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Donald Trump, Pakistan, Baseball Hall of Fame: Your Monday Briefing

President Trump on Sunday with his granddaughter Arabella Kushner. Each time congressional leaders have reached a broad bipartisan agreement on spending, he has expressed anger that it does not include money for the border wall and threatened to torpedo the deal.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

• President Trump said on Sunday that he was willing to shut down the government just before the midterm elections this fall if Congress doesn’t fund a wall on the border with Mexico.

Republican leaders had hoped to delay such a confrontation, which would distract from their push to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in September, and thought they had reached a deal with Mr. Trump on the subject last week.

On the campaign trail, the new tax law was supposed to mobilize Republican voters and help the party keep the House. But we visited a district in Ohio and found that isn’t how it’s playing out.

• The contiguous U.S. had its hottest May and the third-hottest June. Japan has been walloped by record triple-digit temperatures, killing at least 86 people. Record temperatures were also logged on the edge of the Sahara and above the Arctic Circle.

An official with the World Meteorological Organization said the extreme heat was not surprising. “This is not a future scenario,” she said of climate change. “It is happening now.”

Our correspondents around the world spoke with people to find out how they’re coping.

This week’s issue of The Times Magazine is dedicated to the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989 during which humanity settled the science of climate change and came surprisingly close to finding a solution. Watch a preview of the series here and sign up to be notified when the story is published on Wednesday.

• Imran Khan, the former cricket star whose party won last week’s elections, has something few recent Pakistani leaders had: celebrity.

His party failed to win a majority in Parliament, so Mr. Khan will need to build a coalition to become prime minister. But if he does so, his fame could help change his country’s recent troubled history, our South Asia bureau chief writes.

Among the main questions: Will he work to reset Pakistan’s relations with the West, or prefer dealing with China, a neighbor he has praised as a role model?

• Cynthia Nixon thinks she’s being underestimated.

The former “Sex and the City” actress is trying to persuade skeptical New York Democrats to look beyond her political inexperience as she challenges Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary.

“Both the media and the Democratic establishment, they’re not quite getting this moment that we’re in,” Ms. Nixon said, “and how hungry people are for a change.”

Ms. Nixon’s belief that voters in the Sept. 13 primary will reward insurgent energy was reinforced when another underdog progressive won last month: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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Cynthia Nixon, center, has built her campaign on a platform of boundless progressivism, disdain for centrism and higher taxes on the rich.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: Why the A.C.L.U. Wants to Be More Like the N.R.A.

We speak to Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, about the group’s major shift in strategy following the election of President Trump.

The board of CBS spent most of the weekend discussing what to do about Les Moonves, the company’s chief executive, after a report citing six women that included allegations of sexual misconduct.

With their eyes on blockchain jobs and revenue, small countries and territories such as Bermuda, Gibraltar and Malta are competing to become go-to destinations for entrepreneurs and projects.

Apple is scheduled to report its earnings, one of the headlines to watch this week.

U.S. stocks were down on Friday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

How to revive a friendship.

Don’t let your phone ruin your vacation.

Recipe of the day: Keep things simple with pasta, green beans, potatoes and pesto.

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, after allegations that he had sexually abused minors and adult seminarians over the course of decades.

In a significant shift in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, American diplomats held face-to-face talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar a week ago without Afghan government officials present, two Taliban officials said.

The death toll from a wildfire in Northern California rose to six. Seven others were still reported missing in the blazes, which have burned for nearly a week.

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By Sunday, the Carr Fire had burned about 89,000 acres, including this area in Whiskeytown, Calif.Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

President Trump and the publisher of The Times, A. G. Sulzberger, clashed over Mr. Trump’s threats against journalism. Mr. Sulzberger said the president had misrepresented a private meeting.

The Baseball Hall of Fame inducted six new members: Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones, Jack Morris, Jim Thome and Alan Trammell.

Geraint Thomas became the third British cyclist and the first Welshman to win the Tour de France.

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Geraint Thomas, holding the Welsh flag, pedaled through Paris on Sunday.Credit...Pool photo by Marco Bertorello

“Mission: Impossible — Fallout” earned $61.5 million and the top spot at the North American box office.

California’s $100 billion train

In the face of sharp opposition and questions about how to pay for it, construction of the state’s high-speed rail line is underway. Our Los Angeles bureau chief examines the most ambitious public transportation project in the U.S. today.

The secrets to getting into Harvard

A lawsuit accusing the university of discriminating against Asian-Americans has shed light on little-known aspects of its selection process.

How dogs took over the internet

It used to be that the cat was the big beast online. But lately, dogs are taking over.

In the first episode of the new season of her video series, “Internetting,” Amanda Hess investigates an adorable existential crisis for web culture.

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Dogs Took Over the Internet. Our Souls Are at Stake.

Dogs are order. Cats are chaos. Dogs are loyal and compliant. Cats are … not. Why has the internet suddenly switched its allegiance?

