A brief summary of recent history:

• A bunch of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, marched through town at night holding fiery torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”
• President Donald Trump volunteered at a press conference that, among the marchers, there were at least some “very fine people.”
• Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, resigned in disgust got word leaked anonymously that he was very upset with Trump but would continue working for him, leaving observers to surmise that his barely-concealed desire to become the chairman of the Federal Reserve had overridden his pride of heritage.

Now, in an interview with the Financial Times, Cohn has gone public with his disappointments, but given a laughably self-serving justification for his decision to stay on at the White House.

“I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities,” he said. “As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job.”

As Cohn notes, though, the chant that Trump indirectly blessed wasn’t “Trump should fire his Jewish economic adviser.” It was “Jews will not replace us.” Those pressuring him to resign wanted him to make a symbolic statement of disgust with Donald Trump, not with the marching neo-Nazis, who don’t actually employ him.

It stands to reason that Trump at some point will read Cohn’s critical remarks and become extremely angry with him. And it would befit the measures of both men if Trump fired him for being insufficiently tolerant of Nazis, after Cohn passed up his chance to be remembered for standing on principle.

The Federal Reserve chair on Friday defended Obama-era financial regulations to a room full of economists and financiers at the annual monetary policy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, offering a sharp rebuke to Trump’s agenda just six months before her four-year term runs outs.

“The events of the crisis demanded action, needed reforms were implemented, and these reforms have made the system safer,” Ms. Yellen said, adding that any further reforms should be “modest.”

Trump has called Dodd-Frank a “disaster,” and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin has promised to dismantle the 2010 law, including by eliminating the Volcker Rule, which among other things prevents certain banks from engaging in proprietary trading, or using their own money to make speculative trades.

Trump has sent mixed signals about Yellen, whose term ends in February 2018. The president told The Wall Street Journal in July that he was considering nominating Yellen for a second four-year term and that he has “a lot of respect for her.” In May 2016, however, he said in an interview with CNBC that “when her time is up, I would most likely replace her because of the fact that I think it would be appropriate.” He has also criticized Yellen and the Fed in the past for being too political.

As we know, Trump does not take criticism well, and he has not hesitated to give members of his own administration the axe when they defy him. By criticizing a very insecure person who prides himself on his supposed financial expertise, Yellen may have sealed her fate.

For all the talk about this country’s partisan divide, politicians, who are still predominately wealthy white men, usually have more similarities than differences. So the fact that Republican John Kasich and Democrat John Hickenlooper are thinking of a joint independent bid in the 2020 presidential election shouldn’t come as a total surprise. According to Axios, Kasich and Hickenlooper “got to know each other at conferences.” They “both are proud policy wonks, and their staffs are said to get along famously.” And they are thinking about starting a podcast to “cement” their brand.

But it’s still incredible that, in this political environment, any Democrat would consider teaming up with a Republican, even one who considers himself the prince of light. It is even more ridiculous that, in this unholy union, Kasich will likely be at the top of the ticket, meaning Hickenlooper, as VP, would have very little power in comparison. Kasich might try to bill himself as the sane member of the Republican Party, but he defunded Planned Parenthood in his state and has supported slow Medicaid phase outs. He has supported cuts to Medicare. And he gives Donald Trump a run for his money when it comes to sheer narcissism.

For his part, Hickenlooper told Business Insider after the 2016 election, “I think the political reality for the Democratic Party is, you know, there are two sides. There’s one side saying that we weren’t liberal enough and another side saying we’re too liberal. I think they’re both right.” Good point, John.

I did not even see the eclipse because I was too lazy to go outside. But I respect my fellow human beings who enjoy rare and spectacular natural events and now Trump has ruined it for everyone. On Tuesday he retweeted the following meme that another Twitter user had made:

It kind of doesn’t make sense (Trump is the moon to Obama’s sun??), but at least it was merely annoying and childish and did not represent yet another threat to our battered democracy. Trump this morning also went after James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, who recently criticized Trump for his speech in Arizona, saying, “I really question his ability to be—his fitness to be—in this office.” Trump threatened Clapper with some sort of “beautiful letter,” which sounds like gibberish coming from a crazy old man.

Trump also weighed in on how he thought his speeches this week went:

And then he dragged Mitch McConnell through the mud, at the same time that the Senate majority leader was complimenting him in Kentucky:

It’s likely that Trump was responding to the recent news reports that he has actually been angry with McConnell over his alleged failure to defend Trump against the Russia investigations. (It had previously been reported that Trump was mad at McConnell over his failure to repeal Obamacare.)

So to sum up, things that Trump has ruined this morning: eclipses, speeches, beautiful letters, and his relationship with Mitch McConnell.

