At his regular, end-of-session Capitol briefing on Friday, just before the Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell took a victory lap for himself. “As I look back on my career,” he said, “I think the most consequential decision I’ve ever been involved in was the decision to let the president being elected last year pick the Supreme Court nominee.”

That was indeed a masterstroke of power politics. But for my money, the most consequential decision of McConnell’s career (and, since this is McConnell we’re talking about, the most diabolical decision as well) came last summer—amid intense, classified, bipartisan discussions about how to respond to Russian election interference—and remained undisclosed until December.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

We learned last night from the New York Times that by the time of McConnell’s intervention, the CIA in particular was sounding its loudest alarms, and not just about nebulous “meddling.”

In an Aug. 25 briefing for Harry Reid, then the top Democrat in the Senate, [CIA Director John] Brennan indicated that Russia’s hackings appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election, according to two former officials with knowledge of the briefing. The officials said Mr. Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election.

We can’t be certain that Brennan shared the same concerns with McConnell, but it is hard to imagine why he wouldn’t. McConnell, like Reid, was among the handful of members of Congress receive regular briefings on highly classified intelligence. In either case, the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community sought a united front ahead of the fall against Russian election interference—whatever its nature—and McConnell shot it down.

You can fault the Obama White House, to some degree, for acquiescing to McConnell, but it’s worth noting that McConnell clearly understood his threat to be more ominous than simply a promise to call Obama mean names. The claim of partisanship would have implied that Obama was using contested intelligence to meddle in the election on Hillary Clinton’s behalf. This would have invited the press to summon yet-more dark clouds over both of them, and lead, most likely, to a new, urgent congressional investigation. Consider the media and GOP congressional response to the unfounded allegation that Susan Rice spied on Donald Trump, and you can see the Obama White House had good reason to take McConnell’s threat seriously.

The upshot is that McConnell drew a protective fence around Russian efforts to sabotage Clinton’s candidacy, by characterizing any effort to stop it as partisan politicization of intelligence at Trump’s expense.

Given the outcome of the election, I’d say this move was not only far more consequential than stealing a Supreme Court seat from Democrats, it was the key to the theft itself.

A month ago, President Donald Trump took credit for adding 235,000 jobs to the U.S. economy, touting a jobs report that exceeded expectations. It was absurd then, when the report clearly was still a reflection of the Obama administration, but White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer insisted Trump had “jumpstarted job creation not only because of his executive actions, but through the surge of economic confidence and optimism that has been inspired since his election.”

This imaginary surge evidently didn’t last long. On Friday, the economy added just 98,000 jobs when economists expected roughly 180,000, according to The New York Times. Calling this “a disappointing showing,” the paper noted, “The robust numbers in January and February led some analysts to conclude that the economy was benefiting from a ‘Trump bump’ after President Trump’s election, but hard data to support that argument has been scarce.” Democrats, predictably, pounced:

To Trump’s benefit, the jobs numbers are getting buried under coverage of his airstrikes on Syria. But if the press gets around to asking the president about this weak report, he can always revert to his campaign persona as the Holden Caulfield of economic denial: Jobs reports “are phony anyway.”

Trump’s bombing of a Syrian airbase on Thursday night has cable news all excited. Neocons in the Senate are suitably impressed. Even the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill is cautiously supportive, though they’re calling for consultation with Congress on any future military action. By Friday morning, the biggest backlash to Trump’s strike was coming from some of his strongest supporters—voices on the nationalist right who worry their president is abandoning his “America first” posture.

“It’s not something I expected. I’ll be honest with you,” Chris Buskirk, publisher of the pro-Trump website American Greatness, told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep on NPR. “It is something that the president and his administration needs to take the time to explain to the American people in general, to his voters in particular. I don’t think this is what a lot of people, both on the left and the right, expected from this administration, which was a quick jump into military action in Syria of all places.” Buskirk stressed that he wanted to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, but noted that further intervention in Syria would be “radically different than what he has talked about in the past—namely, not focusing on ISIS but focusing on the Assad regime itself.”

While Buskirk was skeptical about Trump’s strike, other prominent Trump supporters were even more critical. According to Politico, white nationalist Richard Spencer called the move “sad, shocking and deeply frustrating” while disgraced alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos described it as “FAKE and GAY.”

Plenty of Trump supporters are getting behind the president’s action. But a divide among his base, coming as Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner go to war with each other, will be another test of where his true loyalties lie.

