June, 23 2025, 04:04pm EDT
“Good Trouble Lives On” National Day of Action Builds on Momentum Against Authoritarianism, Fight for Civil Rights
On July 17, five years since the passing of civil rights hero Congressman John Lewis, communities nationwide are mobilizing for Good Trouble Lives On, a national day of action to speak out against the Trump administration’s brazen rollback of our civil rights.
Coined by Congressman John Lewis, “Good Trouble” is the action of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice and create meaningful change. Led by the Transformative Justice Coalition, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Black Voters Matter, and more, movement leaders are inviting folks across the country to “Make Good Trouble” on July 17 by hosting an event in their community.
Organizers hope to build on the momentum from the historic “No Kings” mass mobilization on June 14, the largest demonstration to take place in Trump’s second term with over 2,100 events spanning across all 50 states. We will take to the streets, courthouses and community spaces to carry forward his fight for justice, voting rights and dignity for all.
The Trump administration’s recent escalating authoritarian actions, attacks on DEI initiatives and voting rights and dismantling of government agencies have raised alarm bells for democracy advocates, and that’s why we’re mobilizing:
- President Trump escalated immigration raids in Los Angeles, where reports showed immigrants being detained and deported without access to family or lawyers. Trump then ordered the National Guard and Marines to the city, leading to mass arrests—including peaceful protestors like SEIU California President David Huerta.
- The Trump administration attempted to weaponize the Justice Department through an indictment of Representative LaMonica McIver (NJ-10), who was simply conducting an Congressional oversight visit of an ICE detention center.
- When Senator Alex Padilla (CA) asked a question at a Department of Homeland Security press conference, FBI agents tackled, handcuffed and pushed him to the ground.
- Trump’s ICE detained NYC Comptroller Brad Lander for asking to see a warrant at immigration court.
- From House Republicans’ so-called “SAVE Act,” which would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, to Donald Trump’s attempted anti-voter Executive Order and attacks on the DOJ’s Voting Rights division, the Trump administration and his allies in Congress are determined to put up hurdles for millions of eligible Americans to cast their ballots.
This isn’t the government our founders envisioned, nor the democracy generations of Americans have fought to realize. As the Trump administration continues violating civil liberties and attacking fundamental freedoms, pro-democracy groups are staying vigilant. The power lies with the American people to unify and “Make Good Trouble.”
Good Trouble Lives On is led by Transformative Justice Coalition, Black Voters Matter, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Declaration for American Democracy Coalition, Mi Familia Acción and more.
For more information on Good Trouble Lives On, please visit https://goodtroubleliveson.org/.
MEDIA CONTACT: For media inquiries, please email media@goodtroubleliveson.org.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Top Dems Reportedly Working to Sabotage Bill to Stop Trump War With Iran
Rep. Ro Khanna said the Democrats trying to kill the bill were beholden to "powerful interests that are itching to have regime change in Iran."
Feb 25, 2026
Top Democrats are reportedly working behind the scenes to stop a vote that would force them to go on the record about whether they support a Trump administration attack on Iran.
As the president amasses an armada in the Middle East in apparent preparation for an unauthorized military action, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) planned to force a vote this week on their war powers resolution, which would require congressional authorization for any attack.
The congressmen have emphasized that time is of the essence, as Trump has signaled that a strike may come any day, and Iran has indicated it may retaliate with devastating force.
A war with Iran is overwhelmingly unpopular with the American public: According to a YouGov poll published Tuesday, just 27% said they'd support military force while 49% oppose it. Democrats are even more united, with 76% saying they'd oppose a war and just 9% support.
And yet, as independent journalist Aída Chávez reported in her newsletter Capital & Empire, Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee have tried to "dampen momentum and prevent the Iran war powers vote from advancing."
Multiple sources have told her that "a top Democratic HFAC staffer... deliberately inflated projections of opposition to the bipartisan measure—warning of 20 to 40 Democratic defections" in a bid to indicate the resolution would fail overwhelmingly.
She said a senior Democratic congressional staffer told her it’s “pretty clear” Democratic leadership is working to "delay or potentially sideline" the vote on the war powers resolution. “If you’ve been around the Hill, this is a familiar playbook," the staffer said.
“Leadership rarely comes out and says they oppose these votes outright, because they know the underlying issue is popular with the base,” said the staffer, who works on foreign policy. “Instead, you see process concerns, timing objections, and caucus-unity arguments used to slow things down or keep members off the record. We’ve seen the same approach on past war powers votes and foreign policy amendments that clash with the national security elite consensus.”
