Karen Tumulty: “The first lady’s decision to step into the debate makes the silence of another Trump family member all the more telling. Where is Ivanka Trump, who is actually an official adviser to her father — and the one who claims that family issues are her portfolio?”
“All those photos of crying children don’t look so great on Instagram. Still, Ivanka, there is time to step up. You can do it. Be best.”
“The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a decision on when partisan gerrymandering goes too far, ruling against the challengers of a Republican-drawn map in Wisconsin, and a Democratic redistricting in Maryland,” the Washington Post reports.
“The decisions in the separate cases once again puts off a decision on when courts can find that partisan efforts to keep parties in power goes so far as to be unconstitutional.”
President Trump “doubled down on his controversial policy of separating children from parents when families illegally cross the border, while also calling on Congress to change laws to end it,” The Hill reports.
“In a series of tweets, Trump appeared to justify the strategy by claiming criminals are using children in a Trojan Horse-style operation to cross the U.S. border.”
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A new Ipsos/Daily Beast poll finds 19% of Republicans indicated they had a favorable view of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with 68% saying they had an unfavorable view.
That compared slightly better than the perception of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who had a 17% favorable, 72% unfavorable rating among self-identified Republicans.
President Trump “will attend a meeting of the House Republican conference Tuesday night, and immigration is likely to be one of the topics on the agenda, said Marc Short, the president’s legislative affairs chief, in an interview Sunday,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Short: “The policy is incredibly complicated and it is one we need to do a better job of communicating. We’ve not talked about the history of how we got to this point.”
Playbook: “Explaining why the government is separating families at the border isn’t likely to make the policy more popular.”
An interesting exchange between Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) and NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press:
SANFORD: We all know the story of 2009 and my implosion.
TODD: Yes.
SANFORD: A lie was told on my half — behalf, which means I own it. More to the point, I was living a lie in that chapter of life.
TODD: Yes.
SANFORD: But there were incredible consequences.
TODD: Yes, there were.
SANFORD: Financially, politically, socially, I lost my — I can go down a long list. A long list.
TODD: You paid a price…
SANFORD: And so maybe the reason I’m so outspoken on this now is there is no seeming consequence to the president and lies. And if we accept that as a society, it is going to have incredibly harmful consequences in the way that we operate going forward, based on the construct of the Founding Fathers.
First Read: “The lowest points of Donald Trump’s presidency have tended to occur when a sizable portion of his own party has criticized him for his actions, policies and statements (even when the GOP doesn’t necessarily act on that criticism). Think Trump’s initial travel ban, the furor over Charlottesville, the Comey firing, the pardon of Joe Arpaio and the health care debate of 2017.”
“And Trump’s slight bump in his approval rating has coincided with a lack of intense GOP disagreement with Trump. Our June NBC/WSJ poll found the president’s job rating increasing to 44 percent among registered voters due in large part to his better numbers among Republicans and rural voters.”
“But is that about to change with fellow Republicans and conservatives increasingly criticizing — in varying degrees — the Trump policy of separating migrant children from their families at the border?”
Jennifer Palmieri: “I am not sure there is a word in the English language to describe how I felt when I read that Comey had occasionally used his personal Gmail account to conduct official business. I’d felt the same sense of outrage and helplessness when I heard members of the press lament the outsized attention Clinton’s emails got during the campaign.”
“I won’t re-litigate the coverage of Clinton’s emails here (and how I believe suspicion of the motivations of a woman seeking power is at the root of the email controversy), but I can’t help but wonder we don’t now distrust Comey’s the way people distrusted Clinton. (Hint: It has more to do with his gender and her ambitions than his email.)”
John Oliver: “Democrats did not give them these laws, because—and I cannot stress this enough—there is no law that suddenly required separating parents from their children. This is a result of a deliberate policy choice by Jeff Sessions.”
Caitlin Owens: “The House plans to vote on two immigration bills this week: one written by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and favored by conservatives, and a compromise bill with buy-in from both conservatives and moderates.”
“GOP moderates will get the votes they wanted, but that doesn’t mean anything’s going to pass. Leadership agreed to do this to avoid the worst-case scenario of moderates filing a discharge petition — a way of forcing votes on bills they don’t like — which could have resulted in passage of the Democrats’ preferred immigration bill.”
“Even the optimists say that the compromise bill’s chance of passage is probably in Trump’s hands: He alone has the power to pressure reluctant House Republicans into voting for it. (Democrats are unlikely to support it.)”
A new Ipsos/Daily Beast poll finds 27% of Americans agree with President Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents, while 56% disagree.
Yet, Republicans leaned slightly more in favor, with 46% agreeing and 32% disagreeing. Meanwhile, just 14% of Democrats surveyed supported it and only 29% of Independents were in favor.
“Leading figures of both parties demanded on Sunday that President Trump halt his administration’s practice of separating children from their parents when apprehended at the border, as the issue further polarized the already divisive immigration debate in Washington,” the New York Times reports.
“Republican lawmakers, the former first lady Laura Bush, a conservative newspaper and a onetime adviser to Mr. Trump joined Democrats in condemning family separations that have removed nearly 2,000 children from their parents in just six weeks. The administration argued that it was just enforcing the law, a false assertion that Mr. Trump has made repeatedly.”
Associated Press: “The emotional policy of separating children from their parents is also starting to divide Republicans and their allies as Democrats turn up the pressure.”
Washington Post: Democrats intensify fight for immigrant children — and bash Trump, GOP ahead of midterms.
“I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”
— Former First Lady Laura Bush, writing in the Washington Post.
Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, announced that he would represent families separated at the U.S. border by immigration officials.
Said Avenatti: “If anyone knows of a parent that has had their child taken from them at the border and not returned, please have them contact me as I am entering this fight. This outrageous conduct must be brought to an immediate end.”