“President Trump is planning to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday in Washington, an encounter that is sure to draw significant scrutiny amid several ongoing controversies involving Trump and Russia,” CNN reports.

“Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told CNN on Monday that the two plan to meet. The White House has not yet confirmed the meeting to CNN.”

Wall Street Journal: “House Democrats and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are nearing a deal for Congress to pass a modified U.S. trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, though hurdles remain.”

“House Democrats and Mr. Lighthizer have been meeting for months to hammer out a deal to amend the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, and have narrowed differences over key sticking points in recent days, the people said. The biggest divide is over revising the agreement on the enforcement of labor rules, a priority for Democrats.

Fareed Zakaria: “The United States risks squandering the hard-won gains from four decades of engagement with China, encouraging Beijing to adopt confrontational policies of its own, and leading the world’s two largest economies into a treacherous conflict of unknown scale and scope that will inevitably cause decades of instability and insecurity. A cold war with China is likely to be much longer and more costly than the one with the Soviet Union, with an uncertain outcome.”

“When a Saudi Air Force officer opened fire on his classmates at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday, he killed three, wounded eight and exposed anew the strange dynamic between President Trump and the Saudi leadership: The president’s first instinct was to tamp down any suggestion that the Saudi government needed to be held to account,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Trump was so quick and so eager to assure the Saudis that the relationship would continue before anyone knew how to categorize the shooting that it raised questions about how the administration would have responded if the suspect had been an Iranian, or an immigrant from Mexico.”

North Korea says it has carried out a “very important test” at a satellite-launching site, the BBC reports.

“Analysts believe it could be a ground-based test of an engine to power a satellite launcher or an intercontinental ballistic missile.”

“It comes after Pyongyang appeared to shut the door on further US talks.”

“An American graduate student who was held in an Iranian prison for more than three years was finally headed home Saturday after a prisoner swap between the two countries,” NBC News reports.

“A senior British diplomat in the US has quit with a blast at the UK government over Brexit, saying she could no longer ‘peddle half-truths’ on behalf of political leaders she did not trust,'” CNN reports.

“In a searing resignation letter delivered just over a week before the UK general election, Alexandra Hall Hall, the lead envoy for Brexit in the British Embassy in Washington, said that she had become increasingly dismayed by the demands placed on the British civil service to deliver messages on Brexit which were not ‘fully honest.'”

Jonathan Chait: “Giuliani — who, incredibly, still represents Trump as an ‘attorney’ despite being the reported target of an increasingly dire criminal investigation — is continuing the same work he’s been undertaking on Trump’s behalf for two years. The House Republican line is that Trump wasn’t trying to order up dirt that would discredit the Mueller investigation and the Bidens. No, he was just really serious about corruption. Yet Giuliani is meeting with various Ukrainians ‘as part of his investigation into the Bidens and his bid to undercut the credibility of the impeachment investigation.'”

“This fact isn’t being dug up by hostile reporters against Giuliani’s wishes. He is literally broadcasting it.”

“A former Ukrainian member of parliament who has claimed to have dirt on a company linked to the Bidens was arrested earlier this week in Germany,” the Daily Beast reports.

“Oleksandr Onyshchenko, who worked closely with Ukraine’s previous president before fleeing the country after being accused of embezzlement, has been living in Europe for several years. German authorities arrested him in Aachen on Friday.”

Kellyanne Conway told Fox & Friends that the world leaders caught on video laughing about President Trump are just jealous.

Said Conway: “What was it really about? It was about the fact that President Trump commands a room, and he does. And maybe that makes a couple of people jealous.”

CNN reports Trump was “fuming” over the video.

“The White House directed Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) to block an effort by Sens. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday to pass a resolution via unanimous consent formally recognizing Turkey’s genocide of the Armenian people,” Axios reports.

“This is the third time that the White House has directed a Republican senator to block the resolution, a symbolic measure already passed by the House that would infuriate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”

Joe Biden released a devastating video just minutes after President Trump returned from the NATO summit in London.

“Iran has used the continuing chaos in Iraq to build up a hidden arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles in Iraq, part of a widening effort to try to intimidate the Middle East and assert its power,” the New York Times reports.

“The buildup comes as the United States has rebuilt its military presence in the Middle East to counter emerging threats to American interests, including attacks on oil tankers and facilities that intelligence officials have blamed on Iran. Since May, the Trump administration has sent roughly 14,000 additional troops to the region, primarily to staff Navy ships and missile defense systems.”

“But new intelligence about Iran’s stockpiling of missiles in Iraq is the latest sign that the Trump administration’s efforts to deter Tehran by increasing the American military presence in the Middle East has largely failed.”