Axios

"Our troops will fight to win. We will fight to win," Trump said during his prime-time announcement on Afghanistan earlier this week, adding that troop levels would be determined by conditions on the ground, not a timetable.

What we're watching for is what those conditions are, and what Trump is signaling about the path forward:

President Trump has stuck to blaming "both sides" for the violence in Charlottesville after a counter-protester was killed, allegedly by a white supremacist. That won him praise from former KKK leader David Duke, and criticism from others for not harshly condemning racism.

Why it matters:

This isn't the first time Trump (or his family) has faced criticism for comments or actions related to minority-groups.

The Trump administration piled on the news Friday night, with multiple major news releases coming as the nation focused on Hurricane Harvey.

1. Trump formally signed the memo banning transgender military recruits. It left those currently serving in limbo. More here.
2. Trump pardoned former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is known for disobeying a 2011 court order telling him to stop detaining people based on suspicion of being undocumented immigrants. More here.
3. Sebastian Gorka resigned from the White House. Gorka, a former Breitbart staffer and deputy assistant to Trump, said he can better serve America from the outside. More here.

And a news item not from Trump: North Korea launched short-range ballistic missiles.

Trump has granted a presidential pardon to former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of Maricopa County, Arizona. The memo mentions his "admirable" and "selfless public service."

• Arpaio is being pardoned for criminal contempt charges for disobeying a 2011 court order that ordered him to stop detaining people based on his suspicions they were undocumented immigrants in what critics have called racist and discriminatory practices.
• Arpaio served as a sheriff from 1993-2016 until he was defeated last year. He endorsed Trump's presidential candidacy in January 2016 and appeared with him at campaign events.

Why it matters: Choosing Arpaio as the first pardon will enrage half the country, but Trump won't care. The way Trump sees it, he genuinely believes an injustice was done to Arpaio and he sees this as helping somebody who was loyal to him throughout the campaign. Trump viewed Arpaio's support -- along with Jeff Sessions' -- as crucial to solidifying his credentials on being tough on the border.

President Trump has pardoned former sheriff Joe Arpaio, noting his record of public service and calling him a "worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon."

Why it matters:

Granting pardons has historically been an unpopular move — it derailed Gerald Ford's reelection bid in 1976 — and it often opens the door for a president's motives to be called into question. But President Trump has spoken openly, and early on, about his power to grant pardons, seemingly without concern for whether it will damage his reputation. Last month, he reportedly asked his legal team whether he could pardon aides, family members, and even himself if implicated in Special Counsel Bob Mueller's Russian investigation; and now he's issued his first pardon, just 7 months into his presidency.

Special Counsel Bob Mueller is ratcheting up his probe again. The two new reported moves include one on Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and one on former national security advisor Mike Flynn:

1. This week Mueller has issued grand jury subpoenas for testimony from public relations executives who worked on an international lobbying campaign with Manafort per NBC News. The work was for a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party.What it means: Manafort could be in serious legal trouble (recall the FBI raided Manafort's apartment last month).The firms: European Center for a Modern Ukraine, Podesta Group, Mercury LLC, and three others NBC did not confirm.
2. Mueller is also looking into whether Flynn played a role in trying to obtain Hillary Clinton's emails from Russian hackers, the WSJ reports. A GOP operative told the WSJ earlier this year he was discussing the matter with Flynn, who at the time was serving as an advisor to then-candidate Trump.

As President Trump headed to his helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House to depart for Camp David for the weekend, he offered a "good luck" and a thumbs up to the people of Texas as Hurricane Harvey, a major Category 3 storm, bears down on the state:

President Trump's National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and acting Homeland Security Secretary Tom Bossert joined Sarah Sanders for her Friday briefing:

• Sanders announced that Trump plans to go to Texas early next week following Hurricane Harvey. She also addressed Gary Cohn's FT interview, where he criticized Trump's Charlottesville response, saying that the remarks were a "very small portion" of the interview.
• Mnuchin assured the press that the debt ceiling will be raised in September. He also acknowledged that he was "wrong" in initially assuming the administration would get tax reform done by August. "I'm hopeful we can get it done by the end of the year."
• McMaster said that winning in Afghanistan "is allowing Afghanistan to be Afghanistan." Not nation building.
• Bossert said the administration is evaluating Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's request for an emergency declaration ahead of the hurricane. He later added that the storm "is right up President Trump's alley."

