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Capital Journal
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Good morning from the WSJ Washington bureau.
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Congress: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell testify in the House on the coronavirus response. Health agency chiefs testify at a Senate hearing on "getting back to work and school."
PPP Loans: The application window closes today but there is more than $100 billion left unclaimed, triggering debate over the remaining funds.
Supreme Court: The high court issues opinions this morning.
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Inside Look: Race and Policing
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Why Policy Division and Politics Make a Police Reform Bill Unlikely
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Despite Republicans and Democrats both being keen to pass some form of police reform legislation, they are yet to come to an agreement. Here's why the political climate is weighing on the chances they will come together.
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Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
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A Hennepin County judge in Minnesota on Monday set a tentative trial date of March 8, 2021, for the four former police officers charged in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, reports Joe Barrett. Separately, one of the four officers filed a document stating he intends to plead not guilty.
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The military is gearing up to fight racial bias. The government has tried at least six times since World War II to root out discrimination and racial bias in the military. Each effort ended in failure, Nancy A. Youssef reports. Military leaders say today's initative will be different.
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The Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law restricting abortions, ruling by a 5-4 vote that it was identical to a Texas law requiring providers to obtain hospital admitting privileges that the justices invalidated in 2016, Jess Bravin reports.
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In an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, four liberal justices reaffirmed their 2016 decision that such measures have no medical benefits and thus interfere with a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy.
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The fifth vote, however, came from Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote separately on narrower grounds to say that the precedent required the same result. The chief justice had dissented from the 2016 decision.
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The high court ordered changes to a government consumer-finance watchdog created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, ruling the agency’s structure was unconstitutional because its director held too much unchecked power, Brent Kendall reports.
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The court also declined Monday to stop the government from executing four inmates starting in July under Attorney General William Barr’s push to reactivate the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Ind., for the first time in 17 years, Jess Bravin reports.
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Latest Numbers
10,302,867 cases world-wide and 505,518 deaths.
2,590,582 cases in the U.S. and 126,141 deaths.
Source: Johns Hopkins University, as of 7 a.m. ET.
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Regional coronavirus surges have forced states to change plans. A rise in new cases and growing hospitalization rates in states such as California and Texas are jeopardizing reopening plans elsewhere. More than 41,000 new coronavirus cases were recorded in the U.S. in daily data published Monday, an increase from Sunday.
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Covid drug to cost $3,120. Remdesivir, which was previously being distributed by Gilead Sciences for free for emergency use, will cost more for most U.S. patients than it will for the rest of the developed world.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said "we have entered an important new phase" by reopening economy sooner than expected—which also poses new challenges.
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U.S. troops at an Afghan National Army base in Logar province, Afghanistan, in August 2018. PHOTO: OMAR SOBHANI/REUTERS
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Republican and Democratic lawmakers united Monday around demands that the White House detail intelligence indicating Russia had paid bounties to insurgents to have American forces killed in Afghanistan, and explain why President Trump apparently wasn’t briefed on the threat to U.S. troops, report Warren P. Strobel, Gordon Lubold and Lindsay Wise.
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The White House said U.S. intelligence officials didn’t brief the president or vice president because the intelligence community and national-security officials hadn’t reached a consensus about its veracity.
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Senior Republicans in Congress, who often are supportive of Mr. Trump, said that even if the intelligence isn’t yet fully verified, it should be taken seriously and the president should have been made aware of it.
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Some Republican House members were briefed at the White House Monday afternoon. A separate briefing for several Democrats was expected to occur early Tuesday, officials said.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke with families who have benefited from the Affordable Care Act on Thursday. PHOTO: MATT SLOCUM/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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President Trump doesn’t appear to be gaining on Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race in the polls, yet the presumptive Democratic nominee still has a lot of work to do, writes Gerald F. Seib. Democratic analysts cite four tasks in particular: Mr. Biden needs a comprehensive economic plan, a China strategy, strong debates and the right running mate.
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Reddit said it was banning a community dedicated to Mr. Trump as part of an overhaul of its hate-speech policies. The Reddit community, called “The_Donald,” is an influential gathering place for Trump supporters to post memes and other messages backing the president and bashing his opponents, Deepa Seetharaman reports.
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Coronavirus Concerns Follow RNC to Jacksonville
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New coronavirus restrictions were announced in the Florida city selected as the fill-in site for most of the Republican National Convention, weeks after President Trump moved the event there from North Carolina hoping to avoid strict social-distancing precautions.
Jacksonville said Monday that the city would require masks at public and indoor locations “and in other situations where individuals cannot socially distance.” The announcement came as Florida is seeing a drastic rise in coronavirus, as are a number of Southern and Western states.
Mr. Trump has studiously avoided wearing a mask in public and has not urged Americans to embrace them, despite mounting calls to do so. Eager to move past the pandemic, Mr. Trump relocated the marquee events of the convention to Jacksonville from Charlotte, in the hopes of drawing a bigger crowd at the late August event.
Florida is also a key battleground state, with a Republican governor who is a close Trump ally.
An RNC spokesperson said party officials remain committed to a safe convention, noting that it is still two months away, and pledging to “offer health precautions including but not limited to temperature checks, available PPE, aggressive sanitizing protocols, and available COVID-19 testing.”
Asked if the president’s thinking on masks has evolved at all, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Monday that “it’s his choice to wear a mask. It’s the personal choice of any individual as to whether to wear a mask or not.”
She added that the president “encourages people to make whatever decision is best for their safety, but he did say to me he has no problem with masks and to do whatever your local jurisdiction requests of you.”
Democrats are planning a scaled-back convention. Presumptive nominee Joe Biden will accept the presidential nomination in Milwaukee, but the party will urge delegates to skip the summer convention because of coronavirus concerns.
Write to Catherine Lucey at catherine.lucey@wsj.com.
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Iran issued a warrant to arrest Mr. Trump and 35 others over the killing of a top Iranian general earlier this year, a largely symbolic order that is Tehran’s latest attempt to draw international attention to what it has labeled an act of terrorism, Sune Engel Rasmussen reports.
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The Chinese government plans to restrict visas for Americans it deems go too far on matters related to Hong Kong, increasing tensions between the U.S. and China over the territory’s limited autonomy from Beijing, Chao Deng reports.
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China’s legislature approved a sweeping new law today aimed at quashing threats to national security in Hong Kong, rejecting Western criticism that Beijing’s efforts will curb people’s freedoms in the protest-torn city, report Chun Han Wong and Wenxin Fan.
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Seattle-area officials say they are finding that only one in five persons with COVID-19 symptoms are going into isolation. (KOMO News)
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In hundreds of phone calls with foreign leaders, President Trump was so unprepared that national-security officials considered him a threat to national security. (CNN)
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Chief Justice John Roberts is showing he is a capable tactician who understands history and how much pressure his institution can bear. (Slate)
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This newsletter is a production of the WSJ Washington bureau. Our newsletter editors are Kate Milani, Troy McCullough, Toula Vlahou, James Graff and Daniel Nasaw. Send feedback to capitaljournal@wsj.com. You can follow politics coverage on our Politics page and at @wsjpolitics on Twitter.
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