Popular vote loser Donald Trump has been very busy his first week in office creating photo opportunities. He particularly seems to enjoy sitting in the Oval Office, surrounded by lackeys and looking presidential while putting his scrawl on orders making America torture again, making America a place without sanctuary again, making America paranoid again, making America disregard the lives of women, again. What Trump didn't do, predictably, is do the necessary homework to determine if any of these things are actually possible.

President Donald Trump’s team made little effort to consult with federal agency lawyers or lawmakers as they churned out executive actions this week, stoking fears the White House is creating the appearance of real momentum with flawed orders that might be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal.

The White House didn’t ask State Department experts to review Trump’s memorandum on the Keystone XL pipeline, even though the company that wants to build the pipeline is suing the U.S. for $15 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo were “blindsided” by a draft order that would require agencies to reconsider using interrogation techniques that are currently banned as torture, according to sources with knowledge of their thinking.

Just a small circle of officials at the Department of Health and Human Services knew about the executive action starting to unwind Obamacare, and only less than two hours before it was released. Key members of Congress weren’t consulted either, according to several members. And at a conference in Philadelphia, GOP legislators say they had no idea whether some of the executive orders would contrast with existing laws—because they hadn't reviewed them.

Colorado Democrats managed to snuff out an anti-LGBTQ “religious freedom” bill designed to give Christians special rights to discriminate. Brian Eason writes:

A state House panel for a third straight year rejected a Republican-led effort to expand religious freedom protections in Colorado, derailing an emotional fight over whether people should be able to deny services to someone on the basis of religion.

Religious freedom laws have been on the books in the U.S. since 1993, but in the last few years have been defined by a single issue: whether Christians should be able to refuse to provide wedding-related services to same-sex couples. [...]

But opponents call it a thinly veiled attempt to legalize discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. And, they fear a slippery slope — how far could someone go in claiming religious belief to justify ignoring anti-discrimination laws?

“At its core, the premise of this bill is to allow people to use religion to ignore laws they don’t want to follow,” said Kelly Brough, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Brough has it exactly right—these bills are slippery slope bills. If Christians successfully gain special rights to violate constitutionally protected rights of LGBTQ Americans, the sky’s the limit.

Yeah, our sitting president is nuts.

On the morning after Donald Trump’s inauguration, acting National Park Service director Michael T. Reynolds received an extraordinary summons: The new president wanted to talk to him.

In a Saturday phone call, Trump personally ordered Reynolds to produce additional photographs of the previous day’s crowds on the National Mall, according to three individuals who have knowledge of the conversation. The president believed that they might prove that the media had lied in reporting that attendance had been no better than average.

So Trump called the director of the National Park Service to demand that the government agency produce new photos that would prove Donald Trump's inaugural crowds were as big as Donald Trump personally imagined them to be. But the agency wasn't able to produce those pictures, because there is no camera yet invented which can photograph the contents of Donald Trump's ego-fueled delusions.

Reynolds was taken aback by Trump’s request, but did secure some additional aerial photographs and forwarded them to the White House through normal channels in the Interior Department, the sources said. The photos, however, did not prove Trump’s contention that the crowd size was upwards of 1 million.

So that's how Donald Trump spent his first morning in office. There's no word on whether Reynolds will be extradited to a Trump black ops prison for his failure to come up photographs to document the thing that didn't happen, but we can only imagine how displeased Donald is with him right now.

At the Republican retreat, which popular vote loser Donald Trump has upended by being Trump, job number one is figuring out just what it is they're going to do once they repeal Obamacare. It's going about as well as you'd expect.

Interviews with more than a dozen GOP lawmakers revealed a clash of expectations between rank-and-file lawmakers to get started in disassembling Obamacare and party leaders who are all too aware of the obstacles and difficult choices ahead.

"Exact, specific and detailed—that's what people want," said Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee. "We're going to own this stuff, and we better be able to explain it."

"I don't think you will see a plan," said Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi (R-Ohio), chairman of a key subcommittee on health care. "I think you will see components of a plan that are part of different pieces of legislation that will make up what will ultimately be the plan."

