Politico: “Many Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House privately agree with the Trump administration official who went rogue in The New York Times. They also say the anonymous anti-Trump screed was a tremendous setback when it comes to curbing the president’s worst impulses. Republicans have been laboring to fund the government, push for free trade and reassure allies in the face of President Donald Trump’s penchant for conflict over the border wall, trade deficits and foreign policy.”

“But people working on those matters said Thursday that the Times piece only amps up the president’s paranoia by handing him proof that members of his own team are working against him.”

Said Sen. John Thune (R-SD): “It kind of reinforces his message out there that there’s a bunch of folks here embedded in the Washington bureaucracy that are out to get him. I’m not sure it accomplishes what the folks behind it think it does.”

President Trump “will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” the AP reports.

Rudy Giuliani said questions about obstruction of justice were a “no-go.”

“Giuliani’s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians. It signals the Trump’s lawyers are committed to protecting the president from answering questions about actions the president took in office.”

“White House officials reached out to a noted Yale University psychiatrist last fall out of concern over President Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior,” the New York Daily News reports.

Dr. Bandy Lee, who edited the best-selling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, said the staffers contacted her because the President was “scaring” them and they believed the President was “unraveling.”

Politico: “The president left behind a White House seized with paranoia, as staffers worried that anything they say to colleagues or in meetings will become fodder for the next tell-all or leak.”

“Trump aides feel burned not just by leaks to Woodward but by last month’s release of secret tapes that their former colleague Omarosa Manigault Newman made during the 2016 campaign and in the West Wing. And they’re worried that the nascent search for the author of the Times op-ed will become an excuse for aides to exact revenge on each other — ‘or target those they dislike,’ as one staffer put it.”

“The overwhelming atmosphere of distrust and suspicion among Trump’s closest aides echoes earlier ugly periods in the White House, including last spring’s crackdown on leaks following the publication of remarks made by a press aide in an internal meeting dismissing Arizona Sen. John McCain’s health.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “The anonymous New York Times column by a ‘senior official in the Trump administration’ has people talking about the 25th amendment again. But the writer is absolutely correct: Trying to remove the president by that mechanism – an idea that apparently was batted around in ‘early whispers within the cabinet’ — would have failed, risking a serious constitutional crisis.”

“That’s because the relevant portions of the 25th amendment allowing the removal of a president ‘who is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office’ are poorly drafted, and are entirely useless for a situation in which the president contests his removal.”

“A government photographer edited official pictures of Donald Trump’s inauguration to make the crowd appear bigger following a personal intervention from the president,” The Guardian reports.

“The photographer cropped out empty space ‘where the crowd ended’ for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama’s in 2009.”

A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 53% of voters disapprove of President Trump’s job performance while just 38% approve.

What is more, the share of voters who say they “strongly disapprove” of Trump has increased by five points, from 37% to 42%, over the past few weeks.

Key finding: “The decline in the president’s numbers stems largely from a change among college-educated whites. These voters will have a disproportionate weight in the upcoming midterm elections to the House of Representatives, both because they show up at polling booths and because so many of them live in marginal congressional districts. In the same poll, 49% of college-educated whites support Democratic candidates for the House (the generic ballot), while 40% support the Republicans. These are awful numbers for Republicans: the president is contagious.”