Insurrection Act Countdown: As April 20 looms, it’s time to prepare.

While 5.2 million protested in Hands Off! marches last Saturday, Trump keeps expanding his immigration dragnet, now going after lawyers, judges, and attacking allies. We need to be ready for more.

Image: Video grab - Washington Post

4.11.25

What’s in this issue:

• All Eyes on April 20^th

• An outdated law ripe for presidential abuse: The Insurrection Act

• Preparing for a Crackdown

• Weaponizing the Alien Enemies Act

• Punting to the Supreme Court

• Using Executive Orders (EOs) to Target Disloyal Aides

• Making Up a Trade War to Unlock More Emergency Powers

• Cracking down on Climate Activism

• Unexpected Allies: Right-Wing Groups sue to stop IEEPA on tariffs

• Trump’s About-Face on Tariffs and Charges of Insider Trading

• Escalating deportations and adding penalties

• Fresh Trump anti-trans arrest

• New Resistance Victories

• Upcoming Actions

• Resources and Tips for Safer Protesting

• Be Ready to Respond to the Insurrection Act

• Post-Script for Readers and New Subscribers

All Eyes on April 20^th

A deadline is looming on April 20^th that is making progressives and others hold their breath. It marks the 90-day deadline Trump set on inauguration day for his team to provide him with a report on the situation at the southern border, and to recommend whether he should invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. The Act would allow Trump to deploy active-duty US military to help enforce or suppress civil unrest. In some circumstances, this can be done without state governor consent -- particularly if the president claims state authorities are failing to uphold federal law.

Trump twice threatened to use the Act during his first administration, once to crack down on Black Lives Matter protesters, another time to retain power after Biden won the election.

An outdated law ripe for presidential abuse

The Insurrection Act exists as an exception to the rarely-used 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that bars federal military from participating in civilian law enforcement, with a few exceptions. In fact, the Insurrection Act is cobbled from various statutes passed by Congress between 1792 and 1871 and can be found in Sections 251 through 255 in Title 10 of the United States Code. “In theory, the Insurrection Act should be used only in a crisis that is truly beyond the capacity of civilian authorities to manage,” notes analyst Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center, a legal think tank. “However, the Insurrection Act fails to adequately define or limit when it may be used and instead gives the president significant power to decide when and where to deploy U.S. military forces domestically.” Concludes Nunn: “There’s a total absence of checks and balances.”

Legal scholars point out that language of the Insurrection Act is poorly-defined and totally outdated. Notably, “nothing in the text of the Insurrection Act defines ‘insurrection,’ ‘rebellion,’ ‘domestic violence,’ or any of the other key terms used in setting forth the prerequisites for deployment,” notes Nunn in his analysis of the Act. “Absent statutory guidance, the Supreme Court decided early on that this question is for the president alone to decide.” As Nunn puts it, the Insurrection Act is “a model of how not to draft major legislation.”

Preparing for a Crackdown

While the anti-Trump Hands Off marches have remained completely peaceful and even joyful, critics rightly fear that right-wing provocateurs will seek to sow chaos, allowing Trump to weaponize the Insurrection Act and arrest protesters. As they point out, Trump has never shown much interest in following the rules, so why start now? Instead, he’s issued an Executive Order seeking to punish their lawyers (see section below, Escalating deportations and adding penalties) and federal judges who rule against them.

It’s time for progressives to release a collectively-held breath and prepare for the likelihood of Trump invoking The Insurrection Act on some trumped-up pretext. It’s also true Trump is using the threat of the Insurrection Act to try to silence and deter people from their right to free speech and dissent.