Trump is prohibiting Venezuela and its state oil company, PDVSA, from selling debt to Americans and U.S. financial institutions. This is likely to make it harder for the dictatorship to function as it's already strapped for cash — Maduro has nearly $100 billion of debts, per Financial Times.

• "This is not an oil embargo," a senior administration official clarified on a conference call with reporters Friday.
• To limit harm to American and Venezuelan people, financing for export and import of petroleum will be allowed, as will transactions involving only PDVSA's U.S. affiliate, Citgo, preexisting Venezuelan debts, and humanitarian goods.
• This comes after Maduro embraced what the White House is calling an "illegitimate" Constituent Assembly. The U.S. has previously sanctioned Venezuela three times.

Intended effect: To make sure the U.S. isn't complicit in the dictatorship and to bring a restoration of democracy to Venezuela.

With the relationship between President Trump and GOP leaders in Congress deteriorating, chances have risen for both a government shutdown and a failure for the United States to increase its debt limit. The timing of these very different issues — the government is funded through the end of September and the debt needs to be raised sometime in October — has led to some confusion.

Why it matters:

When these issues have come up before, conservative Republicans have threatened to vote against raising the debt limit unless the increase was matched by spending cuts, so Democratic votes were required to help Republican leaders push the bills through. But the failure to act on either would have vastly different consequences.

A government shutdown might mean a temporary inconvenience — an unplanned furlough or a botched trip to Yellowstone — but a failure to raise the debt limit would be a catastrophe for global finance.

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen has rejected Trump's assertions that he wants to roll back the banking regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, noting how they protect the economy from running up another crisis, The Washington Post reports.

Quick reaction: Mark Hamrick, Bankrate.com senior economic analyst said her comments will "not largely influence ... minds in the Congress."

Why it matters: This disagreement sets the most powerful banking regulator — whose term is ending soon — very much apart from Trump, and as the NYT's Binyamin Appelbaum put it, "If Janet Yellen Goes, the Fed's Current Policy Might Go With Her." This might push Trump to lean more towards his national economic council director, Gary Cohn, to fill the role, although Cohn's comments earlier Friday about Trump's Charlottesville comments are also likely to spark some tension.

On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended to President Trump that the Bears Ears in Utah, the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou be reduced in size, the Washington Post reported. Zinke called for a "significant" reduction to Bears Ears, according to the Post's sources, as well as for changes to property management rules, including allowing fishing.

Why it matters: This comes after Trump ordered Zinke to review 27 national monuments established by the past three presidents. The winners from the decision include fishing operators, ranchers and some local Republican politicians who think the nationally protected land is too extensive and restrictive to the public. However, the Post reports that more than 3 million people submitted comments to the department on the review, and the majority were in favor of keeping the protected boundaries.

Last weekend, Sen. Bob Corker told a local Tennessee newspaper that President Trump — among other things — "has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence, that he needs to demonstrate in order for him to be successful." Trump responded on Friday:

Trump's tweet was perhaps prompted by a statement from Sarah Sanders at the White House press briefing yesterday after a reporter requested a response to Corker: "I think that's a ridiculous and outrageous claim and doesn't even require a response from this podium."

Gary Cohn told the Financial Times that he felt "enormous pressure" following Trump's response to Charlottesville, where the president blamed "both sides" for the violence that broke out.

"This administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities."

"I have come under enormous pressure both to resign and to remain in my current position. As a patriotic American, I am reluctant to leave my post... But I also feel compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks... Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK."

Why it matters: A source close to Trump predicts he will explode when he reads the Cohn interview.

The White House will start rolling out messaging on tax reform next week, but not the plan being worked on with House and Senate GOP leaders, according to two senior administration officials. A bill is being drafted and the plan is still to get Trump to sell tax reform at public events in the coming month.

Why it matters: The Trump administration knows it messed up on health care, and wants to correct those problems with tax reform. But they've been promising a competent sales job for more than a month, now, and they're yet to deliver.