There are factions in the White House.

Inside the White House, they are dismissed by their rivals as “the Democrats.”

Outspoken, worldly and polished, this coterie of ascendant Manhattan business figures-turned-presidential advisers is scrambling the still-evolving power centers swirling around President Trump.

Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell — two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s eldest daughter and his son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing colleagues.

Of course this is all relative. “Worldly and polished” compared to Trump…which could mean not all that worldly and polished by most standards.

On the other side are the Republican populists driving much of Trump’s nationalist agenda and confrontations, led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has grown closer to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers.

Populist shmopulist. The unabashed misogynist racists, is what they mean. Bannon used to be a banker himself, and he can do “worldly and polished” if he chooses to.

For the most part so far, the ideologues are winning. One revealing episode came as Trump weighed where he would travel this past Wednesday following an auto industry event in Michigan.

Would he jet to New York at the invitation of Canada’s progressive hero, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to attend a Broadway performance of “Come From Away,” a musical that showcases the generosity of foreigners?

Or would he fly to Nashville to dip his head in reverence at the gravesite of Andrew Jackson and yoke himself to the nationalist legacy of America’s seventh president?

The nationalist racist genocidal legacy. The New York faction wanted him to do the less obnoxious thing, and of course he did the more obnoxious thing. He likes it.

Deutsche Welle on the meeting of Merkel and Trump.

Superficially it went pretty well.

The obvious exception was Trump’s joking comparison of Merkel’s surveillance experience, which was real, with his, for which no evidence is known to exist.

“Joking about the US surveillance of Merkel is probably the most tone deaf moment so far of Trump’s time on the international stage,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a scholar of the presidency and the media at Mary Washington University. “Trump needs to remember that he doesn’t need to crack jokes like he is still on reality television’s ‘The Apprentice.'”

Farnsworth pointed out that the two leaders didn’t even engage in the traditional handshake during an Oval Office photo opportunity earlier in the day. “Merkel’s offer to do so was met with an awkward silence that served as a reminder of the deep gulf between their perspectives.”

I wouldn’t call it awkward, I would call it boorishly rude and mal élevé. I would call it shameful. He sat there smirking like a toad; it was grotesque.

Trump’s general rhetoric, for Anderson, was reminiscent “of a language more common of US administrations prior to 1989 – a language of bilateralism and ledger sheets, on which a balance of interest had to be maintained.”

Again in an ostensibly joking manner, but with a tough and dark undertone, the US president praised German trade negotiators who according to Trump had done a better job than their American counterparts, insinuating again as he had done before that the trade relationship is unbalanced and unfair.

Merkel, meanwhile, “spoke from an entirely different – and actually much more grounded and accurate – perspective, answering in effect that the EU negotiates trade deals with member state input and that the principle of mutual benefit in EU trade deals is well established,” said Anderson.

Yeah well, one of them is an adult and the other is a bratty child. This was about as good as anyone’s going to get.

More from the Annals of Nonstop Shame and Embarrassment: Trump still refuses to withdraw or apologize for Spicer’s claim that British spies secretly monitored him during last year’s campaign at the behest of Obama.

Although his aides in private conversations since Thursday night had tried to calm British officials who were livid over the claim, Mr. Trump made clear that he felt the White House had nothing to retract or apologize for. He said his spokesman was simply repeating an assertion made by a Fox News commentator.

“We said nothing,” Mr. Trump told a German reporter who asked about the matter at a joint White House news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel. “All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it.” He added: “You shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

What he actually said, without the tactful tidying, is

All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind, who was the one responsible for saying that on television – I didn’t make an opinion on it – that was a statement made by a very talented lawyer, on Fox, and so you shouldn’t be talkin to me, you should be talkin to Fox.

The Times conceals the perseveration, perhaps because it’s a symptom of brain damage.

He also made a clumsy unfunny joke about it, which elicited a “wtf?” look from Merkel.

I’ve been meaning to share passages from the ruling on the travel ban.

