Kate Brannen at Foreign Policy says it’s become clear that it’s Bannon who’s running the show.

Even before he was given a formal seat on the National Security Council’s “principals committee” this weekend by President Donald Trump, Bannon was calling the shots and doing so with little to no input from the National Security Council staff, according to an intelligence official who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.

That seems healthy. A week in, and people are afraid of retribution, and the guy calling the shots is a guy who built a new career on racism.

“He is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,” the official said. He described a work environment where

Is Trump planning to do an anti-LGB executive order? Spicer refuses to deny it.

Is Donald Trump getting ready to take executive action that would screw over his treasured LGBTQ constituency—the very citizens he promised to protect on the campaign trail? It was a charge that White House press secretary Sean Spicer couldn’t deny during Monday’s briefing, writes Towleroad.

Spicer responded to a question from Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade at today’s briefing.

Said Spicer:

“I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue. There’s a lot of executive orders, a lot of things the president has talked about and will continue to fulfill but we have nothing on that front now…”

To make it all worse, there’s every reason to think Trump is psychologically, intellectually, and emotionally incapable of learning from failures or paying attention to criticism. Goldwater “Rule” or no Goldwater rule, it’s hard to deny that he’s a Malignant Narcissist. Malignant Narcissists don’t listen to no stinkin criticism.

Until recently, it was illegal for psychologists to assess public figures and talk to journalists about their findings. But this rule has now changed, and mental health experts are speaking out about Trump.

Ah no. It wasn’t illegal – how could it have been? No, it was a professional rule, and I gather that professionals considered it pretty binding, but that’s very far from “illegal.” At any rate the extreme … Read the rest

Shame on Theresa May.

(I’ve never liked that phrase – “shame on ___.” But I’m afraid it’s going to become indispensable in our new reality.)

She is refusing to tell Donald Trump to forget about that state visit. Well she damn well should tell him that.

US President Donald Trump’s planned state visit to the UK will go ahead no matter how many people sign a petition against it, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday.

More than a million people have so far called for the visit to be cancelled.

The petition, if accepted by Parliament, will force MPs to debate the motion: “Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom.”

However, Theresa

Remember the soothing murmurs before and even after the election that “checks and balances” would prevent Trump from getting away with authoritarian excesses? I do.

The Times points out the obvious fact that there don’t seem to be any.

By circumventing normal practices for formulating policies and their execution, the White House has created still-swirling confusion about whom the order targets and how it will be enforced. There is also ambiguity about the legality of the order, which the White House calls extreme vetting but which critics call a Muslim ban, and about how court challenges, already underway, will proceed.

For many abroad, the ban raised questions about how an American president could undertake such an action suddenly and

Google is observing Fred Korematsu Day today.

Korematsu tried to enlist after Pearl Harbor, but instead he was interned. Today is his birthday and recognized as Fred Korematsu Day in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida.

The illustration, known as the Google doodle, comes a day after Google established a $4 million fund for the American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, International Rescue Committee and UNHCR.

The ACLU has been one of the main organizations fighting Donald Trump‘s executive order to temporarily ban travel for immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — and temporarily halt the entry of refugees into the United States.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose

Kellyanne Conway thinks journalists who diss Trump should be fired.

Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to President Donald Trump, on Sunday continued the administration’s attack against the media by claiming that network television reporters and commentators who “talked smack” about Trump before the election should be fired.

“Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go,” Conway said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m too polite to mention their names, but they know who they are, and they are all wondering who will be the first to go. The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go.”

It turns out that we have it all wrong, the Trumpets are an incredibly inclusive buncha folks.

The White House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day didn’t mention Jews or anti-Semitism because “despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered,” administration spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN on Saturday.

Right down to the little children in Omaha who had to cut way back on candy for the duration.

Hicks provided a link to a Huffington Post UK story noting that while 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, 5 million others were also slaughtered during Adolf Hitler’s genocide, including “priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical

Again, Trump blames the media for reporting what he’s doing, and tells the lie that the media are lying.

With thousands of protesters marching outside the White House and thronging the streets of Washington and other cities, Mr. Trump late Sunday defended his order. “To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting,” he said in a written statement. “This is not about religion — this is about terror and keeping our country safe.”

Liar.

