If elected president, Vice President Kamala Harris would bring extensive experience to the role from her work in the criminal legal system as district attorney, attorney general, senator and vice president. In these roles, her commitment to reforming the criminal legal system has been mixed. In some areas she has taken positions that have embraced reform, while in other areas she has taken positions that were contrary to reform — including instances where she missed the opportunity to end practices that helped drive mass incarceration.

The ACLU urges Harris to follow the lead of her running mate, Tim Walz, who has been a pioneer for criminal legal system reform in his home state of Minnesota.

Learn more in our breakdown.

The Facts: A Harris administration has the opportunity to make the criminal legal system more just and humane for all by renouncing failed policies that drove mass incarceration and racial disparities.

Importantly, in 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order on policing that changed the use of force standard for federal law enforcement, restricted the distribution of military equipment to local law enforcement, restricted the use of deadly chokeholds and carotid restraints, and created a national police misconduct registry. In the absence of congressional action, a potential Harris administration should continue the important work of implementing Biden’s policing executive order.

A Harris administration should also expand efforts to end federal mandatory sentencing minimums, which require federal judges to impose a required sentence — sometimes as much as five years, 10 years, or 20 years, or even a mandatory life in prison sentence — regardless of the case's specific facts or the circumstances of the person sentenced. A Harris administration should appoint an attorney general committed to ending this harsh practice and implementing other critical reforms that would change the system for the better.

The Harris administration can also push for passage legislative proposals such as the Justice Safety Valve Act, which Harris co-sponsored in the past. The legislation would give federal judges the discretion to sentence below the mandatory minimum sentence. The Harris administration could also push for passage of the EQUAL Act, which the ACLU strongly supports. This bipartisan bill would end the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine that has resulted in racially disproportionate arrests, prosecutions, and federal imprisonment of Black and Brown people. Lastly, in 2019, Harris introduced the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act of 2019. The legislation would have decriminalized marijuana at the federal level and made the de-scheduling of marijuana retroactive. The ACLU supports the aims of the MORE Act and allows states to undo the harms of the war on drugs.

Why It Matters: Right now, the U.S. criminal legal systems hold more than 1.9 million people in prisons, detention centers, jails and other carceral systems. Racial discrimination within these systems mean that police encounters disproportionately impact Black and Brown people, and can escalate into violent encounters or death. Currently, the burdens of petty drug-related charges, steep criminal fines or fees and unfair sentencing is also predominantly borne by Black and Brown communities, fueling a vicious cycle of poverty and criminalization.

Harris on the Criminal Legal System

The ACLU will push the Harris administration to expand progressive reform efforts and challenge draconian approaches to criminal legal policy. ...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

At the ACLU, we believe everyone deserves dignity, fairness, and an opportunity to thrive. That includes people suspected, accused, or convicted of a crime. We seek to limit the harm and reach of the criminal legal system and transform our approach to safety to a system focused on prevention, not punishment. But we can’t do it alone. The executive branch has a vital role to play in realizing this vision.

How We Got Here: Harris brings extensive experience working in the criminal legal system to the White House. As a senator, Harris co-wrote and was one of the lead sponsors of the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, the most significant police reform bill to gain traction in the U.S. Senate after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. In response to the ACLU’s federal advocacy and other efforts, the most recent introduction of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in the Senate included grants for mental health crisis response programs and unarmed civilian government departments to enforce traffic violations. Harris has continued to be a proponent of police reform and accountability in her current role, recently applauding the development of a national non-public police misconduct registry for hiring federal law enforcement, and calling for the passage of the Justice in Policing Act.

Additionally, in the wake of the Trump administration’s execution spree, which killed 13 people, the Biden-Harris administration ordered, through Attorney General Merrick Garland, a halt to any future federal executions and a review of the federal execution process. Over the course of her career, Harris has fluctuated on the death penalty. If elected, the ACLU will call on Harris to suspend federal executions, approve broad grants of clemency to those on federal death row, and work for the abolition of the federal death penalty.

Our Roadmap: The ACLU will push the Harris administration to expand progressive reform efforts and challenge draconian approaches to criminal legal policy.

The ACLU will demand that Congress enact key legislation to ensure a fair and just criminal legal system, some of which were championed by Harris when she was in the U.S. Senate. This includes an improved George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to ensure accountability for police misconduct; marijuana reform to begin to address the harmful impact of the war on drugs; the Driving for Opportunity Act to reduce police interaction and the commensurate risk of harm; the Mental Health Justice Act to provide non-law- enforcement responses to mental health crises; the EQUAL Act to remove sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine; and the End Solitary Confinement Act to limit solitary confinement in federal facilities.

