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Michelle Obama's Post-White House Style Is Consistently on Point Vanity Fair It's been nearly 200 days since the Obamas moved out of the White House. In that time, Barack Obama may have become a style star, but Michelle Obama has simply remained one. The former First Lady is as supportive of a wide range of up-and-coming ...

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Michelle Obama's Post-White House Style Is Consistently on Point - Vanity Fair

In fiscal year 2016, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 240,255 people from the country, a rate of more than 20,000 people per month. | Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via AP

The U.S. is deporting people more slowly than during the Obama administration despite President Donald Trumps vast immigration crackdown, according to new data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

From Feb. 1 to June 30, ICE officials removed 84,473 people a rate of roughly 16,900 people per month. If deportations continue at the same clip until the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, federal immigration officials will have removed fewer people than they did during even the slowest years of Barack Obama's presidency.

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In fiscal year 2016, ICE removed 240,255 people from the country, a rate of more than 20,000 people per month.

In fiscal year 2012 the peak year for deportations under Obama the agency removed an average of roughly 34,000 people per month.

The lower rate of deportations doesnt mean Trump has embraced a hands-off approach to immigration enforcement. But it may mean that deportations are lagging behind arrest rates or removal orders, which by all accounts have soared since Trump took office.

Soon after being sworn in, Trump signed an order greatly broadening the universe of people who could be targeted for deportation. In the next 100 days, immigration arrests rose by nearly 38 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.

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However, an arrest doesnt always translate into a speedy deportation, and several factors have suppressed the removal rate.

First, the number of people caught trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped precipitously under Trump, an indication that his hard-line enforcement has scared people away.

Another factor is the immigration courts, which face a backlog of more than 610,000 cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

The case backlog grew exponentially during the Obama administration partly the result of Central Americans seeking asylum in the U.S. but the pileup has worsened under Trump. It has expanded by nearly 100,000 cases so far in the current fiscal year, an 18 percent increase.

The courts are more paralyzed than ever before, said John Sandweg, who was acting director of ICE from 2013 to 2014.

Sandweg partly blames Trumps decision to scrap policies that required federal immigration officers to place a priority on apprehending serious criminals instead of non-criminals and lower-level offenders.

When you go out and you arrest a whole bunch of people willy-nilly, [the judge] has got to fill his docket time hearing those arguments, Sandweg said.

Still, the immigration courts, which fall under the purview of the Justice Department, could get additional help in coming months.

The DOJ announced Tuesday that it had hired dozens of immigration judges since Trump took office, to meet levels funded by Congress. On top of that, the president's fiscal year 2018 budget requests 75 additional judges to help clear the backlog.

The department said it is also reviewing internal practices, procedures, and technology in order to identify ways in which it can further enhance immigration judges productivity without compromising due process.

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Trump deportations lag behind Obama levels - Politico

WASHINGTON President Trump appears to have found himself a new national security adviser.

His name is Barack Obama.

Recent days have brought evidence of two foreign policy successes for the Trump administration:

Then,on Saturday, China and Russia joined in a unanimous U.N. Security Council vote to approve a U.S.-sponsored resolution with tough new sanctions on North Korea, a forceful world response to that countrys missile tests.

These two developments, in addition to being successes, had another thing in common: In both cases, the Trump administration essentially embraced Obama administration policies policies Trump previously derided as a total failure.

On North Korea, Trump has long been making threats and ultimatums, promising severe things and raising the possibility that South Korea and Japan could build nuclear arsenals. He was harshly (if vaguely) critical of the Obama administrations handling of North Korea, saying Obama and Hillary Clinton who were pushing for tougher sanctions werent being strong enough.

And now? Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered soothing words about North Korea: We do not seek a regime change, we do not seek a collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th Parallel, he said. We are trying to convey to the North Koreans: We are not your enemy, we are not your threat.

Those words cleared the way for China and Russia to support the sanctions resolution at the United Nationson Saturday, as The Washington Posts Karen DeYoung reported. Representatives of both countries mentioned Tillersons statement in casting their votes.

Under the headline Trumps North Korea policy resembles Obamas, Politicoon Mondayreported that administration officials were privately sending signals that a pre-emptive attack on North Korea is not on the table and that the Trump administration is pursuing a five-part strategy similar to the strategy undertaken by the Obama administration.

On the Islamic State, likewise, Brett McGurk, a top State Department official under both Obama and Trump, announced that steps taken by Trump notably his delegation of decision-making authority from the White House to commanders in the field contributed to the reclaiming of 8,000 square miles of Islamic State territory.

Trumps decision to give more authority to field commanders makes the military more nimble. The Obama White House was justifiably criticized for its plodding micromanagement of military strategy.But this change is a massage not a reversal of an Obama strategy Trump repeatedly derided as weak and a disaster. By the time Trump took over, the territory controlled by the Islamic State had already fallen substantially from its peak in early 2015.

