Mother-in-Law: After a Supreme Court decision allowing partial enforcement of President Trump’s travel and immigration order, the administration moved quickly yesterday to define the close personal connections that would permit people from six Muslim countries to travel or immigrate to the United States.

Your mother-in-law is good, but grandma and grampa are not. Parents, including in-laws, will be considered “close family,” but not grandparents. Stepsiblings and half-siblings will be allowed into the US, but not nieces and nephews.

Some civil rights and immigration advocates immediately criticized the rules, saying they violate the Supreme Court’s decision that anyone with a “bona fide” family connection must be allowed into the country.

Big Brother: President Trump’s voter-fraud commission is asking the states to give up the name, address, party affiliation, and voting record of every registered voter in the US, according to a letter made public by the Connecticut secretary of state.

Kris Kobach, who heads the commission, said that “any documents that are submitted to the full Commission will also be made available to the public.”

The Kobach commission is hunting down Trump’s so-far unsubstantiated claim of widespread voter fraud. Kobach is the Kansas secretary of state who has made it a crusade to expose voter fraud. He has won nine convictions in his state.

Some states have already said they will refuse to cooperate with Kobach, or release only partial information in order to protect voter privacy.

War of Words: In an increasingly open and vicious battle with the press, President Trump yesterday attacked MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski in terms that were unusually personal and vulgar even for the President.

Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are co-hosts of “Morning Joe” and they’ve been critical of the President.  Trump tweeted, calling the pair “Psycho Joe” and “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and said they “came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

Photos of Brzezinski at Mar-a-Lago at the time show no bandages or bleeding.

Elated by CNN’s retraction of a story and the resignation of three employees, the President went on an anti-press rampage this week, denouncing both the NY Times and Washington Post as “Fake News.” The White House has shut the press out of events normally open to coverage, including a re-election fundraiser.

After the Brzezinski tweet, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, wrote on twitter, “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.”

An MSNBC statement said, “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

Brzezinski and Scarborough wrote in today’s Washington Post, “America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president. We have our doubts, but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show, ‘Morning Joe.’”

The Heat: A new study in the journal Science says the Midwest and Southeast will suffer the most toward the end of the century as global warming and climate change continue. Energy costs will rise to meet the demands of more air conditioning, the study says. Florida will lose coastal property as oceans rise, and the study says heat-related deaths will increase in Georgia and Alabama.

Channel Change: MSNBC has fired talk host Greta Van Susteren after just six months on the job. She wasn’t getting enough viewers. Van Susteren was also fired last year by Fox News, after spending years as one of their stars.

Take the A Train: With trains breaking down and running late, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of emergency for the NY City subway system. He pledged $1 billion for improvements. Cuomo said, “Just three days ago, we literally had a train come off the tracks. It’s the perfect metaphor for the dysfunction of the entire system.”

Fake President: The Washington Post now counts seven Trump golf clubs that display a framed cover of Time magazine featuring a picture of Donald Trump and the headline, “The Apprentice is a television smash!”

The problem with the Trump Time cover dated March 1, 2009 is that there was no issue of the magazine with that date. The cover, like so many things Trump, is a self-promoting fiction.

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