Additionally, the ACLU will continue our advocacy for legislation to repeal the federal death penalty, end mandatory minimum sentences, abolish the doctrine of qualified immunity, and stop the 1033 transfer of military weapons program. We will push a potential Harris administration to end extreme sentencing practices that fuel mass incarceration and abolish the death penalty once and for all. We will urge the administration to continue and fully implement the Biden administration’s charging policies that equalize sentencing outcomes for crack and cocaine offenses and that minimize the application of mandatory minimums.

The ACLU is hopeful that Harris will create an administration that is responsive to calls for a continued suspension of federal executions, broad grants of clemency to those on federal death row, and abolition of the federal death penalty. The ACLU will also continue our critical litigation that puts the death penalty “on trial” in the states, invalidating the death penalty based on its racist administration, including in the selection of juries.

What Our Experts Say: “I served as a public defender during the same period in our country's history that Vice President Harris worked as a prosecutor, and I know she witnessed, first hand, systemic injustices in our criminal legal system that need to be addressed immediately. We hope that if elected, Harris will use this insight to bring about transformative changes, including protecting people from police abuse, ending extreme and unjust sentencing, addressing the inhumane conditions in jails and prisons, and abolishing the federal death penalty — moving the country toward ending this inhumane practice once and for all.” — Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director and director of the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality

“The ACLU will demand that Harris recommit to the legislative agenda that she championed as a senator. But Harris cannot wait on Congress to act: She must use her executive authority to end extreme sentencing, halt federal executions, and vastly expand the number of people granted clemency. The ACLU will continue to fight for a criminal legal system that is humane and just.” — Cynthia W. Roseberry, ACLU director of policy and government affairs

What You Can Do Today: Unchecked, unaccountable policing harms us all. Yet police continue to experience broad immunity, job security even with a pattern of misconduct, and a steady supply of war equipment directly from the Pentagon. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act addresses these issues by helping to end racial profiling, to create real accountability for police, and to rein in police violence. Urge your representatives to pass this bill now.

Deeply embedded in our Bill of Rights and our most basic American values is the idea that we the people — not the government — are in charge of our own lives. But there are plenty of people who disagree with that premise and want to control our lives. And those people have a plan.

All of us remember Donald Trump’s presidency: separating families, banning visitors from Muslim countries, stacking the Supreme Court with justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and attacking LGBTQ people. Yet as the ACLU’s detailed analysis of Trump and his supporters' policy proposals and rhetoric has shown, if reelected, his administration will likely be far more aggressive and effective in executing its unlawful plans than ever before.

Under a second Trump administration, our federal government could be used to openly discriminate against marginalized communities, to spy on private citizens, and be given authority over what we can and can’t do with our bodies. If such a dystopian view of American life and politics feels like the plot of a Netflix special, consider that this vision of America is what former Trump administration staffers and The Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank, have outlined in Project 2025.

Project 2025 is a federal policy agenda and a blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch that would undercut decades of progress and Constitutional values. Though Trump has claimed he is not connected to Project 2025, a CNN report found that 140 people who worked on Project 2025 previously worked in Trump’s administration. The Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts also worked on Trump’s 2016 transition team and has described his organization’s role in Project 2025 as “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Trump himself told a conference, after taking a flight with Roberts, “they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

Project 2025, Explained

Learn more about the Heritage Project initiative that threatens to erode our democracy — and how to fight it.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

While the ACLU doesn’t endorse or oppose candidates for elected office, we recognize how Project 2025 would erode our freedoms and our democracy. Project 2025's largest publication, “Mandate For Leadership,” includes a long list of extreme policy recommendations that empower Congress and the executive branch to hack away at our civil liberties and civil rights.

At the ACLU we’ve been fighting unlawful attempts to curtail our rights for more than 100 years. We’re prepared to use all of the tools at our disposal — litigation, legislation, advocacy, and grassroots mobilization — to ensure our nation lives up to the promise of the Constitution. But this fight isn’t just about policies or procedures — it’s about people.

Take, for example, an undocumented father living in Texas whose spouse and young children are U.S. citizens. The undocumented father is injured in a workplace accident, but in Project 2025’s America, he will have to choose between forgoing treatment or risk being separated from his family.

Currently, policy dictates that immigration agents avoid arresting or detaining suspected noncitizens in “protected areas” like schools, churches, and hospitals. But Project 2025 calls to weaponize these crucial common spaces as part of a broader anti-immigrant agenda that includes co-opting state and local police to help carry out a mass deportation plan. Nobody should have to choose between the pain of an untreated injury and the agony of being torn away from their children, but Project 2025 is designed to create exactly those kinds of impossible decisions for millions of immigrants and mixed-status families.

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This example is hypothetical, but the risk is not. We’ve already seen how damaging family separation can be for children and parents, we know that immigration detention has a deadly track record of abuse and medical neglect, and we have heard time and again how devastating deportation can be across generations.

