Mr. Mattis, the retired four-star Marine general, resigned as defense secretary in protest of President Trump’s decision to pull American troops out of Syria.
Good Friday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today.
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• Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has resigned. He went to the White House to convince Mr. Trump to keep American troops in Syria, officials said, and told the president he was resigning after he was rebuffed. Here are more details, and here’s Mr. Mattis’s full letter of resignation.
• Mr. Trump defended his plan to withdraw American troops from Syria, saying that the United States should not be “the Policeman of the Middle East.”
• President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia hailed Mr. Trump’s decision on Syria. It was a tactical victory for Mr. Putin, who intervened in Syria in September 2015 with the goal of re-establishing Russia as a power in the Middle East. Here’s who else stands to gain from the decision.
• The Trump administration also plans to withdraw roughly 7,000 troops from Afghanistan. That’s about half of the American military force there now.
