All the revelations of the past 24 hours in Washington, DC

No one could say life in Washington is boring.

From his first hours in office, Donald Trump’s presidency has seemed like a brazen attempt to use the instruments of governmental power for his personal political gain. And in a few hours on Monday, an entire term’s worth worth of news and scandal flooded headlines as if to prove it.

After a squadron of White House aides refused to testify in the impeachment inquiry, Democrats raised the ante, publishing transcripts of other witness depositions that reveal a rogue foreign policy scheme that went around official US diplomats in Ukraine. (Read the summaries here.)

Sign up here for more analysis of US politics for global readers

Then an appeals court judge rejected Trump’s staggeringly broad claim to legal immunity in his battle to keep his tax returns private. His last shot at secrecy is an appeal to the Supreme Court — a constitutionally critical case that would echo down the generations.

Trump meanwhile renewed his demand to unmask the whistleblower who exposed the Ukraine scandal — a bold step for a President already under investigation for abuse of power.

And new reports suggested that the Justice Department is browbeating foreign spy agencies to help discredit the Americans who investigated Russian meddling in the 2016 race that put Trump in the Oval Office.

On a day when US stocks closed at record highs, it’s not clear that Americans care enough to do something about all this. But it’s already obvious that Trump’s legacy will be written in his insatiable grabs for power and the tests he constantly poses to the institutions of US democracy. And it’s just the beginning of the week …