Photo: Jackie Rudin

Autocracy watchers warn against proactive obeisance, or voluntarily silencing oneself in anticipation of a crackdown, which achieves an autocrat’s goal: curbing free speech. The Insurrection Act allows the use of national guard to quell civil unrest, not peaceful actions. That means that protest organizers need to focus on good advance organizing and training for large events, including advance scouting of routes and issues that could arise, educating and training volunteer marshals and participants in marches about the basics of non-violence, non-cooperation, and peaceful civil disobedience. It means teaching de-escalation of violence techniques. It means pre-planning any communication with police or other law enforcement assigned to the events, and – if it should ever happen – the National Guard. As one activist put it to me, “we need a harm reduction approach to the threat of The Insurrection Act.” Luckily, many activists have long experience with this, and there are resources and tools for those new to marches and protest. (see section on Actions)

Trump watchers have also long warned us: when he tells us what he wants to do, believe him. It doesn’t matter if it’s illegal, he may try it.

We’ve seen it for years now. First, Trump seeks to normalize and justify what is outrageous or completely false. That’s s been the pattern since his first campaign to be president. Yesterday, Trump dropped another nugget of warning, admitting to a reporter that he’d be happy to strip American citizens in prison of their rights and send them to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where he’s deported hundreds of immigrants.

Trump made his comment in response to a reporter’s questions about if he’d be willing to put American citizens there and if he’d been discussing the idea. “I love that,” replied Trump. “… I would be honored to give them… I have suggested that, you know. Why shouldn’t it stop just to people that cross the border illegally? … I think if we could get El Salvador or somebody to take them I’d be very happy with it.” There you have it.

How far a jump is it from American citizens in prison to American citizens deemed criminals for protesting his administration? Trump is using the tar of domestic terrorism by association to criminalize students in pro-Palestinian campus protests, saying they’re aligned with Hamas, a terrorist group. That’s the slippery slope.

For now, the US citizens who’ve been targeted by Trump’s agents are a handful mistakenly targeted during deportation sweeps. They include at least seven citizens as of April 5, per a Washington Post review of ICE data. Under Trump’s first term, the US Government Accountability Office reported “around 70 likely citizens were deported” – the GAO’s language. But Trump’s not the only one to do this: The Obama administration detained some 700 Americans in its deportation crackdown, per an NPR investigation. It’s been a past case of arrest now, ask later. Only now Trump is racing to fulfill a campaign promise of deporting one million people.

Meanwhile, Project 2025 remains the blueprint for Trump’s embrace of authoritarianism, modeled after Hungary’s regime under autocrat Viktor Orbán. Hungarian think tanks linked to Orbán provided advice to Trump’s team to develop the model of US illiberalism now being implemented. Project 2025 supports an expanded focus on domestic terrorism as a useful umbrella to go after leftist critics. It encourages fuller use of available emergency and wartime powers to act without the limits or oversight of Congress, while keeping the courts at bay. That’s exactly what Trump’s team has done, with help from a corps of lawyers recruited by Project 2025 to help defend policies they openly anticipated would test the limits of current law. Trump had duly followed the script.

Image: Tony Pantimalli

Weaponizing the Alien Enemies Act

It’s no secret that Trump needs a reason to justify a claim to use emergency powers available to a president. He first sought evidence of a health crisis along the border to justify invoking the obscure Alien Enemies Act of 1878, and when that failed, he pointed to the fentanyl crisis, and labeled Central American criminal drug and human trafficking cartels to be a threat to US national security. The Alien Enemies Act allows the president to detain or restrict the movement of non-citizens from nations deemed hostile. The criteria that define “hostile” may be broad and undefined during a declared emergency. Trump used that wiggle room to deem the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela and the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, criminal gang in El Salvador as hostile enemies.

Both groups were designated terrorist groups by Trump’s State Department on February 20^th, elevating them from a transnational organized crime group to a political terrorist one. (They are two of eight cartel groups the State Department classified as terrorist organization in early 2025. Others labeled Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) include the Gulf Cartel, Carteles Unidos, and four other Mexican cartels. Then there are Islamic networks: Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIL (or ISIS) Boko Haram, and Al-Shabaab.)

Out of some 5000 Venezuelans affiliated with Tren de Aragua, experts estimate that a low hundred are in the US -- or were before the targeted deportations began. These experts argue that the Venezuelan gang, like MS-13, are not really political terrorist groups, and lack political ideology. They’re for-profit criminal networks, more like the Italian mob.

