Politics took a back seat this week as Hurricane Harvey devastated southeastern Texas, dropping more than 50 inches of rain in some locations and killing more than three dozen people. Officials are just beginning to assess the damage inflicted by the storm, which is expected to total in the tens of billions of dollars and will further complicate a crowded legislative agenda this September.

President Donald Trump’s week was subdued, by his standard. He visited Texas on Tuesday, though avoided the afflicted regions where recovery efforts are ongoing, and then began his public push for tax reform with a speech in Missouri on Wednesday, tough on Congress but light on details.

Beyond the West Wing, most government agencies were focused on Harvey, dedicating resources and manpower to assist in the recovery efforts. There just wasn’t much time to finalize and roll out new policies. But it wasn’t all quiet, as agencies from the Department of Justice to Department of Labor managed to issue some real policy changes that didn’t get much attention behind the flood news. Here’s how Trump changed policy this week:

1. Police can buy military equipment again

In August, 2014, after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, looked something like a war zone as protesters set fires and police responded with camo-clad snipers and armored vehicles the result of a decades-long program allowing local law enforcement agencies to receive surplus military equipment.

The controversial image of police rolling in on their own citizens like an army roused Obama into action. Nine months later, his administration prohibited the transfer of certain equipment, such as grenade launchers and armored vehicles, to local police departments and limited the transfer of other items such as drones, riot gear and explosives. Such equipment, the administration determined, didn’t serve a purpose for local law enforcement agencies. "Some equipment made for the battlefield is not appropriate for local police departments,” Obama said.

On Monday, Trump rescinded the Obama-era executive order limiting the transfer of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. Now police departments can again buy previously restricted guns, ammunition, and riot gear, as well as other military-style equipment like grenade launchers, according to a Department of Justice fact sheet. The changes are a victory for local law enforcement agencies that believe the equipment helps keep their officers—and the public—safe. But it was sharply criticized by civil liberties groups and even received some pushback from Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul. “It is one thing for federal officials to work with local authorities to reduce or solve crime,” Paul said, “but it is another for them to subsidize militarization.”

2. Trump nixes an Obama policy to reduce pay discrimination

Last year, the Obama administration made a final attempt to reduce the racial and gender pay gaps, finalizing changes to a form—the EEO-1—that requires employers to report workplace demographics. Under the revised form, employers with more than 100 workers would have to report pay data by race, ethnicity and gender. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for the form changes, could have then used the data to launch an investigation into discrimination. The changes were set to take effect March 2018.

But this week, the White House directed the EEOC to stop the changes and instead use the original EEO-1 form, saying the changes “lack practical utility, are unnecessarily burdensome, and do not adequately address privacy and confidentiality issues.” Labor and civil rights groups criticized the roll-back, arguing that the new form was a crucial means to get employers to address continued unfair pay disparities. Business groups praised the move, saying the form changes created an unnecessary paperwork burden that would ultimately hurt growth and wages.

3. The fiduciary standard gets delayed for more than a year

One of Obama’s final financial reforms was the “fiduciary standard,” a dry-sounding policy that essentially means stockbrokers can’t put their own interests ahead of their clients’. In May, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he would let the fiduciary standard take effect as planned on June 9. But that wasn’t the full story: Only some parts of the rule, which requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients, took effect on that date; the rest of the rule takes effect on January 1, and it quickly became clear that Acosta wasn’t going to let that happen.

First, at the end of June, he asked for information from the public about changing the law. Then, this week, the DOL published a proposed rule delaying the effective date 18 months, until July 1, 2019. This wasn’t a surprise: in a court filing earlier this month, the agency said it had proposed an 18-month delay. This is just a proposed rule, so the agency must still accept comments and issue a final regulation. But it’s clear that Acosta intends to delay, and likely substantively reform, the fiduciary rule. In the meantime, the agency said earlier this year that it wouldn’t actually enforce the portions of the rule that took effect in June—meaning, in effect, the rule has now been mostly mothballed.

4. Trump’s trade fights with Canada continue

During his presidential campaign, Trump railed against China’s trade practices—but he hasn’t done much to improve them since taking office, breaking his promise to name Beijing a currency manipulator and delaying investigations into steel imports from China. Instead, he has targeted a friendly country much closer to home: Canada. He has, for example, reopened NAFTA negotiations with Canada and Mexico and imposed duties on certain Canadian products, including lumber.

This week, the trade fight with Canada took a bit of a surprising turn when the Commerce Department delayed preliminary antidumping duties on certain Canadian lumber companies to give the two countries additional time to negotiate a settlement. In effect, the delay temporarily lifts the 7 percent to 8 percent duties that Commerce had imposed earlier this summer. The agency must make a final determination on the duties by November 14. In less surprising news, on Thursday, Commerce opened an investigation into certain types of Canadian paper, the first step toward imposing penalties for unfair trade practices.

Neither of these trade moves is especially important to the economy, but they are additional evidence that Trump’s trade agenda, so far, is far softer than the bombastic threats he leveled on the campaign trail. Together with his limited actions against Chinese trade policy, his agenda appears almost … conventional.

5. The diplomatic rift with Russia continues

Trump entered office hoping to improve relations with Russia, saying it was “absolutely possible” to ease tensions with Moscow. But the relationship has only spiraled downward as Trump has faced multiple investigations into potential collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government. Things are only getting worse: After Trump reluctantly signed into law new sanctions against Russia, President Vladimir Putin reacted angrily, ordering the U.S. to cut its diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people.

This week, the Trump administration responded by forcing Russia to close three diplomatic compounds, located in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York City. The State Department, in announcing the retaliation, issued a sharply worded statement, saying the initial Russian action was “unwarranted and detrimental to the overall relationship between our countries.” The move is just the latest sign that Moscow and Washington aren't on better terms, even with Trump in the White House.

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