MOSCOW — Russia’s top diplomat on Thursday described the British accusations against Moscow over the nerve agent poisoning of an ex-spy as a mockery of international law and said Russia will push to find out the truth.

Britain has blamed Russia for the March 4 poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter. In response, more than two dozen Western allies including Britain, the U.S. and NATO have ordered out over 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity. Moscow has fiercely denied its involvement in the nerve agent attack and expelled an equal number of envoys. The diplomatic turmoil has hit lows unseen even at the height of the Cold War.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisted that the poisoning case was fabricated by Britain to “demonize” Russia.

“The so-called Skripal case has been used as a fictitious, orchestrated pretext for the unfounded massive expulsions of Russian diplomats not only from the U.S. and Britain but also from a number of other countries who simply had their arms twisted,” Lavrov said at a conference in Moscow. “We have never seen such an open mockery of the international law, diplomatic ethics and elementary decorum.”

Early Thursday, three buses believed to be carrying expelled American diplomats departed from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Before the morning departure, journalists outside the embassy compound saw people leaving the residences, placing their luggage on trucks. Some toted pet carriers.

Russia last week ordered 60 American diplomats to leave the country by Thursday in retaliation for the United States expelling the same number of Russians.

Lavrov noted that Russia will respond in kind to any further hostile moves, but added that “we also want to establish the truth.”

He sarcastically likened the British accusations to the queen from Alice in Wonderland urging “sentence first — verdict afterward.”

On Wednesday, Russia called a meeting of the international chemical weapons watchdog to demand a joint investigation with Britain into the poisoning — the demand that London has rejected.

The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) voted against the Russian proposal, but Moscow said the number of countries that abstained from the vote suggested many have doubts about Britain’s accusations.

“It’s unacceptable to make unfounded accusations instead of conducting a fair investigation and providing concrete facts,” Lavrov said. “Yesterday’s debate in The Hague showed that self-respecting adults don’t believe in fairy tales.”

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Wednesday that “the purpose of Russia’s ludicrous proposal at The Hague was clear — to undermine the independent, impartial work of the international chemical weapons watchdog.”

The chief of Britain’s defense research lab, the Porton Down laboratory, acknowledged Tuesday it has not been able to pinpoint the precise source of the nerve agent.

Gary Aitkenhead said scientists there identified the substance used on Sergei and Yulia Skripal as a Soviet-developed nerve agent known as Novichok. But he added “it’s not our job to say where that was actually manufactured.”

The British government says it relied on a combination of scientific analysis and other intelligence to conclude that the nerve agent came from Russia, but the Foreign Office on Wednesday deleted a tweet from last month that said Porton Down scientists had identified the substance as “made in Russia.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for cyber security, Alexander Krutskikh, mocked the contradictory statements, saying Thursday that “the latest developments around the Skripal case indicate the days of this British Cabinet are numbered.”

Moscow has called a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to press its case.

___

Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

After the president’s remarks, White House aides struggled for hours to decipher his intentions.

Late in the day, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump had met with Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, and members of the national security team to discuss his administration’s strategy for dealing with “the growing influx of illegal immigration, drugs and violent gang members from Central America,” a problem on which she said the president had initially been briefed last week.

That strategy, she said, included mobilizing the National Guard — though Ms. Sanders did not say how many troops would be sent or when — and pressing Congress to close what she called “loopholes” in immigration laws. Also present at the meeting were Jeff Sessions, the attorney general; Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security; Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff.

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Mr. Trump first began raising new dangers posed by immigration in a series of confusing tweets and public statements that started Sunday and continued on Monday. That prompted White House officials to organize a conference call on Monday afternoon to outline a detailed legislative push they said the president was starting for the new immigration restrictions. Deploying the National Guard was not mentioned during the call.

The announcements on Monday and Tuesday appeared to be more about political messaging than practical action. Stung by a backlash from his conservative supporters over his embrace of a trillion-dollar-plus spending measure that did not fund his promised border wall, and lacking a legislative initiative to champion with the approach of midterm congressional elections this fall, Mr. Trump has reverted to the aggressive anti-immigration messaging that powered his presidential campaign and has defined his first year in office.

