For the venerable American Civil Liberties Union, Donald Trump’s four years in the White House had the intensity of life during wartime. The group filed its first lawsuit against the Trump administration on January 28, 2017, just eight days after Trump took office and one day after he promulgated his first attempt at banning the entry into the U.S. of travelers from several Muslim-majority nations. The pace of the organization’s legal combat against Trump never let up. Ultimately the ACLU filed more than 250 lawsuits against Trump’s administration on issues as varied as immigration, abortion, contraception, fair housing, and the rights of racial-justice protesters forcibly dispersed by federal troops around the White House. Like environmental groups, media outlets, and other institutions to the left of center in American politics, the ACLU experienced a renewed burst of relevance and visibility during the Trump years. Fueled by the demand for unstinting “resistance” from the many voters and donors stunned by Trump’s election and horrified by his actions, the group’s staff during his presidency roughly doubled, its budget …