By Cassie Miller

January 20 – Donald J. Trump is sworn in as the 45th president. His inauguration speech paints a bleak picture of an American landscape wracked by “carnage.” The school system, he claims, leaves children “deprived of all knowledge” despite being “flush with cash.” Middle-class wealth, he says, has been “ripped” away and “redistributed all across the world.” He promises to place “America first” – a slogan associated with the America First Committee, an anti-Semitic, isolationist group that emerged in 1940 to prevent American involvement in World War II.

January 20 – David Duke, the neo-Nazi and former Klan leader, tweets, “We did it! Congratulations to Donald J. Trump President of the United States of America!”

January 20 – Trump names John Gore as deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights. Gore defended the University of North Carolina against an ACLU lawsuit challenging a state law banning transgender people from using bathrooms conforming to their gender identity. He has also defended controversial Republican redistricting plans enacted after the 2010 census in Florida, New York and South Carolina.

January 22 – The White House announces that two former Breitbart reporters will join the administration. Julia Hahn is appointed special assistant to the president, working under her former boss, Stephen K. Bannon. Sebastian Gorka, who served as Breitbart’s national security editor, is appointed deputy assistant to the president.

January 24 – During an interview on The David Pakman Show, white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, who coined the phrase “alt-right,” argues that “Trump is a white nationalist, so to speak. He is alt-right whether he likes it or not.”

January 25 – Trump signs two executive orders pertaining to immigration and border security. One instructs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to hire 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents, build detention facilities near the Mexican border, and immediately take steps to construct a border wall. The second order notes that the administration will prioritize deportation of immigrants who “have been charged with any criminal offense” – but not necessarily convicted – or who “in the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.” It also targets so-called “sanctuary cities” by ensuring “that jurisdictions that fail to comply with applicable Federal law do not receive Federal funds.”

January 27 – Trump releases a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day that neglects to mention the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. When pressed, the White House refuses to offer an apology or addendum, insisting that many groups suffered. “Holocaust denial is alive and well in the highest office of the White House,” responded Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt. White nationalist leader Richard Spencer called it the “de-Judaification” of the Holocaust.

January 27 – Trump signs an executive order barring citizens from the majority-Muslim countries of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also indefinitely suspends the entry of Syrian refugees. Trump claims the order is “not a Muslim ban,” but during the campaign he had called for “a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” A federal court subsequently blocks the order, and the government’s request for its reinstatement is ultimately denied.

January 27 – Trump tweets that “at least” 3 million votes in the presidential election were cast illegally. The White House is unable to provide any evidence to back up the claim.

January 28 – In a White House directive, Trump gives chief strategist Bannon a seat on the National Security Council’s principals committee and demotes the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While previous political advisers to presidents had regularly observed NSC meetings, the decision to give Bannon a seat on the principals committee is unprecedented.

February 2 – Reutersreports that the Trump administration plans to rename the Countering Violent Extremist program “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.” The program will focus solely on terrorism carried out by Muslims rather than include terrorism by domestic extremists associated with the radical right. “Yes, this is real life. Our memes are real life. Donald Trump is setting us free,” the white supremacist Andrew Anglin writes in response. “It just couldn’t get any better than this, I am telling myself. But I know that it is just going to keep getting better.”

February 2 – Kellyanne Conway defends Trump’s Muslim ban executive order by citing a “Bowling Green massacre” committed by two Iraqi refugees. The supposed “massacre” never occurred.

February 8 – The U.S. Senate confirms Jeff Sessions as attorney general. More than 1,000 legal scholars previously signed a letter expressing concern that Sessions’ views had not changed since 1986, when he was denied confirmation as a federal district judge in Alabama after accusations of having made racist remarks. Sessions also has strong ties to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim extremist groups.

February 13 – Lucian Wintrich, a writer for the Gateway Pundit who is well known for blatant misogyny, attends his first press briefing after being given White House press credentials. Wintrich’s inclusion in the White House press corps gives the alt-right outlet new access to the highest levels of government.

February 13 – National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn is fired. The administration says he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about discussing the Obama administration’s sanctions against Russia in a phone call with the Russian ambassador in late December. Flynn has long been associated with anti-Muslim extremist groups, particularly ACT! for America.



Former National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn

February 14 – Kellyanne Conway tweets “Love you back” in response to a white nationalist Twitter account that had praised her. The account had previously tweeted anti-Semitic and racist posts, frequently using the hashtags #WhiteIdentity and #WhiteGenocide.

February 17 – In a tweet, Trump refers to the news media as “the enemy of the American People!” He repeats the attack days later at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The phrase “enemy of the people” has troubling historical roots: Stalin used it to refer to his ideological enemies.

