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Capital Journal
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Good morning from the WSJ Washington Bureau.
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Trump's Day: The president attends an anniversary celebration for the first lady's Be Best initiative this morning. He also has lunch with the vice president and meets with Republican members of the Senate this afternoon.
The Administration: Vice President Pence delivers remarks at the Washington Conference on the Americas this afternoon. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany.
U.S.-China Trade: Prospects for a speedy conclusion to the U.S.-China trade fight have dimmed. Talks are expected to continue later this week.
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U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer PHOTO: ANDY WONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Top U.S. officials accused Chinese officials of backtracking in high-stakes trade talks and said $200 billion in Chinese goods will face higher tariffs, report William Mauldin, Michael C. Bender and Josh Zumbrun.
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U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the administration would formalize a long-delayed increase in tariffs on $200 billion of goods to 25% from 10%, effective Friday.
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Mr. Lighthizer said he expected to continue with talks with Chinese counterparts in Washington on Thursday and Friday.
President Trump’s new tariff threat is putting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a bind. He faces concerns from state company executives, industrial-policy advocates and others with a stake in the status quo that he's going to concede too much to Washington, Lingling Wei reports.
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Well-connected Republican donors are set to gather today for a five-hour campaign pitch at the Trump International Hotel, reports Julie Bykowicz. They will be pitched a “bundler” program to urge donors to tap friends and associates for $5,600 Trump campaign donations. For many of them, it's their first foray into Mr. Trump’s campaign world.
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Raising $100,000 would qualify the bundler for a “Builders Club,” which comes with perks like “commemorative Trump Victory gifts.”
Some 70% of voters who intend to cast ballots in a Democratic primary say they are enthusiastic about Joe Biden, or comfortable with him, Aaron Zitner reports. That is a higher share than that received by any other candidate tested in Journal/NBC News surveys since March.
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Few people are positioned to play as crucial a gatekeeper role in the race famong Democrats as former Sen. Harry Reid. With his deep connections to Nevada’s political talent, his reputation as a street fighter who isn’t above doing dirty work, and his knowledge of caucus procedure, he is being sought out by contenders, reports Siobhan Hughes.
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President Vladimir Putin is maintaining Russia’s relevance on the world stage with relatively little investment. PHOTO: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Putin Punches Above His Weight
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Vladimir Putin is managing to maintain Russia’s importance as an international player, despite his country’s economy lacking the strength of the U.S. and China. His strategy is to make enough trouble to remain relevant in global hot spots. It’s an audacious strategy—and it is working. Jerry's full column
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"By ensuring that Moscow’s tentacles are in enough places, Mr. Putin can win a seat at every table that matters."
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The U.S. warned against encroachment in the Arctic by China and Russia. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday in Finland called on nations with Arctic territory to guard against aggressive action in an area that has attracted global competition, reports Courtney McBride.
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“Just because the Arctic is a place of wilderness, it need not become a place of lawlessness,” Mr. Pompeo said at an Arctic Council meeting.
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The decision to reinforce the American military presence in the Middle East was prompted by new intelligence showing that Iran has plans to target U.S. forces in Iraq and possibly Syria, to orchestrate attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb strait near Yemen through proxies and in the Persian Gulf with its own armed drones, officials said. There has also been intelligence that Iran may be seeking to target U.S. forces in Kuwait, Gordon Lubold and Michael R. Gordon report.
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European diplomats warn that Iran is preparing to abandon parts of a landmark nuclear deal in response to U.S. sanctions, a step that risks inflaming tensions, reports Laurence Norman.
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European diplomats have been scrambling to salvage the pact after Mr. Trump’s decision a year ago to exit from the accord.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected House Democrats’ request for President Trump’s tax returns, reports Richard Rubin. Mr. Mnuchin had contended for weeks that lawmakers were trying to expose details of the president’s finances rather than conducting legitimate legislative oversight.
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The move will likely send the dispute between the executive and legislative branches into federal court, where judges may take months or years to resolve a legal question about the boundaries of congressional investigations.
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President Trump presented Tiger Woods with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, calling the golfer’s Masters victory one of the greatest comebacks in sporting history, reports Alex Leary.
