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National

Unending gold is buried in the Mueller report. As the Washington Post's book critic Carlos Lozada writes, "the Mueller report is the best book by far on the workings of the Trump presidency ... special counsel Robert Mueller has it all under oath, on the record, along with interviews and contemporaneous notes backing it up." 

Here's one remarkable tidbit, from page 285 of the report:

"The next day, on May 11, 2017, the President participated in an interview with Lester Holt. The President told White House Counsel's Office attorneys in advance of the interview that the communications team could not get the story right, so he was going on Lester Holt to say what really happened."

Flashback: The Lester Holt interview became infamous because Trump told the NBC anchor that when he fired FBI Director James Comey, "I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story." 

Far from helping himself, the interview gave prosecutors another reason to think he had sought to obstruct justice.

Behind the scenes: This scene in the Mueller report brought back memories for one of my sources who was in the Oval Office with Trump shortly before the Holt interview.  

"He was full of righteous indignation," the source said of Trump. "He said something like, 'Never forget, no one speaks for me but me. These people [Trump's communications team] don't know what they're talking about. But I do, believe me.'"

Behind the scenes of Trump's infamous Lester Holt interview

"Never forget, no one speaks for me but me," Trump said in the Oval Office right before the interview.

Politics

James Comey

Supreme Court to tackle Trump administration's census controversy

The Census Bureau itself has said adding the question will probably cause 6.5 million people to be undercounted.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Supreme Court

In a closed-door meeting with Iranian-American community leaders last Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration is "not going to do a military exercise inside Iran" to expedite a regime change, according to three sources who were in the room, including one who took detailed contemporaneous notes and shared them with me.

Pompeo also sought to distance the Trump administration from a controversial Iranian resistance group that has welcomed John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani as speakers in a private capacity.

Behind the scenes: Pompeo met with around 15 Iranian-American community leaders on Monday morning in a conference room at the Renaissance Dallas Hotel. The secretary gave brief opening remarks and then spent most of the session listening and answering questions.

The most provocative question he fielded, according to the sources, was: "If regime change does not occur internally what is the endgame?"

Pompeo replied, "We're careful not to use the language of regime change." He then told the group that the administration would not intervene militarily in Iran.

Another participant asked, "Has the idea of a coup been considered?" Pompeo joked that "Even if we did, would I be telling you guys about it?" and the room broke out in laughter.

Pompeo used euphemisms and diplo-speak to describe the administration's position on Iran. 

"Our mission set is to give them the opportunity ... capacity to create opportunity, create that and provide transitional support," he said, per the notes. 

"Our best interest is a non-revolutionary set of leaders leading Iran," he added, according to the notes.

Between the lines: Pompeo said the Trump administration would have handled the 2009 Green Movement uprising against the regime very differently than the Obama administration did. But he did not say how.

Pompeo also said there is "no such thing as a moderate inside the Iranian regime anywhere today." 

And when asked how he could guarantee that the Trump administration's tough new sanctions wouldn't hurt the people of Iran, he replied: "There are no guarantees."

Pompeo also distanced the administration from the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq), an anti-regime group that the U.S. once designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Several people in the room told Pompeo they worried about what message it sent for close Trump allies — National Security Adviser John Bolton and Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani among them — to appear friendly with the MEK, whom some in the room described as worse than the current regime.

"Let's not beat around the bush," Pompeo replied, according to one source's notes. "Ambassador Bolton spoke at an MEK rally. President Trump and I have not."

"He acknowledged that John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani had connections or ties, whatever you want to call it ... with the MEK, but he did say that he and the president did not," confirmed another person in the room, Texas attorney Michael Payma.

Why this matters: With Trump as president, Bolton as national security adviser and Pompeo as secretary of state — the American people have never had a government so hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Even though Pompeo made his comments in a relatively private setting — and therefore they cannot be set into stone — it's significant for the secretary of state to tell members of the Iranian diaspora that the Trump administration won't be intervening militarily to overthrow the regime in Tehran. 

It's also significant for Pompeo to distance the Trump administration from the MEK organization — given the group's public association with high-profile Trumpworld figures like Giuliani and Bolton.