February 17 – The first DREAMer – an immigrant meant to be protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program – is deported to Mexico. Juan Manuel Montes, 23, had left his wallet and identification in his friend’s car when he was approached by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent. He was not allowed to retrieve his documents and, despite his active DACA status, was deported only hours later. Montes was brought to the United States at age 9.

February 18 – At a rally in Florida, Trump describes an imagined terrorist attack in Sweden. The night before, Fox News aired a segment dubiously linking violence in Sweden to recent Muslim immigration. Trump apparently misunderstood the report to mean a terrorist attack had occurred.

February 18 – Trump spends time at Mar-a-Lago with radio host Michael Savage. The conspiracy theorist has a long history of bigotry and has suggested that Muslim immigrants come to the United States “to stab people in the street, jump the curb with a car and run them over.” Savage has also claimed that Obama was using immigration “to destroy this country through genocide.” Trump appeared on Savage’s radio show throughout his presidential campaign.

February 22 – In a joint statement, the Departments of Justice and Education rescind protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms and other public school facilities corresponding to their gender identity.

February 27 – The DOJ announces that it is withdrawing its claim that Texas enacted a 2011 voter ID law with racially discriminatory intent. The DOJ’s original objection to the law was filed by the Obama administration in 2013, and alleged that the law discriminated against minority voters who lacked the necessary ID.

February 28 – In his first address to Congress, Trump announces that he has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office (VOICE). The agency is tasked with producing monthly reports “studying the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States,” an apparent effort to link immigration and criminality in the mind of the public. A robust body of research, however, shows that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born American citizens.

March 1 – In an NPR interview, Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Trump who has close ties to anti-Semitic groups in Hungary, refuses to say whether Trump believes that “Islam is a religion” as opposed to a purely political ideology. “This is not a theological seminary,” he tells the interviewer, “we’re talking about national security and the totalitarian ideologies that drive the groups that threaten America.”

March 4 – Trump tweets that former President Obama had his “wires tapped” before the election. The FBI disputes the claim, and no evidence emerges to support it.

March 6 – Trump introduces a new executive order blocking citizens from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the country for 90 days, exempting permanent residents and current visa holders. It removes Iraq from the list of countries in the original ban and replaces the original indefinite suspension of Syrian refugees with a 120-day freeze. U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson blocks the order before it can take effect, concluding that it “was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion.”

March 7 – Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Trump adviser associated with an anti-immigrant hate group, meets with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, an anti-Muslim activist who was convicted of hate speech in her native Austria in 2011. At their meetings, Sabaditsch-Wolff repeats racist tropes, claiming that the refugee crisis in Europe has increased rates of crime and sexual assault and led to the establishment of lawless “no-go zones.”



President Trump with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach

March 13 – The U.S. State Department announces it has named Lisa Correnti as a delegate to the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women. Correnti is executive vice president of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM), which is listed by the SPLC as an anti-LGBT hate group. Austin Ruse, the group’s founder, has offered support for laws criminalizing LGBT people and said in 2014 that the “hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities … should all be taken out and shot.”

March 16 – Trump releases a partial 2018 budget proposal that marks a shift in DOJ priorities. The department plans to eliminate $700 million in spending for “outdated programs” while bulking up funding in areas that “target the worst of the worst criminal organizations and drug traffickers.” It also asks for $80 million to hire additional immigration judges to “bolster and more efficiently adjudicate removal proceedings.”

March 20 – Pursuant to an executive order, DHS releases the first installment of a weekly list of crimes perpetrated by immigrants. Andrea Pitzer, an expert on concentration camps, notes that the list is eerily reminiscent of lists of Jewish crimes published in the Nazi press.

March 21 – Brigitte Gabriel, the leader of the nation’s largest anti-Muslim hate group, ACT! for America, visits with White House legislative staff. Gabriel has spent her career condemning the “cancer” of Islam, which she once described as “a natural threat to the civilized people of the world.” She told Australian Jewish News in 2007, “Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim.”



ACT For America's Brigitte Gabriel visits the White House

March 24 – Roger Severino, a staffer at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, is appointed director of the Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Health and Human Services. When the office issued a rule banning discrimination against transgender patients last year, Severino co-authored a critique published by the Heritage Foundation that called the new regulation a threat to the religious liberty of health care professionals.

March 26 – Violence breaks out at pro-Trump rallies held over the weekend, echoing similar outbreaks at campaign rallies, including one during which Trump exhorted supporters to “beat the hell out of” protesters.

March 27 – Trump rescinds the Obama-era Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order, which required companies contracting with the federal government to demonstrate compliance with federal laws, including those prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

April 1 – Former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann characterizes the Trump presidency as a divine intervention that represents a “reprieve” from immorality. Her comment comes during an interview on the “Understanding the Times” radio program alongside Philip Haney, a former DHS officer whose recent book outlines the “government’s submission to Jihad” under Obama.

