For more than 100 years, the mission of the American Civil Liberties Union has remained the same: protect and uphold the civil liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Its membership has grown from a small room at its founding to more than 4 million supporters across the country. Over the course of its history, this mission has led the ACLU to sue for women’s and immigrants’ rights as well as represent the National Rifle Association and the Ku Klux Klan.
Deborah Archer has been the president of the national ACLU since 2021. She is the first African American to hold the position.
Archer was in Hawaiʻi last week to teach a one-week intensive course at the University of Hawaiʻi William S. Richardson School of Law. She spoke with HPR about how the ACLU has changed during the second Trump administration.
Interview highlights
On the Trump administration
DEBORAH ARCHER: It's pivoted a little bit, but a lot of the work, the level of intensity that we saw from the ACLU during the first Trump administration, continued, unfortunately, at a really fast pace, really intensive work. One, because after the Trump administration and the harm that was done to our legal system, to our communities, the threat to individuals that we care about, we had to spend some time to resolve and address those things. But also after the Trump administration, we saw the states turning to pick up that work, and saw lots of challenges to civil rights and civil liberties in states around the country. … But you are right in assuming that the intensity level is even higher today, after the first year of the second Trump administration. Because this second Trump administration has presented threats to civil rights and civil liberties that are really unprecedented, that we have not seen in our lifetimes.
On pushback from states, institutions
ARCHER: It's important to be pushing back to defend our rights against rollbacks as much as we can, but we also have an initiative that's called the Firewall For Freedom, and that's trying to help states and localities understand the power that they have to both protect their citizens against the threats that we see at the federal level, and also to advance civil rights and civil liberties using tools that are uniquely theirs. So we think it's important that everyone understand that although the harm is coming from the federal government in much of these cases, it's important to know that all the solutions, all the power does not rest at the federal level. So some of it is legislation, getting states and even localities to pass legislation that's responsive to the threats that we see at the federal level. We have seen states step in as plaintiffs and suing the federal government to protect their citizens and to defend the rights of that state, and all of those things are incredibly important.
ARCHER: All of the things that you've described are the ways in which this administration is trying to weaken power centers, weaken the folks, the communities, the organizations that can push back on their unconstitutional actions. And we need to recognize and connect those dots for what they are. The attacks on the media, the attacks on colleges and universities, the attacks on our judiciary, on our communities, on law firms, all of that is a part of a plan to weaken the institutions that can hold them accountable. And so we need to all rise into that power that we have to hold this administration accountable. We need to recognize that executive orders are not law. Only the courts can set what the law is — or Congress. Executive orders do not rewrite constitutional law or constitutional provisions, and so in the face of what we know to be illegal, unconstitutional executive orders, people need to fight back, and we have seen that when these institutions, when universities, push back, when the law firms who have been targeted sue, they're winning. The court is responding. When we, as an organization, filed a challenge to the administration's denial of funding to people based on the use of terms that they thought were related to diversity, equity and inclusion, the court responded and protected and reinstituted that funding. We have to push back. Everyone has to use the power that we have.
On ACLU initiatives to help the public stay informed
ARCHER: The ACLU is trying to do that to make sure that people are educated about what's going on, on social media, on our website, talking about the actions that are happening at the federal level. We have these explainer videos where we're trying to break it down, because sometimes, if you talk about technical terms, people don't understand the everyday impact, how it's going to impact their lives and their communities. It's going to impact their jobs and their work. So we have these videos that try to explain to folks and break it down in terms that are accessible to everyone. We have blogs that we're trying to also discuss and explain, but we're also trying to help people get organized. So we have an initiative called People Power. People can sign up. We'll let people know based on their ZIP code, actions that are happening in their community, ways that they can engage when it's time for them to reach out to their legislator to express their concerns, ways that they can show up for themselves and for other people. So we're trying to make it easy to understand what's going on, and then to help people understand the options on how they can respond and get involved.
On defending constitutional rights
ARCHER: One of our mottos is that we're fighting for an America where "We the People" means everyone, and everyone means everyone. And so we do feel it's important that we ensure that the Constitution, our laws applies equally to everyone, because they're everyone's rights, whether or not you agree with me, whether or not we are enemies on an issue, whether or not we would fight to the end on the substance of the issue, we believe it's important that everyone's rights are protected. And if we allow the government to chip away and undermine the rights of people because we don't agree with them, we should know that that's going to turn around and be a tool that they're going to use to chip away and undermine our rights.
The Hawaiʻi chapter of the ACLU maintains a staff of about a dozen, led by Executive Director Salmah Rizvi. Recently, its attorneys have represented a transgender student on Maui and a Hawaiʻi Island resident detained by ICE, currently held at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center.
This story aired on The Conversation on Jan. 23, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.
