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The trade case is said to focus on supposed Chinese violations of American intellectual property.

Meanwhile, in a cutting editorial, Beijing fired back at President Trump over his tweets accusing China of failing to tame its ally North Korea. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. was not seeking regime change in North Korea.

_____

Defense officials told our national security reporter that the Pentagon and State Department have offered the White House a plan to supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other arms.

Vice President Mike Pence, visiting Europe, said that President Trump would very soon sign a law limiting his ability to lift forceful new sanctions against Russia and that Moscows destabilizing activities and support for rogue regimes has to change.

Also, the White House confirmed that Mr. Trump was involved in drafting a misleading statement issued by his son about a meeting with a Russian lawyer.

_____

In Washington, congressional Republicans bypassed the president to work toward bipartisan legislation to shore up the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

And the Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Christopher Wray, above, as the next F.B.I. director.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is preparing to redirect Justice Department resources toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

_____

A new poll shows that global warming is essentially tied with the Islamic State as the most-feared security threat around the world except in the U.S., where cyberattacks and ISIS are considered the greatest dangers.

On to developments in those two realms. Our photojournalist documented harrowing scenes and battlefield calculations at the front lines of the fight against ISIS in Mosul. And Lewis Pugh, a British endurance swimmer, swam 22 minutes in the freezing Arctic Ocean to call attention to climate changes effect on the worlds oceans.

_____

Volkswagen was barred from receiving European Union research financing over allegations it misused a previous loan to cheat on emissions. The move comes ahead of a meeting on diesel emissions today between automakers and the German government.

Apple exceeded revenue expectations in the quarter that ended July 1 even as buyers waited for new iPhones this fall. But projections suggest at least some phones may be delayed.

Joining Apple, Amazon also bowed to Chinas tough new restrictions on online content.

Documents released in a lawsuit against Monsanto raised new questions about the companys efforts to influence the news media and scientific research.

The eurozone economy outperformed Britain again in the second quarter.

Heres a snapshot of global markets.

Masked agents of the Venezuelan government barged into the homes of two prominent former mayors overnight, hauling them off to jail in the dark. [The New York Times]

In Turkey, nearly 500 suspects in last years failed coup attempt went on trial. [Reuters]

U.S. border agents are testing a system to scan the faces of people leaving the country in an effort to better identify travelers who overstay their visas. [The New York Times]

Travelers in Europe are facing long lines at airports because of stricter security checks on those entering and leaving the Schengen area. [BBC]

In Moscow, three gang members were killed at a courthouse while trying to escape. [The New York Times]

J. K. Rowling apologized to the family of a boy with spina bifida after accusing President Trump of ignoring him. The boys mother said Ms. Rowling misinterpreted the situation. [The New York Times]

The interim prime minister of Pakistan, picked to temporarily replace his corruption-scarred predecessor, said he was no bench warmer. [The New York Times]

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

Recipe of the day: Take some time in the morning to make watermelon ice pops. Youll thank yourself later.

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At the Bayreuth Festival, Barrie Koskys savvy new staging of Wagners Die Meistersinger von Nrnberg stepped gracefully around the works potential land mines, our critic writes.

In London, our visiting critic considers three plays that look to the past to consider the uneasy state of the present.

The British brand behind Wonder Womans leather armor is having a major fashion moment.

The German soccer star Bastian Schweinsteiger has immersed himself in his new city, Chicago.

Our departing book critic, Michiko Kakutani, above, has been hailed as the most powerful critic in the English-speaking world.

Her output during 38 years at The Times attracted plenty of response, and on the day she announced her plans to step down, a colleague revealed a letter that Ms. Kakutani received early in her career.

Ms. Kakutani had written a profile of Pat Carroll, an actress who was then portraying the writer Gertrude Stein on stage. She described her home as filled with books by Stein and about Stein, as well as xeroxed Ph.D. theses and obscure literary journals.

The next day, Aug. 2, 1979, a letter addressed to Mr. Michiko Kakutani arrived, sent by an employee of Xerox, a company famous for protecting its brand name.

There is no adjective xerox, the letter explained. If in the future you wish to use the name Xerox, it should be used with a capital X and no ed.

Indeed, The Times style arbiters agree.