Trump promised to replace the Obama strategy with a secret plan of his own. But, as DeYoung reported, Trumps Islamic State strategy looks very much like the one the Obama administration pursued: denying territory to the militants while avoiding conflict with Iran and staying out of Syrias civil war.

Its not as if Trump is about to usher in a third term for the Obama national security team. But even if these two cases turn out to be isolated and temporary, they show that within the Trump administration there is at least some instinct to tone down the wild talk and, ever so quietly, to bend to reality.

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Milbank: Meet President Trump's new foreign policy adviser Barack Obama - The Mercury News

BARACK DAY

It's only been seven months since Former President Barack Obama left office, and already he will have his own state holiday.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner officially declared Aug. 4 (Obama's birthday) "Barack Obama Day" in the state, according to NBC Chicago. The holiday will be celebrated each year starting in 2018.

The new holiday will be "observed throughout the State as a day set apart to honor the 44th President of the United States of America who began his career serving the People of Illinois in both the Illinois State Senate and the United States Senate, and dedicated his life to protecting the rights of Americans and building bridges across communities."

Democratic efforts to make Obama's birthday a "legal" state holiday raised concerns with some lawmakers because other presidents, like Reagan, do not have the same holiday standards. A "legal" state holiday would require schools and offices to close, but not state banks or other businesses.

Despite some lawmakers declining from voting on the bill, it passed both houses without a single vote against the bill.

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Barack Obama Is Getting A Holiday - Daily Beast

Malia out and about in New York City in mid April.

As weve long debated in these pages, wrestled with as Jacob wrestled with his angel, its tough to know if stars are just like us. Sometimes they behave so much like us that we experience a kind of catharsis, an almost sexual release that makes us feel seen and defined. But other times, its clear that stars really arent like us at all, that they live fabulous and mysterious lives that us mortals can only dimly understand. So weve never been able to definitively decide, have we? If these stars of ours are living lives uncannily similar to our own, or if they, twinkling in the firmament, are doing a whole other thing entirely.

Compounding this vexation is that, in all this pondering, we havent given ourselves time to think about the people past stars, those so famous or important that they transcend celebrity and become a kind of royalty. Such people do exist, of course. Theres literal royalty, like ginger sex ideal Prince Harry. But theres also the unofficial kind, like, say, Malia Obama, former First Daughter, now just a civilian in the world. Except is she? Malia Obama is so famous, from such dynastic stock, that we have to wonder what she really is. Meaning, is Malia Obama just like us?

Turns out, she might be, actually! Page Six, the sweet keening bard of our ages, has a story today about Malia Obama doing something so tragically and beautifully human that it makes us feel an immediate connection to her. You see, Malia Obama lost her cell phone at Lollapalooza. Can you imagine?? Well, of course you can. Because havent we all, at some point, lost our phone at Lollapalooza? Maybe not literally. Maybe it was the Warped Tour or the Kiss 108 Jingle Ball or whatever. But it did happen. We are fallible in exactly that way, losing our phones at events as we were designed by God to do.

Whats more, is that when Malia went to the Apple Store in Chicago (her phone was an iPhone, reader) to replace her phone, she couldnt get one because she didnt know her Apple I.D.! Which makes her even more just like us, because surely none of us ever remember our Apple I.D. or password. I have to change mine almost every time I login! Its some strange aphasia. Although, maybe not that strange, given that Malia Obama has it too. She has the excuse that White House security set up her account when she got her phone, sure. But ignore that minor detail, and many others, and Malia and Iand you!are essentially the same person.

Does that give you any kind of comfort? To know that Malia Obama was at Lollapalooza, just like any old teen, and that she dropped her phone somewhere and it disappeared, just like any old phone? It should. Because, lets face it, in most other ways, Malia Obama is nothing like us. She breathes the rarefied air of the anointed. Doors dont so much open for her as they wink out of existence at the mere mention of her name. But to really think about thatthe sheer and monumental differences between our experiences of the worldis to stare into a kind of existential abyss from which you may never return. So grab onto this pleasing, steadying fact, that at just one moment in our lives, we intersected with Malia Obama. All of our casually lost phones commingled in the same place, like eels in the Sargasso Sea. And then, when the current shifted, we were back to being lowly nobodies, and Malia was back to enjoying the world laid out before her. As is her right.

Anyway. See you at the next Lollapalooza. (Honestly, how many of you knew that was still happening? I certainly didnt!) Lets be careful with our personal items. Losing them may bring us closer to our heroes, but it also means we have to get a new phone.

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Malia Obama Lost Her iPhone at Lollapalooza, Just Like the Rest of Us - Vanity Fair