Between the push to end diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and the demonization of critical race theory, honest conversations about race on college campuses are challenging to have. It’s no wonder that for the past few years, increasing numbers of Black students have headed to HBCUs so they can learn in an environment where their very existence isn’t under attack.
As a first-year student at Spelman College in Atlanta, I know about this firsthand. And for the next six months, I’ll be reporting on racial healing efforts at Spelman — what my fellow students are doing and how our faculty supports this work.
Spelman is one of roughly 70 campuses using the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation framework, created by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in 2016. In 2018, Spelman sociology professor Dr. Cynthia Spence launched one of the very first TRHT Campus Centers, spaces designed to help students learn how to dismantle systemic racism, eliminate the idea that some people have greater value than others, and help us heal from the racism we’ve experienced so far.
The path to racial healing includes fighting for change, demanding a difference for the outside world, and, most importantly, having honest and sometimes uncomfortable conversations on the inside. Before I came here, I thought the HBCU experience would be a haven from the rest of the world.
While that is true to a certain extent, it is not an excuse to avoid our current realities. I am learning that racism is a matter that stretches beyond the color of one’s skin. It affects our perspectives and ideologies, which, in turn, shapes biases.
Blackness is also vast and not experienced in one particular way. Our experiences vary because of intersectionality — the multiple streams of identity that exist simultaneously, such as gender, class, and sexual orientation. And Black students attending HBCUs need a space to have crucial conversations about race, identity, and healing from racial trauma.
I grew up in Baltimore in a family where my mother grounded me in truth through the study of Black history. This early influence ignited my fervor for activism. I am an awardee of the Princeton Prize in Race Relations, but I’m also passionate about the arts. I am a 2024 recipient of the NAACP ACT-SO gold medal for written poetry. At Spelman, I’m studying sociology and creative writing on the pre-law track.
Above all, the Black community is central to everything I do.
The broader society often neglects Black stories and experiences and erases our identities. Black students often find themselves erased, not just because of our Blackness, but also our youth. Sometimes, authority figures tell young people to stay in their place or not contribute, discouraging them from lending their voice to the conversation. We can communicate much when given the space and opportunity to use our voices.
Our differences should not be a threat or barrier to establishing a connection; they are a learning experience for us all — and we all can heal. Healing requires action, and I’m ready to report on it at Spelman.
New York City Public Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos and New York City Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) Commissioner Keith Howard announced that the application for 2025 Summer Rising seats will open on March 4. One of the city’s most popular programs, “cultivating curiosity” and a lifelong joy of learning. This year’s program, as part…
After more than 30 years of practice and research in New York, Dr. Moro O. Salifu, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at SUNY Downstate, will be appointed as Governor-elect Designee of the American College of Physicians (ACP) for the Brooklyn/Queens and Staten Island chapter of the ACP. Salifu replaces Todd Simon and will be the only Black governor on the New York board.
Born in Bolgatanga, Ghana, Salifu knew early that he wanted to be a doctor, thanks to seeing the issues of not having enough doctors for patients. “I got to see firsthand how people in my hometown were struggling with small, little ailments, and there was just barely [any] help. There was one big hospital, but it was mostly understaffed,” Salifu said.
After graduating from the Lawra Secondary School in Ghana and later spending six years studying medicine at the Dokuz Eylul University in Turkey, Salifu came to New York in 1994 and became an internal medicine and nephrology specialist through a fellowship with SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. While working in the U.S, he observed that the issue of not enough doctors was still evident.
“It’s the same thing across the world. I came to America thinking that America has all the doctors, but we still don’t have enough,” Salifu said.
He later became chief of nephrology and director of the Transplant Program in 2008.
Salifu has remained interested in health disparities in New York, and joined the ACP in 2000, eventually becoming a counselor for the organization in Brooklyn. He later served as director of the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center for 14 years, working to mitigate the conditions Black patients face, including hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, stroke, etc., before being named a Master of ACP in 2018. The center has been able to secure funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for development programs to train students from high school to graduate level. He also serves as chair of the chapter’s DEI taskforce.
Throughout his career, Salifu has remained close to the Brooklyn community, speaking about health inequities at churches and other community centers and providing resources.
A main area of focus Salifu will have on the ACP board will be increasing the number of primary care providers in lower-income communities across the region and increasing racial concordance, meaning more Black physicians and primary care providers in particular for Black patients. In the U.S., the number of Black healthcare providers is a low of around 5% both nationally and at the New York state level.