Richard Samson, who is on The Timess legal team, said a multitude of companies had objected to their trademarks being used as generic substitutes. Over the years, he said, we have received concerned letters from owners of the trademarks Spinning, Hula-Hoop, Sheetrock, Jeep and many others.

Andrea Kannapell contributed reporting.

_____

This briefing was prepared for the European morning. You can browse through past briefings here.

We also have briefings timed for the Australian, Asian and American mornings. You can sign up for these and other Times newsletters here.

Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online.

What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes.com.

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Donald Trump, France, Venezuela: Your Wednesday Briefing - New York Times

Washington in the summer is a never-ending stream of tour groups and packs of students, here to swarm the monuments, stroll the National Mall, and learn about our nation's history and government.

In the heat of the summer of 2001, I was part of one of those groups, the American Legion Auxiliary's "Girls Nation." For one week, a hundred of us high school girls came to D.C. to pretend that we were running the government. We visited the White House, met with President George W. Bush, and halfway through the week, we elected a president of our own from our ranks, and she being a young woman from the state of Arizona was "sworn in" by a Congressman from her home state, then-Rep. Jeff Flake.

Two very separate but nonetheless related events in the last week have brought me back to that experience sixteen years ago.

First, there was President Trump addressing the participants of this year's Boys and Girls Nation class, just as presidents have done for decades.

With the speech coming just days after the President caused controversy with his campaign-style remarks at the national Boy Scout Jamboree, I tuned into the livestream, curious and holding my breath. As the remarks began, they seemed quite on the right track: optimistic, upbeat, extolling American greatness and the spirit of our nation's people. When President Trump gave an across-the-aisle nod to perhaps the most famous alumnus of the program, Bill Clinton, I held my breath until it was clear, blessedly, there'd not be a peep about "missing emails," or anything more sordid.

But then, as I feared, it came, the off-note I'd been dreading. It wasn't a glaring, made-for-cable outrageous moment, but it unsettled me all the same.

"Just think of the amazing moments in history you will witness during your lifetime," Trump said to the assembled teens. "Well, you saw one on Nov. 8, right? That was a pretty amazing moment ..."

Suddenly, it about him: his greatness, his election victory. And what a shame. Most presidents aim to eschew politics in this sort of setting; there are likely students in that group for whom Nov. 8 did not feel like that amazing a day. Yet even after being chastened for the Jamboree mess, Trump couldn't help himself.

It may seem like extreme nitpicking to zero in on one, probably unscripted, line in an otherwise standard, quite lovely little speech. But I couldn't shake it. I tried to see it through the eyes of young people there. Is this what a new generation of leaders will grow up and think of as normal? When they are leading the nation and just as the millennials are now the largest bloc of eligible voters, these "Gen Z" post-millennials will begin entering the electorate during the midterms and will be elected to Congress themselves before you know it will they emulate what they are seeing today?

This sort of concern, among others, is surfaced loud and clear by now-Sen. Jeff Flake in Conscience of a Conservative, his book explaining his frustrations and fears about the damage the Trump presidency is doing to America. In an excerpt released last week, Flake bemoans not just the policy areas where Trump has diverged from the usual party line, but the demeanor and tone Trump has brought to the presidency, and the way in which too many conservatives have sat silent in the face of a president who, especially temperamentally, is anything but.

The announcement that the book existed came as a surprise to many, even reportedly to Flake's own staff, who were kept in the dark so that they would not be able to attempt to talk their boss out of putting a major target on his own back.

And target he now is. Pro-Trump voices like former Gov. Mike Huckabee, hardly a true limited-government champion, have pounced on Flake as a "globalist," the insult-du-jour in a party where many have forgotten why they so recently supported free trade and American global leadership. And of course, the Left has come at Flake for being insufficiently courageous in opposing Trump, despite the fact that it is Flake, not liberal activists and pundits, who has something to lose by making his voice heard.

(This is to say nothing of the silliness of those who claim Flake cannot properly oppose Trump while "voting with him 95 percent of the time, given that a large number of the "votes" used in these calculation are things like Senate confirmations of fairly conventional, uncontroversial appointees.)

The fact of Flake being up for re-election in a red, pro-Trump state in 2018 sets this book apart from the calls of the Evan McMullins of the world; what Flake has done can be rightly called brave in a way many "#Resistance" voices cannot, because there are actual risks, actual stakes for Flake in what he has done.

