VOL. CLXVIII . . . No. 58,385 © 2019 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2019

C M Y K Nxxx,2019-07-11,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

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The U.S. will seek to determine whethera planned tax on American tech giantsis an unfair trade practice. PAGE B4

BUSINESS B1-6

Tax by France Under ScrutinyResearchers say the country is on apath toward making transmissions ofthe virus rare after the rapid adoptionof a daily drug regimen. PAGE A4

INTERNATIONAL A4-11

Australia Tackles H.I.V.A lawsuit claiming the president vio-lated the Constitution by profiting fromgovernment guests in Washington wasordered dismissed. PAGE A16

NATIONAL A12-23

Ruling for Trump on Hotel

Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer willmeet on Friday in a semifinal, their firstWimbledon clash in 11 years. PAGE F10

SPORTSTHURSDAY F1-12

Resuming an Epic Duel

The Taliban are attacking the familiesand homes of Afghan soldiers and policeofficers in a quest for revenge. PAGE A6

Taliban Target Afghan SoldiersThe defeat of a heavily recruited wom-an in a North Carolina primary under-scored the party’s problems. PAGE A20

Republicans’ Gender Woes Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys”was inspired by the real-life story of areform school in Florida. PAGE C1

A Harrowing New Novel

Gail Collins PAGE A27

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

From lumber to steel, companies thatsought tariffs or backed Trump tradepolicies find mixed blessings. PAGE B1

What Comes After TariffsA Catholic festival in Brooklyn soughtnew volunteers outside the church tohelp in a revered tradition. PAGE A24

Getting Help From Hipsters

CALLA KESSLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The World Cup champions from the U.S. were honored at City Hall after a parade through the Canyon of Heroes. SportsThursday.They Took Manhattan

WASHINGTON — The FederalReserve chair, Jerome H. Powell,signaled on Wednesday that theFed could soon cut interest rates,sending stocks higher as thebenchmark S&P 500 stock indexbriefly traded above 3,000 for thefirst time.

Mr. Powell, testifying before theHouse Financial Services Com-mittee, highlighted ongoing risksto the United States economyfrom President Trump’s trade warand a global economic slowdown,suggesting a cut may be likelywhen the Fed meets again laterthis month.

That the Fed is considering arate cut at a moment when theUnited States economy is strongand job market gains are solid un-derscores Mr. Powell and his col-leagues’ concern about the futureof a record economic expansion.The Fed expects unemploymentto remain low and inflation togradually increase, but Mr. Powellsaid that “uncertainties aroundtrade tensions and concernsabout the strength of the globaleconomy continue to weigh on theU.S. economic outlook.”

The Fed, which has not cut ratessince slashing them nearly to zeroduring the financial crisis, hasbeen under pressure from Mr.Trump to lower borrowing costs.The president has called the Fedthe biggest risk to the UnitedStates economy and has said re-peatedly that Mr. Powell does notknow what he’s doing.

“Let’s take a look at the econ-omy and let that be the reportcard,” Mr. Powell said when askedabout the president’s criticism,pointing to the record-long expan-sion and low unemployment.

Mr. Powell has insisted that theFed will not bend to political pres-sure and will do what is needed to

Fed Chief HintsAt a Rate CutAs Risks Loom

Traders Ignore Doubts,and the S&P Soars

By JEANNA SMIALEKand MATT PHILLIPS

Jerome H. Powell, the FederalReserve chair, on Wednesday.

GABRIELLA DEMCZUK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A16

WASHINGTON — Labor Sec-retary R. Alexander Acosta onWednesday defended his han-dling of the sex crimes prosecu-tion of the financier Jeffrey Ep-stein in Florida more than a dec-ade ago, bucking a growingchorus of Democratic resignationcalls while effectively making thecase to President Trump to keephis job.

At a televised news conferencewatched intently in the WhiteHouse, Mr. Acosta offered a clini-cal explanation of the 2008 pleadeal, arguing that he overrodestate authorities to ensure thatMr. Epstein would face jail timeand that holding out for a stiffersentence by going to trial wouldhave been “a roll of the dice.”

“I wanted to help them,” Mr.Acosta, who was the top federalprosecutor in Miami at the time,said of the victims during an hour-long session with reporters at theLabor Department. “That is whywe intervened. And that’s whatthe prosecutors of my office did —they insisted that he go to jail andput the world on notice that hewas and is a sexual predator.”

