• The phone call: Trump reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "about eight times" to cooperate with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on investigating Joe Biden's son Hunter, the WSJ reported Friday afternoon.
• The whistleblower: While few specifics are known about the whistleblower complaint, Trump's call with Zelensky was two weeks before the issue was raised. Per the Post, Trump made a "promise" that troubled a member of the intelligence community.
• The standoff: Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and the Justice Department have blocked Congress from accessing that whistleblower report, despite an intelligence community watchdog's referral.
• The pressure: “Of course I did," Giuliani told CNN last night, when asked if he's pressured Ukraine on investigating Biden. Giuliani later tweeted that a "President telling a Pres-elect of a well known corrupt country he better investigate corruption that affects US is doing his job."
• The money: The Trump administration has been withholding $250 million in aid for Ukraine that's meant to deter Russia. In July, Trump told Zelensky that the key to improving ties was Ukraine investigating corruption.

Between the lines: It's not clear that this example provides a reasonable case for investigation into the Biden family, as JustSecurity noted earlier this month.

• "Trump and Giuliani allege, contrary to evidence, that Biden improperly pressured the Ukrainian government in 2016 to fire then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in the midst of a corruption investigation of one of Ukraine’s biggest gas companies, Burisma Group. Biden’s youngest son, Hunter, was serving on the company’s board at the time."
• "But the prosecutor ...was the target of pressure by Ukrainian anti-corruption advocates and a host of international supporters of Ukraine, who argued he should be fired for failing to pursue major cases of corruption."
• "And it was the widely known and publicly espoused position of the U.S. government ... that the prosecutor’s ouster was among crucial anti-corruption measures that the Ukrainian government needed to take."
• The other side: "Several former officials in the Obama Administration ... insisted that Hunter’s role at Burisma had no effect on his father’s policies in Ukraine, but said that, nevertheless, Hunter should not have taken the board seat," The New Yorker reported earlier this year.

What's next: Zelensky is among the world leaders with whom Trump is slated to meet next week at the UN General Assembly.

• Expect Democrats to keep pushing for more information on the whistleblower report, as well as for more details on Trump's phone calls.
• "If it's true that the president requested that the president of Ukraine interfere in an American election, we are in really dangerous, brand new territory," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told the WashPost's Bob Costa today.

The bottom line: “It doesn’t matter what I discussed but I will say this, somebody ought to look into Joe Biden," Trump told reporters Friday.

• Biden's response: "Not one single credible outlet has given any credibility to his assertion. Not one single one and so I have no comment except the president should start to, ah, be president."

Driving the news:

• Chinese online marketplaces Alibaba and JD.com have pulled Juul from their offerings, just a week after they debuted.
• India has banned e-cigarettes altogether, despite having more than 100 million smokers in the country.

The big picture: The global vaping market suddenly looks much smaller than it did a few days ago, even threatening the mega-merger of tobacco companies like Altria and Philip Morris.

And in the United States:

• Numerous states are pushing major anti-vaping efforts, testing everything from banning flavored cartridges to PSA messages aimed at teens that feel like rehashes of the anti-cigarette movement.
• That now extends to local government: D.C. suburb Montgomery County is considering a rule that'd ban vape shops from within a 1/2 mile of public middle and high schools — effectively closing 19 of the county's 22 stores, the WashPost notes.
• Legal vaping manufacturers (particularly in the marijuana variety) are rushing to make sure their product doesn't get mistaken for the bootlegged cartridges that officials believe are causing some of the vaping-related lung illnesses.

Between the lines: Hundreds of people nationwide have suffered vaping-related lung illnesses, with 7 deaths.

• But it's still a mystery what exactly is causing the illnesses.
• The FDA has pointed to vitamin E acetate in THC vaping cartridges, but "no candidate substances have consistently turned up across samples so far," Scientific American warns.
• Although most "cases involve pods containing THC ... not all of them do. ... In a good chunk of cases, patients say the one they vaped contained only nicotine. Although it is possible patients do not want to admit to THC use in states where it is not decriminalized, there is no evidence they are lying."

Go deeper: Nicotine addictions increasingly driving vape users back to cigarettes

Editor's note: This story has been updated with the news from China and India.

• "We spent 40 years developing this trade relationship with China and in one fell swoop, it was all taken away," fourth-generation soybean farmer Bret Davis told Axios' Courtenay Brown in May.
• 2018's U.S. soybean sales to China were at a 16-year low.

By the numbers: Just 77% of potential soybean acres have been planted in the 18 highest producing states vs. an average 93% over the past 5 years.

• For corn, it's 92%, compared to an average of 100%. This is the worst number in 40 years, the WashPost reports.
• Even cotton is at 89% vs. the 5-year average of 94%.
• Michigan, South Dakota, Missouri and Ohio are feeling the pain worse than others.

The big picture: Farmers are generally insured against crop loss — and many are insured against being unable to plant.

• But "the suppliers who sell seed and herbicides to farmers don’t have insurance," South Dakota State's Jonathan Kleinja told the Post.
• Another whammy: Beleaguered industries like dairy are facing already-bad profit margins and are reliant on corn to feed their cows.

The bottom line: More farm aid is almost certainly on the way. The Trump administration — which is responsible for farmer trade war pains — keeps upping its offers to help, including for farmers who weren't able to plant.