Like I did over a decade and a half ago, some bright, earnest "Gen Z"-ers today are looking at our nation's leaders for guidance on how to act. I continue to hope against all odds that this president can become someone who can offer that guidance, that example. But failing that, Sen. Flake saying what he knows to be right, no matter the cost offers a worthy lesson of his own.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of "The Selfie Vote."

See the article here:
Will our future leaders emulate Donald Trump or Jeff Flake? - Washington Examiner

Secretary Ryan Zinke speaks prior to Donald Trump signing an executive order at the Department of the Interior, April 26, 2017. (Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)

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On July 19, Joel Clement, a top climate scientist and policy analyst at the Department of Interior (DOI) filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel alleging that his reassignment to an accounting position was retribution for speaking out about the dangers of climate change. Clement, who had raised the alarm about the potential catastrophic impacts of rising sea levels and warming temperatures on Native communities in Alaska, had been transferred to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue, which collects royalty checks from the fossil-fuel industry. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Clement accused the Trump administration of choosing silence over science.1

But Clement wasnt the only leading climate scientist at DOI who was targeted. As part of a radical, department-wide restructuring that Secretary Ryan Zinke has described as probably the greatest reorganization in the history of the Department of the Interior, at least two dozen senior executive employees have been moved to new positions. Although new administrations often shake up agency personnel, the transfers of senior officials at DOI are unprecedented in scale and, in several cases, viewed as politically motivated or designed to intimidate staff who work on environmental issues. Zinke has defended Trumpsplanto reduce the DOI budget by $1.6 billion next year, costingroughly 4,000 employees their jobs androlling back many of the regulations put in place by the Obama administration.2

Among the initial transfers at DOI was Dr. Virginia Burkett, the former Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), who contributed to several reports on climate change by theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. According to interviews with several DOI employees, Burkett was originally reassigned to the office of the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, which would have movedher from overseeing vital climate science research at USGS to an as yet undefined advisory role at DOI headquarters in Washington.3

Burkett, who joined the DOI in 1990 and has been at the USGS for more than 15 years, is an internationally recognized expert on climate change, sea level rise, and coastal wetlands. She has written extensively on the impacts of climate change on coastal communities, as well as on strategies for adaptation. As an advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, its unclear what her new role would have been. The office reports directly to newly named deputy secretary David Bernhardt, a former high-powered lobbyist who had previously sued the DOI and whose conflicts of interest related to water use issues have been well documented.4

Matt Larsen, former Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change at USGS who now heads up the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, said that under normal circumstances, Burkett could have played an important role in shaping policy on national water resource issues. In her case, the reassignment was a reasonable one, Larsen said. It was in line with her expertise, assuming that the special advisor would have been asked to give advice about climate science and land use change science. But Larsen noted that her role would ultimately be limited to serving theadministrations political agenda.5

As a citizen DonaldTrump dismissed climate science as a hoax, and as president he has continued to undermine the role of science in guiding government policy. References to global warming have been removed from government websites, and regulations designed to limit greenhouse gas emissionsmany of them promulgated through the DOIhave been reversed. Most notably, Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord. Although Secretary Zinke paid lip service to climate change during his confirmation hearings, the DOI seems to have fallen into line with the administrations overall agenda of suppressing climate science. Just a weekbefore Clement blew the whistle, another USGS climate scientist was told not to attend a tour of Glacier National Park with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.6

According to a leaked draft of a USGS science guidance memo obtained by The Nation, the word climate is quietly being scrubbed from various program titles and research initiatives. Under the Trump budget, the Climate and Land Use Change mission area has already been renamed the Land Resources mission area, suggesting that climate science research will no longer be a priority. Funding for climate science centers, which are on the front lines of helping regional and local natural resource managers adapt to climate change, will be reduced from $25 million to $17.4 million, and the agency is preparing for the possibility that four of those centers will be shuttered. The memo instructs program managers and scientists to focus on a small subset of existing projects and research priorities rather than seeking funding for any new initiatives.

