President Trump and his administration have taken several overt steps down the jagged path of fascism over the past week.

On September 17, Trump announced the creation of the “1776 commission” to establish “patriotic education” against what his administration has deemed unpatriotic influences such as The 1619 Project, a New York Times Magazine series about the history of slavery.

At a Minnesota rally on September 18, Trump lavished praise upon the “good genes” of his overwhelmingly white audience in a state known for its history of Scandinavian migration (i.e. the Minnesota Vikings), openly broadcasting his ongoing eugenics fixation. Meanwhile, in another report that reeks of eugenics, a whistleblower alleges that a doctor has been performing unwanted hysterectomies on migrants incarcerated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia.

Then, on September 19, Trump casually suggested that he could sign an executive order prohibiting Joe Biden from being president, months after refusing to commit to leaving office if he loses the November election and weeks after “joking” about holding on to power beyond his term limit.

And on September 21, the Justice Department declared New York City, Seattle and Portland to be “anarchist jurisdictions,” in a move to withhold funding from cities with Democratic leaders whose decisions don’t meet with approval from the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has now also raised the specter of Trump further attacking reproductive rights and civil liberties.

Scholars and pundits have debated whether Trump is “really” a fascist for years now. But regardless of where one comes down in that definitional debate, analyzing Trump and Trumpism in relation to the shifting history of fascism (understood broadly), without necessarily applying that label unequivocally, lends significant clarity to many aspects of his ultranationalist, white supremacist authoritarianism.