Ok, I can feel your skepticism, but give it a read.

Conor Friedersdorf/Atlantic:

How Conservatives Can Save America If properly understood and marshaled, they “can be a liberal democracy's strongest bulwark against the dangers posed by intolerant social movements.” Of course, Trump’s rise repelled a lot of conservatives, and required other factors to succeed, including a weak opponent, a system that awards the presidency to the person with the most electoral votes rather than the winner of the popular vote, and widespread mistrust of an establishment that has failed at home and abroad. But the fact that the Trump administration is heavily reliant on laissez-faire and status-quo conservatives to advance its agenda (and to avoid impeachment), coupled with the radical substantive divergence in what conservatives and authoritarians ultimately want, suggests to me that anyone wary of Trump should study this relationship. This includes Democrats who hope to partner with conservatives to defeat Trump, but don’t yet understand the compromises or assurances that they must offer to succeed…. “Status quo conservatives, if properly understood and marshaled, can be a liberal democracy's strongest bulwark against the dangers posed by intolerant social movements,” Stenner concludes. “Those by nature averse to change should find the ‘shining path’ to a ‘glorious future’ far more frightening than exciting, and can be expected to defend faithfully an established order––including one of institutionalized respect for difference and protection of individual freedom––against ‘authoritarian revolution.’

American independence was Step 1. We got to where we are, who we are, through Steps 2-9. Step 10 is the current American dream. Shared American values, shared with conservatives, at least some of them. They are not the David Duke crowd. Don’t treat them as if they were. One by one they will join us, not because they want to but because they need to.

x I think President Bannon is trying to take the American dream (what I call step 10) away by writing over it. https://t.co/sj4RKGr2oM — Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 3, 2017

CJR:

Adjusting for Trump: where newsrooms fall on the spectrum TWO WEEKS AGO, news executives planning their coverage of the new Trump administration found themselves facing a couple of pressing questions: How different will this administration be? And, how should we cover it? The answer to the former, based on 14 days of leaks, tweets, and broadsides from the briefing room, seems to be a resounding “very.” The response to the latter depends on which outlet is answering it. This week saw the publication of two internal memos from major media organizations signaling two significantly different approaches to coverage of the new regime in Washington. Reuters Editor in Chief Stephen Adler assured his staff that “We already know what to do because we do it every day, and we do it all over the world.” Adler (who also serves as chairman of CJR’s advisory board) laid out a series of Do’s and Don’ts for Reuters reporters, citing the wire service’s experience working in countries like Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia. Few missed the implied message that the press environment in America has dramatically changed, and not for the better. Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Gerard Baker instructed his journalists to refrain from referring to the seven countries covered by Trump’s executive order banning travel and refugees as “Muslim majority,” as BuzzFeed News first reported. The directive caused significant consternation in the Journal’s newsroom, and Baker later clarified that he was not banning the term “Muslim-majority country” from the paper’s pages, but insisted that it not be published without context... Below, we’ve collected memos, speeches, and directives from on high in response to that question, and have attempted to place them on an (entirely subjective) spectrum based on their tone.

x 1/The secret cancellation of tens of thousands of validly issued visas while govt lawyers litigated over the handful of people being stopped — Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) February 4, 2017

x 3/ "law" as a constitutional republic knows it — Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) February 4, 2017

Fighting and resisting the travel ban is/was not a distraction as some have put it, it is resistance against authoritarianism.

x A poll by CNN finds most Trump supporters don't think the administration's travel restrictions were an attempt to ban Muslims from the U.S. pic.twitter.com/ew90M4gXnv — Brad Heath (@bradheath) February 3, 2017

This has important implications. It would be worse for America if most Trump supporters did think this was a Muslim ban and supported him anyway. And if they can be persuaded of the true intent, which is inimical to the American dream, perhaps some can be persuaded to give up support for the chaos agents.

x New CNN/ORC poll: 53% disapprove of the way President Trump is handling his job... highest disapproval rating for any new elected president. — Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) February 3, 2017

x CNN/ORC 44/53, CBS 40/48 & Gallup 43/52 polls agree:

Trump most unpopular new president in history of modern polling. — Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) February 3, 2017

x Gallup approve/disapprove #s: Trump as POTUS, 43%-52%; suspend Syrian refugee program, 36%-58%; border wall, 38%-60%; travel ban, 42%-55% — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) February 2, 2017

x HuffPollster 2 weeks in: Trump approve/disapprove at 44/50. Be clear: He's unpopular, and *by far* the least popular new president ever. — Jonathan Bernstein (@jbview) February 3, 2017

Important not to gloss over the implications, even though it is too early to draw conclusions on where this goes.

