A Trade Deadline Frenzy, and Trump’s Push to Keep Control of Congress

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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Thursday, July 31st.

Here's what we're covering.

There's less than 24 hours to go until President Trump's trade deadline.

Earlier this month, he threatened more than a dozen countries, including some of the U.S.'s closest allies, with steep tariffs if they didn't strike a deal before August 1st.

And with time running out, multiple countries have have agreed to new trade terms, some in just the last few hours.

U.S.

officials said Thailand and Cambodia came in under the wire, though the details haven't been made public.

So did South Korea, which will face 15% tariffs, much higher than when Trump took office, but not as crippling as the 25% the president originally threatened.

For some other countries, though, Trump's taking an increasingly hostile approach.

Yesterday, he singled out India, criticizing the country on social media for its ties to Russia and China.

And he announced that most products from India will face 25% tariffs starting tomorrow.

President Trump's post-The Truth social was insulting.

It was a slap to India.

It was a humiliation to pretty much everyone who's invested a lot in this trade relationship.

And people in India this Thursday morning are reeling, trying to figure out how best to adjust and accommodate the new reality.

My colleague Alex Trevelli is based in New Delhi.

He says it's particularly shocking for major companies like Apple, who've spent the last few years moving their production out of China to India to try and avoid getting caught up in a trade war.

Suddenly, the supply chain that goes through India looks like one of the riskiest of all.

And in another aggressive trade move, Trump followed through on his threat to slap a 50% tariff on Brazil.

There are exceptions for some of its key exports like aircraft and orange juice.

The U.S.

imports almost all of its fresh orange juice from Brazil.

But the move is a sharp escalation of a growing diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

In addition to the tariffs, the Trump administration also slapped sanctions on one of Brazil's Supreme Court justices.

Trump is targeting Brazil, and that judge in particular, for what he claims is the political persecution of his ally, the country's former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro has been called the Trump of the Tropics, and he's he's about to stand trial on charges that he orchestrated an attempted coup after he lost re-election.

Trump wants Brazil to drop those charges and has folded that issue into his trade demands.

In an interview with The Times, Brazil's current president said, quote, if he wants to talk trade, let's sit down and discuss trade, but you can't mix everything together.

We're more than a year away from the midterm still, but President Trump is already thinking about how to maintain his extremely narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

My colleague Shane Goldmacher is covering a growing effort by the White House to pressure Republican-led states to redraw their U.S.

House district maps to help Republicans win future elections.

He's been reporting on the most significant result of that push so far, a new voting map unveiled yesterday by Republicans in Texas.

Redistricting normally happens once a decade after the census, but this is something entirely different.

A mid-decade redistricting for pretty explicit partisan gains, a gerrymander to install more Republicans and fewer Democrats in one of the biggest states in the country.

Shane says that the proposed map still needs to be greenlit by Texas lawmakers and approved by the governor.

But if it goes through, it could give Republicans the chance to gain five House seats on Capitol Hill.

Texas Democrats, however, have called the move outrageous and are expected to challenge the map in court if it's approved.

Meanwhile, other states are watching closely.

The Democratic governors of California, Illinois, and New York have suggested that they could respond to any new map in Texas by redrawing their own state's maps to help more Democrats win.

Now, three more updates out of Washington.

The Trump administration has authorized a widespread deployment of the National Guard to support its immigration crackdown.

Troops will be deployed in 20 Republican-led states where they will help process migrants who are already in custody and set to be deported.

The Times obtained a private government memo about the plan.

It does not authorize soldiers to participate in immigration raids.

Instead, the goal is to have them take on clerical duties, which will free up other authorities to carry out arrests.

Also, President Trump's pressure campaign against elite universities has led to another deal, this time with Brown.

The White House had threatened to block more than $500 million in federal research funds for the school over allegations the university allowed anti-Semitism to go unchecked on campus.

That set off a financial panic at Brown, and it raced to get massive loans.

Now, Brown has agreed to pay $50 million,

and it said it will comply with the Trump administration's vision on policies like restricting trans athletes' participation in sports.

In exchange, the government will restore federal funding and promised that it will not try to dictate the school's curriculum or quote academic speech measures it's threatened to take at other schools.

And today, we decided to leave our policy rate where it's been, which I would characterize as modestly restrictive.

As expected, the Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it's keeping interest rates steady.

That decision, though, was one of the most contentious in decades.

The Fed governors that vote on what to do with interest rates were split, and two of them opposed the decision.

The last time something like that happened was in 1993.

The dissenting governors were both appointed to the Fed by Trump, and the rare fracture comes as Trump's been forcefully demanding that the central bank lower rates, which he says will juice the economy.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has held off, though, saying that the country's economic indicators on things like jobs and inflation continue to give mixed signals about when lowering rates will be the right move.

And finally, a huge chunk of the world from Japan to Alaska was on edge yesterday for tsunami warnings, triggered by the massive earthquake near Russia.

There were sirens, evacuations, people were braced for massive damage, but the big waves never really showed.

And while there was some flooding, so far there are no reports of casualties.

So the question is, how did such a powerful earthquake produce such a weak tsunami?

As one geophysicist told the Times, there's big, and then there's really, really, really big.

The earthquake had an estimated magnitude of 8.7 or 8.8.

By contrast, quakes that triggered catastrophic tsunamis in the past, like the ones that hit Indonesia in 2004 or Japan in 2011, were a nine.

Those numbers seem close, but because the scale that scientists use to measure quakes is logarithmic, there's actually a significant difference.

A magnitude 9 has two or three times the energy of an 8.7 or an 8.8.

There could be other factors at play too.

Not all earthquakes and tsunamis are created equal.

What was notable this time, though, is how the early warning system has developed.

An earthquake struck in almost the exact same spot back in 1952.

That triggered a 12-foot wave that reached Hawaii with almost no warning.

This time, people had several hours heads up.

It's kind of a better safe than sorry situation, the geologist told the Times, quote, warnings went out.

This is a big success.

Those are the headlines.

Today on the daily, a look at the Trump administration's most aggressive push yet to end the fight against climate change.

That's up next if you're listening in our New York Times app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow.