On Politics: It’s Trump’s Economy

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/politics/on-politics-its-trumps-economy.html

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Good Friday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today.

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• The Federal Reserve has halted rate increases. Tax cuts and tariffs have taken hold. Attempts to rewrite the global rules of trade are underway. President Trump got what he wanted on the economy — but it may not last, and the president must now prove the naysayers wrong about the future.

• The first House Intelligence Committee hearing since the special counsel completed his report began with Republicans demanding the resignation of Adam B. Schiff, the committee’s chairman. It only went downhill from there.

• Speaking of the special counsel’s report: It was more than 300 pages long, the Justice Department acknowledged on Thursday, raising more questions about Attorney General William P. Barr’s four-page summary.

• The Supreme Court declined to block a federal ban on bump stocks — the attachments that turn semiautomatic guns to fully automatic — after an appeal from gun owners.

• Senators remain at an impasse over how much disaster relief should be given to Puerto Rico, leaving billions of dollars in aid for recovery efforts across the country in limbo ahead of a vote on Monday.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development sued Facebook, arguing that the company violated the federal Fair Housing Act by limiting who sees ads based on characteristics like race, religion and national origin.

• Mr. Trump criticized Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras on Thursday for accepting aid from the United States but doing “nothing” in return. The statement came a day after his Homeland Security secretary struck an agreement with those same countries to strengthen security at the border.

• Pete Buttigieg may have a challenging last name and an unconventional résumé. But he’s drawing big crowds and has jumped to third place in a poll of Iowa voters.

• Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota unveiled her first policy plan: spending a trillion dollars in federal funds to upgrade the country’s infrastructure.

• There are few more important groups of Democratic primary voters than black women in the South, and they’ll have more weight than ever this year. Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke have different plans to capture their attention.

• The Trump administration is forcing a Chinese company to sell its stake in the gay dating app Grindr over national security concerns. It’s the first case where the United States asserted that foreign control of a social media app could have national security implications.

• In a case that exposed the government’s embarrassing failure to secure its secrets, a 54-year-old former National Security Agency contractor pleaded guilty to taking secret documents home in a deal likely to put him in prison for nine years.

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Today’s On Politics briefing was compiled by Isabella Grullón Paz in New York.

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