Cat videos are so popular on the internet that they have become universal shorthand for the internet itself. Cats are the mascots of being online. They’re the epitome of distracting, useless and comforting. All that the internet is at its best and at its worst. “It’s time for cat massage.” Or at least that’s how we used to think of the internet. Because lately, dogs are taking over. The online rivalry between cats and dogs plays out like a battle for the soul of the internet. Think about Twitter, where every dog is a very, very good boy and every cat is hell bent on destroying civilization. Or YouTube, where we watch cats stalk their humans, and humans shame their dogs. “Did you do that to the pillow?” One pet turns its owner into prey and the other cowers to authority, looking guilty, as if exhibiting a kind of human moral compass. Nowhere is this dynamic clearer than in the differences between two of Japan’s most popular pets. [speaking Japanese] Maru the Dog. [speaking Japanese] And Maru the Cat. One of them is a happy-go-lucky man about town. And the other is a sullen weirdo, who lives out his days attempting to fit his body into a series of impractical containers. Of course, when we talk about the rise of dogs on the internet, we’re not just talking about pets. We’re talking about us. Think about it. Movies and TV shows have traditionally had a very strong preference for dogs, because they can be trained. But even if cats could be tamed, they wouldn’t agree to it. They represent our wild, uncultured, disobedient sides, the stuff we Google late at night when nobody else is watching. They are the chaos agents of the animal kingdom. “Meow.” [explosion] [shrieking] And yet, if cats are aggressive, it’s in an ineffectual way. Unlike a dog, a cat couldn’t actually kill you. Cats represent chaos without any consequence, which is kind of the way we’ve been taught to think about the internet for a long time, as a kind of apolitical playground where crazy stuff happens, but one that’s completely divorced from the serious concerns of real life. [music] The new rise of dogs online tells us something about how the internet itself is changing. We used to experience cats online through janky message boards populated with memes and viral YouTube videos passed around by our friends. Today’s internet, though, is starting to look more and more like old media, with big companies imposing order, offering convenience and extracting optimum value. “The secret to making your pet social media famous.” Dogs represent this professionalization of the internet. They can be dressed up and made to perform for their audiences in a way that cats just won’t. Maybe it’s not a surprise that we’re also increasingly turning to dog content at a time when social norms are degrading. Civil institutions are crumbling, and the weird antisocial activities that happen on the internet have effects on real life, too — sometimes terrifying ones. The lawlessness of cats, like the internet itself, is no longer comforting. Loyal, docile dogs who do what they’re told and who get along with people and wear bow ties, that’s comforting. Now we’re even starting to see a rise in the popularity of internet cats who act like dogs — adventure cats who hike with their owners, trudge through the snow, and swim, like in water. We like these cat-dogs for the same reason we’re drawn to images of animals acting like human beings — getting haircuts, and taking showers — or animals who act against instinct to make friends with one another. These videos reflect the hope that we can restore order to the internet, rein it in and integrate it into civil society, that we can literally take internet culture — [shrieking] — and put it on a leash. “Right, Dolce?” Look, I get it. But let’s not punish cats for the sins of the internet. This is about us, not them. Hey, I’m Amanda. I’m Shane. She writes the videos. He edits the videos. And if you like the videos, just keep watching and another episode will play. [singing] “Internetting with Amanda Hess.”

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Dogs are order. Cats are chaos. Dogs are loyal and compliant. Cats are … not. Why has the internet suddenly switched its allegiance?

Quotation of the day

“My grandmother is happy I spend time in a church, even if I’m working my biceps and not my soul.”

Olivier Pratte, an advertising copywriter in Montreal who works out at Saint Jude gym and spa, in one of dozens of Catholic churches across Quebec that have been converted as attendance has dropped.

The Times, in other words

Here’s an image of today’s front page, and links to our Opinion content and crossword puzzles.

What we’re reading (and watching)

Michael Wines, a national correspondent, recommends this video from The New Yorker’s Screening Room: “Take a break from dismal reality. Imagine you lived in a city made of cardboard. And that you were made of cardboard. And that you drove a cardboard car. And then that the city caught on fire. This ingenious short subject imagines all that, with amazing if corrugated realism, and delivers a funny punch line to boot.”

“We rise from the perusal of ‘Wuthering Heights’ as if we had come fresh from a pest-house,” a critic wrote when the book was published in 1847.

Other reviewers deemed it “coarse” or “repulsive.”

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A farmhouse, pictured circa 1940, near Haworth in Yorkshire, England, which is thought to have inspired the setting for “Wuthering Heights.”Credit...Val Doone/Getty Images

Its author, Emily Brontë, born 200 years ago today in Thornton, England, died of tuberculosis at 30, a year after publishing her tale of quasi-incestuous love between the savage (yet irresistibly compelling) Heathcliff and the selfish (but beautiful) Catherine. She would never see her novel, published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, become the template for a thousand future romance stories.

Today there are some 60 translations and multiple film versions of “Wuthering Heights,” including in Japanese and Spanish (directed by Luis Buñuel).

Emily, the middle of three literary Brontë sisters (Charlotte wrote “Jane Eyre,” Anne wrote “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”), rarely left home and had few friends. Naïve, stubborn and prickly, she gravitated to animals and the Yorkshire moors, where “Wuthering Heights” is set. She was also a poet.

And in the estimation of Virginia Woolf, she was a genius on a par with Jane Austen, writing without fear of what the male-dominated literary world might think.

“I have never seen her parallel in anything,” Charlotte Brontë said after Emily died in 1848. “Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone.”

Nancy Wartik wrote today’s Back Story.

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A correction was made on 
Aug. 1, 2018

An earlier version of this briefing referred incorrectly to a heat wave in which parts of the U.S. recorded the hottest month of May and the third-hottest month of June. The May record and the near-record in June were set in the 48 contiguous states only, not the continental U.S., which includes Alaska.

How we handle corrections

Follow Chris Stanford on Twitter: @stanfordc.

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