Maria Cecilia Hinojos Pressey remembers the sense of fear that descended on Latino immigrants in Oregon during the first Trump presidency in 2017. The deputy director for the farmworkers union Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, saw firsthand how workplace raids seeking undocumented immigrants in Woodburn forced families into the shadows.  “Kids stopped going to school. Many people decided to move out of Oregon,” she said Wednesday evening at an online forum of state and community nonprofit leaders. The panel of conservation and social justice leaders discussed what they’d learned from Republican President-elect Trump’s first term, how they were preparing to organize, educate and protect the public, democracy and vulnerable communities over the next few years and how they were preparing to challenge Trump and his administration legally if his orders violate state law. More than 220 people attended it virtually, according to Casey Kulla, state forest policy coordinator for Oregon Wild and the event moderator.  If the next Trump presidency is anything like the first, Kulla and Steve Pedery, Oregon Wild’s executive director, anticipate a rush by private industries on federal lands for natural resources that will likely trigger lawsuits.  “In the months that followed Trump’s inauguration we just saw the logging, mining, fossil fuel industries go nuts,” Pedery said.  Lawyering up In 2017, Trump’s former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke urged the then-president to shrink the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument that had been expanded by President Obama to allow for more logging.  During Trump’s first term, Oregon’s logging industry also joined with Trump and the American Forest Resources Council, a national timber industry group, in an attempt to repeal the federal Antiquities Act and eliminate national monuments as a tool to protect environmentally and culturally important places around the country. Oregon Wild was among groups that successfully sued the administration over the move.  Following the chaotic Trump years, Oregon Wild hired a staff attorney to help handle legal cases in-house instead of relying on national legal nonprofits or joining national lawsuits.  “It was really a time when the environmental community in Oregon had to take stock of where we were, what kind of political power we had, and how to most effectively engage it to defend the values that we exist to protect,” Pedery said. While Trump failed to shrink the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, he succeeded in slashing the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in southern Utah. Democratic President Joe Biden restored the monuments’ boundaries upon taking office in 2021. Brian Smith, co-director of the Tribal Democracy Project and a citizen of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, said reducing protections for national monuments such as Bears Ears, a sacred site to the Navajo Nation that Trump reduced 85% in size and opened to ranching and mining — was just one of many ways the former president showed he did not care for the concerns of tribal nations. “We’ve had attacks on our sovereignty, treaty rights not being fulfilled, but this was really stepped up under the Trump administration,” said Smith.  He reminded forum attendees that in the first round of federal COVID-19 relief money awarded to states, no money was allocated to tribes. Many did not get federal funding for months after states did. Smith and other members of the Tribal Democracy Project plan to tackle historic voter suppression issues and engagement among tribal communities over the next few years to begin boosting political activism among tribal youth especially in the state, he said.  Constitutional protections Amy Herzfeld-Copple, executive director of the Portland-based Western States Center, and Michele Ruffin, executive director of Portland-based Our Oregon, cited voter suppression, attacks on democracy and potential political violence as big issues. Herzfeld-Copple said Oregon has become a proving ground for anti-democracy movements and resistance to such movements. Ruffin said her organization will focus on defending Oregon’s sanctuary status for undocumented immigrants, trans people and people seeking abortions and will be fighting expected anti-tax measures that would pull money away from schools and other critical public services. “These are flawed actors,” she said of Trump’s allies. “They’ll make missteps, they’ll struggle to achieve their objectives, and they’ll disagree with each other and fracture, right? And each of those moments will be an opportunity for us to push back.” Sandy Chung, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, is also preparing legal push back on Trump policies directed at vulnerable populations. Since the last Trump administration, the group has teamed up with PCUN and several other groups to create the Oregon for All Coalition, which serves as a defensive legal arm for immigrant rights in Oregon, and to defend the state’s sanctuary state status and any attempts at mass deportation.  The ACLU of Oregon will lead a ballot measure campaign for November 2026 to enshrine the rights to abortion and reproductive healthcare, trans and gender-affirming care, and same-gender marriage in the Oregon Constitution.  “We’ve been preparing for the potential of a second Trump presidency for the last four years,” Chung told attendees at the forum. “Under a Trump presidency, as well as under the current Supreme Court that has six regressive Supreme Court justices, we can’t take anything for granted. The strongest way of setting foundational rights is through our state constitutions.” Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: [email protected]. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter. STORY TIP OR IDEA? Send an email to Salem Reporter’s news team: [email protected]. The post Oregon’s environmental, immigrant, democracy groups prepare for another Trump presidency appeared first on Salem Reporter.