According to various GOP spin meisters the reason Jared Kushner, while still a private citizen, proposed communicating with the Kremlin and the VneshEconomBank (VEB), using Russian encryption tools in a Russian facility, was to establish back channel communications without fear of interference by U.S. intelligence services that were viewed as agents of President Barak Obama.

Because back channel communications have been used to establish and facilitate diplomatic relations, GOP spin meisters have tried to normalize Kushner’s unusual activities as an example of diplomatic back channel communication rather than what they were: an attempt to establish covert communications with Russia.   When Henry Kissinger, as a government official, made secretive calls and visits to the Russians, he informed J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, about the meetings and their content. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who also secretly communicated with the Russians, also notified the FBI.  As another example, the Obama team used back channel communication to re-establish normalization of communication with Cuba.  These meetings were held secretly to limit interference from press and other agencies but were made by government officials who had the authority and security clearances and represented the US government – not when there was another President still in office.  Back channel communications are used by government officials to facilitate communication between their respective governments.  When Jared Kushner, a private citizen proposed secret communications with Russia, a US adversary, he was suggesting the establishment of what is referred to in espionage as a covert communication channel

​The safest bet to make right now is that Donald Trump will finish out his first term.  Though we hate to start our letter to you with such a bleak statement, we’re sticking with reality here.  Since becoming President, Donald Trump has been so overt about subverting justice and enriching his family that he has shown his intellectual and psychological unfitness to be President. Nonetheless, the Constitutional provisions for removing a President through impeachment or incapacitation (25th Amendment) all start with the Republican leadership deciding to move against Trump.
 
Given Republican intransigence to recognize any circumstances surrounding the election or subsequent clumsy efforts by Trump to derail the investigations, there is almost no chance that impeachment or incapacitation can happen.   Some Democrats continue to believe that the  daily revelations of ineptitude, criminality and unethical behavior will eventually convince enough Congressional Republicans to seriously consider impeachment.  But, Republican recognition that  high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed, the Constitutional standard for impeachment,  is a political action that could destroy the Republican Party. As Paul Krugman argues, Republicans are now not so much statesmen as they are apparatchiks who show their loyalty to the billionaires funding their party. They show their blind and binding loyalty to the oligarchic system.  The “brave” Republicans make occasional veiled remarks to show they understand how corrupt Trump is, but then show no patriotism or responsibility when voting.  As long as the Republicans hold the House we are almost certainly not going to see an impeachment and even less likely to see two-thirds of the Senate vote to convict.

Donald Trump is a serial liar.  There's really no other explanation for his behavior.  He starts with a statement that's been proven false; then claims that he did not say it, someone else said it and he's merely repeating it, or unknown persons confirmed it, and thus, it cannot be false.  And, as an excuse for any minor inaccuracy, he maintains that he had to say it to avoid political correctness.
 
During the campaign, for example, Trump claimed that he saw Arab Americans in New Jersey celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11.  Faced with numerous eyewitness accounts to the contrary, as well as videos that disputed him, he retracted this claim and said he might have seen celebrations in other countries on television.  Nonetheless, he continued to maintain that hundreds of people told him that they saw the New Jersey celebrations.

Donald Trump doubled down on the science-phobic themes from his fellow-Republicans as he represses all other sources devoted to information exploration and truth (judicial, academic, and free press).  Many hold that he is psychologically impaired.  Others believe that Trump’s passionate support of Republican dogma is payback for Republican’s refrain from impeaching him for corruption and abuse of power.  In either case, concerned citizens are resisting his science-phobic themes.
​
Over the last two weekends, hundreds of thousands of people have marched in Washington DC and many other cities across the world to express concern about how scientific research and activities are being trashed by the Trump Administration.  In the April 22 March for Science and in the April 29 People’s Climate March people marched, rallied, and attended teach-ins.  Scientists and others who affirm science are reacting to the many assaults to science and more broadly to the irrational thought that the Republican Party and Donald Trump are using to harm the US and the world.  While many of the protesters’ signs and chants were focused on intellectually vacuous Donald Trump, the more disturbing horror is that as President, he is activating plans, wishes and beliefs held by many Republicans.  They are hurting science directly by abolishing laws and programs, and indirectly by weakening many threads that nurture scientific thought and dialogue as they curtail international travel.  

When the Senate failed to confirm Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as a federal judge in 1986, many white supremacists believed it was important to control blacks in order to more fully exploit their labor.  Exploiting labor requires close proximity and, according to the mythology of the white South about blacks, rigid control.  As a son of Alabama, Sessions bought into this myth and as the U.S. attorney for Alabama, Sessions did his best to help maintain the traditional control that thwarted blacks in the South.

Sessions was not confirmed because witnesses testified that as an U.S. Attorney in Alabama, Sessions had regularly used racist and demeaning language to address a black colleague and used his office to suppress black voting through a questionable prosecution.  After his confirmation had been defeated in the Senate Judiciary Committee by a bi-partisan vote of 10 to 8, Sessions used his office to retaliate against two of the witnesses against him. 
​
But, as Sessions was failing to win Senate confirmation in 1986, white supremacists also were changing their focus from control of nonwhites to separation from nonwhites.  Noticing the increased number of nonwhite documented and undocumented immigrants, white supremacists and their supporters once again fixed more of their ethnic resentment on immigrants than they had since the early part of the twentieth century.  Even the use of police power, always used to control black behavior, changed from a labor exploitation mechanism to an incarceration, removal, and stigmatizing strategy.  Unlike earlier times in which ethnic and black resentment was accepted, however, white supremacists now felt the need to clothe their animosity in various forms of justification.