From a killer she once called an “ideal man” to a political movement built around radical self-interest, the roots of today’s assault on government run deeper and darker than most Americans realize. Ka$h Patel’s (his preferred spelling) pathetic performance before Congress last week has left many Americans wondering what’s going on with our federal government.... The model here is straightforward: government is something to be exploited for personal gain not public service, because government is essentially an evil thing. So, load it up with incompetents, suck up as much money as you can, and leave the mess to the Democrats.

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Trump just banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, because apparently the First Amendment now needs his signature to be valid. — More American soldiers have died in Trump’s Iran war than Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is willing to admit. — Armed federal agents at polling places is a felony crime and has been for more than a century, but Trump’s people keep floating it — Senators Markey, Merkley, and Sanders are trying to stop Trump from shipping 5,000 one-ton bombs to the Saudi crown prince who had a Washington Post columnist dismembered. — Trump’s war of choice is about to come home to every oil tank in New England, so of course he spent last weekend at his shabby golf motel in Ireland — Saudi Arabia just told Europe there’s no oil for them next month. — Poland’s prime minister says Putin is planning rocket and drone strikes on NATO countries, so Trump wrote Putin’s alibi for him — Crazy Alert! A chatbot made up a nuclear smuggling plot, and Pete Hegseth’s military scrambled planes to board a Chinese ship over it. — Medicare for All isn’t dead, it’s waiting for us to do our part.

With 89 percent saying corruption is widespread, history shows what can follow when citizens stop believing their institutions will hold criminals and the powerful accountable… A new Economist/YouGov poll of registered voters that just came out this week found that the top two words that Americans across the board endorse to describe Donald Trump are “corrupt” (53%) and “dangerous” (51%). Not even half of registered Republican voters were willing to call him “honest.” This is consistent with Gallup’s finding earlier this month that fully 89 percent of Americans now believe that corruption in our government is widespread, the highest number in the two decades the polling company has been asking, and a higher number than in any other advanced, industrialized democracy.

He believed due process separated America from the authoritarian governments his generation fought. That line is now being tested… Last Friday, for the first time in American history, a brand new court in America deported to Afghanistan Nazira Haji Zada, a 47-year-old lawful permanent resident living in Fort Worth. She was never charged with a crime, and wasn’t allowed to see the evidence against her (and neither were her lawyers). Attorney General Todd Blanche called the whole thing “a win for national security and the rule of law.” This was possible because, in a moment of national hysteria following the Tim McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City in the 1990s, Congress authorized the creation of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, something so counter to normal American concepts of the rule of law and fair play that no president before now had been willing to use it.