Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have faced harsh criticism over the ethical entanglements implicit in their overly-friendly coverage of President-elect Donald Trump, particularly in light of their recent admissions that they have acted as advisors to Trump while reporting out campaign and transition “exclusives” often attributed to unnamed sources. Hadas Gold at Politico noted […]

It is easy to get lost in the surreal nature of President-elect Donald Trump emerging from his Mar-a-Lago palace with boxing promoter Don King at his side to dole out a handful of comments to an eager press corps. But even within this odd spectacle, Trump’s self-serving statement on Russia hacking ought to be blaring […]

In a quick move over the holiday weekend, Donald Trump’s transition team announced the appointment of Thomas Bossert to the position of homeland security advisor. Bossert served as deputy homeland security advisor under President Bush, and for the past eight years has run a private security consulting firm and held a senior fellowship on cybersecurity […]

After Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he advocated the “need to strengthen the strategic nuclear forces,” Donald Trump responded with a cryptic tweet: The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, […]

In Quinnipiac’s November 22 poll, 45 percent of people who responded said that Donald Trump does not care about average Americans. In that the same pollster’s February 22 poll, the percentage is now 53 percent, an increase of 8 percent. Overall, the poll now shows only 38 percent of people approving of his presidency, which […]

Donald Trump has managed to prove that it is always possible to go lower, even after his series of outrageous attacks on a federal judge. Fox News has released a clip from Trump’s Super Bowl Sunday interview with Bill O’Reilly, and Trump exceeded his own low standards. When O’Reilly pointed out that Russian President Vladimir […]

A pointed reminder from President Obama: Watch President Obama note that “Vladimir Putin is not on our team.” (FYI: @POTUS is right) pic.twitter.com/fGw4sLelke — HawaiiDelilah (@HawaiiDelilah) January 7, 2017 GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Bottom line: This time, Vladimir Putin got what he wanted? BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, I think that what is true is that the Russians […]

President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign of lies and deflections to protect Russia from blame for the cyberattacks that the FBI and CIA say were intended to help Trump win the election has become more and more desperate by the day. While Trump himself phoned the New York Times ahead of his security briefing on Russian interference, […]

During a brief exchange between President-elect Donald Trump and reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate on New Year’s Eve, Trump claimed that he has secret information regarding Russia’s involvement in the hacks that the FBI and CIA say were intended to deliver him the election. His clear intimation was that the information could exonerate Russia. Without saying where […]

In his continuing campaign of denialism about Russian interference in the election, Donald Trump again took to Twitter to mendaciously obfuscate, smearing U.S. intelligence officials while praising WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In the short-term, as my colleague Tommy Christopher detailed, Trump is laying the groundwork for “pushback against the inevitable revelation that the intelligence community’s […]

Mike Pence, veep-elect and former Congressman, is emerging as the most powerful vice-president ever. I have repeatedly urged maintaining focus on Pence, and the bridge-building between the White House and the GOP Congressional majority with which he would certainly be tasked. And here we are: On the second day of the new Congress, Pence will […]

On Tuesday, House Republicans decided to withdraw a rule that would have gutted the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, and there are already some corporate media outlets who are crediting President-elect Donald Trump for the reversal. But nothing could be further from the truth. Trump and his team defended House Republicans’ secret vote to gut […]

President-elect Donald Trump has received scrutiny for his eyebrow-raising authoritarian proposals, such as stripping citizenship from political protestors and maintaining a private security force to eject anyone he pleases from his events. But he is not the only Republican resorting to authoritarian threats — House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is joining in. In June, a group of Democratic representatives […]

President-elect Donald Trump’s formation of a White House National Trade Council is in itself an unprecedented power grab that will undermine several government agencies, including the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Even the Trump transition team says, as reported by Politico, that the council will “usurp responsibilities from both the National Security Council and […]

It has been customary for decades for presidential candidates to release their tax returns to the public during the campaign. But, as with many other accepted norms, President-elect Donald Trump flouted this tradition, citing the fact that he was being audited. The IRS stated that being under an audit does not prevent anyone from disclosing […]

