Welcome to Tuesday, August 25th, introverted caterpillars and social butterflies...

The Republican National Convention opened Monday night, with prime-time speeches by the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Sen. Scott, the GOP's sole Black senator, shared his family story, saying they went "from Cotton to Congress in one lifetime. And that’s why I believe the next American century can be better than the last.”

“The voters judged me not on the color of my skin, but on the content of my character,” Scott said from Mellon Auditorium in Washington. “The truth is, our nation’s arc always bends back towards fairness. We are not fully where we want to be, but thank God almighty we are not where we used to be.”

Donald Trump Jr. took a more combative tone, calling Democratic nominee Joe Biden “Beijing Biden” and “the Loch Ness monster of the swamp.”

“It’s almost like this election is shaping up to be church, work and school versus rioting, looting and vandalism – or, in the words of Biden and the Democrats, ‘peaceful protesting,’” Trump Jr. said.

What do you think of Monday's RNC convention?

For a politics-free guide to how to protect you and your loved ones from corona, click on over to our Coronavirus Info Center.

On the Radar

Trump Vows to Send ‘Sheriffs’ and ‘Law Enforcement’ to Polling Places

President Trump has pledged to send law enforcement agents to polling stations on Election Day.

"We're going to have sheriffs, and we're going to have law enforcement, and we're going to have, hopefully, US attorneys, and we're going to have everybody and attorney generals (sic)."

The president has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that voter fraud will undermine this fall's election.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Sunday that despite Trump's claims to the contrary, the DHS has no plans to send agents to polling stations on November 3rd.

Do you support sending law enforcement to polling places?

Under the Radar

U.S. Defense Partnerships

Over the past several years, the U.S. Armed Forces have been updating their policies to reemphasize their readiness for conflicts with near peer competitors including Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as those countries have taken an increasingly aggressive posture over the last decade.

For its part, Russia invaded the Republic of Georgia in 2008 and then Ukraine in 2014, where it seized the Crimean Peninsula ― much to the alarm of other nations bordering Russia from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus ― while also lending military aid to the Assad regime amid the civil war in Syria.

The Chinese Communist Party has threatened to use military force to retake Taiwan ― which it regards as a rogue province ― if the self-governing, democratic nation pursues its formal independence. The PRC also enacted a national security law that brought Hong Kong’s autonomy to an end, has ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea and East China Sea with several neighboring nations, and recently engaged in a series of skirmishes against the Indian military in a disputed part of the Kashmir region in the Himalayas.  

In light of the potential for military conflict between the U.S. and Russia, China, and/or other nations, we present an overview of U.S. security commitments to other nations around the world and the forms of those agreements.

How do you feel about America’s defense partnerships?

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And, in the End...

On this day in 1916, the National Park Service was established as part of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Today, "conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wild life therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations,"

—Josh Herman

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