Capital Journal: Clinton Foundation Rethinks Changes |Trump Adds to Confusion on Immigrants | ‘Alt-Right’ Enters the Political Limelight

Capital Journal Daybreak

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HIGHLIGHTS

•	Clinton Foundation Rethinks Changes; Chelsea to Stay

•	Kristina Peterson: Gun-Control Groups Reignite Debate by Crossing the Aisle

•	Trump Adds to Confusion on Immigrants

•	'Alt-Right' Enters the Political Limelight

•	Seib Video: Stakes High for Trump in Presidential Debates With Clinton

CLINTON FOUNDATION RETHINKS CHANGES: The Clinton Foundation is considering exceptions to its plan to stop accepting corporate and foreign donations and reduce family involvement as a way to insulate Hillary Clinton from potential conflicts of interest if elected president. As recently as this summer, the foundation was discussing with some allies plans for Chelsea Clinton to leave the board, along with former President Bill Clinton, if Mrs. Clinton should win. But on Wednesday, foundation spokesman Craig Minassian said Chelsea Clinton plans to stay on the board. While the parent Clinton Foundation will stop accepting money from foreign governments and corporations, the foundation's largest project, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, might continue to accept foreign government and corporate funding, Clinton health initiative officials said Wednesday. James V. Grimaldi and Rebecca Ballhaus report.

LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

CRITICISM MOUNTS OVER CLINTON DONOR ACCESS: Hillary Clinton is facing a new point of vulnerability as critics raise concerns about what they see as a "pay-to-play" atmosphere where donors to various Clinton family causes received access to the former secretary of state during her time in office. The allegations stem from the release of a partial calendar of Mrs. Clinton's events while she served as the nation's top diplomat, a set of records distinct from the emails made public earlier this year. In one instance, the records show, Mrs. Clinton held a dinner in 2009 devoted to higher education. Among the schools represented was an official at a for-profit network of colleges that has donated to the Clinton Foundation and had former President Bill Clinton on its payroll, a review by The Wall Street Journal found. Peter Nicholas and Colleen McCain Nelson report.

Plus: Mrs. Clinton laid out a plan to reduce the regulatory burden on community banks while making clear that Wall Street banks should expect no similar reprieve ... Two new polls show Mrs. Clinton locked in a tight race with Donald Trump in North Carolina, one of the four states both campaigns consider crucial to winning the presidency.

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KRISTINA PETERSON: GUN-CONTROL GROUPS REIGNITE DEBATE BY CROSSING THE AISLE

The political arm of former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords's gun-control group this week endorsed two GOP senators, reigniting a longrunning debate over whether groups focused on liberal issues advance their agenda by backing Republicans willing to cross the aisle. It's a particularly thorny question this year, when the GOP-controlled Senate could lose its slim majority in November's elections. Read Kristina Peterson's full post in Washington Wire.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

WSJ STORIES YOU SHOULDN'T MISS

'ALT-RIGHT' ENTERS THE POLITICAL LIMELIGHT: Aiming to disqualify Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as too divisive, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton will deliver a speech Thursday on his "embrace of the disturbing alt-right political philosophy." Leaders of the alt-right are thrilled. The alt-right, or alternative right, rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity. It is a loosely organized movement—scarcely known in the last presidential election or even one year ago—that mostly exists online. The profile of the alt-right is rising, in part because the movement has cast Mr. Trump's success as proof of the currency of its ideas. Beth Reinhard reports.

REUTERS

TRUMP ADDS TO CONFUSION ON IMMIGRANTS: Mr. Trump proposed contradictory immigration policies, saying in a broadcast interview that it would be "a very, very hard thing" to deport illegal immigrants who have been in the country for decades. During the primaries, he called for a "deportation force" to remove all 11 million undocumented immigrants, and a campaign aide said Wednesday his position hasn't changed. Reid J. Epstein and Janet Hook report.

Plus: The biggest visible change in Mr. Trump's campaign since his shake-up last week of his top advisers has been his consistent use of teleprompters at campaign rallies … Eric Trump said Wednesday it would be "foolish" for his father to release his tax returns and subject them to scrutiny by people who don't know what they are looking at ... "Mr. Brexit" showed up at a Trump rally in Mississippi Wednesday and encouraged supporters to follow Great Britain's lead in challenging the status quo.

DARRON CUMMINGS/ASSOCIATED PRES

BACKLASH AGAINST TRADE WORRIES BUSINESSES IN PENCE'S STATE: In a state highly competitive in manufacturing, the political backlash against trade is jolting businesses that once saw a pro-trade governor as their ally. Their onetime advocate, Gov. Mike Pence, is now the running mate for one of the leading skeptics of international trade agreements, Mr. Trump. Businesses watching the sharp trade critiques of Mr. Trump and, increasingly, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, see a rising threat to their interests. William Mauldin reports.