When the government decides how we are permitted to live, people and communities suffer. Imagine a 27-year-old woman in eastern Washington State who has a young son and becomes pregnant. She works two jobs, but struggles to make ends meet. She knows that having another child would be detrimental to her and her son and wants to end her pregnancy. But she lives several hours from the nearest abortion provider. She doesn’t have a car and she risks losing her job if she takes time off to travel to the clinic. Today, she would be able to do what 20 percent of people seeking abortions do and use telehealth to contact a provider and have FDA-approved abortion pills sent to her.

However, Project 2025 calls for a presidential administration to push the post-Dobbs epidemic of abortion bans into blue states like Washington. The Project has called for the misuse of a 150-year-old anti-obscenity law to prosecute health care providers for mailing abortion pills. If Project 2025 succeeds, that means the pregnant woman in Washington State won’t be able to get an abortion and will be forced to carry her pregnancy against her will and endure labor, possibly putting her own health and the wellbeing of her family at risk.

Scenarios like what the pregnant woman in Washington State may face prove that if freedom means anything, it should mean that we alone control our most intimate decisions. That includes how we present ourselves to the world.

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Consider an Iraq war veteran who, like many veterans, receives medical care from a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital. The veteran does not have other medical insurance, or the resources to pay for medical care out of pocket. She is transgender and has been receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy for more than a decade. Prior to beginning hormone therapy, she experienced significant gender dysphoria, which impacted her mental health and ability to function. She depends on gender-affirming care from the VA to keep her body aligned with her identity so she can maintain her health and well-being.

For the trans veteran, Project 2025 would be devastating. Following Project 2025’s playbook, the VA would prohibit the provision of gender-affirming medical care in the VA healthcare system. As a result, she is now forced to discontinue her treatment and medically detransition. She ends up struggling with the serious health impacts of untreated gender dysphoria, forcing her to take medical leave from her job and causing her to retreat from the military community she had built her life around.

The effects of Project 2025, however, won’t just undercut a single community or person, it will ensure that an entire generation lacks the resources to make informed decisions.

Imagine a high school English teacher in an under-resourced public school that is 65 percent Black. He knows from personal experience that not seeing himself reflected in the books he read and the history he learned made it hard to stay engaged and motivated in school. He remembers the “aha moment” when he took his first African American literature class in college and realized what it’s like to see his experiences represented on the page. That’s why he built an English curriculum that includes books by Black and brown authors, discusses current events that impact racial justice, and encourages students to write freely about their own identities. He’s found that allowing students to feel seen in what they study and in the work they do not only boosts engagement, but also test scores and graduation rates.

Project 2025 wants to gut the teacher’s entire curriculum. Already a wave of classroom censorship and anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) laws have severely restricted students’ right to learn. Project 2025 vows to take it a step further and eliminate all efforts to acknowledge or support diversity in schools. In Project 2025’s America, states are empowered to pass laws that force the English teacher to educate students on the benefits of slavery, or to remove all mentions of race when discussing civil rights icons like Rosa Parks. If Project 2025 succeeds, the teacher can no longer lead discussions about race in policing or in hate crimes without the risk of being fired for engaging in so-called anti-white racism. Unwilling to turn his back on his students, our teacher tests the limits, and quickly finds himself on administrative leave.

As each of these examples show, Project 2025’s nightmarish vision of America should alarm anyone who cares not just about the principles of constitutional freedoms and rights, but about people. The ACLU won’t stand idly by and let our fundamental freedoms — including our right to say what we want, to control our bodies, and to participate freely in society — be taken from us.

The Trump and Harris Memos

Our democracy hangs in the balance because of initiatives like Project 2025. Read our memos outlining what each presidential candidate means for...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

No matter who is elected president in November, the ACLU’s legal and advocacy experts have a roadmap to preserve and expand the rights of immigrant and LGBTQ communities, to advocate for abortion access, to pass nondiscrimination laws, and to fight for our rights. We’re prepared to urge Congress to use its constitutional powers to provide oversight, investigate wrongdoing, and defund restrictive executive branch policies. At the state level, we’ll work with lawmakers to enact laws that protect people from government abuse. Already, we’re in communities working to educate people on the harms of Project 2025 so we can fight for our freedoms.

But we can’t win this fight alone. Preventing Project 2025’s dystopian view of America relies on all of us to stand up for what we believe in and protect each other. Whether it’s our trans veteran who only wants to live as her true self, or our pregnant woman making the most intimate decisions about her life, or our high school teacher trying to empower the next generation, or our immigrant family that only wants to feel safe, we must all show up to support each other and our rights.

At the ACLU, we’re with you — in Congress, in the courts, in the streets — as we work together to build the more free and more just country we deserve.

We want to know how Project 2025 will affect you. Share your story with us.