Yes, these lawsuits are working -- Public Citizen
yes, these lawsuits are working
- As you know from our email updates, Public Citizen has filed quite a few lawsuits against the administration since Donald Trump returned to power. (51 lawsuits and counting, to be exact.)
- We periodically send updates on where things stand with each and every lawsuit.
- And we get a lot — A LOT — of positive feedback about our legal work to hold the Trump regime accountable in court.
- But some folks seem to think that taking the Trump administration to court is easy (it isn’t) or that our lawsuits aren’t going anywhere.
- So today we wanted to highlight just the cases where we have materially slowed down or even stopped some of the destructive and illegal things the Trump regime has been trying to do.
- Perhaps that suggests this will be a short email. After all, the legal system tends to move slowly (a reality Trump exploits, to be sure) and we’re just one small nonprofit organization going up against the entire Trump/MAGA juggernaut, right?
- Except we have 25 cases to tell you about today.
Furthermore, most of our other cases are still in their preliminary stages, so we expect even more success down the road. And of course we will keep taking the Trump administration to court as long as it keeps breaking the law.
OK, read on for a brief recap of every case so far where we have already had success (starting with the most recent, then working back from there).
LAWSUIT #45 — TEEN PREGNANCY PREVENTION
DATE FILED: July 14, 2026
WHY WE SUED: To prevent the Trump administration from politicizing a successful teen pregnancy prevention program in pursuit of its own regressive agenda.
BACKGROUND: Congress, with bipartisan support, established the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program in 2009. Since then, teen pregnancy rates have fallen significantly. But in June of 2026, the Trump administration made significant and sudden changes to the program — such as including funding only for initiatives that exclusively promote abstinence-only before marriage and terminating funding for initiatives that consider populations disproportionally affected by unintended pregnancy (such as LGBTQ+ young people), discuss sex, promote fertility planning, or do not promote ideologically-driven misinformation about contraception. Lawsuits from Public Citizen, Democracy Forward, and Planned Parenthood defeated similar actions during Trump’s first term. Now, Public Citizen is partnering with Democracy Forward, Dunn Isaacson Rhee LLP, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America in representing a coalition of organizations and local governments to bring this lawsuit.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The judge granted our motion for a preliminary injunction in part, preventing implementation of the changes while the case goes forward. We will be asking the judge to issue a final ruling in our favor.
LAWSUIT #42 — COMMERCIAL DRIVERS LICENCES
DATE FILED: June 3, 2026
WHY WE SUED: To make the Trump administration respond to a Freedom of Information Act enquiry into its correspondences with state officials related to commercial drivers licenses.
BACKGROUND: As part of its racist and xenophobic approach to everything, the Trump regime has scapegoated non-citizens who are legally authorized to work here and who have legally received commercial drivers licenses. In 2025, the regime ordered the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to review state records on commercial driver’s licenses issued to non-citizens. That agency issued preliminary findings that many states were not compliant with the regime’s discriminatory and unfounded standards. In November of 2025, Public Citizen submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the agency’s correspondence with state departments of motor vehicles concerning these driver’s licenses. The agency failed to produce the requested records, so we sued.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! After we sued, the administration began releasing the requested documents.
LAWSUIT #38 — JUSTICE FOR IMMIGRANT WORKERS
DATE FILED: April 20, 2026
WHY WE SUED: To prevent noncitizens from losing their authorization to work in the United States through no fault of their own.
BACKGROUND: Because of longstanding and ongoing processing delays on its end, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has for many years provided automatic extensions of work permits when the agency fails to process renewal applications before an existing permit expires. USCIS has previously acknowledged that the automatic extensions are necessary to prevent thousands of lawful workers from experiencing a lapse in work authorization through no fault of their own but rather due to the agency’s own backlogs. But in October of 2025, the Trump regime abruptly and unlawfully ended these extensions.
WHERE THINGS STAND: After we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in this case, and just three weeks before our client’s work authorization would have expired, the agency renewed her work authorization, which ended the case.