(The State Department did not respond to requests for comment when we gave them visibility of this reporting.)

Scoop: Trump administration opposes military intervention in Iran

"We're careful not to use the language of regime change," Mike Pompeo told a closed-door meeting of Iranian-Americans.

Illustration of Mike pompeo holding a tank

Iran

Conflicts, policies and powers are intersecting and shaping the world. Breaking news and analysis of national security, foreign policy and global crises.

World

The White House and top lawmakers from both parties think a bill to lower drug prices has a better chance of becoming law before the 2020 election than any other controversial legislation.

Between the lines: Republican politics on drug prices have changed rapidly. The White House has told Democrats it has no red lines on the substance of drug pricing — a position that should leave pharma quaking. 

What they're saying:  "I think if we get a bipartisan deal on anything, it’s going to be this," a senior administration official told Axios, characterizing the thinking at the top level of the White House. 

The official said that in the White House's conversations with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, “the only red line that we have communicated" is that a drug pricing deal shouldn't be combined with any changes to the Affordable Care Act. 

When asked specifically about red lines drawn around direct Medicare price negotiations — a top priority for Democrats — the official reiterated that “we’re not drawing any red lines on anything in the drug space right now.”

"We’re having conversations with the White House, but they are not negotiations," said Henry Connelly, a Pelosi spokesperson. "We’re looking at every option to maximize the leverage needed to drive down prescription drug prices.”

Yes, but: The official added that "if people want to pursue something out of religious zeal ... we’re not interested in that. If there’s a practical solution that will give patients and taxpayers a break, we’re open to it.”

Top lawmakers and lobbyists have told Axios over the last several months that real momentum has been building behind the issue.

“It’s created interesting alliances and probably is the number one topic for legislatively addressing an issue for the remainder of this year," House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows said. 

"In this unusual three-sided political world, dealing with prescription drug prices seems to have the best chances of a legislative accomplishment," said House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, adding that he was referring to the Democratic House, the Republican Senate and the "unaffiliated White House." 

The other side: The drug industry warns that government intervention on prices will result in less innovation, and President Trump has shown an interest in new treatments.

"When he has conversations around new treatments for things — the new genetic treatments, the sickle cell treatments, all these new therapies that are coming online — he gets very excited about them," the administration official said. "He’s very sympathetic to that, and he wants to make sure that ... this biopharmaceutical ecosystem continues."

What we're watching: Bipartisan bills have already started progressing through the House, establishing a floor for what Congress could accomplish even without the weight of a White House-Pelosi deal.

The Senate is likely to see significant movement before the August recess.

"It’s all got to get wrapped up by December, because nothing’s going to happen next year because of the election," the administration official said. "I think you’ll start to see, hopefully, terminal velocity in the summertime.” 

Not everyone is confident Congress will be able to pull this off. 

“Anything that gets done would need to be passed before the August recess, which itself is growing more unlikely as time passes and fights over the ACA and other issues erode whatever bipartisan collaboration that might have existed," a former Trump administration official told Axios.  

Details: Republicans have recently put forward a slate of new bills, some of which could have been written by liberal Democrats. 

Sen. Rick Scott introduced a bill that would ban drug companies from charging Americans a higher list price than they charge consumers in Canada, France, the U.K., Japan or Germany.

Sen. Mike Braun, who also introduced legislation, told Axios: “I’m just disgusted that we're at this point in time where we're apologizing for a broke industry and they’re not waking up and doing something about it on their own."

Sen. John Cornyn plans to introduce a bill that would allow the Federal Trade Commission to bring antitrust suits against drugmakers who use the patent system to discourage competition.

Meadows said he's part of a bipartisan group that's discussing changes to the administration's international pricing proposal, which ties Medicare reimbursement rates to what other countries pay for the same drug. 

Washington's major push to lower drug prices

That's partly because of how significantly the GOP's stance has changed.

Illustration of a giant pill casting a shadow over congress. 

Health Care

Drug prices

Health care costs

The U.S. health system faces critical questions about cost, access and equity. Technological advances and new discoveries about diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s are transforming patient care and reshaping public health.

