Accountability and Justice Are The Only Path Forward

November 6, 2024

Accountability and Justice Are The Only Path Forward

WASHINGTON, D.C. - As credible news sources are now reporting, Donald Trump has won the 2024 election and will be the next president of the United States.

Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, co-presidents of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

"We cannot sugarcoat this moment: our democracy is in crisis. A second Trump administration will usher in a new wave of grifters, corporate lackeys, and right-wing extremists intent on enriching themselves and enacting an extreme agenda that the majority of Americans disagree with. Our institutions and agencies will face existential threats to their ability to function on behalf of the American people.

"But Public Citizen and our allies are prepared for this moment. Together, we will mobilize Americans to resist Trump's agenda of cruelty and corruption. We will shine a spotlight on his corporate giveaways and self-enriching scams. We will fight for science, evidence, and sanity in our health and climate policy. We will fight to keep non-partisan civil servants from being summarily fired to make way for political sycophants and loyalists. We will use all the tools at our disposal - including aggressive litigation - to ensure that key consumer and other regulatory protections remain intact.

"We will also continue to hold Trump and his cronies accountable for their actions. Trump will still be sentenced for the 34 felony counts on which he has been convicted, and other pending legal proceedings must also move forward.

"We co-founded the Not Above the Law Coalition because no president is above the law. That work - which will continue in earnest - will be more important in 2025 than ever before."

Public Citizen has experience standing up to Donald Trump and his corrupt administration officials.

• We investigated revolving-door conflicts at the FTC and found that 75% of officials had conflicts of interest
• We shed light on the unethical profiteering happening at Trump businesses throughout his time in office
• We exposed the grifters who used their connections to Donald Trump to make money lobbying on the COVID-19 pandemic
• We tracked the corporations raking in obscene profits as a result of draconian Trump administration immigration policies
• We sued Trump's HHS for unlawfully terminating grants for evidence-based work to reduce teen pregnancy
• We sued Betsy Devos's Department of Education for undermining protections for students and siding with predatory for-profit schools
• And much, much more.

Public Citizen experts are available to discuss how we will meet this moment, what is next in the fight for consumer protections, and what we learned from our accountability work in Trump's first term. For interviews, please contact [email protected].