The first votes of 2020 will be cast Monday in Iowa. Meanwhile, voting rights advocates are warning that this could be a banner year for voter suppression, and after 2016, concerns abound that we could see new efforts by foreign powers to interfere in the election.

One of the top election experts in the country, Rick Hasen, will join us Friday to discuss threats to elections — the real ones and the imagined ones — that we’re likely to see in 2020. Hasen is the Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine and a frequent source for TPM reporters. We’ll also discuss attempts by the Trump administration and its allies to perpetuate the “voter fraud” myth.

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That is, if they want to continue with their acquittal cause.

President Trump’s legal team made it through the first day of questioning with several bruises, mainly from its attempts to answer questions about the underlying facts of the case against the President.

Rick Hasen is one of the nation’s top experts on voter suppression and voter fraud propaganda of the sort often pushed by the Trump administration. He’s been a go-to source for our reporters and editors on these issues for years.

Tomorrow, we’re holding an Inside briefing with Hasen. If you care about these issues, you won’t want to miss it.

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We wrapped up the impeachment trial’s Q&A portion last night and two key senators immediately announced where they stood on witnesses: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was for them, but Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was against.

Now we’re waiting for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to make a statement (Romney is a yes). But, as Tierney Sneed wrote last night, the best Democrats can hope for now is a 50-50 tie. Chief Justice John Roberts could break it, but he’s not expected to do so.

Is it game over for Democrats? Not quite.

Let me share with you some thoughts about polls and how they relate to the impending Democratic presidential primary process.

Let me start with some core assumptions. First is that I think Bernie Sanders has a range of electoral vulnerabilities that makes President Trump’s reelection far more likely if Sanders is the nominee. I think this is the case because he supports a number of policies that just are not popular and are tailor made for attacks disqualifying him with the general electorate. There’s also a history of identification and left cultural politics that are also tailor-made for the kind of attack ads that can disqualify a candidate.

But there’s at least some problem with my reasoning. As I’ve told you again and again, people discount polls at their peril. They are imperfect and they measure a fluid reality. But they are one of the key metrics that allow us to step outside our assumptions, personal milieu, region, ideology and see what the whole country actually thinks.

Senate Republicans have secured the votes they need to block witnesses at the Senate impeachment trial, but they don’t appear to have settled on a plan for how to end the trial once that witness vote fails.