A Hands-On Lesson in Civics Sees Surging Student Interest in the Age of Trump

It’s the middle of a hot summer, both in temperature and political intensity. Many high school students are happy to take a break from their studies. But for several hundred students visiting the nation’s capital in July, few things feel more urgent than learning to fight for civil rights and push back against President Donald Trump’s conservative agenda.

The students were attending one of three separate sessions this month of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Advocacy Institute, a weeklong immersion into discussions of presidential power, immigration, racial justice, and transgender rights, among other issues.

“I’m here because I see that we’re on the edge of a fascist regime in government that is trying to take and consolidate more and more power,” said Ashley, a rising 11th grader from rural Virginia who is transgender and asked that their last name not be used.

“I’m not used to this feeling of just walking into a room and knowing that other people understand my experience,” Ashley added, contrasting their experiences in a conservative high school with the ACLU program’s gathering of hundreds of progressive-minded students. “This is rare and beautiful.”

A spike in interest after Trump’s return to the White House

Education Week joined the students for two days of the five-day instructional program last week, where the ACLU provides some very topical civics lessons while also advancing its agenda and helping build its next generation of activists. There are conservative groups with similar programs, though their Washington programs finished earlier this summer.

The ACLU program has been around since 2016, the last full year of President Barack Obama’s administration. This year, as the Trump administration moves aggressively across multiple policy fronts—actions cheered by the president’s supporters and denounced by his critics—the civil liberties group’s high school program is experiencing unprecedented interest.

“We had 120 students in the last year of Obama and the next year, the first year of Trump, we had 550 students,” said Andrew Domingue, the director of the program, noting that concerns over civil liberties spiked student interest during Trump’s first term and again this year when he returned to the White House.

The program enrolled 300 students in each of the last two summers of President Joe Biden’s administration, after going virtual for several years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This summer, the ACLU expanded to three weeklong sessions of 300 students each, with participants coming from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and, for the first time, Guam.

The ACLU strives for such geographic, as well as racial and socioeconomic diversity, for the program. Students aged 15 to 18 apply with the recommendation of a teacher or mentor. Tuition and fees covering room and board are $2,700 per student, but financial aid and travel stipends were available, and more than half of the participants received at least partial aid.

“It’s just clearly lots of interest,” said Domingue, who works out of the New York City headquarters of the ACLU, which was founded in 1920 and has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Trump administration’s agenda.

“We’re really proud of over 400 legal actions the last time around [Trump’s first term] and already more than 145 this time,” Domingue said. “But we also want to let the students know in their introduction to the ACLU that we are nonpartisan, and that we have sued 19 presidents who have been in office since we’ve existed as an organization.”

Still, he said, “Everything that Trump represents is sort of antithetical to our work and is a lot of the reason why [the students] are here.”

Conservative groups say ‘it’s never too young’ to introduce right-wing principles

On the ideological flip side, at least two conservative advocacy organizations are also sponsoring weeklong gatherings in Washington for high school students who lean to the political right.

Young America’s Foundation (YAF), a Reston, Va.-based group that promotes conservative politics among college and younger students, held its high school leadership conference in early July for some 150 participants.

The conference included speakers such as former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who briefly sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and is now president of YAF, and conservative author Vince Everett Ellison.

In a video posted on YouTube of Ellison’s speech, one student asked how she and other young conservatives could seek to “reintroduce” the idea that America is based on Judeo-Christian values “not only in public discourse but especially public school discourse.” Another student expressed concern that a Democrat retaking the White House in the 2028 election “will just completely reverse” Trump’s immigration policies.

The group, which didn’t respond to interview requests, held a similar conference for high school students the week of July 28 at President Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home in Dixon, Ill. It has also begun a series of events for middle school students, including an event in October for 6th to 8th graders at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, Calif.

“You’re never too young to begin your YAF journey,” the group’s website says.

Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation, the powerful Washington think tank, held its own weeklong high school fellowship program this month. Its program is newer and smaller than the others, having launched last year and with some 35 students this year.

In 2023, Heritage published “Project 2025,” a blueprint for reshaping the executive branch that critics say is being largely carried out by the Trump administration (despite Trump’s disavowal of it during the campaign last year).

Kirsten Holmberg, the manager of the Heritage program, said via email that the students came from public, private, classical, and homeschool settings, and they were being introduced “to the principles of the American founding, current public policy issues, and the workings of American government.”

She said the students provided feedback, calling the week “transformative” and saying it helped cement their commitment to the conservative movement.

