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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 has lunch with Secretary of State Pompeo, meets with the vice president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and speaks on expanding health-coverage options. He's expected to be interviewed live on Fox News this morning. Today is his birthday.
Debates: NBC News, which is broadcasting the Democratic debates in June, plans to reveal the two groups of candidates. The two nights of debates will feature 10 candidates each. More below.
Assange: WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange appeared via videolink at his extradition hearing in London, as the U.S. seeks to bring him to trial.
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Attacks off the coast of Iran damaged two oil tankers early Thursday, causing fires and forcing crews to abandoned both tankers. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
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The U.S. blamed Iran for attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the assaults were the latest in a series of hostile actions meant to disrupt the flow of oil, Courtney McBride, Rory Jones, Benoit Faucon and Costas Paris report.
Iran rejected the allegations, deflecting blame for an incident that has again ratcheted up fears of military conflict.
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Oil Tanker Attacks Revive Debate Over Saudi Arms Sales
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New attacks on commercial oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman have supplied a new sense of urgency to a congressional debate about arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
A bipartisan group of senators is seeking to block a set of sales largely to the Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. Last month, the Trump administration invoked rarely-used emergency powers to bypass Congress and approve the $8 billion in weapons, arguing that the growing threat from Iran required immediate assistance to the regional allies.
Lawmakers opposed to the sale are hoping to take up a vote soon, possibly next week, to try and stop them. The ongoing war in Yemen and the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents last year has made selling the country arms unwelcome.
But the attacks on Thursday has bolstered proponents' arguments in favor of completing the sale. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly blamed Iran for the assault on the two boats, which both caught on fire and were not in danger of sinking in the critical seaway for crude oil. Iran has denied responsibility for the hostilities on Thursday and other recent aggression against civilian ships in the same waterways.
The attacks "lend further weight to the conclusion that our allies and partners in the region need greater capabilities,” said Sen. Jim Risch (R., Idaho), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) introduced two resolutions on the Senate floor Thursday to attempt to block additional arms sale to Bahrain and Qatar. While dedicated to different and less controversial sales, the debate on the Senate floor served as a preview of the coming effort to block the sales to Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.
“We are told that because of the threat of Iran the U.S. must accept selling arms to anyone, even bone-saw wielding countries brazen enough to kill a dissident in a foreign consulate,” Mr. Paul said, referencing the death of Mr. Khashoggi.
Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.), a member of GOP leadership who has signed on to the effort to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia, said he still wanted to see the administration follow the normal review process after the latest attacks.
“No one has presented to me arguments indicating that the United States military or our regional partners don’t have the assets to respond to this sufficiently,” he said. “If the administration is making that argument, they need to come over to Congress and make it to us.”
Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com
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PHOTO BY MANDEL NGAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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White House press secretary Sarah Sanders will leave her job at the end of the month to return to her home state of Arkansas. Ms. Sanders has been a prominent defender of Mr. Trump, sparring regularly with the press, but she hasn’t held a formal briefing in the press room in months, reports Vivian Salama.
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Eric Ueland, a veteran Republican congressional aide and deputy assistant for domestic policy, will become Mr. Trump's top liaison to Congress, reports Catherine Lucey. The appointment comes as the administration must negotiate a budget deal and win approval of the deal to replace Nafta.
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A government watchdog recommended White House adviser Kellyanne Conway be removed from her post, citing repeated alleged violations of the Hatch Act, a rule that prohibits political activity by executive branch staff, reports Vivian Salama.
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Mr. Trump could take further action against China if President Xi Jinping doesn’t agree to a meeting at the Group of 20 summit of leading economies in Japan later this month, the White House’s top economic adviser said, William Mauldin reports.
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Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has sold her shares in a paving-materials supplier, following a Wall Street Journal report that she hadn’t fulfilled a pledge to relinquish the shares, report Ted Mann and Brody Mullins.
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The Democratic National Committee said it is boosting online security for presidential campaigns it works with, but declined to say how many or the extent of the security practices./PHOTO: PAUL HOLSTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Presidential campaigns for the 2020 election remain broadly vulnerable to cyberattacks despite their steps to beef up security, report Dustin Volz and Tarini Parti. They are falling short in important areas, including an unwillingness to share information among campaigns about attempted hacks. Already, there are signs that the same foreign forces that targeted the Clinton campaign in 2016 are resurfacing.
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The issue was brought into focus this week by Mr. Trump, who said he might accept information from foreign governments that was damaging to his rivals without alerting the FBI, which risks running afoul of laws.
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Senior Democrats criticized President Trump for the comments, Natalie Andrews and Kristina Peterson report, while Mr. Trump maintained that he believed there wasn’t anything wrong with listening.
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“The Russians attacked our elections, and @realDonaldTrump is giving them the green light to do it again.”
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— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
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The DNC said three candidates failed to qualify for the June 26-27 debates in Miami, Ken Thomas reports. Asked by reporters this week in Iowa about the debates, former Vice President Joe Biden said it would be a “gigantic mistake" if Democrats "go after each other."
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Senior lawmakers in both chambers of Congress appeared headed for collision in negotiations over the annual defense policy bill, as partisan disagreements flared on the border wall, low-yield nuclear weapons and the future of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Kristina Peterson and Ben Kesling report.
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Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, and Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide, have been subpoenaed. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) is seeking to hear from the two sources for former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report, reports Kristina Peterson.
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The wife of U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter on pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors preparing to try her husband on federal campaign-finance and wire fraud charges, Jesse Naranjo reports.
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Who’s afraid of debt and deficits? Not Washington or Wall Street, report Kate Davidson and Jon Hilsenrath. After years of deficit wrangling, political will for it vanished partly because there was no discernible effect on bonds. And voters don't seem to mind. The new bottom line: The U.S. is on course to test just how much it can borrow.
“It’s almost like I’ve wasted my, whatever it’s been, 45 years in this town,” said William Hoagland, who has engaged in nearly every Washington budget-deficit battle for four decades and remains a deficit hawk.
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A look at the history of polling in Iowa shows there's no runaway favorite among Democrats who will be running in the state's caucuses next year. (CNN)
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Columbine High School in Colorado, site of a famous mass shooting, has become such a beacon for people obsessed with mass shootings that security officers have contacted more than 2,400 unauthorized people on the campus this year. (Associated Press)
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At least 10 cities have sent the Trump campaign bills for services associated with the president's political rallies that haven't been paid. (Center for Public Integrity)
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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 on our Politics page and at @wsjpolitics on Twitter.
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