Ever since White House budget director Mick Mulvaney’s embattled  appointment two months ago as head of the Consumer Financial Protection  Bureau, he’s moved swiftly to transform the watchdog agency he once called a “sick, sad” joke. He has shelved investigations and kneecapped the work of CFPB examiners by halting data collection. In just the last week, he announced plans to gut an Obama-era payday loan regulation, spend down the CFPB’s rainy day fund, and launch a review of all its operations, signaling a likely overhaul.

On Monday, the Senate Banking Committee announced that it struck a rare bipartisan deal to deregulate banks. The deal would gut several of the protections enacted in 2010 in response to the financial crisis as part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and  Consumer Protection Act, most notably a key rule requiring that “Too Big To Fail” banks—those with more than $50 billion in assets—undergo stricter oversight.

On Wednesday September 20, the Washington Post published yet another evening bombshell about the Trump-Russia investigation. The Post found that while serving as Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort  offered to provide regular “private briefings” on the presidential campaign to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who is closely linked to Vladimir Putin.

In an interview on Fox News  last month, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin made a sales pitch for the  GOP’s tax reform plan—specifically, its plan to cut corporate taxes.  “Most economists believe that over 70 percent of corporate taxes are  paid for by the workers,” he said. His implication, in laymen’s terms: Regular workers would get 70 percent of the benefit of corporate tax cuts. Five years ago, the Obama-era Treasury department found the exact opposite

Bland on the outside. Terrifying on the inside. Over nearly two decades in political life, first as a congressman and later as Indiana's governor, Pence has been one of the leaders in efforts to push extreme conservative ideas—from limiting abortion access to questioning climate change—into public policy.