Trump: Prove it's not 'rigged' by...voting twice?
The Department of Homeland Security has been hiding valuable intelligence about ongoing Russian interference from other authorities and the American public. This is highly troubling. Giving the public a heads-up about known disinformation campaigns can act as inoculation against them. Instead, the administration, out of fear of upsetting President Trump or in the interests of helping him, is covering for the Russians, allowing them to continue in their efforts and be effective. The fact that analysts have indicated with "high confidence" that the Russians are actively attacking Joe Biden on the issue of his mental and physical fitness suggests they are watching it happen real time, not simply making an educated prediction. While health is often an issue in presidential campaigns, Trump too has focused his attacks on Biden's health, meaning his messaging is in lock-step with Russian messaging. We need to be clear-eyed about what that means: it demonstrates, again, Russian backing of Trump, something that every American should reject. —Evan McMullin
1. A 2016 staple is back
"Rigged election." Remember when Donald Trump used the term over and over in 2016, to describe the only possible way he could lose? Well, it's back with a vengeance. In a tweet yesterday morning, he again cast doubt on vote-by-mail by floating the possibility it could lead to a "rigged election." He was responding to a tweet about a Democratic data group, which warned about a scenario where Trump jumps out to a wide lead on election night but ultimately loses once all mail-in votes are counted. Some Democrats have expressed concerns about this scenario because it could allow Trump to declare victory prematurely. The president later recommended an interesting solution to the problem... —Forbes
— Just vote twice. After arriving in Wilmington, N.C., yesterday, Trump said voters in the state should "test" their state's election system by voting once by mail, then trying to vote a second time in person. "Let them send it in and let them go vote, and if the system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote," Trump said. "It is illegal to vote twice in an election," clarified Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. —USA Today
— Barr takes a pass. If you were looking for Attorney General Bill Barr to correct the record, keep dreaming. Asked by CNN host Wolf Blitzer, "Is there any state in which you can vote twice?", Barr demurred, saying, "Maybe you can change your vote up to a particular time, I don't know what the law is." In the same interview, he justified Trump's controversial suggestion of deploying federal agents to polling places, arguing that the Justice Dept. has historically sent agents to enforce civil rights. —Politico
— Both sides now. Lest you think only Republicans are messing with voting, think again, albeit on a significantly smaller scale. Twitter has forced a Democratic House candidate from Texas to delete a tweet that urged supporters of Trump to vote the day after the November election. The company said the tweet by the campaign for Elizabeth Hernandez, who is challenging GOP Rep. Kevin Brady for his seat in the state's 8th District, violated its rules against voter suppression. —Politico
MORE: Bipartisan campaign aims to reassure voters as Trump questions election integrity —Reuters
2. Schmidt: Pandemic being used to suppress voting rights
"The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy. In the time of a pandemic, our right to vote should also include having our safety guarded. Our leaders should be working to secure that right in the safest way possible instead of attempting to suppress our vote and put our health in jeopardy." —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Ed. Note: Lynn Schmidt is the Missouri state leader for Stand Up Republic.
MORE: House panel subpoenas US Postal Service chief —Reuters
3. DHS held back intel on Russian scheme
— A draft bulletin, entitled "Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of U.S. Candidates to Influence 2020 Election," was submitted to the agency's legislative and public affairs office for review on July 7. It was set to be distributed to federal, state, and local law enforcement two days later, according to internal emails.
— An hour after its submission, a senior DHS official intervened. "Please hold on sending this one out until you have a chance to speak to [acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf]," wrote DHS Chief of Staff John Gountanis. That was two months ago.
— The decision is fueling concerns that the Trump Administration has sought to politicize intelligence—particularly after an announcement that senior intelligence leaders will cease briefing Congress on election security, purportedly to prevent leaks. —ABC News
4. WaPo Ed Board: Putin poisons his enemies...and why not?
"Following the Skripal poisoning, Trump only reluctantly agreed to join diplomatic expulsions by Britain and the EU. He still has not confronted [Russian President Vladimir] Putin about intelligence reports that Russia paid bounties to the Afghan Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers. Nor has he objected to ongoing Russian efforts to help his re-election campaign by smearing Democratic nominee Joe Biden. It's little wonder Putin thinks he can get away with another chemical weapons attack. To all appearances, he has the president of the United States in his pocket." —The Washington Post
5. Immigration is about to get 'dystopian'
— The new rule gives DHS officials wider authority to expand technologies, ranging from voiceprints to iris scans. It also eliminates age restrictions for collecting biometrics, and further allows DHS to collect DNA to confirm genetic relationships.
