News & Commentary

Last week, 217 members of the House of Representatives voted to decimate our country’s safety net for people with disabilities. And many of them gleefully toasted its passage on the White House lawn with President Trump. Yet, on every front, the American Health Care Act (AHCA) threatens the civil rights, health, employment, freedom, and the very lives of millions of people with disabilities in every state across our country. Now that the debate moves to the Senate, with so much at stake if this cruel bill

A version of this piece originally ran at the ACLU of Texas.  Gov. Greg Abbott

On January 27, when President Trump issued an executive order banning people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S., Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, did not expect that the administration would be so eager to implement it that officials would detain and attempt to deport people who had been in the air, heading to the United States, when it was signed. But that’s what happened. Jadwat and his team worked through the night, together with lawyers and law students at the National Immigration Law Center and the International Refugee Assistance Project and the Workers and Immigrants Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School, to file a lawsuit on behalf of two detained Iraqi men and others in the same situation. With at least a thousand people assembled in front of the federal courthouse in Brooklyn to protest the trave

FOR

On October 7, 2016, when the Hollywood Access tape was released featuring the man who is now our president bragging about grabbing women by the pussy, Donald Trump dismissed it as “locker room banter,” and claimed it was no reflection of how he actually felt about women. "I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do,” he

In late February, Aaron Gach was returning to the United States from Brussels. An artist and activist, he had been abroad exhibiting works about mass incarceration, government control, and political dissent. In his pocket was a smartphone.     During a customs inspection at San Francisco International Airport, officers with Customs and Borde

Monday marks a critical next stage in the legal battle against President Trump’s Muslim Ban executive order. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Virginia, will hear legal arguments in a case, International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, brought by the ACLU and National Immigration Law Center (NILC). This will be the first argument in front of a court of appeals, which reviews orders from trial courts, addressing the revised executive order (also known as Muslim Ban 2.0). The stakes are enormous — for the plaintiffs, for Muslim and immigrant communities around the country, and for vital constitutional principles. A quick refresher on where things stand: The president rolled out the original Muslim Ban 1.0 on January 27.

We were all afraid of the knocks on our door, especially if it happened early in the morning. We all knew what it could mean — ICE, la Migra, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.There was always a second of pause, a moment of silence where my parents and I would look at each other — the slight silent hesitation where a thousand thoughts ran through all of our heads. Who will take care of the children when they take us? Do you remember where all our important documents are? You remember who you’re supposed to call first? Take care of your siblings. We love you. Many immigrant families know this

This article was originally published by Smithsonian. Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executiv