Good morning. We’re covering key votes on Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill and China’s big lead in clean energy.
Plus, the high price of protest in Hong Kong.
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| President Trump met with the top Republicans to press for passage of his domestic policy bill. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times |
Trump pressured senators to pass his tax-and-spending bill
President Trump’s first-year legislative agenda hung in the balance yesterday, as the Senate began voting on amendments to the president’s sweeping economic and domestic policy bill.
Trump is pressuring Congress to pass the bill by Friday, the Independence Day holiday, but whether the Republicans had enough votes for passage was unclear. Here’s the latest.
Four Republican defectors would be enough to kill the measure, and at least two senators have said they will not vote for it, while a half-dozen others were undecided. Proposed cuts to medical and Social Security benefits have drawn fierce opposition from Democrats and made several Republicans uneasy.
What’s in it: The bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt over a decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said. The proposed legislation would include significant investments in border security and the military. It would provide major tax cuts and slash spending on safety-net programs, including Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans, and food assistance. Here’s a look at the spending cuts.
What’s next: If the Senate passes the bill, it will then go to the House of Representatives for passage and finally to the president for his signature to become law.
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| Chinese solar panels in Shanxi Province and U.S. oil fields in California. Gilles Sabrié and J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times |
China is far ahead in the race to power the future
China still emits more climate pollution than the U.S. and Europe combined. But it is pivoting to cleaner power at breakneck speed.
More wind turbines and solar panels were installed in China last year than in the rest of the world combined, and its clean energy boom is going global. Chinese companies are building electric vehicle and battery factories in Brazil, Thailand, Morocco, Hungary and beyond. The country already dominates global manufacturing of several clean energy devices, and with each passing month, it widens its technological lead.
Context: The U.S., meanwhile, is pushing oil and gas. Both strategies are driven largely by national security. China, unlike the U.S., doesn’t have much easily accessible oil or gas of its own, so it is eager to eliminate dependence on imported fossil fuels and instead power more of its economy with renewables.
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| President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador at the White House. Eric Lee/The New York Times |
A closer look at Trump’s deal with El Salvador
The U.S. has agreed to pay millions of dollars to El Salvador in exchange for helping imprison migrants deported from the U.S. As part of the deal, the U.S. agreed to a special request from Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president: the return of key members of the violent gang MS-13.
Both countries said that the gang leaders would be facing justice in El Salvador. But a Times investigation found that U.S. prosecutors had collected substantial evidence of a corrupt pact between that the Salvadoran government and gang leaders to support Bukele politically. Here are the key takeaways from the investigation.
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| Jc Milhet/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Trade and the Economy
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| Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz serves to Italy’s Fabio Fognini. Henry Nicholls/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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| A billboard in Moscow featuring Xi Jinping’s “favorite catchphrases.” Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times |
Something surprising has happened in Russia, where everything Western used to be worshiped: China has become trendy. Young people are learning Mandarin, Chinese cars are a common sight in Moscow and Chinese directors stage plays in Russian theaters.
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| Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times |
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