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Attorney General Bill Barr’s Friday-night attempt to push out Geoffrey Berman, who serves as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is the latest example of the Trump Administration’s gradual purge of independent, honorable law enforcement officials. Initially, Berman refused to resign and said he would continue his work on the office’s cases, which include several involving President Trump, before ultimately agreeing to step down. Barr’s move, authorized by Trump, is typical of all aspiring authoritarians and their cronies, in order to hold themselves above the law and pave the way for even more dangerous corruption and abuses of power. Replacing Berman with a Trump loyalist will mean one fewer independent investigator to safeguard the integrity of our elections and system of self-government under a president who wants to undermine both. —Evan McMullin
Top Ten

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1. A rough night for Trump In front of a disappointing crowd of 6,200 supporters in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday night, President Trump spent time at his first rally since the coronavirus pandemic convincing attendees that he can successfully drink water with one hand and capably walk down a ramp. Amid jokes about the coronavirus, he also said he told his staff to "slow the testing down." The White House staff immediately said he was joking. Was he? This morning, he tweeted, "Our Coronavirus testing is so much greater...and so much more advanced, that it makes us look like we have more cases, especially proportionally, than other countries." Hmm. —The Hill ([link removed])
* — Sticking with a racist script. Even at a moment of national reckoning over race and racism, Trump stuck to the divisive themes he exploited in his 2016 run. He referred to COVID-19 as "kung flu," called racial justice demonstrators "thugs," and attacked efforts to take down Confederate statues as an assault on "our heritage." —The Washington Post ([link removed])
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* — Second speech canceled. The campaign, which anticipated a crowd too large for the 19,200-capacity BOK Center, was forced at the last minute to cancel a planned second speech due to low turnout. Campaign representatives inexplicably blamed protesters and the media. —Forbes ([link removed])
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* — Staffers test positive. The poorly attended rally wasn't the only bad news of the day for the president. Six advance staffers for the campaign, who helped prepare for the rally in Tulsa, tested positive for the coronavirus and were placed in quarantine. —CNBC ([link removed])

More: 'It's like a forest fire': Disease expert says coronavirus unlikely to slow in summer or fall (Axios) ([link removed])

2. Bacon: Another 'Friday night massacre' "This is a pattern for Trump: removing the leaders of various government agencies or departments, ignoring normal succession procedures, and passing over the people who would normally step in and instead replacing them with Trump allies. The temporary replacement's role is essentially to do Trump's bidding in a way that the removed person would not. ... Trump's controlling the executive branch in this way—minimizing the oversight of other branches—weakens checks on his executive power." —FiveThirtyEight ([link removed])

More: Attorney General Bill Barr scrutinized over firing of US attorney (The Wall Street Journal) ([link removed])

3. Like a Bolton of lightning In an interview with ABC News' Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz last night, former National Security Advisor John Bolton condemned Donald Trump's presidency as "dangerously damaging" to the United States and argued that the 2020 election is the last "guardrail" to protect the country from him. ([link removed])
* — In Bolton's book, "The Room Where It Happened," he paints Trump as "stunningly uninformed," making "erratic" and "irrational" decisions. He claimed Trump is unable to separate his personal and political interests from the country's, and he is marked and manipulated by foreign adversaries. ([link removed])
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— Bolton said he will not be voting for Trump or the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, in November, and rather will find a conservative Republican to write in. ([link removed])
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* — On why he waited so long to speak out, Bolton told Raddatz he now has "an obligation to let the American people know what it's like in the White House and what their leader is doing." Of course, that information could have been more useful six months ago. —ABC News ([link removed])

More: Judge: Bolton can publish book despite efforts to block it (Associated Press) ([link removed])

4. 'Boogaloo' may have sights set on DC ([link removed])

