The racial violence in Charlottesville, Va., resonated all last week and brought President Donald Trump an unprecedented amount of criticism for his statements in its aftermath.

The specter of nuclear war dwarfed all the other news last week, but President Donald Trump still found time to unleash a tweetstorm on Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

The week in Connecticut started with political drama and a squeaky close vote on a package of wage and benefit concessions critical to shaping the Connecticut state budget – when the legislature finally adopts one.

For many in Connecticut, it was hard to say which was the more confounding issue last week: federal health care legislation, the development of a state budget, or the behavior of the president of the United States.

At the state capitol, all eyes were on Connecticut’s failure, so far, to adopt a state budget; but mostly the news was dominated by Donald Trump Jr.’s bombshell admission of meeting last year with a Russian lawyer he thought could provide dirt on Hillary Clinton.

After 241 years and six days of freedom from England, Connecticut has some of the same economic problems it started with – an out-migration of residents and a sputtering economy.

It was a week spent on needles and pins, here and in Washington. First and foremost, there was the worrisome question of whether the state would have a budget by Saturday as Connecticut Democrats, Republicans and Gov. Dannel Malloy all attempted to put one – at least a temporary one – in place.

It has been a week with many principles in play — some in opposition to others. The big issues affected were the state budget and U.S. Senate’s health care bill.

The typical Washington drama of hearings and partisan rhetoric was eclipsed by violence last week when a gunman opened fire on a Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandra, Va., injuring a top-ranking Republican congressman, an aide and two police officers.

The news came with head-spinning velocity last week with the end of the Connecticut legislative session and riveting testimony in Washington from the former director of the FBI. Both will no doubt reverberate for weeks to come.

As if Connecticut’s and Hartford’s budgetary troubles weren’t enough, the mood darkened further last week with news that Aetna is in talks to move its headquarters out of Connecticut.

“Losers” is one of President Donald Trump’s favorite words — one he uses for describing everyone from bombers in Manchester, England, to Washington Post columnist George Will; and there were plenty of losers and potential losers in Connecticut last week.

Where to put the pain? Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy expressed sharply different ideas last week on who will suffer – and in what way – as they try to close the enormous budget deficit facing Connecticut state government this year and in years ahead.

Connecticut heads turned – no, whipped – toward Washington late Tuesday when word came that President Donald Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey, the man in charge of the agency’s investigation of possible ties between Trump administration and campaign associates and the Russian government.