Hey, everyone, it's me, W. Camel Bell. Welcome back to the ACLU's podcast at Liberty.

We've made it to the holiday break. Almost. We're recording this on Thursday, December 4th. As we look ahead to 2026, a busy Supreme Court term is already underway. With trans rights, redistricting, birthright citizenship, and more on the docket.

And the ACLU is representing clients in many of this year's banner cases.

So today, for our final episode of the year, we're turning our focus to the Judicial Branch.

We have a very special guest joining us in studio.

I'm so happy we're doing it in studio.

She needs no introduction, but I'm going to give her one anyway.

Cecilia Wong is the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She's a voice of reason and authority in an increasingly uncertain time.

And we're so glad to have her back on the show.

We've spoken three times since the presidential election, today's number four.

And at various points, the country has been in different states of reckoning with what's going on in the country. And your advice has consistently been stay ready, that the ACLU stays ready. Where are you at right now with that idea of staying ready? So it's not just a matter of staying ready for what comes

in the future, but, you know, for the last 10 months, 11 months, we've actually been carrying out

our plans. We've actually been responding to the federal government taking away people's rights in the most drastic and extreme

ways possible.

So it's just, it's a matter of actually acting to protect people from the government when

it's trying to make incursions into their most basic rights and liberties.

So, you know, since January 20th, our case count now just against the Trump administration is 118 lawsuits and 97 other legal actions, including things like amicus briefs that we file in support of others who are

challenging the Trump administration, freedom of information act requests, and administrative

complaints that are, you know, might be a prelude to further lawsuits. So we're still,

throughout this whole time, we've got a success rate of about 80% where we have asked courts to step in and protect people from what the federal government is doing.

So I'm quite proud of the work that we've been doing at the ACLU and going into courts as a matter of rapid you know, rapid response in order to protect people's

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