Judge halts mother-daughter deportation, threatens to hold Sessions in contempt  —  This is a developing story.  It will be updated.  —  A federal judge in Washington halted an apparent deportation in progress Thursday and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt …

APNewsBreak: Kobach's lead in Kansas race falls to 91 votes  —  TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's lead over Gov. Jeff Colyer in the Republican primary has shrunk to only 91 votes after election officials discovered a mistake in the listing for one county's results in the state's tally of votes.

Melania Trump's parents are now US citizens  —  (CNN)President Donald Trump's in-laws are officially United States citizens.  —  Viktor and Amalija Knavs, the parents of first lady Melania Trump, were granted citizenship Thursday, their immigration attorney, Michael Wildes, announced.

Laura Ingraham's Anti-Immigrant Rant Was So Racist It Was Endorsed by Ex-KKK Leader David Duke … Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham's Wednesday night monologue about immigrants destroying America was so racist it got the endorsement of David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Twitter says Infowars hasn't ‘violated our rules.’ It looks like that's not the case  —  Why Facebook,YouTube and Apple are removing InfoWars content  —  Twitter's vice president for trust and safety, Del Harvey, told employees in an email on Wednesday that if far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones …

GOP Rep. Chris Collins used campaign funds to pay legal bills for insider-trading investigations  — Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., used campaign funds to pay legal bills while he faced investigation for alleged insider trading for more than a year.  — A federal criminal investigation culminated …

U.S. Officials Scrambled Behind the Scenes to Shield NATO Deal From Trump  —  John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, pushed NATO ambassadors to finish a critical policy document before the alliance's summit meeting last month so the president could not reject it.  —  August 9, 2018

Puerto Rico concedes Hurricane Maria deaths more than 1,400  —  SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico has conceded that Hurricane Maria killed more than 1,400 people on the island last year and not just the 64 in the official death toll.  —  The government acknowledged the higher death toll …

The Outrage Over Sarah Jeong  —  Let he who is without a bad tweet cast the first stone.  —  In March, a liberal furor erupted when The Atlantic magazine briefly hired Kevin Williamson, a conservative writer with National Review.  Several years earlier, Williamson had written a short tweet …

Judge in Manafort Trial Is a ‘Caesar’ in His Own Rome  —  ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Judge T. S. Ellis III had dismissed the jury for the day, but he was not quite finished opining about what he saw as irrelevant and repetitive questioning of a witness in the financial fraud trial of Paul Manafort.

The ‘Red Wave’ Illusion  —  Evidence builds of major GOP losses in November.  —  Republicans on present trend are poised in November to lose their majority in the House of Representatives and a slew of governorships.  That's the clear message from Tuesday's election contests and a growing body of evidence.

In leaked audio, Devin Nunes makes strong case for Democratic Congress  —  Last night, Rachel Maddow reported on leaked audio of Rep. Devin Nunes, who is perhaps President Trump's staunchest bodyguard against accountability on Capitol Hill, in which he candidly revealed that Republicans hope …

Ohio race just got closer after county finds hundreds of uncounted votes  —  A special election in Ohio's 12th Congressional District was too close to call early Tuesday.  It could produce an automatic recount for Democrat Danny O'Connor and Republican Troy Balderson, who was backed by President Donald Trump.

Dismantling Republican Faux-Patriotism  —  One of the more common tropes in modern American politics is the claim that the Republican Party has a monopoly on patriotism.  —  A flag flying in front of a home or a “Support Our Troops” bumper sticker is often assumed to signify the right-wing political affiliation of its owner.

Kaine leads Stewart by 23 points in poll from VCU's Wilder school  —  Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., led GOP rival Corey Stewart by 23 percentage points in a July poll of likely voters released Wednesday.  —  Kaine had 49 percent to 26 percent for Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors …

Should the U.S. Air Force Bomb Forest Fires?  —  It sounds ridiculous, but it's an idea that's grounded in physics.  —  Earlier this summer, the Swedish Air Force dropped a laser-guided bomb on a forest fire to help suppress the flames.  Now there's a proposal for the United States to do the same …

Massachusetts man arrested for threatening ICE agents on Twitter  —  Brandon Ziobrowski, 33, was arrested after allegedly tweeting that he would give $500 to anyone who kills an ICE agent.  —  A Boston-area man has been arrested by federal agents in New York after threatening U.S. immigration agents on Twitter.

Donald Trump's Nightmare Isn't Robert Mueller  —  Judging from the unhinged tone of his tweets—which is nothing new, but still perhaps the best barometer of our 45th president's mood on any given day—Donald Trump is worried about his future.  He should be, as the Special Counsel investigation …

The Demography of the Alt-Right … Divorce does seem to increase the likelihood a respondent will believe whites suffer discrimination and the likelihood that a white person will agree with all three of the basic premises of white identity politics.  —  Higher incomes are associated …

Tesla board plans to meet with advisors next week to ramp up going-private talks, likely to ask Musk to recuse himself from process  — The Tesla board is taking Elon Musk's offer to take the company private at $420-per-share seriously and may tell Musk to recuse himself, according to a source familiar with the matter.