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The House Judiciary Committee plans to vote on Wednesday whether to hold William Barr in contempt, escalating a dispute with the administration, Byron Tau reports. The attorney general missed a congressional deadline to turn over an unredacted Mueller report.
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Tillis Primary Foe to Focus Campaign on Loyalty to Trump
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Republican Sen. Thom Tillis will face a primary challenge in his bid for re-election in 2020, a development that places loyalty to President Trump at the center of what will likely be one of the most competitive Senate races this cycle.
Garland Tucker, a businessman and conservative writer, submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission on Monday to run for the North Carolina Senate seat. The filing is a preliminary step, and the campaign will make an official announcement in the near future, according to Mr. Tucker.
Mr. Tucker will challenge Mr. Tillis from the right and focus on the senator’s reversal on Mr. Trump’s national emergency declaration, according to a campaign adviser. Though the first-term senator ultimately voted against terminating the declaration of a state of emergency at the border with Mexico, he initially opposed it.
Carter Wrenn, a longtime North Carolina Republican consultant working with Mr. Tucker’s campaign, said the campaign will try to paint Mr. Tillis as “your typical Washington politician who talks one way and votes another.”
Mr. Tucker will also contribute his own money into the race, according to Mr. Wrenn, potentially narrowing what could be a formidable financial gap. In his 2014 race, Mr. Tillis raised $11 million.
Polling suggests Mr. Tillis’s political standing suffered following his about-face on the national emergency. A Morning Consult poll found that Mr. Tillis’s approval among Republicans fell by 12 percentage points in the first quarter of 2019, and some local Republican officials have called for another Republican to challenge Mr. Tillis.
Mr. Tucker will face his own set of questions about his loyalty to Mr. Trump. He has previously been critical of Mr. Trump and wrote in 2016 about that he was reluctant to support the GOP nominee. Mr. Tillis’s office labeled Mr. Tucker as an “Anti-Trump Activist” in an email Monday. Mr. Tillis’s overall voting record also aligns closely with Mr. Trump: according to a FiveThirtyEight tracker, Mr. Tillis has voted with Mr. Trump’s position almost 95% of the time.
Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com
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A translator for the FBI had a close, personal relationship with a terrorism suspect whose calls he was translating, according to court documents. Abdirizak Jaji Raghe Wehelie is alleged to have covered up the fact that a person under surveillance by the U.S. government left him a voice mail on his phone—which he later translated as part of his FBI duties without noting that he was the recipient of the call, reports Byron Tau.
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Mr. Wehelie, 66, is charged with several counts of making false statements and one count of obstructing a federal investigation.
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The administration has moved to allow an additional 30,000 seasonal workers to return to the U.S. this summer. The higher-than-expected number reflects internal tensions in the White House's approach to legal immigration, report Louise Radnofsky and Lalita Clozel.
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Employers will be able to petition for the visas starting Wednesday.
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The H-2B program is used to fill lower-skilled jobs they say they can’t find Americans to do. Demand routinely outstrips supply.
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Federal authorities erected a huge white tent on the outskirts of a southern-border town near the Rio Grande to cope with a surge of migrant families. Along with a similar tent complex in El Paso, which also opened Thursday, it is meant to provide safer housing than cells at Border Patrol stations, reports Alicia A. Caldwell.
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The Federal Reserve identified elevated asset prices, historically high business debt and rising issuances of risky debt as top vulnerabilities facing the U.S. financial system in its second financial stability report, reports Andrew Ackerman.
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A federal system meant to erase student loans for those in public-service jobs is in disarray, Michelle Hackman reports. More than 73,000 people have applied for debt forgiveness as of March, but just 864 have had their loans erased. A mix of factors combined to derail the program.
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The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has captured the imagination of many Americans who can’t envision paying off their student loans. This program has become particularly controversial recently as society weighs who deserves to have their loans erased. But there are plenty of stories of people who made career decisions to qualify for this program.
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— Michelle Hackman | michelle.hackman@wsj.com
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GDP Explained: What It Says About the Economy
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Economists say the U.S. would be better off if the country's GDP rose at a 3% rate or more each year, rather than the 2% rate it has been growing at. WSJ explains what GDP is, and why economists are so fixated on its growth.
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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. You can follow politics coverage during the day on our Politics page and at @wsjpolitics on Twitter.
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