The much bigger MS-13 cartel has an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 members, most in El Salvador and some in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, and an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 in the US, pre-deportation. MS-13 members are allied with other Mexican cartels. Many members were deported to El Salvador after the end of its civil war in 1992.

Since February, border agents escalated arrests and deportations of nationals from Venezuela and El Salvador -- undocumented, green card holders – and by error, unlucky citizens. We now have ample evidence that the majority of deportees to El Salvador are not gang members or even serious criminals. A recent 60 Minutes investigation found that 75% of all deportees to El Salvador have no criminal record in either the US or Venezuela. Of the 25% with records, almost all were for non-violent offences: shoplifting, trespassing and theft. “Only about a dozen are accused of murder, rape, assault, and trespassing.” So a dozen men out of hundreds, and note, these are accusations, not convictions.

It’s hardly a wartime threat to America. But it’s too late, right? They’re shackled in a counter--terrorism high-security prison in El Salvador called CECOT. Pictures of the men, shaved, heads facing down, their bodies pressed tightly up against each other like sardines while sitting for hours on concrete, and confined to packed cells that confine 80 men to a room sleeping on concrete, with only two toilets per cell, have shocked the world. There is no rehabilitation or activities program and only one hour of exercise available per day. It’s no wonder reports of psychological and physical breakdowns of prisoners have plagued the CECOT. People who enter never leave.

Image: Mel Haash for the Brennan Center

Punting to the Supreme Court

Trump also has a conservative-majority Supreme Court indebted to him and to Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who funded Project 2025 with dark money, and hand-picked the conservative majority now on the highest bench. In a 5 to 4 decision, a majority of the SCOTUS justices just vacated Temporary Restraining Orders issued in a DC Circuit Court case that barred the Trump administration from implementation its executive order to remove detainees under the Alien Enemies ACT.

The ruling was in response to a class action lawsuit on behalf of five Venezuelan plaintiffs. The justices ruled that the only mechanism for challenges to the statute and the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and to their detention and efforts to remove Venezuelan migrants, is for detained individuals to file individual petitions for writs of habeas corpus in the jurisdiction in which they are held. Deportations cannot occur unless they get court hearings “in reasonable time” – a step Trump’s team conveniently ignored. That effectively blocks their immediate return to the US from prison in El Salvador.

The court also said that the specific legal challenges for the Venezuelan nationals already sent to El Salvador must take place in Texas, not Washington, DC, because they were in ICE custody there before they were flown to El Salvador. Lawyers for the plaintiffs immediately filed a legal demand for change of venue to New York. It’s no secret the Federal District Court in Texas is known for arch-conservative, anti-immigrant judges, based on past rulings.

In a separate case, Chief Justice Roberts also temporarily blocked a lower trial court order directing Trump officials to return an immigrant with a judicial prohibition on deportation to El Salvador, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported due to a clerical error. The deadline for returning him to the US was Monday night. Trump’s team argued that it can’t tell Salvadoran officials what to do, which lawyers contend is absurd. Roberts bought the Trump team time, while an American citizen with a wife and child remains in a draconian torture prison. Roberts’ decision makes clear that citizenship provides no firm protection against the Trump dragnet. Again, we need to pay attention to the slippery slope.

On Thursday, Oct. 10th, the Supreme Court quietly added an unsigned order instructing the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate the return” of Abrego-Garcia, and said the district court must now clarify its directive. It was a partial victory, stated Abrego-Garcia’s lawyer Andrew J. Rossman, who told a reporter, “The rule of law won today. Time to bring him home.”

On another positive and counter-strike note, the ACLU won two temporary restraining orders blocking the Trump administration from deporting five Venezuelan ICE detainees held in Texas and New York facilities until legal challenges to these cases are resolved. The TROs were issued after the SCOTUS ruling. This shows that some judges continue to follow the rule of law, despite the escalating threats Trump has levied against them.