According to Salifu, much of this effort will require lobbying the government to increase Medicare’s cap on new doctors from internal medicine residency programs at a given hospital. He said he will heavily promote the initiative once he is on the board.
Pushing for higher compensation for primary care providers is the other initiative Salifu will drive. He said many medical school graduates choose to go into a specialization instead of primary care because of pay differences.
In response to current attacks on DEI, Salifu said potential cuts to funding of those programs would be a “big mistake.” However, he is hopeful that once the temperature cools down around the current anti-DEI rhetoric, he will be able to obtain funding from NIH for initiatives in closing the gap in health equity.
“The work that we are doing has to do with increasing the number of underrepresented minority folks into the health professions. That is healthy for the United States. Can you imagine not having enough Black doctors in the United States? What does it mean for the United States economy?” Salifu said.
“If you never had someone from your family who was a doctor, how would you want to be a doctor? Our programs are exposing these young kids to these professions, and then we actually get more and more of those kids actually expressing interest, which is a good thing for America. It’s not a disputable thing.”
Earlier this week, the Trump administration implemented a freeze on the Presidents’ Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program, which provides anti-HIV and AIDS medicine and funding for African countries, which could lead to potential significant harm and virus spread.
“This money is peanuts from the context of America to help a poor country treat a particular disease and be healthy. I think, from a humanistic perspective, this is so important to do,” Salifu said. “I hope that this is temporary and that it will come back, but if it doesn’t come back, this is terrible, and it’s going to affect a lot of lives and people are going to, in the future, see that they made a terrible mistake.”
In his career, Salifu has received various awards, including the 2022 Laureate Award for excellence in medical care, community service, education, and research through his work in the ACP chapter and at SUNY Downstate.
Salifu will begin his term as ACP governor-elect designee on April 5, 2025, before assuming his four-year term on April 16, 2026. He is proud that ACP recognized his work, and for now is looking forward to celebrating his new appointment with his wife of 39 years and three sons.
No team has separated itself in their respective conference play in the men’s HBCU basketball standings. The MEAC, SWAC and SIAC are all open as multiple teams are still contending for regular season titles with roughly six weeks before conference tournaments begin.
Norfolk State’s 92-75 home win over Howard last Saturday, televised nationally on ESPN, put them on top of MEAC at 4-1. It was the Bison’s first loss in conference play and they are 3-1 heading into their next conference game against South Carolina State on Monday at home. Before that match up, Howard will play fellow HBCU Hampton in Washington, D.C., in a non-conference pairing.
As an aside, Hampton left the MEAC in 2018 to join the Big South Conference, then departed the Big South and became a member of the Colonial Athletic Conference, where they are now near the bottom of the conference at 3-6 and 10-11 overall. The tale of North Carolina A&T is similar, which also left the MEAC in 2019 for the Big South, and then jumped to the CAA. They haven’t found much success there and are last in the conference at 0-9 and 4-18 in 22 games played this season.
Back to the current MEAC teams: North Carolina Central, Morgan State and South Carolina State are bunched up at 3-2. Delaware State is 2-3, Coppin State 1-4 and Maryland Eastern-Shore 0-4. Norfolk State looks like they may be the team to beat, led by Harlem, New York native Brian Moore Jr. Moore, a graduate student who matriculated to Kingston High School in Ulster County, New York as a sophomore and became a star for Kingston, leading them to the state Class AA final four as a senior in 2019 and being named the Section 9 player of the year. The 6-2 guard attended Northeastern Oklahoma A&M college, a junior college, then played two seasons at Division I Murray State before transferring to Norfolk State this season for his final collegiate campaign.
He is leading the Spartans in scoring at 19 points per game under head coach Robert Jones, a native of South Jamaica, Queens who is in his 12th season leading the program. Moore torched Howard for a game-high 30 points on 11-18 shooting.
In the SWAC, Southern University 7-0 (12-8 overall) is a game ahead of 6-1 Texas Southern (9-11 overall) with Jackson State third at 5-2. The 5-15 Tigers have yet to win a game out of conference. Albany State is pacing SIAC East division at 10-3 (13-7) with Edward Waters (14-6) and Clark (12-7) both posting 9-3 conference records. In the West, Miles is the dominant team at 12-1 and 15-3 overall. Tuskegee is their closest competitor at 7-5 (9-9).
