MusicFestival2025

Washington, D.C. — The terms of a previously secret grant agreement between the United States and El Salvador facilitating the Trump-Vance administration’s practice of disappearing people indefinitely from U.S. territory into El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison without due process, legal justification, or public accountability have, for the first time, been made available as part of an ongoing lawsuit.  The suit, which is pending in federal court in the District of Columbia, is Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights et al. v. U.S. Department of State et al. Plaintiffs, represented by Democracy Forward and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (who represent themselves), secured the release of the document after filing a motion challenging the federal government’s broad claim that it should remain out of public view. 

Washington D.C. – In a series of orders, a federal court has intervened to restrict unprecedented data sharing between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), offering temporary relief that will halt the IRS from continuing to share massive amounts of taxpayer data with ICE without providing the court and plaintiffs with 24-hour notice. Last month, in just one day, the IRS disseminated as much taxpayer data to ICE as it had previously shared with all federal law enforcement agencies in a year. After that sharing was made public, a coalition of small businesses, a low-income tax clinic, and two unions represented by Democracy Forward filed an emergency motion to challenge this dangerous data sharing. 

San Francisco, CA – A federal judge today ordered the Trump administration to immediately halt the mass firing of federal employees initiated since the government has been shut down, siding with two labor unions that challenged the illegal action. Judge Susan Illston from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said the unions are likely to prove that the administration’s issuance of reduction-in-force notices to more than 4,000 federal employees during the shutdown is illegal, exceeds its authority, and is arbitrary and capricious. The judge ordered the administration to issue no further RIF notices and to take no action to enforce the RIF notices it has already issued in offices at the defendant agencies where the unions represent employees. The judge also ordered the administration to provide detailed information within two days on the RIF notices it has issued.

Washington, D.C. — Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to comply with federal transparency laws after the agency failed to produce public records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The records were sought after public comments by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr suggested that the agency could consider punitive action against broadcast entities if they continued to air commentary critical of the Trump-Vance administration — citing, as one public example, remarks made by television host Jimmy Kimmel.