News & Commentary

This fall, the Trump administration announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which offers young undocumented people who came to this country as children temporary permission to work and live here. The decision threw the lives of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants into crisis. The president has repeatedly insisted that there’s “nothing to worry about” and that Dreamers can rest easy while Congress works on a legislative fix.But that’s proven to be false.By Christmas, about 13,500 young people will have lost their DACA status since the administration began letting DACA permits expire on Sept.  5. On average, another 122 young people are now losing DACA every day. If Congress doesn’t come up with a solution immediately, a thousand more will start losing their status each day starting in March. We’re also seeing the Trump administration target Dreamers w

Last week, Doug Jones defeated former state judge Roy Moore in an upset victory. But Moore, who trails by over 21,000 votes and is currently ineligible for an automatic recount, has refused to concede the race. Moore is now suggesting that he may have lost — due to voter fraud.

Perhaps Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most prescient and powerful speech was one he gave in 1967, called “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” In that speech, during a generation-defining civil rights struggle, Dr. King explained that he could not raise his voice for nonviolence at home “without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.” He illuminated the consequences of the Vietnam War from the perspe

Does the Constitution allow a teenager to be sentenced to die in prison for a pair of armed robberies committed on a single day, in which no one was seriously injured? The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it’s unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile who did not commit ho

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In October, it was Jane Doe, a young woman from Central America, whom the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to stop from getting an abortion. Then Jane Poe and Jane Roe came to our attention. Last week, the ACLU learned of two young immigrant women in government custody who were pregnant and

“What did we do to deserve this?” “If they’re being deported, why are they still in detention? And how long will they

The board of directors and staff of the American Civil Liberties Union mourn the passing of Janet Benshoof, a tireless champion of reproductive freedom and of human rights everywhere. Janet, who became director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project in 1977, was known for her bril

On Dec. 8, 2017, a lawyer for the U.S. government stood before a federal appeals court to defend President Donald Trump’s third attempt to ban immigrants and visitors from predominantly Muslim countries. He argued that while there may be legal limits on presidential power to ban noncitizens from the United States, the courts should still defer to the executive branch, taking Donald Trump’s word for it that he is no longer intent on banning Muslims from the United States. The judges might have asked, “What is the historical precedent that supports President Trump’s position on the