With food expenses rising and groceries costing more for families across the state, access to fresh food is even more of a necessity than ever. Queens State Assemblymember Khaleel Anderson is responding after being appointed as the new chair of the State Assembly’s food and farming task force, and his passion for healthy food is evident as he tours the state’s farms.
“We have a growing — pun intended — food ecosystem here on the peninsula,” said Anderson, about his district in Far Rockaway, Queens.
He is “beyond excited” to be named chair of the Task Force on Farm, Food, and Nutrition Policy for the New York State Assembly. His journey to this position began more than 12 years ago as a high school student, when Superstorm Sandy devastated his community in the Rockaways in 2012. He dedicated himself to addressing the systemic barriers that create food apartheid in low-income and underserved communities with limited access to healthy and affordable food.
His position fulfills a goal that dates to his election. “When I first got in office, I brought out the chair of this same task force to the farm that I helped build,” said Anderson. “I was thinking that maybe one day, I could lead some of that work for the state.”
During the onset of the pandemic in 2020, applications for food benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) surged. The New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO), in a report published in October 2024, detailed how the city has struggled to deliver those SNAP benefits over the last several years to those in need by its legally mandated deadlines. Making matters worse was the discovery that at least $47.7 million in SNAP and Cash Assistance (CA) benefits were stolen through electronic fraud over the last 16 months.
Food and urban farming initiatives are a more sustainable way to provide access to healthy food, promote the development of locally sourced grocery stores and farmers’ markets in federally designated food deserts, and fight against the harmful practice of “SNAP skimming,” said Anderson.
“After [Superstorm] Sandy, a lot of folks realized that our food system was terrible here. We had no electricity, no gas for many weeks after the storm had hit. People had to figure out ways to eat. Food was coming in, but there wasn’t autonomy (so) folks began to grow,” said Anderson. “I was able to help build a half-an-acre urban farm in Arverne after Sandy, because now people were able to understand building out that self-sufficiency.”
Ariama C. Long photos
Far Rockaway High School hydroponic farm and kitchen facility on campus in Queens.
Fresh swiss chard growing at Far Rockaway High School hydroponic farm.
Teens for Food Justice Far Rockaway Regional Manager Jessenia Preciado checks on seedlings at youth-led hydroponic farm on Friday, Jan. 24.
Teaching through farming
One example of that understanding is the Far Rockaway High School’s hydroponic farm, where Anderson did a walk-through on Friday, Jan. 24. The school’s farm and kitchen are operated by Teens for Food Justice (TFFJ).
The organization got its start in 2013, said TFFJ CEO/Founder Katherine Soll. Their goal is to build a food-secure environment through youth-led, school-based hydroponic farming — the technique of growing plants vertically using a water-based nutrient solution rather than soil. Hydroponic farming uses less water than traditional soil farming.
“As you can see, we provide an education that’s rooted in a space that mirrors what would happen in a commercial indoor hydroponic farm,” said Soll. “I think we all know that our farming system is broken. We don’t have the natural resources to continue to grow food the way that we do. Our agricultural economy is focused on commodity foods, so we grow a lot of sugar, corn, wheat, and soy, and all of those things are going into foods that are not really healthy for us.”
TFFJ has nine hydroponic farms in New York City, operating in majority low-income schools in food deserts. The farm at Far Rockaway engages 6th- to 12th-grade students from four co-located schools: Queens High School for Information, Research, and Technology; the Academy of Medical Technology; Knowledge and Power Prep Academy; and Frederick Douglass VI High School. The facility is equipped with a germinator bay (plant nursery), Mars Hydro grow tent, water filtration and delivery system, and shallow rack culture (SRC) shelves. They can produce about 7,000 pounds of fresh produce a year, said Soll.
The Far Rockaway students are largely from Black, Latino, South Asian, or newly arrived immigrant backgrounds, said TFFJ Far Rockaway Regional Manager Jessenia Preciado, and often choose to grow plants and herbs that they’ve grown up with or cooked with at home. These include plants like microgreens, Thai basil, cilantro, rosemary, mint, thyme, marjoram, chives, swiss chard, and collard greens. TFFJ then builds a curriculum around those crops over the weeks that it takes for them to mature. Preciado said most of the students’ favorite part is cooking after their harvest and enjoying the food they make.
“It’s really nice because the kids love coming here,” said Preciado. “Teachers as well. They love trimming their herbs. Taking some herbs and putting (them) in their salad. They know they can walk and get mint if they want while they’re cooking.”