The National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium, which provides support to federal national security and law enforcement agencies, warned last week that Washington, D.C., "is likely an attractive target for violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology..." The Department of Homeland Security concurred with the assessment, noting that the far-right extremist group "will take advantage of any regional or national situation involving heightened fear and tensions to promote their violent extremist ideology and call supporters to action." —Politico ([link removed])
* — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted a decision by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council on Friday to commission a report on policing and systemic racism. Though the council stopped short of singling out the U.S., Pompeo called the decision "a new low" and confirmed the Trump Administration's decision to withdraw from the council in 2018. —TIME ([link removed])
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— No BLM for VP. ([link removed]) Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly refused to utter the phrase "Black lives matter" during an interview on Juneteenth. "Let me just say that what happened to George Floyd was a tragedy," Pence said. "We celebrate the fact that from the founding of this nation, we cherish the ideal that all, all of us are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. And so, all lives matter in a very real sense." —Newsweek ([link removed])
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* — White guards only? When Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd, arrived at the Ramsey County jail, all minority corrections officers were ordered to avoid him, according to racial discrimination charges filed with Minnesota's Department of Human Rights by eight minority officers. —New York Daily News ([link removed])

More: Parent of toddler in 'manipulated' Trump video forces Facebook and Twitter to remove it (CNN) ([link removed])

5. Mueller...the gift that keeps on giving In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from CNN and BuzzFeed News, the Justice Department on Friday released a new, less redacted version of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on his investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election. For those looking for explosive new details, it did not disappoint. ([link removed])
* — What he knew and when he knew it. Multiple top Trump campaign aides told investigators that President Trump himself knew that WikiLeaks had damaging information on Hillary Clinton's campaign ahead of WikiLeaks' email dumps in 2016. ([link removed])
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— Trump may have lied. Shocking, but true. Mueller concluded that Trump may have lied to investigators in his written answers to their questions, but he was unable to prove it. ([link removed])
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* — Getting their stories straight. Prosecutors also suspected that Trump may have discussed his answers with longtime adviser Roger Stone, who was later convicted on seven felony counts of obstruction, false statements, and witness tampering. —Business Insider ([link removed])

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6. ICYMI: Quick takes from the weekend

If you were too busy with Father's Day festivities this weekend to check on the news, good for you. Here's what you may have missed from around the globe...
* — An American citizen was among those killed in a terror attack in southern England, the U.S. Ambassador has confirmed. Thirty-nine-year-old Joe Ritchie-Bennett was among three people stabbed to death in the town of Reading on Saturday. —The Philadelphia Inquirer ([link removed])
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* — President Trump said in an interview yesterday that he would consider meeting disgraced Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, playing down his earlier decision to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate leader. —Reuters ([link removed])
* — China will establish a special bureau in Hong Kong to investigate and prosecute crimes considered threatening to national security, as Beijing's controversial new national security law is imposed on the semi-autonomous territory. —The Wall Street Journal ([link removed])
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* — The U.S. and Russia have restarted nuclear talks after a break of more than a year. U.S. arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea is meeting with the Russian deputy foreign minister in Vienna without China, despite Trump's invitation to Beijing. —The Guardian ([link removed])

7. Diehl: Why Putin needs Trump "A re-elected Trump could be expected to continue his campaign to restore Russia as a member of the Group of Seven nations, providing [Russian President Vladimir] Putin with an enhanced global platform. He could pull the United States out of NATO once and for all. And he could advance Putin's most important geopolitical goal, returning Ukraine to Russia's sphere of influence, while opening the way for the lifting of U.S. and European sanctions on the Russian economy. So yes, Putin will do what he can to help Trump. Any doubt about that was removed by a television interview he gave a week ago that appeared aimed directly at the White House. The 'deep internal crisis' in the United States, he declared, was caused by anti-Trump forces, who rather than accept that he 'obviously won' the 2016 election 'in an absolutely democratic way...came up with all sorts of fables to cast doubt on his legitimacy.'" —The Washington Post
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More: Russia uses prizes and patriotism to push vote to change constitution. There's scant mention of the real goal: keeping Putin in power (The Washington Post) ([link removed])