Immigration advocates denounced Mr. Trump’s announcement as a political ploy.

“He cannot get funding for his wall, so instead he irresponsibly misuses our military to save face,” Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

Others said Mr. Trump’s sudden declaration was merely an instance of a now-familiar pattern wherein the president reacts angrily to something he sees in the news — in this case, reports of a large group of migrants from Honduras traveling through Mexico with hopes of reaching the United States — and seeks to use it as a cudgel against his political opponents.

“Some of it is just the guy at the end of the bar yelling his opinions — his gut reaction is to say we’ve got to send the military,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates slashing immigration levels. “But there may also be an element here of political messaging — and a desire to create problems in November for Democratic candidates who have refused to embrace his policies.”

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Whatever Mr. Trump’s motivation, the president floated the idea after days of public stewing about the potential for the group of Honduran migrants to pour into the United States.

“We have very bad laws for our border, and we are going to be doing some things — I’ve been speaking with General Mattis — we’re going to be doing things militarily,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday morning, seated beside the defense secretary at the meeting with Baltic presidents. “Until we can have a wall and proper security, we’re going to be guarding our border with the military. That’s a big step. We really haven’t done that before, or certainly not very much before.”

The caravan has been a popular topic on Fox News — the president’s favorite news network — and Mr. Trump’s aides have argued that weak immigration policies were luring the migrants to the United States from Central America.

“The big Caravan of People from Honduras, now coming across Mexico and heading to our ‘Weak Laws’ Border, had better be stopped before it gets there,” he posted Tuesday on Twitter. “Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!

Later, Mr. Trump claimed credit for having pressured Mexican officials during a conversation on Monday to block the group from approaching the United States, in part by threatening to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement if they refused.

“I’ve just heard that the caravan coming up from Honduras is broken up, and Mexico did that,” he said during his meeting with the Baltic leaders. “And they did it because, frankly, I said, ‘You really have to do it.’”

A White House official said later that Mr. Trump had not, in fact, spoken with President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico on Monday.

While the active-duty military is generally barred by law from carrying out domestic law enforcement functions, such as apprehending people at the border, previous presidents have deployed National Guard troops to act in support roles on the border with Mexico. President Barack Obama sent 1,200 in 2010 and President George W. Bush dispatched 6,000 in 2006, while governors of border states have done the same when faced with large inflows from the south.

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Mr. Trump has spoken before about launching a military operation to police the border, only to have his aides walk back the remarks amid a backlash from members of his administration and officials in Mexico.

Last February, he called his immigration crackdown “a military operation,” prompting Rex W. Tillerson, then the secretary of state, and Mr. Kelly, then the homeland security secretary, who were visiting Mexico at the time, to push back vigorously. They told their Mexican counterparts and reporters that the American president did not, in fact, plan to use the military to hunt down and deport unauthorized immigrants. The White House later insisted that Mr. Trump had meant the word “military” only as an adjective.

On Tuesday, though, the president appeared convinced that American troops were needed.

“I think it’s something we have to do,” he said.

Correction: April 4, 2018

An earlier version of this article misstated part of the immigration strategy described by Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She urged closing legal loopholes, not passing them.

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BEIJING — China responded to President Trump’s new tariffs by threatening tariffs of its own on 106 U.S. products, including soybeans, airplanes and cars, in the latest escalation of what risks becoming a tit-for-tat trade war between the world’s two largest economies.     

The plan, which was announced Wednesday, would see China slap 25 percent levies on a range of U.S. goods worth about $50 billion. Though China said the timing depends on U.S. moves, the news had an immediate impact on markets, including the soybean market. 

The latest trade salvo from China rattled many world markets. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped 2.2 percent and South Korea’s main exchange was down more than 1 percent. In Europe, all major markets opened lower, pointing to another expected slump when Wall Street opens.

Soybeans on the Chicago Board of Trade immediately dropped as much as 4.2 percent, while wheat and corn futures also slid, Bloomberg reported. 

The Chinese announcement came just a day after the White House unveiled plans for tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese imports across 1,300 categories, with 25 percent levies on Chinese goods ranging from electronics, aerospace and machinery to phones, shoes and furniture. 

