​As we approach the 6 month mark of Donald Trump’s Presidency, many of us are incensed and frightened to see such a rapid assault on U.S. institutions, especially how fragile democracy itself now seems.  Donald Trump is an unstable, ignorant, and narcissistic sociopath who bashes through the civility and respectability of social and political decorum.  Trump is not only undermining our society and democracy, he is also enabling the GOP to accomplish what they and their billionaire donors have long set out to do – to replace U.S. democracy with an authoritarian government.  Despite his agitation with how the media are covering him, and his psychological limitations, he has been effective in undermining important government programs and agencies, considered essential for the  for the effective functioning of our country. 
 
  By and large, Washington pundits are still in agreement with political leaders as they speak about the safeguards that will withstand all Trump’s assaults.  But the primary mechanism of those safeguards is that the three separate branches of government have enough power to assure that no tyrant can easily overcome the entire structure of government.   Now that the Republicans hold the Supreme Court, Senate and House of Representatives, and the Presidency that mechanism is severely hampered, if not obliterated. Some political observers have reacted in astonishment and disappointment to the refusal of Republican leaders to defend and support institutions such as the courts and media.  Despite Trump’s Banana-Republic leadership behavior; abandonment of our democratic allies around the world; and what maybe permanent damage to the U.S., these Republican leaders refuse to act.   Some say that while many Republican leaders are offended by Trump’s boorish, un-presidential, and even un-American behavior, they need to stick with him as long as the base of Republican voters support him.  Although some Republican leaders have pushed back against Trump’s humiliatingly public attacks on his Attorney General, Jefferson Sessions, and his apparent intention to fire Sessions and Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, Republican resistance is neither widespread not geared toward specific measures to stop Trump. 
 
But, questions about why Republican leaders do not employ every measure they have to oppose Trump miss the point – there is no reason to question  whether Donald Trump is a fascist or an authoritarian  (It is probably more accurate to say fascist, rather than authoritarian, but the word fascist seems incendiary  to Americans.)   What is clear is that beginning with Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” the Republican Party has grown into a full-fledged an authoritarian party.   Authoritarians fear outsiders and seek systems with strong leaders, and express unquestioning loyalty to those leaders.  Authoritarians operate with little respect for “their people,” but still profess beliefs in nationalism, racism, and ethnic intolerance.  
 
They do not want one-man-one vote; they do not want all children to have the opportunity to get a good education.  They do not believe that healthcare is a right.   They do not believe that a free press is an important component of the American system.   They believe that the very wealthy are entitled to wealth and power because they are wealthy; they must be the deserving members of society.  Those who have not achieved wealth must be less deserving and their misfortunes are their own problems, and their votes are not ones that should be counted.   Measures of authoritarian preference (independent of political questions) are used to sample Americans over time.  The Washington Post reported such a study comparing authoritarian views between Republicans and Democrats over the last several decades.  While authoritarian preference was essentially equal among Republicans and Democrats in the early 1990s, Republicans have increased their authoritarianism and Democrats have decreased theirs.  (The definitive work on Republican authoritarianism is John Dean’s Conservatives without Conscience.)

It’s been just days since James Comey went before the Senate Intelligence Committee.  We learned many things from the well-considered and presented testimony on Thursday, June 8.  The news reports at the time summarized many of the individual points that Comey made, and several listed similar high points as the important “lessons learned.”  For example, most news reports seemed most taken with Comey accusing Trump of lying.  Of equal importance, although mentioned much less was Trump’s lack of interest in finding out more information about the Russian interference.  Few articles focused on Comey’s actual intention of using this highly visible opportunity to help Special Counsel Mueller construct the obstruction of justice argument.   

