Today, Donald Trump signed an executive order to end his own policy of forcing the separation of children from families seeking asylum in America, because his initial position had become so untenable (indeed, downright unbelievable) that his political allies were fleeing like rats from a sinking ship. By this afternoon, there were plenty of other metaphors flying fast and thick: Trump blinked; he waved the white flag; he surrendered; he caved; he backed down; he threw in the towel; he bent to reality. Whichever you choose, the underlying reality is the same: President Donald Trump, in a rare occurrence, was forced today to take an action that proves both he and his aides have been flat-out lying to the American public for days on end. There's just no other way to look at it, and in fact it may be unprecedented for Trump. He's been telling anyone who would listen that he alone could not do anything, and that his hands were tied -- Congress would need to act. Now he has proved himself wrong on that front. He acted, which means he could have done so at any point if he truly had cared about the issue at all. What forced him to act was the overwhelmingly negative and relentless coverage he was receiving in the media, and the flight of his allies in the Republican Party. Today, this all became too much for Trump, so he did what he could have done all along, thus putting the lie to his voluminous statements to the contrary.

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I would sincerely love to be a fly on the wall at tonight's summit meeting between President Donald Trump and the House Republicans. By the time you read this, the meeting will likely either be underway or already over, so it remains to be seen how much of what goes on will leak out. Indeed, one hopes for a surreptitious recording to be made public, but one doesn't always get what one hopes for (alas!). But no matter how many of the details leak, I'd be willing to bet that the meeting will be described as "a spirited discussion" by someone in attendance. The phrase will likely become unavoidable, really.

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Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced a bill in the Senate which would end Donald Trump's cruel policy of separating children from their parents at the border. You might not have heard of this bill, which is in itself a messaging failure of both Feinstein and the rest of the Democrats. Feinstein did not appear on any of the Sunday political shows (at least, that I am aware of), and neither most of the media nor her fellow Democrats who did appear yesterday seem to have been aware of Feinstein's bill. The bill is S.3036, or the "Keep Families Together Act." As of this writing, all the Democrats in the Senate have signed on as cosponsors, but not a single Republican has yet done so.

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Fox News unwittingly (how else?) spoke a deep truth this week. Or perhaps a deep fantasy -- it's tough to tell, coming from Fox anchors. As President Trump descended the stairs from Air Force One in Singapore, Fox And Friends gushed: "This is history. Regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators, what we are seeing right now -- this is history." Um... how many dictators was that, again? The host later tried to walk back her unintentional gaffe, but is it really all that far off the mark?

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President Donald Trump and the media he loves to hate are both consumed today with interpreting the Justice Department Inspector General's report on how the F.B.I. handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails during the 2016 presidential election. I am personally going to avoid this particular fray for now and let the report percolate a bit before commenting upon it, mostly because there is so much other breaking legal news surrounding Trump that I feel is far more relevant and interesting. Long story short, the I.G. report condemns James Comey's public handling of the investigation, and ironically slams Comey for using a private email account to conduct official government business -- the very thing Clinton was being investigated for. What the I.G. report does not do is change either the outcome or the conclusions of the investigation one bit -- in other words, Clinton is the one most vindicated by the report, not Trump. But again, everyone (and their brother) is already chiming in on this discussion, so I'm largely going to take a pass and just sit back and listen to the debate rage.

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Primary election season for the 2018 midterms continues apace. Last night, voters in Maine reaffirmed their commitment to their new "ranked-choice" voting system. Two Democrats in Wisconsin proved why Governor Scott Walker was so right to be scared of holding special elections, as two more state-level legislative seat flipped from Republican to Democratic (which makes 44, and counting...). A brothel owner in Nevada won his primary. In Virginia, a man who defended the white supremacists in Charlottesville won the GOP nomination and will take on Senator Tim Kaine. So there's plenty of election news to talk about today. But instead of addressing any of these, I simply have to chime in on the fact that in my home state of California a ballot measure has now qualified for the November ballot which will allow voters to decide whether to support the idea of splitting California into three states or not.

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Donald Trump has apparently decided to take the advice of that impressive fount of political wisdom, South Park. It's hard to come to any other conclusion, really, when you recall that one of the songs from their first big movie (a song nominated for an Academy Award, no less) was titled: "Blame Canada." President Trump was obviously inspired by the lyrics: "With all their beady little eyes / And flapping heads so full of lies," when he began his tweetstorm against Justin Trudeau after Trump left the G-7 meeting early.

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As usual, there was a whole lot of political news this week, as President Trump continues to flail his way around the world in multiple unhinged ways. But this week, our eye was caught by the story that the Trump Justice Department has announced it is now conspiring to hand Democrats the midterm elections. Maybe Trump should appoint a special prosecutor to look into or something?

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I suppose, if one were more classically-minded, that slogan should be: "Year Of The Woman II." But whatever you call it, 2018 is shaping up to be even bigger for the fairer sex than 1992, the original Year Of The Woman in American politics. There are two reasons this is probably soon going to become conventional wisdom (if it already hasn't): impressive women candidates, and suburban and minority women as the key voting demographics.

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Today, the Supreme Court punted. Or, to be more properly seasonal, they ruled that a runner didn't touch second base so they invalidated his home run. The case before them was Masterpiece Cakeshop versus Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a test case that dealt with the limits of the freedom of religion and the state's right to regulate commerce to assure equal treatment under the law for all. However, the ruling did not directly address that weighty constitutional issue, but rather ruled that the state behaved improperly in its decision-making process. They didn't rule on the decision itself, in other words, but rather how it was arrived at. This is the big reason why the ruling was not another 5-4 decision, but rather 7-2. If the high court had ruled on the actual question before them, no matter how they ruled it most probably would have been another close 5-4 split.

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