The Office of Special Counsel, an agency that protects whistleblowers in the federal government, on Wednesday issued a reminder that any non-disclosure agreements or policies on employee communications must include language notifying federal employees of their whistleblower rights.

"Under the anti-gag provision, agencies cannot impose nondisclosure agreements and policies that fail to include required language that informs employees that their statutory right to blow the whistle supersedes the terms and conditions of the nondisclosure agreement or policy,"

The OSC also noted that whistleblower laws protect employees who blow the whistle "on any effort to ‘distort, misrepresent, suppress’ or otherwise censor any government ‘research, analysis, or technical information’ that the employee reasonably believes could, among other things, pose a substantial and significant threat to the public health or safety or constitute a violation of law, rule, or regulation."

Throughout his first weekend in office, it was abundantly clear that the new chief executive can be bullied into lashing out with lies and incoherent rage.

Now that the “alternative facts” memes have run their course and the hashtags have circulated, there’s one very serious question we all need to ask: How will the Trump White House handle a major crisis? In such a case, will Trump, Spicer, Conway and the rest of the regime tell us the truth about things like troop deployments, civilian or military casualties, details about what happened and how they plan to address it, precipitating factors and so forth? No way.

We know that he’s easily baited, as evidenced by his reactions to both the historic Women’s March and inaugural Crowdgate, and we also know that he is intensely erratic and unpredictable (in a bad way) and has terrible judgment and an adversarial relationship with the truth.

Therefore, it’s entirely possible — in fact, it’s practically inevitable — that his temperament will precipitate some sort of an attack on the United States or its interests. Anyone with a basic understanding of international relations and national security knows that a weak and incompetent leader who simultaneously projects unearned bluster is exactly the kind of leader that enemies will be motivated to test. They will calculate that he is likely to make all the wrong decisions. If ISIS operatives and the like have been monitoring the American news media and internet recently, they will also know that the Trump White House probably won’t be honest with the American people and will likely exacerbate a crisis due to fear, unsteadiness and incompetence.

Trump’s White House may well make the George W. Bush White House look like a pillar of unwavering competence and steadfast veracity. Under that administration, an incompetent leader led us into two destructive wars based on lies, along with a $1.4 trillion deficit and the Great Recession. Faced with a truly dangerous crisis, and without objective truth as the foundation, this one could be even more devastating.

Activists with Greenpeace on Wednesday brought a massive “resist” banner to a construction site in Washington, D.C., to protest President Trump’s actions promoting oil pipelines.

Protesters started scaling a 270-foot tower crane at a downtown construction site Wednesday morning, and unfurled the banner once they reached the top.

“He believes what he believes,” press secretary Sean Spicer said of Trump’s claim that millions voted illegally.

There is no other way to interpret what transpired at Spicer’s daily briefing. On repeated occasions, reporters asked him why Donald Trump continues to argue that 3 to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally in the 2016 election. And on each occasion, Spicer responded that Trump says it because he believes it to be true.

“The president does believe that,” Spicer told one reporter.

It’s a “longstanding belief,” he told another.

“He’s believed this for a long time,” he said to a third.

There is no evidence that millions of votes were cast illegally. In fact, multiple outlets and fact checkers have called such allegations bunk … repeatedly.