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Good morning,

We’re covering President Trump’s new strategy to cut unauthorized immigration, a surprising result at the national spelling bee, and the Toronto Raptors’ win in Game 1 of the N.B.A. finals.

President Trump threatens Mexico with tariffs

Mr. Trump announced on Thursday that he would impose a 5 percent tax on all imported goods from the country beginning June 10 to push its government to stop unauthorized migrants from crossing the border. The tariffs would gradually increase to 25 percent unless Mexico acted, he said.

Mexico is the U.S.’s largest trading partner, sending $346.5 billion in goods last year. A 5 percent tariff on those products would amount to a tax increase of more than $17 billion, with serious consequences for American consumers and businesses.

Reaction: Global markets slumped today on the news, and futures markets suggested that Wall Street would open lower as well.

Another angle: New data suggests that the Trump administration has not prioritized prosecuting employers, although jobs represent the biggest lure for those trying to reach the U.S.

Files point to a partisan hand in 2020 census

Newly disclosed documents represent the most explicit evidence to date that Republican Party interests drove the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Thomas Hofeller, a Republican strategist who died last year, left behind computer files showing that he wrote a study in 2015 that said adding a citizenship question would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to cement the party’s power. He also wrote part of a Justice Department letter that said the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision.

What’s next: The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the citizenship question within weeks. The documents were cited in a court filing on Thursday by opponents of the question, which they say would deter many immigrants from being counted.

Response: The Justice Department said the accusations in the filing were baseless and that Mr. Hofeller’s study had “played no role in the department’s December 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census.”

Behind the collapse of a nursing home chain

Rosewood Care Centers, a Chicago nursing-home business, defaulted last year on $146 million in government-backed mortgages. It was the biggest collapse in the history of a program run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The program was created in 1959 to help ensure that Americans had access to affordable nursing homes. It now guarantees $20 billion in mortgages to more than 2,300 nursing homes — about 15 percent of the country’s total — most of which are private, for-profit enterprises.

Why it matters: HUD officials described Rosewood as an outlier, but the agency manages a portfolio of loans that are at risk of going bad. Taxpayers could be on the hook for money-losing facilities around the country, just as waves of aging baby boomers are likely to swell America’s nursing-home population.

A reminder of 9/11’s unceasing toll

Thursday was the 17th anniversary of the official end of the cleanup at ground zero, which a federal official once described as “potentially the most dangerous workplace in the United States.”

In commemorating the day, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan dedicated an addition called the Memorial Glade, recognizing the people — largely rescue and recovery workers — whose illnesses and deaths came years after the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

Background: Many workers have been found to have cancer, as well as scarring of the heart and lungs. Researchers have discovered links to stomach problems, sleeping troubles and hearing loss, although there has been disagreement over the role played by the poisonous dust and fumes at ground zero.

If you have time this weekend, this is worth it

How a star is made

The Times Magazine’s annual New York issue this year is devoted to live performance. We picked 12 artists — including, from above left, the opera singer Ying Fang, the rapper Princess Nokia, and the subway dancer Ikeem Jones — to demonstrate what it takes to light up the stage.

(This feature is best experienced with the sound on.)

Here’s what else is happening

Reported purge in North Korea: The country’s special envoy to the U.S. has been executed as part of a larger purge of North Korea’s top nuclear negotiators, a South Korean news outlet reported today. The news followed the breakdown in February of the second summit meeting between North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Trump.

$1 billion loss for Uber: The ride-hailing giant’s first quarterly report as a publicly traded company has raised questions about where it will find new growth.

Perspective: In a new series, “Op-Eds From the Future,” science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists imagine what we might be reading in 10, 20 or even 100 years. The first installment is by the award-winning writer Ted Chiang, who imagines a gene-enhancement project that ends up widening the wealth gap.

Snapshot: Above, the beginning of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in April 1989. It is one of about 2,000 newly revealed photographs of the demonstrations and their bloody aftermath, taken by a student at the time.

History-making spellers: Eight contestants were crowned co-champions at the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, after the competition said it had run out of challenging words.

N.B.A. finals: The Toronto Raptors beat the Golden State Warriors, 118-109, in Game 1 on Thursday. Game 2 is Sunday.

French Open results: Simona Halep, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams all advanced. Here are today’s results for the women and the men.

News quiz: Did you follow the headlines this week? Test yourself.

Modern Love: In this week’s column, a woman has a revelation after her husband wears tight shorts to an eclipse-watching party.

Late-night comedy: Most shows are in reruns, so our column is taking the week off.

What we’re reading: This article in Curbed, recommended by Jennifer Jett, an editor in our Hong Kong newsroom. “The bicycle was liberating for women in the late 19th century,” she tells us. “But they are underrepresented in cycling. So in some places, city planners are trying to accommodate riding with children or groceries — presumably, better for everybody.”

Now, a break from the news

Cook: For those who love fried chicken, try this Persian-inspired recipe.

Watch: Asian-American couples don’t get to have sex in Hollywood movies. Randall Park and Ali Wong wrote “Always Be My Maybe” anyway, and it lands on Netflix today.

Listen: Steve Lacy is largely a one-man studio band on his debut album. Its grand statement is the nine-minute “Like Me,” one of 12 new tracks on our weekly playlist.

Read: The first volume of a planned trilogy about the American Revolution is one of 9 books we recommend this week.

Smarter Living: If you want to use energy more efficiently at home, think about how you boil water. A physicist at the University of California San Diego found an open pan on a gas burner was worst, and an electric kettle best, as long as you don’t overfill it and switch it off as soon as you hear it boil.

And if you have a neighborhood-watch app, here’s how to put the crime alerts into perspective.

And now for the Back Story on …

The Times on TV

“The Weekly,” a new TV show from The New York Times, is premiering Sunday on FX and Monday on Hulu. The half-hour show tells one big story every week, featuring different reporters as they investigate the most important issues on their beats.

It’s not easy.

“We’re basically plugging really excellent world-class television journalism, which is what the production side provides, into this gigantic, world-beating news machine that is The New York Times newsroom,” Jason Stallman, the show’s editor, said.

That involves meeting with journalists across The Times, staying ahead of what they are reporting on and asking them to take time away from their other projects to film.

Interviewing for a narrative documentary takes hours, requires the right setting and involves a camera crew. Add to that preproduction (the research and planning stage), dozens of hours of filming, then editing and revising, and the process for one episode — there are 30 in the first season — can take months.

“It takes an enormous amount of planning, and it takes a huge pipeline of stories, and it takes the cooperation and participation of reporters and editors around the world,” Sam Dolnick, an assistant managing editor, said. “But we’ve got all that.”

See for yourself at nytimes.com/theweekly or on FX and Hulu this weekend.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Chris

Thank you
To Mark Josephson, Eleanor Stanford and Kenneth R. Rosen for the break from the news. Melina Delkic, on the briefings team, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at [email protected].

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode is about a Times investigation at North Carolina Children’s Hospital.
• Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Feature common to Dumbledore and Gandalf (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• When Jeremy Egner, a Times television critic, started writing “Game of Thrones” recaps, his daughter was a toddler. He wrote about how the show wove itself into their lives.

Chris Stanford writes the U.S. edition of the Morning Briefing. He also compiles a weekly news quiz. He joined The Times as a home page producer in 2013, before which he worked at The Washington Post and other news outlets. @stanfordc

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