In the last week of on again, off again negotiations, Chuck Schumer has offered President Trump a deal on the wall, and then taken that deal off the table. But how did an idea once viewed as preposterous by most politicians on both sides of the aisle become a very real bargaining chip, and a very realistic eventuality? In part, it’s because the wall is not really a wall. And in part, it’s because of other immigration priorities. The Atlantic’s Russell Berman explains: How Democrats Stopped Worrying and Learned to Accept Trump’s Wall.

+ Meanwhile, Mexico reported its highest murder rate on record (and that number has everything to do with consumption — and drug war policies — on our side of the wall).

+ “Over the next two years, Arredondo said, he would be hounded, kidnapped, pistol-whipped and stabbed so severely that surgeons removed his gall bladder. In December 2016, he fled to Canada, where he now seeks asylum from gangs that steal fuel from Salamanca and five other refineries operated by Pemex, the state-owned oil company.” Reuters: Mexico’s drug cartels, now hooked on fuel, cripple the country’s refineries.