Stora tråden om amerikansk inrikespolitik

The 2018 United States House of Representatives elections will be held on November 6, 2018. Elections will be held to elect representatives from all 435 congressional districts across each of the 50 U.S. states. Non-voting delegates from the District of Columbia and four of the five inhabited U.S. territories

Data posted online this week by the State Department showed that non-immigrant visas granted to people from nearly 50 Muslim-majority countries were down almost 20 percent in April compared with the 2016 monthly average.

When only Arab countries were considered, non-immigrant visas were down nearly 30 percent in April compared with the 2016 monthly average. Visas issued to the six countries targeted by Trump's March 6 travel ban — Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen — declined even further, down 55 percent compared with the 2016 monthly average.

State Department data made public last month showed similar declines in visas to these three country groupings for March, but the April declines were more dramatic.

The idea behind the secret communications channel, the three people said, was for Russian military officials to brief Mr. Flynn about the Syrian war and to discuss ways to cooperate there. Neither side followed up on it. And less than two weeks later, the idea was dropped when Mr. Trump announced that Rex W. Tillerson, a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil who had worked closely with Russian officials on energy deals, was his choice to become secretary of state.