By Aris Folley @ TheHill.com, Aug. 3

A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration must fully restore the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

In his 25-page opinion, Judge John Bates said the Trump White House had again failed to provide justification for its proposal to end the Obama-era program, under which nearly 800,000 people brought to the country illegally as children, known as "Dreamers," have received work permits and deferral from deportation.

The judge also said in his opinion that he has agreed to delay his ruling to give the Trump administration 20 days "to determine whether it intends to appeal the Court’s decision and, if so, to seek a stay pending appeal."

President Trump rescinded DACA in September, a decision Bates wrote in his opinion “was arbitrary and capricious” with legal judgment that was “inadequately explained.” [....]

By Sarah Taylor @ TheBlaze.com, July 30

[....] “I been doing comedy since 1986. You look back, y’all gonna see so much inappropriate … you can’t hold me accountable for what I said in 1987. I wasn’t smart,” Jones said. “I’m so happy social media wasn’t going on in my 20s. I would be the comeback kid. You all would be sitting here going, ‘Ooh, she’s so respectable now!”

Jones said people should stop holding comedians to a certain standard.

“Stop doing that! Our job is to make the ugliest stuff funny. That’s our job,” the comedienne said. “We are court jesters, we are clowns, that’s what we do. We come out and make this terrible situation laughable. I mean, unless you want to cry for the rest of your life, you want to cry? We can do that. We can cry if you want to.” [....]

“People love me so much because I have an energy of happiness,” she continued. “The best way to conquer pain is laughter. It’s the best way. So let comedians do their jobs, because let me explain something to you: you’re not letting comedians doing their job and you’re miserable! You’re miserable!”

Jones went on and added that laughter is a “release” that is being cut off by the politically correct culture and those who are chronically offended. “Stop walking around so offended — you’re not gonna be able to survive life if you walk around offended,” the comedienne concluded.“LAUGH! LAUGH! LAUGH!” the comedienne and actress screamed at the top of her lungs.

You can watch the full segment in the video below [....]

By Astead W. Herndon @ NYTimes.com, Aug. 2

DETROIT — A Palestinian-American woman in the Michigan legislature running in the mold of Bernie Sanders. The African-American president of the Detroit City Council, who is popular with unions. The white mayor of a nearby suburb, positioning himself as a pragmatist. Two black state senators from historically prominent political families.

One of the most diverse Democratic congressional primaries of the year will reach a climax with voting on Tuesday. Yet it’s the competitive nature of the race that is a drastic adjustment for some residents, considering just how long political representation in this region has been almost singularly defined by one name: Conyers.

Voters are choosing a successor to Representative John Conyers Jr., a legend in Detroit and one of the nation’s most powerful black leaders until he resigned in December amid allegations of sexual misconduct [....] Besides electing a new member of Congress, many residents see Tuesday’s election as an opportunity to reshape the identity of the district, which is one of the poorest in the country and a shadow of its former self during Detroit’s heyday, in terms of population, homeownership and jobs. People speak less of choosing candidates based on traditional ideological lines, and more of selecting a new face of hope in a community that has been so defined by waves of economic and political tumult [....]

By Lauren Meier @ Axios.com, 1 hr. ago

A Russian national employed by the U.S. State Department, and through her position worked with the U.S. Secret Service, has been accused of being a Russian spy working in the U.S. embassy in Moscow undetected for about 10 years.

The details: According to the Guardian who broke the story, the Russian national had triggered warnings of U.S. intelligence in 2016 during a standard State Department security sweep when they found she regularly had "unauthorized meetings with members of the FSB, Russia’s principal security agency," which prompted State to revoke her security clearance. U.S. security agencies say she did not have access to classified information [....]

Op-ed by Josh Rogin @ WashingtonPost.com, Aug. 2

If ethnic cleansing takes place in China and nobody is able to hear it, does it make a sound? That’s what millions of Muslims inside the People’s Republic are asking as they watch the Chinese government expand a network of internment camps and systematic human rights abuses designed to stamp out their peoples’ religion and culture.

Since last year, hundreds of thousands — and perhaps millions — of innocent Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region in northwest China have been unjustly arrested and imprisoned in what the Chinese government calls “political re-education camps.” Thousands have disappeared. There are credible reports of torture and death among the prisoners. The government says it is fighting “terrorism” and “religious extremism.” Uighurs say they are resisting a campaign to crush religious and cultural freedom in China. The international community has largely reacted with silence.

Horrific as they are, the camps constitute just one part of Beijing’s effort [....]

The real factors for congestion are increased freight movement, construction activity and tourism, population and job growth.

Op-ed by Liya Palagashvili @ NYTimes.com, Aug. 2

Ms. Palagashvili is an economics professor at State University of New York-Purchase.

Are ride-sharing and -hailing services like Uber and Lyft causing road congestion? This has been the perception in cities across the country, and the companies have come under fire for it. In New York City, it has led to a proposal to curb, for a year, for-hire-vehicle companies from adding new driver's licenses (except for wheelchair-accessible vehicles).

