This was one of those son-of-a-bitch weeks that’s harder to stomach than some. But there was still plenty of progress still being made.

The GOP quietly introduced another abortion-ban bill, which quietly failed to advance in the Senate.

A Manhattan federal judge decried ICE for “cruel” tactics in jailing immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir and ordered him freed.

The Republican Governors Association cut all ties with former RNC chairman and accused harasser Steve Wynn and returned money he had donated to the organization, and the University of Iowa, which had named one of its institutes after him in exchange for his $25 million commitment to the school, is retracting the honor.

Donald’s release of cherry-picked facts from the memo House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes carefully and selectively edited regarding the Russian investigation and the FBI’s surveillance of people in the Trump campaign has resulted in a firestorm of controversy, but it’s not just the FBI and Democratic lawmakers speaking out against the irresponsible, propagandized, potentially national-security-threatening memo.

Republican John McCain says, “The American people deserve to know all the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded. Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the lens of politics and manufacturing political sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”

And former CIA head John Brennan (under both Bush and Obama) accused Nunes (who, let’s remember, tried to secretly share confidential House Intelligence Committee info with the White House last year before he even briefed his bipartisan committee colleagues) and the GOP of “reckless partisan behavior” pointedly adding that “Absence of moral and ethical leadership in [White House] is fueling this government crisis.”

And a former FBI special agent and counterterrorism investigator spoke out in a NYTimes op-ed about why he’s leaving the bureau in the interest of being free to protect it and our institutions, sharply calling out “political operatives” trying to shake the public’s trust in the FBI in order to undermine the findings of the Russia investigation—“operatives” he doesn’t call out by name, but by using direct quotes from Donald’s tweets, makes his subject entirely clear.

Lawyers for Donald’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s codefendant in Mueller’s fraud and money-laundering prosecution, Rick Gates, have asked the federal judge in the case to let them leave the case—the third shift in legal representation since Gates was indicted. The attorney’s declined to offer a reason, citing a gag order. Meanwhile, TIME magazine discovered that in 2013, Donald’s former campaign adviser Carter Page bragged of his Kremlin contacts in a letter to a publisher—not only adding fuel to Mueller’s investigation of him, but lending credence to the FBI’s decision to surveil him that Nunes’s memo glosses over as probable cause.

Meanwhile, here’s the Washington Post’s great visual breakdown of who we know has spoken with Mueller’s investigation.

Another one bites the dust—Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee (and he who relentlessly dragged out the Benghazi investigation, racking up millions of dollars in cost to taxpayers despite repeatedly finding no evidence of wrongdoing), has announced he won’t seek reelection, calling himself “a lousy politician” (we can’t help but agree). GOP lawmakers are being picked off like carnival ducks—do they know something we don’t know (like that a new conservative party is forming?) or are they simply leaving the field in disgrace?

Donald may yet face few consequences for calling Haiti and other minority nations “shitholes,” but one official has—the lottery board chairman who referred to a town in Illinois as “a shithole of the universe” has stepped in the face of heavy public criticism.

The White House has withdrawn Kathleen Harnett White, Donald’s nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, after loud public and congressional outcry against the climate-change denier—including a letter signed by more than 300 scientists across the country.

Need a palate cleanse for the week? Stream the inaugural episode of David Letterman’s new Netflix show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, featuring Barack Obama and John Lewis. Here’s a clip—but don’t miss the whole one-hour show. It will remind you why we’re fighting and how far we’ve come—and how hard those before us have fought, and how much there is to be gained.

I’m not going to bury the lede—Michael Flynn rolled like a burrito, my friends, and has promised “full cooperation” with Mueller’s investigation. The former national security adviser was the highest of high-level advisers to Donald and the minions, and in exchange for one paltry count of lying to the FBI (despite the reams of incriminating info Mueller has on him), it sounds like he’ll be singing like the proverbial canary. Know what song I keep hearing…? “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” Bet things aren’t quite so merry in the White House, where Melania’s horror-movie holiday decorations now seem pretty spot-on. For more from a legal expert on why this is Very Big News, please enjoy this delightful read.

Meanwhile Donny Jr. has agreed to talk to the House Intelligence Committee. I wonder whether he has the sense of self-preservation to point fingers at Daddy or if he’ll throw himself on the grenade in accordance with Donald’s demands for loyalty at any cost.

A right-wing group that targets media and left-leaning organizations attempted to “sting” the Washington Post by hiring a woman to pretend to be an accuser of child molester, disgraced judge, and Congressional wannabe Roy Moore—but the effort backfired when the Post, following its stringent fact-checking policies, declined to run the story, and in checking on the woman and her story discovered (and published) evidence of her duplicity and the sting operation conducted by Project Veritas, a right-wing extremist organization that uses deceptive tactics and secretly recorded conversations in an effort to discredit its targets (and one that Donald himself donated $10K to).

As Donald reportedly denies his own voice on the Access Hollywood tapes, which the pussy-grabber-in-chief initially owned up to, the New York Times ran a well-sourced article revealing how many Republicans Donald has pressured to end the Russia investigations. Never minds separation of powers or ethics or, you know, the law.

Donald’s recurring and renewed attacks against the free press are escalating, and journalists are fighting back. He held out his propaganda station, FOX, for praise against CNN, saying, “FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly. The outside world does not see the truth from them!” CNN whipped back within minutes: “It’s not CNN’s job to represent the U.S. to the world. That’s yours.” Donald then called for a boycott of CNN when the media organization decided not to attend the White House holiday party for news media.

Two media organizations are suing the White House for information on the federal government’s surveillance practices against journalists, and for which the White House has denied records requests.

One of the first things authoritarians do in consolidating power is attack the free press, and Donald’s constant war against the media and the First Amendment is one of the more alarming attacks on our democracy. You can help by supporting the outlets doing top-notch journalism and keeping this regime accountable and transparent despite their attempts otherwise: Subscribe to the Washington Post and NY Times; donate to NPR and the Guardian; and support the many other excellent media sources that deal in truth and facts and relentlessly bring both to light.

The Inspector general of the Treasury Department has launched an investigation to determine whether Steven “Moochin’” Mnuchin suppressed a Treasury analysis of the Republican tax bill—or even initiated one at all.

Donny John was also recently exposed for hiring undocumented laborers—without adequate workplace safety precautions—for $4/hour (less than half the union wage—for those who were paid at all) to raze the Bonwit Teller building in Manhattan where his gaudy gold Trump Tower now stands. Donald settled the class-action lawsuit in 1998 (despite his false claims that he never settles), and the terms were recently unsealed by a district court judge.

Twenty-three Donald-affiliated business have received subpoenas from Maryland and DC attorneys general instructing them to preserve records as part of a lawsuit against Don John for violating the Constitution—again, this time the emoluments clause intended to prevent presidents from personally profiting from their office, as Donald is.

Texas Rep Joe “Dick Pic” Barton announced he is retiring from the House after it was revealed that the hard-line conservative sent lewd photos to a woman he was having an extramarital affair with. In not-unrelated news, members of both parties are pressuring Congress to end the culture of secrecy around sexual harassment claims—and especially to unmask lawmakers who have used taxpayer dollars to settle harassment claims.