Texas Tribune:
As thousands of Texans prepare to evacuate their cities due to Hurricane Harvey, the United States Border Patrol said it is not planning to close its roadside immigration checkpoints north of the Rio Grande Valley unless there is a danger to travelers or its agents.
“Border Patrol checkpoints will not be closed unless there is a danger to the safety of the traveling public and our agents. Border Patrol resources, including personnel and transportation, will be deployed on an as needed basis to augment the efforts and capabilities of local-response authorities,” the agency said in a statement.
Bloomberg:
Brock Long knew it was just a matter of time.
"We've gone 11 years without a major hurricane land-falling in the U.S.—that's a one-in-2,000 chance," said Long, President Donald Trump's administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in an interview at his office on Monday. "We're gonna get hit by a major hurricane. I worry that a lot of people have forgotten what that's like."
The country is about to be reminded. As of Thursday afternoon, Hurricane Harvey was expected to hit the Texas coast as a Category 3 storm, with top wind speeds of 85 miles an hour and flooding as high as seven feet. The storm will be Long’s first challenge as FEMA director. He was sworn in just two months ago.
Long's appointment was welcomed by experts on extreme weather, who praised him as neither overtly ideological nor hostile to the mission of the agency he was chosen to lead. Before being appointed to the top job, he was director of Alabama's Emergency Management Agency from 2008 to 2011, as well as a regional hurricane program manager for FEMA.
It matters what Long’s background is. As for his state vs Fed ideas, we’ll see.
Noah Rothman/Commentary:
Notes on Trump’s Usurper
The 2020 race has begun.
That contender should, however, realize what he or she migth be getting into. There is no triumph on this path; at least, not in the near-term. Trump’s challenger or challengers should know that they are most likely martyring themselves. No one has ever defeated a sitting president in a primary. They will be blamed for rending the party asunder and undermining Trump’s chances for victory in November. If Trump loses, his supporters will be able to dismiss that loss as reflective not of Trump’s record in office but the conceit of the spoiler.
All of these burdens may be worth bearing if prospective candidates truly believe the GOP is being transformed permanently into an irascible, bitter, racially anxious party that is hostile toward conservatism. Trump’s challengers may arrest that transformative process, but they won’t get credit for it initially. Vindication would come later.
Catherine Rampell/WaPo:
It’s time to start punishing public officials who disenfranchise voters
If we want state officials to stop erring so often on the side of disenfranchising voters, we need to change their incentives. That is, we need to start punishing them for illegally denying Americans the right to vote, rather than just have courts say, “Hey now, don’t do that again.”
The costs are much too low for public officials who, whether deliberately or mistakenly, disenfranchise Americans.
FT on Gary Cohn, head of the White House national economic council:
“As a patriotic American, I am reluctant to leave my post . . . because I feel a duty to fulfil my commitment to work on behalf of the American people. But I also feel compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks,” he said.
“Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK,” Mr Cohn added.
“As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job. I feel deep empathy for all who have been targeted by these hate groups. We must all unite together against them.”
Eugene Robinson/WaPo:
It’s no surprise we’re refighting the Civil War — it never really ended
The Confederate memorial in Orangeburg, S.C., my hometown, was dedicated in 1893. It was one of the early ones; most throughout the South were built after the turn of the century. They were symbols of defiance, intended to let African Americans and the federal government know who was back in charge.
Michael Gerson/WaPo:
My purpose is not to indict the president’s speechwriters. It is to point out that, in Trump’s case, there is no doubt which is his authentic voice, because he leaves no room for doubt. In rambling stemwinders such as the one in Phoenix, he plays rhetorical games with the artificial (for him) constraints of being presidential. “Nobody wants me to talk about your other senator — who’s weak on borders, weak on crime,” he said of (conservative Republican) Jeff Flake. “Now everybody’s happy.” Here the “nobody” clearly included his own concerned advisers. Trump often uses speeches (and Twitter) to cut the strings of their counsel.
Trump deserves a patent on the idea that political authenticity means spontaneity. So it was the real voice that we heard in Phoenix, attacking a man with brain cancer — Republican Sen. John McCain — without any wish for his recovery. The real voice defending a supporter who had been fired by CNN for writing “Sieg Heil” on Twitter. The real voice making fun of a TV anchor’s height. The real voice again widening racial divisions by defending Confederate monuments as “our history and our heritage.” (Instead of the royal “we,” the white “we.”) It was the real voice expressing greater passion in criticizing journalists than white supremacists.
Timothy Egan/NY Times:
So far, Democrats have come up with a tepid slogan — a “better deal” — and a bushel of banalities. They need to go big, bold and simple, pounding home a single economic message: Trump is trying to make life worse for most Americans. Call him out for going after people’s health care, for gutting protections for clean air and water, for killing studies on the health of miners in Appalachia.
Democrats could grab the economic nationalism argument from Bannon, refine it along Bernie Sanders lines, and run with it. Health care for all is pro-American. Raising wages across the country is pro-worker. A moonshot infrastructure program would lift every community. And then, Trump will do his part, ranting in the gutter where he feels most at home.