-- Progress on health care? Not so fast. The compromise plan announced yesterday to fund Obamacare subsidies for low-income Americans has already stalled. Sean Sullivan, Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein report: “The compromise offered by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Tuesday proposes authorizing those payments for two years in exchange for granting states greater flexibility to regulate health coverage under the ACA. … The measure presented congressional Republicans with an uncomfortable choice between helping sustain coverage for many Americans and making good on a long-standing campaign promise — and paying the consequences — by allowing the ACA to falter. …

“Senate Republican leaders did not immediately endorse the proposal. Influential House Republicans panned the blueprint, and Trump offered conflicting reviews. The discord swiftly cast the plan’s viability into serious doubt. … It appears likely that the vast majority of Senate Democrats will back the measure.”

-- Tax plan moves tiny step forward as Senate opens debate on budget. Elise Viebeck and Damian Paletta report: “Senate Republican leaders earned a series of much-needed victories Tuesday, first with the return of ailing Sen. Thad Cochran (R -Miss.) and later with an announcement from Sen. John McCain (R -Ariz.) that he would back the budget resolution in order to help passage of tax cuts. Senate Republicans are now hopeful they can agree on a final budget resolution later this week, which is a key procedural step to help them pass a tax cut plan later in the year without relying on support from any Democrats.

Still, many hurdles remain: “Republicans still haven’t written a tax cut plan, they haven’t identified trillions of dollars in tax deductions they plan to eliminate, and they haven’t sorted out how to ensure that the majority of any tax cuts don’t benefit primarily the wealthy,” our colleagues write.

TRADE MATTERS:

-- The Post obtained internal White House documents arguing that a weakened manufacturing sector will lead to increases in abortion, spousal abuse, divorce and infertility. Damian Paletta reports: “The documents … were prepared and distributed by Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. They were presented without any data or information to back up the assertions, and reveal some of the materials the Trump administration reviewed as it was crafting its trade policy. … The documents list what Navarro alleges are the problems that have resulted from a ‘weakened manufacturing base.’ Some of the consequences are economic, including ‘lost jobs,’ ‘depressed wages,’ and ‘closed factories.’ But a separate sheet claims ‘Socioeconomic Costs’ of the decline of the country’s manufacturing industry, such as ‘Higher Divorce Rate,’ ‘Increased Drug/Opioid Use,’ ‘Rising Mortality Rate,’ ‘Higher Abortion Rate,’ among many others.”

-- The fourth round of NAFTA negotiations also wrapped up yesterday, with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer issuing harsh words for his Mexican and Canadian counterparts. Steven Mufson reports: “Lighthizer said the Trump administration was determined to craft a better deal for U.S. companies and reduce a roughly $60 billion trade deficit with Mexico. ‘Trade deficits do matter and we intend to reduce them,’ Lighthizer said ... However, [Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia] Freeland cautioned earlier that an agreement ‘cannot be achieved with a winner take all mindset.’” The countries agreed to extend talks through the end of March.

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN:

-- Senior White House official Marc Short is on the shortlist to be the next president of the Heritage Foundation. Robert Costa, Ashley Parker and John Wagner report: “In addition to [Todd Ricketts, a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs] and Short, Heritage’s board of trustees also has expressed interest in Lisa B. Nelson, the chief executive of the American Legislative Exchange Council, and David Trulio, a vice president at Lockheed Martin[.] … The conservative think tank’s trustees, however, remain torn over their decision. … The group’s clout in Washington was underscored by President Trump’s appearance Tuesday night at a gathering of its President’s Club at a Washington hotel. …

“For Ricketts — a longtime Republican activist whose father, Joe, is the founder of TD Ameritrade and brother is Pete Ricketts, the current Nebraska governor — the posting would offer him and his family even greater influence in helping to shape the direction of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. … Short . . . has strong conservative credentials, previously leading Freedom Partners, the political operation for billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, and before that working for Vice President Pence . . . It is unclear whether Short has expressed interest in the job, and he has not met with the Heritage board. But if selected — and if he were to accept — he would represent yet another high-profile departure from Trump’s administration[.]”

