- Support groups suing for civil rights. Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Docket, Democracy Forward, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Public Citizen and many more are suing to stop the Trump administration from shutting down government departments, firing government workers without cause and signing unconstitutional executive orders that do everything from trying to rewrite American history at the Smithsonian to taking over state-run elections to demolishing due process. Whenever possible, support groups that are fighting these imperative legal battles with a monetary donation or by volunteering with groups working to enforce American civil rights and the rule of law and defending citizens and democratic institutions against authoritarianism. As of August 2025, there were 380 active lawsuits against the Trump administration.
- Switch to the blue butterfly: Blue Sky. Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) deliberately boosts far-right lies, and supporting it will only help further spread disinformation — a main culprit of America’s ailing democracy. The antidote is bsky.app — a social media app that will look extremely familiar, but without the algorithm that boosts lies and spreads hate.
- Stay informed. Sign up for one fact-based news source or, at the very least, ask your smart speaker “What’s the news?” as you make your morning brew and hear a quick rundown from NPR or Reuters. Your local newspaper could surely use subscribers, and national/international media doing outstanding work right now include: Wired, The Atlantic, ProPublica, The Guardian, The New York Times and more. States Newsroom is filling in coverage gaps in local journalism across the country with free online news content, so there’s no real excuse to being uninformed. You can also download Libby, and with a local library card, it lets you access dozens of newspapers and magazines for free.
- Protest. No Voice Unheard maintains a list of peaceful protests by state. The Big List of Protests is even more comprehensive.
- KNOW YOUR RIGHTS. If you plan to protest, keep it peaceful and review your First Amendment rights. The ACLU offers an easy-to-understand guide to peaceful protest here.
- Help Americans remember what freedom means. We fought the Nazis, championed democracy around the world and used to care about global humanitarian causes and human rights. Trump wants America to be the classic villain — praising dictators who abhor civil rights, void of all human empathy or decency, and contemptuous of scientific knowledge, higher education and the rule of law. America cannot go down as a repressive regime where political dissidents and the powerless disappear into gulags. We used to fight for the rule of law and basic civil liberties (the very definition of freedom) as a global cause. That’s why we were a beacon of freedom. Let’s make America good again.
Read More:
Fighting Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Resistance. The New Republic’s Timothy Noah writes, “This country has never witnessed an abuse of presidential authority so extreme as what Trump is right now wreaking in every conceivable direction.” Ralph Nader told Noah, “As some people stand up to power, it becomes contagious.”
ACLU: KNOW YOUR RIGHTS. If you take part in one of many peaceful protests across the nation, understand the ways the U.S. Constitution protects your right to protest and ways to protect yourself.
Global Watchdog: U.S. Will Not Be Considered a Democracy. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-democracy-report-1.7486317
Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions. As of August 2025, there were 380 active lawsuits against the Trump administration. Follow them here.