It is undisputed that the Executive Order does not facially discriminate for or
against any particular religion, or for or against religion versus non-religion. There
is no express reference, for instance, to any religion nor does the Executive
Order—unlike its predecessor—contain any term or phrase that can be reasonably
characterized as having a religious origin or connotation.
Indeed, the Government defends the Executive Order principally because of
its religiously neutral text —“[i]t applies to six countries that Congress and the prior
Administration determined posed special risks of terrorism. [The Executive Order]
applies to all individuals in those countries, regardless of their religion.” Gov’t.
Mem. in Opp’n 40. The Government does not stop there. By its reading, the
Executive Order could not have been religiously motivated because “the six
countries represent only a small fraction of the world’s 50 Muslim-majority nations,
and are home to less than 9% of the global Muslim population . . . [T]he suspension
covers every national of those countries, including millions of non-Muslim
individuals[.]” Gov’t. Mem. in Opp’n 42.
The illogic of the Government’s contentions is palpable. The notion that one
can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at
once is fundamentally flawed. The Court declines to relegate its Establishment Clause analysis to a purely mathematical exercise. See Aziz, 2017 WL 580855, at
*9 (rejecting the argument that “the Court cannot infer an anti-Muslim animus
because [Executive Order No. 13,769] does not affect all, or even most, Muslims,”
because “the Supreme Court has never reduced its Establishment Clause
jurisprudence to a mathematical exercise. It is a discriminatory purpose that
matters, no matter how inefficient the execution” (citation omitted)). Equally
flawed is the notion that the Executive Order cannot be found to have targeted Islam
because it applies to all individuals in the six referenced countries. It is undisputed,
using the primary source upon which the Government itself relies, that these six
countries have overwhelmingly Muslim populations that range from 90.7% to
99.8%.12 It would therefore be no paradigmatic leap to conclude that targeting
these countries likewise targets Islam. Certainly, it would be inappropriate to
conclude, as the Government does, that it does not.

“It would be no paradigmatic leap” – I like that.

The Government compounds these shortcomings by suggesting that the
Executive Order’s neutral text is what this Court must rely on to evaluate purpose.
Govt. Mem. in Opp’n at 42–43 (“[C]ourts may not ‘look behind the exercise of
[Executive] discretion’ taken ‘on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reason.’”). Only a few weeks ago, the Ninth Circuit commanded otherwise: “It is
well established that evidence of purpose beyond the face of the challenged law may
be considered in evaluating Establishment and Equal Protection Clause claims.”
Washington, 847 F.3d at 1167–68 (citing Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v.
City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 534 (1993) (“Official action that targets religious
conduct for distinctive treatment cannot be shielded by mere compliance with the
requirement of facial neutrality.”); Larson, 456 U.S. at 254–55 (holding that a
facially neutral statute violated the Establishment Clause in light of legislative
history demonstrating an intent to apply regulations only to minority religions); and
Village of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 266–68
(1977) (explaining that circumstantial evidence of intent, including the historical
background of the decision and statements by decisionmakers, may be considered in
evaluating whether a governmental action was motivated by a discriminatory
purpose)). The Supreme Court has been even more emphatic: courts may not “turn
a blind eye to the context in which [a] policy arose.”

I like that even more. Courts may not turn a blind eye to the context in which a policy arose.

“[H]istorical context and ‘the specific sequence of events leading up to’” the adoption of a challenged policy are relevant considerations. Id. at 862; see
also Aziz, 2017 WL 580855, at *7.
A review of the historical background here makes plain why the Government
wishes to focus on the Executive Order’s text, rather than its context. The record
before this Court is unique. It includes significant and unrebutted evidence of
religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order and its related
predecessor. For example—
In March 2016, Mr. Trump said, during an interview, “I think
Islam hates us.” Mr. Trump was asked, “Is there a war between
the West and radical Islam, or between the West and Islam
itself?” He replied: “It’s very hard to separate. Because you
don’t know who’s who.”
SAC ¶ 41 (citing Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees: Exclusive Interview With Donald
Trump (CNN television broadcast Mar. 9, 2016, 8:00 PM ET), transcript available
at https://goo.gl/y7s2kQ)). In that same interview, Mr. Trump stated: “But there’s
a tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant. We have to be very
careful. And we can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred
of the United States. . . [a]nd of people that are not Muslim.”

Talking like that helped get him elected but it’s not helping him now.

