From Outrage to Submission: Congress Ready to Roll Over on Wiretapping?

TALLAHASSEE — At Tuesday’s Florida Cabinet meeting, Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials followed through on their campaign to designate two leading Muslim civil rights nonprofits as “domestic terrorist organizations.” The groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its state chapter, CAIR-Florida, filed a lawsuit challenging the baseless designation in federal court in early July. At a Cabinet meeting in which Gov. DeSantis and four Cabinet members voted on the designation, counsel with the ACLU stood up and asked Gov. DeSantis for an opportunity to speak on behalf of CAIR and CAIR Florida. According to a new emergency rule to implement the Florida law, the Governor and Cabinet have sole discretion to decide whether an organization to be designated can present arguments against designation. Notice and an opportunity to be heard are fundamental due process requirements. Gov. DeSantis did not acknowledge and spoke over the ACLU’s request, said he heard no objections from the Cabinet, and approved the designation. The entire vote consideration took thirty seconds. On behalf of CAIR and CAIR-Florida, the ACLU, ACLU of Florida, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Bondurant Mixson & Elmore LLP plan to file an amended complaint and an emergency motion to stop the designations from becoming effective. If the designation does go into effect, the groups will be forced to shut down their operations in the state under threat of severe criminal penalties against them as well as their employees, board members, volunteers, and other stakeholders in Florida. “As I wanted to explain before the Cabinet voted to designate our clients, Gov. DeSantis’s use of Florida’s dangerous new “terrorism” designation regime against CAIR and its Florida chapter is baseless and unconstitutional,” said Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “There are simply no legitimate grounds to brand our clients with a reviled label, impose crippling criminal penalties, and force them to shut their doors in Florida. As the country's leading Muslim civil rights group, CAIR is being targeted not because it poses a threat to public safety, but because doing so serves a political agenda at the expense of Floridians' rights. CAIR and all U.S. nonprofits have the right to criticize the government, protect religious freedom, and advocate for the causes they believe in. We look forward to vindicating our clients’ rights in court.” If the courts do not intervene, the designation will become effective on November 5.

On September 21, 2026, the ACLU, ACLU of Nevada and the Innocence Project filed an amicus brief in the District of Nevada in support of Jason Killinger, a man wrongfully arrested after police relied on an incorrect result from facial recognition technology.

NEW YORK - In remembrance of the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued the following statement: “Twenty-five years after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the ACLU remembers the victims, their families, and all of those impacted. We pay particular tribute to John William Perry, a New York Police Department officer, lawyer, and longtime member of the Nassau County Chapter board of the New York Civil Liberties Union who tragically died in the rescue effort. "The lessons of the post-9/11 era apply to the abuses of power we face today. Immediately following the attacks, the ACLU urged government leaders to respond justly and in accordance with the safeguards enshrined in our Constitution. “Instead, successive presidents claimed expansive power that eroded many of our fundamental freedoms. U.S. leaders authorized torture and indefinite detention, launched illegal wars, warrantlessly surveilled Americans, and signed off on other horrific human rights violations. The Patriot Act was rubber-stamped by a Congress too afraid to ask the tough questions. And the courts all too often abdicated their role in our system of checks and balances and deferred to the executive. “Yet, thanks to the tireless work of civil liberties and civil rights organizations, human rights groups, investigative journalists, and the communities who were at the center of the harm, some of the worst abuses of that era came to light — and some of them ended. Other abuses continue to this day: Notably, key provisions within the Patriot Act are still the law of the land, and the government is still prosecuting individuals through a military commission process that has never worked and will never render true justice. "As we challenge the Trump administration's daily assault on our civil liberties and civil rights, we remain steadfast in the knowledge that our nation’s true strength lies in its people, an independent judiciary, and our commitment to due process. “The tragedy of 9/11 taught us that adherence to the rule of law is what makes this country great. Twenty-five years ago, we learned that we ought not forfeit our civil liberties in the face of government officials who are abusing their power. That lesson is doubly relevant today.”

NEW YORK – Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Trump administration’s bombing campaign of private boats in international waters, the American Civil Liberties Union is demanding immediate action from both Congress and the White House. On Sept. 2, 2025, the United States struck a small boat in the Caribbean Sea that had 11 people on board. Nine were killed in the first strike. Two survived, clinging to the wreckage for around 45 minutes before a second “double tap” strike killed them. In the year since the Trump administration launched its campaign, the United States has conducted at least 68 strikes and killed at least 227 civilians, including the family members of two ACLU clients. This tragic milestone comes right after U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced plans to expand lethal military operations throughout Latin America. “For a year now, the Trump administration has engaged in a terrifying, lawless killing campaign at sea and has yet to provide the public with anything beyond the most threadbare justifications,” said Jeff Stein, staff attorney with ACLU’s National Security Project. “These strikes have devastated countless families, terrified communities, and, by the administration’s own admission, failed to achieve their purported goal of stopping drugs from entering into the United States. We urge leaders in both Congress and the executive branch to put an immediate end to these strikes before anyone else is killed.” The Trump administration has claimed, without proof, that these military strikes are targeting unnamed drug cartels. But neither domestic nor international law authorizes the use of military force against such criminal organizations. The strikes are thus premediated killings of civilians outside of armed conflict, constituting murders under domestic law and extrajudicial killings under international human rights law. Nonetheless, a secret Trump administration legal memorandum reportedly blesses the strikes as lawful and purports to immunize personnel who authorized and carried out the strikes from future criminal prosecution. Along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (“CCR”) and the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU is suing for the immediate release of this memorandum. While many of the strikes’ victims remain unknown, according to investigative journalists and Senator Tim Kaine (who has reviewed classified information about the strikes), the strikes have killed ordinary people with no connection to drug trafficking. That includes Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian men who worked as fishermen and farmhands in Venezuela and were killed in an October 14, 2025, strike while returning home to see their loved ones. The ACLU, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and CCR represent Chad and Rishi’s family members in a lawsuit against the United States government seeking compensation for their wrongful deaths. The ACLU has also called on international human rights bodies, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to investigate the strikes and hold the perpetrators accountable. “The international community must do everything in its power to hold the Trump administration responsible for these extrajudicial killings that are blatant violations of international law,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of ACLU’s Human Rights Program. “No other country should provide any assistance that could contribute to these unlawful U.S. government killings. We call for independent international investigation into this lawless campaign.”