• “The Supreme Court on Tuesday handed the Trump administration a victory in its battle to clamp down on illegal immigration by making it easier to detain immigrants with criminal records,” Fox News reports. Unfortunately, though, the border situation is worsening. According to The Washington Times, “The government is on track to catch nearly 100,000 immigrants crossing the border illegally this month,” which explains the government’s decision to, per The Hill, “stop detaining some migrant families who illegally cross the border in Texas as it copes with overcrowding in detention facilities.” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen this week stated, “The situation at our Southern border has gone from a crisis, to a national emergency, to a near systemwide meltdown.” On the upside, the Washington Examiner reveals, “The Defense Department has identified $12.8 billion in possible funding that it could use to fulfill President Trump’s call for a border wall.”

• According to The Daily Caller, “Law enforcement officials are confiscating substantially larger amounts of methamphetamine as Mexican drug cartels increasingly push the drug into U.S. markets. A drug-tracking system from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) indicates that a total of 347,807 law enforcement meth seizures were submitted to various labs across the country in 2017, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The number is a 118 percent hike from 2010 submissions. U.S. meth-related deaths hit 6,762 in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is approximately 3.5 times the amount in 2011.” Yet Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand this week had the audacity to suggest, “Immigration is not a security issue.”

• Stabbing Trump in the back? “The United States is bristling at the suggestion Germany might miss its own defense spending target, which is already short of the NATO goal. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz’s budget plan … foresees Germany’s defense spending rising to 1.37 percent of national income in 2020, but decline to 1.25 by 2023… NATO countries have pledged to move toward spending 2 percent of GDP on defense and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government had pledged to increase spending to 1.5 percent by 2024.” (Associated Press)

• “On Tuesday, CNN trumpeted that the network had won the Walter Cronkite Award, administered by USC’s Norman Lear Center and announced by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, for the Parkland Townhall in which NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch was booed and even called a ‘murderer,’” according to The Daily Wire. Norman Lear Center director Marty Kaplan groused, “If the press is the ‘enemy of the people,’ then being on this ‘enemies’ list is a badge of honor for these exceptional journalists.” Yet the joke’s on him: The accompanying press release ironically declared, “Cronkite Award Proves That Facts Matter.” The award is as worthless as CNN.

• According to the Montgomery Advertiser, “Days after it fired co-founder Morris Dees for undisclosed misconduct issues, the Southern Poverty Law Center hired a Chicago-based lawyer well-versed in gender and racial equity issues to review its workplace environment and policies.” But not just any Chicago lawyer: “Tina Tchen previously worked as chief of staff to then-first lady Michelle Obama.” The latter, you’ll recall, revealed her anti-America epithet in 2008 by bellowing, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” Birds of a feather…

• “Hundreds of pages of court records made public Tuesday revealed that special counsel Robert Mueller quickly zeroed in on Michael Cohen … in the early stages of his Russia probe,” the Associated Press reports. “The heavily blacked-out records … show that Mueller was investigating Cohen by July 2017 — much earlier than previously known. That was two months after Mueller was appointed to investigate Moscow’s election interference and practically a year before an FBI raid on Cohen’s home and office.” Meanwhile, USA Today says that “trust in Mueller has eroded and half of Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s contention that he has been the victim of a ‘witch hunt.’”

• For the record: “Trump’s judicial nominees are being treated very differently than those of previous presidents. Those 91 judges, for example, have received a total of 1,824 votes against their confirmation in 782 days. When Barack Obama was president, it took 2,123 days to rack up this many negative votes, and he had to appoint 282 judges to do it. Trump’s 91 judges have received more negative confirmation votes than the 2,653 judges confirmed to the same courts during the entire 20th century combined.” (Thomas Jipping, The Heritage Foundation)

• Trouble incoming: “An Islamic State spokesman on Monday called on the group’s followers to violently retaliate against non-believers in response to the massacre of 50 people at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch last week. ‘The scenes of the massacres in the two mosques should wake up those who were fooled, and should incite the supporters of the caliphate to avenge their religion,’ Abu Hassan al-Muhajir said in a 44-minute audio recording.” (National Review)

• The BBC reports, “People don’t become fully ‘adult’ until they’re in their 30s, according to brain scientists. … Research suggests people aged 18 are still going through changes in the brain which can affect behaviour and make them more likely to develop mental health disorders.” But Nancy Pelosi wants to lower the voting age to 16.

• Humor … but true: Cow runs away from Indiana police, blocks traffic, and goes to Chick-fil-A (KUTV)

• Policy: The Resurgent’s Merrie Soltis tackles the complex question of “How Do We Make College More Affordable?”

• Policy: “As the need for electricity to power the nation’s digital economy grows, coal is no longer playing a primary role, and that’s problematic, because it undergirds the electric grid and is the most reliable source of energy,” writes Mark J. Perry in the Washington Examiner. Catch the lowdown here.

For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit In Our Sights.