The steady flow of Cabinet picks from Mar-a-Lago signals that President-elect Donald Trump, fresh off his election victory, is wasting no time. And for good reason: Trump’s team will inherit a mountain of to-dos on Day One.
The Biden-Harris administration aggressively pursued policies that threatened our fundamental liberties: religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, the right to life, and equal opportunities for women and girls.
Alliance Defending Freedom had a front-row seat to this assault. We faced off regularly against the Biden-Harris administration and its allies in courtrooms and legislatures nationwide.
These next four years will provide a strategic opportunity to reclaim lost ground and forge new paths to protect our fundamental freedoms.
ADF encourages the new Trump-Vance administration to focus on three critical areas.
First, reject censorship and protect free speech from all threats, foreign and domestic.
From pressuring social media companies to deplatform individuals to weaponizing the government against parents who oppose gender ideology in schools, the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly used censorship to punish and silence dissent.
Free speech is the most basic test of any free society. It allows us to debate ideas, seek truth, expose lies, and ultimately prevent tyranny. It’s a global imperative that the United States protect this God-given right.
There are already positive signs the new Trump administration plans to tackle censorship head-on.
Trump said recently that he plans to dismantle the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” or CIC—a network of government, nonprofit, for-profit, and media entities that collude to censor vast swaths of speech under the guise of fighting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
The Republican Party also trained its sights on the CIC in its official platform, stating: “We will ban the Federal Government from colluding with anyone to censor Lawful Speech, defund institutions engaged in censorship, and hold accountable all bureaucrats involved with illegal censoring. We will protect Free Speech online.”
Fulfilling this pledge would push back the tide of authoritarianism both here and abroad.
Second, uproot dangerous gender ideology from public policy, protecting women, children, and parental rights.
The Biden-Harris administration’s infusion of gender ideology into federal policy threatened the well-being of women and girls. Its Title IX rule, which sought to open up girls’ spaces to boys in public schools, sparked a national outcry.
No political agenda can alter truth. We are immutably created male and female. Denying this reality has caused immeasurable harm, but embracing it is the surest path to restoring equality and respect for all people.
Trump can rescind the current administration’s Title IX rule and adopt the new Trump administration’s own rule restoring protections for women and girls.
We’ve seen encouraging signs that the next administration has made this a priority, with Trump saying recently in response to a question about males playing in women’s sports: “It’s such an easy question . . . We’re not going to let it happen.”
The president-elect also has vowed to go after medical providers that perform irreversible “transition” surgeries on minors and has called for a national ban on these barbaric procedures.
Third and finally, fortify the rule of law, protect the integrity of our judiciary, and shrink the bloated administrative state.
Far from defending democracy, the Biden-Harris administration continually undermined core principles of the Constitution such as federalism and the separation of powers. It even entertained the radical notion of packing the Supreme Court.
Thankfully, we’ve been given at least four years to block this power grab and return power to states, communities, and families. The Supreme Court, in its June 28 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, struck a necessary blow against the administrative state, placing a greater burden on agencies to justify their rulemaking.
But there is more work to be done. Let’s hope the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, co-led by entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, implements the kind of innovative thinking we need to tame Leviathan.
For our part, Alliance Defending Freedom will continue advocating for every person’s God-given rights in courtrooms, legislatures, and the public square as we enter this new season. But the work of “keeping our republic” ultimately falls to all Americans.
That work takes place when we insist on a limited government that protects our freedoms. And it takes place at our kitchen tables as we raise the next generation to understand what true freedom is, what it costs, and why it matters.
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