It would be an understatement to say Mitch McConnell’s suggestion that state and local governments should declare bankruptcy rather than seek more federal funding went down like a lead balloon. It was a rare instance of the Senate majority leader overplaying his hand.

Donald Trump’s promise to a foreign leader so troubled an official in the US intelligence community that it prompted the person to file a whistleblower complaint, according to multiple media reports. Speculation in Washington was at fever pitch on Thursday over which leader Trump was speaking to and what promise he made. The substance of the complaint remained a mystery.

A day after the official that Donald Trump wants to pass over as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) asked a federal court to block the president’s own appointment, Trump’s pick for the role offered doughnuts to agency staff and told them to “disregard” his opponent’s instructions. Barney Frank, the retired Massachusetts Democrat who was one of the  authors of the law that created the CFPB, told CNN on Monday that Trump and Republicans were seeking to weaken the agency in an administrative fashion, rather than legislative, because it was popular for its work standing up to banks, mortgage companies, loan companies and debt collectors on behalf of ordinary Americans.

Donald Trump has bowed to overwhelming pressure and directly condemned the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, two days after violent clashes left one woman dead. “Racism is evil,” the US president said at the White House. “And  those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

In his statement, Comey makes it clear that Trump was seeking to put pressure on him. “My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant  the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job  and create some sort of patronage relationship,” Comey said. “That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status  in the executive branch.”

Jill Stein’s attempts to secure presidential election recounts hit hurdles in Pennsylvania on Monday, while a furious Donald Trump began raising money to “fight back” against the efforts to review his victory. Stein was scrambling to recruit more than 25,000 supporters to submit  affidavits requesting recounts on her behalf to local elections officials in Pennsylvania, which does not allow the kind of statewide request she submitted in Wisconsin last week.