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Capital Journal
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Good morning from the WSJ's Washington bureau.
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Trump's Day: President Trump participates in a signing ceremony for an executive order on a “National Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End Veteran Suicide."
Congress: The House is in session for evening votes, while the Senate leadership will hold afternoon news conferences.
U.S.-EU Relations: Ahead of trade talks tomorrow between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, the U.S. reversed its decision to downgrade the bloc’s embassy.
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The House Judiciary Committee has requested documents from more than 80 agencies and associates of President Trump, as part of investigations the panel is opening into obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power. The committee appears to be pursuing several lines of inquiry in its document requests, Rebecca Ballhaus reports.
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The requests also signal that the committee is seeking to build a case against the president and his associates before determining whether their findings merit an attempt to oust the president from office.
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Mr. Trump, asked if he would comply with the document requests, said he cooperates "all the time with everybody" and added: "It's all a hoax."
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Also, the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees said in letters to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that they were investigating what Messrs. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed in in-person and phone conversations.
Mitch McConnell said a measure blocking Mr. Trump's emergency declaration on the border wall would pass. Passage of the measure, which would would force the president to issue his first veto, would be an unusual check on the Republican president from the GOP-controlled Senate, Kristina Peterson reports.
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“I was one of those hoping the president would not take the national emergency route.”
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— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
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Michael Cohen, President Trump's former personal lawyer, on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. PHOTO: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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An attorney for Michael Cohen approached President Trump's attorneys about the possibility of a pardon. The issue was broached and dismissed after the April FBI raid on Mr. Cohen’s premises, Rebecca Ballhaus, Joe Palazzolo and Michael Rothfeld report. Conversations among those parties are now being probed by congressional investigators.
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Democrats' Impeachment Clock Is Ticking
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As investigations into President Trump and his associates begin in the House, Democrats may soon find themselves compelled to decide whether to go through with politically risky impeachment proceedings.
The House Judiciary Committee, the body where an impeachment inquiry would begin, launched a wide-ranging investigation into possible obstruction of justice, public corruption and abuses of power in the Trump administration on Monday. The Democratic-led panel requested information from 81 entities and individuals, including members of Mr. Trump’s family.
Party leadership has assiduously cautioned against moving forward with impeachment before the completion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which is expected to wrap up soon.
What portion of Mr. Mueller’s findings will become public, though, remains unclear, and a procedural battle with the Department of Justice over the records could potentially stall its release. Preparing for the worst, Democrats have said they are seeking to build a record of information before they decide to move forward with an impeachment inquiry.
The clock is ticking. The central risk for the party in committing to an impeachment process is the potential backlash from Mr. Trump and Republican voters. An impeachment inquiry perceived as partisan could provide the president a potent political foil in his re-election effort. The longer Democrats wait and the closer election season looms, the more politically risky impeachment becomes if they ultimately decide to do it.
“I think it’s wise to get it over with. I think this could be a very intense summer on that front,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served in Bill Clinton’s White House.
Opening a series of inquiries before committing to impeachment provides Democrats with an alternative: unearthing damaging information about the president continuously for the next two years and hurting his re-election chances. But Democrats will still have to grapple with whether they feel they must move forward with impeachment based on the evidence they uncover and political pressure from their liberal base.
“What they have to weigh is on the one hand they don’t want to do this because it would be cleaner and easier to mobilize to defeat him in 2020; the flip side is there are other considerations,” Ms. Kamarck said.
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Trump Faces Slog of Diplomacy
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PHOTO: LUONG THAI LINH/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Diplomacy is a little like riding a bicycle: You either keep moving forward or the thing falls down.
That’s the position in which the Trump administration finds itself after last week’s Hanoi summit meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The meeting wasn’t the disaster some proclaim. A bad nuclear deal wasn’t agreed to; the door to a better one remains open.
What the hangout in Hanoi did, though, was to point to two crucial problems the White House now has to ponder to keep moving forward.
Read the full column.
