I think I understand some of this succession stuff ... for the dummies like me out there: It only matter whether #Rosenstein was fired or resigned for his duties as deputy attorney general. But he was overseeing the Mueller probe as the acting attorney general (because Sessions had to recuse).

.@HHSGov “is diverting millions of dollars in funding from a number of programs, including the @CDCgov and the @NIH, to pay for housing for the growing population of detained immigrant children.”

yahoo.com/news/exclusive… “The rest is being taken from other programs, including $16.7 million from Head Start, $5.7 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program and $13.3 million from the National Cancer Institute.”

I've been told that Kelly is "freaking out over the cost."

Trump's military parade was originally advertised as costing $12 million. It's basically ballooned to $100 million.

https://twitter.com/GarrettHaake/status/1030112322520592384

The White House also wants to designate the parade a "National Special Security Event," which adds many more complicating factors for planning it.

"Among the many ways in which the ongoing war in Yemen is a disaster is the impact it has had on the counterterrorism (CT) campaign against AQAP." -- @TheSoufanCenter thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-cho… "The complicated tribal nature of coalition allies in Yemen has led to the U.S. and its allies actually working with al-Qaeda fighters, paying them to either temporarily relocate or join the Saudi-led coalition."

In researching Trump and Manafort's overlapping social and business circles over the last several decades, I came across Steven Seagal's name...And it's a bizarre story. Two men, Paul Cohen and Julius Nasso, launched Manhattan Pictures International, a New York-based motion picture distribution and production company, in 2001. Manafort was part of the team behind the new company. variety.com/2001/film/news…

For most white Americans in this country, the rules when your family arrived were: If you made it here, you could stay. Sure, we can have a debate whether that still makes sense, but to pretend your circumstances were somehow different than those arriving at the southern border is uninformed/hypocritical.

If you thought the nightmare of family separations was even close to being over, listen to this: nytimes.com/2018/07/27/pod… I had no idea "ineligible" parents included people the Trump administration had simply lost track of -- sometimes because they were deported w/o their children, often with the understanding that w/ deportation would come reunification.

Don Jr. was either evasive or denied his father knew anything about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting when talking to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017. About Rob Goldstone's email in which he told Don Jr. that the Russians had "offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and info that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia":

A good peek behind the scenes here from @nahaltoosi, @BryanDBender & @elianayjohnson: politico.com/story/2018/07/… It confirms what I've been hearing as well. On the Mattis letter to Bolton: It was described to me as just a little "passive aggressive," providing Bolton a long list of some of the topics that he might want to hold a mtg on ...

France has its own version of Maria Butina, a young Russian woman named Maria Katasonova, who happens to be an ardent supporter of Marine Le Pen. .@qz described her as: "a smoldering 21-yr-old Russian nationalist who somehow manages her time btw working for a high-ranking politician, heading up a 'Women for Marine' movement, studying law, & being part of a patriotic artists’ collective." qz.com/941383/maria-k…

Who contacted Trump before Theresa May to congratulate him on his election victory? The @nytimes reported that Putin sent Trump "a telegram about an hour after he had emerged the victor." nytimes.com/2016/11/15/wor… This came up later in Jared Kushner statement: "When the campaign received an email purporting to be an official note of congratulations from President Putin, I was asked how we could verify it was real....

Using the Parkland shooting to sow distrust in FBI leadership,with the goal of discrediting the Russia investigation (thereby protecting Trump), is perhaps the most appalling development of the Trump era. Carter Page kicked it off on @TuckerCarlson's show Friday night: video.foxnews.com/v/573544927500…

Let's clear something up once and for all: We have no idea what impact the Russian operations had on our election. Why? Because it's impossible to get inside voters' brains.