Washington Edition

This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation’s capital. Today, senior White House correspondent Jennifer A. Dlouhy looks at how the president is trying to use energy supplies to pressure Russia on Ukraine. Sign up here and follow us at @bpolitics. Email our editors here.

Crude Calculations

President Donald Trump has been threatening for months to mount a new economic pressure campaign against Vladimir Putin by slapping tariffs on countries that buy Russia’s crude. The idea is to starve Moscow of the revenue that’s funding the three-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine.

The follow through, so far, has been incomplete. The US unilaterally hiked tariffs on goods from India over its Russian oil purchases. But Russia’s other big oil customer, China, has escaped a new penalty.

There’s no sign that so-called secondary tariffs on China are imminent. Trump is scheduled to talk with China’s President Xi Jinping tomorrow and there’s a host of other issues on their agenda.

Administration officials previously told allies in the Group of Seven nations that if they boost levies on India and China, the US would follow suit. Today, Trump floated another condition. During a news conference with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump signaled that stepped-up US sanctions hinge on European allies cutting purchases of Russian energy.

“I’m willing to do other things, but not when the people that I’m fighting for are buying oil from Russia,” Trump told reporters after the conversation.

Meanwhile, more than a month after Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska, Moscow is continuing its attacks on Kyiv, and plans for negotiations on a truce appear stalled.

Trump said today that Putin “really let me down,” but suggested the ball is now in Europe’s court.

While Starmer was sympathetic to Trump’s concern — agreeing that allies needed to stop Russian oil purchases — it’s not clear it could quickly or easily happen.

The European Union is planning to accelerate the bloc’s phaseout of Russian liquefied natural gas. But an abrupt halt to all fuel flows tied to Russia would be a tough sell. While direct purchases of Russian oil by most European nations stopped since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, a small volume continues to flow to Hungary and other landlocked countries in eastern Europe. And European nations still import diesel from India and Turkey, where Russian oil is refined into the fuel.

For now, the situation in Ukraine is unchanged. Asked aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington if it was time to again ask Putin for a ceasefire, Trump said: “It doesn’t feel like it.” — Jennifer A. Dlouhy

Don’t Miss

Trump said US broadcast networks should face scrutiny over their licenses if they’re too critical of him, in what amounts to his furthest-reaching threat to media freedoms.

The administration is making plans for how to go after left-wing groups it says are fomenting political violence following conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing, while nonprofits prepare to defend themselves.

Kirk’s alleged killer used Trump’s name as a pseudonym on the Steam video-game platform, a fact that’s become part of a profile law enforcement is building on him.

Trump asked the Supreme Court to let him fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, pulling the justices into a high-profile legal battle with major implications for the central bank’s independence.

The president and Starmer concluded an historic state visit by hailing the trans-Atlantic relationship and — at least publicly — smoothing over their policy differences.

Trump, left, and Starmer. Photographer: Neil Hall/EPA

A new mission statement for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the extent to which the historically nonpartisan health agency is being reshaped to align with Trump’s political agenda.

Out-of-power Democrats, under pressure from their base to prevent a spike in Obamacare premiums and reverse Medicaid cuts, are considering risking a government shutdown to slow the president's agenda.

Congressional Democrats’ drive to make subsidies for Obamacare health plans permanent would cost about $350 billion over a decade, budget analysts said.

Initial applications for jobless benefits dropped by the most in nearly four years, reversing an unusually large jump in the prior week and consistent with low levels of layoffs in the economy.

Trump's decision to label alleged drug-runners in the Caribbean as "narco-terrorists" and launch military strikes on boats has spurred debate over the legality of his strategy.

The US government’s bet on Intel is paying off in a big way after a surprise investment from Nvidia sparked the biggest rally in the chipmaker’s shares in nearly four decades.

Wall Street’s one-time “Junk Bond King” is opening a $500 million museum venerating American capitalism down the block from the Trump White House.

The administration is proposing cuts to programs that have been at the forefront of efforts to reduce deaths from opioid abuse in some of the most vulnerable communities across the country.

The Washington Commanders are officially returning to the District of Columbia after a three-decade hiatus, with city officials approving a roughly $3.7 billion plan for a new stadium.

Watch & Listen

Today on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power early edition at 1 p.m., hosts Joe Mathieu and Kriti Gupta interviewed Democratic Representative Dina Titus of Nevada about her party’s demands for a government funding bill and the risk of a standoff that leads to a shutdown.

On the program at 5 p.m., they talk with Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, and Democratic Representative Sean Casten of Illinois about shutdown chances and the administration’s response to political violence and dissent.

On the Trumponomics podcast, host Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg’s head of government and economics, is joined by Bloomberg managing editor Shelly Banjo and senior reporter Ian King to discuss how Trump’s dealmaking is reshaping corporate America and whether it will outlast his presidency. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Chart of the Day

Close to 2 million people in the US have been looking for a job for at least 27 weeks, and a growing share of them — nearly one-third — have a college diploma. There are many dynamics at play, one being that there are simply a lot more people with a degree than there were 25 years ago, so the competition for jobs requiring a bachelor's degree has increased. Another is that many firms have been opening up some jobs that used to require a degree to people without one. Even so, the unemployment rate for people with bachelor's, master's, professional, and doctoral degrees is much lower than the rate for people without a degree. But the growing share of people with such credentials among long-term unemployed suggests that the labor market premium for getting a college degree is diminishing. — Alex Tanzi

What’s Next

Trump and Xi are scheduled to talk tomorrow morning.

A memorial service for Kirk, the slain conservative activist, is scheduled for Sunday in Arizona.

United Nations high-level meetings convene in New York City beginning Sept. 22.

Existing home sales for August will be reported Sept. 23.

The August reading of the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge will be reported Sept. 26.

The deadline for Congress to approve funding for government operations in the new fiscal year is Sept. 30.

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