The farm and cooking curriculum also encourages students to explore careers in sustainability, technology, agriculture, and ecology, said Soll.
TFFJ was initially funded by a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant, capital funding from Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, and discretionary funding from Councilmember Selvena N. Brooks-Powers. Anderson’s plan is to expand urban farming initiatives, particularly at the Far Rockaway High School campus and Goldie Maple Academy in Queens, as well as throughout the state. He has provided $400,000 for the hydroponic farm at Far Rockaway High School, which supplies fresh produce to local food pantries throughout the peninsula; allocated $100,000 each year for expenses at Goldie Maple Academy for the next two years; and allocated $400,000 for a greenhouse in Rockaway to support the Campaign Against Hunger organization.
As the state finalizes its executive budget, Anderson is also advocating for more resources for traditional Black farmers with farmland upstate.
“You have Black farmers that are always at a disadvantage because of the costs of product, and cost of the tools and materials you need,” said Anderson. “… tractors and equipment are very expensive. You have to take out thousands of dollars in loans to get these tools. Irrigation systems. All of this is expensive.”
On Monday, Aaron Glenn met with the media at the New York Jets’ training facility in Florham Park, New Jersey. It was his introductory press conference after becoming the franchise’s 22nd head coach since their founding in 1959 as the New York Titans who joined the American Football League.
The AFL and NFL (National Football League) merged ahead of the 1970 NFL season. The Jets won Super Bowl III in 1969 before the leagues combined, defeating the heavily favored Baltimore Colts 16-7 led by iconic quarterback Joe Namath. It was their first and only Super Bowl appearance. Ending this year’s season at 5-12, the Jets have not made the playoffs since losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship game in 2010 under then head coach Rex Ryan.
They hold the dubious distinction of longest active playoff drought — 14 years — out of all the teams in the four major North American sport leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) and a combined 124 teams. Glenn endeavors to end that disconcerting mark.
“Listen, I wanted this job,” said Glenn, a former defensive back who was drafted by the Jets out of Texas A&M in 1994 with the 12th overall pick in the first-round and played for the franchise through the 2001 season. He ended his playing career in 2008 having been named to three Pro Bowls.
The 52-year-old Glenn began his coaching career as an assistant defensive backs coach with the Cleveland Browns in 2014 and was the Detroit Lions’ defensive coordinator for the past four seasons before being hired by the Jets. He is currently one of only five Black NFL head coaches of the league’s 32 franchise’s with the New Orleans Saints still interviewing to fill their opening as of AmNews press time.
Glenn acknowledged and embraced the road ahead. “Listen, there are going to be challenges, but with challenges come opportunity,” he said with team owner Woody Johnson and new general manager Darren Mougey, among other team personnel present.
“Here’s what I do know,” Glenn added. “We’re the freaking New York Jets and we’re built for this … sustained success — that’s what we’re looking for because I’ve lived it …” To me there’s no such thing as accountability without responsibility. So it’s my job to make sure what your responsibility is.
“Once the players understand that, then they know they have to be accountable for that. It’s not like I’m the one to have to tell them, ‘You’re wrong.’ They’ll know it. So we set that standard up front, and the players want that.”
The prevailing issue for Glenn and the Jets’ leadership is resolving the quarterback dilemma. Incumbent starter Aaron Rodgers is 41 and has been a polarizing figure since the Jets acquired him in a trade with the Green Bay Packers in April 2023.
“This thing is not about Aaron Rodgers,” Glenn said. “This is about the roster. And we plan on building the best roster we can.”
Signed by Trump on Jan. 20, the order essentially reinstates the Schedule F directive Trump had in place during his first presidential term. Now renamed as Schedule Policy/Career, the directive calls for agencies to send the White House lists of all their “policy-related” positions by Apr. 20.
The Trump administration is requiring supervisors to reclassify federal worker positions that are not normally subject to change with each new presidential administration. Under the reclassification, the jobs could be subject to easier termination.
“Accountability is essential for all federal employees, but it is especially important for those who are in policy-influencing positions,” the Trump order states. “These personnel are entrusted to shape and implement actions that have a significant impact on all Americans. Any power they have is delegated by the president, and they must be accountable to the president, who is the only member of the executive branch, other than the vice president, elected and directly accountable to the American people.
“In recent years, however, there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership. Principles of good administration, therefore, necessitate action to restore accountability to the career civil service, beginning with positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating character.”
