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Anthony D. Romero is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, the nation’s premier defender of civil liberties. He took the helm of the organization just seven days before the attacks. Anticipating the impending assault on civil liberties in the name of protecting national security, Romero quickly launched the Keep America Safe and Free campaign to protect basic freedoms. He created the ACLU’s National Security Project, which achieved legal victories on the Patriot Act, uncovered thousands of pages of documents detailing the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, and filed the first successful legal challenge to the Bush administration’s illegal NSA spying program. During the Obama administration, the ACLU continued its litigation on NSA surveillance and launched litigation and advocacy against the U.S. drone program.

Prior to the election of Donald Trump as president, the ACLU released a legal analysis warning that Trump’s policy proposals would amount to a one-man constitutional crisis. Under Romero’s direction, the ACLU has filed more than 200 legal actions against the administration, winning a nationwide stay of Trump’s Muslim Ban just over 24 hours after it was issued, stopping the administration’s family separation policy and blocking the asylum ban.

In 2017, the ACLU launched People Power, a grassroots advocacy platform

Romero also oversaw the ACLU’s expansion into high-impact political work. Since then, more than half a million activists have joined People Power and their advocacy has pushed local governments across America to enact policies to protect immigrants, expand voting rights, and increase voter education and turnout around civil liberties issues. Additionally, Romero significantly ramped up the ACLU’s chatki engagement in direct political advocacy in 2018, scoring several major victories, including the re-enfranchisement of approximately two million voters across three states –the biggest increase in the potential voting rolls since the 26th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1971.