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Chinese hackers targeted more than two dozen universities in the U.S. and around the globe, Dustin Volz reports. It’s part of an elaborate scheme to steal research about maritime technology being developed for military use, according to cybersecurity experts and U.S. officials.
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The University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among at least 27 universities in the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia that Beijing has targeted.
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Chinese officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but have denied that they engage in cyberattacks.
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North Korea is still using a uranium enrichment facility at the heart of the summit between President Trump and Kim Jung Un, the United Nations atomic agency said. The findings are in line with the analysis of other experts, report Laurence Norman and Michael Gordon.
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The agency couldn't confirm the nature of purpose of the activities.
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Separately, South Korea is racing to get the two sides back to negotiations to prevent the diplomatic detente from losing steam.
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The threat of a new arms race between Washington and Moscow has increased. Mr. Putin has formally ordered a suspension of Russia's obligations under a Cold War-era nuclear treaty.
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A regime that is still fighting the “Great Satan.” Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy has been defined by one key principle: anti-Americanism. Here's the full essay from Jerry Seib.
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Presidential hopefuls are using MobilizeAmerica, which gives Democratic campaigns and progressive causes a centralized sign-up system for events, door-knocking and shifts calling and texting voters. WSJ’s Jason Bellini sat down with the two-year-old tech company's founders.
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MobilizeAmerica is becoming the go-to platform for Democrats organizing campaigns, reports Julie Bykowicz. Some 370,000 volunteers and almost 1,000 local, state and federal campaigns and progressive groups used the online tool ahead of the midterms, the company said.
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Presidential contenders are promising to run “grassroots” campaigns powered by small donors and volunteers. The New York company MobilizeAmerica is hoping to capitalize on digital organizing by selling access to a website that engages volunteers for Democratic causes across the country. Republicans don’t yet have a broadly used equivalent to MobilizeAmerica.
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— Julie Bykowicz | julie.bykowicz @wsj.com
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Hillary Clinton for the first time Monday ruled out seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Mrs. Clinton, who lost the 2016 general election to President Trump and the 2008 nomination to Barack Obama, told a local cable TV news station in the New York suburbs that “I’m not running,” Reid J. Epstein reports.
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Democratic-led states are seeking to block an administration plan to strip on-site abortion providers of taxpayer dollars for family planning, arguing the federal government is exceeding its authority to limit the federal funding, Stephanie Armour reports.
A federal judge questioned the State Department’s decision to revoke the citizenship of Hoda Muthana.The U.S.-born woman traveled to Syria to marry an Islamic State fighter and wants to return home. The battle centers on whether her father, who was a diplomat, had immunity at the time of her birth, Jessica Donati reports.
A federal judge dismissed without sending to the jury a case against a former senior Barclays PLC trader, Aruna Viswanatha reports. The trader was accused of illegally trading in anticipation of a major client deal.
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’It’s amazing that I’m getting paid almost $20 an hour to learn how to weld,’ said Cassandra Eaton. PHOTO: DAYMON GARDNER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Will you pay more or less under the new tax law? Find out what to expect as you file your taxes for the first time under the 2017 overhaul with WSJ's tax calculator.
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High-speed trains in Europe can go 200 mph. Between Boston and Washington, 150 mph. A $2 billion Chicago-St. Louis project that's under way? Maybe 110 mph. Shayndi Raice and Paul Overberg report on why high-speed rail in the U.S. remains elusive.
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In its negotiations with North Korea, the U.S. is expecting Pyongyang to give up something vital--its nuclear program--in return for something that isn't as important to the North, economic expansion. (American Conservative)
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Democrats have the opportunity and ability to extend their 2020 list of target states to include Arizona and Georgia. (American Prospect)
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A growing split between Morocco and Saudi Arabia reflects wider regional concern over the aggressive foreign policies of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (Brookings)
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This newsletter is a production of the WSJ Washington bureau. Our newsletter editors are Tim Hanrahan, Kate Milani, Troy McCullough and Daniel Nasaw. Send feedback to capitaljournal@wsj.com.
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