[Trump targets $50 billion in Chinese electronics, aerospace with tariffs]

Though a response from Beijing was widely expected, the speed of the announcement came as a surprise, deepening fears of a rapid escalation.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Chinese officials did little to stem talk of “war,” but stressed that Beijing is willing to work with the White House. 

“If someone wants a trade war, we will fight to the end. If someone wants to talk, our door is open,” said Wang Shouwen, vice-minister of commerce.

Zhu Guangyao, vice minister of finance said both sides were “showing their swords and making demands,” but needed to get back to the negotiating table. 

Though the dollar amounts targeted by both sides are similar — $50 billion — the focus on U.S. soybean exports by China could have a particularly big impact on the United States.

Soybeans are the top U.S. agricultural export to China and U.S. soybean farmers and their allies fought hard to prevent the tariffs — something Zhu noted in the press conference. 

Christopher Balding, an ­associate professor at the HSBC Business School in Shenzhen, said that comparing the U.S. and Chinese lists showed China’s willingness to target products like soybeans, automobiles and planes that could create political problems for Trump.  

“Even though the numbers between China and the U.S. are comparable, it seems clear that China is trying to twist the knife,” he said, “This is a warning that ‘we are willing to fight harder and inflict more pain that you are.’”

The goal may be to get U.S. voters to stop Trump from doing more. Farm states generally backed Trump in the 2016 election and their exports could be hurt. 

“China is stirring up U.S. farmers to put pressure on the White House,” said Shen Dingli, deputy dean of the Institute of International Affairs at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

Wednesday’s announcement means there are now two U.S.-China trade battles playing out.

In late March, the U.S. announced steel and aluminum tariffs that would penalize China to the tune of about $3 billion a year. On Monday, China returned fire by imposing similar measures on $3 billion worth of U.S. pork, fruit and other items. 

Then, on Tuesday, the White House went ahead with tariffs that target manufacturing technology, arguing that Chinese trade practices have unfairly hurt U.S. business.

Trump has argued that the Chinese government forces U.S. companies to surrender proprietary technology to gain access to the Chinese market, resulting in the theft of trade secrets. 

But critics say the U.S. president’s protectionist trade moves will hurt the global supply chains of U.S. companies and could lead to higher prices for U.S. consumers. 

The question now is if Trump will move ahead with the tariffs as announced or change course, potentially going to the table.

Shi Yinhong, a professor of international affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, said that China’s move has signaled the country’s willingness to go “tit for tat” in a trade war. 

Today’s move is “a rising wind that foretells a storm,” he said, adding that whether that storm comes, “depends on President Trump.”

Luna Lin, Amber Ziye Wang and Yang Liu contributed from Beijing.

Read more:

China’s retort to Trump’s latest trade move was pretty clever

In a U.S.-China trade war, Trump voters likely get hurt the most

The U.S. wrote the rules for trade. Now China is using them against Trump.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

Vadim Lavrusik, a YouTube employee who formerly worked for The New York Times, tweeted just before 1 p.m. that there was an “active shooter at YouTube HQ” and that he had “heard shots and saw people running while at my desk.” He was barricaded in a room with co-workers, he said, but moments later tweeted that he had been safely evacuated.

The last known address for Ms. Aghdam was in Menefee, a city in Southern California about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.

Ms. Aghdam was active on various social media outlets, including YouTube, where she had a number of channels in Persian, Turkish and English. On YouTube, she published an eclectic set of videos, including music parodies and workouts, on topics like animal cruelty and vegan cooking.

In February 2017, she recorded a video on Facebook criticizing YouTube for taking measures that decreased the number of views on her videos.

She said that she had contacted YouTube, but that the site’s support staff told her that her workout videos contained inappropriate scenes and needed to be restricted from younger audiences.

“This is what they are doing to weekend activists and many other people who try to promote healthy, humane and smart living — people like me are not good for big business like for animal business, medicine business and for many other businesses. That’s why they are discriminating and censoring us,” she said in the video on Facebook.

YouTube had pulled down all of her channels as of Tuesday night.

