<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/us/elections/primary-election-michigan-arizona-kansas.html?partner=IFTTT" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">What to Watch For in Today’s Primaries</a>  <font color="#6f6f6f">The New York Times</font>

Representative Rashida Tlaib faces a rematch in Michigan. And some Republicans aren’t thrilled about Kris Kobach’s Senate campaign in Kansas.

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An election worker organized absentee ballots in Detroit on Tuesday.Credit…Elaine Cromie for The New York Times

Polls have now closed in a smattering of elections across the country that will provide a snapshot of the nation’s mood and be a harbinger of things to come this fall for Democrats and Republicans alike.

There are, as a once promising Democrat memorably said, two Americas.

In one, President Trump is sagging in the polls, his ineffectual handling of the coronavirus and incendiary response to racial justice protests having alienated a large segment of the country.

Yet in the other America, the one where Republican primary voters will go to the polls this week in Kansas and Tennessee, Mr. Trump is not toxic at all. In fact, his endorsement amounts to a political seal of good housekeeping.

The Senate primaries in those states for seats held by two retiring Republicans have, like G.O.P. contests elsewhere, evolved into tests of who’s most supportive of Mr. Trump and critical of his intraparty opponents. Never mind that the president could be on his way out of office when the would-be senators are sworn in next year.

The president has not endorsed a candidate in Kansas, where establishment-aligned Republicans are petrified that the polarizing former secretary of state Kris Kobach may claim the nomination and imperil an otherwise safe Republican Senate seat.

But Mr. Kobach and two of his main rivals — Representative Roger Marshall and the plumbing executive Bob Hamilton — are all embracing Mr. Trump in their advertising and vowing to support his policies.

In Tennessee, which holds its primary on Thursday, Bill Hagerty, a private equity executive who served as finance chairman for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, is running on his endorsement from the president. Mr. Hagerty helped exorcise his ties to Mr. Romney by supporting Mr. Trump in the 2016 general election and serving as his ambassador to Japan.

His upstart challenger, Manny Sethi, an orthopedist who teaches at Vanderbilt University, is trying to upset Mr. Hagerty by pledging his loyalty to Mr. Trump and relentlessly highlighting Mr. Hagerty’s relationship with Mr. Romney, who is in his first term as a Utah senator. Mr. Romney, the only Senate Republican who voted to remove Mr. Trump from office during impeachment, is now something of a dirty word in Republican primaries.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Representative Rashida Tlaib is facing a tough Democratic primary in Michigan; a bitter House battle in St. Louis is unfolding between a Justice Democrats-backed upstart and a longtime Democratic incumbent; and Joe Arpaio, the 88-year-old immigration hard-liner and former sheriff of Maricopa County, is asking Arizona voters to return him to that office.

The Department of Homeland Security is moving to “rapidly” replace the uniforms of tactical border agents who prompted widespread criticism for detaining demonstrators in Portland, Ore., in military-style apparel.

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the department’s acting deputy secretary, submitted prepared remarks to a Senate committee on Tuesday that said the department would move to change the uniforms of the Customs and Border Protection agents who responded to the unrest surrounding a federal courthouse in Portland.

Some agents from BORTAC, the Border Patrol’s equivalent of a S.W.A.T. team, were captured in videos detaining people off the sidewalk and placing them into unmarked vehicles, spurring investigations from the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. Officials from the Pentagon have also expressed concern over the public mistaking the agents for members of the military.

“We want a system where people can tell the difference” between the federal agents who are patrolling streets and military troops who are not, Jonathan Hoffman, a chief Defense Department spokesman, said last month.

Mr. Cuccinelli argued in his remarks to a Senate judiciary subcommittee that the department’s agents were not unidentified, citing the word “POLICE” and an agency logo on their uniforms. He said that the agents did not have names displayed because of fear they would be doxxed. But some senators said that was not distinguishable enough.

Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, displayed a poster with an image of the camouflaged agents next to a photograph of a “right-wing militia group.” He said any insignia on the uniforms was not clearly visible.

“They have no unique identifier,” Mr. Merkley said. “These features, officers with no identity attacking protesters, sweeping somebody into unmarked vans, are the features for secret police tactics from around the world.”

President Trump, who only a day ago suggested he could restrict voting by mail through executive fiat, reversed course on Tuesday, urging his supporters in Florida to request mail-in ballots as some polls show him trailing in the pandemic-racked battleground state.

“Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Florida’s Voting system has been cleaned up (we defeated Democrats attempts at change), so in Florida I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail!”

