President Donald Trump has not been very successful in steering policy through Congress. But that doesn't mean terrible things aren't happening in the rest of government.

The previously regulated are becoming the regulators of our environment, free to pollute and harm as profits dictate.

Efforts to tame global warming officially are abandoned. The internet, the digital bloodstream of a modern age, is being sold to the highest bidder.

We are stuck on the quaint notion of bringing back long-gone jobs in coal while the rest of the developed world perfects renewables. Lawyers who have never presided over a courtroom are rising to the federal bench, if they pledge allegiance to the rich and powerful.

The country's richest salivate at the prospects of looming success in Congress on tax reform, ready to sweep up all the new money the United States will have to borrow to make ends meet, like greedy Russian oligarchs.

Racists are openly celebrating, in this time of Trump.

The president tells us to look away from the women claiming sexual harassment and listen instead to what the accused has to say, at least when the accused is Republican.

The middle class, never mind the poor, underprivileged and struggling, is being pilfered before our very eyes.

At least the old establishment Republicans had enough shame to try to hide some of this.

Our own Sen. Chris Murphy has emerged, despite his youthful demeanor, at 44, as one of the bright hopes of Trump resistance in Washington, securing frequent cable TV appearances and some nods on more than a few 2020 presidential contender lists.

So I was curious, in attending Murphy's interview Tuesday before The Day's Editorial Board, how potent this Trump slayer might seem.

The eye-opener from the interview for me was Murphy's assessment — he qualified that he is not a conspiracy theorist — that the Trump Administration's dismantling of the State Department is exactly what Russia's Vladimir Putin would pursue, if he could run the U.S. government himself.

Indeed, the Trump era, Murphy said, has been good for Putin, from our deferral on the Syrian war to a lack of official rebuke for election meddling.

"Russian influence is expanding by the day," Murphy said.

As the special counsel's investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russians grows more openly aggressive, it appears an enormous reckoning is at hand, as a round of new indictments seems likely to fly.

I take Murphy at his word when he says he doesn't relish the notion of crushing indictments or even impeachment.

But I took some solace in his reckoning that the Washington establishment, including Republican senators with whom he says he has private conversations, is prepared to see Mueller's Russian investigation to its conclusion, wherever it may lead.

A Mueller firing would not be tolerated by Congress, Murphy said.

Still, I worry about a future that has President Trump backed into a corner, Mueller holding the chair.

Murphy, a sponsor of legislation that would clarify the president's use of a first nuclear strike, is not all that reassuring that even a new law would prevent the notion, already floating inside the administration, that legal justification of a first strike is subject to interpretation.

Murphy is smart, studied and very much on his game. It would be hard to expect more from Connecticut's junior senator.

No wonder there seems to be no one on the horizon with a prayer of derailing his re-election. But that's not all about him. Still ringing in many ears from the last election was someone who told me, Trump drunk, that he will never ever vote for a Republican again, whoever it might be.

I must also remember that Murphy, among the more prominent of Trump obstructionists in Congress, was among those in the Democratic establishment who assured us, with candidate Trump bearing down, that Hillary Clinton had our backs.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com