The president has signed a bill that opens the door to defunding the organization, The Hill reports. He has repealed an Obama-era measure that prohibited states from passing politically motivated bills to defund medical providers.

Anti-abortion activists are already praising the order. Via The Hill, a statement from Marjorie Dannenfelser, head of Susan B. Anthony List:

“Prioritizing funding away from Planned Parenthood to comprehensive health care alternatives is a winning issue,” Dannenfelser said in a statement. “We expect to see Congress continue its efforts to redirect additional taxpayer funding away from Planned Parenthood through pro-life health care reform after the spring recess.”

This is partially thanks to the work of Mike Pence, who broke a tie in the Senate to pass the bill in question. He has reason to know better: Indiana suffered an HIV outbreak after it defunded Planned Parenthood, which provides a host of necessary medical services. But the Trump administration never lets facts interfere with its policymaking. And legally, they occupy an excellent position.

Two weeks ago, this all would have been a dead end. Courts have repeatedly rebuffed state attempts to defund Planned Parenthood. But Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court alters the legal calculus—and that means the abortion provider’s funding may now be in real danger. So much for Cecile Richards’s meeting with noted Secret Liberal, Ivanka Trump.

Republican Representative Andy Biggs was forced to defend his rampant denial of mainstream climate science during a raucous town hall in Mesa, Arizona, on Tuesday. Biggs, a House Freedom Caucus member, made the widely-debunked claim that climate scientists “manipulated data” to prove the existence of manmade global warming. His audience jeered and booed him.

That irked Biggs. “It’s hard to get to the point because you want to shout me down,” he said. As the crowd continued its ruckus, Biggs compared his plight to Albert Einstein, whose theories were attacked vociferously before they were accepted and applauded. “Oddly enough,” Biggs told the audience, “the same attitude you take is the exact same attitude that Einstein faced over physics. That’s exactly what happened to him. They shouted him down until he was able to demonstrate.”

This prompted one audience member to yell: “You’re not Einstein!”

Biggs, who chairs the House Science Committee’s subcommittee on the environment, has never been shy about his climate-change denial. “I do not believe climate change is occurring,” he said in 2016. “I do not think that humans have a significant impact on climate. The federal government should stop regulating and stomping on our economy and freedoms in the name of a discredited theory.” Last month, he helped lead a House Science Committee hearing to attack the legitimacy of mainstream climate science.

On Tuesday, Biggs said he’s “read stuff” from “tenured professors” who disagree that humans are the primary cause of climate change. There are indeed climate scientists who disagree with the mainstream view that humans cause the problem, but they make up only 3 percent of active, publishing climate researchers.

Sanders, a Democratic strategist, shut down pro-Trump pundit Jeffrey Lord on CNN on Thursday after he compared the president to the civil rights icon. Worse, Lord drew the parallel in defense of Trump’s threat to freeze healthcare subsidies for poor Americans if Democrats in Congress don’t compromise with him to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Sanders admonished Lord to “not equate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a humanitarian, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner, to the vagina-grabbing president Donald Trump.”

Reached by phone, Sanders was still stunned by Lord’s comments. “I was like, ‘Is he really going there?’” she said. “Donald Trump is saying, ‘I’m going to withhold healthcare and possibly kill people if I don’t get my own way.’ That’s not the same thing.”

Sanders said Republicans have done nothing to convince Democrats to negotiate over health care. “Democrats are in a very good position here to hold the line,” she said. “Democrats are only coming to the table to build on the enormous success of the Affordable Care Act, not to tear it down.”

Thursday’s episode was just the latest blunder by Trump defenders this week, after White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s epic Holocaust gaffe on Tuesday.

“There are just some things you don’t invoke—Hitler, MLK, I’d say Gandhi is up there as well,” she said. “Just steer clear. Steer clear.”

As a businessman, President Donald Trump made his name by hawking products and services that sounded glitzy and fabulous but were actually very bad. (See: Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines.) So it makes perfect sense that the restaurant at his so-called “Winter White House” is no different.