But the road ahead is rocky. On April 9^th, House GOP members passed a bill called The No Rogue Rulings Act that would limit the power of lower court judges to issue orders that would halt Trump’s agenda. Only one GOP member sided with Democrats to oppose the bill. It demonstrates how many GOP Congressional leaders actively support the administration’s deportation effort and expanding Trump’s powers and authoritarian rule.

Using Executive Orders (EOs) to Target Disloyal Aides

Trump also just signed a new Executive Order to demand a criminal investigation by his Justice department into former Department of Homeland Security officials Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who defied his unfounded claims of election fraud. Trump has now made good on his promise to prosecute those he deems unloyal or critical of his policies. Taylor quit Trump 1. 0 and then wrote an expose book, A Warning, under the pseudonym Anonymous: A Senior Trump Administration Official, then came out as the author in October 2020. He portrayed Trump as unfit for office.

Krebs served as Trump’s director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and was in charge of coordinating efforts to secure the 2020 presidential election. Instead, he countered false claims of voter fraud and Trump fired him two weeks later. Both have also been stripped of any security clearances they still had. In a social media post on October 10th, Taylor said, “I said this would happen. Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path.” Many agree. Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney branded Trump’s latest moves against Taylor and Krebs “Stalinesque.”

Photo: Getty

Making Up a Trade War to Unlock More Emergency Powers

Trump’s recent move to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and apply huge tariffs on allies and other countries shocked the world and quickly began tanking the US stock market and global economies. The IEEPA also represents an indirect stealth power grab by Trump because it unlocks access to over 120 statutory powers that are found in federal law. (Actually, the Brennan Center has now identified 150 federal statutes). The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255) and Alien Enemies Act ((50 U.S.C. §21) represent just two of them.

That doesn’t mean Trump’s team can just easily begin applying these statutes, as a lawyer I spoke with about the statutes stressed. They still have to be connected to a specific Trump executive order or the trade war issue if the IEEPA is being invoked, she pointed out. (see the NEA statute below for details.) Plus, Trump has already listed many targets within his forever-growing list of Executive Orders, so it’s not clear how much more ammunition the IEEPA gives him to crack down on domestic dissent or free speech. But the federal statutes do include several that critics fear Trump could try to weaponize:

• Emergency Detention: The 1976 National Emergencies Act (NEA) (50 U.S.C. §§ 1601-1651) is the federal statute governing emergency detention powers. It empowers the President to declare national emergencies and outlines the procedures for doing so, but it doesn't automatically grant the President specific emergency powers. Instead, the NEA requires the President to identify specific statutes and provisions of federal law that provide the authority to act during an emergency, and to notify Congress when declaring a national emergency.

  • Congress has a six-month period to assess and possibly terminate a national emergency through a concurrent resolution that does not require the president’s signature, notes Protect Democracy. Congress can consider termination every six months if legislation is introduced to do so, but a vote isn’t required. Congress can only terminate an emergency over presidential veto with a joint resolution and a 2/3 majority in both houses.

• Control of Domestic Communications - 47 U.S.C. §606(c): Allows the president to take control of, shut down, or regulate wire and radio communications — including the internet, social media platforms, broadcast networks, and telecom infrastructure — in the name of national defense. Originally intended for wartime, this Cold War-era law remains on the books.

• Asset Freezing and Financial Surveillance: The IEEPA, as amended by the Patriot Act, allows the government to freeze assets during investigations. The IEEPA and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) are among federal statutes used in conjunction with the Patriot Act.

• The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), 31 USC 5311 establishes recordkeeping and reporting requirements for national banks, credit unions, federal savings associations, federal branches, and agencies of foreign banks. They must report suspicious activity related to money laundering, tax evasion, or other illegal activity.

  • The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) bureau of the Treasury department oversees review and enforcement of the BSA.

  • The BSA was amended to incorporate provisions of the USA Patriot Act and requires every bank to adopt a customer identification program.

