On Politics: Senate Rejects Trump’s National Emergency

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/us/politics/senate-national-emergency.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 Senate voted to overturn President Trump’s national emergency declaration at the southwest border, delivering a bipartisan rebuke for what lawmakers in both parties deemed executive overreach. The 59-41 vote on the House-passed measure sets up the first veto of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

• House Republicans joined Democrats to demand that the Justice Department publicly release the full findings of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the possible involvement of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

• Three votes in Congress this week — rebuking Mr. Trump over Saudi Arabia, blocking his national emergency declaration and demanding a public release of the Mueller report — demonstrated a newfound willingness among some of Mr. Trump’s Republican allies to stand up to him.

• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been personally pushing China to give the American film industry greater access to its markets. That has raised ethical questions, given his ties to Hollywood.

• Mr. Mnuchin signaled that he would block a congressional request to obtain Mr. Trump’s tax returns on privacy grounds, setting up a potential legal battle if Democrats follow through.

• New evidence suggests that Russian spies used networks run by Aleksej Gubarev, a tech entrepreneur, to hack the Democratic Party in 2016 — much as the so-called Steele dossier, which purported to detail Russian interference in the election, alleged.

• Facing billions of dollars in cleanup costs, the Pentagon is pushing the Trump administration to adopt a weaker standard for groundwater pollution caused by chemicals that have commonly been used at military bases.

• Afghanistan’s national security adviser accused the American special envoy of seeking personal benefit by sidelining the Afghan government in peace talks with the Taliban, “increasing the legitimacy of the Taliban” and “decreasing the legitimacy of the Afghan government.”

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

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