The media has fallen over itself to praise the U.S.’s attack against Syria last night, with many mainstream pundits proclaiming that Donald Trump has finally “become president.” But perhaps the most egregious example of this rosy coverage came from the Times, which claimed, in a piece headlined “On Syria Attack, Trump’s Heart Came First,” that Trump was primarily motivated by his great sympathy for the Syrian people. Trump’s decision to drop 59 missiles on Syria, Mark Landler writes, was “an emotional act by a man suddenly aware that the world’s problems were now his—and that turning away, to him, was not an option.”

It’s true that Trump claimed that the images of Syrian children killed by chemical weapons had a “big impact” on him. But this is exactly the kind of boilerplate that leaders of all kinds use when they launch attacks against other countries. The reasons we go to war are always humanitarian. This is the oldest trick in the book. That Landler is so credulous is especially unbelievable when you consider that Trump tried to ban Syrian refugees—very much including children—from entering the United States. If his heart was full for the children of Syria, Trump could have, I don’t know, taken them in?

Worse still, there is zero proof that Trump actually believes this, other than what he has said publicly. It seems to have come solely from Landler’s imagination. In fact, the administration denies Landler’s interpretation of how things went down. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the Times, “I do not view it as an emotional reaction at all.” This is, of course, an attempt to build a narrative that Trump is steely, presidential, in control. (Axios Presented By Raytheon reports that the strikes are part of Trump’s “leadership week,” the aim of which is to prove that he is a leader.) But thanks to the Times, Trumps gets to have it both ways: He is in control and his heart bleeds.

Late Thursday evening, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk missiles into a Syrian airbase that was reportedly responsible for chemical weapons attacks in the country earlier in the week. The airstrike marked the first direct action taken by America in Syria’s horrific six-year civil war—and a major escalation of the United States’s long-simmering conflict with Syrian Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian backers. “Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types,” Donald Trump said in a short televised statement. “We ask for God’s wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed.”

The decision to bomb Syria came after a week of confusion and mixed signals from the White House. A week ago, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested that the United States was OK with Assad remaining in power—a move that may have contributed to Assad’s decision to use chemical weapons. And immediately after the chemical weapons attack, the Trump administration blamed the Obama administration for Assad’s action. All of this was largely in line with what Trump had said on the campaign trail, that he thought that intervention in Syria was a mistake.

It was only on Wednesday that the Trump administration began to change its tune on Syria. Trump said the use of chemical weapons “crossed many lines.” A day later, America was bombing Syria.

The response from cable news was monolithic and alarming. NBC’s Brian Williams unironically quoted an ironic Leonard Cohen lyric about the horror of war and described the missiles as “beautiful.” Many people, including CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, said that Donald Trump “became president” on this, his 75th day day in office—they conveniently forgot all the other times they said that he became president, like when he nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, gave his State of the Union address, and actually became president.

It remains to be seen whether this is a largely symbolic, one-off operation, or if this attack is going to ensnare Trump in a series of escalations, which is what tends to happen when you let the U.S. military get a taste. One retired general told CNN, “This is not like Kentucky basketball—one and done. This is the start of a series of operations.” Despite what practically everyone on cable television said last night, this is a very risky decision, one whose implications will not be clear for quite a while.

It’s possible that, by bombing Syria—particularly in such an unpredictable fashion—the United States can create a real red line in Syria. But it will all depend on what happens next. The situation in Syria may very well be the most complicated international conflict in several decades—the players not only include Assad, who is clearly not relinquishing powers, but Iran and Russia, who are standing beside him for their own reasons. The opposition to Assad is currently dominated by Islamists, which is one reason why the U.S. did not intervene beyond sending small arms before this moment.

In other words, it only gets much more complicated from here. Bringing this conflict to some kind of satisfactory resolution will take an extremely sophisticated diplomatic-cum-military policy. And as we’ve seen again and again over the past eleven weeks, Trump does not do complicated. The risk is that Trump makes the situation even worse by adding another belligerent power—his own.

Congressman Trey Gowdy is very unhappy with all the unsubstantiated accusations of criminal activity emanating from Congress and the White House, where people aren’t tasked with investigating crimes.

“Congress doesn’t investigate crime,” he told Greta Van Susteren. “I don’t like it when anybody accuses other people of committing crimes.... When you accuse people of committing crimes, that’s serious and it’s not Congress’ job to investigate that.”

