The Weekly Sift

I started a vacation yesterday, but I’m avoiding canceling two consecutive Sifts by putting out a weekly summary (but no featured post) this morning. (I’m writing this from the breakfast room of a Best Western in Pennsylvania, and I’ve got Cubs tickets for Friday.) I’m going to try to have the summary out by 10 EDT.

As usual in the Trump Era, a lot is going on:

• Across the government and the country, Americans continue to wonder what Trump promised Putin in their private meeting two weeks ago. Secretary of State Pompeo tried to convince the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that they know everything they need to know, but instead raised doubts about how much he knows himself.
• The government tried to claim that it met a court deadline to reunite the migrant families it separated, but it did so by classifying the parents who hadn’t gotten their kids back as “ineligible”. The judge doesn’t seem to be buying it.
• Trump prematurely announced that he has resolved the trade war he started with Europe. The 2nd quarter GDP numbers look good, but come with a major asterisk.
• Trump is also facing increasing legal pressure on a variety of fronts: Michael Cohen seems to be flipping against him, Paul Manafort’s trial is starting, a lawsuit challenging his receipt of unconstitutional emoluments cleared a major hurdle, and his long-time CFO got a subpoena. Meanwhile, his supporters are trying to impeach Rod Rosenstein and starting to say “So what if he did collude with the Russians?”

I’ll try to flesh all that out, plus a few other things (like some interesting environmental developments), before closing with a funny-not-funny video about the questions gay couples get asked.