There’s a facet of Paul Ryan’s opposition to censuring Donald Trump for coddling white supremacists I didn’t quite get to in my article this morning, but it’s neatly captured in this short clip of a Q&A he participated in at Intel Wednesday.

Ryan isn’t simply trying to spin you into thinking he’s not the central reason a Trump censure resolution has become “partisan.” He’s also attempting to claim the moral high-ground in the controversy, arguing in effect that the cause of opposing white supremacy is better served by not censuring a president who bolsters white supremacy.

I’m reminded at this juncture of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who was forced to resign after he celebrated the segregationist heritage of his colleague Strom Thurmond, on the occasion of Thurmond’s 100th birthday.

“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we [Mississippians] voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”

By Ryan’s logic, Lott may have “messed up,” but the cause of equality would’ve been better served if he’d remained in power.

Post script: The man solemnly nodding along with Ryan in the background is Oregon representative Greg Walden.

President Donald Trump is stoking racial tensions and dismantling environmental protections, and State Department Science Envoy Daniel Kammen has decided he just can’t take it anymore. In a letter to Trump first reported by BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, Kammen—a renewable energy scientist at the University of California, Berkeley—became the latest administration official to resign in protest from his government position. Kammen’s letter was powerful; it not only blasted Trump’s remarks on Charlottesville as in line with a “broader pattern of behavior that enables sexism and racism,” but called out Trump’s “destructive pattern” of policy decisions, like withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and defunding climate research.

But Kammen’s letter did more than denounce the president’s behavior. It also subliminally called for Trump’s removal from office—by spelling out, with the first letter of each paragraph, the word “IMPEACH.”

If this sounds familiar, it’s because basically the same thing happened last week. All 17 members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities resigned following Trump’s remarks on Charlottesville. They penned a strongly worded letter that doubled as an acrostic poem. The message was “RESIST.”

I can understand why the arts and humanities people would do it; poems, even bad ones, are their thing. It makes less sense coming from a renewable energy scientist, but I’m tempted to give him a pass as well. We all know what it takes to get the media to cover anything related to climate change.

Still, for at least three reasons, this gimmick should not become a trend. One: These resignation letters are unprecedented and important on their own, shining light on how the president’s destructive nature makes it impossible for public servants to do their jobs. Two: The acrostics are a distraction, overshadowing the letters’ primary message. Three: Acrostic poems should never, ever be allowed to escape the drab beige walls of our nation’s middle-school classrooms. The tactic appears childish, and gives Trump loyalists fodder to claim that the authors are merely seeking attention and self-promotion. Your resignation is serious—why stoop to the president’s level by going back to middle school?

If you’re considering resigning from the Trump administration, let your principles speak for themselves. And if you think the president should be impeached, or that the public should resist, shout it from the rooftops.

UPDATE: There is one situation where resignation letter acrostics are acceptable.

What can you even say about his Tuesday night speech? It was unhinged, even for Trump—a petulant and socially corrosive display that invoked the most frightening mass movements in human history. But what was perhaps most striking was how little substance there was. Trump came to perform, because that’s what he knows best and he’s all out of tricks:

As everybody here remembers, this was the scene of my first rally speech, right? The crowds were so big, almost as big as tonight, that the people said right at the beginning, you know, there’s something special happening here. And we went to center stage almost from day one in the debates. We love those debates. ... Did anybody watch last night?

This incoherent ramble is actually a plea: Remember the good old days? Don’t you still love me? Embarrassing, coming from anyone; dangerous, coming from the president of the United States. No Donald Trump performance is complete without attacks on his enemies. “I mean truly dishonest people in the media and the fake media, they make up stories,” Trump whined. “They have no sources in many cases. They say ‘a source says’—there is no such thing. ... I’m really doing this to show you how damned dishonest these people are.”

The real problem, Trump slurred to his audience, is Antifa, which only turns out when Nazis are around, and CNN, which fired Jeffrey Lord for tweeting “Sieg Heil!”, and Barack Obama, who is no longer president. This went on for 77 minutes, or approximately the length of one hellfire-and-brimstone sermon in the South. The hellfire-and-brimstone sermons are more interesting.

The crowd in Arizona appeared to agree: The Washington Post reports that the crowd thinned as Trump shrieked on. This was partly due to the heat—Phoenix hit 106 degrees that day—and partly because they were bored. “Hundreds left early, while others plopped down on the ground, scrolled through their social media feeds or started up a conversation with their neighbors,” the Post says.

Spectacle is all Trump has left, and it is beginning to lose its appeal. The consequences will be Biblical. Lukewarm believers will fall away; the devout will remain, and a sense of embattlement does wonders for building fanaticism. There will almost certainly be more violence before the curtain finally closes on this miserable affair, and when it happens Trump will still blame CNN.