Black smoke from ignited refrigerated-truck containers of volatile organic peroxides at Arkema's chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, early Thursday morning sent 16 Harris County sheriff's deputies to the hospital with respiratory issues, but none of the deputies are expected to have permanent damage and Arkema and the county fire marshal said they believe the smoke isn't toxic with limited exposure. Arkema also said the remaining eight tractors full of organic peroxides will probably combust, and the sheriff's office is enforcing the 1.5 mile-radius evacuation zone in the town, 25 miles northeast of Houston.

The Arkema chemical fires are only part of the hazardous combination of floodwater and 230 chemical plants, 33 oil refineries, and hundreds of miles of pipelines carrying dangerous materials in and around Houston, The Associated Press reports, citing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Sierra Club. Many of those facilities continue to report spills and leaks from Tropical Storm Harvey. The Houston area is no stranger to chemical plant explosions, and some residents in Crosby talk about environmental disasters "as Californians might discuss the inevitability of the next earthquake," The Washington Post reports. Others argue that unlike the hurricane, plant disasters are avoidable, as in this Thursday night report from CBS 11 News Dallas-Fort Worth:

Those latter residents may be right. Federal regulations governing chemical plant safety haven't been updated since 1992, and experts say that the decision to upgrade plants to the latest safety technology are mostly voluntary. After a deadly fertilizer-plant explosion in West, Texas, in 2013, the Obama administration came up with new rules to strengthen regulations and, as the EPA explained, "seek to improve chemical process safety, assist local emergency authorities in planning for and responding to accidents, and improve public awareness of chemical hazards at regulated source."

The rules were set to take effect March 14. President Trump's EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, put them on hold for two years. Arkema, a unit of French oil giant Total, specifically lobbied Pruitt and the EPA to block the rules, the International Business Times reports, arguing they would be too onerous and expensive. Peter Weber

Friday's federal court ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as ObamaCare, is unconstitutional will be upheld by the Supreme Court, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller forecast on Face the Nation Sunday.

Miller conceded there would be no immediate change in ACA administration nationwide, but he answered CBS host Margaret Brennan in the affirmative when she summarized his comments as "predicting that this goes to the Supreme Court and that the Supreme Court ultimately strikes down" the ACA.

"I believe that's the likeliest outcome, because Obamacare has always been unconstitutional," Miller said, pointing to the individual mandate provision, which is core to Friday's decision.

It's that very focus on the mandate which has led most legal experts — including conservatives and libertarians who oppose the ACA as a policy matter — to conclude the Friday ruling probably will not hold up under appeal. Read about their reasoning here at The Week. Bonnie Kristian

President Trump does not have the votes in either house of Congress to get the border wall funding he wants, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Meet the Press Sunday, arguing congressional Republicans should force Trump to accept this fact to avert government shutdown.

"Republicans just have to have the guts to tell President Trump he's off on the deep end here, and all he's going to get with his temper tantrum is a shutdown. He will not get a wall," Schumer told host Chuck Todd.

"If the president wants to debate the wall next year, he can," he continued. "I don't think he'll get it, but I don't think he should use innocent worker as hostages for his temper tantrum to sort of throw a bone to his base." Watch an excerpt of Schumer's comments below. Bonnie Kristian

President Trump will not grant an interview to Special Counsel Robert Mueller if Rudy Giuliani has anything to say about it.

"There are reports now that the special counsel is interested again in interviewing the president," said Fox News host Chris Wallace when Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, joined his show for an interview Sunday. "Has his office reached out to you about sitting down for an in-person interview with the president?"

"Yes, there are several unpaid parking tickets back in 1986 [or] '87 that haven't been explained," Giuliani quipped. Pressed by Wallace for a more serious answer, Giuliani declared the Mueller investigation "a joke" and said Trump would grant the interview "over my dead body — but, you know, I could be dead."

Watch Giuliani's full interview below, and read more here at The Week on why an attorney would be wary of letting his client speak to federal investigators. Bonnie Kristian

President Trump revisited familiar complaints on Twitter Sunday, reiterating his animosity toward a variety of people on a variety of topics.

He began with a gripe about the media, particularly Saturday Night Live, which opened the night before with Alec Baldwin reprising his role as the president in a sketch parodying the holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life.

Alas for Trump, satire is indeed legal.

He soon moved on to the subject of former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. While Trump claimed in tweets Saturday night and Sunday morning that "19,000 Texts between [the two] were just reported as being wiped clean," the reality is Politico reported Thursday that about 19,000 previously missing texts were recovered by the Department of Justice investigation into Strzok and Page.

Trump next made a convoluted non sequitur about the FBI's warranted search of an office belonging to his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen:

On immigration, Trump at once condemned the Obama administration for separating some migrant families while boasting of his own separation policy. And finally, the president said he would review the case of Matt Golsteyn, a former Green Beret who has been charged by the Army with premeditated murder for his admitted role in killing an Afghan man he claimed was a Taliban bomb maker. Bonnie Kristian

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday pushed back on calls for a second referendum on Brexit, the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union.

May particularly condemned remarks from former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said this week a new vote should be considered if "none of the other options work." May accused Blair of "seek[ing] to undermine our negotiations by advocating for a second referendum," arguing "Parliament has a democratic duty to deliver what the British people voted for."

May's proposed Brexit deal with the EU has stalled, lacking support to pass a House of Commons vote. Bonnie Kristian

The North Korean government on Sunday issued a typically dramatic statement condemning the United States' sanction regime and suggesting denuclearization plans are in jeopardy.

Pyongyang accused the U.S. State Department of being "bent on bringing [North Korea]-U.S. relations back to the status of last year which was marked by exchanges of fire," warning that additional U.S. sanctions would be America's "greatest miscalculation" and would "block the path to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula forever."

This comes as Pyongyang observes the seventh anniversary of the death of former leader Kim Jong Il and the rise to power of his son, current leader Kim Jong Un. Bonnie Kristian