Happy Tuesday! As we noted last week, Trader Joe’s recalled two types of cookies over concerns that they contained rocks. This week, the grocery store announced a recall of its falafel … over concerns it contains rocks.
Might be time to break up with their wholesaler, who we can only assume is one of Charlie Brown’s neighbors.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- The Republican-led House Judiciary, Oversight, and Ways and Means committees launched inquiries into Hunter Biden’s plea deal Monday, sending a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland scrutinizing portions of the agreement and questioning whether the Justice Department investigation into Biden is still ongoing. Separately, Devon Archer—an ex-business associate of Hunter’s—testified before the Oversight Committee Monday in a closed session probing the business dealings of the president’s son. According to lawmakers present at the briefing, Archer told the committee that Hunter would take calls from his father during business meetings and sometimes put him on speakerphone, but the elder Biden never discussed business and mostly engaged in casual conversation. He said Hunter sold “the illusion of access” to his father.
- A Russian missile strike on a residential building in Kryvyi Rih—a city in central Ukraine distant from the frontlines—killed six people including a 10-year-old girl and injured 75. Two Ukrainian drones struck office buildings in Moscow over the weekend as attacks reaching into Russia have increased in recent weeks. “Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia, to its symbolic centers and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural, and absolutely fair process,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.
- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced Monday that it would no longer consider race in its admissions and hiring processes—barring the use of application essays or other methods for indirectly taking race into account. The school’s board of trustees cited the Supreme Court decision last month in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina which declared the school's admissions process unconstitutional.
- The Catholic Diocese of Syracuse in upstate New York has reached a settlement over more than 400 abuse claims filed by 387 people, agreeing to pay the victims $100 million. Notably, the money will not be paid out by insurance companies that cover the diocese but the diocese itself and its parishes.
- After detaining the country’s president last week, members of Niger’s presidential guard arrested several high-ranking government officials Monday including oil and mining ministers. The new junta arrested the ministers of defense, transport, and interior last week and on Monday captured the head of President Mohamed Bazoum’s Democracy and Socialism party and the son of Niger’s former president.
- The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a political rally in northwestern Pakistan Monday. The attack left at least 54 people dead and nearly 200 injured at an event hosted by a pro-Taliban party.
- Building on legislation passed late last year, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday implementing a major overhaul of how the Uniform Code of Military Justice handles cases of sexual assault, rape, and murder. Rather than leaving prosecutorial decisions to individual military commanders, the change removes military commanders’ power to decide whether to prosecute charges and transfers that power to special independent prosecutors. The order follows congressional action in 2021 directing the president to finalize the changes before the end of 2023.
- The Defense Department announced Monday that President Joe Biden had decided to keep the U.S. Space Command headquarters in Colorado, reversing a Trump administration move that would’ve moved the facility—which has been in Colorado on a temporary basis—to Alabama. A Pentagon spokesman said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, and U.S. Space Command chief Gen. James Dickinson all backed Biden’s decision to remain in Colorado, but some Air Force officials reportedly saw Alabama as a preferable option.
- Paul Reubens, an actor and creator of the comedic Pee-wee Herman character, died on Sunday at the age of 70 after a lengthy battle with cancer.
Tweaking the Algorithm
Even when your own company funds research and company researchers help produce it, it’s hard to avoid over-interpreting the results—just ask Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, who had to tone down his summary of research findings from four new papers about Facebook’s impact on polarization ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
His blog post about the research first offered a sweeping victory lap—“there is little evidence that social media causes harmful ‘affective’ polarization or has any meaningful impact on key political attitudes”—before being updated to more narrowly declare that “there is little evidence that key features of Meta’s platforms alone cause harmful ‘affective’ polarization.”
Even that may be an overstatement.
Congress Digs Into UFOs
In the final pages of the 1980s comic Watchmen, a devastating attack by a supposed extraterrestrial brings the world together and pulls the United States and the Soviet Union back from the brink of nuclear annihilation. The prospect of little green men zipping around the earth’s stratosphere in Tic Tac-shaped flying machines had a similarly unifying effect on the good men and women of the U.S. Congress last week, when the House Oversight national security subcommittee heard testimony on unidentified anomalous or aerial objects, or UAPs. (UAP is a fancy government acronym for what the rest of us know as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.)
The downright collegial spirit that infected the chamber made Invasion of the Body Snatchers look like a documentary.
Worth Your Time
- People were never meant to derive their sense of meaning or purpose from politics, Ronald Dworkin notes in Law & Liberty—but too many today are trying to squeeze blood from that stone. “People who feel unhappiness are naturally filled with religious-like sentiments. They seek to understand the mystery of what they feel as much as they seek relief from their condition,” he notes. “Who can have sent this enemy into the camp of our lives, they ask? And who exactly is this enemy? As more Americans try to address their private pain by seeking answers in illusions—illusions that in some way correspond to the agenda of a political movement—American politics grows increasingly extreme, chaotic, and uncompromising. By piggybacking their problems onto the realms of interests and ideology, these people inject into the American political system problems that the system was never designed to handle.”
Presented Without Comment
Oakland NAACP: “Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. … Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals.”
Also Presented Without Comment
Gov. Ron DeSantis: “I wouldn’t say [my campaign is] too online. I think that there’s a place for that. But ultimately, people in Iowa and New Hampshire, they’re not following the latest Twitter war, they’re following what’s going on in their lives. And I’m very cognizant of that.”
Also Also Presented Without Comment
Semafor: “Senior aides to Ron DeSantis oversaw the campaign’s high-risk strategy of laundering incendiary videos produced by their staff through allied anonymous Twitter accounts, a set of internal campaign communications obtained by Semafor reveals.”
Toeing the Company Line
- It’s Tuesday, which means Dispatch Live (🔒) returns tonight at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT! Declan will be joined by Drucker, Audrey, Price, and Mary to discuss what is shaping up to be a very busy news week and, of course, take plenty of viewer questions! Keep an eye out for an email later today with information on how to tune in.
- In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics team checks in on the jockeying to succeed Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2025, Nick offers (🔒) a particularly bleak take on a new New York Times/Siena poll, and Kevin looks at (🔒) the Achilles heel of the rich and powerful: valets.
- On the podcasts: David and Sarah discuss Justice Samuel Alito’s latest appearance in the Wall Street Journal and Donald Trump’s mounting legal bills, while Steve and Sarah check in on (🔒) their bet amid Trump’s soaring poll numbers and DeSantis’ rough patch.
- On the site: Audrey B. explains the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s art purchases and Stirewalt reflects on the centennial of Warren Harding’s death and Calvin Coolidge’s subsequent ascent.
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