memeorandum: ‘The US could lose the right to vote within months’: Top official warns on threat to democracy (Lauren Gambino/The Guardian)

1:30 PM ET, August 28, 2022

Top Items:

GOP seat lead shrinks as Biden approval ticks up — CBS News Battleground Tracker poll — Republicans head into the fall still in position to gain enough House seats for a majority, but a tumultuous summer has made their advantage appear a little smaller today — with a trend so far pointing toward narrow gains instead of a wave.

Discussion: The Hill

Michael Stern / Just Security:

Assessing Trump's Claim of ‘Executive Privilege’ on FBI Access to MAL Docs — The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and former President Donald Trump are locked in a long running dispute over records taken from the White House in January 2021.

Discussion: Townhall

New York Times:
Judge Signals Intent to Appoint Special Master in Mar-a-Lago Search

Discussion: Breitbart, The Daily Caller, CNN and Washington Post

Brooke Singman / Fox News:
Judge announces ‘preliminary intent to appoint a special master’ to review Trump records seized by FBI

Discussion: New York Post, National Review, Townhall, New York Magazine and NewsNation

Chloe Folmar / The Hill:
Judge announces intent to appoint special master to review Mar-a-Lago documents

Discussion: The Colorado Sun, Associated Press, Insider, CBS News, NBC News, Raw Story, Washington Examiner, Just The News and Political Wire

Jason Miciak / Political Flare:

WaPo Bombshell: Trump Took Boxes of Material on Trips Around the World for ‘No Reason’ — There are a couple of salient facts that many people do not know regarding the problem with Trump keeping Top-Secret/SCI files. They paint a very sinister picture. — First, these boxes at issue …

Washington Post:
Inside Trump's war on the National Archives

Discussion: Axios, Daily Kos, Raw Story and Political Wire

Ronald G. Shafer / Washington Post: ‘Mutilated by rats,’ burned, trashed: 200 years of presidential papers lost

Lauren Gambino / The Guardian:

‘The US could lose the right to vote within months’: Top official warns on threat to democracy — Jena Griswold urges Americans to pay attention to crucial but often overlooked races for secretary of state — Colorado's secretary of state, Jena Griswold, is warning anyone who will listen …

Discussion: Alternet.org

David Shepardson / Reuters:

Duke volleyball game in Utah moved after racist abuse hurled at Black player — Duke University women's volleyball match on Saturday was moved to an alternate location in Provo, Utah, after racial slurs were hurled at a Black player from the crowd during Friday's match with BYU, school officials said.

Glynn A. Hill / Washington Post:

BYU bans fan, relocates volleyball match after racist incident — A volleyball match was relocated and a spectator was banned from Brigham Young sporting venues after a Black player on Duke's team became the target of racial slurs during a game Friday at Smith Fieldhouse in Provo, Utah.

Discussion: Raw Story and Associated Press

Benjamin Mueller / New York Times:

Fall Vaccination Campaign Will Bring New Shots, Worse Access — Updated Covid vaccines, expected soon after Labor Day, were designed to thwart Omicron variants. But money to distribute them has dried up. — Long past the point when pollsters said there were no more Americans willing …

Liz Essley Whyte / Wall Street Journal:
Latest Covid Boosters Are Set to Roll Out Before Human Testing Is Completed

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Vinay Prasad / Common Sense:
Let Djokovic Play — Barring the tennis champion from the U.S. Open has nothing to do with science or public health.

Discussion: The Hill and TheBlaze

Elahe Izadi / Washington Post:

They were some of the last journalists at their papers. Then came the layoffs. — The latest cutbacks at Gannett come amid an industry-wide trend of shrinking newspaper newsrooms. — The only full-time news reporter at the Daily Jeffersonian kept busy until recently.

Brad Lendon / CNN:

US sends two warships through Taiwan Strait, in first transit since Pelosi trip — China fires missiles towards Taiwan strait in drill after Pelosi visit — Two United States Navy warships have entered the Taiwan Strait in what is the first US naval transit in the waterway since US-China tensions spiked …

Discussion: Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet, Washington Examiner, New York Times, Politico, Reuters, Fox News, Trends Journal, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Florida Politics, WTOP News, TASS and The Hill

Sahil Kapur / NBC News:

Democrats hammer Republicans over Social Security as conservative candidates grab the ‘third rail’ — WASHINGTON — When Blake Masters was running for the Republican nomination for Senate in Arizona, he floated what he called a “fresh and innovative” idea. — “Maybe we should privatize Social Security.

CNN:

A once-bullish GOP now sees a smaller House majority in its future, presenting a challenge to McCarthy — Democrats closing the enthusiasm gap but the midterms will still be an “uphill battle” — House Republicans are starting to grow pessimistic about their chances of winning a massive majority …

Discussion: HotAir, Raw Story and Breitbart

Chris Stirewalt / Politico:

Fox News Fired Me After I Said Biden Won. That Wasn't the Worst of It. — My first meeting in Roger Ailes' boardroom of doom was on Election Day 2010. — At the time, I was the network's new political editor. Republicans were poised to deliver a serious walloping to President Barack Obama …

Henry Foy / Financial Times:

EU set to suspend visa travel agreement with Russia — Plan to freeze 2007 deal will make it harder and more expensive for Russians to get Schengen-area documents — EU foreign ministers are this week set to back a suspension of the bloc's visa facilitation agreement with Moscow in an effort …

Discussion: Politico, The Guardian and Radio Free Europe/Radio …

Sarah Vowell / New York Times:

What's With All the Fluff About a New Civil War, Anyway? — BOZEMAN, Mont. — The idea was to be permanently chastened by the Civil War, that the relief of emancipation and reunification would always be tempered by the shock of 600,000 corpses. And yet “civil war” has lately become …

Dan Balz / Washington Post:

Trump is turning the midterms from a referendum into a choice — Republicans could pay a price in November as the former president's dominance of the party changes the equation for midterm campaigns — It's long been said that midterm elections are all about the current occupant of the White House …

Margaret Talbot / New Yorker:

Justice Alito's Crusade Against a Secular America Isn't Over — He's had win after win—including overturning Roe v. Wade—yet seems more and more aggrieved. What drives his anger? … Some baby boomers were permanently shaped by their participation in the countercultural protests …

Discussion: Althouse

Ryan King / Washington Examiner:

WATCH: Karl Rove says Secret Service could have ratted Trump out over classified docs — A Secret Service member tasked with safeguarding former President Donald Trump may have been the one to spill the beans about the classified material at Mar-a-Lago, according to Karl Rove.

Discussion: Political Flare and Politico