    These laws enable the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to implement sanctions and freeze assets of designated individuals and entities, often under the authority of the President.

Given Trump’s conflation of solidarity with Palestinian rights as support for Hamas and terrorism, critics rightly worry the federal statutes could be used to target domestic political groups, journalists, and activists. What about anyone who’s donated to an online Go Fund Me campaign for a pro-Palestinian cause or group like Jewish Voices for Peace? The worry is there. Trump’s team, led by Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, has already made liberal and creative use of impoundment – freezing federal funds – as a key strategy to purge the federal government of programs deemed liberal or woke.

Cracking down on Climate Activism

Already, we saw Trump’s team (FBI, EPA, EPA Inspector General) order Citibank in February to freeze the bank accounts of several nonprofits and state government agencies engaged in green banking programs. The FBI charged that the groups were involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” per The New Republic. The monies were disbursed as part of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, created by Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The EPA received $14 billion for a National Clean Investment Fund that gives grants to green banks. Citibank was chosen as the financial administrative agent for this money, holding it in accounts of awardees. Citi is also administering a $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator program.

Legal challenges have followed. Power Forward Communities and the Coalition for Green Capital, part of the Climate United coalition, have sued the EPA and Citibank, denying any violations and demanding release of the funds. The freeze has crippled the operations of at least one smaller nonprofit that may be forced to close this summer.

Unexpected Allies: Right-Wing Groups sue to stop IEEPA on tariffs

In a twist, Trump’s close allies are disagreeing with his use of the IEEPA to launch a global trade war. This week, Leonard Leo and Charles Koch just backed a lawsuit by a hard-right libertarian group, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, arguing that Trump’s claim to emergency powers to impose trade tariffs is illegal. The suit was brought on behalf of Simplified, a Florida-based home goods company heavily reliant on China imports. “In its nearly 50-year history, no other president – including President Trump in his first term – has ever tried to use the IEEPA to impose tariffs,” stated the libertarian alliance. The lawsuit argues, “that there is no connection between the fentanyl epidemic – which Trump has cited as a reason for invoking the emergency powers – and the tariffs.”

It’s another sign of growing GOP disagreement with Trump’s trade war. A bipartisan Congressional bill, The Trade Review Act of 2025, was introduced recently by co-sponsors Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the Senate’s president pro tempore, to assert Congressional oversight over Trump’s tariff actions with trading partners. The bill would require the president to notify Congress on the imposition of any new tariffs within 48 hours and provide an explanation this action, and his administration to deliver an assessment of how any action taken may impact US consumers and businesses. Any new tariffs would sunset (end) after 60 days unless Congress passes a joint resolution to approve them, and Congress could also pass a joint resolution of disapproval to cancel tariffs before that deadline.

Democratic co-sponsors include: Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Mark Warner (Va.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Peter Welch (Vt.), Chris Coons (Del.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.). Republicans backing the bill include:former Senate Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (KY) have now signed on to . Others are: Sens. Jerry Moran (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Todd Young (Ind.) and Susan Collins (Maine).

Meanwhile, others point to the fact that before Trump took office in January, US drug overdose deaths had dropped by 24% in the 12 months before September 2024, due largely to distribution of a life-saving drug, naloxone, which reverses overdose. Now, Trump has shredded the CDC, gotten rid of CDC data surveillance programs, and moved to cut off access to naloxone to Medicare clients and others, per a report by Democracy Forward. It will be interesting what fentanyl data they cite in their upcoming border report to continue justification of mass deportations.

Trump’s About-Face on Tariffs and Charges of Insider Trading

In an update, Trump made an about-face turn on his tariffs program on April 9^th, agreeing to a 90-day pause on the policy after his own officials pleaded with him to do so, citing a tanking stock market, including bonds. The move quickly caused global relief, and a stock market recovery rally, but a 10 % tariff still exists on many countries, including allies, and a 125% one on China – as of today.

