated in 1871 that allows the president to use the military for law enforcement, to exert control over cities and suppress demonstrations. This plan is an “immediate priority” for Project 2025.
Although Trump has hesitated to say that he would pardon himself, he has not ruled it out. Sources report that he considered pardoning himself as well as his children during his previous presidency. He has repeatedly suggested that he is above the law as President, and repeatedly attacked the legal system.
Project 2025 calls for withdrawal from international climate change agreements, as well as other reversals of climate change and clean energy policy. Trump previously withdrew the United States from the international Paris climate agreement.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to leave NATO and questioned the U.S.’s obligations under the treaty. Although withdrawing the U.S. from the treaty would likely face legal obstacles, backing away from security obligations and expressing a lack of commitment to NATO could have international impacts . It is also possible to partially withdraw from NATO without fully leaving, as France has done in the past.
Many organizations are working to defend the vote and resist authoritarianism, including Protect Democracy, the ACLU’s voting rights work, Civil Liberties Defense Center, which provides rights and privacy trainings for activists as well as legal support, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law , which offers phone and text hotlines to contact with problems and questions related to voting.
Facing extreme voter suppression following their efforts to register Black Mississippians to vote, civil rights groups ran a parallel, inclusive election for elected representatives to the 1964 Democratic convention. Their efforts drew attention to the corruption and racism of the official election and became a touchstone moment for the civil rights movement.
This document provides some examples of what was done to organize a mutual aid society in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, with tips and links to additional resources. When using online tools to organize a mutual aid society, it is also important to consider the privacy and safety issues that may arise and be mindful of personal data.
As The Guardian and others have documented, Trump’s plans for a second term include “systematically dismantling” the EPA by cutting funding, closing offices, reducing regulations and fuel economy standards, and creating closer ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Trump has signaled that he will again seek to use the Insurrection Act to suppress domestic dissent and violence, primarily in Democratic-run cities and states. Work on this plan would be led by Jeffrey Clark, and is likely to include draft executive orders. The proposal is an “immediate priority” of Project 2025. Clark and his associates have drafted plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on Trump’s first day in office, in order to police any public protests.
In interviews and in his campaign trail speeches, Trump has repeatedly stated his priority to “drill, drill, drill” to increase domestic oil production. He has a track record of working within the EPA and other agencies to subvert oversight and environmental regulations.
Learn more about participatory budgeting from the Participatory Budget Project.
As CNN and others documented, Trump in 2022 used Truth Social to call for suspension of the Constitution in order to overturn the results of the 2020 election, based on false claims of fraud.
Schedule F is an executive order, first proposed in 2020, that would change the status of tens of thousands of government workers, making them political appointees who could be fired and replaced with Trump loyalists at will. Trump has promised to reissue this order and use this power aggressively for purges based on “Deep State” conspiracy theories.
As part of his Agenda 47 plan , released in 2023, Trump has promised to “clean out corrupt actors,” replacing them with appointees vetted for loyalty to Trump. The use of Schedule F to reclassify and fire executive branch employees has also been identified as “key” by Project 2025.
ShutDownDC and Beautiful Trouble are two of many organizations working to support strategic and effective approaches to direct action and educate activists.
Dr. Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and International studies and a scholar of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action. You can view a video covering these three points here.
Find scenario planning tools at Choose Democracy’s site What if Trump Wins.org.
In fall 2023, the United Auto Workers staged unprecedented coordinated strikes against all three unionized American automakers. After about six weeks, they won major gains for workers, including a 25% pay increase following a period of record manufacturer profits. .
Washoe County, a battleground district in Nevada, has seen huge staff turnover following a pattern of threats and harassment of election workers based on right wing conspiracy theories. This is representative of increasing threats and harassment nationwide.
Rest in Power, Robin Harper, a 92-year-old Quaker from the Philadelphia area. Throughout his life, Robin has actively worked for peace and resisted the payment of federal taxes that underwrite war and militarism. You can watch him tell his story here.
This phrase comes from Momnetum, which provides excellent trainings about “moments of the whirlwind”.