His comments did little to quellthe furor over the deal, which hascome under renewed scrutinysince Mr. Epstein was charged onMonday in New York with run-ning a sex-trafficking operationthat lured dozens of girls, some asyoung as 14, to his Upper EastSide home and to a mansion inPalm Beach, Fla. Lawyers forsome of the victims and the for-mer Palm Beach prosecutor ac-cused Mr. Acosta of rewriting his-tory.

While condemning Mr. Ep-stein’s “horrific” crimes, Mr.Acosta offered no apologies, nordid he channel the visceral out-rage over the deal felt by manycritics. Instead, he offered a meas-ured, nuanced defense unusualfor an administration in which at-tack-the-attacker bombast ismore common while suggestingthat times had changed in a waythat made his compromise a dec-ade ago look different.

ACOSTA DEFENDSPLEA DEAL, CITING

A DIFFERENT ERA

FURY OVER EPSTEIN CASE

Labor Secretary Depicts Going to Trial in 2008

as ‘Roll of the Dice’

This article is by Katie Rogers,Maggie Haberman and PeterBaker.

Continued on Page A19

WASHINGTON — Ask mem-bers of the Washington diplomaticcorps about the cables that SirKim Darroch, the British ambas-sador who resigned Wednesday,wrote to London describing thedysfunction and chaos of theTrump administration, and theirresponse is uniform: We wrote thesame stuff.

“Yes, yes, everyone does,”Gérard Araud, who retired thisspring as the French ambassador,said on Wednesday morning of hisown missives from Washington.“But fortunately I knew that noth-ing would remain secret, so I sentthem in a most confidential man-ner.”

So did Mr. Darroch, who, aloneand with Mr. Araud, tried to navi-gate the minefield of serving asthe chief representative of a long-time American ally to a presidentwho does not think much of thevalue of alliances.

Mr. Darroch submitted his res-ignation the morning after BorisJohnson, who this month is likelyto become Britain’s next prime

minister, notably declined duringa televised debate to defend thediplomat and also refused to criti-cize President Trump.

In his resignation letter, Mr.Darroch said the furor over hischaracterization of the Trump ad-ministration made it impossiblefor him to carry out his role.

“Although my posting is not dueto end until the end of this year, Ibelieve in the current circum-stances the responsible course isto allow the appointment of a newambassador,” he wrote.

He came to that conclusion af-ter he found himself in the vortexof what for years has been the def-inition of a classic Washingtongaffe: He was caught in publicsaying something that is widelybelieved. It would have been

‘It Could Have Been Any of Us,’Say Peers of British Diplomat

By DAVID E. SANGER Other Envoys Say TheyShare View of Chaos

in Washington

Continued on Page A5

When federal prosecutors an-nounced sex-trafficking chargesagainst Jeffrey Epstein this week,they described him as “a man ofnearly infinite means.” They ar-gued that his vast wealth — andhis two private jets — made him aflight risk.

Mr. Epstein is routinely de-scribed as a billionaire and bril-liant financier, and he rubbed el-bows with the powerful, includingformer and future presidents.Even after his 2008 guilty plea in aprostitution case in Florida, hepromoted himself as a financialwizard who used arcane mathe-matical models, and he oftendropped the names of NobelPrize-winning friends. He told po-tential clients that they had to in-vest a minimum of $1 billion. At hispeak in the early 2000s, a maga-zine profile said he employed 150people, some working out of thehistoric Villard Houses on Madi-son Avenue.

Much of that appears to be an il-

lusion, and there is little evidencethat Mr. Epstein is a billionaire.

Mr. Epstein’s wealth may havedepended less on his math acu-men than his connections to twomen — Steven J. Hoffenberg, aonetime owner of The New YorkPost and a notorious fraudster lat-er convicted of running a $460 mil-lion Ponzi scheme, and Leslie H.Wexner, the billionaire founder ofretail chains including The Lim-ited and the chief executive of thecompany that owns Victoria’s Se-cret.

Mr. Hoffenberg was Mr. Ep-stein’s partner in two ill-fatedtakeover bids in the 1980s, includ-ing one of Pan American WorldAirways, and would later claimthat Mr. Epstein had been part ofthe scheme that landed him in jail— although Mr. Epstein was never

Epstein’s Wizardry, and Fortune,May Be More Illusion Than FactThis article is by James B. Stew-

art, Matthew Goldstein, Kate Kellyand David Enrich.