The NTEU, which represents more than 150,000 federal employees, filed a lawsuit against the new order late on Monday, Jan. 27, which it calls an attempt to strip civil service employees of their due process protections.
“The American people deserve to have day-to-day government services in the hands of qualified professionals who are committed to public service and stay on the job regardless of which political party holds the White House,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement. “[The Jan. 20] Executive Order is a dangerous step backward to a political spoils system that Congress expressly rejected 142 years ago, which is why we are suing to have the order declared unlawful.”
The NTEU’s lawsuit notes that today’s merit-based, competitive civil service jobs are the result of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which was established as federal law to counter a system that had allowed each administration to hand out political jobs to friends and family.
According to Scott Michelman, legal director of D.C.’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “The federal workforce executive order is a power-grab by Trump, expanding his authority to fire employees he perceives as insufficiently loyal. During Trump’s last administration, he bumped up against federal workers who were following the law, rather than indiscriminately following his orders. Federal workers should not be fired because they are more loyal to the U.S. Constitution than they are to the president. That is a threat to both our constitutional values and the rule of law.”
In a flurry of executive orders signed just hours after he took office, President Donald Trump rescinded a Biden administration order on prescription drugs — a move that could hike drug prices for millions of Medicare and Medicaid enrollees.
At the same time, Trump also reversed Biden’s efforts to make it easier for people to enroll in Medicaid or to get insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Approximately 67 million adults have health coverage through Medicare, and 11% of them — just over 7 million — are Black. The vast majority of enrollees are aged 65 and older, but younger people with disabilities are also covered.
The Trump order rescinds an executive order President Joseph Biden signed in 2022 that’s intended to lower the cost of most prescription drugs. It also comes as new polling finds that half of Americans say the federal government isn’t spending enough on Medicare and Medicaid.
MSNBC reports that the new administration said the “recission order” is aimed at “deeply unpopular” and “radical” Biden policies.
Drafted in conjunction with the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s order instructed the federal government to negotiate some prescription drug prices, with a goal of limiting out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for people on Medicare.
Signed into law during Biden’s first term, the IRA included a cap on annual out-of-pocket prescription costs of $2,000, a rule that was to become effective this year. That law also capped insulin costs for Medicare recipients at $35 per month.
“On average, Americans pay two to three times as much as people in other countries for prescription drugs, and one in four Americans who take prescription drugs struggle to afford their medications,” Biden said when introducing the measure in 2022. “Nearly three in 10 American adults who take prescription drugs say that they have skipped doses, cut pills in half or not filled prescriptions due to cost.”
Trump’s order won’t affect this benefit since it became law through congressional action. But Biden’s executive order also identified a list of prescription drugs that Medicare and Medicaid recipients would have been able to obtain for just a $2 monthly copay. Drugs considered for that list treat diabetes, high cholesterol, and thyroid issues.
Biden’s order also directed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to find ways to lower prescription drug costs for recipients. Trump’s Executive Order overturned that move and halted efforts to improve access to high-cost cell and gene therapies.
A recent KFF Health Tracking Poll shows that just over half of respondents (51%) believe the rate the federal government is spending is “not enough” on Medicare, and nearly half (46% ) say the same about the Medicaid program, according to the KFF Health Tracking Poll.
The poll finds that, while lawmakers are considering major changes to Medicaid and Medicare — including possible spending cuts — the majority of the public supports the programs. The poll also found that almost two-thirds of adults (64%) still support the 2010 Affordable Care Act or ACA, frequently known as Obamacare.
For those voters of color who scoffed at warnings that Donald Trump would implement the extreme policies outlined in Project 2025, I say: Thank you. Sarcastically, of course. Because here we are. On Day One, as the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism pointed out, Trump wasted no time, issuing a flurry of executive orders that brought the Project 2025 blueprint to life, especially on immigration.
Immigration and Border Security: The Reality Hits
The Day One immigration-focused executive orders represent the most sweeping fulfillment of Project 2025’s border security vision. The plan, as laid out on page 135, calls for Homeland Security to return to the “right mission, the right size, and the right budget.” Sounds harmless enough – until you realize that the focus is on mandatory detention and expedited deportations.
Trump’s orders reflect Project 2025’s push to remove any “discretionary language” from Title 8, ensuring immigrants “shall” be detained instead of “may.” In other words, say goodbye to due process and humanitarian discretion.