-- Trump tweeted yesterday morning that his nominee for drug czar,Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), withdrew from consideration following the investigative report documenting Marino’s crucial support for a law that stifled the DEA’s ability to crack down on drug distributors. John Wagner, Lenny Bernstein and Scott Higham report: “With Marino’s withdrawal … the administration’s scrutiny of the law intensified. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said he was ‘very concerned about it’ and planned to review whether the DEA needs ‘more tools’ to carry out its mission. But it was unclear how aggressively Congress will reassess a bill that was passed last year with no opposition. …

“Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, sought to increase pressure for action and cheered Marino’s exit. They argued that his nomination demonstrated a lack of commitment from Trump to addressing the opioid crisis that has gripped the nation. … Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), an original co-sponsor of the bill, called Tuesday for an investigation into whether the law is harming enforcement and for hearings to examine whether she was misled about its impact. Chu, one of only a few Democrats to put her name on the bill, said then-acting DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg — who has declined repeated interview requests — told her in a meeting last year after the measure became law that it ‘did not interfere with the DEA’s ability to successfully stop bad actors.’”

-- Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci came under fire after the Scaramucci Post — his new media venture — tweeted a poll asking how many Jewish people died in the Holocaust. Callum Borchers reports: “The poll offered four options[: less than one million, between 1-2 million, between 2-3 million and more than 5 million.] … The @ScaramucciPost Twitter account removed the poll after about 90 minutes and said the account manager, Lance Laifer, had posted it without consulting Scaramucci. Laifer said the poll was meant as a simple trivia question. … The problem with Laifer's defense is that the Scaramucci Post specializes in opinion polling.” “The Mooch” apologized and will donate $25,000 to a Jewish human rights group.

-- Trump is eyeing former drug firm executive and Bush-era health official Alex Azar to lead HHS. Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein report:“Azar served a decade at Lilly USA, the biggest affiliate of Eli Lilly and Co., including five years as president. He directly led a biomedicines division that covered, among other areas, neuroscience, immunology and cardiology, and was also responsible for the company’s sales and marketing operations. Under Bush, he served as the department’s general counsel, working on the administration’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing anthrax attacks, stem-cell policy and the advent of the Medicare prescription drug benefits. He then served two years as deputy secretary.”

-- Jeff Sessions is creating a watchdog group to oversee reinstatement of a controversial asset forfeiture program, which allows police to seize cash and property from people suspected of a crime, even if they have not been charged. Sari Horwitz reports: “In a memo Tuesday, Sessions directed [Rosenstein] to hire a director to review all aspects of the department’s policy and take action if problems arise.”

-- Trump is expected to announce his pick for Fed chair, which has been narrowed down to five candidates, in the next two weeks. Damian Paletta reports: “Fed Chair Janet L. Yellen’s four-year term will expire in February. Trump is considering renominating her to the post, but he is also looking at four other people for the position[.] … Trump is scheduled to leave on Nov. 3 for an 11-day trip to multiple countries in Asia. His decision is expected before then. … ‘Honestly I like them all, I do,’ Trump said of the five finalists on Tuesday afternoon. ‘I have a great respect for all of them. But I will make a decision’ very soon. He would not say whether he preferred any one candidate over another.” The remaining candidates are former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, Jerome “Jay” Powell, Stanford professor John Taylor and Gary Cohn.

-- EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt suggested Tuesday that he may rid the agency’s scientific advisory boards of researchers who get EPA grants. Brady Dennis reports: “’What’s most important at the agency is to have scientific advisers that are objective, independent-minded, providing transparent recommendations,’ Pruitt [said]. ‘If we have individuals who are on those boards, sometimes receiving money from the agency … that to me causes questions on the independence and the veracity and the transparency of those recommendations that are coming our way.’ [Pruitt’s] remarks drew rapid criticism from scientific and environmental groups, who called the move a veiled attempt to ‘purge’ scientists from advisory boards in favor of more industry representatives.’”

-- Trump’s nominee for the D.C. appellate court, Gregory Katsas, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday — where he was pressed on his role as a White House lawyer and whether he could maintain judicial independence if confirmed for the role. Ann E. Marimow and Sean Sullivan report: “In nine months as a deputy White House counsel, Gregory G. Katsas told senators considering his nomination that he advised the Trump administration on the travel ban on residents of certain majority-Muslim countries, ending protections for young undocumented immigrants and the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. If confirmed by the Senate, Katsas, 53, would join what is often referred to as the nation’s second-highest court . . .

“In the nearly two-hour hearing, Katsas acknowledged giving ‘legal advice on a few discreet questions’ arising from [Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation]. He declined, when asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), to provide any details because of concerns, he said, about undermining Mueller’s probe and violating attorney-client confidences.”

