Don't tell Arizona Republicans the election is over

Did you know that Arizona is kind of still counting 2020 election ballots? No, really, they are. And don't sleep on President Joe Biden making his big trip to meet Putin. That has the potential to be both politically incendiary and actually newsy. 

It's Monday, ya'll. Here we go. 

Arizona's election audit is disinformation

According to recently uncovered emails, former President Donald Trump called Karen Fann, the Republican president of Arizona’s state Senate, personally thanking her for ordering a recount of the state’s 2020 presidential votes and “pushing to prove any fraud.”

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s aide de camp, called her at least six times, or so she said in one of her emails. That may help explain why a partisan company with zero relevant experience is conducting a dubiously competent and seemingly interminable recount of Maricopa County’s votes inside Phoenix’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Here is a puzzle. What do Trump and his allies hope to accomplish? The partisan recount lacks all credibility. The county’s Republican recorder and all five of its supervisors, four of them Republicans, have denounced it as a sham.

It is unnecessary.

Today's editorial cartoon 

• June editorial cartoons: Trump reinstatement timeline

Biden needs to get tough with Russia

We need to push back against Vladimir Putin. President Joe Biden needs to take a much harder line when he meets the Russian leader this week in Switzerland. 

For too long, presidents of both parties have gone far too easy on Moscow’s most meddlesome man.  If the United States does not do more to deter his attacks on our institutions and ideals, our democracy may become irreparably damaged in the coming years.

Wait, don't go yet

We have here a few more opinions from the weekend. Because it's hard to have too many opinions, tbh. 

• Don't get 'woke,' get serious about saving democracy.
• He's on the left. I'm on the right. Here's what we learned talking to each other
• My best friends were murdered at Pulse nightclub. I survived to fight for them.
• I said I couldn't stand Indian food. Then a Twitter friend took me to dinner.
• Reinstating Catherine Lhamon at the Dept. of Education is a mistake
• How the outrage industrial complex profits from stoking Americans' anger
• Justice subpoenas are bad enough, but government has other ways to go after journalists