Translation: they don't know what in the fuck they're doing. The good news—and it is good news—is they finally actually realize that they're "going to own this stuff," and that they're not going to be bailed out by either their president or their Democratic colleagues. The chances that they figure out a way to just punt on this—pass something meaningless and declare victory—are increasing by the day.

Scientific results don’t have a party allegiance and under the Obama administration the EPA published a promise to release all data "uncompromised by political or other interference." But now that the agency is behind the Trump wall of information blackout, all science must first pass a political exam before it can escape.

The Trump administration is scrutinizing studies and data published by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, while new work is under a "temporary hold" before it can be released.

The screening covers all data currently published. It also covers any new data generated by the EPA, including data that was regularly and routinely passed along to other agencies and the public in the past under the theory that government works for the people.

As with so many actions of the Trump regime, there has been an attempt to normalize this suppression as something that happens with every transition. However ...

Former EPA staffers under both Republican and Democratic presidents said the restrictions imposed under Trump far exceed the practices of past administration.

And just in case you thought that public attention had made safe the EPA web pages that provide both an overview of climate change and access to the agency’s store of data.

Ericksen said no decisions have yet been made about whether to strip mentions of climate change from epa.gov

Gen. James Mattis is one of a handful of Trump’s cabinet nominees to have already been approved by the Senate. Even though it took a special legislative act to make Mattis eligible to fill the role of Defense secretary, his four decades in the Marine Corps and exemplary record helped Gen. Mattis earn respect on both sides of the aisle. Though some worried about the example of putting a recently retired military officer in charge of the military, Mattis was perhaps the only Trump nominee to earn acclaim from all quarters.

And now, just days later, it’s only right that he resign.

In his initial meeting with Donald Trump, Gen. Mattis clearly indicated his position on torture.

Trump said Mattis told him, " 'I've always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.' "

During his military career, Mattis came face to face with the results of torture and acted swiftly and forcefully to end its use.

Colleagues say the general’s handling of the episode reflects his firmly held views against torture and prisoner mistreatment, which are shared by many military leaders and could put them at odds with the new commander in chief.

If Mattis does not resign immediately, he will be party to not just the re-establishment of torture as an element of American policy, but the reinstitution of illegal black sites and the alteration of the Army Field Manual, forcing U.S. soldiers in the field to commit war crimes.

For his own honor, the honor of the armed services, and what remains of the honor of the nation, James Mattis must step down from his role as secretary of defense.

Unbelievable.

[David] Brock’s Florida conference outlined some of the philosophical fault lines. In one closed-door session, Chicago mayor and former Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel advocated a measured approach to Trump opposition, one in which Democrats choose only specific fights with a tight game plan.

If you can’t muster relentless and sustained opposition to a historically unpopular white supremacist president who lost the popular vote, then get the fuck out of my party. Trump may be the problem, but so are you. And Emanuel, who guided the White House to our party’s disastrous 2010 midterm elections, is a problem. If anyone should know the power of relentless opposition to a president, it should be him. He’s beyond hopeless, and so is anyone that invites him to speak at their event. (And remember, this is where our top-tier DNC Chair candidates were, instead of marching with the masses.)

If this brewing movement wants to be taken seriously, it’ll have to start taking out elected Democrats in primaries. It’s clear that millions marching in the streets ain’t getting it done. 

Fast food CEO Andy Puzder has hit yet another delay in his confirmation as Donald Trump’s labor secretary. His confirmation hearing has just been pushed back to February 7, the third time it’s been postponed.

Puzder, who hasn’t yet turned in his ethics paperwork, was also hit Thursday with 33 complaints against his company for wage theft, sexual harassment, and unfair labor practices.

“Several months ago my shift-manager asked me for a kiss, and when I said no he told me that unless I started giving him what he wanted, he was going to start taking it,” said Ceatana Cardona, one of the Hardee’s workers involved in the complaints from Tampa, FL, in a statement. But she said the company did nothing when she complained. Another homosexual male Carl’s Jr. worker in Oakland, CA, described being harassed by his manager, who told his coworkers and customers that he “likes boys” and used a feminized version of his name.

