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Five Questions with the ACLU's Ben Wizner

"We're built for these moments"

Joyce Vance

Jan 24

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Happy Friday. Donald Trump’s Vaccine Panel Chair Says Polio and Other Shots Should Be Optional for kids. A five-year-old in Minneapolis, with his bunny cap on and his Spider-Man pack on his back was put hands up against a car so ICE could take him into custody. Donald Trump embarrassed us all in Davos this week.

If you need a break after that long week, Tonight’s guest for five questions, Ben Wizner, the Deputy Legal Director at the ACLU, has the antidote you need. Ben reminds us that the people he works with at the ACLU aren’t about to give up: “We’re built for these moments” is what he hears at the office. And I think that’s true for all of us here at Civil Discourse. We’re built for this too, even if we didn’t know it at the start.

Ben is also the Director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, which encompasses the organization’s work on free speech, privacy, immigrants’ rights, voting rights, human rights, and national security. He has been with the ACLU for more than two decades and has litigated cases involving the right to protest, freedom of expression online, government surveillance practices, airport security policies, targeted killing, and torture. He is also the principal legal advisor to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Ben is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law.

I’m so grateful Ben took time out of a crazy busy schedule this week to discuss where we are as we cross off year one of the second Trump administration and head into the next three. Something we don’t always see front and center is the competence with which dedicated lawyers have approached Trump 2.0 and how effectively the lower courts have slowed the illegal parts of Trump’s agenda. Ben paints that bigger picture for us, and it’s in sharp contrast to the “Democrats in disarray” narrative that still seems to hang in the air at times. But we have been more successful than that, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

“Five Questions” is a feature for paid subscribers, my way of thanking people who are able to support this work so that I can devote the necessary time and resources to it. I appreciate everyone who reads the newsletter and works to stay informed, so free subscriptions, with access to all of the other posts, will always be available.