The Miami Herald on Thursday published the most recent inspection reports from Mar-a-Lago’s kitchen, which show 13 violations, including some that are just plain dangerous. Some highlights:

▪ Fish designed to be served raw or undercooked, the inspection report reads, had not undergone proper parasite destruction. Kitchen staffers were ordered to cook the fish immediately or throw it out.

▪ In two of the club’s coolers, inspectors found that raw meats that should be stored at 41 degrees were much too warm and potentially dangerous: chicken was 49 degrees, duck clocked in at 50 degrees and raw beef was 50 degrees. The winner? Ham at 57 degrees.

▪ The club was cited for not maintaining the coolers in proper working order and was ordered to have them emptied immediately and repaired.

In other words, not only is it ethically gross for a president to be hosting foreign leaders at his own resort, it’s also generally gross too.

In 2000 Donald Trump famously told Fortune magazine, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” This statement dogged Trump for much of his successful 2016 campaign, with GOP consultant Rick Wilson labeling his effort a “scampaign,” the goal being self-enrichment rather than victory. Regardless of whether or not greed was a motivating factor for Trump (it was), it’s now clear that many of Trump’s staffers—especially in the early days, when few respectable political types would join the circus—were essentially grifting.

Two of the biggest grifters are also exhibits A and B in the Trump-Russia conspiracy: Carter Page and Paul Manafort. On Thursday, The New York Times reported that Manafort and his wife borrowed $13 million from Trump-affiliated businesses on the day he resigned as chairman of Trump’s campaign:

That morning, he stepped down from guiding Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, after a brief tenure during which Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination, Democrats’ emails were hacked and the campaign’s contacts with Russia came under scrutiny. Dogged by revelations about past financial dealings in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort retreated from public view.

But behind the scenes, he was busy with other matters. Papers were recorded that same day creating a shell company controlled by Mr. Manafort that soon received $13 million in loans from two businesses with ties to Mr. Trump, including one that partners with a Ukrainian-born billionaire and another led by a Trump economic adviser. They were among $20 million in loans secured by properties belonging to Mr. Manafort and his wife.

This is exceptional for a number of reasons, the biggest being that Manafort secured $13 million in loans on the day he resigned from the campaign for having questionable financial ties. According to the Times, the loans were likely used to keep Manafort afloat after he sunk money into a failed venture with his son-in-law.

This story fits like a puzzle piece with another featuring Carter Page that was published earlier this week in The Washington Post, which detailed surveillance of Page during the election:

In one secretly recorded conversation, detailed in the complaint, [suspected Russian spy Victor] Podobnyy said Page “wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. Plus he writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language. He flies to Moscow more often than I do. He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up. Maybe he can. I don’t know, but it’s obvious that he wants to earn lots of money.’’

Page, who seems to be a deeply stupid man, attempted to explain himself this morning. It did not go well.

Hoo boy. Page is not only unable to explain how he came to work for Donald Trump, but also unable to deny that he discussed the easing of sanctions with Russia while working for Trump (which means he almost certainly did).

It is important to remember that no one expected Trump to win when Manafort and Page went to work with him. Manafort and Page are essentially grifters, going from one well-paid con to another, and both saw Trump’s campaign, which they did not expect to be successful, as a way to gain influence that they could then trade for more money. That doesn’t necessarily preclude the possibility that they were Russian agents or the tools of Russian agents, but it suggests that they may have been running their mouths off to Russian agents because they were looking for their next grift. Trump was going to lose, after all, and they had to start looking for the next big pay day.

It would be going too far to say President Trump’s top budget guy is happy to brag about how his boss is an easily manipulable dupe. But not much.

Over the course of an important interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney repeatedly betrays the fact that his ideological goals (as a movement conservative, and founding-member of the House Freedom Caucus) differ from Trump’s campaign promises in many ways—but that he thinks he can outmaneuver his boss.

Here’s how Mulvaney describes his budget-writing process, which culminated in a policy blueprint that would devastate Trump’s core supporters.

