The barrage began within minutes of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. One executive order (EO) after another; each aimed at reversing America’s progress on becoming a more inclusive and welcoming nation. Many of the EOs attack core Unitarian Universalist values, and this administration’s “flooding the zone” tactic is designed to overwhelm people of conscience and erode our determination.

Trump’s team closely emulates the tactics Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian ruler, used to erode democratic structures. As Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton scholar who studies the rise and fall of constitutional governments, wrote for The Contrarian, “When aspirational autocrats take office, they often act with lightning speed to entrench themselves in power while the political opposition struggles to comprehend the magnitude of what they are seeing.”

While this report aims to help readers understand the impact of EOs impacting three (among many) Unitarian Universalist justice priorities, we encourage you to select a specific issue to act on (and we’ll offer resources where appropriate). We’ll look at orders involving:

• Immigration and refugees
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion (and accessibility)
• Rights of transgender and other LGBTQIA+ people.

Enforcing Limits on Executive Power

With over 20 EOs on Day One, Trump and his cohorts immediately made clear that they don’t merely seek to enact regressive policies. Their actions aim to radically injure our Constitution’s protections for civil rights and elevate the president’s power above the co-equal branches of Congress and the Supreme Court (despite both those branches aiding his agenda in all but the most extreme cases).

As Trump and his aides claim the power to violate federal laws they dislike, it’s crucial to recognize (and ensure others understand) that executive orders are not laws and that presidents cannot unilaterally make law.

Executive orders can merely advise federal agencies and civil servants as to how the President wishes to apply existing laws. And when an order is alleged to violate the Constitution or laws enacted by Congress, they are subject to judicial scrutiny.

Attacks on Immigrants and Refugees

The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) has already begun fighting attacks on human rights by joining over two dozen religious denominations and associations to collectively sue the Trump Administration. Our lawsuit aims to block a directive from the Department of Homeland Security allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other government agents to stage warrantless raids or make arrests at houses of worship where they suspect undocumented residents may be present. The suit contends that enabling warrantless entry into houses of worship violates both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was intended to protect minority religious groups’ constitutional right to freely exercise their religious beliefs.

Houses of worship historically have been regarded as protected spaces for people who entered them for sanctuary. Previously, the Department of Homeland Security’s “sensitive locations” policy barred such actions at houses of worship, as well as medical facilities, schools, and other selected spaces, as a violation of the broad protections for individuals performing religiously motivated actions.

While the UUA fights this threat to immigrants’ rights and our religious liberty in court, we encourage you to learn best practices for local congregations. See the UUA resource on ICE and Immigration Enforcement in Congregations, this related fact sheet, and, for those willing to write letters to the editor or to their representatives, UUAs messaging tips re our lawsuit.

Another first-day EO assaults people of color while defying the plain language of the Constitution. The 14th Amendment clearly states that a child born on U.S. soil automatically becomes a citizen. This “birthright citizenship” means all Americans, regardless of our parents lineage, have equal rights. This principle has been upheld by federal courts repeatedly. Yet Trump’s order tells federal agencies to deny citizenship to certain U.S.-born children whose parents are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Several lawsuits seeking to block the order were filed promptly by state attorneys general and advocacy groups. Judges in Washington and Maryland blocked implementation of the order, with one Republican-appointed judge calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”

Another EO would withhold federal funds from local governments that decline to assist Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda—a scheme San Francisco and other cities have sued to block. Several other orders and proclamations attack immigrants (we will not repeat the deceptive EO titles, some of which contain false and hateful accusations one would expect at a white supremacist rally, not a government statement).

Refugees also are targeted by an order freezing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, an action. This action left thousands of people who already had won approval to gain refuge in the U.S., many of whom already had flights booked, stranded. For those seeking more information on the immigration orders, Global Refuge offers a useful guide.

While many of Trump’s EOs contradict the core UU belief in the inherent worthiness and dignity of every person, the UUA also has explicitly supported the right of immigrants to human dignity and fair, humane treatment over decades. The UUA has issued more than 20 (pdf) statements and Actions of Immediate Witness supporting the rights of refugees and immigrants. Our 2013 statement, Immigration as a Moral Issue, provides a fine overview of why we prioritize this work.

Specifically, the UUA has called for:

• Ending Family Separation and Detention of Asylum Seekers
• Abolishing ICE
• Protecting the rights of asylum seekers and other immigrants
• Creating a path to permanent residence for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status
• Striking at the root of anti-immigrant attacks by undoing systemic white supremacy

Also, the UUA’s Side With Love team regularly provides news, webinars, trainings, and resources to turn these assertions into UUs engaging directly in immigration justice work.

Attacks on Civil Rights (DEI)

Other EOs seek to terminate all federal diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and offices, and even stop such policies within private companies by rescinding equal opportunity policy for federal contractors. In fact, federal contractors must now promise they have no DEI programs! Notably, equal opportunity rules also originated with an EO (by President Kennedy in 1961).

The EOs amplify pressure campaigns and state legislative threats by anti-DEI forces that already were weakening equity initiatives. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 80 colleges altered or eliminated DEI programs even before Trump’s directive during 2023-24. Many more have quickly caved to the threat of Trump’s EO, which abandons decades of success by our federal government in helping root out discrimination and equalize opportunity for underrepresented groups.

The impact of the order on federal contractors may exceed that on direct federal hiring. The federal government spends well over $600 billion annually on contracts, which creates or sustains several million jobs. Recipients of federal grants also will be pressured to abandon DEI practices. The new orders do not banish affirmative action requirements of federal contractors aimed at protecting veterans and individuals with disabilities.