​While the Constitution clearly gives the Congress the responsibility to oversee the conduct of the President, the Republican House and Senate have not addressed the issue of potentially illegal payments received by Trump; reviewed Trump’s mismanagement of foreign policy and executive agencies; and only reluctantly moved to have its intelligence committees investigate Russian interference and its ties to the Trump campaign.  The reluctance of both the House and the Senate to exercise its constitutionally mandated oversight duties of Trump stands in stark contrast to its previous eagerness to oversee the Obama administration.
 
The GOP reluctance is all the more surprising because Trump is someone who many of the GOP do not consider a “true” Republican.  As a businessman and during his campaign for President, not only did he fail to espouse many of the policies Republicans consider sacred, but he openly supported antithetical policies.  And, although since winning office, he has pledged his support to the Republican agenda, one might reasonably suspect him to be viewed with enough suspicion to loosen the ties that would usually bind the Republican Congress to their party’s president.  Of course, one would only be surprised at the behavior of Republicans if one expected them to be principled. 

​The Trump protest marches (Women’s March, Muslim March, Tax March, Science March, Climate March, Immigration March, and March for Truth) in Washington DC, wind through the Capitol streets, formless, like an amoeba.  The people in the streets appear as the caricature of American before 2016: diverse, well intended, optimistic and engaged.   Now, marchers yell chants in unison, but with little conversation, except occasional comments about the sad strangeness that we need to march to express fundamental wishes.  Demands for truth, advancement of science, and freedom of the press reinforce how quickly we’re losing fundamental rights and values – too basic to actively cherish.  They were simply our gifts as Americans.  The marches are remarkable for the “spirit” shown, but there are few signs of actions being taken or planned that will keep us from losing our fundamental rights and values. We wonder if or how the resistance will develop from a movement that expresses our feelings about what has happened to one that is instrumental in changing what has happened?

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.
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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. 
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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.  

On Saturday, April 15, thousands marched in over 150 cities to use their voices and their presence to demonstrate how strongly they believe that the President of the United States should release his tax returns.  Contrary to Donald Trump’s insulting tweets that the protesters were paid, the streets were filled with Americans who marched for truth, not for money.  The principal idea is that Americans need to know what are the influences on any president, but especially on this president who prides himself on his vast dealings.

The idea that people would work from conviction rather than payment probably does seem absurd to Donald Trump, who appears to consider money as the motivation for his actions and the measure of each person’s worth.  He lies as he claims that he hides his returns because he is under audit.  We know that he can share his returns with no penalty from the IRS.  People know that he is lying, but do not know if he is lying because the tax returns will reveal that he is also lying about how wealthy he is, or reveal to whom he is indebted.  And, they know that the tax reform legislation he intends to introduce will benefit him and his family more than the vast majority of Americans.

In the past Trump has said he’d release his taxes if Obama released his birth certificate.  He repeatedly called on Mitt Romney to release his taxes as the responsible thing to do.   Before running for office, he promised that if he ran, he would “absolutely” release his taxes.  Ever acting the game-show host, he also held up the returns as barter during the 2016 election, claiming he’d release his taxes if Hillary released missing emails. 

In each of the next two weekends, marches are scheduled so that protesters can work in mass to speak to Donald Trump and other Americans.  On April 22nd, the March for Science will be held in over 500 cities across the world.   The organizers say that standing up for science is essential because science protects families, communities and the future, and that currently science is under aggressive attack. 

On April 29th, the People’s Climate Movement which has lead rallies in the past several years will coordinate marches on DC and other cities, again because the current Trump administration, overtly denying science and the threat of climate change, is destroying programs intended to address this earth-threatening crisis.  
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Trump’s tweets claim that those who march and those who challenge their Congressional leaders in Town Hall meetings don’t understand that he (and Vladimir Putin) beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.   Of course, Trump, who projects his faults onto others, would assume that others would be like him and deny defeat when it occurred.   However, the marchers understand what happened in 2016, and understand what is happening in 2017.  They are showing that they treasure the American right to free speech (while it lasts), and they are showing that they will continue to resist the slow dismantling of their country.