New York Times, Mar 17, 2018

choi

(1) English
(a) Michael D Shear and Maggie Haberman, Housecleaning in West Wing Stalls for Now; Louder Rumblings of a cabinet shakeup. (one of two front-page top reports)
(Trump did not fire anybody Friday, Mar 16. "His chief of staff delivered a buck-'em-up message that no heads will roll -- for now")

Note:
(i) buck-'em-up = buck-them-up
(ii) buck (v):
"3 : ('buck someone up' [transitive] or 'buck up' [intransitive])  informal  make or become more cheerful.
[with object]  >Bella and Jim need me to buck them up>
[no object]  <buck up, kid, it's not the end of the game>" (brackets original)
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/buck

(b) Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jonathan Martin, Bannon's Populist Revolt Has Plumb Run out of Rebels.

Four consecutive paragraphs:

"Danny Tarkanian, a perennial candidate who had Mr Bannon's backing, withdraw from his [GOP primary] race against [Nevada] Senator Dean Heller [up for re-election in November, 2018] after a tweet from the president.  

"At Mr Trump's suggestion, he said he would run for an open seat in the Houseinstead. * * *

"Earlier this week, another Bannon-backed candidate, the Mississippi state senator Chris McDaniel, dropped his challenge to Senator Wicker [also up for re-election this coming November], opting instead to run for the seat left open by the retirement of the state's senior [US] senator, Thad Cochran.

"By making clear he [Trump] would support Mr Heller and Mr Wicker in their primaries, Mr Trump effectively starved their challengers of the political oxygen they needed to win over conservative activists. In his tweet Mr Trump said it 'would be great for the Republican Party of Bevada, and its unity' if Mr Heller could run unopposed")

My comment:
(i) The quotations are merely to give you to understand the background.
(ii)
(A) plumb (adv): "North American [as submodifier] extremely or completely <they must both be plumb crazy>" (brackets original)
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/plumb
(B) plumb (adv): "chiefly dialectal : to a complete degree : ABSOLUTELY"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plumb
(iii) "On March 5, 2018, he announced his intention to resign from the Senate on April 1 for health reasons." Wikipedia on Thad Cochran. The winner of the special election will serve out the remainder of Cochran's term (January 2015 to January 2021).


(2) Michael M Grynbaum, How White House Central Casting Elevated an Economic Pundit to Chief Adviser;Turning policy commenters into policy shapers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/ ... eth-television.html

(3) Neil Irwin, Trump Sees Trade Loss by Ignoring Key Sector; An outlook could hurt industries that employ most Americans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/ ... ng-about-trade.html

Quote:

(a) "The biggest [of exported service] is travel, which accounted for $204 billion last year. This is an area that the president should know well. When a Canadian couple stays in a Trump hotel in New York, the money they spend counts as a service export.

The next biggest category is “charges for the use of intellectual property,” a category that includes foreigners who pay to watch movies or music made in the United States, as well as licenses of patents and trademarks.

(b) "Some of these lines are a little arbitrary. A worker in a Campbell’s Soup factory works in manufacturing, and when that soup is shipped to Canada, it counts as an export of goods. If that same worker instead made soup in a restaurant that sold it to a Canadian tourist, it would become a service export instead.

Note: The key sector in the title means service.