Democratic leaders have largely tempered their criticisms of Trump's buildup for what would be potentially the most consequential military action taken by the US in decades.
Schumer, one of the top recipients of funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel donors, has limited his criticisms of Trump's war posturing to questions of procedure rather than policy.
Asked earlier this week about potential US strikes on Iran, Schumer lamented that discussion was being held in "closed-door briefings," saying that "the administration has to make its case to the American people as something as important as this."
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a similar statement that did not object to war in principle but rather the fact that Trump's reasons for making war were unclear.
"The president and his administration have not tried to explain whether their goal is to destroy Iran's nuclear program, protect Iranian protestors, pursue regime change, or simply distract from hisfailure to deliver on his promises at home," Coons said in a statement posted to social media. "Congress and the American people need answers about what our objectives are in Iran."
President Donald Trump is reportedly weighing a massive military operation that could entail assassinating Iran's leaders. Meanwhile, Iran has said in the event of a massive attack, it would consider US military bases to be “legitimate targets,” meaning US servicemembers could be at risk.
As Drop Site News reported late last week, based on conversations with an unnamed aide to Schumer back in June—weeks before Trump attacked three nuclear sites in Iran—a number of important Senate Democrats believed that if Trump wants to start a war with Iran, they shouldn't stand in his way.
Not only did these Democrats believe that "Iran ultimately needed to be dealt with militarily," but they "also understood that going to war again in the Middle East would be a political catastrophe."
"That’s precisely why they wanted Trump to be the one to do it," the report continued. "The hope was that Iran would take a blow and so would Trump—a win-win for Democrats."
Other Capitol Hill sources told Chávez that, in the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and other leaders have not been whipping support for the Khanna-Massie resolution, while few members have openly endorsed it, even as no other war powers resolutions are up for a vote.
Two leading pro-Israel Democrats, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), came out against the war powers resolution on Friday, with Moskowitz deriding it as the "Ayatollah Protection Act."
In a statement, they claimed that Iran was "still pursuing a nuclear weapon," even though US intelligence agencies and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have assessed the opposite.
Iran's leaders have expressed a willingness to reach an agreement with the United States that limits their ability to develop a nuclear weapon while allowing them to pursue peaceful nuclear technology in line with the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The IAEA assessed that at the time Trump pulled the US out of a previous nuclear agreement in 2018, Iran was complying with its terms. Since the deal's collapse, it has begun to scale up uranium enrichment, according to a report by the agency last year.
During an interview on the podcast Breaking Points on Tuesday, Khanna said that the Democrats who have sought to kill his bill were being guided by "powerful interests that are itching to have regime change in Iran."
"This has been a long-term goal of AIPAC and other groups," Khanna said. "So when you stand up and say, 'I'm going to introduce legislation to uphold the Constitution and not get us into another war,' you make enemies."
He said pro-war Democrats were going along with Trump's push for the same reason they've resisted releasing the Democratic National Committee's report assessing that former Vice President Kamala Harris' position on Israel cost her votes in the 2024 election, and have balked at saying Israel is committing a "genocide" in Gaza.
"It's not that they may disagree with it," Khanna said. "It's just that they don't want billionaires and powerful people to be targeting them."
Khanna said he plans to meet with other House Democrats on Wednesday to rally the votes for his resolution. He says he believes he'll have enough support to force a vote on the resolution by next week, but that "it's taking work."
"There are a lot of people in Congress," he said, "who just would prefer that these issues go away."
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'Heavily Armed Secret Police Force': ICE, CBP Amass $144 Million Weapons Stockpile
"In just one year, ICE’s spending commitments on weapons, ammunition, and accessories surged fourfold."
Feb 25, 2026
A report produced by the office of Sen. Adam Schiff reveals that federal immigration enforcement agencies amassed a gigantic weapons stockpile during the first year of President Donald Trump's second term.
In total, the report released by Schiff (D-Calif.) finds that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) committed to spending over $144 million on weapons and ammunition over the last year, a massive increase over these agencies' spending on weapons in years past.
"In just one year, ICE’s spending commitments on weapons, ammunition, and accessories surged fourfold—an increase of over 360 percent—when compared to ICE’s contracts in 2024," states the report. "In 2025, CBP’s contracts for weapons, ammunition, and accessories doubled when compared to CBP’s 2024 contract totals."