LAWSUIT #37 — GOVERNMENT ETHICS
DATE FILED: April 16, 2026
WHY WE SUED: To make the Trump administration provide records — under the Freedom of Information Act — about how, or even if, it looked into possible ethics concerns relating to employees of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
BACKGROUND: At the outset of his second term, Trump — along with Elon Musk, the richest person on the planet — concocted the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). They staffed it with an assortment of inexperienced outsiders, many from Musk’s own companies, some still in their teens. These “DOGE bros” immediately started infiltrating numerous federal agencies and interfering with critical government work, recklessly and often illegally (forming the basis of some of our earlier lawsuits against the regime — see below). In June of 2025, Campaign Legal Center, under the Freedom of Information Act, requested records from the Office of Government Ethics about communications related to potential conflicts of interest among DOGE employees. When the administration failed to produce any of the requested information, we sued, on behalf of Campaign Legal Center, to force it to do so.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! After we sued, the administration released the requested documents.
LAWSUIT #36 — EXTORTION OF POORER COUNTRIES
DATE FILED: April 3, 2026
WHY WE SUED: To force the Trump administration to disclose exploitative “agreements” it bullied poorer countries into signing — which give the United States access to valuable assets, including sensitive data and natural resources — by withholding critical health assistance.
BACKGROUND: The Trump regime has taken a sledgehammer to foreign aid. (By the way, while polls show that many Americans think foreign aid accounts for as much as half of all federal spending, in reality, only about 1% of the federal budget — just one penny out of every dollar — goes to foreign aid.) This assault on foreign aid is literally killing people. But that, apparently, is not sinister enough for the Trump regime. The Trump administration is also using foreign aid to essentially bully other countries into giving the regime access to their data and natural resources. Like the villain in a trite action movie, the Trump regime is extorting poorer countries and putting the lives of millions of people at risk so that American corporate tycoons and their MAGA cronies can get even richer. And the administration is keeping the terms of these coercive agreements secret. Under the Freedom of Information Act, we sought copies of the agreements. After the regime failed to respond, we sued, asking a federal court to order the Trump administration to produce the relevant records so that the American people can know how the Trump regime is exploiting other countries — and putting lives at risk — in our names.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! After we sued, the administration began releasing the requested documents. We are continuing to litigate the case.
LAWSUIT #35 — TRUMP’S GIANT VANITY ARCH
DATE FILED: February 19, 2026
WHY WE SUED: To stop the illegal construction of a gargantuan, self-aggrandizing arch that Trump wants to erect in Washington, D.C., just outside the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, across from the Lincoln Memorial.
BACKGROUND: This arch joins a litany of Trump vanity projects: banners bearing his scowling face hanging from government buildings all over our nation’s capital; his (now rejected) effort to affix his name to the storied Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; his illegal demolition of the East Wing of the White House so that he can build a gaudy Billionaire Ballroom; and more. These are the types of things we expect from real-world despots and fictional authoritarians like Big Brother in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. But the law is clear: Trump does not have the authority to construct the arch without approval from Congress, which he does not have. Public Citizen, representing a group of Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian, is suing in federal court to stop construction of Trump’s illegal vanity arch.
WHERE THINGS STAND: In the spring, the court issued an order requiring 14 days’ notice before the commencement of any arch construction. Then, in early September, the judge ordered the government to provide 48 hours’ notice before engaging in any arch-related activity on Memorial Circle. These orders ensure that, while we wait for the judge’s final ruling in the case, the Trump regime can’t suddenly start building.
LAWSUIT #31 — REGIME’S SECRET DEALS WITH BIG PHARMA
DATE FILED: January 27, 2026
WHY WE SUED: To force the administration to reveal details of its agreements with pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Eli Lilly.
BACKGROUND: In the fall of 2025, Trump announced that his administration had negotiated “most favored nation” pricing with pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Eli Lilly. But the regime and the companies are keeping the agreements secret. Maybe the deals will actually help everyday Americans afford essential medicines. Or maybe the deals just benefit corporate executives and assorted Trump officials. Public Citizen — under the Freedom of Information Act — called for the administration to release the agreements. It did not, so we sued.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! After we sued, the administration began releasing some of the requested documents. We are continuing to litigate the case.
