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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
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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
More: 'It's like a forest fire': Disease expert says coronavirus unlikely to slow in summer or fall (Axios)
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...
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
- — 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
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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
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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
More: Access to ballot, seal of democracy's covenant, under attack (Associated Press)
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
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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