Many of the groups that worked to obstruct President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office are hitting up donors to fund a redux, and being met with lukewarm responses after Vice President Kamala Harris failed to defeat him with a $1 billion war chest, according to The New York Times.
Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and Center for Biological Diversity are ready to launch legal challenges against the second Trump administration starting on day one, mirroring the hundreds of lawsuits they filed during the president-elect’s first term, the NYT reported. The leaders of these nonprofits, however, are finding that they are short of the funds necessary to bankroll their ambitious “resistance” game plans.
“The response from donors has been shock, anger and depression, sprinkled in with a few checks,” CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren told NYT. “It’s not been a flood.”
CCR fought Trump’s ban on immigration from some Muslim-majority countries and accused the first Trump administration of supporting white nationalism.
Center for Biological Diversity executive director Kieran Suckling, meanwhile, wants to hire 12 new lawyers to support the group’s legal resistance to Trump’s proposed policies, according to the NYT.
“We can’t wait for the money to come in,” Suckling told the NYT. “We have to be prepared immediately.”
Her organization filed 266 lawsuits opposing the first administration, including a lawsuit to block Trump’s border wall under environmentalist pretenses, according to its website.
Money has thus far proved insufficient to stop Trump from amassing power. Political committees supporting Harris and opposing Trump spent nearly half a billion in the final month of the election, on top of the $1 billion Harris raised herself, only for Republicans to carry every swing state on election night.
As left-of-center nonprofits plea with their supporters for funds, they are competing with the Harris campaign, which is still asking supporters for money despite the election having been over for more than a week. The Harris campaign reportedly had at least $20 million in debt as of Nov. 6, two sources familiar told Politico.
“How did you spend $1 billion and not win?” one former Biden aide said. “What the fuck?”
If the funding arrives, some groups have robust plans ready to launch as soon as Trump is sworn in.
“Thus far, we have not seen the same levels of giving we experienced as compared to this time in 2016,” NILC executive director Kica Matos said in an email to NYT. She noted, however, that the group saw donations increase in 2017 after Trump actually took office.
The ACLU plans to challenge Trump’s deportation efforts on constitutional grounds, work with congressional allies to starve the administration of funding and lobby to restrict where Customs and Border Protection agents can operate. NILC, meanwhile, is plotting to deploy a network of volunteers across the United States to record immigration raids and intervene if they believe a legal violation is occurring.
The ACLU, NILC and CCR have all been able to count on funding from George Soros’ grantmaking network in the past, according to Open Society Foundations’ grant database. Soros handed over the reins of his philanthropic empire to his son, who has described himself as “more political” than his father, in 2023.
Democracy Alliance, an influential group of left-leaning donors that pours hundreds of millions of dollars into liberal groups, meets next week to prepare to fund the second nonprofit-run anti-Trump resistance, NYT reported. In 2017 the group published a “resistance map” to direct efforts opposing Trump.
The ACLU, NILC, CCR, and Center for Biological Diversity did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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