“In my opinion, just speaking candidly, this is a defining moment for our nation,” Rep. Mark Meadows, chair of the deeply conservative House Freedom Caucus, said Monday night. “But it’s also a defining moment for the Freedom Caucus.” The three dozen or so members of the group, joined by Sens. Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, had just met for more than an hour in a Capitol complex seemingly occupied by only them and a couple dozen reporters waiting in the hallway.

On Monday, the House Intelligence Committee interrogated FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers about Russia’s covert operation to manipulate the 2016 presidential election. Comey confirmed that the FBI was investigating, among other things, whether anyone associated with Donald Trump had coordinated with the Russians. The committee is supposed to be conducting its own Russia probe.

For all Justin Trudeau’s heartthrob popularity among U.S. liberals, in Canada, the rules of political gravity have caught up with the prime minister. He’s now gone through a couple of scandals—cash-for-access fundraisers, abandoning a major campaign promise on electoral reform—and his approval rating has fallen to 45 percent, his lowest since taking office. Trudeau would likely still win an election if it were held this year, but he’s vulnerable.

As expected, Paul Ryan has released a sweeping proposal—the American Health Care Act—to remake the U.S. health care system. Also as expected, lots of people hate it. What’s somewhat more surprising is that so many Republicans seem to hate it.

Last week, President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, registered as a foreign agent. Flynn confirmed that from August to November 2016, while serving as Trump’s military adviser, his company collected $530,000 from a Dutch-based firm for lobbying work that “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The White House dismisses this as an old story about a departed adviser. It’s more than that.

On Dec. 29, 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave Congress a list of four countries that “have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” They were Iraq, Libya, South Yemen, and Syria. Carter was complying with recently passed legislation requiring extra scrutiny of exports to countries where the goods being exported could “enhance the ability of such country to support acts of international terrorism.” The list got little press coverage at the time.

On Sunday, Feb. 26, the sermon at the Spanish-language Mass in Waterloo, Iowa, was about fear. Like many Catholic churches, the tan-brick, gothicQueen of Peace serves as a community center for Hispanic immigrants in this Cedar River town of 68,000. Waterloo has a claim to be Iowa’s most diverse big city. Immigrants, including Latinos and refugees from Bosnia, Myanmar, and Liberia,have helped stabilize its population andhousing market, and revived downtown storefronts.

Firing an acting attorney general, threatening widespread investigations against civil servants, characterizing unfriendly press as enemies of the state.

After Donald Trump signed his first executive order to ban refugees and immigrants from a number of Muslim-majority nations in January, I tweeted this photo of my dad riding the New York City Subway in a righteous afro and bell-bottoms. The point was to mock the notion that Muslims aren’t capable of assimilating in the West.

Donald Trump is a conspiracy theorist. We know this. For most of the past 10 years, he fanned conspiracies about Barack Obama’s birthplace and origins. During the Republican presidential primary, he turned this conspiratorial gaze toward Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, questioning his citizenship and accusing his father, Cuban-born Rafael Cruz, of involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. After November, there was hope that Trump would be sobered by the responsibilities of the Oval Office.