Good Friday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today.

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• President Trump declared that he would accept Russia’s help on a campaign if it were offered again, saying it would be no different than meeting with the queen of England. Republicans joined Democrats in condemning his willingness to collaborate with a hostile foreign power.

• In the first six months of the 2020 campaign, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Elizabeth Warren have demonstrated an innate understanding of the value of viral moments and nonstop exposure that drive politics in the Trump era. And it’s worked to their advantage.

• Interviews across Iowa indicate that Joe Biden’s early lead comes from familiarity, nostalgia for the Obama years and strategic calculations about who can win. But on the ground, there are signs that his lead in the state is fragile.

• Twenty Democratic presidential candidates will take the debate stage later this month. Steve Bullock, Seth Moulton and Wayne Messam will be left out.

• Those candidates didn’t make the cut, in part, because they failed to reach 1 percent in three qualifying polls. The exclusions illustrate the challenge of using polls at this early stage to make sense of the race, let alone to decide whom to include in a debate.

• In a newly unearthed video from 2006, Mr. Biden reaffirmed his support for Roe v. Wade but said he did not view abortion as a “choice and a right.”

• Julián Castro became the fifth Democratic candidate to do a Fox News town hall, and the topics included some of the network’s favorite catnip: immigration, abortion, the Steele dossier and Hillary Clinton. Here are the highlights.

• The Trump administration’s accusation that Iran was behind the blasts that crippled two oil tankers now forces the president to confront a choice he has avoided: whether to make good on his threat that Tehran would “suffer greatly” if American interests were threatened.

• The president has been urged by an independent government agency to fire Kellyanne Conway for repeated violations of the Hatch Act, an ethics law barring partisan politics from the federal workplace.

• Mr. Trump staged a third White House event to highlight his administration’s work on criminal justice reform, one of his only bipartisan achievements — and an issue he plans to campaign on, in the hope of winning over African-American voters.

• Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary who fiercely defended Mr. Trump through one of the most tumultuous periods in American politics, will step down at the end of the month.

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Today’s On Politics briefing was compiled by Isabella Grullón Paz in New York.

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