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Capital Journal
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Good morning from the WSJ Washington Bureau.
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Trump's Day: President Trump holds a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Over the weekend, he attacked Michigan Rep. Justin Amash for saying that the president’s efforts to impede the probe of Russia interference in the 2016 election amounted to “impeachable conduct.”
U.S.-China Relations: Google is halting some services for smartphones made by Huawei, a sign that the U.S. decision to deny the Chinese tech giant access to technology will bite into its booming consumer-device business.
Supreme Court: Justices issue orders and could release opinions.
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President Trump has continued to criticize what he sees as unfair trade practices. PHOTO: MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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President Trump has worked to sell voters on the idea that he can negotiate better trade pacts. Now, as talks drag, he says only he is tough enough to walk away from a bad deal. Democrats jockeying to face him in 2020 are making the opposite argument—that the administration’s performance on trade demonstrates why Mr. Trump is the wrong person for the job, report Vivian Salama and Ken Thomas.
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Joe Biden repeatedly took on President Trump as he addressed several thousand people in Philadelphia, striking a contrast with his nearly two dozen Democratic primary opponents. Mr. Biden said President Trump inherited a strong U.S. economy and 10 years of growth from former President Obama, just as he inherited much of his wealth from his father, reports Julie Bykowicz.
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris is proposing that major corporations pay women on an equal basis with male counterparts or face government fines. Ms. Harris’s campaign said companies would be fined 1% of their profits for every 1% wage gap they allow to continue for work of equal value, Ken Thomas reports.
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Lawmakers to Get Briefed on Iran
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Both parties have staked out positions on the threat Iran presents to the U.S. ahead of a pair of classified briefings expected in Congress this week.
Republicans who have already viewed the intelligence about Iran have largely echoed the Trump administration’s assessment that the country had taken provocative action meriting a response. They have also downplayed the possibility that a war could begin the two countries.
“We are at a state of heightened tension, because of Iranian aggression,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
But Democrats who have been similarly briefed have cast blame on President Trump and his advisers for escalating tensions between the countries and increasing the probability of a military conflict.
“What is taking place now was all too predictable,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on "Face the Nation" on CBS. Mr. Schiff pointed to Mr. Trump’s decisions to leave the Iran nuclear agreement and designate the Iranian Guard Corps as a terrorist organization as aggressive actions against Iran.
“All of these policy decisions have led us to a state where confrontation is far more likely and that cannot be ignored,” he said.
That division echoes a debate within the Trump administration, where officials have disagreed about whether Iran was preparing to attack the U.S. first or respond in the case of a U.S. first strike. The U.S. deployed an aircraft carrier and a bomber group to the region earlier this month and evacuated diplomatic personnel from Iraq last week.
Top Congressional leaders and the members of certain committees in Congress have had access to some of the intelligence about Iran, but the entire membership of the House and Senate are expected to be briefed this week. President Trump tweeted on Sunday warning Iran about the consequences of an attack.
“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!” the president wrote on Twitter.
While the immediate possibility of conflict between the two countries has eased, Democrats and Republicans may still spar this week about Iran in the aftermath of the briefings.
Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com
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Site Selectors Guild members got a fiery welcome at Paul Brown Stadium, home of the Cincinnati Bengals, when they came to town for their annual conference last year. PHOTO: STEVE ZIEGELMEYER
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Georgia rolls out a red carpet for them at the Masters Golf Tournament. Utah recently arranged a private ski trip with an Olympic medalist. Such is the life of site selectors—consultants who jet around the country helping corporations decide where to build new headquarters, factories or expansion projects, often pitting communities against each other in multistate bidding wars to maximize tax breaks, grants, land deals and other incentives, reports Cezary Podkul.
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President Trump’s call this weekend for unity among abortion-rights opponents reflects an emerging split among Republicans who are debating the merits and politics of new state laws aimed at curtailing access to abortion. The message is an unexpected turn in a fight that has remained largely focused on incremental changes since the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision made access to abortion a constitutional right, reports Gabriel T. Rubin.
Months after a racist yearbook photo and sexual-assault allegations threatened to topple Virginia’s top elected officials, a surprising outcome is emerging: The scandal is helping advance causes particularly important to black voters, report Scott Calvert and Jon Kamp.
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Mr. Galvez in the hotel room with his orphaned grandchildren. ‘It’s really difficult,’ the exhausted 50-year-old said. ‘There are so many of them.’ PHOTO: Rena Effendi for The Wall Street Journal
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Swedish authorities earlier this month evacuated seven orphans from a camp in Syria, under pressure from humanitarian organizations and the children’s tenacious grandfather, Patricio Galvez. The joy Mr. Galvez felt when the children finally made it to Iraq quickly collided with the reality of caring for seven young children, reports Isabel Coles.
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Sweden took the first formal steps toward requesting the extradition of Julian Assange, in what is likely to be a protracted battle to bring the hacker to trial, Dominic Chopping reports.
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The SEC levies billions of dollars in fines each year, but it doesn’t always collect. Over the five years through 2018, the SEC took in 55% of the $20 billion in enforcement fines set through settlements or court judgments. During the prior five years, it collected on 60% of $14.6 billion. Last year, the agency collected just 28% of almost $4 billion—the lowest rate in a decade, Dave Michaels reports.
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The SEC’s enforcement cases are closely watched for the fines they yield and the message of deterrence they are supposed to send. But collecting penalties is another matter. The SEC’s collection rate has stayed in a predictable range for a decade, despite efforts to ramp up fine recoveries and improve how the agency tracks debtors.
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— Dave Michaels | dave.michaels@wsj.com
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New data show millennials are in worse financial shape than any preceding living generation and may never recover, Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg report. Hobbled by the financial crisis and recession that struck as they began their working life, Americans born between 1981 and 1996 have less wealth, less property, lower marriage rates and fewer children than any other generation of young adults born since the Great Depression.
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People close to the president insist they’re not panicked by state polling that concluded the Mr. Trump trails Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. (Politico)
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In their own ways, President Obama and President Trump were two of the most unlikely people ever elected to the presidency. That has implications for 2020 as well. (Washington Post)
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Rep. Justin Amash's "decision to state publicly that President Trump engaged in activity worthy of impeachment — could be the hardest yet for him to explain to Republican voters." (Washington Post)
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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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