The reversal of policy was followed by immediate accusations against Trump’s circle of insider trading, since he announcement the pause shortly after posting a social media message on Truth Social encouraging people to buy stocks that seemed to be aimed at investors. “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” he wrote, signing off with his initials “DJT,” which is also the stock symbol for his company, Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. Trump generally does not include his initials in his tweets. Later Trump was caught boasting with some billionaire friends about how they all profited in a White House Oval Office meeting. “He made $2.5 million, and he made $900 million! That’s not bad!” Trump said, pointing to financial investor Charles Schwab and then NASCAR team owner Roger Penske. Senator Adam Schiff announced an investigation. Public outrage has grown.

Amir Makled, a Michigan attorney for a pro-Palestinian protester, was detained at Detroit Metro airport by US officials demanding access to his phone

Photo: NA. (Facebook)

Escalating deportations and adding penalties

While 5.2 million people marched across America and more globally to protest his policies, Trump officials increased deportations and self-deportations. He just imposed major fines on students and others who just learned they’ve lost their visas to stay and must leave the US immediately or risk having their property seized, too. It’s draconian. Here’s a partial list of these attacks, as of mid-day April 10:

• On the weekend of April 4-6, US officials revoked the visas of nearly 300 foreign students, including many University of California universities, without warning. Some had nothing to do with campus protests. School officials discovered the revocations by scouring the SEVIS foreign student database.

• New York colleges confirmed that, as of April 9^th, some 50 international students statewide have had their visas revoked, including: 17 at City University in New York (CUNY); 21 at the Statue University of NY (SUNY); two at Fordham University; and several more at Columbia University. They discovered this via the SEVIS database.

• Six University of Wisconsin students and seven alumni had their visas cancelled.

• A UW spokesman said the school was given no notice and the students did not appear to have any involvement with ‘free speech’ events or rallies, per UW.

• Dozens of Indian students in the US had their F-1 visas revoked, including in Missouri, Texas and Nebraska.

• GOP Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ) recently introduced a proposed America First bill, the Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act of 2025 ((H.R H.R.2315), to upend the Optional Training Program (OPT) that now allows international students of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields to study and work in the US — sending fresh shockwaves. OPT visa holders must now fast-track transition to an H-1B visa if they get selected in the lottery or find work elsewhere in the world.

• US officials have canceled the visas for some 900,000 people on humanitarian parole who entered using the Biden-era CPB ONE app. They must immediately self-deport. Ukraine and Afghan parolees are exempted.

• US officials plan to impose a $998 a day penalty on migrants under deportation orders and seize their property if they don’t pay it. The fines stem from a 1996 law first enforced by Trump in 2018. The penalties can be applied retroactively for up to five years a senior US official told Reuters, leading to fines of over $1 million.

• US officials moved to revoke the visas and ban US entry to all South Sudanese after South Sudan’s government refused to repatriate a South Sudanese national, arguing political conditions in the country were too dire to assure his safety upon return.

• USCIS officials announced they will begin screening immigrant’s social media for evidence of antisemitic activity as grounds for denying immigration benefit screenings, and this will apply to green card holders and foreigners affiliated with educational institutions.

• A Houston-based charter airline company, Avelo Air, recently agreed to help ICE AIR fly deportation flights, drawing a boycott action against it at Tweed New Haven airport. The airline has a major hub in Burbank, CA, too.

• Amir Makled, a Dearborn, MI, attorney for a pro-Palestinian student protester, was detained for over 90 minutes at Detroit Metro on April 6 by two federal agents, while returning from a spring break trip with his wife and children. The agents demanded he turn over his telephone to them, which he refused, on grounds of attorney-client privilege. They released him 90 minutes later, but only after he allowed them to look at his contacts, all identified by him as his clients. “They are now challenging the judiciary, or lawyers…they're putting pressure (on them) to dissuade attorneys from taking on issues that are against the government's issues,” Makled said about the Trump administration. “We have an obligation as lawyers to stand up to this stuff."

