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When I wrote a piece a few days after the election, The Mike Pence (Donald Trump) Assault On LGBTQ Equality Is Already Underway, I hoped against all hope that something might change to alter what was already happening during the Trump transition.

But in fact, much of what I reported has materialized in the first 100 days. And theres reason to believe the second 100 days will be worse.

In the first 100 days Trump installed viciously anti-gay individuals in his cabinet and throughout the government departments, all of whom were brought forth from the Mike Pence-run transition team, from Ben Carson and Roger Severino to Tom Priceand Jeff Sessions. Trump and Sessions, the attorney general, already rescinded guidanceon fighting discrimination against transgender students across the country, and had the Justice Department halt litigation against North Carolina regarding HB2 and the equally discriminatory law that replaced it. The Trump administration decided there was no need to move forward with the Census Bureaus planned data collection on LGBT Americans, thereby keeping LGBTQ people invisible.

Though Trump made a little bit of a spectacle of not rescinding President Obamas executive order banning anti-LGBT discrimination among federal contractors, his administration later quietly issued an order ending data collection among contractors about such discrimination thus allowing for it. Similarly, the administration stopped collecting data on discrimination against elderly LGBTQ people. Trump removed Eric Fanning as Army Secretary, appointed by President Obama and the first openly gay Army Secretary in history, and has now nominated an anti-LGBTQ Tennessee legislator, Mark Green, to the job a man who sponsored a bill allowing discrimination against LGBTQ people and who has called transgender people evil.

And perhaps most consequentially, Trump placed on the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch, a constitutional originalist in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia by his own description and someone whose idea of religious liberty is a direct threat to LGBTQ rights.

But heres why the next 100 days and after that could be far worse: Trump is continuing to plummet in approval ratings and he needs his base to back him and to back the GOP more than ever if he has any hopes of re-election and of keeping Congress in the hands of the GOP in 2018 and beyond. He just barely made it in 2016, and any softening of any part of his base will spell doom. The anti-LGBTQ religious right turned out for Trump in numbers as great or greaterthan every previous recent Republican presidential candidate.

Christian right activists are already demanding much more. They were hoping a religious liberty executive order which would allow for widespread discrimination against LGBT people would have been issued already, and were disappointed when the Trump administration early on said a leaked draft of it wasnt coming soon.

But Trump transition official Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, told me in February it was indeed coming, and was being fine-tuned to withstand a legal challenge. Last week USA Todayreported that a group of 51 GOP legislators in the Housesent a letter to the White House asking for the order to be signed:

[We] request that you sign the draft executive order on religious liberty, as reported by numerous outlets on February 2, 2017, in order to protect millions of Americans whose religious freedom has been attacked or threatened over the last eight years.

These are anti-LGBTQ legislators who backed Trump and who represent the armies of the Christian right. Theyre pressuring him to move ahead with the anti-LGBTQ agenda he promised. Though the media downplayed it, Trump courted these people at events and through their media during the campaign, promising everything from protecting religious liberty to getting the Obergefell marriage equality ruling overturned.

Again, if Trump has illusions of winning re-election, and helping the GOP in Congress, he knows he must deliver to his base, and wont be able to lose any of it. If you thought the GOP was done with the issue of marriage equality, for example, you need only to look at House member Randy Weber of Texas, who last week wept as he asked God to forgive the U.S. for making marriage legal for gays and lesbians at an event attended by the GOP House leadership (including Paul Ryan), which didnt challenge him.

The Christian right isnt satisfied with what they see as the crumbs Trump has given them in the first 100 days. Theyre demanding much, much more, and Trump, like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both of whom courted the Christian right and believed they needed evangelical voters for re-election, will feel compelled to deliver. (And one could argue that Reagan, and to a lesser extent Bush, didnt need that religious right base for re-election as much as Trump desperately does.)

Thats why the next 100 days and beyond are even more treacherous, and why well have to pay great attention and fight back hard.