Among the immediate impacts, West Point military academy ordered many student groups to disband in deference to Trump’s order, including the Asian-Pacific Forum, the National Society of Black Engineers, the Native American Heritage Forum, and the Society of Women Engineers.

Several higher education entities are among parties filing lawsuits to stop these orders, accusing them of violating the First and Fifth Amendments.

Equity, inclusion, and anti-racism are integral to Unitarian Universalism, and the UUA has long dedicated itself to advancing these values both within Unitarian Universalism and in society. The UUA offers many resources to help UUs and their congregations become more welcoming, inclusive, and equitable places and to help drive progress for equity in society. The UUA also offers an array of peer groups for UUs of color, trans and nonbinary UUs, and many others.

And yes, we have staff dedicated to Equity, Belonging and Change and yes, the UUA’s commitment to diversity, equity, belonging and change isn’t going anywhere! Beyond dedicated staff positions, UUA staff are committed to ensuring Unitarian Universalism is welcoming to all, and is a consistent advocate for justice and inclusion in the broader world.

The UUA Theological Grounding for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is covered from multiple perspectives in this video from our 2020 General Assembly and our 2021 Statement of Conscience on Undoing Systemic White Supremacy provides many actionable items.

To succeed in advancing equity — the purpose of serious DEI programs — it’s worth learning why the anti-DEI backlash spread beyond bigots and plan to rebuild more effective programs where current initiatives are dismantled.

Finally, it’s vital to recognize and call out the strategy of Trump and his advisors: using DEI as a catch-all slur, as they did with “woke,” to advance their racist, segregationist agenda. Baselessly blaming DEI for wildfires, plane crashes, and other negative events all feed the goal of making straight, white, able-bodied men the default setting for excellence and competence, and incite suspicion that any other person in a desirable job or position of power got there through favoritism, rather than merit and hard work.

If anyone considers this point overstated, Darren Beattie, a speechwriter for Trump during his first term and now appointed to a key State Department role, made it explicit. “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” he wrote.

A more in-depth look at the orders impacting DEI is offered by the ACLU.

Attempts to Humiliate and Erase Human Beings

Several Trump orders directly attack transgender and nonbinary people. One EO directs federal agencies to recognize only the “biological sex” assigned at birth on federal documents and in government policy. This means passports and other federal identification documents must deny the true humanity of intersex, transgender, intergender, genderqueer, and nonbinary persons.

In an act of symbolic cruelty against kids already leading difficult lives, Trump issued another order calling to ban transgender girls from competing in girls athletics in schools. Two teenage girls quickly challenged Trump’s ban via a lawsuit filed by GLAD Law.

Another especially cruel order would force federal prisons to move transgender inmates out of prisons that align with their gender identity into facilities matching the designated on their birth certificate and deny them gender-affirming medical care. While that action is under legal challenge, transgender prisoners already are being victimized in other ways as a result of these orders. See this Glad Law page for a more thorough overview of the many executive orders attacking the LGBTQIA+ community.

Unitarian Universalists have championed the civil rights of LGBTQIA+ people for more than 55 years, including this 2023 response to legislative attack against trans and nonbinary kids and subsequent production of an action guide to help UUs thwart anti-transgender bills.

In 2024, UUs passed a resolution declaring that our religious tradition unequivocally supports the defense and expansion of protections for LGBTQIA+ people as a matter of faith. ”As a people who put love at the center of our faith, that love calls us to fully embrace equity for transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-diverse people in our congregations and the wider world,” reads one passage.

Regressive politicians know public attitudes have evolved over recent decades, making attacks against gay and lesbian Americans risky — for now. So they targeted a far smaller and more vulnerable group to start, but already are expanding their erasure targets. It is our moral duty to defend differently-gendered people and defeat the politics of hate and ignorance.

The UUA hosts a range of action tools to help defend trans rights, as well as regular support gatherings for transgender and nonbinary folks. See the Side With Love’s UPLIFT Action page and the previously-mentioned toolkit, much of which applies to the current battles.

Meeting the Moment as UUs

Despite the deliberately overwhelming assault on many marginalized groups, and the harm to millions of people who depend on federal grants and funding, many people have yet to feel direct impact from Trump’s EOs. As Professor Scheppele notes, “Even the most terrible [dictators] found ways to make life seem normal for most people, as long as they demobilized politically and didn’t challenge the dictator’s hold on power. To understand what kind of government we have, we need to look at how that government treats those whom the leader believes are his enemies as well as those who are on the margins of society.”

We urge all UUs to resist the temptation to look away from the onslaught and to muster all the courage and determination we can to make a forceful stand against these attacks on democracy, human decency, and our faith. The struggle will only become tougher and more deadly if we wait to declare our opposition publicly.

To help those ready to be engaged, the UUA’s Side With Love team just published a new free guidebook: Grounded, Resilient, and Responsible: Responding and Organizing in Authoritarian Times. The guide is a living document covering many key organizing considerations, from social media practices to direct action to digital security.

Side with Love also will be publishing weekly action updates to help you take impactful measures to counter the assaults on human rights and dignity, and channel energy toward proactive work for justice. Sign up to get alerts.

Messaging Tools

Along with the many excellent organizations referenced within this report, ASO Communications produces an outstanding series of messaging guides covering these issue (and several more) from a progressive perspective.

Jeff Milchen is the UUA Justice Communications Associate