-- Jason Zengerle in the New York Times Magazine, “Rex Tillerson and the unraveling of the State Department”: “Accommodating the president, rather than working with him, is not a normal mission for a secretary of state — and for Tillerson, it seems to be an increasingly doomed one. 'The president's always saying, “Rex's not tough,” and “I didn't know he was so establishment,"' says one Trump adviser. [The] question among many people inside and outside the Trump administration is not necessarily what's keeping Tillerson from resigning; it's what's stopping Trump from firing him. One Trump-administration official offered me a tentative theory: 'Losing a chief of staff in the first year is a big deal, but losing a secretary of state is an even bigger one.’”

BANNON'S WAR:

-- A new Fox News poll shows Republican Roy Moore tied at 42 percent with Democrat Doug Jones in the Alabama Senate race. Fox News’s Dana Blanton reports: “The competitiveness of the race is striking. Donald Trump won Alabama by 28 points in 2016, yet the Steve Bannon-backed Moore defeated the president’s favored candidate, incumbent Luther Strange, in the GOP primary. ‘This race exemplifies the difficulty the Republican Party has now,’ says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll with Democrat Chris Anderson. … ‘The fissure within the party means divisive primaries, controversial candidates, and hard choices for GOP voters once the general election rolls around.’ …

“The poll, released Tuesday, shows 42 percent of Moore’s supporters have some reservations about their candidate. For Jones, that number is 28 percent. Plus, 21 percent of those in the Jones camp say they’re voting against Moore as opposed to for Jones. That’s three times the number of Moore supporters who say their vote is based on dislike of Jones (7 percent).”

-- The RNC has raised more than $100 million since January, a record for a nonpresidential year, largely thanks to small-dollar donations from Trump supporters. McClatchy’s Anita Kumar reports: “The numbers give Republicans a large cash advantage over Democrats as they look to retain control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections next year. … The Democratic National Committee, which kicks off its fall meeting Thursday in Las Vegas, has not yet released its fundraising for September. But through August, Republicans had raised almost twice as much as the Democrats and had nearly seven times as much money in the bank.” Republicans have funneled some of that money into Ed Gillespie’s gubernatorial bid in Virginia.

-- Steve Bannon has begun reaching out to dozens of major GOP donors in the hopes of financially capitalizing on their disappointment with McConnell. Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reports: “How many Republican givers will sign on with Bannon is an open question; people close to him declined to say whether he had financial commitments. ... There is also concern in the donor world that having Bannon-aligned outsiders in the Senate Republican Conference would make it harder, not easier, to reach consensus on legislation.”

THERE’S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:

-- Jared Kushner recent added Charles Harder to his legal team amidst reported concerns that Reince Priebus, who was interviewed by Mueller on Friday, may implicate Kushner in Trump’s decision to fire James Comey, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reports: “While Priebus has been careful not to criticize the president openly, sources who have spoken to him say he’s not happy about the way he was treated by Trump and his family. ‘He was champing at the bit to testify,’ a Republican familiar with Priebus’s thinking said. … Priebus has knowledge of Kushner’s proximity to the controversial decision to fire Comey during a weekend at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in early May, which, hypothetically, is the lynchpin of an obstruction case against the president and his advisers. Trump was accompanied for the weekend by Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Stephen Miller. …

“Kushner’s closeness to the discussion of firing Comey continues to be much discussed by current and former Trump administration officials, who see it as one of the main drivers of the administration’s present legal travails. Two sources familiar with the matter told me that prior to Comey’s dismissal, Kushner expressed concern to West Wing officials about the investigation.‘He’s all over us,’ Kushner told one official in February, according to two sources briefed on the conversation. ‘He was freaked out about Comey from day one,’ one Trump adviser said.”

-- Special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly interviewed former White House press secretary Sean Spicer for much of the day on Monday. Politico’s Annie Karni and Josh Dawsey report: “During his sitdown, Spicer was grilled about the firing of former FBI director James Comey and his statements regarding the firing, as well as about Trump’s meetings with Russians officials including one with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office, one person familiar with the meeting said. … Spicer’s Monday meeting shows that Mueller is starting to ramp up interviews with current and former Trump administration officials.”

-- Mueller also interviewed Matt Tait, a cybersecurity researcher who has described being “recruited to collude with the Russians.” Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand reports: “The interview was part of a broader effort by Mueller to examine the relationship between the longtime GOP operative, Peter Smith and [Michael Flynn], and whether Flynn played any role in seeking out the stolen emails during the election. Smith killed himself in May after talking to The Wall Street Journal about his experience. Mueller interviewed Tait months after Tait published a first-person account of his interactions with Smith on the national-security blog Lawfare."

