Supported by
Donald Trump, Kirstjen Nielsen, World Cup: Your Wednesday Briefing
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)
Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
Seeking a fix for the border crisis
• Senate Republicans have one plan. The House has its own. But there’s no widespread agreement on how to end the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of separating immigrant children from parents who enter the country illegally.
President Trump hasn’t endorsed any of the ideas, and he has rejected calls that he change the policy himself.
The uproar has galvanized the business world, and corporate leaders on Tuesday condemned the breaking up of migrant families. (The chief of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, was a notable exception.)
• Word of the separations policy has filtered through Mexico and Central America. Our correspondent spoke to several migrants about whether it had changed their plans.
The face of “zero tolerance”
• Last month, Kirstjen Nielsen was said to be prepared to quit her job as Homeland Security secretary.
She has now become the most visible defender of the administration’s efforts to discourage illegal immigration. On Tuesday night, she was heckled by protesters while eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Washington.
The creators of “Family Guy” and “Modern Family” are among several prominent entertainers working for the company that owns Fox News who have criticized how the network has covered the issue.
• Separately, the U.S. has withdrawn from the U.N. Human Rights Council to protest its frequent criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. (The U.S. joins Iran, North Korea and Eritrea.)
Betting that China will blink
• “President Trump has given China every chance to change its aggressive behavior. China does have much more to lose than we do.”
That was Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s top trade adviser, on Tuesday, noting that the value of China’s exports to the U.S. was nearly four times what the U.S. exports to China.
Mr. Trump is now threatening to tax nearly the total value of goods — more than $505 billion — that China sent to the U.S. last year. His stance has drawn a rebuke from retailers, tech companies and manufacturers. Here’s the latest in the trade dispute between Washington and Beijing.
• In other global economic news, Greece is preparing to emerge from nearly a decade of bailouts. European officials have hailed it as a symbolic end to a ruinous crisis, but new problems lurk elsewhere in the region.
A gastro pub with an unusual past
• La Punto, a restaurant recommended to World Cup visitors in Sochi, Russia, has a less savory past: The building once housed the drug-testing lab involved in one of the most elaborate cheating schemes in sports history.
Where soccer fans now gather, a chemist tampered with urine samples during the 2014 Olympics to conceal the widespread use of banned performance-enhancing drugs by top Russian athletes.
One of our reporters visited the restaurant, where the only clue to the site’s notorious past can be found on the cocktail menu. One drink is called Meldonium, the name of the substance that led to Maria Sharapova’s suspension from tennis.
• On the field, Russia is virtually assured to advance from the World Cup’s group stage after beating Egypt, 3-1. Senegal and Japan also won on Tuesday. Today’s matches conclude with Spain vs. Iran. We have live updates and analysis here.
Business
• Walt Disney sharply increased its offer for 21st Century Fox today, hoping to win a bidding war with Comcast for Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment conglomerate.
• The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market. The drop is so significant that the agency has added four years to its estimate of how long the program will be financially secure.
• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross shorted stock in a shipping firm — a tactic for profiting if share prices fall — days after learning that reporters were preparing a potentially negative story about his dealings with the Kremlin-linked company.
• General Electric, the last original member of the Dow Jones industrial average, was dropped from the blue-chip index after more than a century.
• U.S. stocks were down on Tuesday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.
Smarter Living
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
• Want to stay healthy on your next trip? Here are four tips.
• We have advice for dealing with impostor syndrome.
• Recipe of the day: Keep stir-fry sauce in your freezer for easy, delicious meals.
Noteworthy
• Explore the aftermath of a volcanic eruption
After the Fuego volcano erupted in Guatemala this month, it buried one village in sand, ash, rocks and tree trunks. Using augmented reality, we captured what was left behind.
• Losing, and gaining, vision
What happens when visual artists lose their sight? A new exhibition at the University of Cincinnati explores how artists adapted to vision loss and, in some cases, experienced a personal renaissance.
• A great restaurant, backstage
Behind every great restaurant is a finely tuned team — and hours and hours and hours of work. A Times photographer shadowed the staff at Craft, the Manhattan flagship of the chef Tom Colicchio.
• Best of late-night TV
Stephen Colbert offered some advice to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary: “If kids in cages is too much for you to defend, there is one option: You could resign!”
• Quotation of the day
“If a woman goes inside the family’s home during her period, three things will happen. A tiger will come; the house will catch on fire; and the head of the house will get sick.”
— Runcho, a farmer in Nepal, explaining deeply entrenched superstitions in his part of the country that lead to women being banished from their homes while menstruating.
• The Times, in other words
Here’s an image of today’s front page, and links to our Opinion content and crossword puzzles.
• What we’re reading
Michael Wines, a national correspondent, recommends this long read in The Atlantic: “You may disagree with the premise (and judging by the online response, a lot of people do), but this is probably medicine worth taking. The big income-disparity problem with America, the author argues, isn’t the top 1 percent but the top 9.9 percent — the lawyers, doctors, M.B.A.s and others who consider themselves just upper middle class. Which, he says, they most definitely aren’t.”
Back Story
Steven Spielberg’s genre-defining film “Jaws” was released on this day in 1975. It was his first big-budget film, and it ushered in one of the industry’s most successful careers.
But the production was troubled with delays and budget-busting costs. Crew members called it “Flaws,” and Mr. Spielberg — not yet 30 years old — worried he might never work in Hollywood again. “No one had ever taken a film 100 days over schedule,” he said.
Especially problematic were three animatronic sharks meant to serve as the focal predator. Collectively known as Bruce (after Mr. Spielberg’s lawyer), they proved disappointingly unmenacing. And they corroded and malfunctioned because the young director insisted on the realism of filming in the ocean, not in a tank.
Unable to show more than a few scenes of the film’s linchpin, Mr. Spielberg improvised. He filmed some scenes from the shark’s point of view and signaled its presence with John Williams’ now-iconic theme song. The result: a Hitchcockian buildup of tension and suspense. (The Times review was a bit dismissive.)
Even the production delays ended up helping. “Jaws” missed the traditional Christmas window, and a later release (and a marketing blitz) made it one of the first summer blockbusters.
Emma McAleavy wrote today’s Back Story.
_____
Your Morning Briefing is published weekdays and updated all morning. Browse past briefings here.
Sign up here to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning. To receive an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights, sign up here.
Check out our full range of free newsletters here.
What would you like to see here? Contact us at briefing@nytimes.com.
Follow Chris Stanford on Twitter: @stanfordc.
Advertisement