Even the raging waters of the Houston flood can’t drown out Trump news. We’ll start with this from WaPo: While Donald Trump was running for president in late 2015 and early 2016, his company was pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow. And this from the NYT: Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal Will Get Donald Elected: “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

+ “The Arpaio pardon is a perfect conflagration of all of the ways that Trump has systematically undermined these authorities over the course of his first seven months in office. It is nothing less than a multipronged attack on the executive branch’s own commitment to the rule of law.” The New Yorker on Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio.

+ “We’ve been covering Joe Arpaio for more than 20 years. Here’s a couple of things you should know about him.” (A must-read series of tweets from the Phoenix New Times.)

+ Meanwhile, the ACLU has sued the Trump administration over transgender military ban.

+ And during an interview on Fox News, Sec of State Tillerson responded to a question about Charlottesville and whether Trump comments represent American values: “The president speaks for himself.” (Trump is now frantically demanding to know who Himself is and why he’s getting all the attention…)