8. Trump's new voting attack Frustrated by poor turnout at his Tulsa rally and feeling threatened by sagging polls that show former Vice President Joe Biden leading nationally, President Trump is attacking a familiar foe today—vote-by-mail. In a series of tweets this morning, he said the 2020 presidential election will be the "SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES" and that "foreign countries and others" would print mail-in ballots to disrupt the election. Having solicited and benefitted from foreign interference in the past, he's now using the concept to undermine the perceived integrity of the election result should he lose in November. —The Independent ([link removed])
* — California guarantees vote-by-mail. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law last week requiring state election officials to mail a ballot to every registered, active voter ahead of the November election. —The Mercury News ([link removed])
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* — Trouble in Kentucky? Fewer than 200 polling places will be open for voters in the state's primary election tomorrow, down from 3,700 in a typical election year. Amid a huge influx in requests for mail-in ballots, some voters still had not received theirs days before they must be turned in. —The Washington Post ([link removed])
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* — We need to do better. Tens of thousands of voters didn't receive their requested absentee ballots in recent primaries, including in the battleground states of Georgia and Wisconsin. In Maryland, where all registered voters were automatically supposed to get ballots in the mail, about 160,000 ballots, or roughly 5%, weren't delivered. —CNN ([link removed])

More: Access to ballot, seal of democracy's covenant, under attack (Associated Press) ([link removed])

9. Wehle: Register to vote now "Bottom line: mistakes—and voter disenfranchisement—will undoubtedly occur in November. It's true that some percentage of voter disenfranchisement has nefarious roots—unlike voter fraud, voter suppression efforts are a serious malignancy in the U.S. electoral system. But many eligible voters will simply fall through the cracks in November due to lack of funding, incompetence, confusion, or even disgust over the process. Which is all to say that, in order to get America back on track with leadership that cares about the Constitution, the rule of law, accountability to the people, and the health and welfare of every American, the margins of victory in the fall—whomever they favor—must be substantial. Voter turnout must produce a tsunami, not a trickle, of civic engagement. Which requires unprecedented voter registration now." —The Hill ([link removed])

10. An American Story: Walking in solidarity Shawn Dromgoole, a 29-year-old black man, has lived in a neighborhood known as "12 South" in Nashville for his entire life. Despite this and his family being residents for 54 years, he felt uneasy in his hometown because so few people looked like him. ([link removed])
* — With each passing year, he felt more and more unwelcome, as black families moved out and white families moved in. These feelings grew in recent months when he heard about the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. — Dromgoole voiced his fears on Facebook and Nextdoor, and responses from neighbors poured in. The next time Dromgoole went for a walk, 75 people (adorning masks) joined him on his walk to let him know he wasn't alone. ([link removed])
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* — "I finally feel seen, I feel like I'm a part of something," said Dromgoole. "Because when you walk with your neighbors—and you know they really see you—the world becomes a better place." —The Washington Post ([link removed])

Ed. Note: We are spotlighting ways that Americans are helping each other through the coronavirus crisis and recent unrest, and promoting American values. Would you like to suggest an "American Story" from your local news? If so, please forward a link to the story to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) . Thank you!
What's Your Take?

You know what? I didn't know much about Juneteenth before this year, but I think it SHOULD become a national holiday, and I would like to see our elected leaders support legislation to this end. Yay for the end of slavery in "the land of the free"! As THE TOPLINE often reminds us, our country still has much work to do to live up to its ideals and promises, but this would be a step in the right direction. And to conservatives (a term I used to apply to myself, but the meaning of which has become quite difficult to pinpoint), I would say that making continuous progress (a scary word for some) toward our country's ideals and promises should be considered the ultimate in conserving the vision of our Founding Fathers. Let's take another step in that direction. —Aimee O., Iowa

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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.

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