to celebrate july 4th in several key battleground states. we ll show you how the presidential contenders marked the holiday. plus a federal judge orders the biden administration to stop talking with social media companies. what it means for the effort to tamp down misinformation about covid and so much more. and later which of these things is not like the other? looks like the gop needs to brush up on its social studies. how its twitter page mixed up the american flag. good morning, and welcome to way too early on this wednesday, july 5th. i m jonathan lemire, and thanks for starting your day with us. we certainly hope you had a happy and safe july 4th. the white house celebrated america s independence yesterday with a barbecue, a concert, and of course plenty of fireworks. we re turning from a weekend at camp david, president joe biden addressed military members in the crowd who he called the protectors of democracy. you are the backbone, the reality of why we are
Wagner forces into the russian military, but that comes with a host of its own challenges including the fact numerous wagner fighters have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. this opens up a whole new can of worms for moscow. the second option would be to install a new head to mostly keep wagner in place, keep its vast infrastructure in place and install a leader more pliant to putin and to the kremlin almost an anti-prigozhin, somebody that s going to kind of be really putin s lapdog. and lastly they can dissolve wagner into existing private military companies. sergei shogui, the defense minister. the russian energy giant now has its own private military contractor. but even that decentralizes wagner and takes away its power force multiplier for moscow which has become dependent on this group. certainly had success in
This, with mr. prigozhin now reportedly in exile in belarus mr. putin faces a few choices how to deal with wag n purseinaries scattered around the world. none are likely to play out well for russia. even if wagner fighters do decide to join russian military units en masse, it won t be easy for moscow to integrate them. joining us now the author of that piece, director of research at the sufan group, collin clark. his research focuses on domestic and international security as well as geopolitics. collin, fascinating piece. so let s start with this wagner group. there s reporting over the weekend that prigozhin was trying to summon a lot of them to reorganize in belarus. not clear for what purposes. what are the options that putin has to deal with this private army not so many miles away from moscow? yeah, thanks for having me, jonathan. i think, you know, first of all putin can try to integrate the