Continued on Page A18

Financier Charged WithSex Trafficking Reliedon Rich Connections

SAN DIEGO — At its peak, thenonprofit shelter run by JewishFamily Service of San Diego heldmore than 300 migrants droppedoff by United States immigrationauthorities after they crossed theborder from Mexico. Some daysthis spring were so busy that newarrivals had to be sent to overflowsites.

Now, the shelter is almost eerilyempty. The number of people ar-riving there has plunged in recentweeks amid a precipitous declinein arrivals along the southern bor-der, where the Department ofHomeland Security said that ap-prehensions dropped 28 percentin June.

While migrant arrivals typical-ly decline as the hot, hazardoussummer months set in, the De-partment of Homeland Securitysaid the drop in June was muchlarger than the 11 percent drop inJune of last year.

The difference suggested that

the Trump administration’s longpush to curtail the arrival of mi-grants at the southern border is fi-nally showing results.

Since he took office, PresidentTrump has made it a cornerstoneof his administration to halt theflow of undocumented migrants,expanding security fencing, slow-ing processing at ports of entryand locking up record numbers ofmigrants.

The administration’s latest poli-cies have gone a step further. Thethreat of tariffs helped push Mex-ico to deploy security forces on itsown southern border, curtailingthe flow of migrants from neigh-boring Guatemala.

A second initiative has forcedmany migrants to return to Mex-

Once Overcrowded Shelter Sees A Stark New Figure: No Arrivals

By MIRIAM JORDANand KIRK SEMPLE

Migrant Seizures Dropas Temperatures Riseand Policies Tighten

Continued on Page A14

CHAGUARAMAS, Trinidadand Tobago — She slipped out ofthe house around dusk, withouttelling her mother. Sixteen andhungry, she followed the men whohad promised her work and food.

Instead, they smuggled her outof Venezuela by sea, secretly plan-ning to force her into a Trinidadbrothel.

Put in a fishing boat, the girl,Yoskeili Zurita, said she spedaway with dozens of other women,including her cousin. But the over-loaded skiff took on water fast —and capsized with the roll of a sud-den swell.

Screams pealed across the wa-ter. Women cried out the names ofchildren they had left behind. Inthe darkness, someone prayed.

“My cousin didn’t know how toswim. She looked at me and said,‘I can’t do this,’” recalled Yoskeili,who spent two days clinging to theoverturned hull in the strait be-tween Trinidad and Venezuela be-fore fishermen found her. Shenever saw her cousin again.

The boat sank with 38 pas-

sengers in late April, most of themwomen. Only nine people sur-vived, among them Yoskeili andother women who the authoritiesnow say were victims of a humansmuggling ring.

The tragedy was shocking evenin Venezuela, a nation accus-tomed to the ravages of a collaps-ing state, hunger, hyperinflationand rampant crime. For millions,survival means leaving, whateverthe risk may be.

In the last four years alone,about four million people haveabandoned the country, theUnited Nations estimates. Theyleave on foot, crossing a treacher-ous pass in the Andes Mountains.They sell their hair in plazas inborder towns, huddle in refugeetents in Brazil and Colombia.

And they head off in leaky boatsshort on gas or spare parts — andsometimes get lost at sea.

As the women in Yoskeili’s boatfought to survive, their state wasnowhere to be found. The govern-ment, crippled by corruption, mis-management and American sanc-tions on its oil industry, told rela-tives the day after the wreck that

Duped in Venezuela. Bound for a Brothel. And the Boat Capsized.By NICHOLAS CASEY

Yoskeili Zurita, 16, was one of nine survivors of a boat that cap-sized while smuggling dozens of Venezuelan women to Trinidad.

ADRIANA LOUREIRO FERNANDEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A8

Jim Bouton, a modest on-field successwho tore the cover off the sport with histell-all, “Ball Four,” was 80. PAGE B8

OBITUARIES B7-8

Pitcher Who Bared Baseball

Late Edition

More than 100 firefighters helped extin-guish a blaze that also left a woman anda baby in critical condition. PAGE A25

NEW YORK A24-25, 28

3 Killed in Queens House FireThe comic is not an underdog anymore,and he’s still defending wealthy, famouspeers enmeshed in scandals. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-8

Chappelle on Broadway

Today, hazy sunshine, afternoonthunderstorms, humid, high 84. To-night, showers and thunderstorms,low 73. Tomorrow, sunshine, high 87.Weather map appears on Page A22.

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