Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was interrupted while reading the words of Coretta Scott King on the U.S. Senate floor this week. Warren was reading a 1986 letter King wrote in opposition to the confirmation of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, then a U.S. attorney in Alabama, to a federal district judgeship. In a rare decision, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected Sessions. Now, as the Senate debated a new confirmation of Sen. Sessions for the position of U.S. attorney general, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., silenced Warren shortly after she read Coretta Scott King's words, invoking an obscure Senate rule against impugning colleagues. She was told to sit down and was barred from speaking further during the ongoing debate on Sessions.

No longer just tweeting, President Donald J. Trump has been issuing a stream of executive orders and memoranda since his inauguration. On Tuesday, his pronouncements involved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Both projects were denied or delayed by the Obama administration, each after massive public protests. Now, with the Trump administration's actions, buttressed by a servile Congress under Republican control, fossil-fuel megaprojects are getting the green light.

But it will take more than the stroke of Trump's pen to quash the vigorous resistance to these two pipelines, or the growing global demand for urgent action to combat climate change.

The arc of U.S. history is on full display as the peaceful transition of power takes place from the administration of President Barack Obama to that of incoming president-elect Donald Trump. The first African-American president is about to hand the reins of power to the very man who led the racist "birther" campaign to delegitimize his presidency. As Trump continues to shock the world with his middle-of-the-night tweets, the flurry of Senate confirmation hearings exposed the hollow rhetoric of Trump's pledge to "drain the swamp." Among the controversial and divisive cabinet nominees is his pick for attorney general: Jeff Sessions, the junior senator from Alabama.

President-elect Donald Trump exploded a half-century of U.S. nuclear-arms policy in a single tweet last week: "The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." With that one vague message, Donald Trump, who hasn't even taken office yet, may have started a new arms race.

Trump's statement set off alarms around the world, necessitating a cadre of his inner circle to flood the airwaves with now-routine attempts to explain what their boss "really meant." On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow confronted former Trump campaign manager and newly appointed Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway about the shocking tweet:

Maddow: "He's saying we're going to expand our nuclear capability."