April 3 – Sessions orders the DOJ to review all of its reform agreements with local police departments. These include a consent decree with the Baltimore police and a decree still being pursued with Chicago. Both were intended to remedy systemic misconduct. Sessions previously said he had not read the Obama-era DOJ reports documenting racial disparities in policing practices in Chicago and Ferguson, Missouri. He has suggested that the DOJ would not open any new civil rights investigations of police departments under his watch.

April 4 – Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, says in a tweet that Mike Cernovich, a right-wing social media provocateur, deserves a Pulitzer Prize for a blog post reporting that Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, requested information on Trump associates who appeared in foreign surveillance intelligence reports. Cernovich gained an online following through advice aimed at teaching men to cultivate “dominance.” He has written that “date rape doesn’t exist” and that “women want to be tamed.” Cernovich promoted claims that Hillary Clinton suffered from a “grave neurological condition” as well as the “Pizza-gate” conspiracy theory that Democratic officials were running a child sex ring from a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant.

April 6 – The Daily Beast reports that Bannon called Trump’s son-in-law and trusted adviser, Jared Kushner, a “cuck” and a “globalist.” Both are terms popularized by the alt-right. The former refers to conservatives who have submitted to multiculturalism and liberalism. The latter is used to describe opponents of “nationalism” and contains anti-Semitic undertones. Kushner is Jewish.

April 6 – Anti-Muslim activist Brigitte Gabriel has dinner alongside the president at his Mar-a-Lago resort. While dining, Trump carries out at an air strike against Syria.

April 6 – After learning of the strike on Syria, Trump’s alt-right supporters turn on him. Breitbart News explodes in negative comments and rabid alt-right Trump supporters – including Paul Joseph Watson of InfoWars, social media personality Mike Cernovich, and far-right political commentator Ann Coulter – quickly criticize Trump for betraying his pledge to put “America first.” I’m officially OFF the Trump train,” Watson tweets.

April 7 – Trump nominates Mark E. Green, a retired Army officer and member of the Tennessee Senate, as secretary of the Army. Green has criticized federal legislation that protects LGBT individuals against discrimination in workplaces and businesses, and once referred to being transgender as a “disease.”

April 7 – Vice President Mike Pence speaks to the Family Research Council – an anti-LGBT hate group – during a surprise visit to an event held for the group’s supporters in Washington, D.C.

April 8 – According to The Washington Post, Sessions has signaled that he will revive the war on drugs by appointing Steven H. Cook, a Knoxville-based federal prosecutor, to one of the top advisory positions in the DOJ. Cook has been a strong proponent of mandatory minimum sentencing, increasing drug prosecutions, and layering charges to increase the severity of sentences – all prosecutorial tools developed during the drug war that disproportionately harmed minorities. Though crime rates have trended downward over the last four decades, Sessions has argued that there are “clear warning signs – like the first gusts of wind before a summer storm – that this progress is now at risk,” thereby justifying his moves to halt criminal justice reform.

April 11 – Sessions releases a memo directing federal prosecutors to bring more felony charges against undocumented immigrants. They’re instructed to tag on charges for identity theft and document fraud whenever possible. The memo also states that the DOJ will hire 50 immigration judges this year and 75 next year to supplement the 275 immigration judges currently serving. “Be forewarned,” Sessions says during a speech in Nogales, Arizona, “This is a new era. This is the Trump era.”

April 13 – The New York Times reports that the Trump administration intends to pare regulations that protect immigrants detained in jails. Less-burdensome contracts are designed to encourage law enforcement officials to open beds in local facilities before new detention centers can be built to accommodate the administration’s intensified deportation efforts.

April 13 – After Sessions rescinds a 2016 DOJ memo that ended the use of private prisons within the federal system, the private prison corporation GEO Group announces it has signed a $110 million contract to build a 1,000-bed immigrant detention center in Conroe, Texas. Sessions argues that the Obama-era moratorium – enacted after a DOJ study found private prisons to be less safe than those operated by the Bureau of Prisons – “impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”

April 14 – The Trump administration announces it will keep White House visitor logs a secret. The records will not be available to the public until five years after Trump leaves office.

April 14 – Betsy DeVos picks Candice Jackson to serve as the deputy assistant secretary for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. As an undergraduate at Stanford, Jackson complained that she experienced discrimination because she was white. She also helped edit a book by an economist who criticized the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

April 14 – The DOJ drops a lawsuit against North Carolina over a bill that required transgender people to use public bathrooms that match the gender listed on their birth certificate. The DOJ claims to have dropped the suit because North Carolina repealed the original law, but its replacement kept many of its provisions in place. Municipalities are now prohibited from passing their own anti-discrimination ordinances.

