This happened.

On August 24, the Trump administration’s Department of Energy censored a Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science proposal from Dr. Jennifer Bowen, an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

She posted a screenshot of the email on Facebook, writing, “This just happened. I’m just going to leave this here for people to ponder.”

In the email, Dr. Bowen was told, “I have been asked to contact you to update the wording in your proposal abstract to remove words such as ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change.’ This is being asked as we have to meet the president’s budget language restrictions and don’t want to make any changes without your knowledge or consent. Below is the current wording for your abstract—at your next convenience, will you kindly revise the wording and send back to me as soon as you can? That way we can update our website.” The words “climate change” and “global warming” were highlighted for removal in the proposal.

So Trump gets to control the wording used by independent scientists who don’t work for the government but do contribute research to government agencies. That’s pretty stunning.

The Guardian reported earlier this month that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has been censored from using the term “climate change.” They have been directed to use the phrase “weather extremes” instead.

Scientists have feared the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back and undermine climate change initiatives. On August 7, The New York Times reported that scientists from 13 federal agencies leaked a climate change report for fear it would be censored or its findings would be prevented from release. The Trump administration is politicizing and manipulating scientists’ work and research to better fit its own political agenda, which favors industries that profit from suppressing climate change science.

Good plan. By the same token the Trump administration should suppress information about approaching hurricanes for the sake of industries that profit from selling hot dogs on the beach.

Philip Bump at the Post has drawn up a master list of all the protections and rules Trump has undone.

We’ve seen most of them before but a master list is always good to have.

Samples:

Revoked an executive order that mandated compliance by contractors with laws protecting women in the workplace. Prior to the 2014 order, a report found that companies with federal contracts worth millions of dollars had scores of violations of labor and civil rights laws.

Cancelled a rule mandating that financial advisers act in the best interests of their clients.

Repeal of a bill that mandated that employers maintain records of workplace injuries.

Rescinded an Obama effort to reduce mandatory sentences. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered that prosecutors seek the most stringent penalties possible in criminal cases.

Cancelled a phase-out of the use of private prisons.

Reversed the government’s position on a voter ID law in Texas. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department argued that the law had discriminatory intent. Under Sessions, Justice withdrew that complaint. On Wednesday, a federal court threw out the law.

Rescinded a rule mandating that rising sea levels be considered when building public infrastructure in flood-prone areas.

Reversed an Obama ban on drilling for oil in the Arctic.

Rolled back school lunch standards championed by Michelle Obama.

Halted or cancelled hundreds of other minor regulatory actions.

Revoked a ban on denying funding for Planned Parenthood at the state level.

This stuff is why they put up with him.

Noah Feldman at Bloomberg says pardoning Arpaio would be an attack on the judiciary itself.

Arpaio was convicted this July by Judge Susan Bolton of willfully and intentionally violating an order issued to him in 2011 by a different federal judge, G. Murray Snow.

The order arose out of a civil suit against Arpaio brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, accusing him of violating the law by detaining undocumented immigrants simply for lacking legal status.

Snow issued a preliminary injunction that ordered Arpaio to stop running so-called saturation patrols — police sweeps that essentially stopped people who looked Latino and detained those who were deemed undocumented. The basic idea was that the profiling, warrantless stops and detention were unconstitutional.

Yet despite the federal court’s order, Arpaio kept running the unlawful patrols for at least 18 months, and publicly acknowledged as much.

We don’t want law enforcement people doing that, any more than we want the military doing that.

Judge Bolton convicted Arpaio of criminal contempt. She found he had “willfully violated” the federal court’s order “by failing to do anything to ensure his subordinates’ compliance and by directing them to continue to detain persons for whom no criminal charges could be filed.” And she held that Arpaio had “announced to the world and to his subordinates that he was going to continue business as usual no matter who said otherwise.”

This is the crime that Trump is suggesting he might pardon: willful defiance of a federal judge’s lawful order to enforce the Constitution.

…

Such a pardon would reflect outright contempt for the judiciary, which convicted Arpaio for his resistance to its authority. Trump has questioned judges’ motives and decisions, but this would be a further, more radical step in his attack on the independent constitutional authority of Article III judges.

