45 Ways We Disrupted 45’s Executive Branch Corruption
We launched in 2017 to help expose and challenge the rampant corruption in and of the Executive Branch. There certainly was a lot to do — and we’ve gotten a lot done.
Over the course of its long four years in power, the Trump administration presented extraordinary challenges to the rule of law and sound policymaking.
Here are 45 ways we disrupted the 45th president’s Executive Branch corruption:
1.Ken Cuccinelli was unlawfully appointed by Trump to lead a key federal immigration agency and used his post to strip protections from asylum seekers. In a landmark victory, we sued and won, unwinding his harmful directives and giving asylum seekers a fairer shot.
The Trump administration tried to do an end-run around federal vacancies law to install the xenophobic Cuccinelli (who once compared immigrants to pests) at USCIS. On behalf of RAICES and seven asylum seekers, we sued with CLINIC and Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP.
A federal court ruled that Cuccinelli was illegally appointed and lacked authority to perform the functions of the USCIS director. The court, therefore, invalidated two harmful immigration directives that Cuccinelli had issued and gave our clients a second chance. The court’s decision was the first to hold that a Trump administration official was unlawfully appointed, setting the stage for a number of other successful challenges.
2.President Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) unlawfully canceled the collection of equal pay data. So we filed suit. And won. Our legal victory — with the NWLC and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement — forced collection of pay data by race, gender, and ethnicity, which will shed light on wage disparities.
You can’t fix what you can’t see, so it defied reason that the Trump administration would halt a requirement that large employers collect aggregate pay data based on sex, race, and ethnicity. A court agreed, finding the Trump administration’s justification for halting the pay data collection “misdirected, inaccurate, and ultimately unpersuasive.” But that’s not all! Trump’s EEOC delayed compliance with the court’s order, so we took them back to court. In the end, because of our case, 90% of companies submitted two years of pay data to the EEOC.
3.Trump’s Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke unlawfully tapped an outside advisory group stacked with hunting and gun advocates to advise on the trophy hunting of threatened wildlife. So we teamed up with environmental and animal advocacy groups to bring a lawsuit challenging the misnamed ‘International Wildlife Conservation Council.’ The Council disbanded in the face of our lawsuit.
With the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Humane Society of the United States, and the Center for Biological Diversity, we were quick to pounce on the Trump administration’s use of this illegal advisory body.
4.The Trump administration inexplicably cut grant funding for the $100 million, evidence-based Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program. We brought multiple successful lawsuits to reinstate the grants and exposed the folks behind the scenes who tried to transform the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program into an abstinence-only initiative.
The Trump administration had an ugly pattern of discarding evidence-based strategies. We stepped in when funding was cut from over 80 TPP programs in the middle of their 5-year grant cycle. We fought back on behalf of King County, Washington, the City of Baltimore, and Healthy Teen Network and secured complete victory. A federal court ruled HHS’s termination of the TPP Program violated federal law. And when the Trump administration again tried to push its ideological, abstinence-only agenda on teens, we went back to court on behalf of Multnomah County, Oregon. Once again, a federal court ruled against the Trump administration and stopped its unlawful scheme.
In 2019, Power to Decide awarded Democracy Forward, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Public Citizen its Sarah S. Brown award for successfully preventing the Trump administration from abolishing the TPP Program.
5.Despite the mounting toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration’s Labor Department continued to stall progress on a long-pending workplace standard that would protect frontline healthcare workers from infectious diseases.
We sued with four labor unions — AFT, AFSCME, WSNA, and UNAC — to challenge this dangerous disregard for America’s frontline workers.
There is currently no occupational safety and health standard on the books designed to protect healthcare workers from infectious diseases spread by contact, droplets, or the air — like influenza, COVID-19, Ebola, and more.
The Trump administration’s cruel decision to unreasonably delay progress on this standard left healthcare workers dangerously unprotected in the face of a once-in-a-generation pandemic.
The Biden-Harris administration has since told a federal court, in response to our suit, that it will prioritize the standard.
6.Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, illegally used his private email account to discuss government business and, among other things, set up a meeting with a white supremacist. We uncovered his unlawful use of private email and forced the Trump administration to admit as much in court — and conduct a search of his private email accounts.
But it’s not clear all of Ross’s private emails related to government business made it back to the government for preservation. So, we shared what we know with the National Archives to aid its investigation into Wilbur Ross’s improper conduct. Our investigation revealed that Ross used private email to correspond with corporations with business before the Department; to discuss meetings with foreign officials, lobbyists, and CEOs; and to correspond with Holocaust denier Chuck Johnson, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and then-Ambassador Richard Grenell, among others.
7.Throughout his presidency, President Trump tried to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, making health insurance more expensive and inaccessible. We took Trump to court on behalf of five major U.S. cities to prevent him from deliberately undermining millions of Americans’ access to high-quality, affordable health insurance. And we won.
A federal court ruled the Trump administration undermined the ACA and struck down four Trump-era policies that undercut the ACA’s success.
President Trump followed through on his threats to sabotage the Affordable Care Act with, among other things, his Department of Health and Human Services’ 2019 rule governing the ACA’s implementation. The rule weakens the ACA’s exchanges, drives up premiums, and forces out health insurers, ultimately increasing the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans. We filed suit on behalf of five major cities — Columbus, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — and two citizens from Corvallis, Oregon. A federal court ruled Trump’s HHS undermined the ACA and invalidated four of its unlawful policies.
8.The Trump administration rolled back healthier school nutrition standards for 30 million children. We sued and won, reversing the rollback and helping to ensure students across America have access to healthier school meals.