• Seven Tulane students who participated in a March 11 off-campus protest against the detention of Mahmoud Khalil in a Jena, LA, ICE facility, now face Tulane disciplinary hearings. School officials say the students are affiliated with a campus group called Tulane Students for a Democratic Society that was suspended as a student organization last year and prevented from operating on campus by Tulane authorities over pro-Palestinian activism.

Fresh Trump anti-trans arrest:

Trump officials also moved to enforce recent anti-trans executive orders impacting access to public bathrooms and sports activity. One woman decided to test the law. (see also New Resistance Victories, below, for more):

• Marcy Rheintgen, a transgender woman, was arrested and jailed overnight after deliberately using a Florida state capitol bathroom, in an act of planned defiance against what she deems an illegal anti-trans law banning anyone from using bathrooms in government buildings that don’t align with their gender at birth. “I was originally intending to pray the rosary, but I didn’t have enough time,” she told a New York Times reporter. “I was just washing my hands, and they told me to leave.”

Photo: Jackie Rudin

New Resistance Victories

• The Associated Press won a lawsuit and the right to participate in Oval Office press briefing after suing the Trump administration from excluding them from White House news events, a press freedom win.

• A mother of three and her children were released from ICE detention in Sackett’s Harbor, after strong community protest. The family was picked up in a collateral arrest in the town where US “border czar” Thomas Homan lives, and transferred to an ICE facility in Texas. They are now making their way home. T (see our recent story on More Deportables).

• A Montana judge issued a preliminary ruling in Kalarchik v. Montana that prevents the state of Montana from enforcing new policies that prevent transgender people from obtaining accurate sex markers on their birth certificates and drivers licenses. The ACLU and Nixon Peabody LLP firm represented the plaintiffs, two transgender women.

• 504 US law firms have signed onto a ‘friends of the court’ brief in support of a lawsuit by Perkins Coie, the first firm to receive an executive order restricting its business that has since won a temporary restraining order against the administration. They include ten firms in the top 100 as ranked by American Lawyer. Until recently, the top firms had declined to take a position. Now Covington & Burling (No. 28) and Arnold & Porter (No. 47) signed on, as gave two other big firms that received executive orders and are challenging them in court, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block. The ACLU and the right-wing libertarian think tank Cato Institute also filed court briefs in support of Perkins Coie.

• Investigative journalists have exposed the identity of two main funders of Canary Mission, the pro-Zionist group that has used artificial intelligence and facial recognition tools to surveil, identify, and publicly expose students, faculty and professionals they accuse of antisemitism. They shared this data with ICE and other Trump officials. The Two South Florida donor groups are: the Natan and Lidia Peisach Family Foundation, which donated $100,000 in 2023, and Ann and Robert Fromer Charitable foundation, that also donated $20,000 that year. Cheryl Peisach is a University of Pennsylvania trustee; her husband, Jaime Peisach, is the Peisach family foundation’s treasurer. Both are tied to pro-Israel activities. Canary Mission also supports Israeli settler activities, say rights watchdogs.

• The Anti-Defamation League, has publicly denounced the Trump administration crackdown on student protesters and revoking of student visas as a violation of due process – a major reversal of its initial support from Trump. The ADL said the administration is betraying American values, and punishing students for their views.

• US Christian and evangelical groups are rising to denounce Trump ICE deportation, in the wake of a new report that finds 80% of those at risk of being deported are Christians. Some 10 million Christians face deportation, while 7 million U.S. Christian who are citizens live in households with at-risk individuals, the report found.

Many groups are joining a national climate action day April 19^th

Upcoming Actions

Building on the national success of the Hand Off! Protests, organizers are calling for follow-up protest events.

• On April 17ths in Washington, DC, Housing Works and ACT UP are among groups planning an action to protest Trump’s attacks on global health and HIV programs and funding.

• On April 19th, with a variety of state and city events planned by groups within the loose anti-Trump coalition. In New York, a major Global Climate Strike action is planned that day as an official Hands Off! event. The Our City, Our Fight, Nuestra ciudad, Nuestra lucha: Marcha por los migrantes y por el planeta march meets at Bryant Park in Manhattan on April 19th with a kickoff at 2, and is taking place three days before Earth Day, April 22.