Will proposals to limit ride hailing succeed at reducing road congestion? In New York, the answer can be found in a report by the mayor’s office. This $2 million study was conducted by McKinsey and other consultants to investigate whether ride-hailing companies have worsened traffic in the city.

From 2009 (before ride hailing) through 2015, the study finds that reductions in vehicular speeds began long before ride hailing hit the stage, and the pattern did not change after ride hailing. The primary factors of reductions in vehicular speed, according to the study, are increased freight movement, construction activity and tourism, population and job growth.

In short, ride hailing is not responsible for greater road congestion.

From 2009 to 2015, pedestrian growth in Manhattan’s central business district grew by about 18 to 24 percent. This slows cars down; at turns, they have to wait for crossing pedestrians. Furthermore, last year, New York City set a record of hosting almost 63 million tourists — a nearly 30 percent increase from 2010 [....]

Transcript @ WhiteHouse.gov, August 1

Cabinet Room

1:55 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you very much.  It’s my great honor to be here today with some of the leading pastors and faith leaders from across our nation.  These are great people, most of whom I know.  And my administration is open, 100 percent, and we have been.  We’ve had tremendous support, and I appreciate that.  I appreciate you all being here today.

In case you don’t know, that’s called “the media.”  (Laughter.)  They’re wonderful people.  I like you better.

I’m very happy to welcome these great leaders, including my good friends Pastor Paula White, Bishop Harry Jackson, Dr. Alveda King.  Thank you for being here, by the way.

DR. KING:  Yes, sir.  Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Darrell Scott, who’s been with me from — I think before I even announced.  He was saying, “You should run.”  Thank you, Darrell.

Today we’ll discuss the progress we’ve made — and it’s been tremendous — and the next steps we must take to continue bringing opportunity and safety to all of our citizens [....]

By Annie Karni @ Politico.com, July 31

[....] the process for managing the book has not been as formal in President Donald Trump’s White House — in fact, there hasn’t been any process at all. According to half a dozen former administration officials and people close to the administration, Woodward was never officially granted access to the White House or to the president, and the communications department did nothing to help him in researching or writing his book.

For example, when Woodward approached then-National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton, with whom Woodward had worked closely on his books about the George W. Bush administration, about an interview with national security adviser H.R. McMaster, he was officially turned down, according to a person familiar with the request.

The result is what often happens in Trump world: Senior officials, acting as lone wolves concerned with preserving their own reputations, spoke to Woodward on their own — with some granting him hours of their time out of a fear of being the last person in the room to offer his or her viewpoint.

As one former administration official put it: “He hooked somebody, and that put the fear of God in everyone else.”

Another former official added: “It’s gonna be killer. Everyone talked with Woodward.” [....]

The pop star’s reported shaping of the September cover hints at the shifting relationship between the media and their subjects—and between creators of color and traditional gatekeepers.

By Spencer Kornhauber @ TheAtlantic.com,/Culture Section, July 31

Control, meet control: The legendarily exacting editor Anna Wintour has handed the legendarily exacting singer Beyoncé some rule over the legendarily influential Vogue. In an unprecedented arrangement, reported by HuffPost, the cover and some inside photos of the forthcoming September issue have been orchestrated and selected by the subject rather than the editors. Beyoncé will not break her years-long avoidance of traditional interviews with journalists, but she will write her own “long-form” captions. This will be for Vogue’s largest and most scrutinized annual edition—possibly the final September issue of Wintour’s 30-year tenure before she retires.

The arrangement has been hyped as novel, but it comes as the culmination of a long trend: the waning dominance of old-media institutions in relation to new-media stars. As has been much observed, celebrity magazines lost power when famous people became able to easily conduct their own image making, unfiltered, on social media. A similar story has unfolded across sectors of society (does a president need to submit to an Oval Office interview when they have Twitter?), and America’s most obsessed-over public figures can now demand enormous concessions in the rare instances when they grant access to publications. [....]

By Michael D. Scher, Tiffany Hsu & Kirk Johnson @ NYTimes.com, July 31

WASHINGTON — For years, Cody Wilson, a champion of gun-rights and anarchism from Texas, has waged a battle to post on the internet the blueprints for making plastic guns on 3-D printers, claiming the First Amendment gives him the right to do it.

Plastic guns are difficult to detect, and concerned about making it easier to produce them, the Obama administration had used export laws banning the foreign distribution of firearms to prevent publication of the blueprints. But an abrupt reversal by the State Department last month appeared to finally clear the path for Mr. Wilson to usher in what his website calls “the age of the downloadable gun.”

That age, he said, would start Wednesday when he would begin uploading the instructions. But faced with dire warnings about an imminent risk to public safety from alarmed public officials across the country, a federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday evening abruptly granted a temporary nationwide injunction blocking Mr. Wilson from moving forward with his plans [....]

By Dan Berman @ CNN.com, July 29

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she hopes to stay on the Supreme Court until the age of 90. "I'm now 85," Ginsburg said on Sunday. "My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years." She has already hired law clerks for at least two more terms.

Ginsburg spoke in New York following a production of "The Originalist," a play about the late Justice Antonin Scalia, at the 59E59 Theater [....]