And if that wasn’t enough, the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Assistance Program takes the cruelty a step further. The executive order bluntly states: “It is the policy of the United States to ensure that public safety and national security are paramount considerations… and to admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States.”
Translation? Refugees from certain regions – mainly Black and Brown ones – aren’t welcome unless they fit a narrow, exclusionary definition of “assimilation.” This is precisely what Project 2025 advocated on page 145, where it demanded sweeping reforms to refugee intake, temporary work visas, and asylum rules.
The “Cartel” Label: A Dangerous Precedent
Another clear Project 2025 plan was executive orders designating drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Now, no one is arguing that cartels aren’t dangerous, but the language used here is straight from Project 2025’s playbook – on page 183, to be exact – where it paints Mexico as a “national security disaster” overrun by criminal organizations. The order claims:
“The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere.”
This rhetoric dangerously frames Mexico as a failed state and lays the groundwork for even harsher border measures. But it doesn’t stop at drug trafficking – Trump’s team has borrowed the term “cartel” to target a range of institutions, from academia to agriculture. According to Project 2025, so-called “cartels” include everything from university accreditation bodies to international tax agreements – essentially labeling anything they disagree with as a threat to U.S. sovereignty.
What This Means For Immigrants And Communities Of Color
The implications of these policies are stark. Immigrant communities, especially Black and Brown ones, will bear the brunt of the crackdown, that has already begun. Refugee admissions will plummet, asylum seekers will face insurmountable hurdles, and immigrants already in the U.S. will live under the constant threat of mandatory detention and deportation.
Yet, somehow, too many voters dismissed these warnings. They believed the rhetoric about economic prosperity and national security without recognizing that such policies always come at a cost – especially for communities of color. The writing was on the wall, but now it’s official policy.
The Bottom Line
Day One of Trump’s return has shown us exactly what to expect – Project 2025 in full effect. And for those who doubted it could happen, I hope the reality is sinking in now. As my grandmother used to say in her infinite wisdom: “Too late, too late shall be the cry.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Felicia J. Persaud is the publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, a daily news outlet focused on positive news about Black immigrant communities from the Caribbean and Latin America.
President-elect Donald Trump’s victory has energized anti-abortion groups, even as abortion rights organizers notched victories on Election Day. Now, reproductive rights groups are preparing for legal and legislative battles in a new, less friendly environment.
They are planning to embrace a multipronged approach: challenging anti-abortion policies in court, organizing political protests, and lobbying state and national lawmakers to oppose proposed bans.
“We’re going to use every tool available to us, whether with the courts, legislatures or governors, or in the streets,” said Jessica Arons, a director of policy at the ACLU.
Until now, abortion rights groups have focused much of their energy on ballot initiatives to secure abortion rights in state constitutions. By putting it in the hands of voters, they have enshrined protections in 11 states and defeated anti-abortion measures in two more since Roe v. Wade fell.
That strategy, which absorbed millions of dollars, is hitting its endpoint. There are only four states left that allow the direct democracy approach — Arkansas, Idaho, North Dakota and Oklahoma — where voters have not yet weighed in on state abortion rights. (An effort this year to put an Arkansas abortion rights measure on the ballot was blocked by the state courts.) All four of those states have elections in 2026. Abortion rights supporters could also try again to pass protections in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota, the three states where such measures failed in the 2024 elections.
Whether abortion rights organizations will seize those remaining ballot measure opportunities isn’t yet clear, said Jennifer Dalven, who directs the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “We’ll take every opportunity we can, but we have to do a little more of a close look at what happened and where we can go next,” she said.
But direct votes will no longer be the strategic centerpiece. Instead, abortion rights organizations, including large national organizations such as the ACLU and smaller volunteer-staffed local abortion funds, are now shifting their focus. They’re solidifying protections that have already been enacted and preparing to play defense against possible new state and national restrictions.
“We will likely be forced to defend current access points and fight against insidious attempts to force government agencies deeper into our private lives and decisions,” said Ashley All, a political strategist who worked on a 2022 abortion rights campaign in Kansas as well as on a Montana campaign this past election cycle. “Americans must speak out loudly and forcefully every time politicians in Washington or state legislatures try to take away our rights or interfere in our medical decisions.”