• Across the country, local actions continue to call for firing Elon Musk and the DOGE at Tesla showrooms, part of a national Tesla Takedown movement. In NYC, Rise and Resist continue to organize weekly Tesla actions, and R&R’s regular Tuesdays at Fox lunchtime protests of Fox’s role in promoting pro-Trump misinformation, per R&R.

For a fuller update of national actions, check the roster of protests at The People Dissent.

Resources and Tips for Safer Protesting

There are many resources on how to prepare and protect yourself while protesting. I’m also sharing a link to an article by Daniel Hunter, founder of Choose Democracy, published at Waging Nonviolence, in which he reflects on how to think about and prepare for protesting in the face of the Insurrection Act.

• ACLU: Know Your Rights – Protester’s Rights (ACLU)

• Safety Tips for Attending Rallies (Sierra Club)

• How to Defend Against Police Surveillance at Protests (ACLU – DC)

• Marshal Training Tips (ACT UP)

• Civil Disobedience Guide (ACT UP NY)

• De-Escalation Tactics at Protest (Activist Handbook)

• Hands Off! Toolkit (Hands Off)

Be Ready to Respond to the Insurrection Act

Indivisible also published a 6-point starter list of steps for how people to consider and take if the Insurrection Act is invoked. Here’s a reprint of their short list:

1. Sound the alarm. If it happens, we move fast to make sure people know what it is and why it matters. No euphemisms. No hedging. Just the truth.

2. Push Democrats at every level to meet the moment. We’ll need every Democratic elected official using their platform to expose and challenge this abuse of power. That includes governors preemptively activating their National Guards (which may prevent federal takeover), press conferences, legal challenges, and public pressure campaigns.

3. Stay calm, disciplined, and united. Trump wants chaos. Our power is in joyful, defiant, nonviolent action. We protect each other, stay coordinated, and refuse to play into his narrative.

4. Flip the script. If Trump claims to be stopping “insurrectionists,” we remind people that he pardoned the actual ones. We shine a light on the real threat: a president using military force to suppress dissent.

5. Use ridicule to deflate his power. Strongmen hate being mocked. So we mock. Through memes, theater, satire, and creativity, we show how ridiculous and weak this play really is.

6. Plan for the long haul. This may be the opening move in a broader power grab. So we stay ready. We build legal infrastructure, strengthen communication channels, and invest in our communities’ ability to respond.

Indivisible will keep updating its list as the situation unfolds, and so will we here. As many note, our job isn’t to panic. It’s to prepare.

Photo: Jackie Rudin

Post-Script for Readers and New Subscribers:

Will you support our reporting and work?

This newsletter is an independent reporting project of the nonprofit Resisting Project 2025 campaign, launched by GenDemocracy in fall 2023 to focus on public education and community mobilization around Project 2025. We continue to make our content on this Substack free for all given the urgency of informing a global public about the unfolding of Project 2025’s agenda by the Trump administration.

We now have over 9000 subscribers, which is fantastic, since we began in January. Only a small number of you have upgraded to become paid subscribers. We deeply appreciate each person who made that commitment. If you’ve been appreciating our reporting and find our content really useful, will you consider an upgrade to a paid subscription? Putting this newsletter together every day requires intensive work, and the pace of the coup demands that we step up to meet this moment. We are a small team, and I’m the lead reporter, but we bring a deep bench of experience. We need and welcome your support.

On that note, if any of you are interested in helping us with online research or editorial work, we welcome more volunteers. You can sign up at the form on our website. There is so much to be done. We also welcome your feedback and ideas for what you want to know more about. Please help us sound the alarm now by restocking and sharing the content on your social media or other channels. We have ten days before April 20th to reach a lot of people to help them be more prepared.

As the Haitian proverb says, Men anpil, chaj pa lourd. With many hands, the burden is lighter. Thank you.

In resistance,

Anne-christine

---