A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump on the issue of “crime and safety” by nine points, 50% to 41%.

Aaron Blake: “The finding echoes what we’ve seen from other pollsters. A Pew Research Center poll from mid-June showed Biden led Trump 46% to 43% on which candidate could ‘effectively handle law enforcement and criminal justice issues.’ A Kaiser Family Foundation poll from late June directly employed the ‘law and order’ phrasing, finding voters trusted Biden to handle maintaining it by a 51-41 margin — virtually identical to the Post-ABC poll.”

“To the extent that there is a law-and-order candidate at this point, it appears to be Biden.”

Earlier for members: Trump Doubles-Down on ‘Law and Order’ Message

The U.S. attorney in Oregon wants an investigation into “constitutionally questionable arrests in Portland” by officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.

CNN: “Floyd sobbed as officers initially began pulling him from the vehicle he was in, and at one point officer Derek Chauvin appears to lean into pressure applied to Floyd’s neck. Floyd’s last words, which were not seen in a previously released transcript, were, ‘I can’t breathe.’”

President Trump told CBS News the killing of George Floyd was “terrible” but appeared to bristle when asked why Black Americans are “still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country.”

Said Trump: “So are White people. So are White people. What a terrible question to ask. So are White people. More White people, by the way. More White people.”

He also said the Confederate flag was a freedom of speech issue: “All I say is freedom of speech. It’s very simple. My attitude is freedom of speech. Very strong views on the Confederate flag. With me, it’s freedom of speech. Very simple. Like it, don’t like it, it’s freedom of speech.”

“The first planned federal execution in 17 years is that of a convicted killer whose victims’ relatives have told President Trump that putting him to death would only compound their grief and have asked a federal judge to halt it,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

This is interesting from the new Monmouth poll: Just 18% of voters think “defund the police” means “get rid of the police,” while 77% believe it means a call to action to change the way police operate.

As Dave Weigel notes, the latest wave of Trump campaign ads portrays “Biden’s America” as one without any police.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions referred to Henry Louis Gates Jr., a celebrated Black Harvard University scholar, as “some criminal” in the New York Times Magazine.

CNN notes Gates had been wrongfully arrested by a police officer in 2009 as he tried to enter his own home. After the incident, then-President Barack Obama invited Gates and the arresting officer to the White House for a “beer summit.”

Said Sessions: “The police had been demoralized. There was all the Obama — there’s a riot, and he has a beer at the White House with some criminal, to listen to him.”

“Three members of a North Carolina police department have been fired after a department audit of a video recording captured one of the officers saying a civil war was necessary to wipe Black people off the map and that he was ready,” the Raleigh News & Observer reports.

One officer said he was going to buy a new assault rifle, and soon “we are just going to go out and start slaughtering them (expletive)” Blacks. “I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait.”

He added that he felt a civil war was needed to “wipe them off the (expletive) map. That’ll put them back about four or five generations.”

In secretly recorded phone calls, a Mount Vernon, NY police officer admitted that some drug dealers operate in the city with “free rein,” Gothamist reports.

“Officer Campo’s claim that he personally safeguarded the drug dealer’s bundle of crack was made in one of several phone calls secretly recorded by Bovell between 2017 and this year. In that and another recording, Campo claimed that members of the department’s narcotics unit allowed favored drug dealers to sell with impunity, get deliveries, and control territory. In exchange, he said, the dealers, serving as confidential informants, gave them information leading to the arrests of their own low-level clients.”

Washington Post: “At a time when President Trump and other top U.S. officials have claimed — with little evidence — that leftist groups were fomenting violence, federal prosecutors have charged various supporters of a right-wing movement called the ‘boogaloo bois,’ with crimes related to plotting to firebomb a U.S. Forest Service facility, preparing to use explosives at a peaceful demonstration and killing a security officer at a federal courthouse.”

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) told the Des Moines Register that she will sign an executive order restoring voting rights to people with past felony convictions, a move that will address Iowa’s status as the last state in the country with a lifetime ban on felon voting.

“Houston’s top prosecutor has concluded that a scandal-ridden former Houston police officer likely lied when he arrested George Floyd on a minor drug offense for which Mr. Floyd served time in state jail,” the Wall Street Journal reports.