Red Flag #5: Disregarded the Rule of Law and Endangered Fundamental Rights  

Red Flag #5:
Disregarded the Rule of Law and Endangered Fundamental Rights

The Trump administration has attacked longstanding rule of law principles, weakened democratic institutions, and chipped away at legal safeguards across the government. President Trump and his administration have attempted to bully lawyers, eliminate opportunities for everyday Americans to make their voices heard, and erode transparency within federal agencies with the ultimate goal of blocking you from fighting back when your fundamental freedoms—including your reproductive rights—are violated.

• Rights violated? President Trump is trying to prevent you from getting your day in court.  

• President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum that threatens lawyers who challenge his administration’s actions and policies, and signed numerous Executive Orders that directly target law firms that have challenged his agenda. These actions are a brazen attempt to intimidate lawyers with threats of financial sanctions, disbarment, and more simply for fulfilling their important role in our justice system. As more firms have come under scrutiny, some have opted to proactively enter settlements with the administration rather than challenge its actions, pledging millions in pro bono services to causes aligned with the President’s agenda in an effort to avoid an Executive Order targeting them. Because reproductive rights are consistently under attack in the United States, including from the Trump administration, these threats against legal advocates also threaten reproductive freedom.
• Lawyers play an indispensable role in holding governments accountable and protecting human and civil rights, including reproductive rights. The legal system depends on attorneys—public and private—being able to represent clients without political interference.  

• Want to have a say in the reproductive health policies that affect you?  The Trump administration is eliminating transparency and public input on its policies.

• The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new policy that will make it easier for HHS to avoid collecting public input before finalizing certain federal regulations. The notice-and-comment process is ordinarily required by law and is an important opportunity for you to influence rules and regulations that affect your life before they are finalized. Thanks to this new policy, the Trump administration may be able to ram through extreme anti-abortion policies without public transparency or oversight.
• HHS also closed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) offices at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), making it easier for the government to evade transparency for its actions.

• Value an efficient and accountable government? The Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers who specialized in oversight and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.

• President Trump, alongside DOGE’s Elon Musk, has fired federal employees who provide objective oversight within agencies and focus on efficiency of government programs. This included inspectors general (IGs) at key federal agencies, such as the HHS IG who oversaw the Medicaid program, the largest public payer of reproductive health services, as well as hundreds of additional HHS employees who investigated fraud, waste, and abuse in government funded health programs.
• As of the 100-day mark, the Trump administration has slashed the federal workforce, gutting entire agencies and firing tens of thousands of workers. These reductions in staff make it impossible for many agencies and offices to do their jobs effectively, including those working to improve maternal health outcomes, access to infertility care, and global family planning.