Under Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, the USDA weakened whole-grain requirements and increased permissible sodium levels for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, which feed 30 million children. We won a major victory for those kids with our lawsuit on behalf of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Healthy School Food Maryland that challenged the unlawful rollback.
9.The Trump administration’s Labor Department rolled back a visa certification policy aimed at protecting immigrant victims of workplace abuse and crimes. We teamed up with the NOWCRJ and sued to protect the ability of immigrant victims to obtain visas to remain in the U.S. lawfully when they assist in the investigation and prosecution of criminal offenders.
In response to our lawsuit, the Biden-Harris administration withdrew the unlawful policy.
The Trump-era change jeopardized the safety of vulnerable workers — including victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, and labor exploitation — while protecting abusive employers. Among other things, the rollback made it more difficult for the Labor Department to certify visa applications by mandating that the Department first refer applications to criminal law enforcement for concurrence prior to certification. It also removed a requirement that visa certification decisions be made in a timely manner. Our lawsuit challenged the unlawful policy, and the Biden-Harris administration withdrew the policy in its first few weeks in power.
10.President Trump failed to release the War Powers Transparency Report as required by law. Faced with a lawsuit we brought on behalf of national security experts, the Trump White House reversed course and made the report available to Congress and the American people.
The public should know when presidents believe they are authorized to unleash military power overseas. The Trump White House kept Capitol Hill and the public in the dark for over eight months. We sued on behalf of Protect Democracy and Benjamin Wittes and Scott R. Anderson of Lawfare — and forced the release of the report.
11.The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security quietly leaked private and protected information about individuals’ immigration status to right-wing media outlets like Breitbart and Fox News. We demanded an investigation.
Under President Biden, the Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties took a look and concluded the issues we raised “are concerning and indicate possible privacy and civil rights violations” and that new training was needed.
The Trump administration took its anti-immigrant agenda to new heights by using DHS’s Office of Public Information to help drive a false and racist narrative that immigrants are criminals. Emails we uncovered via a public records lawsuit show that DHS’s press team chided a reporter for not highlighting an alleged criminal’s refugee status and routinely volunteered the immigration status of individuals that were the subject of negative news stories.
DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties told us that these facts “indicate possible privacy and civil rights violations” and that it will develop new training protocols as a result. As the saying goes, what’s done in the dark will come to light. Or perhaps: what’s done on government email will be made public.
12.Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services unlawfully approved the State of Georgia’s plan to waive essential Affordable Care Act requirements and block Georgia residents’ access to HealthCare.gov. We sued over the unlawful waiver on behalf of Planned Parenthood Southeast and Feminist Women’s Health Center.
In its final months in power, the Trump administration approved Georgia’s waiver request under Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act, which turns back the clock for Georgians trying to enroll in quality health care to a time when consumers were forced to navigate through private insurers, brokers, and junk plans just to get covered. Up to 100,000 Georgians stand to lose their insurance as a result of the Trump administration’s decision, which remains on the books.
13.The Trump administration unlawfully erased LGBTQ+ and Native American foster youth from vital statistics. We brought suit with a dynamic coalition of Tribal governments, LGBTQ+ advocates, and foster youth organizations to bring these marginalized communities out of the shadows.
Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services unlawfully rescinded requirements that child welfare agencies report essential data about marginalized foster youth and parents. American Indian/Alaska Native and LGBTQ+ youth and parents all too often suffer negative treatment in the foster care system. Collecting data on their representation and outcomes in the foster care system is critical to making things better. We filed suit with Lambda Legal and the Michigan State University College of Law’s Indian Law Clinic on behalf of the California Tribal Family Coalition, the Cherokee Nation, Yurok Tribe, Ark of Freedom Alliance, Facing Foster Care in Alaska, the Ruth Ellis Center, and True Colors, Inc.
14.One of Trump’s top officials at the Department of Justice unlawfully banned the use of a critical enforcement tool allowing polluters to pay for projects that benefit the communities they’ve harmed with illegal pollution. On behalf of two environmental conservation groups, we filed suit.
Our case spurred the Biden-Harris administration to withdraw the unlawful Trump policy.
In March 2020, Trump’s Assistant Attorney General for the Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division Jeffrey Bossert Clark abruptly and unlawfully banned the inclusion of Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) in environmental enforcement settlements. SEPs allow violators of environmental statutes to address the effects of their pollution, or to forestall future pollution, through projects that benefit affected communities. Alongside the Conservation Law Foundation and the Surfrider Foundation, we sued the Department of Justice for unlawfully ending the use of SEPs. The Biden-Harris administration retracted the unlawful policy in February 2021.
15.The Trump administration unlawfully blocked access to the Potomac River to accommodate President Trump’s frequent trips to golf at his private Virginia club. We sued and successfully forced the US Coast Guard to reopen access to the river.
The Coast Guard’s unlawful restrictions blocked the public’s right to access and enjoy the Potomac River while the president golfed. We sued on behalf of the Canoe Cruisers Association and prompted the Coast Guard to lift the restrictions. To celebrate, the Canoe Cruisers Association took our team out for a victory paddle on the newly reopened public waterway.
And that’s just our top 15 highlights out of 650 legal actions & FOIA requests filed across 50 agencies to expose and challenge the Trump administration’s corruption.
Ready for the rest of the 45? Where we ended FDA’s unlawful delay in regulating e-cigarette products, won a court-ordered settlement for federal collection of minority-owned lending data, and revealed the Trump administration’s multi-agency ties with Fox News & Breitbart?
Yeah, you are.