This larger context aside, a DOI employee with knowledge of Burketts reassignment said the move raised a number of particular red flags. Burketts special advisory role was a newly created position, in an office that was not yet fully staffed. Typically, the employee said, assistant secretaries like to choose their own advisors. Anne Castle who served as Assistant Secretary for Water and Science under Obama confirmed that it was unusual to name special advisors before having the leadership team in place. Moreover, unlike many of the other Senior Executive Service employees who were transferred, an immediate replacement for Burkett was notnamed. Doug Beard, another USGS scientist, is now serving as acting associate director for Climate and Land Use Change, but it is unclear whetherthe position will ultimately be filled or eliminated. According to another DOI employee, the reassignment was a signal to us that the mission area not only might be renamed but might be removed.8

The DOI declined to respond to specific questions about Burketts reassignment but said the personnel moves were being conducted to better serve the taxpayer and the Departments operations.9

As a citizen Donald Trump dismissed climate science as a hoax, and as president he has continued to undermine the role of science in guiding government policy.

Notified of her reassignment in mid-June, Burkett was given just 15 days to accept the new position, resign, or retire. But instead, she was able to negotiate a departure from the Senior Executive Service, the upper echelon of federal government employees, and return to her previously held position as chief scientist of the Climate and Land Use Change mission area, taking a pay cut in the process. 10

Reached by phone as she was driving from Virginia to Louisiana,where shell be stationed, Burkett said she preferred not to speculate on the reasons for her reassignment. Im sure it would have been a different role, she said. The office has a different mission. Burkett, along with two other DOI employees, did express concern that nobody had yet been named to fill her old job as Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change at USGS, a key leadership role. There are hiring freezes presently, and Im just unclear about how and if the position will be refilled, Burkett said.11

More here:
Donald Trump and Ryan Zinke Are Purging Climate Scientists for Telling the Truth - The Nation.

Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process? With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump.

I will let the liberals answer for their own sins in this regard. (There are many.) But we conservatives mocked Barack Obamas failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It was we conservatives who, upon Obamas election, stated that our No. 1 priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term presidentthe corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime. It was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obamas legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued. To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial.

Story Continued Below

Ive been sympathetic to this impulse to denial, as one doesnt ever want to believe that the government of the United States has been made dysfunctional at the highest levels, especially by the actions of ones own party. Michael Gerson, a conservative columnist and former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, wrote, four months into the new presidency, The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased, and conservative institutions with the blessings of a president have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion.

For a conservative, thats an awfully bitter pill to swallow. So as I layered in my defense mechanisms, I even found myself saying things like, If I took the time to respond to every presidential tweet, there would be little time for anything else. Given the volume and velocity of tweets from both the Trump campaign and then the White House, this was certainly true. But it was also a monumental dodge. It would be like Noah saying, If I spent all my time obsessing about the coming flood, there would be little time for anything else. At a certain point, if one is being honest, the flood becomes the thing that is most worthy of attention. At a certain point, it might be time to build an ark.

Under our Constitution, there simply are not that many people who are in a position to do something about an executive branch in chaos. As the first branch of government (Article I), the Congress was designed expressly to assert itself at just such moments. It is what we talk about when we talk about checks and balances. Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, Someone should do something! without seeming to realize that that someone is us. And so, that unnerving silence in the face of an erratic executive branch is an abdication, and those in positions of leadership bear particular responsibility.

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There was a time when the leadership of the Congress from both parties felt an institutional loyalty that would frequently create bonds across party lines in defense of congressional prerogatives in a unified front against the White House, regardless of the presidents party. We do not have to go very far back to identify these exemplarsthe Bob Doles and Howard Bakers and Richard Lugars of the Senate. Vigorous partisans, yes, but even more important, principled constitutional conservatives whose primary interest was in governing and making America truly great.

But then the period of collapse and dysfunction set in, amplified by the internet and our growing sense of alienation from each other, and we lost our way and began to rationalize away our principles in the process. But where does such capitulation take us? If by 2017 the conservative bargain was to go along for the very bumpy ride because with congressional hegemony and the White House we had the numbers to achieve some long-held policy goalseven as we put at risk our institutions and our valuesthen it was a very real question whether any such policy victories wouldnt be Pyrrhic ones. If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?

If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?

Meanwhile, the strange specter of an American presidents seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservativeswho had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Unionthat it was almost impossible to believe. Even as our own government was documenting a concerted attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax. Conduct that would have had conservatives up in arms had it been exhibited by our political opponents now had us dumbstruck.