While Mr. Trump denied that his action was targeted against Muslims, just hours earlier he made clear on Twitter that he was concerned about Christian refugees. Part of his order gives preferential treatment to Christians who try to

What Trump found it worth saying on Twitter today, in the midst of the firestorm set off by his deranged ban on refugees:

Somebody with aptitude and conviction should buy the FAKE NEWS and failing @nytimes and either run it correctly or let it fold with dignity!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

One minute he’s throwing his toys out of the pram, the next minute he’s ruining the lives of thousands of people by signing a dictatorial order.… Read the rest

More on Bannon’s elevation:

President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum Saturday that removed the nation’s top military and intelligence advisers as regular attendees of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, the interagency forum that deals with policy issues affecting national security.

The executive measure established Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon as a regular attendee, whereas the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence will be allowed to participate only “where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed.”

The two core experts are demoted while the loony neofascist amateur takes their place.

John McCain says it’s unprecedented. Not everything unprecedented is bad, but this? This is bad.

John Bellinger,

I think what Trump is doing with the ban order is a variation on the availability heuristic – on looking for your keys under the lamp post even though you dropped them 20 feet away, because the light is better under the lamp post. I think he’s thinking, stupidly, that if you’re just harsh enough, you will have Great Success in preventing terrorist incidents in your vicinity.

He’s also reasoning backward while dropping a slew of relevant details in the process. He’s reasoning from “people whose parents immigrated from Mooslim countries have blown people up or away in Paris and Brussels and London” to “therefore if we ban people from a few Mooslim countries, even though they’re not the relevant… Read the rest

Steve Bannon on the National Security Council.

I wish that were a joke, but it’s not.

Trump has given Bannon a regular seat at the NSC, while making other people part-timers.

President Donald Trump granted controversial adviser Steve Bannon a regular seat at meetings of the National Security Council on Saturday, in a presidential memorandum that brought the former Breitbart publisher into some of the most sensitive meetings at the highest levels of government.

The president named Bannon to the council in a reorganization of the NSC. He also said his chief-of-staff Reince Priebus would have a seat in the meetings.

Trump also said the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence, two

A judge has blocked part of Trump’s executive order.

A federal judge blocked part of President Trump’s executive order on immigration on Saturday evening, ordering that refugees and others trapped at airports across the United States should not be sent back to their home countries. But the judge stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s actions.

Lawyers who sued the government to block the White House order said the decision, which came after an emergency hearing in a New York City courtroom, could affect an estimated 100 to 200 people who were detained upon arrival at American airports in the wake of the order that Mr. Trump

I just want to pause for a moment to point out what a disgusting photo this is. If they’d tried to put in every slap in the face to humane people they could think of, this is what they would have come up with.

 … Read the rest

Malala speaks up:

Malala Yousafzai’s statement on President Trump’s latest executive order on refugees:

“I am heartbroken that today President Trump is closing the door on children, mothers and fathers fleeing violence and war. I am heartbroken that America is turning its back on a proud history of welcoming refugees and immigrants — the people who helped build your country, ready to work hard in exchange for a fair chance at a new life.

I am heartbroken that Syrian refugee children, who have suffered through six years of war by no fault of their own, are singled-out for discrimination.

I am heartbroken for girls like my friend Zaynab, who fled wars in three countries — Somalia, Yemen and Egypt

Trump says his Nazi-style ban on refugees is working “nicely.” His stupidity is exceeded only by his callous indifference to the miseries of anyone who isn’t Donald Trump.

The fallout from President Trump’s temporary ban on refugees to the U.S. struck with full force Saturday, blocking some travelers from boarding their planes overseas, compelling others to turn around upon arrival in the U.S., and prompting customs agents at New York’s JFK Airport to detain at least a dozen people, including a former Iraqi translator for the U.S. military in Baghdad.

The growing chaos also sparked legal challenges, airport protests, condemnations from politicians and denunciations from advocacy groups.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Saturday tweeted an offer of support to those

… Read the rest

The Times reports on the horrors Trump has unleashed.

President Trump’s executive order on immigration quickly reverberated through the United States and across the globe on Saturday, slamming the border shut for an Iranian scientist headed to a lab in Boston, an Iraqi who had worked as an interpreter for the United States Army, and a Syrian refugee family headed to a new life in Ohio, among countless others.

Around the nation, security officers at major international gateways had new rules to follow. Humanitarian organizations scrambled to cancel long-planned programs, delivering the bad news to families who were about to travel. Refugees who were airborne on flights when the order was signed were detained at airports.

Reports rapidly surfaced