LAWSUIT #30 — HIDING WHO GETS TO MEET WITH KEY TRUMP OFFICIALS
DATE FILED: January 5, 2026
WHY WE SUED: To make the administration disclose the names of people who got meetings with Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick.
BACKGROUND: We represent a client who filed a Freedom of Information Act request in September of 2025 for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s calendar. The administration estimated that it would not respond until June of 2028 — almost three years later. We sued to force the regime to provide the information more promptly.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! After we sued, the administration began releasing the requested documents. We are continuing to litigate the case.
LAWSUIT #29 — TRUMP’S GILDED BALLROOM
DATE FILED: December 22, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To force the administration to release records related to the construction of a gilded ballroom where the East Wing of the White House stood until Trump had it demolished.
BACKGROUND: In October of 2025, Trump had the entire East Wing of the White House demolished. In its place, he intends to erect a humongous gilded ballroom — the estimated cost of which was initially $200 million, then $300 million, and now $400 million. All so Trump can curry favor with billionaire CEOs and try to impress the authoritarian foreign leaders he longs to emulate. Two days after demolition of the East Wing began, Public Citizen — under the Freedom of Information Act — called for the administration to release the contract for the construction of the ballroom. In defiance of the law, Trump officials have refused to do so. So we took them to court.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! In response to our lawsuit, the administration released the contract.
LAWSUIT #28 — MAGA’S WAR ON DIVERSITY
DATE FILED: December 22, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To make the regime reveal what it said when it tried to bully large law firms into abandoning efforts at making their workplaces more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
BACKGROUND: Early in Trump’s second term, his administration sent letters to 20 major law firms about their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. (Attacking “DEI” is of course a pillar of the grievance politics that animate Trump and his base.) Four of the firms subsequently signed settlement agreements with the regime. After the deadline for the administration’s response to our Freedom of Information Act request passed, we sued.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! After we sued, the administration released some of the requested documents but withheld many others. We are continuing to litigate the case.
LAWSUIT #27 — CLEAN, AFFORDABLE ENERGY
DATE FILED: December 18, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To block a new rule the regime tried to impose that would have illegally and unfairly disadvantaged wind and solar projects that should qualify for federal tax credits.
BACKGROUND: Congress wanted to encourage investment in new, cleaner power generation without favoring any one technology. The Trump regime attempted to weaponize the tax code to wage war on wind and solar energy projects, which would have caused electric bills to rise, workers to lose their jobs, and older, dirtier power plants to spew more pollution into our air.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won! The court issued a final ruling in our favor, barring the administration from implementing the new rule.
LAWSUIT #26 — CONSUMER PROTECTION
DATE FILED: December 5, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop Trump from defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
BACKGROUND: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was established after the 2008 financial crisis to keep everyday Americans from getting ripped off by Big Banks. (Public Citizen played a major role in creating the CFPB.) Trump put one of his top lieutenants, Russell Vought — a primary architect of the infamous Project 2025 manifesto — in charge of the Bureau. In November of 2025, Vought announced that he would not request funding for the CFPB from the Federal Reserve, despite a legal requirement to do so.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won! The judge ruled in our favor and ordered that funding be requested as required by law. The administration later appealed, but the judge’s order remains in effect — and the administration has complied with it — while the appeal is pending.
LAWSUIT #25 — STUDENT LOANS
DATE FILED: November 4, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To prevent the administration from denying student loan forgiveness to borrowers just because the regime doesn’t like the kind of work they do.
BACKGROUND: In 2007, Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to help people who go into public service work, including: public school teachers, first responders, social workers, military personnel, librarians, government workers, people who work at homeless shelters and food banks, nurses and other employees at nonprofit hospitals, people who provide services to survivors of domestic violence, and many other kinds of workers. Under Trump’s Education Secretary — the billionaire former professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon — the administration decided to deny public service loan forgiveness to borrowers whose work it just doesn’t like.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won! The court issued a final ruling in our favor. (The administration has appealed.)