Follow Michelangelo Signorile on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/msignorile

The rest is here:
Why Donald Trump's Second 100 Days Will Be Even Worse For LGBTQ Equality - Huffington Post

As they gave President Donald Trump high marks for his first 100 days in office, a trio of conservative radio talk show hosts at a Riverside conference Sunday, April 30 urged congressional Republicans to get their act together and pass the presidents agenda, especially repealing Obamacare.

Its OK to disagree. Its fine to be a divided caucus if at the end of the day, you come together and take 75 percent of what you want and call it a win, Dennis Prager told an audience of more than 800 at the Fourth Annual Unite IE Conservative Conference.

Republicans generally do not perceive the threat that the left is to our society, he added. This is the Achilles heel of the Republican Party If you do understand it, then any victory is a victory.

The conference, which took place at the Riverside Convention Center, offered a chance for conservatives to gather, network and be inspiredin a state thats been hostile ground for their beliefs.

This years conference focused on the first 100 days of the Trump administration, which hit that mark Saturday. Radio host Hugh Hewitt, who served as a panelist for four debates of GOP presidential hopefuls, gave Trump a solid B, saying the Republican real estate mogul and reality TV star needs to fill more judgeships.

Another radio personality, Larry Elder, gave Trump an A+, calling the nomination and confirmation of conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch far and away the presidents most important accomplishment.

Prager gave Trump an A- and apologized for resisting Trumps quest for the GOP presidential nomination.

I am starting to love this man and I thought I would never say that in my life, Prager said.

Unlike liberals, Trump doesnt care if America is loved, Prager said, adding: The recipe for peace on Earth is not for America to be loved, but feared.

The audience in the convention center expressed their support for Trump through the applause. The loudest cheers came when event co-emcee and local radio host Jennifer Horn asked how many in the crowd gave Trump an A, with fewer claps for those who give him a B and the lightest applause for those giving him a C.

The conference also featured Joel Pollak, senior editor-at-large of the conservative news site Breitbart and author of the book How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution.

The unifying message that brought a New York former liberal Democrat together with conservative audiences in the Midwest and South and everywhere else we can think of was the pushback against the mainstream media, Pollak said, adding that Trump addressed issues like immigration and trade that were ignored by the Republican and Democratic parties.

Anti-Breitbart sentiment was on display at a morning protest outside the conference. About 50 protesters waved signs with slogans such as Evil Lurks and its Name is Breitbart, Impeach Vladimir Trump, Facts Still Matter and Hire a Clown, Get a Circus.

Lecia Elzig of Riverside held a sign with provocative Breitbart headlines seen as offensive to women, including Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.

Elzig said she respected the right of conference-goers to assemble. Were just here exercising our constitutional rights, she said.

More:
Why there were cheers for Donald Trump in Riverside - Press-Enterprise

"I loved my previous life, I loved my previous life. I had so many things going," Trump told Reuters. "I actually, this is more work than my previous life. I thought it would be easier."

Then, later: "I do miss my old life. This -- I like to work. But this is actually more work."

That sentiment is, in a word, strange. For a few reasons.

It's absolutely true that all presidents express -- privately and then, eventually, publicly -- some level of longing for the life they left behind or the life they will return to. But that usually happens after, say, seven or eight years in the White House. Not after 99 days.

The truth is -- and even Donald Trump might admit this in his most candid moments -- that he had almost zero idea of what being president would entail when he started running for the office almost two years ago now.

When he entered the race in June 2015, there was no reasonable expectation that he would even sniff the top tier of the Republican field. He was seen as a curiosity, a celebrity calling everyone's bluff who said he never could, should or would run.

Throughout the campaign -- even as he improbably rose to the top of the GOP field and stayed there -- Trump would always tell his crowds that being president would be easy, and that he would solve the problems of the country so quickly they wouldn't believe it.

"Together we're going to deliver real change that once again puts Americans first," Trump promised a Florida audience last October. "You're going to have such great health care, at a tiny fraction of the costand it's going to be so easy."

(Nota bene: Republican attempts to even hold a vote on legislation that would reform and replace the Affordable Care Act died Thursday night. For the second time in as many months.)