The Government appropriately cautions that, in determining purpose, courts
should not look into the “veiled psyche” and “secret motives” of government
decisionmakers and may not undertake a “judicial psychoanalysis of a drafter’s heart
of hearts.” Govt. Opp’n at 40 (citing McCreary, 545 U.S. at 862). The
Government need not fear. The remarkable facts at issue here require no such impermissible inquiry. For instance, there is nothing “veiled” about this press
release: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims
entering the United States.[]” SAC ¶ 38, Ex. 6 (Press Release, Donald J. Trump for
President, Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration (Dec. 7,
2015), available at https://goo.gl/D3OdJJ)). Nor is there anything “secret” about
the Executive’s motive specific to the issuance of the Executive Order:
Rudolph Giuliani explained on television how the Executive
Order came to be. He said: “When [Mr. Trump] first announced
it, he said, ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up. He said, ‘Put a
commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.’”

SAC ¶ 59, Ex. 8. On February 21, 2017, commenting on the then-upcoming
revision to the Executive Order, the President’s Senior Adviser, Stephen Miller,
stated, “Fundamentally, [despite “technical” revisions meant to address the Ninth
Circuit’s concerns in Washington,] you’re still going to have the same basic policy
outcome [as the first].” SAC ¶ 74.
These plainly-worded statements,14 made in the months leading up to and
contemporaneous with the signing of the Executive Order, and, in many cases, made by the Executive himself, betray the Executive Order’s stated secular purpose. Any
reasonable, objective observer would conclude, as does the Court for purposes of the
instant Motion for TRO, that the stated secular purpose of the Executive Order is, at
the very least, “secondary to a religious objective” of temporarily suspending the
entry of Muslims. See McCreary, 545 U.S. at 864.

It’s a good read.

The Guardian’s take on Trump’s adventure in libeling a former president and pissing off a current ally.

The extraordinary public rebuke by the United States’ closest surveillance partner has revealed an emerging characteristic of Donald Trump’s White House: a willingness to antagonize even its allies instead of admitting error.

…

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, credulously repeated on Thursday an account by a Fox News pundit, Andrew Napolitano, that GCHQ laundered surveillance on Trump at the behest of Barack Obama. Napolitano, who is in no position to actually know, made the allegation apparently to explain away the mounting evidence, even from senior Republicans on the intelligence committees, that there is no basis to Trump’s claim that Obama ordered that surveillance.

Beautiful, isn’t it? They tell one lie, which results in a lot of people saying wo hey that’s not true, so in response they tell more lies in the hopes of “explaining away” the evidence of the first lie. I don’t see what could possibly go wrong with that.

The context matters here. Spicer repeated Napolitano’s allegation for the same reason Napolitano made it: to defend Trump’s evidence-free assertion, on 4 March, that Obama had Trump’s team placed under surveillance.

Spicer did so while reading off a long list of news reports, both credible and not, about aspects of surveillance intercepts related to Trump and Russia. Spicer’s implication is that if Trump was wrong – which he did not concede – it was because the journalists calling attention to Trump’s error lack credibility. Not a single credible news account Spicer read supports Trump’s 4 March claim. Napolitano’s did.

The credible ones don’t; Napolitano’s did.

One option always available to the White House is to forthrightly concede Trump was wrong. It has shown no appetite for that. Instead, Trump and his allies have grasped for whatever explanation might keep alive an incendiary accusation – one that is itself an unforced error – without regard for the relationships those explanations damage.

Even now, with GCHQ and 10 Downing Street angry, the White House is stopping short of an apology. “Ambassador Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and General McMaster. Mr Spicer and General McMaster explained that Mr Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story,” according to the current White House line.

The White House has been here before. Mexico’s president cancelled a state visit after Trump kept claiming Mexico would pay for a border wall. Trump invented an attack in Sweden in order to bolster his dubious claim that refugees are incipient terrorists. He antagonized another Five Eyes ally, Australia, over refugee policy as well.

He’s a chronic liar and a crook. Hug yourself, Putin, you hit the jackpot.

They did what now?

The White House has tried to soothe an angry Britain after suggesting that President Barack Obama used London’s spy agency to conduct secret surveillance on President Trump while he was a candidate last year but offered no public apology on Friday.

They WHAT?

