All Hat, No Cattle: After a lot of big talk, president Trump backed off his effort to get a citizenship question on the 2020 census. Trump had said it was vital to get 2020 census respondents to say whether they are citizens, but after a dramatic leadup yesterday to what was expected to be a big announcement, Trump declared victory in defeat.

  “We are not backing down on our effort to determine the citizenship status of the United States population,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden. He said that rather than fight for the citizenship question on the census form, he is ordering all federal departments and agencies to immediately provide the Census Bureau with citizenship information from their “vast” databases.

  Trump’s order is a duplicate of what the Commerce Department announced last year, so it’s nothing new. It’s a cover for getting beaten on the issue.

  The census is intended to count the number of people living in the country, not the number of actual citizens. Counting citizens would be interesting, but not necessarily for Trump’s purpose, which is to point out the number of non-citizens threatening the American way of life.

  Trump claimed that political opponents are “trying to erase the very existence of a very important word and a very important thing, citizenship,” although no one has said that. He went on, “The only people who are not proud to be citizens are the ones who are fighting us all the way about the word ‘citizen.’”

   Looking into the future to a time when we presume he will no longer be President, Trump ordered the Commerce department to examine putting the citizenship question on the 2030 census form.

The Rich Are Different:Accused child-molester Jeffrey Epstein offered to put up his private jet and $77 million New York mansion as collateral to bail himself out of jail.

  The 66-year-old Epstein’s lawyers also offered to hire a team of security guards to ensure that he won’t skip the country. Prosecutors have said that Epstein  poses “an extraordinary risk of flight and danger.”

  The judge in Epstein’s case rejected a similar bail offer made by a defendant in 2016 because it would “foster inequity and unequal treatment in favor of a very small cohort of criminal defendants who are extremely wealthy.”

Shaken, Not Stirred:German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her aides are playing down three strange public incidents in recent weeks in which she was seen. The first incident in June was attributed to dehydration. Then it happened again, and again this week.

  Merkel is known for having great health and stamina. After the third event she suggested to reporters that she has a temporary condition. “I am very well, and you don’t need to worry about me,” she said. “Just like how it has come, one day it will go away, too.”

Mississippi Today:A Mississippi candidate for governor who wanted to avoid unfavorable attention has gotten unfavorable attention for refusing to allow a woman reporter to accompany him on the campaign trail.

  Robert Foster is one of those devout Christians who refuses to be alone in the presence of a woman who is not his wife. His campaign told Mississippi Todaywriter Larrison Campbell that if she wants to follow him on the campaign trail she will have to be escorted by a man.

  Foster said, “I put my wife and my Christian beliefs above anyone else’s feelings or opinions … and I did not want there to be a perception that I was riding with another female and that something promiscuous was going on or anything like that.”

  Foster isn’t the only Christian politician who does this. Vice President Mike Pence also refuses to be alone with a woman who is not his wife.

  He also calls his wife “Mother.”

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