Axios

House Democrats on the Oversight and Government Reform committee have "serious concerns" over the White House's handling of classified information and are pushing for documents relating to security clearances granted to ousted National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and Jared Kushner, Trump's advisor and son-in-law.

Their concerns: That the White House allowed Flynn to access sensitive material even after learning he had misled the administration about his conversations with a Russian diplomat, and that Kushner failed to disclose contacts with foreign officials.

The Trump administration plans to delay and then scrap a rule allowing foreign entrepreneurs to enter the U.S. to build companies, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, citing an anonymous administration official.

Axios previously reported that Trump's initial executive order draft (which ended up not being released) would have called for restricting access for foreign founders. It's not surprising that the administration moved forward with finding a way to make good on that idea, even if it wasn't addressed in the final executive order.

Timing: Ironically, the report of plans to scrap the International Entrepreneur Rule comes as tech leaders are in Washington to meet with White House officials. Immigration was one of the topics Trump addressed with tech CEOs earlier this week, as it has been a major source of tension between Silicon Valley and the administration.

President Trump is gearing up to travel to Cedar Rapids, Iowa today — the first state he'll visit west of the Mississippi River since becoming president. Within the first three months of Barack Obama and George W. Bush's presidencies, both leaders ventured out West on a few separate occasions.

Map: Lazaro Gamio / Axios

During a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee this morning, officials from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security discussed the scope of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and how the federal government is preparing for potential future cyberattacks.

The big thing: Jeanette Manfra, the Acting Deputy Undersecretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at DHS, confirmed that election-related systems in 21 states were targeted in the lead-up to the 2016 election, but reiterated that no vote tallies were altered.

Related: Manfra refused to name those 21 states, but said that the "system owners" had been made aware of the targeting. She also said that some states had data exfiltrated by Russian hackers but refused to provide details regarding the nature or scope of the exfiltrated election data.

GOP Congressional baseball shooter James Hodgkinson "acted alone" and "there was no nexus to terrorism," the FBI told reporters Wednesday.

The FBI's definition of terrorism: The "unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, to further political or social objectives."

Other details: The FBI is investigating this as an "assault" on a member of Congress and a federal officer. Hodgkinson had a list of six members of Congress in his pocket at the time of the shooting. He was "known to have an anger management problem" and "suffered from taking some prescription medications" but had no history of mental illness.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson told the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday that there is no doubt Vladimir Putin ordered his government to hack the U.S. November election:

"In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyber attacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election. That is a fact, plain and simple. Now, the key question for the president and congress is: What are we going to do to protect the American people and their democracy from this kind of thing in the future?"

The Washington Post's Emily Heil has the latest on Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's Saturday nupitals:

"Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was introducing Mnuchin at a conference and concluded ... with a personal flourish: 'Hilary and I also extend our congratulations and look forward to seeing you wed your dear fiancee, Louise Linton, on Saturday,' he said, referring to his wife, Hilary Geary Ross.

"Mnuchin has been engaged to Linton, a Scottish model/actress, since 2015. Linton, 36, ... had small roles in a number of movies and TV shows ... In May, Linton stepped down as chief executive of film-financing firm Dune Entertainment — a company that Mnuchin had divested from — after some questioned the ethics of her retaining a role in the company.

"Mnuchin, 54, will have something ... in common with Wilbur Ross and with Trump — both his Cabinet colleague and his boss are married to wife No. 3."

Silicon Valley doesn't see eye to eye with Trump on social and climate change policy. But major tech executives showed up to the White House for a set of meetings Monday focused on updating the government's use of technology. From tax reform to high-skilled immigration, these companies have a number of business priorities they feel they need to work with the White House on, and they want Trump to understand their perspective on technology-driven economic shifts.

Here's our rundown of what each of the players featured in this photo (from White House social media aide Dan Scavino) brought to the table:

The White House's "Tech Week" is hitting the road, and President Trump plans to tell Iowans Wednesday that he's committed to "including internet connectivity" in any infrastructure package the administration builds with Congress, aide Ray Starling told reporters.

That pledge will come as part of an event at Cedar Rapids' Kirkwood Community College that will highlight agricultural technology.

Let's talk details: It's expensive to build networks in rural areas, because providers struggle to recoup their investment from a small customer base, so it could be difficult to find money for rural broadband. Starling said the administration recognizes that "we'll have to invest monetarily" but also hopes to look to the private sector and money already deployed by the government. "At this point I think the conversation is relatively high-level and the president is committed to working with whatever Congress sees as the best solution there," Starling said when asked for specifics.

Tonight's runoff in Georgia's 6th Congressional district is a true tossup between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel, so we've simplified things a bit. Here's how the district's three counties voted in April's first round, and what we're watching for tonight:

• Fulton County: Ossoff 47.6%, GOP 51.5%, 45% of district votes in April. The North of Fulton is home to the only eight precincts that went for Handel in April. She'll expect to do well there, but things will be close county-wide.
• Cobb County: Ossoff 41.3%, GOP 58.0%, 32% of the vote. Ossoff swept the precincts here in April, but that came amid a GOP split between several candidates. Handel will likely win Cobb tonight, but the margin will be key.
• DeKalb County: Ossoff 58.6%, GOP 40.3%, 23% of the vote. Ossoff won every precinct here in April and will want to run up the score tonight.

Several White House officials, including Sean Spicer, stated the Trump administration will continue to put pressure on China in an effort to retaliate against Kim Jong-Un's regime following the death of Otto Warmbier. But the president seemed to dismiss those notions on Twitter Tuesday, writing that their efforts haven't worked out:

Why it matters: The Trump administration has looked to China in recent months to ramp up its aggression toward North Korea. But Trump's latest tweet suggests the WH may be switching gears now, and planning to deal with North Korea more directly.

