Happy Hour Roundup

* President Trump looks like he’s going to go through with it:

President Donald Trump appears likely to pull the plug on DACA, the Obama-era program allowing young people who came to the U.S. illegally as children to remain here, several government officials said Friday.

Administration officials said the Department of Homeland Security sent a recommendation to the White House earlier this week on what to do, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed the program with senior officials Thursday at the White House. Sessions has been a consistent opponent of the program, formally known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

As many as 1 million immigrants could be affected.

Trump is said to be weighing whether to let DACA gradually expire or end it immediately, but the officials said it is not yet clear which option Trump may choose.

Even if he lets it gradually expire, it will end over the next two years or so, but that doesn’t mean it’s over for the dreamers (I tried to lay all of that out in this piece on what comes next). This will surely elicit great roars of approval at Trump’s next rally, as it will give a major economic boost to the struggling Rust Belt voters who elected him (okay, that last part isn’t true). — gs

* Janet Yellen is not down with Republican plans to dismantle the regulations put in place after Wall Street destroyed the American economy:

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen offered a forceful defense of broad new banking regulations enacted after the 2008 financial crisis, saying the rules safeguard the economy against another crisis and rejecting assertions from President Trump and top aides that they should be rolled back.

Yellen’s speech, delivered here to an annual gathering of central bankers, finance ministers and economists, comes as Trump considers whether to reappoint her to a four-year term as head of the U.S. central bank.

Yellen, 71, made clear in her speech on Friday that she believes tighter regulations and standards have made the banking system safer and that while some improvements could be made, they should be modest, not structural.

But how will President Trump deliver on his promise to make government work for ordinary folks if we don’t let Wall Street do whatever they want?

* David Weigel reports that the Republican National Committee is totally against racism:

The Republican National Committee on Friday approved a resolution condemning racism and white supremacy at its summer meeting in Nashville — but don’t call it a rebuke of President Trump.

“This has nothing to do with the president,” said the resolution’s sponsor, Bill Palatucci, an RNC committeeman from New Jersey. “This is the RNC saying that racism and bigotry have no place in America.”

Palatucci, an attorney who served as general counsel to Trump’s presidential transition committee, said that he began drafting the resolution Aug. 13, the day after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville ended with the death of a counterprotester.

“The core issue was for us as RNC members to clearly and loudly denounce white supremacists,” Palatucci explained. “There can be no hesitation for the Party of Lincoln.”

Good for them, but I would note that the resolution states that the struggle against racism “continues to animate the Republican Party today,” which is a rather generous reading of their recent past and present.

* Julián Aguilar reports that the Border Patrol will keep open its checkpoints on roads north of the border in Texas, increasing the traffic problems as people try to flee the approach of Hurricane Harvey.

* Ron Brownstein has an interesting look at how Trump’s trade agenda is creating a divide between the economic priorities of smaller cities and larger ones.

* Rebecca Shapiro reports that the guy who’s job it was to find and circulate positive news stories about President Trump has quit the White House. Hard to blame him.

* Kevin Drum notes that the White House is apparently not going to bother coming up with its own tax reform plan, and just leave it to Congress. Policy is hard!

* Eliza Newlin Carney says the most harmful racists aren’t the ones wearing hoods and giving Nazi salutes.

* Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng, and Sam Stein profile Sam Clovis, the conspiracy theorist climate denying nutbar who calls liberals “race traitors” and who Trump made his chief “scientist” at the Department of Agriculture.

* James Fallows tells us what the decor of Trump’s Oval Office, and how it differs from previous presidents, says about him.

* Jill Filipovic explains why it wouldn’t have made any difference if Hillary Clinton had said “Back off, creep” to Donald Trump, because when it comes to harassment women get blamed no matter what they do.

* At The Week, I explained how stupid it is for President Trump to wage war on Congress.

* And Jonathan Chait examines how Trump went from “I alone can fix it” to “It’s not my fault.”