I laid to him the options that Mick Mulvaney would put on a piece of paper. And he looked at one and said, “What is that?” And I said, “Well, that’s a change to part of Social Security.” He said, “No. No.” He said, “I told people I wouldn’t change that when I ran. And I’m not going to change that. Take that off the list.” So I get a chance to be Mick Mulvaney. I get a chance to have those same principles. And I give ‘em to the president, and he makes the final decisions.

Mulvaney makes no effort to hide the fact that Trump’s policy knowledge is rudimentary, but tries to suggest that Trump knows where his red lines are and won’t knowingly cross them. Fortunately, as Mulvaney lets on, he can be fooled into crossing them!

First, Trump’s proposal to abolish the Appalachian Regional Commission.

[H]e probably didn’t know what the Appalachian Regional Commission did. I was able to convince him, “Mr. President, this is not an efficient use of the taxpayer dollars. This is not the best way to help the people in West Virginia.” He goes, “OK, that’s great. Is there a way to get those folks the money in a more efficient way?” And the answer is yes.

On persuading Trump to cut Social Security.

HARWOOD: I’ve had interviews with Republicans from Paul Ryan to John Thune who have been making the case that “we are going to persuade the president that we have to do something about entitlements.” How are you going to manage that?

MULVANEY: We’re working on it right now. He went through the list and said, “No, that’s Social Security. That violates my promise. Take that off. That’s Medicare. That violates my promise. Take that off.”

HARWOOD: Is Social Security Disability on that list?

MULVANEY: I don’t think we’ve settled yet.

On reviving Medicare privatization.

MULVANEY: My guess is the House will do either that or something similar to that.

HARWOOD: Because of his pledge, President Trump would veto it?

MULVANEY: That’s not a really conducive way to sort of maintain a relationship between the executive and the administrative branch. Let them pass that and let’s talk about it.

On using a debt limit increase as a vehicle for entitlement reform.

There’s a lot of entitlement reform other than just how old do you have to be to get your Social Security benefits.

I don’t assume Trump will fall for all of these tricks, and I definitely don’t assume the GOP Congress if functional enough to present Trump with promise-breaking bills that he can be fooled into signing. But to the extent that he ever had a chance to become a paradigm-shifting president, he blew it when he picked a bunch of ideologically orthodox conservatives, with grander commitments and ulterior motives to run his policy operation. They think he’s the sucker, and with good reason.

This is not how the Trump administration thought its first meeting with Vladimir Putin would go. To be fair, it’s not how anyone thought the Trump administration’s first meeting with Putin would go. Instead of meeting as chums—and possible allies in the war against ISIS—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Putin on Wednesday amidst heightened tensions, after the United States bombed Russia’s ally Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad’s sarin gas attack. The bombing, moreover, came less than a week after Tillerson signaled to Assad and Putin that the United States was effectively ceding Syria to Russia’s sphere of influence. The already incomprehensibly complex situation in Syria is now more incomprehensibly complex than ever.

Some wondered if the long-planned meeting between Tillerson and Putin would be canceled. But that was not the case—Tillerson met with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for nearly four hours before heading to the Kremlin to meet with the man himself. Sure, Putin on Wednesday essentially dared the United States to strike Syria again, but these meetings suggest that relations with Russia have not deteriorated to the extent that some people have claimed. Whether that’s a result of the overtures that Trump made during the campaign is anyone’s guess. After all, the last three U.S. presidents have pledged better relations with Russia and all three have been disappointed.

The Fox Business Network anchor on Wednesday gave a master class in how to butter up the president, who reciprocated by divulging intimate details of what it was like to order last week’s strike against a Syrian airfield. (“I will tell you, only because you’ve treated me so good for so long,” Trump said, making the transactional nature of the conversation explicit.) The press has already praised the beauty of the missiles raining down on Syria and informed us of Trump’s overwhelming compassion for Syria’s children, so Bartiromo had to dig a little deeper to unearth new information that would allow Trump to bask in this glorious moment a little longer. She homed in on his dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, which was when the strike was ordered.