An Arpaio pardon would express presidential contempt for the Constitution. Arpaio didn’t just violate a law passed by Congress. His actions defied the Constitution itself, the bedrock of the entire system of government. For Trump to say that this violation is excusable would threaten the very structure on which is right to pardon is based.

Fundamentally, pardoning Arpaio would also undermine the rule of law itself.

The only way the legal system can operate is if law enforcement officials do what the courts tell them. Judges don’t carry guns or enforce their own orders. That’s the job of law enforcement.

In the end, the only legally binding check on law enforcement is the authority of the judiciary to say what the law is — and be listened to by the cops on the streets.

And we need to have a legally binding check on law enforcement. They’re heavily armed.

The Constitution isn’t perfect. It offers only one remedy for a president who abuses the pardon power to break the system itself. That remedy is impeachment.

James Madison noted at the Virginia ratifying convention that abuse of the pardon power could be grounds for impeachment. He was correct then — and it’s still true now.

But that of course does not mean it will happen.

Who knew that Trump had a “spiritual adviser”? Let alone more than one, so that one among them is the chief. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a more of the earth earthy human. This is a guy who talks about “beautiful chocolate cake” in the same breath with missile strikes. But apparently he does.

Televangelist and pastor Paula White has known Donald Trump since the early 2000s, and she is thought to be the president’s closest spiritual adviser. She prayed at his inauguration, appeared with him when he signed his executive order easing restrictions on pastors engaging in politics, and told evangelical TV host Jim Bakker she is in the White House at least weekly these days. This week, as Trump faced sustained criticism over his response to the violent white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, she proved her loyalty once more, appearing on the Jim Bakker Show to defend Trump’s presidency and his spiritual bona fides in apocalyptic terms. While White has condemned white supremacy as evil and has a racially mixed fan base, she didn’t mention Trump’s equivocations that have roiled the nation.

I suppose that’s because she’s so spiritual. In the spirit there is no color, so it doesn’t matter how racist white people are, yeah?

Instead, she made an extended comparison of the president to the biblical figure Esther on Bakker’s show Monday, in an interview that at times sounded more like an impassioned sermon. Like Esther, White said, Trump is a come-from-nowhere figure elevated to leadership against all odds in order to do God’s will. She described Trump as a generous, humble man of “character and integrity” and vouched repeatedly for the state of his soul. “He surrounds himself with Christians, and he is a Christian,” she told Bakker, about a man who’s been widely reported as being irreligious for most of his life, prompting applause from the studio audience. “He loves prayer.”

Nope. He’s not generous, he’s not humble, he has the character of a mean, vengeful, petty, selfish, greedy, reckless, angry bully. He has zero integrity. He’s a terrible person on every dimension we can observe, and it’s morally perverse to say otherwise.

[In] A damning investigative piece written for the now-shuttered conservative site Heat Street, Jillian Melchior reported this spring on her dubious record as a televangelist and pastor. White’s church outside Orlando attracts an almost exclusively black audience, many of whom have low incomes and little savings. That doesn’t stop White from asking for what they have. White asked congregants to donate up to a month’s salary as a one-time special offering to mark the beginning of the year.

Is that squalid and ruthless enough for a “spiritual adviser”?

Don Lemon is knocked sideways.

CNN's @donlemon on President Trump's speech in Phoenix: "What we have witnessed was a total eclipse of the facts" https://t.co/qAxwCSSJfq pic.twitter.com/aPCwbyJTQ4

— CNN (@CNN) August 23, 2017

Hillary Clinton’s thoughts on being bullied on stage by Trump during the second debate:

“This is not okay, I thought,” Clinton said, reading from her book. “It was the second presidential debate and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces.

“It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled. It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, ‘Well, what would you do?’ Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, ‘Back up, you creep. Get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.’”

The Post adds:

As The Post’s Sarah L. Kaufman wrote, Trump “paced and rocked and grimaced as spoke; he broke into her time by shouting over her. When she protested that she had not done the same to him, he shot back with all the finesse you’d hear in a middle school gym: ‘That’s ’cause you got nothin’ to say.’

