memeorandum: Rescue efforts mount in Houston as Harvey pours it on heavy

5:25 PM ET, August 27, 2017

Top Items:

Jon Gabriel / USA Today:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is no conservative and no hero, no matter what President Trump says — Convicting Arpaio of contempt of court was like busting Al Capone on tax evasion. It was the tip of an iceberg of misdeeds I saw my longtime sheriff commit. — CONNECT

Discussion: Washington Post

Mike Allen / Axios:

Trump Island: Risk rising with Republican leaders — It started with Charlottesville. The pardon of Joe Arpaio sped it up. — Until now, most Republicans on the Hill have either backed Trump, or mostly stayed silent about their differences. Now, he's being openly defied.

Peter Wehner / New York Times:

Behold Our ‘Child King’ — REPUBLICAN lawmakers have seen the Trump disaster coming for a while now. They simply have no clue what to do about it. — A couple of months ago — before we learned that Donald Trump Jr. wanted to spend quality time with people he believed represented the Russian government …

Jacqueline Thomsen / The Hill:
Obama adviser: Trump asking to drop case against Arpaio could get him impeached

Discussion: Washington Post, Daily Kos, IJR, The Guardian, Business Insider, KTLA, Outside the Beltway, Infowars, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, Mother Jones, Axios and New York's PIX11

Aaron Blake / Washington Post:
What if Trump ditched the GOP?

Discussion: Daily Kos

Amanda Erickson / Washington Post:
What authoritarianism experts think of Trump's decision to pardon Joe Arpaio

Discussion: Impeachable Offenses?, Hullabaloo, New York Times, BillMoyers.com, New York Magazine, Booman Tribune and BuzzFeed

Maia Davis / ABC News:
Trump after pardoning Arpaio gives plug for another polarizing sheriff

Discussion: Shareblue, Mediaite, Associated Press, Washington Post and Joe.My.God.

Maggie Haberman / New York Times:
Trump Asked Top Aides Months Ago if Arpaio Case Could Be Dropped, Officials Say

Discussion: New York Magazine, Vox and The Hill

Dan Balz / Washington Post:
Trump's pardon of Arpaio fits a pattern: A divider, not a uniter

Discussion: Politico

The Weather Channel:

Rainfall from Harvey Could Reach 50 Inches in Some Spots, Highest Ever Recorded in Texas; Catastrophic Flooding to Continue for Days — Story Highlights — Harvey has stalled inland over Texas, resulting in catastrophic, record flooding. — Periods of torrential rain will continue …

Discussion: Axios, The Ticker, The Gateway Pundit, The Verge, Patterico's Pontifications, Refinery29 and Grist

David Caplan / ABC News:

Harvey slams Texas: Rescue operations underway as historic flooding hits Houston area — Houston is being inundated with flooding of historic proportions after the ferocious Hurricane Harvey set in over the Texas Gulf Coast this weekend, dumping torrential rain on the city with no end in sight for days.

Discussion: Jamie Dupree, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, NBC News, Daily Wire, RedState, Balloon Juice, CBS New York and The Guardian

Joel Achenbach / Washington Post:
FEMA director says Harvey is probably the worst disaster in Texas history

Discussion: The Big Picture

CBS News:
Rescue efforts mount in Houston as Harvey pours it on heavy — live updates

Discussion: New York Times, TheBlaze, The Guardian, AOL, The Atlantic, IJR, CBS New York, Mashable, Washington Post, NPR, Associated Press, Mediaite, Talking Points Memo, NBC News, CNBC, ABC News and CNN, more at Mediagazer »

Fox News:
Harvey causes ‘catastrophic flooding’ in Houston, thousands of rescue calls made

Discussion: RedState, Washington Post, USA Today, The Texas Tribune, ThinkProgress, John Hawkins' Right Wing News and twitchy.com

Associated Press:
Hurricane Harvey: Houston residents desperately seek help

Discussion: Axios and ABC News

NHC Webmaster / National Hurricane Center GIS Data:
Summary - Tropical Storm Harvey (AT4/AL092017)

Discussion: Axios, New York's PIX11, FOX6Now.com, The Verge and ThinkProgress

ABC News:
‘This Week’ Transcript 8-27-17: Gov. Greg Abbott and Thomas Bossert

Discussion: Politico

Joe Biden / The Atlantic:

‘We Are Living Through a Battle for the Soul of This Nation’ — In January of 2009, I stood waiting in Wilmington, Delaware, for a train carrying the first African American elected president of the United States. I was there to join him as vice president on the way to a historic Inauguration.

Discussion: The Hill, The Guardian, Daily Wire, Shareblue, Raw Story, Mediaite, Business Insider and Washington Times

John Wayne Ferguson / Galveston County Daily News:

15 rescued from Dickinson nursing home — Fifteen senior citizens were evacuated from the La Vita Bella nursing home in Dickinson, David Popoff, the city's emergency management coordinator confirmed on Sunday afternoon. — A picture of the residents sitting in waist-deep water went viral on Twitter Sunday.

Discussion: The Daily Caller and The Gateway Pundit

Dave Lawler / Axios:

First Cohn, now Tillerson, turn on Trump — Asked by Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace about President Trump's values, Secretary of State Tillerson said, “the president speaks for himself.” Wallace followed up by asking Tillerson if he was separating himself from Trump's values …

Discussion: The Atlantic, Politico, ThinkProgress, Outside the Beltway, New York Times, RedState, Political Wire, Talking Points Memo and Joe.My.God.

Kailani Koenig / NBC News:

Kasich on a 2020 Run With Dem Hickenlooper: ‘The Answer Is No’ — WASHINGTON — Ohio's Republican Governor John Kasich on Sunday tried to shut down reports that he is considering an independent presidential bid in 2020 with Colorado's Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper.

Discussion: Political Wire, The Daily Caller, Daily Wire and Mediaite

Julia Manchester / The Hill:
Flake challenger: Trump ‘is what the country wanted’

Discussion: RedState

Colum Lynch / Foreign Policy:

Top State Department Officials Step Down in “Black Friday” Exodus — The State Department's Top U.N. Expert Steps Down On Eve of Trump's Turtle Bay Debut — The top State Department envoy responsible for overseeing U.S. policy at the United Nations and other international organizations stepped …

Discussion: Raw Story and New York Magazine

Adolfo Flores / BuzzFeed:

ICE Left 50 Immigrant Women And Kids Stranded At A Bus Station Before Hurricane Harvey Struck — The bus depot had been closed due to the approaching storm. — Federal immigration authorities left about 50 immigrant women and children, most of them asylum-seekers from Central America …

Discussion: ImmigrationProf Blog, Lawyers, Guns & Money and Daily Kos

Doyle McManus / Los Angeles Times:

Op-Ed Trump is shedding supporters like no other president in modern history — President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Aug. 23. (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press) — President Trump's poll numbers are bad and getting worse.

Discussion: Raw Story

Caroline Orr / Shareblue:

Trump hasn't done a thing to declare the opioid crisis an official emergency — In early August, after Democrats managed to shame him enough to say something, Donald Trump told reporters that the country's ongoing opioid epidemic was a “national emergency,” and promised to take the necessary steps to make the declaration official.