Donald Trump took to Facebook for his weekly presidential address, ostensibly as an attempt to reach out to Black citizens, and eschewing journalists’ probes in favor of a few minutes of “likes” from supporters, who posted comments such as “The devil is at work in the Democratic Party” and “please don’t release your tax returns, […]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this image of President Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd, as compared with that of President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, is worth many more than that: Photos: the crowd at Donald Trump’s inauguration vs. Barack Obama’s https://t.co/zA3nRJeu0C pic.twitter.com/yu2KFZYv95 — Vox (@voxdotcom) January 20, 2017 That did not […]

Over 150,000 people from across the country have registered to join the Women’s March on Washington in protest of President-elect Donald Trump’s attitude and behavior toward women and other marginalized people. Begun by Theresa Shook, a retired attorney in Hawaii, the march now stands to be one of the largest demonstrations to take place in protest […]

We have been closely following the absurd and unpatriotic lengths to which President-elect Donald Trump and his team have gone to deny or deflect blame away from the cyberattacks that 17 intelligence agencies agree were the work of the Russian government, lengths which include open collusion with Vladimir Putin. And thus Trump’s latest move should […]

President Obama’s time in the White House is rapidly drawing to a close. But while the powers of the presidency still reside with him, he is working hard to forestall at least some of the damage to the nation’s people and land his successor is sure to wreak. Obama has previously announced a series of strong […]

During a brief exchange between President-elect Donald Trump and reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate on New Year’s Eve, Trump revealed that he has secret knowledge of Russia’s innocence in the hacks that the FBI and CIA say were intended to deliver him the election. Without saying where that secret information came from, Trump promised that he will […]

As President-elect, Donald Trump has “made a practice of freely mixing the business of the United States of America and his private business interests.” My colleague, Melissa McEwan, detailed for Shareblue the gravity of Trump’s entanglements: Reports on the myriad ways in which Trump may be compromised, as both head of state and head of government, […]

Donald Trump does not appear to care very much about victims of public acts of violence, nor about the reverberating effects his commentary might have on people who commit these acts. His primary concern, after nearly every act of public violence, has been to do a self-aggrandizing victory lap, no matter how cynically or undeservedly, […]

Many people on social media have observed, with horror, that the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) have set the lowest bar possible for harmful speech by uninviting speaker Milo Yiannopoulos over his comments endorsing adult sexual relations with children. As it turns out, though, their highest-profile speaker does not entirely clear that bar, either. […]

Congressional Republicans have made repealing the Affordable Care Act a pillar of their agenda, fighting against its passage and voting more than 60 times to erase it from the law books. And President-elect Donald Trump put repealing Obamacare front and center in his campaign, stating in his platform, “On day one of the Trump Administration, […]

Donald Trump began his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” and went on to make the building of a border wall with Mexico a central pillar of his campaign rhetoric, all the while insisting that Mexico would pay for the wall. Now, Trump has qualified that, by saying that U.S. taxpayers will fund the […]

A day after Donald Trump favorably tweeted about Julian Assange and smeared the intelligence community, he took to Twitter to push back on resulting criticism: The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange – wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people…. — Donald J. Trump […]

With Congress back in session for the new year, and while America’s eyes are largely fixed on the White House and its impending occupants, numerous state legislators across the country are making good on their threats to curtail civil rights protections and to implement state-sanctioned bigotry toward LGBT Americans, and particularly transgender citizens. Texas Republican Lieutenant […]

As we previously reported, state legislators in California and New York were working on legislation that would make disclosure of tax returns a requirement for presidential candidates to get on the ballot. Now, state lawmakers in a number of other states are joining the emergent campaign. A pair of Maryland Democrats on Tuesday announced they […]

On December 15, President Obama made it clear his administration planned to take action against Russia for their unprecedented interference in the U.S. presidential election, saying: “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take action. And we will — […]