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Trump, Asia Argento, Elon Musk: Your Monday Evening Briefing

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Good evening. Here’s the latest.

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Credit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

1. President Trump met with federal immigration officers at the White House, hailing them as heroes.

He argued that Democratic victories in November would result in “open borders” and higher crime rates. And there was one awkward moment: As Mr. Trump introduced a Hispanic Border Patrol agent, Adrian Anzaldua, above, he noted that he spoke “perfect English.” Watch the video.

Separately, recriminations are building over the Trump legal team’s original stance of total cooperation with the special counsel investigation. That’s because the president’s lawyers don’t know what exactly those interviewed by the prosecutor have actually said.

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Credit...Chris Wattie/Reuters

2. Social media “can be destructive and harmful when used incorrectly.”

That’s what Melania Trump told a group of cyberbullying prevention experts in Maryland, in a speech that was part of her “Be Best” campaign.

But it was a day of dissonant messaging from the White House.

Just after she spoke, President Trump unleashed a barrage of digital insults, including calling the former director of the C.I.A. a “hack” and mocking the effectiveness of the Justice Department.

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Credit...Loic Venance/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

3. What does it mean for #MeToo that Asia Argento, above, a very public face of the movement, reportedly made a deal with her own accuser?

Over the weekend, we reported that Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay off the actor Jimmy Bennett after he said she sexually assaulted him in 2013 — when he was 17 years old and she was 37.

Her one-time supporters are grappling with the news. Tarana Burke, who created a Me Too campaign 10 years before it took off last year, said the revelation showed the movement was working as it should.

“Sexual violence is about power and privilege,” she tweeted. “That doesn’t change if the perpetrator is your favorite actress, activist or professor of any gender.”

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Credit...Giuseppe Lami/EPA, via Shutterstock

4. “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.”

Pope Francis wrote a letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to condemn the “atrocities” of priestly sexual abuse and its cover-up. He demanded greater accountability, asking followers to “join forces in uprooting this culture of death.” Above, Francis at the Vatican on Sunday.

His message came ahead of a scheduled trip to Ireland, where the abuse issue has dominated headlines, and just days after a searing grand jury report found that the church had covered up the abuse of more than 1,000 minors in Pennsylvania.

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Credit...Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

5. California is experiencing its worst fire season in memory, and with each new blaze residents ask themselves: How did this happen?

Climate change may be making California’s wildfires more extreme, but they almost always have a human spark — perhaps a car accident, a discarded cigarette, a campfire.

Officials and experts say education in fire safety measures is a key to trying to stop wildfires. The state has also become more aggressive in holding people accountable — either with criminal charges for arson or negligence or with a lawsuit to recoup costs.

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Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

6. Over the last two years, the state of New York spent more than $200,000 fighting a Freedom of Information request by The New York Times.

We finally got the requested information: about 350 pages of emails related to a corruption investigation of former state officials and upstate contractors. And they reveal a corrupt lobbyist’s influence in the Cuomo administration.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat seeking a third term in November, has repeatedly played down his relationship with the lobbyist, Todd Howe, above center, who is a key figure in two corruption cases.

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Credit...Pool photo by O Jong-Chan

7. Dozens of family members from North and South Korea were permitted a rare chance to see one another for the first time since fighting in the Korean War ended in 1953.

Lee Gyum-sum, 92, of South Korea, above, wrapped her arms around her son Ri Sang-chol, a 71-year-old from the North, and peppered him with questions. “How many children do you have?” she asked. “Do you have a son?”

Meanwhile, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has been on a whirlwind tour of farms, factories and construction sites as he turns his attention to building prosperity. But he needs cooperation from the U.S.

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Credit...Rozette Rago for The New York Times

8. Call it the cryptocurrency crash. The value of all outstanding digital tokens, by one evaluation, has fallen by about $600 billion, or 75 percent, since the peak in January.

Tony Yoo, above, a financial analyst in Los Angeles, invested more than $100,000 of his savings last fall. At their lowest point, his holdings dropped almost 70 percent in value. But that hasn’t stopped him from investing in even more cryptocurrency.

“There’s just so much more behind this new wave of technology and innovation that I’m sure will take over our society in due time,” he said.

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Credit...Justin Kaneps for The New York Times

9. Tesla is grappling with uncertainty over the well-being of its chief executive, Elon Musk, and whether the company will go private. And one more thing: its financial health.

Mr. Musk is under intense pressure from Wall Street to turn a profit, and Tesla has been plagued by manufacturing issues while ramping up production of its mass-market Model 3, above.

Meanwhile, short-sellers continue to target the stock, injecting a destabilizing element to the company’s share price.

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Credit...Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros. Entertainment, via Associated Press

10. Finally, “Crazy Rich Asians” was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, and many Asian-Americans are hailing it as a watershed moment.

The film stars Constance Wu and Henry Golding in a love story complicated by dazzling wealth and a treacherous mother (Michelle Yeoh, left), and it’s the first Hollywood studio movie in 25 years to have an all-Asian cast.

Read our critic’s review here.

Have a great night.

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Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

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