James Hohmann/WaPo:

More companies back away from Donald Trump under pressure from customers THE BIG IDEA: Companies are caught between a rock and a hard place, with President Trump on one side and their customers on the other. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quit President Trump’s 15-member council of business leaders yesterday, and Disney CEO Bob Iger let it be known that he won’t attend a meeting at the White House today because of a scheduling conflict. Nordstrom announced last night that it will stop selling Ivanka Trump’s name-branded line of clothing and shoes after an extended boycott by an anti-Trump activist group called “Grab Your Wallet."

x Today @realDonaldTrump is repealing something called the Ã¢ÂÂfiduciary rule.Ã¢ÂÂ ItÃ¢ÂÂs a complicated name for a simple and critical check on banks. — Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) February 3, 2017

Robert Schlesinger/US news:

Troll Games Berkeley protesters who shut down Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos were just playing into his hands. Really Berkeley? The hallowed home of the free speech movement has become the face of curtailing speech? And it did so while playing its assigned role in a Breitbart provocateur's performance art project? Oh well played, Berkely. Really. Well done. The University of California, Berkeley's Republican club invited Milo Yiannopoulos, whose persistent stream of deliberate offensiveness got him banned from Twitter, to speak at the school. This ignited first a large (1,500+ people) and, according to the school's account, peaceful protest which was then joined by 150 or so anarchist agitators employing violent tactics. "This university was essentially invaded by more than 100 individuals clad in ninja-like uniforms who were armed and engaged in paramilitary tactics," a school spokesman told The New York Times. Ninjas!

x "In March 1969, memo warned Nixon to expect increased violence on college campuses... Ã¢ÂÂGood!Ã¢ÂÂ Nixon wrote" https://t.co/a7IPQiXgH5 — Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) February 3, 2017

This is not hard. President Bannon wants an excuse for a lawn order crackdown. Don’t give it to him. Period.

x @dbernstein David S Bernstein on effect of antiTrump protests on Trump agenda https://t.co/5vMtmC7hk9 — Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 1, 2017

Noah C. Rothman (a favorite conservative voice)/USA Today:

Trump loves making enemies and that's a problem Trump surely doesn’t regret being seen as ruthlessly pursuing “America First” foreign, immigration and trade policies. If that rankles friend as well as foe, then so be it. But the problem with creating enemies at this pace is that, eventually, you’re surrounded. As a Republican president, Trump’s only true opposition is the Democratic Party and its liberal base. The longer he and other Republicans take their eye off the ball — focusing instead on the media, the ACLU, the courts, Mexico, China, and who knows how many enemies of the people yet to come down the pike — the stronger their true opponents will get. And 2018 is right around the corner.

x 'Why are you keeping me?'

'It says here you visited Iran in 2014.'

'I did.'

'Why?'

'I was prime minister of Norway.' https://t.co/LvhM0B7xfz — Matt Haig (@matthaig1) February 3, 2017

Patricia Wilson/USA Today:

Should Australia dump Trump and his elephant dung? Assurances from White House officials that the "dumb deal" is still alive and under review, as well as Trump's own belated declaration of "love" for Australia, reeks of Donald Regan's "shovel brigade." As former President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff, Regan once described his job thusly: "Some of us are like a shovel brigade that follow a parade down Main Street cleaning up." Australians generally are a hardy bunch and not much bothered by elephant dung. But all this is not amusing to an Australian [the author] who, until recently, happily called Washington D.C. home for more than three decades, and covered U.S. presidents from Reagan to Barack Obama.

x This sentence: "The adviser to President Trump invented a massacre to justify restrictions on refugee admissions." https://t.co/jQk7Yt8ed0 — Ed Yong (@edyong209) February 3, 2017