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Judge Rejects Trump’s ‘Appalling’ NIH LGBTQ, Race Grant Cuts (opens a new window)

  • June 16, 2025
  • Bloomberg Law

Kenneth Parreno, a Protect Democracy attorney arguing for the plaintiffs in that case Monday, maintained the Administrative Procedure Act requires the NIH to make decisions on grants in a reasoned away, while the “record shows a slap-dash decision making process,” including a series of emails in which NIH leadership took “just minutes” to make a decision on grants affecting “hundreds of researchers and millions of lives.”

“The directives themselves are explicitly spelling out a process where HHS is directing and identifying these terminations, that NIH officials are, in turn, just rubber stamping them, not providing any review,” Parreno said. “What this is is a slap-dash, harried effort to rubber stamp an ideological purge.”

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Judge orders NIH to restore cuts to research grants related to diversity (opens a new window)

  • June 16, 2025
  • The Washington Post

“We are really gratified that we have a judge who has taken a fair look at the record and come to the very clear conclusion that NIH and the defendants have acted unlawfully in terminating these grants based on ideological grounds and not based on science,” said Shalini Goel Agarwal, special counsel at Protect Democracy, an advocacy group representing the plaintiffs in one of the cases.

By terminating the grants, the Trump administration was effectively declaring that certain groups of Americans are not worthy of having their health studied, Agarwal said. It is part of “a pretty ugly history that the judge is rightly calling out as wrong and fundamentally unlawful.”

What Democracy Nonprofits Need from Funders to Fight Back Against Authoritarianism (opens a new window)

  • June 11, 2025
  • Inside Philanthropy

Resources are also needed to protect people and organizations who have been unfairly attacked and any organizations who are unfairly named, vilified and targeted, said Ian Bassin, cofounder and executive director of Protect Democracy, a national nonprofit founded in 2016 to defeat the threat of authoritarianism, “so that every attack on an organization working in the public interest backfires by resulting in an immediate surge of support.”

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The 5-Minute Fix | Four questions about the LA protests (opens a new window)

  • June 10, 2025
  • The Washington Post

Trump used the military to disperse racial justice protesters in D.C. in 2020, with helicopters hovering over protesters’ heads. Another legal expert says what’s happening in Los Angeles is an escalation even from that.

“I think it’s one of the scariest things that a president can do,” said Ariela Rosenberg, a national security expert with Protect Democracy. “Do they use this extremely blank check they gave themselves to deploy the National Guard in the smallest of circumstances?”

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For Trump, seizing emergency powers has become central to governing (opens a new window)

  • June 9, 2025
  • The Washington Post

“He is not going to view himself as constrained,” said Kristy Parker, special counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that fights authoritarianism. “Emergency powers are like manna from heaven for someone like him. He can just wave a wand in the form of an executive order and absolve himself, as he sees it, from the need to answer to Congress.”

The Musk blowup reveals how Trump is remaking the presidency (opens a new window)

  • June 8, 2025
  • CNN

“Never before in this country has a president made so clear that mere disagreement with him or failure to show sufficient personal loyalty might cause that person to lose government contracts or even face investigation,” said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that analyzes threats to US democracy. “That’s how things work in Russia, and apparently, under Donald Trump, now here.”

Ian Bassin ’98, Hon.’25: “You Will Decide Whether Democracy Endures” (opens a new window)

  • May 25, 2025
  • Wesleyan University

In his Commencement address at Wesleyan’s 193rd Commencement Ceremony, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy Ian Bassin ’98, Hon.’25 urged the Class of 2025 to take collective action—both against the rising authoritarianism that preys on our frustrations, and toward a future that transcends the perils of our present.

“When the freedom of any one of us is endangered, act as if the freedom of all of us is endangered, because it is,” said Bassin, who was named an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at the ceremony. “And rather than demonize those with whom we disagree or impose purity tests, we must forge common cause with the broadest possible coalition in defense of our Republic.”

Trump Ramps Up Threats Against Political Foes After DOJ Shakeup (opens a new window)

  • May 22, 2025
  • Bloomberg Law

Publicly discussing pending investigations could also hinder the prosecution itself, such as by tainting a jury pool, former prosecutors said.

“It definitely raises the question: if they are continually running afoul of those things, what is the true purpose here, and what is the true legitimacy of these cases?” said Kristy Parker, special counsel at Protect Democracy and a former prosecutor with the department’s civil rights division.

Lawsuit challenges USDA demand for food stamp data as some states prepare to comply (opens a new window)

  • May 22, 2025
  • NPR

States could become “the new battleground in the fight against DOGE’s oversteps into the lives of Americans,” said Nicole Schneidman, a technology policy strategist at Protect Democracy and one of the attorneys involved in the suit. “This demand puts states in a no-win situation where they must break the law and betray their citizens or risk losing essential funding.”