LAWSUIT #23 — DEFENDING IMMIGRANT WORKERS
DATE FILED: October 20, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To challenge an “interim” rule from Trump’s Department of Transportation that prohibits asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients — individuals who are legally authorized to work in the United States — from getting or renewing commercial driver’s licenses.
BACKGROUND: The interim rule was based solely on the immigration status of the workers. The agency offered no evidence of a safety issue or any other rational basis for barring people who have passed the written and road tests, and who have legal work authorization, from working as drivers. The administration put the rule into effect immediately, with no advance notice, directly threatening the livelihoods of 200,000 truck drivers, bus drivers, and delivery drivers. The rule will also hurt countless businesses, both large and small — as well as schools and potentially millions of American consumers — that depend on these drivers.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The court granted our motion asking it to put the rule on hold while the agency worked on a final rule. After the administration issued the final rule, the court put this case on hold while our challenge to the final rule proceeds.
LAWSUIT #22 — FREE SPEECH FOR FEDERAL WORKERS
DATE FILED: October 3, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop the administration from violating the First Amendment rights of federal workers.
BACKGROUND: With the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of government employees set up “out-of-office” emails before being furloughed. But at Trump’s Department of Education — run by the billionaire former professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon — these emails were replaced with a partisan message blaming “Democrat Senators” for the shutdown. That change was made without the employees’ consent and without notice that partisan messages were being sent in their names. In essence, they were being forced to make a political statement, whether they agreed with it or not.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won! The court ordered the Department of Education to remove the partisan messages from the employees’ emails.
LAWSUIT #20 — JOB CORPS PROGRAM
DATE FILED: June 18, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To prevent the administration from closing Job Corps centers all across the country and shutting down the Job Corps program.
BACKGROUND: Congress created the Job Corps program in 1964 to provide vocational and academic training to low-income young people. The program has continued with ongoing bipartisan support in Congress — even when Richard Nixon wanted to shrink it and Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate it altogether. But in early 2025, the Trump regime — in flagrant defiance of the law — tried to suspend the program and close all 99 Job Corps centers nationwide. Public Citizen, with Southern Poverty Law Center as co-counsel, filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful attempt to close the Job Corps centers.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won! In August, the administration agreed to rescind its directive to shutter the 99 Job Corps centers around the country.
LAWSUIT #19 — HUNGER IN AMERICA
DATE FILED: June 10, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop the regime from shutting down the National Hunger Clearinghouse and hotline.
BACKGROUND: For more than 30 years, Congress has required the U.S. Department of Agriculture to contract with a nonprofit organization to serve as an information clearinghouse for food assistance resources. Hunger Free America has held that contract since 2014, helping tens of thousands of individuals and families access food banks, soup kitchens, and government programs. But in May of 2025 — with no explanation or warning — the Trump administration terminated the current contract and took no action to find another nonprofit to maintain the clearinghouse.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! In response to our lawsuit, the administration complied with the law and awarded the contract to our client.
LAWSUIT #17 — WORKER HEALTH AND SAFETY
DATE FILED: May 14, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To preserve the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
BACKGROUND: In the spring of 2025, the Trump regime quietly dismantled the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which protects workers in high-risk industries like mining, firefighting, construction, and healthcare. Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “leadership” at the Department of Health and Human Services, where NIOSH is housed, the majority of its staff were fired, slated for termination, or otherwise forced out.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! NIOSH rehired its staff. We then dismissed our case.
LAWSUIT #15 — TRANSPARENCY ABOUT DISMANTLING OF USAID
DATE FILED: April 22, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To make the administration disclose records related to its purge of programs and employees at USAID.
BACKGROUND: The Trump regime has essentially dissolved the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in clear disregard for the law and the Constitution. We are suing the administration over its refusal to respond to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records related to its dismantling of USAID.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! After we sued, the administration released some of the requested documents but withheld many others. We are continuing to litigate the case.
LAWSUIT #14 — DOING FISHY THINGS WITH EMAIL
DATE FILED: April 17, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To compel disclosure of information about the administration trying to monitor emails among nonprofit groups, monitoring the speech of government personnel, and giving outside actors access to official government email accounts.
