Public Citizen, Inc. is a lobbying and advocacy organization created by former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader. ¹ The organization supports a broad policy agenda focused on left-of-center advocacy. ² The organization signed a petition supporting the Green New Deal. ³ Public Citizen has repeatedly opposed the use of nuclear energy. ^4 5

Public Citizen has previously advocated for left-of-center policy mandates. The group’s lobbying agenda supports increased government spending⁶ and opposed multiple tax cuts.⁶ The group also touts its support for enacted policies that increased civil liabilities,⁷ and imposed costly environmental mandates⁶ and regulatory red-tape on businesses. ⁶ Public Citizen has also supported “packing” the United State Supreme Court by adding additional Democratic-appointed justices. ⁸

Public Citizen has been funded by billionaire George Soros, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Rockefeller Foundation. ⁹

Since the reelection of President Donald Trump in November 2024, Public Citizen has focused much of its programming on filing lawsuits against the Second Trump administration and its actions and opposing laws he supports. ^{10 11 12}

Background

Former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader created Public Citizen, Inc. in 1971 to help fundraise for his two other Washington-based organizations, the Center for Study of Responsive Law and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Thomas A. Troyer, a tax lawyer, and Paul Gikas, a professor at the University of Michigan Medical School, both sat on Public Citizen’s initial board of directors. ¹

In 2001 Public Citizen distanced itself from Nader due to claims his Green Party presidential candidacy cost Democratic nominee Al Gore the presidency in 2000.¹³

Programs

Public Citizen uses lobbying, litigation, and research ¹⁴ to advocate left-of-center policies. ² On its website, Public Citizen provides a list federal, state, and Supreme Court cases it has been involved in since its founding, to most of which Public Citizen submitted an amicus brief. ¹⁵

Public Citizen Foundation

Also see Public Citizen Foundation (nonprofit)

Public Citizen Foundation supports the lobbying and advocacy efforts of Public Citizen, ¹⁶ sharing the costs for Public Citizen, programs, while also funding a litigation group program, the health research program, and the energy program.¹⁸

Coalitions

In 2017, Public Citizen partnered with Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Safe Climate Campaign, and Environment America to push for environmentalist mandates on auto manufacturers. ¹⁹ In 2016, Public Citizen partnered with advocacy groups including Planned Parenthood and U.S. Public Interest Research Group and a number of labor unions including the AFL-CIO, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to oppose right-of-center budget policies while advocating business regulations. ²⁰

Lobbying Activities

Between 2007 and 2018, Public Citizen spent over $2.4 million lobbying Congress²¹ and federal agencies²on 460 bills.²² The group’s policy agenda supports increased government spending as well as expanded civil, environmental, and regulations. ¹⁴

Public Citizen claims to have successfully lobbied against tax cuts,⁶ in favor of retaining the death tax,²³ and against policies that would have limited federal spending.⁶ In 2017, the group expressed “outrage” at the passage of a Republican-backed tax cut package,²⁴ and the group’s then-president President Robert Weissman opposed the 35% decrease in the corporate tax rate.²⁵

In 1975, Public Citizen successfully lobbied Congress for environmentalist legislation, including fuel economy mandates for cars. ⁶ In 1980 the group pushed for the Superfund law, which pushed for corporations to unlimited liability for environmental cleanup efforts. ²⁶ It opposed President Ronald Reagan’s environmental policies,²⁶ and the group claims to have played a major role in then-President Barack Obama’s 2012 decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. ²³

Public Citizen claims to have successfully pushed Congress and federal agencies to implement regulations banning products, ⁶ extending labor protections,⁶ and blocking the deregulation of electric utilities.²⁷ It also claims it helped create new federal regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. ²³

Public Citizen opposed the SAVE Act, a bill requiring proof of U.S citizenship to register to vote, which passed the United States House of Representatives in April 2025. Public Citizen called the legislation “an extremely harmful anti-voter bill.” ²⁸

Also in April 2025, Public Citizen endorsed the Clean Cloud Act, which would set emissions performance standards for the electricity used by cryptocurrency-mining facilities and data centers. ²⁹

Court Packing

In 2021, Public Citizen endorsed the Judiciary Act of 2021, a bill that proposed to add four new seats on the Supreme Court of the United States, raising the total number of justices to 13. Public Citizen and the other liberal groups who supported the bill claimed it would restore balance to an overly right-of-center court. ³⁰

In April 2019, then-Public Citizen government affairs lobbyist Craig Holman penned an opinion editorial in The Hill claiming that packing the Supreme Court could “play a solid role in constitutional checks and balances.” ⁸

2024 Political Contributions

According to OpenSecrets, Public Citizen Inc, through its political action committees, individual members, employees, or owners, and those individuals’ immediate family members, contributed $33,442 to political campaigns in the 2024 cycle and spent $291,755 on lobbying during the same cycle. The group’s top recipients for 2024 were presidential candidate and then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who received $8,461; then-United States Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who received $4,000; and Democratic United States House of Representatives candidate from California Cheyenne Hunt, who received $3,590. ³¹