“When it was his turn to speak, Trump got angry, pointed at her, swung his arms around with alarming force.”

His actions were widely mocked and criticized after the debate, and even featured in a “Saturday Night Live” skit that showed him zooming toward an unsuspecting Clinton.

“If a man did that to me on the street … I’d call 911,” political commentator and former Republican strategist Nicolle Wallace said, according to NBC News.

The New York Daily News headline the day after the debate read: “Grab a seat, loser.”

In the post-debate spin room, Clinton surrogates accused Trump of “menacingly stalking” the Democratic nominee. Two body language experts analyzed the debate and concluded Trump was trying to assert his power by roaming the stage while Clinton spoke.

“Trump’s constant pacing and restless movements around the stage attracted attention from Hillary’s words, and visually disrespected her physical presence on the stage, as in ‘I am big, you are small,’ ” David Givens, director of the Center for Nonverbal Studies, a nonprofit research center in Spokane, Wash., told The Post then.

And it worked. He won.

A guy on Twitter says maybe if she’d fought back she would have won.

If @HillaryClinton had turned on @realDonaldTrump in their 2nd TV debate & told him 'Back up you creep', as she wanted, she might have won.

— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) August 23, 2017

Right…because women telling men to back off is always so universally popular.

Trump’s bestie the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal wants his reporters to report JUST THE FACTS dammit, like “Trump said some words this evening,” not this stinking opinion crap. Objectivity, god damn it!

[Gerard] Baker, in a series of blunt late-night emails, criticized his staff over their coverage of Mr. Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix, describing their reporting as overly opinionated.

“Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” Mr. Baker wrote at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday morning to a group of Journal reporters and editors, in response to a draft of the rally article that was intended for the newspaper’s final edition.

The Post has more on the horror in Phoenix.

Before the Gilded Nazi took the stage, four stooges told the audience that he’s a great, lovely, loving, spiritual guy who loves all god’s children. Then he made a liar out of all of them. (They were Ben Carson, a niece of Martin Luther King, Franklin Graham, and Pence.)

Trump spent the first three minutes of his speech — which would drag on for 75 minutes — marveling at his crowd size, claiming that “there aren’t too many people outside protesting,” predicting that the media would not broadcast shots of his “rather incredible” crowd and reminiscing about how he was “center stage, almost from day one, in the debates.”

“We love those debates — but we went to center stage, and we never left, right?” the president said, reliving his glory days. “All of us. We did it together.”

Over the next 72 minutes, the president launched into one angry rant after another, repeatedly attacking the media and providing a lengthy defense of his response to the violent clashes in Charlottesville, between white supremacists and neo-Nazis and the counterprotesters who challenged them. He threatened to shut down the government if he doesn’t receive funding for a wall along the southern border, announced that he will “probably” get rid of the North American Free Trade Agreement, attacked the state’s two Republican senators, repeatedly referred to protesters as “thugs” and coyly hinted that he will pardon Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County who was convicted in July of criminal contempt in Arizona for ignoring a judge’s order to stop detaining people because he merely suspected them of being undocumented immigrants.

But he went on so long that some people left, and other people stopped paying attention.

Early in his speech, when Trump still had the attention of his followers, he recited his definition of what it means to be a Trump supporter.

“This evening, joined together with friends, we reaffirm our shared customs, traditions and values,” Trump began. “We love our country. We celebrate our troops. We embrace our freedom. We respect our flag. We are proud of our history. We cherish our Constitution — including, by the way, the Second Amendment. We fully protect religious liberty. We believe in law and order. And we support the incredible men and women of law enforcement. And we pledge our allegiance to one nation under God.”

The bugle-call of the far right – nationalism, militarism, flag-worship, theocracy, police-worship, theocracy mixed with nationalism. Not a word about equality, human rights, justice, environmental stewardship, sharing, caring, progress, compassion…

Minutes later, Trump transitioned to a topic that he would return to again and again.