A 2009 story by The San Diego Union-Tribune quoted a woman with the same name as Ms. Aghdam at an animal rights protest outside Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base in Southern California. Two dozen attended the protest organized by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals against the use of pigs in military trauma training.

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“For me, animal rights equal human rights,” said Ms. Aghdam, then 29, who attended the protest carrying a plastic sword and wearing a wig and jeans painted with drops of blood.

The shootings on Tuesday took place in a courtyard at YouTube’s offices, the police said. Those offices, like other Google facilities, maintain light security, with employees using badges to go through security gates or doors. Usually, the main lobby is attended by a receptionist. There are no visible metal detectors or armed guards.

San Bruno is about nine miles south of San Francisco, with a population around 43,000. YouTube is the city’s biggest employer, and many workers commute here from San Francisco. Though YouTube is owned by Google, it operates in a separate office, about 20 miles from Google’s main campus in Mountain View, Calif.

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Outside the YouTube headquarters, armed police officers waded into a crowd of 200 or so employees who had evacuated to a nearby parking lot Tuesday afternoon. The police asked for employees who had witnessed something firsthand to come forward, and about two dozen, some visibly distraught, walked over to the officers.

Many employees said they had initially thought the episode was a fire drill. Others said they had run when people started shouting that there was a shooter. Two hours after the attack, YouTube employees, including Susan Wojcicki, the chief executive, continued to stream slowly down the hill, away from the office.

Footage broadcast by CNN showed people leaving the building in single file with their hands raised above their heads. Separate footage showed a large crowd lining up to be frisked, one by one, by the police.

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Zach Vorhies, 37, a senior software engineer at YouTube, said in an interview that he had been sitting at his desk when the fire alarm went off. He grabbed his electric skateboard and headed for a back exit, he said. As he rode down a gravel hill, he heard someone shouting and saw a man lying motionless in one of the office’s outdoor dining areas.

“He had a red spot on his stomach, and he was lying on his back, not moving,” Mr. Vorhies said. “I saw the blood soak through the shirt.”

About 25 feet away from the victim, he said, a man was shouting, “Come at me!” Mr. Vorhies thought the man was the attacker, but he did not see a gun and said it was possible that the man had actually “been taunting the shooter.”

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A moment later, an armed police officer entered the patio area, and Mr. Vorhies quickly left, he said.

The dining area can be reached from an adjacent parking structure without an employee badge, Mr. Vorhies said.

By 2:15 p.m., President Trump had been briefed on the attack. He tweeted a short time later: “Was just briefed on the shooting at YouTube’s HQ in San Bruno, California. Our thoughts and prayers are with everybody involved. Thank you to our phenomenal Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders that are currently on the scene.”

Was just briefed on the shooting at YouTube’s HQ in San Bruno, California. Our thoughts and prayers are with everybody involved. Thank you to our phenomenal Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders that are currently on the scene.

—
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
April 3, 2018

Cameron Rogers Polan, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Division of the F.B.I., said in an email that the agency was in contact with the San Bruno police. The San Francisco division of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tweeted that it, too, was responding to the shooting.

Google said on Twitter that it was “coordinating with authorities.”

“I know a lot of you are in shock right now,” Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said in a statement posted to Twitter. “Over the coming days, we will continue to provide support to help everyone in our Google family heal from this unimaginable tragedy.”

Executives at other Silicon Valley companies took to Twitter to send their condolences to YouTube employees.

“From everyone at Apple, we send our sympathy and support to the team at YouTube and Google, especially the victims and their families,” Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, wrote.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, wrote on Twitter: “I can’t imagine what our friends at YouTube are feeling and dealing with right now. We‘re here for you and your families and friends.”

Others, including a trauma surgeon at the hospital where shooting victims were taken, expressed anger at continued gun violence.

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“You’d think that after we’ve seen Las Vegas, Parkland, the Pulse nightclub shooting, that we would see an end to this, but we have not,” the surgeon, Dr. Andre Campbell, told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions should rescind his recusal on the investigation into Russia’s interference with the 2016 election, haul in special counsel Robert Mueller and order him to reveal any evidence of collusion that would justify continuing the special counsel’s probe, says Congressman Matt Gaetz. And if that evidence doesn’t exist, the Florida Republican says, “then let’s go ahead and wrap this thing up.”