This will come as a tremendous surprise to anyone who was alive six months ago, when Gowdy was the chairman of the House Benghazi Committee and issued this statement about Hillary Clinton and her private email server: “There is sufficient evidence, both direct and circumstantial, upon which a jury could conclude an intent to violate the law.”

In case you were not already convinced that GOP conduct during the last election was grosser than normal campaign-season hardball politics.

Whether the president and congressional Republicans will intentionally sabotage the Affordable Care Act remains an open question, weeks after Trumpcare failed. But Trump really does seem to have convinced himself that intentionally creating a health insurance market failure will be good politics for him somehow. In an interview with New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush, Trump explained his reasoning.

“Obamacare is not sustainable. It’s over. It will be anywhere from six months to a year. It’s over. It’s over. Now, if I want to deal with Democrats, Glenn, if I want to deal with Democrats, all I have to do is let it go a little further. You know, you have many states now, you have many states coming up where they’re going to have no insurance company. O.K.? It’s already happened in Tennessee. It’s happening in Kentucky. Tennessee only has half coverage. Half the state is gone. They left. But I’d rather solve it in a much better way for the country.”

Let’s take Trump’s two examples as illustrative. Between Tennessee and Kentucky, there are three Democratic Congressmen (out of 15 total) and zero Democratic senators. His theory of politics follows underpants gnome logic.

1. Kick rural, near-poor GOP voters off of their health insurance.

2. ???

3. Cut a deal with Democrats and win re-election on the issue of health care.

Needless to say, polls show this theory of politics is a bit like using a suicide vest to rob a bank. Everyone would be better off if he just reconsidered.

In Fast Five, the characters steal millions of dollars from a Brazilian crime lord by dragging a giant metal safe out of a police station with two cars. In Fast & Furious 6, they steal a computer chip by driving into the world’s largest plane as it takes off from a runway. In Furious 7, they steal a flash drive from a really nice car by driving it through three skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi. The GOP’s heist to take back Antonin Scalia’s seat is even more incredible and convoluted than any of the heists in these very good movies.

It all started in February 2016 in a ranch in west Texas, where Scalia was found dead, clutching pages of the U.S. Constitution in his cold fingers (okay, not really). Barack Obama then moved to fill Scalia’s seat by nominating Merrick Garland, one of those normcore white guys respected by both sides of the aisle. Republicans responded by refusing to even hold a hearing, citing a non-existent precedent that presidents can’t nominate Supreme Court justices in election years.

Then, the GOP used the threat of a liberal taking Scalia’s Supreme Court seat to help get a crazy old man who watches Fox News all day elected as the president of the United States. (For a moment, when it looked like Trump would not be elected, the GOP hinted they would prefer to confirm Garland instead of another, possibly more liberal judge nominated by Hillary Clinton.) Though Trump lost the popular vote by three million ballots, the GOP took his victory as a mandate to nominate an arch-conservative, Neil Gorsuch, to Scalia’s seat.

Senate Democrats protested the blatant theft of what was rightfully theirs by filibustering Gorsuch. Dungeon master Mitch McConnell, who led the way in the Obama years by violating norm after norm in the Senate, then made good on his threats to do away with the filibuster altogether, dropping a nuclear bomb on it. By Friday night, Neil Gorsuch will be be confirmed to the Supreme Court, completing the greatest political heist of our time. Cue Don Omar’s “Danza Kuduro” featuring Lucenzo.

Well, this is awkward. On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency sent out a press release honoring the winners of the annual “Energy Star Partner of the Year Award,” given to businesses and organizations that excel in energy efficiency. In the release, which previews a gala for award winners later this month, the EPA praised the Energy Star program as “America’s resource for saving energy and protecting the environment.”

President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating the program, which sets voluntary efficiency standards for various products like electronics and buildings. If businesses choose to have their products meet those standards, they get Energy Star certified. The Environmental Defense Fund has called Energy Star “one of the most successful and noncontroversial energy-related programs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ever managed.”

The EPA seems to agree. In its press release, it said the program not only helps the environment, but saves consumers money. “In 2015 alone, Energy Star and all of its partners saved American families and businesses $34 billion on energy bills, while helping states achieve their air quality goals,” the EPA said.

Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, should expect an angry call from the White House any minute now.

Update: EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman says in an email: “We are still working through future plans for the Energy Star program. The Annual Gala this year was planned long before the release of the President’s Blueprint for the Budget. EPA will continue to find ways to partner with stakeholders in the private sector to innovate, improve our environment, and strengthen our economy.”