Health

The series of coordinated blasts that struck several Sri Lankan churches and several hotels Easter Sunday has left more than 207 people reported dead and more than 450 injured — making the cluster of terrorist attacks more deadly than both the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2002 Bali bombings.

The big picture: The attacks targeting Christian worshippers suggest a new front in the annals of violence in Sri Lanka. Since the end of the bloody civil war in 2009, the country has mainly returned to peace, so the Easter attacks came as a shock.

Details: The attacks took place in the capital city of Colombo, the nearby city of Negambo, and in Batticaloa, across the island on the country's eastern coast.

By the end of day, the government had attributed the blast to suicide bombings and announced the arrests of 13 unnamed suspects.

Between the lines: Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war was driven largely by ethnolinguistic cleavage, with Tamil separatists in the north and east fighting against the Sinhalese-majority government. The pattern of today’s Easter Sunday attacks in churches point to yet another growing divide.

In its religious demographics, Sri Lanka is overwhelmingly Buddhist, more than 70% of the country’s population of more than 22 million, with around 12% Hindu, just under 10% Muslim, and a little more than 7% Christian.

The country’s earlier history of violence pitted ethnic Sinhalese (mainly Buddhist) against Tamil (mainly Hindu), with the small Muslim and Christian minorities not a target.

Tensions have been growing between Buddhists and Muslims, however; last year Buddhist extremists attacked Sri Lankan Muslims. 

What to watch: The Sri Lankan government also announced the suspension of several social media platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. The inability of such prominent services to catch up to and counter the spread of misinformation, especially during times of crisis, continues to be a major challenge for government and civil society.

In South Asia, governments have repeatedly opted to suspend platforms in situations of emergency, sparking difficult debates about freedom of expression, hate speech and misinformation. Look for this to become a growing concern in the region and beyond.

Alyssa Ayres is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013.

Easter terrorist attacks open new front of violence in Sri Lanka

The country has suffered decades of ethnic and religious conflict.

A Sri Lankan Catholic priest among the dead outside a church targeted in the attacks.

A Sri Lankan Catholic priest among the victims outside St Anthony's Church in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Photo: Tharaka Basnayaka/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Sri Lanka

Expert Voices

Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who plays president on a popular television show, has defeated incumbent President Petro Poroshenko with more than 70% of the vote to win Ukraine's presidential election, according to exit polls.

The big picture: This was Ukraine's first presidential election without a clear pro-Kremlin candidate, reflecting a shift for a country that has been increasingly drawn toward the West since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. Zelensky, who lacked any sort of a formal campaign, has promised that as a fresh face on the political scene, he can shepherd lasting structural change that career politicians cannot.

The incumbent Poroshenko's unpopularity is tied to his failure to tackle corruption. Poroshenko has suggested the inexperienced Zelensky would be a dream come true for Vladimir Putin.

Claire Kaiser, an expert on Eastern Europe at McLarty Associates, tells Axios that Zelensky will have to build a strong national security team and send an early signal he has a handle on foreign policy.

"Anyone running the show in Ukraine has the dual challenge of managing the economy and finding some sort of solution to the war in the East," she says.

Kaiser says Zelensky hasn't sent any signals that he plans to shift Ukraine's orientation away from Europe and the U.S., so while "there will definitely be a getting to know you phase," U.S. policy toward Ukraine is unlikely to change significantly.

Comedian known for playing president on TV wins Ukrainian election

Volodymyr Zelensky has easily defeated incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, according to exit polls.

Axios

Sunday's top stories

Behind the scenes of Trump's infamous Lester Holt interview

Supreme Court to tackle Trump administration's census controversy

Scoop: Trump administration opposes military intervention in Iran

Washington's major push to lower drug prices

Easter terrorist attacks open new front of violence in Sri Lanka

Comedian known for playing president on TV wins Ukrainian election

Facebook's regulatory woes

The corruption of laissez-faire capitalism

Nadler: "Barr deliberately misled the American people"

Giuliani: "There's nothing wrong with taking information from Russians"

Schiff: Trump's obstruction was far worse than anything Nixon did

A growing nation of immigrants

FBI arrests New Mexico militia group member at Southern border