Melania Trump attended a White House "roundtable" on opioid abuse with Ms Most Unimportant Person in the World.

Melania met with experts and people who have been impacted by drug addiction, including opioids, on Thursday The mother-of-one stated that she wanted to 'listen and learn' from their stories, and she sat alongside White House counselor Kellyanne Conway

...Melania stated at the meeting that she wanted to 'listen and learn' from their stories, and she sat alongside White House counselor Kellyanne Conway who reportedly did most of the talking.

According to USA Today, Melania organized the event.

Melania Trump invited experts and people affected by addiction to opioids to the White House for a listening session and discussion about the epidemic.

..."I'm here to listen and learn from all of your stories," she said. And listen she did, leaving White House counselor Kellyanne Conway to do most of the talking.

For those who don't mind stepping into a pile of varmint, here are the transcripts of the Howard Stern interviews with Donald Trump. I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole. Not only don't I care, I won't waste my time. We all knew what he was during the campaign. If Americans were too steeped in Hillary-hatred to care then, it won't make a bit of difference now.

A much more productive way to spend your time: It's 15 minutes until Senor de Los Cielos starts. I hope they don't kill Monica Robles tonight. It's on Telemundo, with English subtitles, 9pm and again at midnight. Comcast's English captions for the show this season have been so awful I started watching via my indoor antenna last week. The captions, which come through my Sony TV rather than Comcast that way, are complete and accurate, so it's not the show's fault, it's Comcast's.

Acting DEA Chief Chuck Rosenberg is resigning. He has been at odds with Trump several times.

Law enforcement officials told the NY Times Rosenberg became convinced Trump had little respect for the law.

Mr. Rosenberg, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2015, is a career prosecutor. Under President George W. Bush, he served as the United States attorney in both southern Texas and eastern Virginia.

Rosenberg and the DEA have also disagreed with DOJ and Trump's insistence on going after the MS-13. [More...]

Donald Trump announced today he will visit Puerto Rico next week. As he always does, he exaggerated the U.S. response to date and said, "We're doing a great job."

A "great job"? That is as wrong and as tone-deaf as George Bush saying in 2005 to FEMA Chief Michael Brown, ""Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job". Puerto Rico may well become Donald Trump's Katrina.

The reality is the U.S. response has been slow and inadequate to address the growing humanitarian crisis on the island. [More...]

Republicans announced today they are giving up on their health care bill. They don't have the votes.

Another failure for Donald Trump. Another bullet dodged by the American people.

The Supreme Court has canceled oral arguments set for October 10 on Donald Trump's initial travel ban.

In an order issued Monday, the justices asked for new briefs about whether the third rendition of the travel ban means there is nothing left for the court to decide. The briefs are due Oct. 5 and the court said for now it is removing from its oral argument calendar a hearing scheduled for Oct. 10.

The New York Times says:

By canceling the arguments for now, the court signaled that it may never decide the case. “The cases are removed from the oral argument calendar, pending further order of the court,” the court said.

Yesterday, Donald Trump issued an executive proclamation revising and expanding his travel ban. You can read it here. [More...]

Donald Trump's speech at the U.N.

Authority and authoritarian powers seek to collapse the values, the systems, and alliances that prevented conflict and tilted the world toward freedom since World War II.

International criminal networks traffic drugs, weapons, people; force dislocation and mass migration; threaten our borders; and new forms of aggression exploit technology to menace our citizens.

The U.S. does have one problem, and its name is Donald Trump. Until his time is the oval office has come to an end, the U.S. will not be the beacon of liberty it has been for centuries.

The Washington Post reports Donald Trump, Jr reportedly wants to give up his secret protection service -- he wants more privacy. It's unclear whether he is also asking that protection be ended for his wife and five children.

Why the children?

Rich Staropoli, a former member of the Trump administration and former Secret Service agent, said one frustration has been that the Secret Service has been sending a rotating set of temporary agents to staff the details of Trump Jr.’s young children.

“Every few weeks they get new people,” Staropoli said. “There are all these new people coming and going. The kids don’t like that. They can’t get comfortable with someone they don’t know.”

Why do they have to be "comfortable" with them? Secret Service agents aren't members of the family or babysitters, they are hired guards. On the other hand, I think he's right to be angry that this happened: [More...]

Donald Trump and his family's travel and vacation expenses will result in 1,100 Secret Service agents working overtime this year, and the Secret Service today said it will run out of money November 30.

The spending limits are supposed to last through December, but the cost of protecting the president and members of the extended first family, who have traveled extensively for business and vacations, has strained the Secret Service, local governments and at least one other federal agency, the Coast Guard.

Presidential travel for Trump and the first lady — who fly to their oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., and to their golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on many weekends — has added costs for taxpayers and complications for the government. The Secret Service also must provide protection for Trump’s four adult children.

There is a hugely scathing (and in my view, pretty accurate) op-ed in today's New York Times by Frank Bruni, The Week When ... Trump Resigned.

Bruni opines that Trump voluntarily abdicated the Oval Office on Tuesday: [More...]

Sarah Huckabee Sanders today at the press briefing:

“White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.”

Am I the only one who sees Jared's and Ivanka's hand in this?

The Washington Post must have been in a hurry to get this news out. It's rare to seem them print a typo like this:[More...]

Donald Trump may already be a lame-duck. He is so embattled that none of his plans are going through and Congress is practically at a stand-still.

The White House announced yesterday he was ending two advisory commissions: one on manufacturing and one on infrastructure.

"[Donald Trump] has announced the end of the Manufacturing Council and the Strategy & Policy Forum. In addition, the President's Advisory Council on Infrastructure, which was still being formed, will not move forward," a White House official said Thursday.

The Teflon Don he is not. Republicans are so concerned about his effect on their re-election, they are distancing themselves from his as much as possible. Democrats just want to scrape him off the bottom of their shoes. His chances of doing anything while occupying a desk in the Oval Office are zilch.

Will he resign? Don't count the chickens before they're hatched. The pressure must stay on and the media must do the job now they failed to do during his campaign. [More...]