“What happened in Charlottesville strikes at the core of America,” Trump said, appearing to read from the teleprompters placed on stage. “And tonight, this entire arena stands united in forceful condemnation of the thugs who perpetrate hatred and violence.”

Many in the crowd lit up at the use of the word “thugs” and applauded. Later in the evening, Trump would repeatedly use the same word to describe the protesters who showed up to his campaign rallies.

“But the very dishonest media,” Trump continued, “those people right up there, with all the cameras.”

He was cut off by loud booing. He smirked and nodded in agreement. A few people shouted, “Fake news!”

“I mean truly dishonest people in the media and the fake media, they make up stories,” Trump said. “ … They don’t report the facts. Just like they don’t want to report that I spoke out forcefully against hatred, bigotry and violence and strongly condemned the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and the KKK.”

Trump reached into his suit pocket and removed a different set of talking points.

“I’m really doing this to show you how damned dishonest these people are,” Trump said, promising that this would take “just a second” and would be “really fast.”

Trump then took more than 16 minutes to read the various statements that he made about Charlottesville over several days, noting the use of all-caps for one word and skipping over the part where he said that “many sides” were responsible for the violence. After reading each snippet, Trump would detail why that response was not good enough for the media.

“Why did it take a day? He must be a racist,” Trump said, the first of the five times he imitated people calling him a racist.

Along the way, Trump defended his use of Twitter and bragged that he went to “better schools” and lives “in a bigger, more beautiful apartment” than those who are considered elites. He said the “failing New York Times … is like so bad,” mocked CNN for its ratings and accused The Washington Post of being “a lobbying tool for Amazon” because the newspaper is owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos, who founded Amazon. The crowd repeatedly booed the reporters in their midst and chanted: “CNN sucks! CNN sucks!”

This is his “base.” It’s a small minority. Everybody knows it’s a small minority – yet Trump feels perfectly entitled to whip it into a frenzy in order to bully and intimidate the rest of us. It’s a small minority but it’s a heavily armed one.

“The media can attack me, but where I draw the line is when they attack you, which is what they do. When they attack the decency of our supporters,” Trump said, without explaining what he meant. “You are honest, hard-working, taxpaying — and by the way, you’re overtaxed, but we’re going to get your taxes down.”

Trump would return to taxes later — but first, he had to blame the media for “fomenting divisions” in the country, “trying to take away our history and our heritage” and “giving a platform to these hate groups.” He called reporters “sick people” and “really, really dishonest” and accused them of turning “a blind eye” to gang violence, public school failures and “terrible, terrible trade deals.”

“You would think they’d want to make our country great again, and I honestly believe they don’t,” he said. “I honestly believe it.”

Trump took a brief detour into immigration, prompting him to ask the crowd: “By the way, I’m just curious. Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe?”

The crowd burst into wild cheers, thinking that Trump was about to pardon Arpaio — something the press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had said just hours earlier would not happen that day.

“So, was Sheriff Joe convicted of doing his job?” Trump continued. “You know what? I’ll make a prediction. I think he’s going to be just fine, okay? But I won’t do it tonight, because I don’t want to cause any controversy. Is that okay?”

He’s pickling us all in his filth.

Trumpkin is in Phoenix for his “rally,” which starts in about half an hour. Many people there are dreading it; many are protesting it.

Large protests are expected near the president’s rally in downtown Phoenix on Tuesday night, his first such event since he drew wide condemnation for his comments on the violence in Charlottesville, Va., this month.

The rally, scheduled for 7 p.m. local time at the Phoenix Convention Center, is Mr. Trump’s first visit as president to Arizona, where he made fiery remarks on a signature issue — immigration — during his election campaign last year.

The state is home to high-profile supporters of Mr. Trump, like Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County who built a national reputation on his hard-line stance against undocumented immigrants and was recently convicted of criminal contempt of court. But it is also home to staunch critics of Mr. Trump, like Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain, both Republicans who have feuded openly with the president.

Amid the fallout from Mr. Trump’s assertion that “both sides” were to blame for the violent clashes in Charlottesville, and following the president’s suggestion that he could pardon Mr. Arpaio, Phoenix is bracing for throngs of protesters to come out in 100-degree heat.