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Gaetz, one of the most enthusiastic defenders of President Trump on cable news, doesn’t trust Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general overseeing Mueller. He believes Rosenstein has sheltered Mueller ever since recommending the former FBI director to replace Jim Comey atop the bureau, and believes Rosenstein has been compromised by signing renewals for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court related to the Carter Page investigation.

“I still think there’s time for Jeff Sessions to do the right thing,” Gaetz told me in an interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast.

Gaetz, 35, has become as much as anyone an avatar of Congress and the GOP and Washington in the age of Trump. He does not have much experience, but he stresses what he’s learned from it. He does not have much inside knowledge of the Mueller probe, but he knows exactly what he thinks of it. He talks about how awful Washington is, but he’s become a prominent presence in it. He’s the son of a locally famous politician who helped get him where he is, but now he’s a proud Trump protege.

And he does it all on TV.

The hard part about trying to schedule an interview with Gaetz is that his schedule is busy with so many other interviews. He points out that he’s in the middle of 12, maybe 13, profiles. His media hits run from InfoWars to the National Enquirer, and he’s now enough of a regular in the greenrooms at Fox and MSNBC that he jokes around with the makeup people.

Now reporters know to call. So does the president.

Late at night or early in the morning, Gaetz’s cellphone will ring—sometimes from a blocked number, sometimes from “a 10-digit number that starts with a 202-area code.”

“He’s always very funny and very laudatory, and he’s one of the great showmen of a political generation. And so I think that there’s a certain element of the president that wants to confer onto others some of his skills,” Gaetz said. “I think he said one time that I should smile more when he thought I wasn’t smiling enough. And told me he liked my new haircut.”

Gaetz says Trump isn’t coaching him. “It’s more about the president wanting to keep his finger on the pulse of the Congress, where we stand, what people are discussing,” Gaetz said.

Most often, he’s been discussing Russia and Mueller’s ongoing investigation.

Gaetz hasn’t read the underlying intelligence, but he’s read the controversial memo written by House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), which criticized the surveillance of Page without drawing from the underlying intelligence used to justify the wiretaps, and he’s read the various Mueller indictments. He believes Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin didn’t want Hillary Clinton to become president, and he accepts the fact that Russia attempted to interfere with the 2016 election— as it has in other free elections around the world—but insists it wasn’t very extensive.

Gaetz likens Russia’s 2016 involvement to “emptying a thimble of vinegar into the ocean hoping to change its chemical composition.” And anyway, Trump’s campaign was too much of a mess to have been up to anything like collusion.

“The Trump campaign was lurching from one event to the next. I had some familiarity with the campaign. I spoke at, I think, four of the Trump rallies that were in Florida, and these were not highly coordinated events. I would often learn of the program of one of these events just a day or so before the event itself,” Gaetz said. “That seems to evidence the point that these were not people off colluding with Russia.”

He blames the ongoing hubbub about Russia on “the left” and “the media.” True, Gaetz says, Trump hasn’t done anything to denounce the Russians for the incursion into the elections, but on the other hand, “the president could never say enough to satisfy some in the mainstream media and some on the political left as it relates to Russia.”

The president who needs to be investigated more, Gaetz believes, is Barack Obama. Asked if he thinks Obama wiretapped Trump—as the president alleged in a tweet a year ago and never provided evidence of despite staff insisting he would—Gaetz said, “I believe the Obama administration did.”

“I think we’ve still got to pull the thread on that sweater. But what I’ve seen to date is that the administration most certainly was engaged in surveillance that was alleged by the president when he was mocked,” Gaetz said. “I think we’ve got to interview more witnesses. One of my frustrations is that the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced a very ambitious investigation to interview 20 witnesses. And in 2½ months, we’ve interviewed two of them, and subsequent to both of their interviews, they’ve left the employment of the federal government. So it would seem to me that that would prod the committee leadership to enhance the pace of that investigation, and it is frustrating to me that it’s been so slow.”

For all the time he spends injecting himself into the media bloodstream, Gaetz insists he doesn’t enjoy it.