The reassurances came after British officials complained to Trump administration officials. Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to Washington, spoke with Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, at a St. Patrick’s Day reception in Washington on Thursday night just hours after Mr. Spicer aired the assertion at his daily briefing. Mark Lyall Grant, the prime minister’s national security adviser, spoke separately with his American counterpart, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

“Ambassador Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and General McMaster,” a White House official said on condition of anonymity to confirm private conversations. “Mr. Spicer and General McMaster explained that Mr. Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story.”

Other White House officials, who also would not be named, said Mr. Spicer offered no regret to the ambassador. “He didn’t apologize, no way, no how,” said a senior West Wing official. The officials said they did not know whether General McMaster had apologized.

So they’re proud of it. They’re proud that Spicer insinuated that Britain helped US spooks spy on Trump, and that he refused to apologize for doing so. Make America Great, baby. Shed all those pesky allies.

The flap with Britain started when Mr. Spicer, in the course of defending Mr. Trump’s original accusation against Mr. Obama, on Thursday read from the White House lectern comments by a Fox News commentator asserting that the British spy agency was involved. Andrew Napolitano, the commentator, said on air that Mr. Obama had used Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, the signals agency known as the GCHQ, to spy on Mr. Trump.

And this happened because Spicer was trying to convince a room full of reporters that Trump had good reasons to scream on Twitter that Obama had wiretapped him – because He Saw It On The Fox Channel. Spicer was trying to convince reporters, of all people, that commentary on Fox News is good evidence, or at least a reliable enough source that it justifies screaming on Twitter that Obama committed felonies. If anyone knows what commentary on Fox is worth, it’s reporters.

The GCHQ quickly and vehemently denied the contention on Thursday in a rare statement issued by the spy agency, calling the assertions “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous.” By Friday morning, Mr. Spicer’s briefing had turned into a full-blown international incident. British politicians expressed outrage and demanded apologies and retractions from the American government.

Mr. Trump’s critics assailed the White House for alienating America’s friend.

The cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated. And from the PODIUM. https://t.co/lJ1Q1GR3lB

— Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) March 17, 2017

Susan Rice, former National Security Advisor to Obama.

In pointing the finger at Britain on Thursday, Mr. Spicer read from comments made by Mr. Napolitano on Fox this week. “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command,” Mr. Spicer read. “He didn’t use the N.S.A., he didn’t use the C.I.A., he didn’t use the F.B.I., and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ.”

“What is that?” Mr. Spicer continued. “It’s the initials for the British intelligence spying agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, ‘the president needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trump’s conversations involving President-elect Trump,’ he was able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this.”

And this, not surprisingly, caused outrage in the UK.

British officials and analysts were surprised at the tough and vehement language in the GCHQ response, especially from an agency that traditionally refuses to comment on any intelligence matter.

There was some annoyance and eye-rolling as well. Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the last British coalition government, described Mr. Spicer’s repetition of the claims as “shameful” and said Mr. Trump was “compromising the vital U.K.-U.S. security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment.”

It’s so Trump. He does something stupid and malevolent, so then he and his stooges do more stupid and malevolent things in their effort to force everyone to stop objecting to the first one. We can count on seeing a lot more of this sequence unless he’s removed soon.

British officials said that Britain initiated calls of complaint and denial to the White House after Mr. Spicer’s briefing. They also said that British officials had discussed responding earlier, after Mr. Napolitano’s comments were made on air, but acted quickly after those remarks were repeated by the president’s official spokesman.

“I doubt if there will be any long-term damage — the intelligence links between the U.S. and the U.K. are just too strong,” said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to the United States. “It was unfortunate that the White House spokesman repeated what he’s heard on Fox News without checking the facts. But once he’d done so, GCHQ had no choice but to set the record straight.”

Their incompetence is appalling.

Science. Trump don’t want no stinkin science. Trump wants JOBS, not science. Science never created any jobs for anybody. Hell no, it’s selling overpriced condos that creates jobs. Somebody has to paint all those faucets gold-color.

The scientists of course are having a big hissy fit. They’re such prima donnas.

[T]he extent of the cuts in the proposed budget unveiled early Thursday shocked scientists, researchers and program administrators. The reductions include $5.8 billion, or 18 percent, from the National Institutes of Health, which funds thousands of researchers working on cancer and other diseases, and $900 million, or a little less than 20 percent, from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds the national laboratories, considered among the crown jewels of basic research in the world.

