"It has never existed," the New York Times' Maggie Haberman wrote in June about the hope being expressed in Washington for an imaginary person who could keep Trump in line. "... [P]eople keep cycling through, looking for ways, in the campaign and now." In June some were hoping the kindergarten-teacher-in-chief would be the First Lady; this month the talk was of retired Marine general John F. Kelly, Trump's new chief of staff. John Kelly Quickly Moves to Impose Military Discipline on White House, the New York Times proclaimed on August 3, only to be answered barely two week later by the Washington Post headline Trump's lack of discipline leaves new chief of staff frustrated and dismayed.

In the aftermath of the violent Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, VA, Trump's noncommittal statement has come under criticism from across the political spectrum, with the exception, of course, of white supremacists. As noted on our home page, the Weekly Standard's Kelly Jane Torrance, appearing on Fox News, condemned Trump's refusal to identify white nationalists as the perpetrators of the Charlottesville violence, or label it domestic terrorism. Also on Fox News, former George W. Bush adviser, Karl Rove, derided Trump's statement as defensive and inadequate.

The neo-Nazi web site the Daily Stormer praised Trump's comments on Charlottesville. "No condemnation at all," the Stormer wrote.

Last week's news was dominated by Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, which Trump admitted to NBC News was related to what he called "this Russia thing with Trump." Pushed somewhat into the background, but with as much or greater potential to affect national politics was the executive order establishing the so-called "Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity." Heading the commission with Vice President Mike Pence will be Kansas Secretary of State Kurt Kobach, who gained national attention for his hysterical allegations of widespread voter fraud, despite there having been only four documented cases in the entire 2016 election.

Trump is the first convicted felon president. Although he won, his raw vote total was less than 50%, "the fifth smallest margin of victory in the thirty-two presidential races held since 1900." 

Much of Theda Skocpol's 2017 "A guide to rebuilding the Democratic Party, from the ground up" in Vox, is still apt. Skocpol, a Harvard sociologist and political scientist urges progressives to avoid the traps of endless "election replays," squabbles over "message," failing to coordinate interests and causes, or giving procedural fixes too much importance. Instead she advocates strengthening Democratic party organizations at the national and state level, identifying groups that can replace the role formerly played by unions, organizing locally to oppose Trump, improving political intelligence, and focusing on near-term state contests. As consensus emerges for countering the Republican takeover we will update this section.

University of Sheffield's James Weinberg (UK) has a reading list on authoritarianism.

See The New Republic's Citizen' Guide to Resistance.

"So You Want to Be a Dissident?" from The New Yorker.

Resources for creating local ICE watch groups: defendandrecruit.org.

American Civil Liberties Union

People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch 

Anti-Defamation League 

If you're concerned about public safety consider contacting a mutual aid group in your area.

"Who's making the decisions in the White House?" Senator John McCain asked reporters on February 14. "Is it the 31 year old?" he continued, alluding to Trump adviser Stephen Miller. "Is it Mr. Bannon? Is it the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff? I don't know." The "whole environment is one of dysfunction in the Trump administration," McCain said.

"“I’ve consulted many people in town about analogies and comparisons and nobody can come up with any," Bill Galston, former Deputy Assistant to President Clinton, now at the Brookings Institution told the Guardian. "Our seismographs are broken.... We appear to have a president who cannot distinguish chaos from order. There are amateurs doing a job that only professionals can do, and even then often not successfully."

"I am the least racist person," Trump told CNN's Don Lemon on December 9, 2015. Two days earlier, Trump had proposed "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." In his campaign kickoff speech on June 16 of that year he had infamously characterized Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists. On February 28, 2016, in a television interview with CNN's Jake Tapper Trump declined repeated opportunities to distance himself from expressions of support from former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, later blaming a bad earpiece. It was also Tapper who interviewed Trump on June 3, 2016 when Trump declared that Indiana born judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was handling two Trump University lawsuits, was ruling unfairly because "He is a Mexican." (Trump eventually settled the fraud case for $25 million.)

Sebastian Gorka is a deputy assistant to the President, serving as an adviser on national security. Still unknown to many Americans, Gorka gained some notoriety recently when he was found to have worn a medal associated with Miklos Horthy to an inaugural ball. Horthy led the Hungarian government from 1920 to 1944. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, describes his government as anti-semitic, noting that it was the first government in post-World War I Europe to institute a quota on the number of Jews who could enter university. Although Horthy later resisted Hitler's more extreme measures, such as construction of ghettos, and concentration camps, he is revered by the far right Jobbik party in Hungary. The Jobbik party, which sponsored a statue of Horthy unveiled in 2013, has "stoked anti-semitism" in Hungary, "vilifying Jews and Israel in speeches in parliament," according to Reuters.

Gorka, whose specialty these days seems to be media appearances and his own celebrity, does not have the Top Secret or Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance that would normally be expected of someone leading a government unit responsible for counterterrorism intelligence. Colin Kahl, who was a national security adviser in the Obama administration, wrote recently in Foreign Policy that he was unable to confirm that Gorka had a security clearance at all.