Axios

On April 7, as Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met at Mar-a-Lago, Chinese bureaucrats issued an order telling traders to send North Korean coal cargoes back from where they came. Reuters says in a scoop that it has tracked a dozen cargo ships headed from China to North Korea's main west coast port of Nampo, full or mostly full. At the same time, after importing no U.S. coking coal from 2014 through 2016, China bought 400,000 metric tons by the end of February, Reuters said.

Why it matters: China is North Korea's main trading partner, and coal is North Korea's main export. By turning back the cargoes, China is sending a sharp signal of unhappiness with Kim's flaunting of his ballistic missile technology, which experts think might achieve the ability to hit the continental US within two years. The surge in US imports makes the message even clearer.

Get smarter: What the coal politics won't do is change Kim's missile policies. To get there, China and the US will have to somehow jointly reassure the skittish and youthful Kim that he will not be the victim of regime change.

The question Spicer was asked: "What makes you think that, at this point, [Putin] is going to pull back his support for President Assad and the Syrian government" after years of remaining allies?

His response: "We didn't use chemical weapons in World War II... Hitler didn't even sink to using chemical weapons."

On Monday, the FBI announced that they had found Peter Yuryevich Levashov —"one of the world's most notorious criminal spammers," according to prosecutors. The Russian cyber criminal had made the rookie mistake of using the same username and password for iTunes that he used for hacking, Wired reported.

Why it matters: The state-run Russian media company RT has reported that Levashov was involved in hacking during the U.S. election, although that has not been confirmed. At the very least, Levashov ran one of the world's biggest botnets and infected as many as 100,000 computers, including 10,000 in the U.S.

At a meeting with major American CEOs, President Trump made some quick remarks regarding regulatory reform. The big hits:

• Dodd-Frank: Trump promised a "major streamlining" of the 2010 law and — without providing any further detail — suggested keeping parts but getting rid of many of its regulations.
• NAFTA: He told the CEOs to expect some "very pleasant surprises on NAFTA."
• The environment: "We're going to be very, very careful on the environment. It's very important to me and my administration."

A new Washington Post-ABC poll on President Trump's missile strike in Syria has an interesting partisan breakdown when compared to hypothetical support for strikes by President Obama in 2013:

• Democratic support: 38% support in 2013, 37% support in 2017
• Republican support: 22% support in 2013, 86% support in 2017

Why it matters: Overall, 51% of Americans support Trump's strike, but that majority is due to the massive swing in support among Republican voters. A better look at how the strike affected Trump's support: Gallup's daily approval ratings show POTUS gained a single point since Thursday.

The 2017 Morning Consult Senator Approval Rankings results are out, and the most and least popular Senators have been revealed. More than 85,000 registered voters participated in the survey and evaluated their Senators based on perceived job performance over the past year.

Winners: Bernie Sanders was the most popular Senator, followed by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Barrasso (R-WY).

Losers: Mitch McConnell, the Senate's most powerful member, was ranked the least popular, followed by John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

Losers pt. 2: Six of the 21 women in the Senate were among the least popular; only one, Susan Collins, was among the top 10 most popular Senators.

Hasan Minhaj, a senior correspondent for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, is this year's entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 29.

Why it matters: President Trump announced in February that he is skipping the event and news organizations — like the New Yorker, Bloomberg, Vanity Fair, TIME, and People — have canceled their WHCD parties, leading many to speculate whether there would be an entertainer or even that it might be canceled this year.

Eric Trump told London's Daily Telegraph that his father will not be "pushed around" by Vladimir Putin, adding that his father won't take being crossed. The younger Trump also said his "heartbroken and outraged" sister Ivanka spurred their father to launch the airstrikes.

Why it matters: Trump has faced heat since the campaign for his family's close involvement in his operations. With his children and son-in-law Jared Kushner playing this increased role in a wartime setting, such scrutiny will only intensify.

How to finance Trump's infrastructure plan, which depends on leveraging public funds with many more private dollars, will be one of the top topics as President Trump meets at 10:45 a.m. with a who's-who of CEOs (Elon Musk, etc.) assembled by Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman, who heads the President's Strategic and Policy Forum.

Why it matters: After Trump got skunked on health reform, he needs to find other ways to put points on the board. The corporate heat can help him with Congress — and back him up where Congress won't.

