The Long Goodbye: Arizona Sen. John McCain is lying in state at the capitol in Phoenix today where thousands of people have waited to pay their respects. After a memorial, his body will be moved to Washington to lie in state at the Capitol before a service at the National Cathedral.

The Trumpster Fire: President Trump pushed out White House Counsel Don McGahn with a tweet, The NY Times reports. Although McGahn’s departure had long been discussed, Trump forced it with his announcement yesterday before even telling McGahn, the paper reports.

Trump had tweeted, “I have worked with Don for a long time and truly appreciate his service!,” but insiders had said he didn’t like McGahn and was frequently annoyed that the lawyer opposed him. McGahn was reported to have threatened resignation when the President ordered him to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

McGahn has been Trump’s point man in filling the federal courts with conservative appointees. Trump said McGahn would leave after the Senate votes on the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. But McGahn also has become a key witness in the Special Counsel investigation into whether Trump committed obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation. McGahn was present during critical moments and has submitted to 30 hours of questioning.

According to John Baron: In a messy development for CNN, Michael Cohen’s lawyer has retracted his statement that President Trump knew in advance about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer dealing dirt on Hillary Clinton. Lanny Davis now confirms he was one of the anonymous sources for CNN’s reporting of that story and says that he got it wrong.

This prompted President Trump yesterday to write a couple of tweets attacking the press, one of which said, “When you see ‘anonymous source,’ stop reading the story, it is fiction!”

He was up early this morning and at it again. “I just cannot state strongly enough how totally dishonest much of the Media is. Truth doesn’t matter to them, they only have their hatred & agenda.” Trump declared them, “Enemy of the People!”

What Trump won’t admit is that he is surrounded by people who tell reporters about what’s going on in the White House. And if anyone knows about fictitious sources, he does. He used to call reporters in New York claiming to be John Baron, a public relations man working for Donald Trump.

Insert Foot: Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum pulled off a big upset winning the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida. He was running third in the polls last week and now he’s the first black candidate for the state’s highest office.

The Republican, Ron DeSantis, promptly went on Fox News and said,

“The last thing we need to do is monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.”His campaign later claimed the “monkey” reference was innocent.

Show Us Your Papers: The federal government is increasingly challenging the citizenship of Hispanic residents along the southern border whose birth certificates say they were delivered by midwives rather than at a hospital. Lifelong US citizens are being denied passports, or passport renewals,The Washington Post reports. People with US citizenship have even had their passports confiscated and been put in the queue for deportation, the paper says.

The Trump administration claims that some midwives and doctors from the 1950s to the 90s faked birth certificates and that even people who’ve served in the military and worked for the government are not really citizens.

Previous administrations have also challenged some of these birth certificates, but the Post reports that, “Under President Trump, the passport denials and revocations appear to be surging, becoming part of a broader interrogation into the citizenship of people who have lived, voted and worked in the United States for their entire lives.”

Boiling Mad:Last week a truck carrying 7,000 pounds of live lobsters crashed on a road outside Brunswick, Maine, and all of the lobsters died. That was about 4,500 lobsters that never made it to the boiling pot.

Now the organization PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wants to erect a five-foot granite roadside memorial for the lobsters. The PETA people believe lobsters have feelings. A letter from the organization said, “crustaceans don’t enter a state of shock when injured, they feel every moment of their slow, painful death.”

Their memorial would read,  “In memory of the lobsters who suffered and died at this spot August 2018, Try Vegan, PETA.” The Maine Department of Transpiration says it is considering the request. For the memorial, not to go vegan.

Williams v. Williams: It’s been so hot at the New York Open that the rules have been relaxed to allow the tennis players 10-minute breaks to cool off.

Two players who survived the heat are Venus and Serena Williams, who both won second-round matches yesterday setting them up to play each other in the third.

The sisters have played each other 29 times in their careers and Serena has won 17 times. Venus said, “It’s definitely a tough draw.”

1968: Fifty years have passed since the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago marked by epic clashes between protesters and the police. After a long investigation into the brutality of the cops, a report described the violence as “a police riot.”

In the age of Donald Trump and the current political divisions, it’s fun to remember the famous words of Chicago mayor Richard Daley: “The policeman isn’t there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

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