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Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.

‘Only something dramatic’ will stop Trump shutting border

Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, has suggested it would take “something dramatic” for the president not to carry out his threat to close the US border with Mexico this week amid a spring surge of migrants from Central America, whose treatment in detainment has once more become a source of controversy. The Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin said that shutting border crossings, at the cost of billions in trade, was a “totally unrealistic” response.

Aid cuts. The US state department announced over the weekend that it will cut aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, all countries that Trump has accused of deliberately sending migrants to the US.

Hole in one. In a new book entitled Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, the former Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly claims the president is “the world’s worst cheat at golf”.

Softer Brexit was ‘inevitable’, says May ally

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Britain’s chief whip. Julian Smith. made the comments in a BBC TV documentary, which was originally set to be broadcast after Brexit. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

The UK government’s chief whip, Julian Smith, has told the BBC a soft Brexit became “inevitable” after Theresa May’s Conservatives lost their overall majority at the 2017 election. But all options remain on the table this week as parliament prepares for another round of indicative votes on alternatives to May’s Brexit deal, which she reportedly intends to bring to a vote for a fourth time.

Cabinet rift. Several Brexiter cabinet members are reportedly threatening to resign if the prime minister backs a customs union with Europe, while pro-Europe members of May’s team say they would quit rather than support a no-deal Brexit.

No laughing matter. John Harris says the English habit of approaching even serious subjects with heavy irony has left people complacent about the impending Brexit disaster.

TV comedian leads in Ukrainian presidential election

Play Video 0:36 Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejoices at first exit poll victory in Ukraine's election – video

The actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy – who won fame in Ukraine for his portrayal of an ordinary schoolteacher who becomes president – has taken a big lead after the first round of the country’s real-life presidential elections. With just over half of the ballots counted early on Monday, Zelenskiy had 30.45%, while the incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko, was in second place with 16.22%. Assuming neither claims an overall majority, the election will go to a runoff between the two men on 21 April.

Turkey elections. Turkey’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has suffered a blow at the ballot box after his party lost control of the capital, Ankara, in local elections.

Slovakia elections. Slovakia has elected its first female president, the progressive Zuzana Čaputová, who campaigned on the promise of “humanism, solidarity and truth”.

Intel report suggested leftwing protesters were ‘terrorists’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Antifa and other counterprotesters demonstrate against a white supremacist rally in Washington. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/The Guardian

In the run-up to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, at which a neo-Nazi killed a counterprotester by driving a car into a crowd, law enforcement agencies received an intelligence report that appeared to endorse the notion that leftist protesters were “terrorists” just as responsible for street violence as white nationalists. The report, Antifa/Anti-antifa: Violence in the Streets, was produced by the Regional Organized Crime Information Center.

‘Anti-Antifa’? Experts say the report mischaracterised the dynamics of street violence between far-right and leftwing protesters, by suggesting white supremacist groups were “anti-Antifa” and acting simply in opposition to leftists.

Rightwing lit. Rising populism is being abetted by the emergence of a radical rightwing intelligentsia, says Elif Shafak. To understand the far right, we should study their bookshelves.

Crib sheet

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 2020 hopeful Julián Castro. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Mayor, housing secretary … and first Latino president?

Julián Castro has struggled to make his voice heard among the clamour of Democratic presidential candidates. But the 2020 hopeful and third generation Mexican American is a living rebuke to Trump’s incendiary immigration rhetoric, writes Ed Pilkington.

The woman behind the Natural Cycles app

The Swedish scientist Elina Berglund invented the birth control app Natural Cycles as an alternative to hormonal contraceptives, with huge success – and a dose of controversy. “You want to do something good and then you have a woman contacting you because it failed for her, it’s super tough,” she tells Miranda Bryant.

The skyscraper set to tower over a tiny Danish town

The fast-fashion firm Bestseller is building a new headquarters designed by the star architectural studio Dorte Mandrup, which at 320 metres will be the tallest building in western Europe. Not in a capital city, but in a tiny, rural Danish town. Richard Orange reports.

Tracing the origins of blackface

Blackface minstrelsy is thought to have first emerged as a form of entertainment in the New York slums of the 1830s. As racist propaganda, it persists to this day – an indelible aspect of the American cultural zeitgeist, as Jamiles Lartey discovers.

Opinion

Congress has a duty to investigate whether Donald Trump cheated on his way to the White House, or obstructed justice once he got there. But those investigations should be undertaken with a view to legislating for the future, not simply coming to terms with the past, says Laurence H Tribe.

It would be an inexcusable dereliction of duty for those with responsibility to get to the bottom of our democratic predicament to shut down their inquiries – or even to conduct them out of the full view of the public.

Sport

Michigan State knocked Duke out of the 2019 NCAA tournament in the East Region final on Sunday, beating the No 1 seeds 68-67 on their way to a Final Four clash with Texas Tech. The winners of that game will face one of Virginia or Auburn in the national final.

Roger Federer beat John Isner in the final of the Miami Open on Sunday to claim his 101st tennis title, putting him just eight behind Jimmy Connors on the all-time career singles list.

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