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Donald Trump, Kirstjen Nielsen, World Cup: Your Wednesday Briefing

An encampment for immigrant children in Tornillo, Tex., on Tuesday. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said that “all of the members of the Republican conference support a plan that keeps families together.”Credit...Mike Blake/Reuters

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

• 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.

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Trump Assails Critics of Immigration Policy

President Trump defended his actions against illegal border crossings during a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business.

Those are the only two options: totally open borders or criminal prosecution for lawbreaking. And you want to be able to do that. We don’t want people pouring into our country. They said, “Sir, we’d like to hire about five or six thousand more judges.” Five or six thousand? Now, can you imagine the graft that must take place? You’re all small business owners so I know you can’t imagine a thing like that would happen. When countries abuse us by sending their people up — not their best — we’re not going to give any more aid to those countries. Why the hell should we? Why should we? So we have a House that’s getting ready to finalize an immigration package that they’re going to brief me on later. And then I’m going to make changes to (it). Democrats love open borders, let the whole world come in. Let the whole world — MS-13 gang members from all over the place, come on in, we have open borders. And they view that, possibly intelligently, except that it’s destroying our country. They view that as potential voters. Some day they’re going to vote for Democrats.

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President Trump defended his actions against illegal border crossings during a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

• 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.)

• “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.

• 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.

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As soccer fans watched the Russia-Egypt match at La Punto on Tuesday, the building that placed a pockmark on Russian sports suddenly became a place to celebrate it.
Credit...Denis Sinyakov for The New York Times

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.

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: Father and Son, Forced Apart at the Border

A 5-year-old boy and his father fled violence in Honduras and were separated upon arriving in the United States. What has happened to them since then?

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.

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.

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.

Here’s more from this week’s Food section.

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Jake Epstein, a sous-chef at Craft, arrives each morning before 7 to prepare stocks and organize the kitchen before lunch customers arrive.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

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.

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In parts of western Nepal, woman are banished to chhaupadi huts like this one when they get their periods. Starting in August, it will be illegal to force a menstruating woman into seclusion.Credit...Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

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.”

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.

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The director Steven Spielberg and the star of his breakout film, “Jaws.”Credit...Steven Spielberg, via Associated Press

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.

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Follow Chris Stanford on Twitter: @stanfordc.

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