First Run News

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • In China, all eyes were on the new lineup of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s top rung.

It wasn’t long after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico that attention turned to a century-old shipping law. A group of lawmakers urged the Trump administration to suspend the law, known as the Jones Act, for one year to expand access to oil, food and other supplies.

For the past two years, Andy Techmanski ran a tiny family utility-contracting company out of his home in the ski town of Whitefish, Mont., getting relatively modest jobs out West. They helped rebuild a fire-ravaged power line in mountainous Washington State and are in the process of supplying a transformer to a Montana electric cooperative. But now, Mr.

SAN JUAN, P.R. — Girls raced up the school steps in their plaid pinafores and backpacks on Tuesday, ponytails tied tight with colorful ribbons. They hugged and squealed and swapped dramatic hurricane stories, eager to catch up after more than a month away. “We are ready,” Kenia Caraballo Rivera, the principal at the Dr.

Senate Republicans voted on Tuesday to strike down a sweeping new rule that would have allowed millions of Americans to band together in class-action lawsuits against financial institutions. The overturning of the rule, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking a 50-to-50 tie, will further loosen regulation of Wall Street as the Trump administration and Republicans move to roll back Obama-era policies enacted in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

Democratic congressional challengers have posted very impressive fund-raising tallies so far this year. In the last quarter, nearly three dozen Republican incumbents were outraised by at least one Democratic challenger — an astonishing number against sitting members of Congress. The breadth of Democratic fund-raising is also strong. But there’s an important pattern under the big numbers that will shape the battleground in the 2018 midterm elections. So far, nearly all of the biggest Democratic recruiting struggles have been in working-class areas.

WASHINGTON — The presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paid for research that was included in a dossier made public in January that contained salacious claims about connections between Donald J. Trump, his associates and Russia. A spokesperson for a law firm said on Tuesday that it had hired Washington-based researchers last year to gather damaging information about Mr.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Tuesday announced investigations into two of President Trump’s most frequent grievances, unveiling new inquiries into actions of the Obama administration connected to Hillary Clinton. In the first of two back-to-back announcements, the top Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees said they would formally examine the Obama Justice Department’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

WASHINGTON — President Trump renewed his attacks on Senator Bob Corker on Tuesday, chastising him for his skepticism over a $1.5 trillion tax cut. Mr. Corker responded by going on national television to say that Mr. Trump was “debasing” the United States and that the president struggled with the truth. Mr. Corker “couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in Tennessee,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday. Mr.

WASHINGTON — President Trump renewed his attacks on Senator Bob Corker on Tuesday, chastising him for his skepticism over a $1.5 trillion tax cut. Mr. Corker responded by going on national television to say that Mr. Trump was “debasing” the United States and that the president struggled with the truth. Mr. Corker “couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in Tennessee,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday. Mr.