The House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday considered looking into President Trump’s financial ties, particularly those linking him to a bank that had been involved with laundering Russian money.

But Republican members voted “nyet” on a straight party-line vote of 34-26.

They defeated a Democrat-sponsored request to order Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “provide certain documents … relating to President Trump’s financial connections to Russia, certain illegal financial schemes, and related information.”

The committee, which deals with banking and money laundering, “will not be spending time and money” on an investigation that already is being touched upon by other congressional committees, said Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas.

The Senate and House intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee have all been looking at some aspects of Trump interactions with Russians. Hensarling called the effort to launch yet another investigation “blatantly political.”

But Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., urged passage of the bill known as a “resolution of inquiry,” a rarely used measure that allows Congress to request documents from the executive branch. He said an inquiry is needed because it’s clear “the president has something to hide when it comes to his financial dealings with the Russians.”

Perlmutter said his “suspicions” have increased in recent days because “the president has threatened to fire not only Mr. (Robert) Mueller, the special counsel, but also his attorney general, Mr. (Jeff) Sessions because of the probe into Mr. Trump’s and his family’s financial dealings with the Russians.”

Committee Democrats had been pushing for a broad inquiry, but with a special focus on Trump’s dealings with Deutsche Bank. Earlier this year, the Frankfurt, Germany-based bank paid a $425 million fine for its involvement in a money-laundering scheme with Russian clients.

To better understand why a German bank has turned up in the middle of a controversy involving an American president, here is an explainer:

Deutsche who?

Deutsche Bank, founded in 1870 in Germany, is an enormous financial institution, which S&P Global Intelligence’s ranks as No. 15 in the world in total assets. In 2016, 18 percent of Deutsche Bank’s capital was in the United States.

But the company frequently gets into legal trouble. For example, just last week, it agreed to pay $77 million to end U.S. antitrust litigation in a case involving manipulation of interest rates.

What does a German bank have to do with a U.S. president?

Deutsche Bank and Trump have a long relationship. It started after Trump went through a series of bankruptcies in the early 1990s, and U.S. banks did not want to lend to him.

Deutsche Bank then stepped in as his go-to banker. A New York Times review of security filings estimates that over the past 20 years, Deutsche Bank has given Trump $4 billion in loan commitments and potential bond offerings.

Where do those loans stand today?

While most of the loans have been paid back, Trump’s most recent financial disclosure shows he still has at least $150 million in outstanding debts to the bank.

Many people have loans. So what if Trump owes money to a bank?

For a president, any debt can create a conflict of interest, according to Norm Eisen, who served as the White House ethics adviser to President Barack Obama. He says debts raise questions about whether a president is making policy decisions based on a desire to get favorable terms from his lenders.

“When I was working for President Obama, we wouldn’t even let him refinance his modest home in Chicago because of the appearance of conflict,” Eisen told NPR.

Deutsche Bank isn’t Trump’s only lender. His most recent financial disclosure includes 16 liabilities, from Royal Bank America to Merrill Lynch. His debts total hundreds of millions.

But Deutsche Bank is particularly problematic because it’s so often in legal trouble. Since 2015, the bank has stacked up more than $9.2 billion in fines, penalties and settlements, according to monitoring by the Capital Performance Group. If Trump owes the bank a great deal of money, the question might arise: Would his administration back off tough regulatory enforcement so that the president can get better personal lending terms from Deutsche Bank?

Is special counsel Mueller looking into Deutsche Bank?

Yes, according to news reports. For example, The Guardian says Mueller wants to see an internal report done by Deutsche Bank itself. Several months ago, the bank did an internal review to determine whether any of Trump’s loans were connected to Russia or backed by the Russian government, the report said.

Also, New York regulators want to know whether loans made by Deutsche to Trump could expose the bank itself to heightened risk, The New York Times said.

What does the president have to say about all this?

In a recent interview with the Times, reporters asked whether it would cross a line for Mueller to examine his personal finances. Trump said it would, calling it a “violation.”

Trump has made it clear that he objects to Mueller, congressional investigators or banking regulators looking into his personal finances and loans.

Do other Trump family members owe money to Deutsche Bank?

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, secured and personally guaranteed a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank in October 2016, as the The Washington Post first reported in June.

The loan came right before the election and just as Deutsche bank was settling the Russian money-laundering case with the New York regulators. Kushner did not include the loan on his financial disclosure form filed with the Office of Government Ethics in March nor was it listed on his updated form released last week.

The financial disclosure also shows Kushner has a $5 million to $25 million open line of credit from Deutsche Bank, which he shares with his mother.

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Six months after Republicans gained control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats have outlined a plan to improve their chances of methodically taking it all back.

They are leaning heavily on a re-branding of their greatest hits — more and better-paying jobs, lowering health care costs and cracking down on the what are seen as the abuses of big business.

