President Trump said on Twitter Saturday morning that his administration is doing "a much better job" when dealing with children at the border than the Obama administration.
The big picture: While it's been reported that hundreds of children are being reunited with their families, there still doesn't seem to be an established process for doing so after Trump's executive order earlier this week failed to address the issue.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders' dismissal from The Red Hen, a small Lexington, Virginia restaurant, went viral on Saturday morning — spurred first by a Facebook post from an employee and later by Sanders' confirmation via Twitter.
What they're saying: The restaurant's owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, granted an interview to The Washington Post this afternoon, telling her story about why she decided to give the public face of the Trump administration the boot from her establishment.
Julia Ioffe reports on Donald Trump Jr.'s past and present for GQ, digging up both a new account of the infamous Trump Tower meeting he had with a Russian lawyer and details of his early childhood.
Why it matters: Don Jr. is a favorite of Trump's base, but, in a quest to help his father's presidential campaign, has found himself at the center of the investigation regarding possible collusion with Russia. As Ioffe writes, "It’s never been trickier to be the president’s son."
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed that she was booted from The Red Hen, a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, on Friday night — apparently because of her work for the Trump administration.
The big picture: No official word from the restaurant has been given regarding Sanders' dismissal from the establishment, though a waiter there posted on Facebook that "my owner asked her to leave." And Sanders isn't the first Trump administration official to have difficulty dining out in the D.C. area this week.
"I am ashamed of the way my country has acted with respect of those children. I am disgusted, I am horrified, I am embarrassed, I’m ashamed. ... My wife and I were joking, not really joking; we wanted to tell the people on the customs line coming here that we were Canadian. And we were joking, but it's funny because it reveals a truth: I'm ashamed."
Melania Trump's visit to see migrant children in detention centers at the Mexican border quickly became about her fashion — an army green jacket with the words "I don't really care, do u?" in white letters on the back.
Why it matters: The First Family will always face intense scrutiny for everything they do, especially in serious situations. And Trump is not the first to face outcry for fashionably bad optics.
The Department of Health and Human Services established a task force to reunify families that had been separated at the border, according to Politico.
The details: The "unaccompanied children reunification task force" was formed by the branch of HHS that responds to public health disasters, Politico reports. The order for the task force says, per Politico: "The Secretary of Health and Human Services has directed the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response assist the ACF Office of Refugee Resettlement with Unaccompanied Children Reunification."
The great political protests shaping our country have one key difference from the 1960s, the AP's Sharon Cohen notes — the faces are less famous.
The big picture: "Since the presidential election of Donald Trump, there have been marches for women, science, the Dreamers — immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children — and most recently, gun control, a response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida."
Harrowing images of children in detention centers, the administration's flip flopping on its own family separation policy and two bills struggling to make it through the House have kept the national focus on immigration this week.
The big picture: Trump signed an executive order to end family separation, causing chaos amidst government agencies. He doubled down on his tough immigration message by holding an event with families whose children were killed by undocumented immigrants. One House immigration bill failed, another got punted to next week and Melania wore a $39 jacket that said "I don’t really care" on her trip to the border.
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence held an impassioned event on Friday with "Angel Families" — people whose children have been killed by undocumented immigrants — amid the controversy surrounding the administration over its "zero-tolerance" policy.
The big picture: Trump's administration has been embroiled in a major fight this week on immigration, primarily over the implementation of child separation. Meanwhile, The families who spoke today criticized the media for not covering their stories, and thanked Trump and Pence for their commitment to them.
There are 16 states that currently have National Guard troops employed at the Southwest border to support the Department of Homeland Security's enforcement mission, a National Guard spokesperson confirmed to Axios.
The backdrop: This week, several U.S. governors announced that they were either recalling their National Guard units back from the border or vowing not to send them in the wake of the controversy surrounding the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy and the separation of migrant families.
A nearly 2-year-old Honduran girl became a symbol for opposition to Trump's family separation policies, even ending up on the cover of TIME Magazine.
Reality check: As Reuters and the Washington Post have now reported, the girl, Yanela, was never separated from her mother, Sandra Sanchez. They are currently together at a facility in Texas.
President Trump has a 45% approval rating in the latest Gallup poll, the highest since late January, but it's around the same percentage that past presidents had going into a midterm election in which they lost dozens of seats.
Why it matters: His approval increased by 1 percentage point each week in two previous polls, then it jumped up 3 points in the most recent poll. As the Cook Political Report's Charles Cook writes: this 45% "needs to be the beginning of an upward trend through November if he hopes to salvage this House majority."
President Trump took to Twitter and threatened to place a 20% tariff on car imports coming from the European Union if the union didn't remove the $3.2 billion in tariffs recently placed on the United States.
The big picture: Earlier this month, President Trump said he has the "absolute right" to pardon himself, and had his legal team write a memo to confirm as much.
President Trump tweeted his endorsement of Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.) Friday, despite Roby's impassioned rebuke of Trump in the wake of the Access Hollywood scandal during his 2016 presidential campaign, when she said: "I cannot look my children in the eye and justify a vote for a man who promotes and boasts about sexually assaulting women."
Behind the scenes: It's a stunning signal of support, given Trump's fixation on loyalty. Meanwhile, there’s been consternation within Trumpworld over whether to endorse Roby, who has worked hard at gaining back the president's approval.
The backdrop: Initially, it was assumed that the heart-wrenching photo of 2-year-old Yanela was taken from her mother, Sandra Sanchez, like thousands of other children subjected to the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy. Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, still in Honduras, worried they has been separated as well, but later learned that the two were detained together at a facility in McAllen, Texas.
As House Republicans scramble for votes on its comprehensive immigration bill, President Trump tweeted Friday that Republicans should "stop wasting their time" and punt the immigration fight to after the midterms.
Be smart: As the immigration crisis reached new heights with the institution of the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy, the president repeatedly put the responsibility on Congress to fix it, and said that he wanted comprehensive legislation to do so. But now, with a House vote on a "compromise" immigration bill delayed to next week in the hopes of securing 218 votes, the president is changing his tune, and optimistically suggesting that passing any such legislation will be easier after the midterms.
The lobbying has started for the $80 million Michael Bloomberg plans to spend for House Democrats in the midterms.
What to watch: Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a possible 2020 presidential candidate, wants it to go to military veterans who are running, reports the Boston Globe's Liz Goodwin.