Yes but what good is it? We can see how useful overpriced condos are, but we can’t see what good scientific research is.

The White House is also proposing to eliminate climate science programs throughout the federal government, including at the Environmental Protection Agency.

“As to climate change, I think the president was fairly straightforward: We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said at a White House briefing on Thursday. “We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.”

Right. It’s way less wasteful to just let climate change go ahead.

While the budget is only a blueprint and is sure to face strong opposition from members of both parties in Congress — many lawmakers have already said that certain cuts, like those to the N.I.H., are nonstarters — policy makers expressed concern about what the proposal says about the administration’s commitment to science.

“Do they not think that there are advances to be made, improvements to be made, in the human condition?” said Rush D. Holt, a physicist and the chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “The record of scientific research is so good, for so many years — who would want to sell it short? What are they thinking?”

They work for Trump, so they’re probably not thinking at all.

Eliminating laboratory research on climate change, as the budget proposes, can have real-world effects, experts said, by making it harder to predict storms or other weather events that cause devastation and loss of life.

“Cutting scientific research in E.P.A. and NASA and NOAA and other science agencies is not going to help us have more information on the causes and, more important, the effects of climate change,” said Vicki Arroyo, the executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center and a former E.P.A. official.

The budget also calls for eliminating some programs that help bridge the divide between basic research and commercialization. Among the most prominent of these is the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy, known as ARPA-E, the Energy Department office that funds research in innovative energy technologies with a goal of getting products to market. Its annual appropriation of about $300 million would be eliminated.

James J. Greenberger, the executive director of NAATBatt International, a trade group for the advanced battery industry, said ARPA-E had been of enormous benefit to the industry.

“We’re absolutely stunned by it,” Mr. Greenberger said of the agency’s potential elimination, which he announced to industry leaders gathered at his group’s annual conference in Arizona. “I don’t know what’s going through the administration’s head. It’s almost surreal.”

See above. They work for Trump, so these are not thoughtful or scrupulous people.

Trump’s budget proposals are what you’d expect from a loathsome human being like him.

If Americans were taken aback by the restrained, highly scripted President Trump that addressed Congress last month, they should recognize a lot more of the blustery, law-and-order candidate they elected in the budget blueprint the White House released on Thursday.

“If he said it on the campaign, it’s in the budget,” the president’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters in a Wednesday briefing previewing the proposal’s release.

That means more money—some $54 billion in extra defense spending—for the military generals Trump loves to quote so much, and a lot less for the diplomatic niceties and programs combatting climate change that he so often dismissed. The State Department sees a 28 percent cut in the administration’s budget request, with a chunk of it coming from foreign aid. “It is not a soft-power budget,” Mulvaney explained. “This is a hard-power budget, and that was done intentionally. The president very clearly wants to send a message to our allies and to our potential adversaries that this is a strong-power administration.”

That’s a prettified way of saying Trump wants to send a message to everyone that he believes in force and force alone. That’s a useful stance to take, in international relations and in life. Don’t ask, just grab them by the pussy. Don’t be bashful, tell malicious lies about people on Twitter. Don’t give reasons, just keep repeating your assertions. Don’t answer reporters’ questions, insult them instead. Don’t mess around with diplomacy and foreign aid, just bomb the shit out of everyone.

The Trump administration wants to eliminate federal funding of 19 agencies and commissions, including the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, the Legal Services Corporation, the Institute of Peace, and an interagency council on homelessness. Some of those have long been targets of conservatives in Congress, but Democrats are expected to fight aggressively for their preservation, and it’s likely they retain majority support to continue.

Beyond the programs targeted for elimination, the Trump budget puts nearly every domestic Cabinet department on the chopping block. In the Department of Education, dozens of school and teacher grant programs would go, and the popular college work-study program would see significant cuts. In the Department of Commerce, NOAA gets slashed by billions, including the complete elimination of $250 million in grants for coastal and marine management. Funding for the National Institutes of Health—an agency with some of the most bipartisan support in Congress—would drop by nearly $6 billion, a cut [of] 18 percent.

The pundits say lots of this won’t fly, but of course Donnie is (according to him) a genius negotiator, so no doubt what does fly will be bad enough.