Oddly, most Americans have no idea what's going on.

We had our thirty-something son and his wife and their six kiddos visit for a few days last week. They were on their way back home after being on a vacation. When I brought up the children being separated from their parents at the border, they didn't know about it.

I was reminded of myself at that stage of life, busy with work, kids' activities, and paying scant attention to news sources. I was in my forties before I started focusing again. I say again because I was raised in a politically active family and volunteered for various candidates in high school, college, and beyond.

We have a large number of our compatriots who may have heard very little about Trump, Russia, Mueller, and have a long way to go before they'll understand or believe. It's hard to imagine, the way this has captured our attention, but they're pretty clueless. That is not connected at all to level of intelligence. We've got our work cut out for us between now and Election Day, even more than we may have realized.

I hope to be in an immigration courtroom by the end of next week.

An attorney (S.) who goes to my Methodist church is working to get assigned to assist immigrants with their court cases. My pastor knows the separation of kids and parents has had me in tears and made it hard to concentrate on much else. He suggests I go with S. and another church member who's planning to go.

I'm not an attorney, but he told me they need witnesses to immigration proceedings, taking notes. I told him I'm very slow as a note-taker and have an unreliable memory, but he encouraged me to go anyway. Having civilian witnesses to the proceedings seems to cause the judges to trend to a little more careful and to better outcomes for the immigrants.

I'm waiting to hear if S. has been able to set things up. We'd go for a couple of days. Not much but something. Too bad we don't live close. If we did, it could be an ongoing effort.

Will NATO be the next alliance broken by Trump?

Daniel Shapiro (@DanielBShapiro), former US Ambassador to Israel (2011-2017) and served under Obama on the National Security Council, posted a thread today. Coupled with the news that Trump has tasked a committee to assess the ramifications of pulling our troops out of Germany, this gave me chills! It seems so crazy – and completely likely with tRump.

…I don't think we are fully grappling with the possibility that we could be on the on the cusp of a completely new era, a fundamental reshaping of the international order. And I don't mean over the course of the Trump Administration. I mean by next week.

…Trump clearly wants to pull the US out of NATO. He doesn't believe in the alliance (or any alliances); he thinks our allies take advantage of us; he complains that NATO is worse than NAFTA(whatever that means); he seeks purely transactional relations with our closest partners.

…Our President doesn't know the history or strategy, doesn't listen to experts, personalizes everything & makes it transactional, & loves the drama of the outrageous move that dominates cable TV coverage. For him, pulling out of NATO is all gain, no cost.