Nuclear Energy

Public Citizen was one of more than 600 co-signing organizations on a January 2019 open letter to Congress titled “Legislation to Address the Urgent Threat of Climate Change.” The signatories declared their support for new laws to bring about “100 percent decarbonization” of the transportation sector but denounced nuclear power as an example of “dirty energy” that should not be included in any legislation promoting the use of so-called “renewable energy.”⁵

Public Citizen was one of more than 100 co-signatories on a November 2020 letter to the U.S. Senate that expressed opposition to S. 4897, the “American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020.” The letter stated that nuclear power “amplifies and expands the dangers of climate change” and denounced it as an example of “false solutions to the climate crisis that perpetuate our reliance on dirty energy industries.” ⁴

In May of 2021, Public Citizen was one of 715 groups and businesses listed as a co-signer on a letter to the leadership of the U.S. House and Senate that referred to nuclear energy as a “dirty” form of energy production and a “significant” source of pollution. The letter asked federal lawmakers to reduce carbon emissions by creating a “renewable electricity standard” that promoted production of weather-dependent power sources such as wind turbines and solar panels. ³²

Second Trump Administration

In February 2025, Public Citizen filed a lawsuit on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees against Donald Trump, U.S Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department, and the Department of Treasury for shutting down USAID. ³³

As of April 2025, Public Citizen represents the National Treasury Employees Union, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Employee Association, NAACP, National Consumer Law Center, Ted Steege, and Virginia Poverty Law Center in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration for ordering the effective closure of the CFPB. ^{10 11}

In April 2025, Public Citizen filed suit on behalf of the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) against Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and the U.S. Department of Education for attempting to dismantle the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) after 90 percent of its workforce was laid off. ³⁴

According to a June 2025 article by the National Review (NR), Public Citizen is listed as one of several environmentalist groups willing to file lawsuits against oil and traditional energy companies with “Climate Homicide” or, as according to David Gelles of the New York Times, where “prosecutors could charge oil companies with criminal homicide and “every type of homicide short of first-degree murder.” ³⁵ The NR story continues by claiming that David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program, co-authored a 2024 piece titled “Charging Big Oil with Climate Homicide Preliminary Prosecution Memo for July 2023 Heat Wave.” ³⁵

#TeslaTakedown Protests

In March 2025, former Wall Street Journal journalist Asra Nomani posted a list on her X (formerly Twitter) account showing organizations and other groups allegedly involved with #TeslaTakedown, a series of national protests advocating against Tesla CEO Elon Musk over his ties to the second Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). ³⁶

The Not Above the Law Coalition, of which Public Citizen is a member, was listed as one of the groups alleged to be involved with planning and participating in the protests. According to Nomani’s post, Public Citizen has been a member of the Not Above the Law Coalition since June 2023. Public Citizen’s 501(c)(3) counterpart was also listed on the post. Public Citizen’s co-president, Lisa Gilbert, is the founder and co-leader of the Not Above the Law Coalition. ³⁶

#NoKings Protests

In June 2025, [Organization Name] participated in organizing or supporting protests branded under the “#NoKings” banner, a national day of demonstrations positioned as a defense of democratic norms against Donald Trump. These events were part of a larger mobilization involving over 70 Democratic Party affiliates and allied organizations across at least 19 U.S. states and multiple international locations, according to publicly available event listings on Mobilize.us, a Democratic Party-aligned organizing platform. ^{37 38}

Funding

In 2022, Public Citizen Inc. reported $5,728,329 in total revenue, $7,135,504 in total expenses, and $3,095,019 in total assets. ³⁹

Public Citizen has received funding from several organizations including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the Joyce Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, and the Surdna Foundation.⁹

Leadership

Robert Weissman has worked as co-president of Public Citizen since 2009, and he is co-president as of 2025. Prior to joining Public Citizen, Weissman was executive director at Essential Action where he pushed for stringent legislative and regulatory actions against banks and other companies. ⁴⁰ From 1989 to 2009, he was editor of the Multinational Monitor magazine. He previously worked as a public interest attorney at the Center for Study of Responsive Law. Weissman earned a law degree from Harvard Law School. ⁴¹

Lisa Gilbert is co-president of Public Citizen. Previously, Gilbert worked as Public Citizen’s vice president of legislative affairs and as director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. She founded and co-leads the left-of-center Not Above the Law Coalition. Gilbert also founded the legal advocacy Declaration for American Democracy coalition. ⁴²

Jason Adkins is the chair of the board of directors at Public Citizen. He co-founded and is an attorney for the national litigation firm Adkins, Kelston & Zavez. Adkins also founded and worked as executive director of the Center for Insurance Research. He worked for Public Citizen from 1984 to 1988, when he directed the program Buyers Up. Adkins received his law degree from Harvard Law School. ⁴³

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