The following is a timeline of instances of extremism in the Trump administration in March 2018.
President Trump has opened the White House doors to extremism, not only consulting with hate groups on policies that erode our country’s civil rights protections but enabling the infiltration of extremist ideas into the administration’s rhetoric and agenda.
Once relegated to the fringes, the radical right now has a toehold in the White House.
Groups and individuals referenced in the list below are not associated with hate groups and extremist ideology unless indicated by a hate group profile.
Anti-Black
Mar 1
Trump nominates former federal prosecutor William Otis, who says he believes black and Hispanic people are more violent than whites, to the U.S. Sentencing Commission — the commission that sets policy on how to punish criminals.
Anti-Immigrant
Mar 5
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson changes his agency’s mission statement, removing promises of “affordable homes for all” in “communities free from discrimination” to pledge support only for “Americans” working towards “self-sufficiency.”
Anti-Immigrant
Mar 6
Trump administration sues California over the state’s “sanctuary city” laws.
Anti-Immigrant
Mar 7
Kris Kobach, former head of Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, said its proposal for identifying U.S. voter fraud would not in fact be a reliable way to identify noncitizens.
Anti-Immigrant
Mar 8
Andrew Veprek, an aide close to anti-immigrant senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, appointed as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
Anti-Black
Mar 9
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon tells French far right, “Let them call you racist. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.”
Anti-Immigrant
Mar 12
San Francisco’s ICE spokesman resigns over what he says were “false” and “misleading” statements by Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan.
Anti-Muslim
Hate Group
Mar 13
President Trump announces plans to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America once called a “staunch ally.”
Anti-Immigrant
Mar 13
President Trump says those seeking to cross the U.S. border without documentation are “like professional mountain climbers.”
Anti-LGBT
Mar 20
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos refuses to say whether adhering to federal law means adhering to federal LGBT protections for students.
Anti-LGBT
Mar 21
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson says some “were not comfortable” with transgender homeless people.
Anti-Black
Mar 21
Attorney General Jeff Sessions releases memo encouraging prosecutors to bring charges that would result in the death penalty for drug offenders.
Anti-Black
Mar 24
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos uses recent school shootings to push for rollback of Obama-era guidance that sought to correct racial disparities in school discipline.
Anti-Immigrant
Hate Group
Mar 28
Trump administration proposes to penalize immigrants who use public assistance of almost any form, including popular tax deductions, a policy long on the wishlist of anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies.
Anti-LGBT
Mar 29
Jason Foster, chief investigative counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee and author of a blog warning of Islamic takeover and comparing homosexuality to incest, revealed as architect of assault on FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.
Read our extremist group profile