It's, of course, true that no president is ever, really, ready for the job when they come into office. But Trump's understanding of the office -- and of the political process was minuscule. He had never run for or served in any elected office. (Say what you will about the relative inexperience of George W. Bush and Barack Obama before ascending to the presidency but they had been elected and served as governor and senator, respectively.) Trump's experience in politics, by contrast, amounted to giving money when someone asked him to. And that's about it.

Which is how someone who has been president for the last 99 days can repeatedly express amazement that the job is hard -- far harder than he expected -- and wax nostalgic about his old life.

Trump's old life was, without question, easier than his current one. He starred in a reality TV show. He was the brand manager of a company built around his ostentatious personality. He did, basically, what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.

Now his life is totally and completely proscribed. He has very little agency in all of it. He goes where he is told when he is told. And much of what Trump does on a daily basis is a radical departure from the "being Donald Trump" role that he had been playing for decades prior to winning the White House. He has to confront problems -- the Middle East, North Korea, healthcare -- in which he can't just snap his fingers, make a decision and move on. Nothing -- or almost nothing-- is black and white. It's all shades of gray. It's, um, hard.

Given all of that, it's easy to see why Trump might pine for the simpler life he led prior to being elected president. It's just very, very odd he decided to say that publicly less than 100 days into his administration.

The rest is here:
Donald Trump sounds like he really misses not being president - CNN

What changed? He talked to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto.

"I get a call from Mexico yesterday, 'We hear you're going to terminate NAFTA.' I said that's right. They said, 'Is there any way we can do something without you -- without termination?' I said, 'What do you want to do?' He said, 'Well, we'd like to negotiate.' I said we'll think about it. Then I get a call, and they call me, I get a call from Justin Trudeau and he said, 'We'd like to see if we can work something out,' and I said that's fine.'"

What's important here: By Trump's account, two leaders of foreign countries came as supplicants to him. They called him, asked him not to do it. He, as a flexible negotiator, said OK. Because he believed them when they told him, personally, that they would renegotiate the deal in ways more favorable to the United States.

The NAFTA phone calls are far from an isolated incident when it comes to just how much power Trump invests in relationships with people. If he talks to you, if you are nice to him, if he feels as though you connected on some level, he is much, much more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Coming out of it, Trump makes it sound as though he and Xi may be co-starring in a buddy comedy sometime soon.

"Look, my problem is I have established a very good personal relationship with President Xi. I really feel that he is doing everything in his power to help us with a big situation," Trump told Reuters regarding North Korea's ongoing pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

Added Trump: "He's a good man. He's a very good man and I got to know him very well." (Related: Trump has cited the duo's relationship as one of the reasons he isn't labeling China a currency manipulator any more.)

Reminder: Trump spent roughly 48 hours with Xi. They had not met each other previously. Could the meetings possibly have gone so well that Trump is now convinced China is going to help the US on North Korean containment and is going to stop manipulating their own currency?

Trump's background is as an old-school businessman -- he likes to look people in the eye or talk to them on the phone, not shoot emails back and forth. And he believes very strongly in his gut reactions to these meetings. In fact, he is using that gut to guide American foreign policy at the moment.

So, if you don't like the way Trump appears to be heading on an issue, call him up. Meet with him. Tell him how reasonable you are and how powerful he and the United States are. You might just get a change of heart.

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Here's the best way to change Donald Trump's mind - CNN

Deadline

Donald Trump Mocks Elizabeth Warren 2020 Challenge In 1st POTUS Address To NRA Convention Since Reagan Era Deadline In the first presidential speech to the National Rifle Association convention since 1983, Donald Trump today hinted that he thinks Elizabeth Warren will be running against him in 2020 and declared that his election victory was the bigger than any ... Trump Again Derides Elizabeth Warren as 'Pocahontas'NBCNews.com Watch Live: President Trump Addresses Annual NRA ConventionTIME Trump at NRA speech touts "responsible" gun ownership, takes shot at Elizabeth WarrenCBS News Atlanta Journal Constitution -CNN -New York Times all 269 news articles »

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Donald Trump Mocks Elizabeth Warren 2020 Challenge In 1st POTUS Address To NRA Convention Since Reagan Era - Deadline