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Capital Journal
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Good morning from the WSJ's Washington bureau. Congress is out of session but there's plenty going on in Washington, as well as new developments from presidential hopefuls and the Trump campaign.
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Trump's Day: President Trump has meetings with Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He also signs a space-policy directive.
Congress: The House and Senate are out of session this week. In addition to the fight over the border wall, fiscal fights are looming.
North Carolina Allegations: A state elections official alleged voter fraud in the unresolved race for the Ninth Congressional District.
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Workers check a new section of bollard wall in Santa Teresa, N.M.—as seen from the Mexican side of the border. PHOTO: JOSE LUIS GONZALEZ/REUTERS
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Sixteen states have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the president’s national-emergency declaration to pay for a wall, setting up a showdown that could go to the Supreme Court and last through the 2020 election, report Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Sadie Gurman. The complaint seeks judicial intervention to stop the order.
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California’s Attorney General led the lawsuit. Only one of the states to join the suit, Maryland, is led by a Republican governor.
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The Justice Department will likely argue that the emergency declaration was based on national-security concerns, and that the courts should defer to the president in such decisions, experts said.
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Neglect, then a renewed push. How the border wall turned into a national emergency.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders has joined the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, vowing to take on “the powerful special interests that dominate our economic and political life." Unlike in 2016, he will compete for the party’s most liberal voters in a large and unpredictable field, reports Ken Thomas.
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President Trump added a new round of senior-level hires to his re-election team, continuing an early push to preserve a clear path to the Republican nomination. Michael C. Bender has the exclusive details.
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The hires include media aides: Communications director Tim Murtaugh, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and strategic communications director Marc Lotte.
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Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren is proposing a $70 billion-per-year universal child-care program, reports Reid J. Epstein. It would provide free care for up to 12 million children, her aides said. She would pay for the program through her proposed “wealth tax.”
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The president's ambitious trade campaign has yet to produce a big win. Mr. Trump’s ability to tout completed trade pacts during his 2020 re-election campaign rests in part on how he steers his still-evolving trade strategy, reports Jacob M. Schlesinger. One big question: whether he ultimately sees tariffs as a means to an end—a club to force open export markets—or an end in itself, to protect domestic industry from imports.
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Trade talks with China resume this week. The administration is racing to strike a deal that will result in long-term reforms—and prove that tariffs are an effective battering ram to open markets.
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Worrying About Deficits Falls Out of Style
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Washington’s red-ink alarms have gone dead, even though the annual federal deficit will reach roughly $900 billion this year, then pass the trillion-dollar mark annually starting in 2022. The accumulated public debt just surpassed $22 trillion. Is the lack of concern wise? The widening federal budget deficit has yet to result in economic calamity, but as more money goes to interest payments on debt, less is available for things like infrastructure, schools and social benefits. Jerry's full column
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After McCabe Interview, Congressional Probes Diverge
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Without control of the House, Republicans are turning to a new forum for airing their grievances about the FBI and Department of Justice: the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), the new chairman of the committee, said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he plans to launch an investigation into the DOJ and FBI-led probes into President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Public claims from former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office kindled fresh skepticism of the law enforcement agencies. Mr. McCabe served as acting FBI director for a few months in 2017 after James Comey was fired.
“I'm going to do everything I can to get to the bottom of the Department of Justice FBI behavior toward President Trump and his campaign,” Mr. Graham said on CBS, adding that he plans to bring Mr. McCabe and Mr. Rosenstein in to testify in front of the committee.
A Senate inquiry into the DOJ and Federal Bureau of Investigation would set up a split-screen between the House and Senate. Whereas Senate Republicans plan to investigate the investigators and root out any anti-Trump bias in the government, House Democrats plan to follow additional leads after special counsel Robert Mueller has concluded his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and other matters and investigate the possibility that Trump campaign associates coordinated with Russians.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the committee will seek to publicize information that may be absent from what Mr. Mueller makes public.
“Well, we're going to have to do our own investigation. And we are. We will certainly be very interested to learn what Bob Mueller finds,” Mr. Schiff said.
The differing investigative scopes reflect the differing political incentives of Republicans and Democrats. Republicans are seeking to cushion the blow of any potentially damaging findings about Mr. Trump in the Mueller report, and evidence of political bias or wrongdoing among the key investigators could help inoculate the president in such a case. Democrats, on the other hand, hope to broadcast damaging information about the president.
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President Trump yesterday in Miami declared that the “twilight hour of socialism has arrived” in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. PHOTO: KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
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Mr. Trump, speaking about the Venezuelan crisis, praised Latin Americans in exile who've lobbied for change. He called embattled President Nicolás Maduro a "Cuban puppet," Vivian Salama reports, and gave this message to those helping Mr. Maduro remain in place: “The eyes of the entire world are upon you...You cannot hide from the choice that now confronts you."
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He didn't extend Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans in the U.S., which Florida’s Democratic congressional delegation had sought.
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The first U.S. military aircraft carrying aid for Venezuela arrived in Colombia last week. It's at the center of a political showdown between Mr. Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who the U.S. backs.
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The U.S. is considering opening a liaison office in North Korea, in what potentially would be another step toward normalizing relations, report Michael R. Gordon and Andrew Jeong. The plan would allow North Korea to also open an office in the U.S., an official said.
The Kurdish commander leading the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria urged the U.S. to leave troops in Syria, reports Gordon Lubold. Gen. Mazloum Abdi said that the U.S., France and Britain should aim to leave as many as 1,500 troops from at least double that now.
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Join WSJ journalists Laura Saunders, Richard Rubin and Geoffrey Rogow for a 30-minute call on how to navigate the tax landscape. Register here.
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A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds that more than 6-in-10 Americans disapprove of President Trump's decision to declare a national emergency so he can build border barriers. (NPR)
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Sen. Bernie Sanders said of former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's potential independent candidacy: There are a lot of people "who make $40,000, $50,000 a year who know a lot more about politics than, in all due respect, does Schultz."(CBS)
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The founder of China’s Huawei said there is no way the U.S. can “crush” the tech company. (BBC)
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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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