ALSO IN THE NEWS

• World news: Turkish tanks, U.S. warplanes and Syrian rebels joined forces in a cross-border assault into northern Syria that quickly pushed ISIS forces from a strategic border town. Vice President Joe Biden met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other top officials on Wednesday, pledging support for Turkey as Washington tries to smooth over thorny relations after last month's failed coup … A sweep of academics on the outs with the Turkish president is part of a longrunning split between the nation's urban elite and conservative-Muslim interior ... Attackers stormed the barricaded American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, firing at students in a long siege that left 12 people dead and 30 wounded by Thursday morning ... U.S. fighter planes will conduct patrols with the Bulgarian air force next month, U.S. and Bulgarian officials said Wednesday, operations that are aimed at opening a new front in the NATO alliance's efforts to deter Russian military aggression ... China's recent move to add the U.S. to a list of Zika-infected countries is worrying U.S. exporters, who fear they will be required to fumigate all containers destined for Chinese ports ... Four ships from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps harassed a U.S. destroyer near the Persian Gulf in what the U.S. Navy called an "unsafe and unprofessional" interaction.

• The death toll in the 6.2-magnitude earthquake that struck central Italy early Wednesday rose to 247 people, the Italian Civil Protection Agency said early on Thursday. The devastation has starkly exposed Italy's vulnerability to such tremors as well as serious shortcomings in its ability to prevent deaths and damage from such disasters.

• Mylan became the latest pharmaceutical company to face outrage about higher drug costs after the company's substantial price increases for the EpiPen emergency allergy treatment, which now costs 548% more than it did when the drug became available in late 2007. Hillary Clinton jumped into the fray, calling the recent price hikes "outrageous, and just the latest example of a company taking advantage of its consumers."

• The first handful of states have released approved 2017 rates for people who buy health insurance on their own and the results so far are consistent with what many expected: There are significant increases in premiums for next year. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) will soon release a new proposal in a bid resolve the longrunning dispute among retailers, state governments and online retailers over how to tax purchases made across state lines.

• When central bankers gather this week in Jackson Hole, Wyo., they will be consumed not with some pressing crisis in the global economy but by an existential threat to their relevance, Greg Ip writes.

• Federal Bureau of Investigation scientists have adopted a new method of analyzing DNA samples, generating thousands of fresh potential leads in cold cases from the world's largest genetic database of suspects.

• Cyber thieves are increasingly hacking into consumer bank accounts through customers' mobile phones.

• American interstates are in far better shape than other roads, reflecting a divide in how federal dollars are allotted to maintain the country's road network.

• President Barack Obama on Wednesday designated a new national monument in Maine on 87,500 acres donated by the co-founder of Burt's Bees, capping an intense yearslong debate over whether the plan would hinder or help the rural northern part of the state.

• European astronomers on Wednesday announced their discovery of a small rocky planet potentially hospitable to life circling the star closest to our own solar system—our nearest neighbor in a galaxy dense with unexplored alien worlds.

SEIB VIDEO: STAKES HIGH FOR TRUMP IN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES

Washington Bureau Chief Jerry Seib breaks down how Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump are preparing for the presidential debates in September and October.

HERE'S A LOOK AT THE DAY AHEAD

• OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: President Barack Obama meets with Defense Secretary Ash Carter at 4:15 p.m. Vice President Joe Biden meets with Prime Minister Kjell Stefan Lofven of Sweden. Secretary of State John Kerry, in Saudi Arabia, meets with his counterparts from the Gulf Cooperation Council, the U.K. and the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen to discuss the ongoing conflict in Yemen and other challenges in the region.

• ELECTION 2016: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton holds a rally in Reno, N.V., to discuss her plan to create jobs at noon PDT. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a rally in Manchester, N.H., at 1 p.m.

• ECONOMIC INDICATORS: The Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. The Commerce Department releases durable goods for July at 8:30 a.m.

WHAT WE'RE READING AROUND THE WEB

• The New Yorker's John Cassidy looks at how the Clinton Foundation could be saved, amidst all the attention being focused on the potential conflicts of interest it creates for Hillary Clinton: "Rather than torpedoing the foundation, it would surely make more sense, at least for the duration of a Clinton Presidency, to separate it from its founding family and turn it into an independent organization run and overseen by people unconnected to the Clintons."

• How much does Hillary Clinton's gender help or hurt her? A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that "most Americans see Clinton's gender playing a role in the campaign, with 37 percent saying her gender will help her chances of being elected president, 29 percent arguing it will hurt her, and 33 percent thinking it won't make a difference."

• The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus writes that the facts so far about ties between the Clinton Foundation and State Department when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state don't come close to special prosecutor territory. She says the question to ask is: Why do the Clintons "continue to operate in a manner that opens them to attack by their enemies?"

• In the WSJ's Think Tank, Kori Schake writes that, while Americans hold the military in high regard, new research shows they actually know little about it: "When the public is uneducated, there may be little penalty when the president or Congress makes ineffectual strategic decisions, whether that is deploying troops in numbers inadequate to carry out strategy (such as in Iraq before 2006 and after 2010, or in Afghanistan throughout the campaign since 2001); ineffectively fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria; or not addressing the readiness degradation inflicted by budget sequestration."

MILESTONE

3.2%

Sales of previously owned homes slipped 3.2% in July, a sign the U.S. housing-market recovery could be uneven as limited inventory and rising prices put purchases out of reach for some Americans.

FEEDBACK: The Capital Journal Daybreak newsletter is The Wall Street Journal's morning rundown of the biggest news stories and exclusive features from Washington on politics, policy, financial regulation, defense and more. Send your tips, feedback and suggestions for recommended reading to editor Kate Milani at kate.milani@wsj.com.