Defending the United States Constitution
Each time someone buys Trumped Up Cards until Inauguration Day, I’m donating $10 to the ACLU
When we started selling Trumped Up Cards to the public in September, we noted that we’d be giving all profits to charities already working to make America great.
Our first area of focus will be on organizations that protect civil liberties. As part of that process, I’m pleased to make the following announcement:
For every deck of Trumped Up Cards that we sell between December 1st and Inauguration Day through our website, I will personally donate $10 to the ACLU, up to $100,000.
My hope is that Donald Trump will serve our country on behalf of all Americans, in ways that will lead to broad-based prosperity and security.
At the same time, we must balance such hopes by not forgetting the many specific statements and promises Trump made during the campaign.
Over the course of the election campaign, Trump suggested he’d like to close U.S. mosques, build a database to keep track of U.S. Muslims, ban Muslims from entering the country, increase and accelerate deportations, close parts of the Internet, expand libel laws, jail Hillary Clinton and use his power as President to exact revenge on perceived critics like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — tactics typically favored by dictators rather than the leader of one of the world’s longest-standing democracies.
Since November 9th, Trump has softened some of these claims, but it’s still not clear exactly how he will proceed on many fronts.
While I support President-elect Trump’s frequent calls for national unity, during his campaign he also regularly employed rhetoric and endorsed policies designed to marginalize religious freedom, ethnic minorities, and women.
As a candidate, Trump could make outlandish statements with little regard for their Constitutional implications. As President, he is pledged to respect the Constitution’s authority, and the specific rights and protections it guarantees to every American citizen.
The division of our federal government into three branches is also supposed to protect citizens from overzealous politicians. Now, however, one party controls the House and the Senate along with the Executive branch. So the checks and balances that would normally be in place to guard against a President determined to erase individual civil liberties won’t necessarily function as strongly as they should.
Thus, the need for strong and capable organizations like the ACLU is particularly acute at this moment.
If Trump’s actions as President reflect his campaign rhetoric, the ACLU and other capable organizations like it will be critical for defending the Bill of Rights for all Americans.
For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has worked so that America lives up to its ideals of free expression and equal protection for all its citizens. In the 1920s, it won important anti-censorship cases involving authors like H.L. Mencken and James Joyce. In the 1930s, it helped preserve religious freedoms for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and in the 1950s and 1960s, it played an integral role in fighting racial discrimination and constraining police misconduct.
In our own era, it will draw upon all of its experience, expertise, and resources to preserve our civil liberties. I hope you will join me in supporting them as we work to ensure that American ideals of freedom of expression, equal protection, tolerance, inclusion, and rule of law persist and even flourish as we move forward in positive and productive ways.