— The department claims the results will be stored in immigrants' official records but that raw DNA will not be kept. In some cases, the department would have the authority to collect U.S. citizens' DNA.
— Civil liberties and immigrant rights groups have criticized the proposal. Andrea Flores of the American Civil Liberties Union said, "Collecting a massive database of genetic blueprints won't make us safer—it will simply make it easier for the government to surveil and target our communities..." —The Hill
6. 'This is a virus that's established itself into the population'
As new COVID-19 case counts decline in some recent hot spots, they're spiking in other places—particularly in Midwestern states like Iowa and South Dakota. It's a sign that the country's virus fight remains stuck in neutral, as progress in one state is repeatedly offset by infections in others, with little improvement overall. Politics plays a role, as do events like college reopenings and the Sturgis motorcycle rally. But it's also a sign of the fatigue, frustration, and exhaustion Americans feel after months of masks and hand sanitizer, social isolation, shuttered businesses, and closed beaches. People are putting their guard down, and public health experts fear that will leave room for the virus to continue spreading across the country. —Bloomberg
— Shifting attention from testing. The president has made no secret of his disdain for coronavirus testing, so with Election Day just two months away, he's going to focus less on the administration's wildly unsuccessful effort to contain the virus and even more on shielding vulnerable groups and restoring a sense of normalcy. The goal is to increase public approval of Trump's pandemic response—and bolster his re-election chances—by sharply reducing case counts and the number of deaths and hospitalizations attributed to the virus. —Politico
— Operation Warp Speed. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has requested that the nation's governors do everything in their power to eliminate hurdles for vaccine distribution sites to be fully operational by Nov. 1. Some officials say the federal government has failed to adequately communicate the logistical responsibilities that state and local governments need to take in distributing the vaccine. Others worry that the timeline—offering the first vaccines just days before the presidential election—is motivated by politics over science and safety. —McClatchy
— Some good news. Early-stage clinical trial results show the COVID-19 vaccine candidate made by Novavax is safe and elicits an immune response, according to a study published yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Five vaccines are in the clinical-trial phase in the U.S., as well as 33 others around the world, according to the World Health Organization. —CNN
MORE: Perlstein: Gerald Ford rushed out a vaccine. It was a fiasco —The New York Times
7. Barker: Germany is winning against COVID-19, but losing to QAnon
"Germany's disinformation landscape is evolving—and metastasizing—rapidly. In recent months, Querdenken 711 has developed connective tissue with the Reichsbürger, Hildmann, and the growing German following of the QAnon cult of conspiracy. In fact, Germany has the second-highest number of QAnon believers after the United States. NewsGuard has identified more than 448,000 QAnon followers in Europe. On YouTube, Facebook, and Telegram, accounts dealing with the QAnon conspiracy have over 200,000 followers in Germany alone." —Foreign Policy
Ed. Note: Tyson Barker is deputy executive director and fellow at the Aspen Institute Germany.
MORE: Nearly two centuries ago, a QAnon-like conspiracy theory propelled candidates to Congress —The Conversation
8. US sanctions ICC officials
— The sanctions are directed at Fatou Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko, who were both added to the Treasury Dept.'s "Specially Designated Nationals" list. The designation freezes any assets they might have in the U.S. or that are subject to U.S. law.
— In March, the ICC moved forward with an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, including those allegedly committed by U.S. forces and the CIA.