The report documents how both agencies have combined to spend tens of millions of dollars purchasing lethal weapons, including "AR-style rifles, pistols, and large quantities of accessories, such as optical sights for firearms and suppressors"; so-called "less-lethal" weapons including "TASERs, pepper sprays, tear gas canisters, and canister launchers"; and assorted kinds of ammunition.
The report adds that "records show that DHS’s procurement of weapons at immense scale is just beginning, as these contract awards contemplate even greater spending moving forward," which it says should serve "as a stark warning to the American public."
Schiff's report concludes with a warning about the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) "growing plans to build a heavily-armed domestic police force," adding that federal immigration agents' killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti could only be the first of many tragedies to come.
In an analysis of the Schiff report published Wednesday, the New Republic's Greg Sargent argued that the Trump administration is trying to launch a domestic "war on terrorism" by bringing the kind of violence the US has deployed overseas back to the homeland.
"In a sense, we’re seeing yet more cancerous growth of the post-September 11 national security bureaucracy, but with a more intensified inward focus," wrote Sargent, who described ICE and CBP under Trump as a "heavily armed secret police force" in a Wednesday social media post.
Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks told Sargent that the dangers posed by ICE and CBP could outlast Trump's presidency.
"Trump is building up a well-funded, poorly trained paramilitary force that could easily take on a life of its own,” Brooks explained. “Once you have a massive moneymaking machine ginned up, it’s hard to reverse course and turn off the spigot.”
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'Huge Win': Judge Bars Trump DOJ From Searching Devices of Washington Post Journalist
One press freedom group called the raid on Hannah Natanson's home last month a "warning shot to journalists and whistleblowers nationwide."
Feb 25, 2026
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the US Justice Department cannot search the devices it seized from Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post journalist whose home was raided by the FBI earlier this year as part of an investigation into a government contractor.
William Porter, magistrate judge of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia's Arlington Division, wrote in his 22-page decision that the Trump administration's "failure to identify and analyze" the Privacy Protection Act (PPA) in its application for a search warrant in the case "has seriously undermined the court’s confidence in the government’s disclosures in this proceeding."
The PPA shields journalists from being forced to turn over work materials to law enforcement. During the raid on Natanson's home, FBI agents reportedly seized a phone, two laptops, a recorder, and other devices.
"Many government lawyers had multiple opportunities to identify the PPA as controlling authority and to include an analysis of it in the warrant application," Porter wrote. "None of them did."
Porter added that he hopes "this search was conducted—as the government contends—to gather evidence of a crime in a single case, not to collect information about confidential sources from a reporter who has published articles critical of the administration."
Runa Sandvik, founder of a startup that works to protect journalists' digital security, called the ruling a "huge win for Hannah Natanson and the Washington Post."
The Post noted in its reporting on the decision that federal prosecutors "acknowledged that only a small portion of the information on the devices seized from Natanson would be relevant to the case against" Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor who was indicted last month on charges of illegally obtaining and sharing classified materials.
Federal prosecutors "asked Porter to allow a government filter team to search through the devices for relevant information," and the team "would then hand over the responsive information to prosecutors," the Post reported.
Porter rejected that proposal in his ruling, citing "documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s well-chronicled efforts to stop them."
"Allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product—most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources—is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” Porter wrote. “The concern that a filter team may err by neglect, by malice, or by honest difference of opinion is heightened where its institutional interests are so directly at odds with the press freedom values at stake.”
Press freedom organizations have condemned the Trump administration's raid on Natanson's home and seizure of her work devices as an alarming escalation in a broader assault on journalism.
Earlier this month, the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a complaint against Gordon Kromberg, the federal prosecutor who signed the search warrant application targeting Natanson.
“Kromberg and the government omitted a federal law that should have prohibited the raid of Hannah Natanson’s home when applying for a search warrant," Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for FPF, said in a statement, referring to the Privacy Protection Act. "That choice now threatens to expose Natanson’s sources and cripple her ability to report, while also sending a warning shot to journalists and whistleblowers nationwide."
“Disciplinary bodies cannot look the other way and ignore misconduct that threatens the First Amendment, particularly from an administration with a long history of misleading judges and everyone else," Stern added. "When prosecutors abuse their power to facilitate efforts to silence reporting and intimidate news sources, disciplinary authorities must hold them accountable and impose real consequences.”
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