On Nov. 6, 2024, Donald Trump became president-elect of our beloved republic. His revolutionary dictatorial grievance politics, raging against inflation, cultural elites, the checks and balances of our republic, immigrants, globalism, and his promise to fix everything with simple autarkic solutions like mass deportations and tariffs resonated with not only the majority of Americans in swing states but also with the majority of the American population, winning him a landslide victory in the electoral college and popular vote.

However, civil society organizations saw his victory as a rallying cry to fortify our democracy and to mobilize the American people to protect our inalienable rights from government overreach. Below are some of them, with their plans.

The ACLU promises to:

1. Challenge his plans to centralize power in the presidency by firing civil servants and applying the Unitary Executive Theory.
2. Challenging plans to reinstate the dormant Comstock Act restricting bodily autonomy nationwide
3. Protect journalists from government surveillance.
4. Upholding the First Amendment protecting the free press and Donald Trump’s critics
5. Protecting LGBTQ civil rights from federal government overreach
6. Stand up for refugees and undocumented immigrants facing mass deportations.
7. Protect birthright citizenship, DACA recipients, and legal American citizens from potential denaturalization and deportation.
8. Protect Americans from what will be the largest mass surveillance operation in our history.

Brennan Center for Justice has promised to:

1. Protect voting rights
2. Protect public education
3. Fight big money special interests in politics

Amnesty International plans to:

1. Protect bodily autonomy
2. Defend Refugees and asylum seekers
3. Combat discrimination
4. Document any human rights violations
5. They also made a petition demanding the Trump administration follow human rights norms.

The League of Women Voters promises to:

1. Defend voting rights
2. Protect bodily autonomy

The NAACP made eight pledges to:

1. Stand up for the preservation of all civil rights and anti-discrimination laws
2. Protect voting rights
3. Protect bodily autonomy
4. Preserve the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Social Security.
5. Protect unions and government programs that focus on decreasing wealth inequality
6. Protect public education
7. Maintain environmental regulations that protect our water, air, and food.
8. Push back against plans to increase policing and mass incarceration.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights pledges to:

1. To obstruct efforts to weaponize the Department of Justice against political opposition
2. Prevent the politicization of the Census Bureau
3. Protect bodily autonomy
4. Fight the purging of the civil service and replacement with partisan loyalists

The National Organization for Women promises to:

1. Protect bodily autonomy
2. Maintain Title Nine protections that protect women from educational discrimination
3. Protect LGBTQ rights

The Human Rights Watch pledges to:

1. Protect refugees that will be targeted in the administration’s mass deportation plan
2. Protect the administration’s political opponents from political persecution
3. Protect bodily autonomy

When post-truth authoritarianism ushers us into an age of competitive authoritarianism, raising concerns about the prospects of our democratic republic, civil society groups will serve as the backbone of liberty. However, these groups are only as strong as we choose to make them. 

Authoritarian conspiracy theorists will try to convince you of many things over the next few years through conspiratorial deceit, as exemplified by the Russian-funded propaganda site, “the Center for Research on Globalization.”

But the above groups aren’t run by elite puppet masters, but we the people, for the people, of all backgrounds, Republican or Democrat, committed to our common values of inalienable rights, democracy, and opportunity. However, that comes with a cost, and that cost is your participation because symbiotically, without civil society personifying and advocating for people, and without people participating in civil society, both we the people and civil society will be nothing.

If civil society is preparing for these coming attacks on our liberty, then in the context of competitive authoritarianism, civil society is already an enemy to be stifled by the state. So know that civil society will be demonized in the coming years and remember that the incoming attacks on civil society, the primary means of popular mobilization, is an attack on you, the individual, and we the American people. An attack which has already started in an anti-liberty House of Representatives.

So remember who you are, America, and do your part in the everlasting struggle for liberty by supporting these civil society groups so we may prevail against these premature waves of post-truth tyranny.

Yes, I can assure you the road ahead will be fraught with challenges, but only together can we determine our destiny. If we don’t defend it in submission, it will be at our national peril as tyrants will gladly steal it.