Workers also described being denied their full pay. “Recently the restaurant I worked at went an entire month without paying me a dime, and they only agreed to pay me after I stopped coming to work in protest,” said Angel Gallegos, a Carl’s Jr. employee in Los Angeles, CA, in a statement. “If Andy Puzder can’t be trusted to pay his workers what they’ve earned, why should we expect him to enforce laws meant to protect working Americans?” Another from Whittier, CA claims to have gone a month without a paycheck, while workers in Durham, NC say that because they were paid with debit cards that included transaction fees, their hourly pay ended up falling below the $7.25 minimum wage.

Fight for $15 also held protests across the country to draw attention to the workers’ complaints.

This is just revolting beyond measure. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who claims to be a member of the Democratic Party, recently took a secret freelance trip to Syria without informing either Paul Ryan or Nancy Pelosi, as would be customary. And on her return, she tried to keep up the secrecy, refusing to say whether she met with the country’s murderous autocratic president, Bashar al-Assad.

On Wednesday, with pressure mounting, she finally admitted she did just that, shocking the hell out of Republicans and Democrats alike. After all, who would grant Assad legitimacy like that? Yet Gabbard still refused to explain who had paid for her excursion—only to later claim it had been funded by an obscure group from Ohio (which is not, you might note, the state Gabbard represents) that doesn’t even have a functioning website.

But we don’t even need to know Gabbard’s true benefactor to know where her heart lies: with Assad. Following her visit, Gabbard issued a statement that will fill your throat with bile:

As I visited with people from across the country, and heard heartbreaking stories of how this war has devastated their lives, I was asked, "Why is the United States and its allies helping al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups try to take over Syria? Syria did not attack the United States. Al-Qaeda did." I had no answer. […]

I return to Washington, DC with even greater resolve to end our illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government. [...]

Originally, I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it. I think we should be ready to meet with anyone if there's a chance it can help bring about an end to this war, which is causing the Syrian people so much suffering.

The U.S. must stop supporting terrorists who are destroying Syria and her people. The U.S. and other countries fueling this war must stop immediately. We must allow the Syrian people to try to recover from this terrible war.

If there was ever any question about how Donald Trump's ahhhmazing negotiating skills would work out in the realm of foreign policy, Mexico's complete and total rejection Thursday of talks with our new pr*sident answered it. Now, the cost of the wall will be passed on to U.S. taxpayers one way or the other and Trump has likely sparked a trade war with Mexico in the process.

Remember Trump on the trail: 

"I know the best negotiators in the world."

"We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning."

"I will build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.”

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell today:

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said today that Congress will forge ahead with plans to approve funds for President Donald Trump's border wall, which they estimate will cost $12 billion to $15 billion.

"We intend to address the wall issue ourselves, and the president can deal with his relations with other countries on that issue and others," McConnell told reporters at a GOP policy retreat in Philadelphia.

That ship has sailed, McConnell. Trump, less than a week into being pr*sident, has already worked his magic. U.S. taxpayers now on the hook for tens of billions. Anyone bored with all the winning yet?

Can't wait to see Trump renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a draft executive order calling for a review of interrogation techniques banned under the Obama administration—and raising the possibility of reopening CIA secret torture sites—did, in fact, come from the White House. That’s contrary to the claims of presidential press secretary Sean Spicer, who said Wednesday that it did not.

The document in question, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times and The Washington Post, has sparked a considerable outcry on Capitol Hill, including criticisms from Sen. John McCain. The draft order also reportedly “blindsided” Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. 

The Journal cited an unnamed U.S. official as saying the draft order had been sent by White House officials to National Security Council staff for review. Whatever the source of the document, just the fact that it was being considered is disturbing. The attention given the document on Capitol Hill and elsewhere gave Pr*sident Trump another opportunity to express his views on torture:

“As far as I’m concerned, we have to fight fire with fire,” he said in an interview with ABC News. “I want to do everything within the bounds of what you’re allowed to do legally, but do I feel it works? Absolutely I feel it works.” [...]

After taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama ordered a review of interrogation methods. The resulting report, portions of which were released last month, found no support among national security officials for reinstituting so-called enhanced interrogation techniques or other abusive methods.