It was then that I was compelled back to Senator Goldwaters book, to a chapter entitled The Soviet Menace. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this part of Goldwaters critique had seemed particularly anachronistic. The lesson here is that nothing is gone forever, especially when it comes to the devouring ambition of despotic men. As Goldwater wrote in that chapter:

Our forebears knew that keeping a Republic meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors; they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with independence.

So, where should Republicans go from here? First, we shouldnt hesitate to speak out if the president plays to the base in ways that damage the Republican Partys ability to grow and speak to a larger audience. Second, Republicans need to take the long view when it comes to issues like free trade: Populist and protectionist policies might play well in the short term, but they handicap the country in the long term. Third, Republicans need to stand up for institutions and prerogatives, like the Senate filibuster, that have served us well for more than two centuries.

We have taken our institutions conducive to freedom, as Goldwater put it, for granted as we have engaged in one of the more reckless periods of politics in our history. In 2017, we seem to have lost our appreciation for just how hard won and vulnerable those institutions are.

Jeff Flake is a Republican senator from Arizona. This article has been excerpted from his new book, Conscience of a Conservative. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Originally posted here:
My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump - POLITICO Magazine

Or so he hopes.

The decision to part ways with Priebus and bring on Department of Homeland Security chief John Kelly as chief of staff, all which Trump announced via Twitter late Friday, was cast by allies of the President as a much-needed reset for a White House that had lost its direction.

Maybe.

Kelly is, by all accounts, a highly disciplined and organized leader. The Trump White House needs that. He is also a highly decorated military man and someone Trump regards as an equal; Priebus was neither of those things. Kelly is the man Trump wanted. Priebus was the guy he accepted as, in his mind, a sop to a Republican establishment fretting over what sort of President he might be.

The problem with all of the talk of a "reset" in the White House led by Kelly is that Donald Trump is still the President. Priebus proved ineffective at managing Trump's erraticness -- leaping from issue to issue within a single day, tweeting out things that directly contradicted his White House's official line, fomenting competition among top staffers into a sort of blood sport.

This is, quite literally, who Trump is. He has lived his entire adult life a certain way. At 71, the idea that anyone -- Kelly included -- can fundamentally alter who Trump is -- or who Trump is willing to be for political purposes -- seems very far-fetched.

No one, ever, has wrangled Trump for any extended period of time. Sure, for a day or even a week during his first six months in office, Trump would avoid sending an inflammatory tweet or straying way, way off the teleprompter when delivering a speech. But it never lasted. He always returned to what he knows: the brash, unapologetic provocateur who is as interested in making a stir as he is in getting things done.

Trump didn't bring in Kelly to hamstring his natural instincts. Ditto Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director who spent his first week on the job savaging Priebus (and chief strategist Steve Bannon) to The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza. Trump brought both men in because he sees them as equals, as men who understand who he is and will work to implement his wishes as opposed to trying to fit him into a traditional political frame.

That last line from Lewandowski is the most important one: "Anybody who thinks they're going to change Donald Trump doesn't know Donald Trump."

That's 100% right. It's also why the chances of the next 193 days being any different than the past 193 days are very, very small.

Trump doesn't look back on the past six months as a failure on his part. He views it as a failure of the experiment he undertook to play nice with the Washington establishment. He put Priebus and Priebus' allies (Sean Spicer, Katie Walsh) in senior roles -- right alongside the likes of his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner -- and they failed to deliver. Their attempts to manage Trump made him angry; their inability to grind the gears of official Washington to work for him infuriated him.

The lesson Trump learned from these first six months office wasn't that he needs to change. It was that trying to change him into a Washington figure or anything close to a traditional politician wouldn't work. And that even if it had worked, he didn't want to do it anyway.

To the extent Trump is "starting over" then, it is really, in his mind, a return to his roots -- to who he should always have been from the start. He has put in place a team -- from Kelly to Scaramucci and on down -- that is much more likely to affirm and amplify his gut instincts to "let Trump be Trump" than to block them.

That is the only reset anyone watching this White House should expect. Trump isn't going to change. Instead, he's going to double down on being exactly who he's always been.

Continue reading here:
On day 193, Donald Trump (tries) to start over - CNN