Today's D Brief: No evidence of vote-by-mail fraud; COVID at 2-month-low; New Taliban tactics; BIW strike ends; And a bit more.
The Republican National Convention is this week in the U.S., and President Trump is kicking it off by flying around the Carolinas. He has stops planned in Charlotte, where a curtailed, in-person convention is happening today. Then POTUS heads to Asheville and Mills River in North Carolina; and he ends his afternoon dropping by Greer, S.C., before flying back to the White House ahead of the convention’s televised events, which begin at 8:30 p.m. ET.
Monday’s convention theme: “Land of Promise,” which is intended to emphasize “how Trump helped renew the American dream,” the Associated Press reports in a preview. “An American success story” is how the Wall Street Journal describes how Trump will frame his first term in office.
- By the way: “The debt of the United States now exceeds the size of its GDP,” the New York Times reported Friday. “That was considered a doomsday scenario that would wreck the economy. So far, that hasn’t happened.” Read more on why “The National Debt is Surging,” and why fewer economists think that’s as big of a problem as they once did, here.
FWIW: Tuesday's convention theme is “Land of Opportunity"; Wednesday is “Land of Heroes"; and the final day will be themed “Land of Greatness."
Trump’s formal acceptance speech isn’t expected until Thursday, but he plans to say something every night of the convention sometime around 10 p.m. ET. Televised and livestream coverage is expected to end around 11:30 p.m. nightly.
For the record, Trump's campaign produced no evidence of vote-by-mail fraud in a Pennsylvania court case last week after a federal judge ordered the campaign to turn over everything it could to support its claims. The Intercept first reported the developments Thursday. The Guardian unpacks what remains of the Trump campaign’s allegations for the state of Pennsylvania, here.
Recall that Trump said on Aug. 13 he was “intentionally blocking federal funding to the U.S. Postal Service to discourage the use of mail-in ballots in November's elections,” Fortune reported the following day, adding that Trump’s admission came as his postmaster general was making sweeping changes to postal service. Review changes that happened already here (via the Washington Post); then read about changes the postmaster wants to make after the election, here (also via the Post).
Now: Some post offices appear to be going rogue to restore mail service hobbled by the Trump administration. KUOW out of Washington state reported Friday, “Despite a national order not to reinstall letter-sorting machines that had been dismantled over the past month, the Postal Service plants in Tacoma and Wenatchee have done just that, according to workers there.” More to that story, here.
And: Vote-by-mail for troops and their families is more complicated this time around, the Washington Post reports.
One more thing: House lawmakers voted Saturday to block recent changes to Postal Service operations in a 257-150 vote. But the Senate does not appear poised to do anything about that bill, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said afterward. More from Reuters, here.
From Defense One
Here’s What Might Not Survive COVID Budget Cuts // Marcus Weisgerber: Like baby antelope at the watering hole, military weapons and vehicles still in early development might be the first to go.
Meet the 'Mayflower:' Sailing Into a New World, All Over Again // Brett Phaneuf and Raymond A. Spicer: Our autonomous ship will attempt to cross the Atlantic from Plymouth to Plymouth. Here's how — and what we hope the Navy can learn from her.
How Washington Should Handle Turkey's Summer of Flex // Daniel DePetris: Turkey looks less like a treaty ally and more like a competitor.
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1991, Ukraine declared its independence from the rapidly crumbling Soviet Union.
U.S. shipbuilders ended what had been a 63-day strike at Maine’s Bath Iron Works facility when shipbuilders voted to return to their jobs on Sunday, AP reported. “After falling behind schedule, Bath Iron Works is eager to get caught up on production of destroyers as the U.S. Navy faces growing competition from China and Russia on the high seas,” AP writes. “The General Dynamics subsidiary was already more than six months behind schedule before the strike.” More, here.
New U.S. coronavirus infections reached a two-month low, “notching a ninth straight day with fewer than 50,000 new cases,” the Wall Street Journal reports this morning. However: “Total infections in the U.S. have now passed 5.7 million, nearly a quarter of the world’s roughly 23.42 million, according to Johns Hopkins data. More than 808,000 people world-wide have died, including more than 176,000 in the U.S.” Read on, here.
Iraq's Camp Taji just became the eighth base transferred back to the Iraqis, the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS announced Sunday. The transfer happens now due to “the Iraqi Security Forces' success in the ongoing campaign to defeat Daesh remnants in Iraq, allowing the Coalition to shift its focus and role," the coalition said in its statement.
In the process, “The Coalition transferred $347 million in equipment and property to the Government of Iraq. This was the highest dollar figure of any base transfer,” according to the coalition, which says it added “airfield and runway renovations, modular aircraft shelters, infantry training ranges,” as well as unspecified “vehicles, and more than 90 million rounds of ammunition.”
On Taji’s impact: The location “historically held up to 2,000 Coalition members” who helped train more than 47,000 Iraqi troops in “infantry tactics, marksmanship, operations planning, combat medicine and intelligence analysis.” The final coalition troops will leave “in the coming days.”
“From this day forward, the ISF will take full responsibility for the facilities and programs at Taji and continue to use the site to lead and conduct training as part of the mission to defeat Daesh remnants,” said coalition Deputy Commander, Maj. Gen. Kenneth Ekman, in that Sunday statement. Read more, or watch OIR’s video remembering efforts out of Taji, here.
Dual purpose. The base transfers are partly to allow Iraqi forces to take over more of their country’s security — and partly to get U.S. and coalition troops away from frequent rocket attacks, U.S. Central Command head Gen. Kenneth McKenzie confirmed on Aug. 12.
By the way: The U.S.-led coalition is still carrying out airstrikes in support of the Iraqi military, and the most recently known strike happened Saturday north of Baghdad. Find video of that, here.
Big picture messaging: Coalition and Iraqi forces “have liberated nearly 110,000 square kilometers (42,471 square miles) from Daesh, eliminating their self-proclaimed territorial caliphate and freeing 7.7 million people from Daesh oppression,” the coalition said in its latest civilian casualty report, which covers operations up to the end of May.
Since August 2014, the coalition has carried out 34,846 airstrikes that also killed "at least 1,377 civilians," according to the latest estimates from the coalition, which also happens to be the same numbers the coalition put out publicly in late June and covering the same time period. (The airstrike count spanning that same window of time appears to have increased by 20 since that late June report.)
Monitoring groups like Airwars, of course, put the coalition’s casualty estimate much higher — somewhere between 8,253 and 13,135 civilian deaths out of 1,485 separate alleged incidents. Dive into their data, here.
As intra-Afghan peace talks are still yet to begin, the Taliban have changed tactics in its war with the Afghan government: “frequent targeted assaults that the country’s security forces seem unable to control,” the New York Times reports.
Recent amphibious vehicle accident was the Corps’ deadliest ever, reports Marine Corps Times off data newly released from the Navy Safety Center about the July 30 accident that killed nine Marines heading ashore at San Clemente Island, California, during a training exercise. Only eight other Marines had died in Assault Amphibious Vehicle accidents since 1988. Read, here.
Lastly today: U.S. State Secretary Mike Pompeo travels to the Middle East this week, with stops in Israel and the UAE today and tomorrow, respectively. Stops at Bahrain and Sudan are also scheduled in between, the State Department announced Sunday.