But he’ll just look out at all the red cap wearers cheering him and think they’re all that counts.

The mayor of Phoenix, Greg Stanton, a Democrat, has urged Mr. Trump to delay his trip.

“America is hurting,” Mr. Stanton wrote Monday, in an opinion piece for the Washington Post. “And it is hurting largely because Trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline. With his planned visit to Phoenix on Tuesday, I fear the president may be looking to light a match.”

Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, was planning to greet Mr. Trump but not to attend the rally, according to the Arizona Republic.

Neither Mr. Flake nor Mr. McCain, both of whom last week tweeted about their apparentdisapproval of Mr. Trump’s comments on Charlottesville, is expected to attend. Mr. Trump called Mr. Flake, who is up for re-election next year, “toxic,” and praised the senator’s primary opponent on Twitter last week. And, during the same news conference when he commented at length on Charlottesville, Mr. Trump took a jab at Mr. McCain, who derailed the Republican health care bill with a dramatic thumb-down vote on the Senate floor last month: “You mean Senator McCain who voted against us getting good health care?”

Other than that, he’s a popular guy.

Trump and Mitch McConnell are not getting along at all.

The relationship between President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has disintegrated to the point that they have not spoken to each other in weeks, and Mr. McConnell has privately expressed uncertainty that Mr. Trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises.

What was once an uneasy governing alliance has curdled into a feud of mutual resentment and sometimes outright hostility, complicated by the position of Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine L. Chao, in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, according to more than a dozen people briefed on their imperiled partnership. Angry phone calls and private badmouthing have devolved into open conflict, with the president threatening to oppose Republican senators who cross him, and Mr. McConnell mobilizing to their defense.

…

In a series of tweets this month, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell publicly, then berated him in a phone call that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match.

During the call, which Mr. Trump initiated on Aug. 9 from his New Jersey golf club, the president accused Mr. McConnell of bungling the health care issue. He was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Republicans briefed on the conversation.

Classic Trump. I detest McConnell, but honestly – what narcissism it takes for Trump to expect him to protect him from the FBI.

Mr. McConnell has fumed over Mr. Trump’s regular threats against fellow Republicans and criticism of Senate rules, and questioned Mr. Trump’s understanding of the presidency in a public speech. Mr. McConnell has made sharper comments in private, describing Mr. Trump as entirely unwilling to learn the basics of governing.

Yes; wasn’t that always obvious? Did McConnell think Trump was going to change just because he won the election?

Mr. Trump has also continued to badger and threaten Mr. McConnell’s Senate colleagues, including Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, whose Republican primary challenger was praised by Mr. Trump last week.

Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He's toxic!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017

Mr. Trump was set to hold a campaign rally on Tuesday night in Phoenix, and Republicans feared he would use the event to savage Mr. Flake again.

If he does, senior Republican officials said the party’s senators would stand up for their colleague. A Republican “super PAC” aligned with Mr. McConnell released a web ad on Tuesday assailing Mr. Flake’s Republican rival, Kelli Ward, as a fringe-dwelling conspiracy theorist.

So it’s becoming a circular firing squad. Good.

The fury among Senate Republicans toward Mr. Trump has been building since last month, even before he lashed out at Mr. McConnell. Some of them blame the president for not being able to rally the party around any version of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, accusing him of not knowing even the basics about the policy. Senate Republicans also say strong-arm tactics from the White House backfired, making it harder to cobble together votes and have left bad feelings in the caucus.

Well, again – of course. He’s stupid and ignorant and lazy; of course he doesn’t know even the basics about the policy. Had they not noticed?

 The combination of the president’s frontal attacks on Senate Republicans and his claim that there were “fine people” marching with white supremacists in Charlottesville has emboldened lawmakers to criticize Mr. Trump in withering terms.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee rebuked Mr. Trump last week for failing to “demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence” required of presidents. On Monday, Senator Susan Collins of Maine said in a television interview that she was uncertain Mr. Trump would be the Republican presidential nominee in 2020.

Too bad they didn’t prevent him from becoming president.