“Look, this isn’t summer camp. You don’t pick the merit badges you want to earn. This is serious work and I do believe the president has gotten a raw deal on Russia. I think I have an argument to make, and I’m willing to go make it,” he said. “I do think that if you’ve got a compelling argument to make in this country, going on television, going online, being on social media, you’ve got a broader ability to be effective at communicating your message if you engage a wide span of platforms, rather than just standing on the House floor in the middle of the night, speaking to an empty room.”

Gaetz liked the state Legislature in Tallahassee better. He says he doesn’t understand the pace of Congress, and doesn’t understand most of his fellow Republicans—notably on issues where the president he so vigilantly defends has moved the party further away from where he wants it to be.

“We should not be a party that is opposed to science. I don’t think this is a parochial issue for me as a Floridian. I fear that history will judge very harshly those who deny the science of climate change, and I just don’t intend to be among them,” Gaetz said. “There is an ability for people who got elected to Congress to hold on to their dogmatic views. I encounter this on cannabis reform, on climate change. I don’t understand what Republicans have to gain from appearing like we’re mean to gay people.”

Not everyone loves how Gaetz is appearing: He’s facing a primary challenge back home in his Panhandle district (where the Republican nomination is all that matters) from a 2016 opponent who’s come back at him, attacking him for being a fake conservative and a career politician.

After the podcast microphones turned off, Gaetz started talking about Sam Nunberg, the former Trump aide who can’t stop doing interviews about not being able to stop doing interviews.

Ratings, he said. That’s what he’s learned. People will do anything for ratings in Washington.

“I take it for what it is,” Gaetz said. “It’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It’s a condition.”

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The March 2017 action by the E.P.A. on the pipeline project — in the form of a letter telling the State Department that the E.P.A. had no serious environmental objections — meant that the project, an expansion of the Alberta Clipper line, had cleared a significant hurdle. The expansion, a project of Enbridge Inc., a Calgary-based energy company, would allow hundreds of thousands more barrels of oil a day to flow through this pipeline to the United States from Canadian tar sands.

The signoff by the E.P.A. came even though the agency, at the end of the Obama administration, had moved to fine Enbridge $61 million in connection with a 2010 pipeline episode that sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan and other waterways. The fine was the second-largest in the history of the Clean Water Act, behind the penalty imposed after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A spokesman for Williams Jensen said that the lobbying firm did not intervene with the E.P.A. or Mr. Pruitt on the Enbridge pipeline expansion either before or after Mr. Pruitt was living in the condo owned in part by Vicki Hart, the wife of J. Steven Hart, the chairman of the firm.

The lobbying firm also said it had not worked on similar regulatory issues for Enbridge in the past year, even though it was registered at the time as lobbying for the company on “issues affecting pipelines and construction of new pipelines,” its disclosure report from early 2017 says.

Cynthia Giles, who served at the E.P.A. as an enforcement official in the agency’s mid-Atlantic region in the 1990s before becoming an assistant administrator at the agency in the Obama administration, said Mr. Pruitt’s housing arrangements raised questions about the fairness of the E.P.A.’s decision-making process.

“The people at the E.P.A. are charged with following the science and facts as it applies to individual decisions,” she said. Appearing to accept favors from influential figures “is just not good judgment.”

Ms. Bowman said the criticism was unjustified, saying that Mr. Pruitt paid what one E.P.A. official called a “market value” rent. However, an examination of Capitol Hill rentals suggests that rates typically are considerably higher and generally do not come with a provision, as Mr. Pruitt’s did, that the renter can pay for only the nights stayed at the condo.

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The E.P.A.’s review of the Alberta Clipper project was one of at least a half dozen regulatory matters before the E.P.A. related to clients who were represented by Williams Jensen at the time that Mr. Pruitt was living part-time in the Capitol Hill condo.

Williams Jensen, for example, was lobbying the E.P.A. early last year, according to its disclosure reports, on behalf of both Oklahoma Gas and Electric, a major coal-burning utility, and Concho Resources, a Texas-based oil and gas drilling company.