Much of the next steps for abortion rights groups will hang on how much influence anti-abortion groups wield in the new Trump administration. In his first term, Trump was a staunch ally to abortion opponents — even campaigning on an anti-abortion platform in 2020 — but some anti-abortion groups fear that the unpopularity of abortion restrictions may change his decisions.
Still, abortion opponents are pressing ahead in their advocacy, focusing in particular on curtailing access to the medications used in most abortions. Anti-abortion organizations and some lawmakers have expressed concern about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who has been inconsistent on whether to support national abortion restrictions. But Kennedy has been open to conversations about how to win their support, including potentially appointing strident abortion opponents such as Roger Severino, a former Trump official and diehard abortion opponent, to a senior position. Severino wrote the HHS chapter of the conservative policy paper Project 2025, which endorsed taking mifepristone, one of the pills used in most abortions, off the market. Politico reported that Trump’s transition team has rejected the push to install Severino.
Looking beyond the federal government, some abortion opponents are pushing for states to cut off access to the online resources people have used to circumvent their home states’ abortion bans.
A woman wears ovary-shaped earrings at a Women’s March on November 2, 2024, at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. (Jordan Tovin/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
One prominent anti-abortion group, Students for Life, has crafted model state bills that would ban the distribution of abortion pills and give fetuses the same legal protections as people. In Texas, a state lawmaker has introduced legislation intended to stop groups like abortion funds, the small nonprofits that help cover costs associated with care, from helping people travel out of state to access the procedure. The legislation also aims to make it harder for people to learn about and order abortion pills online.
With a potentially hostile administration and conservative-led states potentially moving to enact more restrictions on abortion, abortion funds anticipate more requests for support.
The Chicago Abortion Fund, one of the nation’s largest, has brought on more Spanish-speaking staff — they expect more callers coming from Florida, where this year’s ballot initiative failure leaves a six-week abortion ban intact. They are also seeking more funding; this past October alone, the fund disbursed about $750,000, said Qudsiyyah Shariyf, the fund’s interim executive director.
“We’re in this for the long haul, but we’re going to need to have some really tough decisions and potentially shifts in our program to remain sustainable,” Shariyf said.
The Brigid Alliance, which financially supports people who have to travel for an abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy — a point some abortion opponents have touted as a compromise point for national restrictions, even though medical complications can still arise well beyond that week — is working with legal advisers to ensure its work is protected in a potentially hostile political climate. The fund is planning to start supporting people earlier in pregnancy, anticipating a growing need for travel-related support.
It is also exploring what it would look like to send clients abroad for abortion, a contingency plan if the Trump administration does put forth national restrictions. But there are challenges. Many people who travel for their abortions do not have a passport; some don’t have identification paperwork at all.
“The abortion support organizations really need the advocacy political organizations fighting against this national ban,” said Serra Sippel, the fund’s executive director. “That is the biggest threat to care that is looming.”
Their biggest hope, many said, is making an abortion ban politically unviable, leveraging mechanisms like direct protest to deter Trump from backing such a policy.
“We’re certainly prepared to show out in force and mobilize our millions of members to resist any further erosion of abortion rights at the federal level,” Arons said.
Even without national restrictions, health policy analysts and reproductive rights organizations alike anticipate a federal environment less protective of abortion rights.
Under President Joe Biden, federal agencies such as the Department of Justice and HHS worked to secure abortion access after the fall of Roe. Those actions included defending the availability of mifepristone against an ongoing lawsuit, and issuing guidance that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals to provide abortions when it is the required stabilizing treatment in a medical emergency. Project 2025 suggests dismantling those policies.
“I’m not confident of anything under the new administration,” said Molly Duane, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which has filed multiple lawsuits challenging state abortion bans.
The ACLU, which frequently challenged Trump policies in his first term, is preparing to potentially revise that role in defense of abortion rights, focusing in particular on potential threats to medication abortion and on EMTALA-protected abortions.
“We will be ready to go to court to block actions that unlawfully seek to prevent access to abortion care,” said Lorie Chaiten, a senior staff attorney at the organization’s Reproductive Freedom Project.
Still, she said, she thinks it’s possible that Trump, who retreated from more strident anti-abortion language over the course of his campaign, avoids imposing unpopular new restrictions. Polling largely shows that Americans oppose abortion restrictions, and in several states Trump won — including Florida, Arizona and Nevada — voters who backed the GOP ticket also supported abortion rights.
“I have to hope he will keep his promises that he will not wreak further havoc on abortion access, and I think the voters are watching,” she said.
