Charity Navigator:
Charities Providing Assistance in the Wake of Hurricane Harvey
Philip Bump/WaPo:
Trump has lost more than a fifth of his support since inauguration
A lot of attention has been paid to the core, fervent base of support that Trump enjoyed from the primaries through the general election. But he won because more-moderate Republicans who were iffy about him ended up voting the party line. They, like a number of independents, didn’t really like him, but they liked Hillary Clinton even less.
That’s a problem because Trump has seen a big drop in support from precisely those groups. Republicans overall have shed 11 points of support for Trump — but moderate Republicans have dropped 17 points since January.
Sarah Ellison/Vanity Fair:
EXILES ON PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE: HOW JARED AND IVANKA WERE REPELLED BY WASHINGTON’S ELITE
“What is off-putting about them,” one political veteran told me, “is they do not grasp their essential irrelevance. They think they are special.”
Brian Beutler/TNR:
Republicans Completely Own Trump’s Arpaio Pardon
If they don't hold the president accountable for this abuse of power, where will the pardons end?
Personally, I am convinced that the Arpaio pardon is one of many reasonable grounds on which Congress could initiate the impeachment process, and that even in the absence of high crimes and misdemeanors, Trump should be removed from office because he is unfit to serve. Republicans, by contrast, want you to think that while they strongly oppose Trump’s behavior, they are powerless to do anything about it. But they are not powerless, and now they must confront the questions raised by their own post-hoc objections to something Trump all but announced he would do several days in advance. If Republicans in Congress are not going to do anything to stop Trump, what will they do to contain the damage?
The pardon announced in the middle of the hurricane. For ratings.
Brian Beutler/TNR:
Donald Trump and the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
As the Russia story comes roaring back, here is what we know: this presidency can never be ordinary, because it grew in toxic soil.
This is what awaits Trump on the flip side of his terrible August. It’s why anyone holding out for the possibility that Trump’s presidency might somehow become more ordinary over time is making a category error. It can’t become more ordinary, because it came into existence under unacceptable circumstances. Lawyers describe the knowledge gained from ill-gotten evidence as the fruit of the poisonous tree, because the information, no matter how compelling, can’t escape the taint of its forbidden provenance, and must be tossed out. With each passing day, the Trump presidency looks more and more like a political manifestation of the same metaphor.
Lawfare:
It’s Time: Congress Needs to Open a Formal Impeachment Inquiry
The fundamentals of impeachment are simple enough, but sufficiently abstract that you might be forgiven for thinking that serious consideration of an impeachment inquiry should remain a ways off. Article II, section 4 of the Constitution provides that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” This last bucket of impeachable offenses is broad—but it is not formless. As Charles Black, Jr., explains in his classic 1974 handbook on the subject, some acts are not crimes but are sufficiently abusive or ignominious to render an individual unfit for the nation's highest office. On the other hand, as one of us recently wrote in an extended meditation on Black’s analysis, crimes rise to the level of the impeachable offense specifically if they are "subversive of government or political order“ or simply so serious as to make a president "unviable as a national leader."
The problem in applying this rubric to Trump’s conduct is not that the President’s behavior raises no serious issues to discuss under the impeachment clauses. It’s the range and diversity of behavior the House Judiciary Committee properly should be considering that overwhelm.
Will Bunch/philly.com:
The day the 'enemies of the American people' helped save America
The loud and angry chant that had filled an Arizona convention center, egged on, remarkably, by the 45th president of the United States — “CNN sucks! CNN sucks!” — was still ringing in many people’s ears when the first scattered pellets of rain began falling on Houston. By Sunday afternoon, politics was almost forgotten as millions of Americans sat glued to their TVs watching the devastation from Hurricane Harvey and a flood that looked like it was something out of a Bible-school coloring book, the rising waters gradually and inexorably obliterating much of the nation’s fourth largest city. Into the eye of this apocalypse rode cops, wildlife officers, everyday Joes or Janes with little more than some gumption and a Mercury outboard motor, and, yes, an army of journalists.
Or, as we rarely call them these days, human beings.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Will Hurricane Harvey prompt a Trump ‘reset’? His megalomania probably won’t allow it.
Hopefully, Trump will rise to the occasion today, and management of the disaster response will continue to go as smoothly as possible. But beyond these things, questions about whether this will afford Trump a “reset” opportunity seem deeply flawed. They reflect an inability to reckon with the true depths of Trump’s megalomania, disengagement from policy details and utter detachment from any sense of responsibility to the public — and with the degree to which those things are deeply intertwined with all of the racial divisiveness and abuses of power that continue to rot away at this presidency.