President Trump has recorded a robocall in support of Kansas State Treasurer Ron Estes' bid for the House seat vacated by CIA Director Mike Pompeo. The special election is tomorrow, and it's the first Congressional election since Trump took office.

Why it matters: The Republican nerves are showing; Kansas' 4th should be safe for the GOP — it's home to Koch Industries and party mega-donor Charles Koch — but they're still pulling in the big guns, including Mike Pence, Ted Cruz and now Trump. Here's what Trump is telling voters:

Ron is going to be helping us, big league... I need Republicans like Ron Estes to help me get the job done.

As Cruz put it at rally today in Wichita, "Today, the eyes of the whole country are on Kansas."

Spicer opened the briefing with a discussion of global reaction to the U.S. missile strike in Syria: "By all measures, the world and domestic reaction was highly laudable of the president's action," said Spicer. He added that, "If you look at the countries that are with us, it speaks pretty loudly. Russia stands with Syria, North Korea and Iran." Other takeaways:

The two tweeting Presidents fought hard to keep their favorite devices in the Oval Office.

Phone choice: In 2009, Obama had to convince his team to let him keep his BlackBerry for emailing, and this year, Trump tweeted from his old Android Galaxy S3 for the first few months of his presidency.

Security: Obama was allowed to use his BlackBerry — a presidential first — only after having the phone secured, changing his contact information and being restricted to communication with a short, pre-approved list of senior staff and close friends. Trump, however, did not have his Android secured against malware or hacking, as far we know, and tweeted at will.

Politico's Shane Goldmacher has a story this morning, in which six White House staff leak to him about a confidential planning meeting that happened last week. Only about 30 staff were in the meeting, led by Trump's communications director Mike Dubke, in a conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office.

That's a 20% leak rate. Bad!

What it means: The leaks illustrate a dynamic that's defined Trumpworld since the campaign — a stark and persistent division (and distrust) between staff who view themselves as "America First" Trump loyalists, and those who they view as either RNC implants ("Reince's people") or Johnny-come-lately consultants who are more comfortable with the establishment than with populist nationalists.

The lovers, the haters, the bots — Bloomberg's Polly Mosendz did a deep dive on @RealDonaldTrump followers and found:

• "According to a beta content-analysis software used by Social Rank, only 19 percent of Trump's followers are women. Among Trump's 20 most-engaged followers, only two had traditionally female names — and both of those accounts appear to be automated."
• "Egg accounts — named after the logo [of users — often bots] who don't adopt another image ... — make up 7.5 million of @realDonaldTrump's followers, about 28 percent of his total following."

Articles from the Washington Post and Financial Times take a look at the back stories of two of the West Wing's wealthiest and influential members of the White House: Steve Bannon and Reed Cordish.

• Inside the Bannon machine: "Bannon was able to produce more than a dozen conservative documentaries over the past decade by drawing on a network of two dozen nonprofit organizations and private companies." ... "Bannon, who had already made millions on Wall Street, often was paid in multiple ways for each project — a common practice in Hollywood, where he had worked as an entertainment financier."
• Reed Cordish family: FT's Gary Silverman explains how rival-turned friend David Cordish is now the Trump's kind of dealmaker: "David Cordish once made an enemy of Donald Trump over plans to develop two casinos in Florida. But his son is now a senior figure in the White House."
• "The Cordish family's relations with government have grown more complicated now that Reed Cordish, 42, has left the family business ... to serve as Mr. Trump's assistant for intergovernmental and technology initiatives and a member of the White House Office of American Innovation. 'We miss him,' his father says. 'Anytime the president wants to send him back, we'll take him.'"

President Trump's Mar-a-Lago hosting with Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to be bearing some fruit, per the FT, which says China has offered the following concessions on trade:

1. A drop on China's ban on U.S. beef, which has been in place since a Mad Cow Disease scare in 2003.
2. Foreign investors will be allowed to hold majority stakes in Chinese investment and securities companies. This concept was discussed during the Obama administration, and a Chinese official told the FT it would have gone through had Obama had a few more months in office.

Why it matters: Trump needs concrete wins on trade, particularly for his heartland voters, and China wants to lock in a bilateral trade deal with the U.S., which it isn't eager to fight in a Trumpian trade war.