BACKGROUND: Trump’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was reportedly doing some unusual (to put it mildly) things with email — including signing up for listservs nonprofit organizations use to communicate with one another, monitoring the communications of untold numbers of government employees, and letting people outside of the government into official OPM email accounts. After the administration failed to respond to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records related to these actions, we sued to force disclosure.
WHERE THINGS STAND: After we sued, the administration released some of the requested documents but withheld others. We are continuing to litigate the case.
LAWSUIT #13 — OUTSOURCING GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATIONS
DATE FILED: April 17, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To force the administration to release records about using non-governmental third parties for official government communications.
BACKGROUND: We sued Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for its refusal to respond to our Freedom of Information Act request for records related to HUD’s use of non-governmental entities to conduct official government communications.
WHERE THINGS STAND: Success! After we sued, the administration released the requested documents.
LAWSUIT #10 — GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY
DATE FILED: April 8, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop the administration from keeping its decisions about how to spend taxpayer dollars secret.
BACKGROUND: Trump put a man named Russell Vought — a primary architect of the infamous Project 2025 manifesto — in charge of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). By law, OMB is required to publicly post information, on something called the Public Apportionments Database, about the funds allocated to each federal agency. But under Vought’s leadership and in clear violation of the law, OMB took that database offline and told Congress it would stop maintaining the database altogether. The Public Apportionments Database is an invaluable resource for monitoring how the government spends taxpayer money — including whether the administration is flouting Congress’ constitutional authority over government spending (the “power of the purse”).
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won! In response to our lawsuit, the court ordered the administration to restore the apportionments database while the case proceeds. Although OMB has appealed, the information is currently back online.
LAWSUIT #9 — EDUCATION IN AMERICA
DATE FILED: April 4, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To challenge the regime’s dismantling of the Institute of Education Sciences.
BACKGROUND: The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is a semi-independent division within the Department of Education that conducts, supports, and disseminates high-quality, evidence-based research about education in America. In February of 2025, the Department of Education — run by the billionaire former professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon — began dismantling IES by cancelling dozens of contracts for research studies and support services vital to the agency’s functioning. In March of 2025, roughly 90% of IES employees were notified that they would be terminated.
WHERE THINGS STAND: After we sued, the administration announced that it would not cancel access to a key research database as it had planned to do. Both sides then asked the court to issue a final ruling on the rest of the claims in this case.
LAWSUIT #7 — CONSUMER PROTECTION
DATE FILED: February 13, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop the administration from eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
BACKGROUND: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established after the 2008 financial crisis to keep everyday Americans from getting ripped off by Big Banks. (Public Citizen played a major role in creating the CFPB.) In 2025, Trump openly declared his intent to “totally eliminate” the CFPB, and he put one of his top lieutenants — Russell Vought, a primary architect of the infamous Project 2025 manifesto — in charge of the Bureau. But the administration cannot lawfully dismantle a federal agency created by statute. Any attempt to do so is in defiance of the Constitution’s separation of powers. That hasn’t stopped Vought from trying to fire the vast majority of CFPB employees, among other schemes to shut the Bureau down.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The judge granted our motion for a preliminary injunction blocking Vought from summarily firing CFPB staff and cancelling CFPB contracts while the case proceeds. The administration’s appeal is pending. (We later withdrew as co-counsel in this case to focus on Lawsuit #26, above.)
LAWSUIT #3 — PUBLIC HEALTH
DATE FILED: February 4, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To restore critical health information the regime deleted from government websites.
BACKGROUND: Based on a directive from the administration to scrub information related to gender or “DEI” from government websites, essential public health agencies — like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — removed vital information that doctors and researchers all across the country were using to treat patients, monitor diseases, advance medical discoveries, and save lives. In some instances, information that had been publicly available going back to the 1990s had vanished.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won! The court issued a final ruling in our favor, requiring the agencies to restore the deleted information, which they did.
Again, that’s 25 cases where we have already either won outright, won a preliminary ruling that limited or delayed a destructive thing the administration was doing or wanted to do, or forced the regime to reveal information it was unlawfully trying to keep from the American people.
We will keep taking the Trump administration to court as long as it keeps breaking the law.
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