Eight years later, and Republican candidates are STILL pretending like they'll repeal Obamacare, if the base just believes hard enough to elect them again. Never mind that they've had the White House and the Congress for nearly two years and have only managed to demonstrate they can wreck all the things that made the law popular.

They have updated the idea from "repeal and replace" to "repeal and bring back the stuff that you like so much in the law," which is as tricky to run on as it sounds. A lawsuit to declare the whole thing unconstitutional? "Sure, anything that's going to actually get rid of it, yes," says Mike Braun, the Republican running for Senate in Indiana. "And then be ready to come back and talk about what you're ready to do about pre-existing conditions and no limits on coverage. That's where you don't hear much conservative talk."

Pssst, Mike—you don't hear conservatives talking about it because they are utterly incapable of accomplishing it. Remember "repeal and replace"? Remember how disastrous that whole Trumpcare replacement bit was? That's one of the reasons Republicans who are actually in Congress now are not so excited about that lawsuit. Even Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) admits that they are incompetent when it comes to doing anything with health care. "It may be good to have an exit strategy and I'm not sure there's one in place." Yes, indeed it might be a good idea to figure out what to do if 130 million people suddenly lose their health insurance because of their preexisting condition.

Lost in the mix, however, is some rather alarming news in the confirmation process for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. According to a letter signed by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senate Republicans are refusing to hand over documents pertaining to Kavanaugh — documents that could include damning evidence that’d surely kill the judge’s confirmation process before it even begins.

The senators’ letter to Chairman Chuck Grassley notes that the Republicans have only made available around three percent of documents covering Kavanaugh’s record. A full 98.4 percent of Kavanaugh’s record is being withheld. The senators noted that, by comparison, 99 percent of Elena Kagan’s record was made available to the committee prior to her confirmation process. Stating the obvious here: it looks like they’re hiding something. Duh.

And this might be the something. Kavanaugh might’ve lied under oath during his prior confirmation hearing in 2006. The senators wrote:

As you know, in 2006, Judge Kavanaugh told the Committee under oath that he was “not aware of any issues” regarding “the legal justifications or the policies relating to the treatment of detainees”; was “not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants”; had nothing to do with issues related to rendition; and was unaware of, and saw no documents related to, the warrantless wiretapping program conducted without congressional authorization.

One of the most flagrant offenders is Stripe, an online payment processing company that works with some of the biggest names in tech, including Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Salesforce. But such while major content providers Apple, Spotify, Facebook, and YouTube have taken half-measures to give the appearance that they’re cracking down on hate, payment processing systems, and especially Stripe, haven’t even done that much, continuing to allow its purveyors to collect profits via their services.

What makes the inaction of the payment processing companies so infuriating is that they are still readily working with such groups and websites — even those who can’t be bothered to hide their racism and anti-Semitism behind layers of “irony” and “humor,” as do many in the ranks of the 2.0 form of white identitarianism — despite repeated promises that they would do just that.

Stripe, for instance, is servicing payments for the League of the South, Occidental Quarterly, and Counter–Currents Publishing. The League of the South is an openly white supremacist, neo-Confederate group that advocates Secession and the creation of a southern theocracy. Its leaders say that immigration “will eventually weaken and destroy our civilization.” (Intriguingly, a whole section of the group’s website is devoted to “Russian Outreach.”)

“How many of the 300 were probably guilty? Maybe half. My reasoning? The 2004 report by the John Jay College for Criminal Justice found that 4 percent of priests nationwide had a credible accusation made against them between 1950-2002,” he continued. “That is the figure everyone quotes. But the report also notes that roughly half that number were substantiated. If that is a reliable measure, the 300 figure drops to around 150.”

This is Donohue’s “debunking” of the story. It gets worse.

At one point in the rambling piece, Donohue declared that rape accusations against the priests are a “myth.”

“This is an obscene lie,” Donohue declared. “Most of the alleged victims were not raped: they were groped or otherwise abused, but not penetrated, which is what the word ‘rape’ means.”

Donohue goes on to say that his assertions are not meant to be a “defense,” but an attempt to “set the record straight and debunk the worst case scenarios attributed to the offenders.”

In other words, it’s a defense.

The picture of Trump as president is now crystal clear. His instincts and methods are those of the autocrat. He respects no separation of powers, no zones of authority from which the constitution very deliberately excludes him and his office. He may be called Donald, but he wants to rule like a don.

The danger of all this to Americans is obvious. The US system of government, cherished and nurtured over two centuries, is being eroded by a president who tramples over every convention and custom that ensures its survival – and, crucially, by his Republican enablers in Congress who could stop him but won’t. (In a chorus, they supported his act of revenge against Brennan.)

Americans need to guard against an authoritarian impulse whose existence in their body politic is now demonstrably real. A survey this month found that 43% of Republicans were willing to give Trump the power to close down media organisations, while a separate poll a year ago found 52% would support “postponing” the 2020 election if Trump proposed it. Among all Americans, support for rule by the army – as opposed to elected politicians – is unusually high, with nearly one in five in favour.

But there is a threat here to the rest of us too. For Trump is forging a template for the 21st-century autocrat. Of course, there are already plenty of models to work from – Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Xi Jinping, Rodrigo Duterte – all of whom have received lavish, fawning praise from Trump. But an American president stands on a uniquely influential platform, observed the world over. Where once the US presidency offered an example of executive power restrained by the “co-equal” judicial and legislative branches, today Trump stands as an inspiration to every would-be strongman and abuser of authority, ready to bellow the line from his 2016 convention speech that could serve as a governing credo for tyrants everywhere: “I alone can fix this”.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent prick? Not content with being the worst foreign secretary in a century, resigning because his mate did even though he didn’t want to, and then sparking racial hatred via the pages of a national newspaper column for no better reason than his yawning fear of not being talked about, Boris Johnson is thinking of getting back on the bus. The Huffington Post reported this morning that Johnson was, joy of joys, being urged to consider arranging a bus tour to campaign for Brexit. Again.

Actually, he might not be. Also earlier today, Kevin Schofield, editor of Politics Home, tweeted that a suspiciously familiar-sounding source close to Britain’s worst Donald Trump impersonator had described the news as “total and utter bollocks”

With most politicians you’d assume that one of these reports must be true and the other false, but Johnson is not most politicians. Given his record of backing both sides of an issue until the last possible moment, it seems entirely possible in my mind that Johnson was the source of both stories. This is, at this moment, Schrodinger’s bus tour: it exists and does not exist, at exactly the same time, and until Johnson collapses the waveform by actually publicly commenting, this state will persist.