THE NEW WORLD ORDER:

-- U.S.-backed forces claimed victory on Tuesday over the former Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa — ending a four-month battle for control of the Syrian city and raising new questions about America’s commitment to Syrian Kurds. Louisa Loveluck and Liz Sly report: “The U.S. military said a formal victory announcement will come after [Syrian Democratic Forces] are sure that no pockets of Islamic State resistance remain in the city … But the capture of Raqqa by the SDF, backed by U.S. airstrikes and American advisers on the ground, nonetheless marks a milestone in the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State. The victory also intensifies growing questions about what comes next … [The] Trump administration has not yet indicated whether it is prepared to stay on in northeastern Syria to provide protection for the fledgling ministate being forged by Syria’s Kurds. Syrian government officials have spoken on several occasions about their determination to regain control over all of the territory they lost to the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad.”

-- After a CIA drone picked up an image of a woman resembling the American taken captive five years earlier, the U.S. threatened to send in a Navy SEAL team to retrieve her if Pakistan couldn’t, the New York Times’s Adam Goldman and Eric Schmitt report on the paper’s front page. “The top American diplomat in Pakistan, Ambassador David Hale, turned to his host country, … delivering an urgent message to the Pakistani government: Resolve this, or the United States will. The implication was clear. If the Pakistanis did not act decisively, the United States would set aside its unease and launch a raid deep inside the country to free the family.

“It would be another humiliating episode for the Pakistani government, reminiscent of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, conducted by the same elite Navy SEAL commandos well into Pakistan without its government’s knowledge. And a failure to act would underscore American officials’ belief that the Pakistani government gives safe haven to the Taliban-linked Haqqani network that had kidnapped the family. Pakistani officials said they acted within hours.”

MORE WEINSTEIN FALLOUT:

-- Harvey Weinstein’s brother and business partner Bob Weinstein has now been accused of sexual harassment. Variety’s Cynthia Littleton reports: “Amanda Segel, an executive producer of [the Weinstein Co. drama] ‘Mist,’ said [Bob] Weinstein repeatedly made romantic overtures to her and asked her to join him for private dinners. The harassment began in the summer of 2016 and continued on and off for about three months until Segel’s lawyer, David Fox of Myman Greenspan, informed TWC executives — including COO David Glasser — that she would leave the show if Bob Weinstein did not stop contacting her on personal matters. ‘ “No” should be enough,’ Segel told Variety. ‘After “no,” anybody who has asked you out should just move on.’”

-- Bob Weinstein has also been accused of volatile, unacceptable workplace behavior by former employees. The Wall Street Journal’s Alexandra Berzon and Ben Fritz report: “Once, when a marketing executive showed him a potential trailer for the film ‘I Got the Hookup’ and asked, ‘What do you think?’ Bob Weinstein responded, ‘I think it f—ing sucks,’ and threw the videotape over an employee’s head after which it smashed against a wall, according to a person who witnessed the incident. Mr. Weinstein denied the incident occurred. At the 2000 premiere of ‘Scary Movie,’ a Dimension executive attempted to introduce his wife to his boss. Bob Weinstein stuck out his arm and shoved the woman back, the former executive recalled, as he made a beeline for stars Marlon and Shawn Wayans and director Keenen Ivory Wayans, with whom he hoped to sign a deal to make more movies. Mr. Weinstein denied that that occurred.”

-- More high-profile actresses — including Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Lawrence and America Ferrara — continue to come out with their own stories of sexual harassment and assault. Stephanie Merry reports: “Witherspoon, for example, used her speech at the Elle Women in Hollywood event Monday night to reveal that a director sexually assaulted her when she was just 16. That was the first time it happened to her, she said, though not the last. … Jennifer Lawrence added her own anecdotes to the growing list. At the same Elle-sponsored event, the Oscar winner talked about being part of a humiliating nude lineup. As a way to shame her into losing weight for a role, she was forced to stand beside much thinner women, then photographed.”

-- Meanwhile, the backlash sparked by Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults is affecting other industries:

• The head of Amazon studios, Roy Price, was forced to resign after Isa Hackett, a producer on “The Man in the High Castle,” accused him of sexually harassing her in 2015. (Elahe Izadi)
• More than 140 lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists signed a letter complaining of a “pervasive” culture of sexual harassment in the California state legislature. (LA Times)
• And it’s gone global: tens of thousands of women in France have used the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc, or “Expose Your Pig,” after journalist Sandra Muller recalled being harassed by a powerful executive. (The New York Times)