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The work for Oklahoma Gas involved the effort to repeal or revise the landmark Obama-era rule that pushed states to move away from coal in favor of sources of electricity that produce fewer carbon emissions. An E.P.A. calendar in March 2017 shows that Mr. Pruitt and his chief of staff were scheduled to meet with company executives at the request of a Williams Jensen lobbyist.

Brian Alford, a spokesman for Oklahoma Gas, said the company had received no favors from Mr. Pruitt. “By no means has O.G.E. benefited from any living arrangements for Administrator Pruitt,” he said in a statement. “In fact, Administrator Pruitt did not attend the mentioned meeting.”

Concho, a 2017 lobbying disclosure report shows, hired Williams Jensen to help it handle matters including “EPA regulatory proposals re: oil and gas operations.” The company’s regulatory filings indicate its concerns included the regulation of methane emissions (a major factor in climate change) from drilling and production operations, as well as rules intended to protect drinking water supplies. Mr. Pruitt has considered revisions in both regulatory areas.

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In the Enbridge case, the E.P.A. was asked to evaluate the potential environmental effect of the pipeline expansion application, as well as the quality of a preliminary review of the project that the State Department had already conducted. When the pipeline opened in 2010, it was permitted to carry only as much as 500,000 barrels of oil a day. The expansion would allow it to move an additional 390,000 barrels through a key three-mile section near the Canadian border.

Michael Barnes, a spokesman for Enbridge, said the project deserved to be approved, noting the “vital service that this existing pipeline provides in delivering secure and reliable supplies of North American crude oil to the United States.”

The oil it carries comes from the so-called Canadian tar sands, like the oil for the proposed extension of the Keystone XL pipeline. Extraction from tar sands has drawn opposition from environmentalists, given that the process requires more energy than traditional drilling.

Pipelines, like this one, that cross an international border into the United States require a presidential permit, which is issued only after the State Department has conducted a detailed environmental review and has taken input from other federal agencies, including the E.P.A.

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In this case, the pipeline expansion was further complicated by the fact that a related Enbridge pipeline involved in oil imports from Canada spilled nearly one million gallons of oil in Marshall, Mich., in July 2010 after tape intended to prevent corrosion on the pipeline failed. Investigators later found that employees allowed the oil to continue to flow after wrongly assuming that the alarms sounding were caused by a harmless vapor bubble.

Enbridge has argued it has learned from that accident and taken corrective measures to prevent it from happening again. The settlement with the E.P.A. also requires the company to spend at least $110 million to install advanced leak detection and monitoring measures to prevent spills.

In March 2017, while Mr. Pruitt’s lease at the Washington condo was in effect, the E.P.A. issued a letter giving the pipeline project the second-best rating it offers out of 10 possible scores. The agency concluded that while the project raised “environmental concerns,” the review had adequately examined the alternatives and determined that “no further analysis or data collection is necessary.”

If the E.P.A. had wanted to more aggressively challenge the project, the agency could have rated it as “environmental objections” or “environmentally unsatisfactory.”

The conclusion stands in contrast to a similar evaluation by the agency in 2013 of the Keystone XL pipeline project. That evaluation focused more on the effect that the flow of tar-sands oil could have on the goal of limiting global climate change and gave the project an “environmental objections” rating.

With the signoff by the E.P.A. and the State Department, Enbridge received the expansion permit it needed in October, five years after it first applied for permission. Additional pumping stations have already been built, meaning the pipeline expansion project is already completed, the company said.

Mr. Pruitt is separately the focus of an investigation by the E.P.A. inspector general, Arthur A. Elkins Jr., based on Mr. Pruitt’s travel in early 2017 back to his home state of Oklahoma on government-funded flights, as well as his use of first-class tickets for flights and, at times, costly chartered planes.

Discussions have already started on Capitol Hill about asking the E.P.A. inspector general to expand his inquiry to include the condo deal. Late Monday, three House Democrats who serve on the committee with oversight of the E.P.A. sent a letter to Mr. Pruitt asking a series of questions about the condo lease, which was first reported by ABC News.

“As administrator you have taken a number of actions to benefit industries regulated by E.P.A.,” the letter said. “And this news raises the possibility that you may have personally benefited from your relationship with industry.”