As an agenda and a slogan, “A Better Deal,” hearkens back to the days of President Franklin Roosevelt. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went 50 miles outside the Beltway, to Berryville, Va., to unveil it, hoping the ideas will resonate with suburban voters, many of whom were energized by Trump’s campaign-trail populism.

“When you lose an election with someone who has, say, 40 percent popularity, you look in the mirror and say what did we do wrong?” Schumer said, speaking on ABC’s This Week Sunday. “And the No. 1 thing that we did wrong is … we didn’t tell people what we stood for.”

Responding to the plan on Monday, President Trump tweeted that in releasing the plan, Democrats were admitting that it was their own fault they lost the election, and not Russian meddling.

Democrats say they want to double federal support for apprenticeship programs to help train young people and put out-of-work adults back in the work force. They also want tax incentives for companies to retrain workers, as well as new standards aimed at limiting corporate mergers that throw people out of work. In addition, the plan calls for lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

“We will aggressively crack down on unfair foreign trade and fight back against corporations that outsource American jobs,” the Democratic leadership said in a statement. “We will fight to ensure a living wage for all Americans and keep our promise to millions of workers who earned a pension, Social Security and Medicare, so seniors can retire with dignity.”

Berryville, with a population less than 5,000, is situated in one district that Democrats desperately would like to flip in 2018. It is currently represented by Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock and it stretches from just outside Washington to more rural parts of the state.

Writing in The Washington Post on Sunday, Pelosi said that since taking the reins in January, Republicans have squandered opportunities to help average Americans. “[Instead] of creating good-paying jobs, or rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, or advancing tax reform,” she said, “Republicans have spent six months trying to raise Americans’ health costs to fund tax breaks for billionaires.”

Democrats need to wrest 24 Republican-held seats in the House to gain control of that chamber. In the Senate, however, they are playing defense, fighting to retain Democratic-held seats in states won by Trump.

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A 5-year-old girl whose sidewalk lemonade stand brought a $195 fine in east London has been invited to set up shop at several markets and festivals, as supporters reach out to her family. The ticket was forgiven; now the girl’s father is urging more kids to open their own stands.

Last weekend, Andre Spicer took his daughter to the end of their street to offer lemonade (50 pence for a small, 1 pound for a large) to people drawn to a music festival in a nearby park. But, as he said in a tweet that day, “She’s now sobbing, ‘I did a bad thing'” after four Tower Hamlets police officers descended on the stand, issued a fine, and sent them packing.

Spicer’s tweet didn’t bring a response from the local council. But after he wrote a column for The Telegraph, strangers began to praise Spicer and his daughter — and to wonder what was wrong with Tower Hamlets.

“So, about the lemonade standard incident… we are very sorry that this has happened,” Tower Hamlets said in a tweet on the morning after Spicer’s column was published. It continued, “We expect our enforcement officers to show common sense, and to use their powers sensibly. This clearly did not happen.”

The council said the fine “will be cancelled immediately,” adding that it had contacted Spicer and his daughter to apologize.

Spicer said in an email that his daughter may not realize how widely her story has resonated. He added that due to the positive response, “Now she feels less sour about the experience” — and she might be up for setting up another stand in the neighborhood later this month.

The Spicer family also wants to see more kids get the chance to make a stand. On Saturday, Spicer posted a message that reads in part:

“We have been overwhelmed by the kind response from people across the world. Dozens of festivals, markets and businesses have offered us the opportunity to set up a lemonade stand. We hope they will extend this invitation to others who’d love to make a stand.”

“Children could sell home-made lemonade, hand drawn comics or vegetables they have grown. Young people could do more than sell things, like sharing film or music they’ve created, or gaining support for their local club.”

If that sounds like a message influenced by someone who’s used to thinking about people and commerce, it should: Spicer is a professor of organizational behavior at the University of London’s business school. He’s also a critic for the type of behavior his daughter encountered, having written extensively about what he calls “collective stupidity” that sometimes overtakes organizations.

In Spicer’s column for The Telegraph, he noted the difficulties of giving kids space to pursue real-world activities, particularly in an era of shifting parental norms, competition from electronic gadgets — and an abundance of regulations.

Before “Lemonadegate,” Spicer said, his daughter had been inspired by seeing kids running their own tables at a school festival. Afterwards, as he said in The Telegraph, he told her they could get a permit, only to hear her reply, “No. It’s too scary.”

Spicer, who’s a native of New Zealand, says his daughter’s run-in with police has made him contrast the situation with his own childhood, when he and his brother roamed far from home and supported their clubs by selling snacks.

Since the episode became a news story, Spicer tells NPR, he’s received “many messages from people in the U.S.” telling their own stories about children and young people being “harshly shut down by authorities for doing things like selling candy.”

Stressing the importance of learning through action, the Spicer family’s note states, “Making a stand is a great opportunity for kids to share their interests, build confidence and contribute to our communities.”

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