— The U.S. has never been a part of the ICC, which Pompeo called "a thoroughly broken and corrupt institution." He added, "We will not tolerate its illegitimate attempts to subject Americans to its jurisdiction." —NPR
9. Mohammed & Landay: US faces hurdles nudging Belarus toward democracy
"Russian President Vladimir Putin makes no secret of his interest in Belarus, which is a conduit for Russian oil and gas to Europe and is vital to Moscow's European defense strategy, and Russia has formed a police force to back [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko if necessary. Washington wants a way to bolster democracy in Belarus that avoids Russian intervention, something which—as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun told Russian officials last week in Moscow—would further damage U.S.-Russian ties." —Reuters
MORE: Bipartisan congressional appeal calls for 'greater leadership' in support of democracy in Belarus —Atlantic Council
10. An American Story: Old Navy prepares its fleet of poll workers
— Old Navy has more than 50,000 employees spread out over 1,000 stores. The company is partnering with Civic Alliance and Power the Polls to recruit 250,000 new poll workers to meet this year's need.
— The company stated that it will pay employees for eight hours of work if they work as poll workers. Employees will also be eligible to receive compensation for working as a poll worker from their local jurisdiction.
— "Every voice in this country matters and deserves to be heard at the polls, and if we at Old Navy can be even a small part of making that process more accessible to the communities we call home, we are on board," said Nancy Green, president of Old Navy. —CNN
Ed. Note: Would you like to suggest "An American Story" from your local news? If so, please forward a link to the story to editor@thetopline.com. Thank you!
With the postponement of the NBA playoff games last week, sports and politics again intermingled. Sports have never been a true escape from a real world but have been an active player in shaping society. Politics and sports have always been intertwined. The question is whether this medium can advance or hinder humanity.
The 1936 Olympics were intended by Nazi Germany to glorify the products of its ideology, but that message was undermined by the political statement made by the victories of Jesse Owens. For decades, Major League Baseball franchises implicitly barred the entrance of minority players, which reinforced the social status quo. The debut of Jackie Robinson was not a decision based on simply improving the Brooklyn Dodgers but was also a political statement. South Africa made the immoral political stand to apply apartheid to athletics, and for that, the International Olympic Committee made a strong statement by barring its participation starting in 1964. Yet, under Nelson Mandela, the integration of its rugby team marked a moment of national healing. International tension between El Salvador and Honduras spilled over onto a soccer match and a riot that followed. This even led to military armed conflict in 1969.
Meanwhile in the boxing ring, Muhammad Ali's career was largely shaped by his activism, including on issues that Americans still cannot find consensus on today. The Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs was a demonstration on the tennis court that men and women can compete against each other. Throughout the 1980s, sports were used as a means for Cold War rivals to demonstrate their superiority—when allowed to actually compete, as Olympic boycotts happened in Moscow and Los Angeles. At the 1990 FIBA World Championship, Vlade Divac publicly seized a fan's Croatian flag when Yugoslavia's twilight was fast approaching.
Years before Colin Kaepernick, Denver Nugget Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the national anthem to express his views that the flag symbolized tyranny and oppression. He eventually agreed to stand to pray during the playing of the anthem. Fast-forward years later to Tim Tebow, who despite mockery and criticism, continued to wear eye black and engaged in actions that expressed his faith. During this time, baseball accepted Cuban defectors that desired a better life and freedom. Activism by coaches and players led to the ouster of Donald Sterling as Los Angeles Clippers owner in 2014 due to his vile attitudes toward others. Athletes can, of course, be on the wrong side of the moral equation, as LeBron James criticized Daryl Morey in his advocacy for civil liberties in Hong Kong.
Outside of these high-profile examples, sports still have a role to play in a community—either bringing it together in victory or tearing it apart during a scandal. The role sports takes in our society today, and whether it is the correct path, has yet to be determined. —Leonard C., Texas
tell us what you think
about today's stories
The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Stand Up Republic Foundation.
Got feedback about THE TOPLINE? Send it to Melissa Amour, Managing Editor, at editor@thetopline.com.
Did you receive this email from a friend? Sign up at www.thetopline.com.
CARE ABOUT DEMOCRACY? SHARE SOME DEMOCRACY.
If you love THE TOPLINE, share it with your friends and reap the rewards—from a shoutout in an issue of TL, to exclusive swag, to a call with Evan and Mindy.
Your Dashboard has everything you need to easily share THE TOPLINE
and track your progress.