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Donald Trump hasn’t been talking about the rising stock market lately, and no wonder. Stocks have given up their earlier gains since the President unveiled his protectionist trade agenda, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 1.9% on Monday. Tech stocks took a particular beating as Nasdaq fell 2.74%, but the main policy concern is the new uncertainty from rising trade tension.

China slapped punitive tariffs on 128 categories of American goods on Monday in retaliation for the Trump Administration’s national-security…

North Korea has threatened to go to war over broadcasts across its militarized border that included the K-pop songs of South Korean bands like Red Velvet. On Sunday, Kim Jong Un was clapping along and posing for pictures with the music group.

Kim’s surprise appearance at a rare pop concert in Pyongyang was the North Korean leader’s latest diplomatic overture as he prepares for an unprecedented potential meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump next month. Kim first plans to hold a rare summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has pursued reconciliation with North Korea to avert war over the regime’s nuclear weapons program.

After listening to the band belt out dance tunes including “Red Flavor” and “Bad Boy” to about 1,500 members of the North Korean elite at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, Kim called for a similar performance in Seoul later this year. “I understand people were curious to see if I would come to see Red Velvet’s performance,” Kim said, calling the show a “present” to North Korea’s citizens.

After a similar attempt at K-pop diplomacy received a frosty reception 15 years ago, Red Velvet’s members expressed surprise at the welcome they received from the North Korean spectators, who waved their hands and sang along to the songs. South Korea has in recent years added K-pop to its propaganda broadcasts across the demilitarized zone, a practice that has prompted threats of military action by North Korea.

China Trip

Kim’s appearance comes a week after he shook up the Asian diplomatic landscape with an unexpected trip to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing — his first overseas trip since taking power in 2011. The planned inter-Korean summit with Moon on April 27 is expected to pave the way for a similar meeting with Trump, who wants Kim to abandon his nuclear weapons.

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On Monday, stock market indexes in Tokyo and Shanghai were up 0.5 percent at midmorning.

Beijing faces complaints by Washington, the European Union and other trading partners that it hampers market access despite its free-trading pledges and is flooding global markets with improperly low-priced steel and aluminum. But the EU, Japan and other governments criticized Trump’s unilateral move as disruptive.

The United States buys little Chinese steel and aluminum following earlier tariff hikes to offset what Washington says is improper subsidies. Still, economists expected Beijing to respond to avoid looking weak in a high-profile dispute.

Effective Monday, Beijing raised tariffs on pork, aluminum scrap and some other products by 25 percent, the Finance Ministry said. A 15 percent tariff was imposed on apples, almonds and some other goods.

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The tariff hike has “has seriously damaged our interests,” said a Finance Ministry statement.

“Our country advocates and supports the multilateral trading system,” said the statement. China’s tariff increase “is a proper measure adopted by our country using World Trade Organization rules to protect our interests.”

The White House didn’t respond to a message from The Associated Press on Sunday seeking comment.

China’s government said earlier its imports of those goods last year totaled $3 billion.

The latest Chinese move targets farm areas, many of which voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

U.S. farmers sent nearly $20 billion of goods to China in 2017. The American pork industry sent $1.1 billion in products, making China the No. 3 market for U.S. pork.

“American politicians better realize sooner rather than later that China would never submit if the U.S. launched a trade war,” said the Global Times, a newspaper published by the ruling Communist Party.

Washington granted EU, South Korea and some other exporters, but not ally Japan, exemptions to the steel and aluminum tariffs on March 22. European governments had threatened to retaliate by raising duties on American bourbon, peanut butter and other goods.

Beijing has yet to say how it might respond to Trump’s March 22 order approving possible tariff hikes in response to complaints China steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology.

Trump ordered U.S. trade officials to bring a WTO case challenging Chinese technology licensing. It proposed 25 percent tariffs on Chinese products including aerospace, communications technology and machinery and said Washington will step up restrictions on Chinese investment in key U.S. technology sectors.

Trump administration officials have identified as potential targets 1,300 product lines worth about $48 billion. That list will then be open to a 30-day comment period for businesses.

Beijing reported a trade surplus of $275.8 billion with the United States last year, or two-thirds of its global total. Washington reports different figures that put the gap at a record $375.2 billion.