Here is a breakdown of how Bartiromo got the goods.

1. Bartiromo: When you’re with the president of China, you’re launching these military strikes. Was that planned? How did that come about? Because right there you’re saying: A reminder, who the super power in the world is.

A perfect opening move. Trump is a notoriously insecure man, and it’s hard to imagine a more ego-stroking remark, one that sets Trump up as the big boy to Xi’s little wimp. Also, Bartiromo’s facial expression is at a 7 on the sycophancy scale.

2. Bartiromo: When did you tell him? Before dessert or? ...

It’s not the substance of the question so much as the schoolgirl giddiness with which she asks it. Facial expression at a 9 on the sycophancy scale.

3. Trump: We had finished dinner, we’re now having dessert, and we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen [indicates size with hands: it’s a big cake], and President Xi was enjoying it, and I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded—what do you do? And we made a determination to do [it]. So the missiles were on the way. And I said, “Mr. President, let me explain something to you.” This is during dessert. “We’ve just fired 59 missiles,” all of which hit by the way, unbelievable, from hundreds of miles away, all of which hit, amazing...

Bartiromo: Unmanned.

Trump: So incredible. It’s brilliant, it’s genius, our technology, our equipment, is better than anybody’s by a factor of five. What we have in terms of technology nobody can even come close to competing.

Trump’s digression about the chocolate cake is what has received the most attention this morning. But Bartiromo’s subtle goading allowed Trump to wax poetic about the military as if it were one of his hotels—the best, the biggest, etc.—which in turn allowed Trump to condemn Barack Obama for cutting defense spending and George W. Bush for invading Iraq. Also, yes, missiles are generally “unmanned.”

4. Trump: We’ve just launched 59 missiles, heading to Iraq.

Bartiromo: Well, you, ah, headed to Syria.

Trump: Yes, heading toward Syria.

This is the best part. Trump can remember the size of the chocolate cake he was eating and how good it felt to squeeze off a few missiles at the hazy area off the coast of his mind known as the Middle East, but he can’t remember the actual country he bombed. Bartiromo swooped in to help, but her face registered a 2 on the sycophancy scale.

5. Bartiromo: How did he react?

Again, it’s not the question itself, but the unctuous eagerness with which she asks it. A 10 on the scale.

6. Trump: He said to me, “Anybody that uses gasses”—you could almost say, “or anything else”—but “anybody who was so brutal and uses gasses, to do that to young children and babies, it’s OK.”

Bartiromo: He agreed.

Trump: He was OK with it.

Never mind the almost childlike use of the word “gasses” to describe chemical weapons. Never mind that strange aside “you could almost say, ‘or anything else,’” which seems to imply Trump believes retaliation is warranted whenever children are killed. We’re talking about Xi Jinping, whose government has tortured and imprisoned dissidents and repressed civil society groups. All hopes that China would move in a more liberal direction have been dashed under his rule. And Xi is the arbiter of whether a humanitarian strike is justified? But Bartiromo doesn’t question, she merely puts Trump’s word salad into a succinct phrase: “He agreed.”

The latest is Kevin Hassett, a tax expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who was tapped late last week to be the president’s chief economic advisor. Hassett has expressed support for a carbon tax, which is essentially a way to make polluters pay for the damage they cause to the global climate.

If confirmed by the Senate, Hassett would join a small but growing circle of Trump advisers who are annoying Steve Bannon with their support for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through tax reform. Gary Cohn, director of the White House Economic Council, reportedly floated the idea, as did Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk when he was advising Trump. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also advocated for a national carbon tax policy while he was the CEO at Exxon Mobil.

But discussions of a carbon tax have so far not gone over well. A few weeks ago, an anonymous administration official told the Washington Post a carbon tax was being considered, which caused enough of a ruckus that a White House spokesperson flatly denied it hours later. But the rift in the White House between the carbon-tax moderates and right-wingers is apparently ongoing: Axios reported today that Bannon and his allies refer to Cohn in text messages as “CTC” (for “Carbon Tax Cohn”) or with an emoji: 🌎.