April 14 – In response to a suit filed by three protesters he attacked at a 2016 Trump rally in Louisville, Alvin Bamberger, a 75-year-old veteran, files a countersuit alleging he attacked them at the “urging and inspiring” of the future president. Three days later, Matthew Heimbach, the leader of the white supremacist Traditionalist Youth Network, who is also being sued by the three plaintiffs for assault, files his own countersuit. Heimbach claims he “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and any liability must be shifted to one or both of them.”

April 15 – Far-right extremists hold a pro-Trump rally in Berkeley, California, where they clash with anti-fascist counter-protestors. Eleven people are injured and six hospitalized. Nathan Domingo, founder of a student-oriented white-nationalist group, Identity Evropa, is filmed punching a young woman in the face. Afterward, a member of the alt-right group Proud Boys, the organizers of the rally, call it an “enormous victory!”

April 18 – In a speech at George Washington University, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly tells lawmakers critical of his department’s heavy-handed approach to immigration and drug enforcement to either find “the courage and skills to change the laws” or “shut up.” He repeatedly chides detractors for underestimating ever-present dangers. “While you’re binge-watching Mad Men on Netflix, TSA is stopping an actual mad man with a loaded gun from boarding a flight to Disney World,” he said. “We are under attack from criminals who think their greed justifies raping young girls at knifepoint, dealing poison to our youth, or killing just for fun. The threats are relentless.”

April 18 – After news emerges that the first DREAMer has been deported by federal agents, U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa tweets a photo of a beer with the caption “Border Patrol, this one’s for you.” King previously made statements criticizing immigrants, tweeting “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

April 19 – Trump hosts former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and musicians Kid Rock and Ted Nugent at the White House. In 2012, Nugent described Obama as a “gangster” and “subhuman mongrel.” The same year, he attracted the Secret Service’s attention when he said, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” In 2016, he called for Obama and Hillary Clinton to be “tried for treason and hung.”

April 21 – The DOJ sends letters to officials in Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, New York City, Miami-Dade County, Milwaukee County, Cook County, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations to warn that their federal justice program funding may be in jeopardy if they fail to prove they’re complying with immigration enforcement. “Many of these jurisdictions are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime,” an accompanying press release states. It cites “gang murder after gang murder” in New York City as the “predictable consequence of the city’s ‘soft on crime’ stance,” though a reduction in gang-related shootings helped drive the city’s murder rate to historic lows in the last several years.

April 21 – During an interview with The Associated Press, Trump calls Marine Le Pen, the French National Front presidential candidate who ran a campaign attacking immigrants and Muslims, the “strongest” election contender. Trump also said a recent Paris terrorist attack that targeted police and resulted in one officer’s death will “probably help” the far-right Le Pen’s election bid.

April 23 – During a speech to the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Trump recounts that the Holocaust – “the darkest chapter of human history” – resulted in the death of 6 million Jews at the hands of Nazis. For white supremacists, Trump’s remarks signal that he has abandoned their cause. “You remember when he gave the Holocaust Day message that didn’t include the Jews?” neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin writes the next day on the Daily Stormer, before claiming that the president has become “a hostage of the Jews, and he is doing their bidding.”

April 23 – While discussing possible funding sources for Trump’s border wall on ABC’s “This Week,” Sessions suggests the structure could be paid for by reducing tax credits that go to “mostly Mexicans.” The 2011 report Sessions appears to reference a study showing that $4.2 billion in tax credits went to people who were not authorized to work in the United States but had children who were U.S. citizens, and made no reference to the nationality of the tax credit’s recipients.

April 24 – Trump hosts a White House reception for far-right members of the media, whom Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggests were “neglected” by the previous administration. Attendees include reporters from Breitbart News, One America News Network, Daily Caller, The Washington Free Beacon, and Christian Broadcasting Network. According to Charlie Spiering, the Breitbart White House correspondent, Trump answered the reporters’ policy questions for more than half an hour.

April 24 – The Anti-Defamation League reports that anti-Semitic incidents rose 86% during the first quarter of 2017 as compared to the same period the previous year. The increase is part of a longer trend that gained steam after the November election. Many of the perpetrators invoked the name of the president.

April 25 – A federal judge in San Francisco temporarily blocks Trump’s executive order that aimed to withhold federal funding to sanctuary cities, marking the third time a judge has blocked one of Trump’s executive orders.

April 25 – The Council on American-Islamic Relations reports that the number of anti-Muslim profiling incidents carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection have increased 1,035% thus far in 2017 as compared to the same period in 2016. The 193 incidents recorded this year exceed all incidents in the past three years combined.

April 26 – Trump signs the “Education Federalism Executive Order” directing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to examine whether federal regulations interfere with state and local control of the nation’s schools.

Image Credit: AP Images