A word of caution: Axios' Jonathan Swan writes that it's possible, even likely, that rather than abandoning his previous approach, Trump is publicly shaming Xi for his lack of success in changing North Korea's behavior and giving him one last chance to fix the situation.

Timing: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis are set to meet with their Chinese counterparts later this week.

Sean Spicer, who was back at the podium for his first on-camera briefing in 8 days, told reporters Tuesday that he didn't know whether President Trump, or anyone in the White House, has seen a draft of the Senate's health care bill yet — which is set for a vote in the coming weeks — but emphasized that Trump "clearly wants a bill that has heart in it." Spicer also deflected questions on why the Senate has been so secretive in crafting its bill, stating, "It's not our job to go in and dictate how they do it." Other takeaways:

Trump called Ukraine "a place we're all very much involved in" and said it was a great "honor to be with President Poroshenko" in the Oval Office Tuesday as he welcomed the president to the White House.

• Context: This comes in advance of Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 meeting next month, and today Poroshenko tweeted he is "grateful" for America's intention to stand by Ukraine.
• U.S. role in Ukraine: Trump met with Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin in May, who said Trump and Poroshenko would meet once conversations about the U.S.'s role in Ukraine's stalled peace progress were done, Deutsche Welle reports.
• The intrigue: This meeting was actually between Trump and his National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster — Poroshenko and VP Pence just dropped by.

Christopher Wray, President Trump's nominee to replace former FBI Director James Comey, deleted a line from his law firm bio referencing a 2006 case in which Wray represented an American energy executive who was being investigated by the Russian government, per CNN's KFILE.

What we know: Micheline Tang, a spokeswoman for the law firm King and Spalding, told CNN that Wray removed the detail in January 2017, before he was even considered for taking on the role of FBI Director, in an attempt to make the material on his page "more current." Tang also emphasized that the executive Wray was representing is an American citizen who lives in the U.S., and at the time the law firm, Wray, and the client were "adverse to the Russian Government" as Moscow was looking to exert leverage over the client by launching a criminal investigation.

The death of 22-year-old American student Otto Warmbier, who was released last week from a North Korean prison, is sparking a greater political debate over how to hold Kim Jong-un's regime responsible. One option of retaliation is for Congress or the Trump administration to issue new restrictions on Americans traveling to North Korea.

Last month, Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) proposed a new bill that, if passed in Congress, would require Americans traveling to North Korea to obtain a license, and Americans would be banned from visiting as tourists, per NY Mag.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also hinted to a House committee last week that the administration may introduce such a ban. "We haven't come to a final conclusion, but we are considering it," Tillerson said.

There was a lot of happy talk after the White House kicked off its self-styled "Tech Week" on Monday with a meeting of big name tech CEOs. Here's what to make of the meeting, which featured Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Apple's Tim Cook and Microsoft's Satya Nadella, among others:

1. Tech companies still want a seat at Trump's table. Even after policy disagreements, nobody wants to risk being left out of discussions about everything from taxes to federal IT. At least on the issue of high-skilled immigration, it seems Trump has moved over to tech's side.
2. "Tech Week" isn't the same as an actual tech policy push. In the past such listening sessions were accompanied by announcements of new private-sector commitments or administration programs. That wasn't the case Monday, though the week is just beginning.
3. Less backlash. Remember how Uber's (otherwise embattled) chief executive ended up leaving Trump's councils because of user backlash? That doesn't seem to be happening in this case, maybe because so many prominent CEOs were there — and this isn't a formal advisory council.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told Donald Trump on Monday that he hoped the president would put "more heart" into the immigration debate, according to a source familiar with the meeting. His comment came at the end of a meeting with tech CEOs after Trump used the same phrase in reference to the debate over healthcare. The New York Times' Maggie Haberman was the first to report on the conversation, which a source had confirmed to Axios.How it happened: Tech leaders met at the White House on Monday to talk about modernizing government technology, with a meeting with Trump capping off the gathering. Trump told the executives that he had instructed Senate Republicans to put "more heart" into their coming health care bill, the source said. The Associate Press reported last week that Trump had called the House healthcare bill "mean" and told GOP senators to be "more generous" with their bill.Cook echoed his phrasing back to him, saying he hoped that Trump would put "more heart" into the equally-contentious debate over immigration. The executive mentioned the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the fate of which under Trump remains unclear, and said that some employees in the tech industry felt targeted by the administration's actions on immigration, even if that wasn't the White House's intent.Trump's response: Our source says Trump told the executives to talk to their elected representatives and mentioned the need for comprehensive immigration reform. He has previously floated — and then backed off — the idea of an immigration deal. The White House and Apple declined to comment.

Trump met with top tech executives including Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Alphabet's Eric Schmidt at the White House on Monday, and he offered assurances that his immigration policies wouldn't hurt Silicon Valley.

Other highlights:

• Trump on cyber hacking: Trump mentioned that he had been discussing "stronger protection against cyber attacks," adding "[i]t's a big problem, no question about it. We're going to be working hard and we're going to solve the problem."
• Cook on skills: Cook said coding training should be in every school and there is a "huge deficit in the skills we need today." He also raised immigration.
• Bezos on AI: Bezos said it was "impossible to overstate" the importance of artificial intelligence.
• High praise for Trump including from Safra Catz of Oracle who said it was "an absolutely wonderful day working together."