Mr. Trump’s caustic public denunciation of the mail-in voting system has chafed many Republicans who see his statements as likely to cost him support among older voters, many of whom may rely on mail-in ballots to avoid going to polling stations during the pandemic. Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, and other party leaders have said mail-in voting can work as long as anti-fraud measures are in place.

Campaign officials have recently warned the president that efforts to block mail-in voting in Florida, with its large population of older voters, could have especially dire consequences, according to two Republicans familiar with the situation.

In a press briefing at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Trump explained that his position on mail-in voting depended on the competence of state officials.

A routine bill-signing turned into an embarrassing blooper for Mr. Trump on Tuesday.

At a signing of the Great American Outdoors Act, the president appeared not to recognize the word “Yosemite” in his prepared text, pronouncing it instead “Yo Semites.”

The latest verbal miscue by Mr. Trump came as he and his campaign have repeatedly seized on verbal gaffes by his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and sought to portray Mr. Biden as senile.

And Yosemite National Park in California, which Mr. Trump was trying to reference, is a federal treasure that presidents have often highlighted.

Before he signed the act into law, Mr. Trump talked about young Americans looking at “the breathtaking beauty of the Grand Canyon,” before moving on in his script.

“When they gaze upon Yo Semites — Yo Seminites — towering sequoias, their love of country grows stronger,” Mr. Trump said.

The original sponsor of the bill was Representative John Lewis, the late civil rights icon from Georgia, of whom Mr. Trump was dismissive in an interview with “Axios on HBO.”

Condoleezza Rice, former United States Secretary of State, at a conference in Abu Dhabi in November.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged President Trump on Tuesday to sign legislation to rename 10 United States Army bases bearing Confederate generals and added her support for taking down statues of rebel commanders and other figures from the secessionist, pro-slavery movement.

Ms. Rice, the first African-American woman to serve as the nation’s top diplomat, spoke out during the opening session of the annual Aspen Security Forum when asked about Mr. Trump’s response to the protests for racial justice since the police killing of George Floyd in May.

“I actually don’t know why anybody wants to defend the Confederacy and Confederate monuments,” Ms. Rice said during the online forum. “This glorification of people with military bases named after military officers who tried to destroy the country, I don’t get it.”

Mr. Trump has defended flying the Confederate flag as “freedom of speech” and threatened to veto a defense authorization bill that includes a bipartisan provision calling for the renaming of bases like Fort Bragg, Fort Hood and Fort Benning. Asked if he should sign it, Ms. Rice said, “Absolutely,” adding, “I can think of better names than Confederate generals for our bases.”

At the same time, she said the move to dismantle monuments can be taken too far, referring to protesters’ calls to remove memorials in Washington and Boston showing Abraham Lincoln standing over a liberated slave in a way critics consider degrading.

Ms. Rice’s position reflects an evolution in her thinking. Just three years ago, during a book tour, she said she supported lowering the Confederate flag over Southern capitals but opposed taking down statues.

Representative Louie Gohmert has frequently refused to wear a mask in the Capitol.Credit…Matt Mcclain/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

What do House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Louie Gohmert’s daughter have in common?

They both want him to wear a mask.

Mr. Gohmert’s daughter Caroline Brooks, a singer who performs under the stage name BELLSAINT, tweeted a tempered rebuke of her father (and a less measured takedown of the president) shortly after the cantankerously mask-averse Texas congressman announced last week that he had been infected with the coronavirus.

“This has been a heartbreaking battle bc I love my dad and don’t want him to die,” Ms. Brooks said on Twitter. “Please please listen to medical experts. It’s not worth following a president who has no remorse for leading his followers to an early grave.”

Mr. Gohmert has frequently refused to wear a mask in the Capitol. He says he has no symptoms and suspects he was infected, contrary to the available evidence on transmission, during one of the few times he chose to wear a mask.

Ms. Pelosi, who instituted a mask mandate on the floor of the House in response to Mr. Gohmert’s diagnosis, offered a similar assessment to the one Mr. Gohmert’s daughter did.

“I’m so sorry for him,” she told reporters last week. “But I’m also sorry my members, who are concerned, because he has been showing up at meetings without a mask and making a thing of it.”

Messages and calls to Mr. Gohmert and his daughter were not immediately returned.

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, Luke Broadwater, Nick Corasaniti, Reid J. Epstein, Nicholas Fandos, Manny Fernandez, Katie Glueck, Kathleen Gray, Maggie Haberman, Zolan Kanno-Youngs,Annie Karni, Jonathan Martin, Jesse McKinley, Giovanni Russonello, Glenn Thrush, Neil Vigdor and Michael Wines.


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