Students enjoyed monument tours, dorm bull sessions, and looking for ‘common ground”

Meanwhile, students at the ACLU conference brought their own range of backgrounds and interests to the sessions, which mainly took place at American University here.

Maya Hardy, a student from South Orange, N.J., who attends an all-girls private school, said “conversations around politics are fairly polarized, so our teachers have a hard time navigating how to talk about issues like race and politics.”

Hardy, a Democrat, said she hopes to build bridges: “Real change can only happen if we all can start somewhere that’s kind of the same.”

Jack Herzke, a rising 11th grader who attends a magnet school in Charleston, S.C., said he “got involved with advocacy when I realized that South Carolina was banning a lot of books and censoring education, and I didn’t like that. I could see the effects in my school, and it was a problem. They also took away [Advanced Placement] African American Studies, and I thought that was wrong and, frankly, stupid.”

He wanted to hone his grassroots advocacy skills, and the weeklong institute provided plenty of opportunities. Hourlong electives included such topics as issue-based organizing, digital activism, coalition building, voting rights, and “earned media”—how to deal with reporters.

The week also included elements of what the other student programs have—tours of Washington’s monuments, a visit to the U.S. Capitol, social events, and late-night bull sessions in the dorm.

The most energetic sessions were the larger keynotes on the most controversial issues.

“We are truly living in the worst timeline right now,” Anu Joshi, the ACLU’s national campaign director for immigration, said at a session about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. “We’re really acknowledging that this has been really hard. … And for all of us, we can’t necessarily see the way out.”

Joshi showed a slide featuring three Trump administration officials active in the immigration crackdown: Tom Homan, a senior official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who is often identified as the administration’s “border czar”; Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem; and Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser to Trump who is reported to be an architect of the hardline immigration policies.

The students easily called out the officials by name and heartily booed them.

“We’ve got to know who we’re up against, right?” Joshi said. “The reality is, we are stuck with this White House, with Donald Trump as our president and his vision for immigration for the next three-and-a-half years. So we need to figure out how are we going to make the best out of this bad situation.”

Carver Oppong, a rising 12th grader from Los Angeles who was attending with his brother Baron, said “It really, really hurts to see what’s going on in my hometown” amid the recent immigration focus by the Trump administration that included calling in the National Guard to assist in quelling protests.

“I thought this was a great opportunity to come and fight,” he said.

Jack Waide, a rising 11th grader from Boston, said he was seeking to learn how to teach immigrants in his community their rights.

“Both my parents are immigrants,” he said, with his father coming from Ireland and his mother fleeing a civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s.

“Letting people know their rights is terribly important, especially when ICE is coming through and raiding everywhere,” he said. “ICE was outside my high school a couple of months ago, and people were scared.”

Students crafting a ‘game plan’ to take lessons back home

Transgender rights were another major focus. The first week’s group got to hear directly from Chase Strangio, the co-director of the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Rights Project, who had argued in the U.S. Supreme Court this spring against a Tennessee law that bars puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors seeking a gender transition.

Students across all three sessions watched “Heightened Scrutiny,” a 2025 documentary about Strangio and the fight for transgender rights.

In United States v. Skrmetti, the court ruled 6-3 to uphold the Tennessee law, a defeat for transgender young people and their advocates. That ruling, combined with attacks on transgender rights coming from conservative-dominated states and the Trump administration, led Arli Christian, a senior policy counsel for the ACLU focusing on LGBTQ+ rights, to tell the students, “It’s been a wild onslaught of attacks.”

“There’s a lot of fear, hatred, and misinformation coming out in the media, from the opposition, and from people who really don’t understand our community,” Christian said during the session on transgender issues.

Kaz, a 17-year-old transgender male from northern Virginia (who also asked that his last name not be used), said he was energized by some of the detailed information he had learned about transgender cases and legislative bills.

“Trans rights are human rights, and I am fortunate to live in a more progressive area, but I know that that’s not the same everywhere,” Kaz said.

While adverse court rulings and legislation are a challenge, he said, the ACLU conference was giving him “the ability to learn how to do something about it.”

Kaz and Ashley, the transgender female student also from Virginia, made plans to use their new knowledge and organizing skills when they returned to their communities and to a new school year.

“I’ve been formulating a game plan on what to do when I get back,” said Ashley, who noted that they were more comfortable focusing on social media and tech organizing than in-person actions.

“I’m more technologically inclined,” Ashley said.

Kaz said, “I am feeling very fueled. I’m the leader of my school’s GSA. So I definitely will be using the tactics I’ve learned here to really expand upon that and connect and reach out and help people, not just in the school, but hopefully with less fortunate people and people who are trans and queer.”