Happy Wednesday! As the Supreme Court considers whether to uphold a “TikTok ban” set to take effect on Sunday, the app’s users have begun to flock to an alternative Chinese streaming platform: Xiaohongshu. The U.S. government is seeking to outlaw TikTok over its alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party, but rest assured, Xiaohongshu—which translates to … checks notes … “Little Red Book”—is totally above board.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- The Department of Justice on Tuesday released special counsel Jack Smith’s 137-page report on his investigation into President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, in which Smith concluded that the incoming president had engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to subvert the transfer of power. The report, which was made public following legal efforts by Trump to suppress it, outlined Smith’s belief that the president-elect would have been convicted in the election case had it not been for his success in the 2024 election. “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” Smith wrote in conclusion. Trump responded to the findings Tuesday, asserting that he was “totally innocent” and calling Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor.”
- South Korean authorities detained President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday in connection to his short-lived declaration of martial law last month, marking the first time in the country’s history that a sitting president has faced arrest. Yoon’s detention, on charges of abuse of authority and orchestrating a rebellion, followed an unsuccessful attempt by law enforcement to arrest him after an hourslong standoff between police and the president’s private security detail earlier this month. In a video address, Yoon denounced the investigation as “illegal” but said he would comply “in order to prevent any unsavory bloodshed.”
- Mozambique swore in Daniel Chapo—a member of the southern African nation’s longtime ruling party, the Mozambique Liberation Front—as president on Wednesday. The inauguration followed widespread unrest in response to the country’s October election, which opposition leaders and election monitors rejected as rigged in Chapo’s favor. “We’ll protest every single day,” the runner-up candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, said ahead of the swearing-in. “If it means paralyzing the country for the entire term, we will paralyze it for the entire term.”
- Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump’s pick for defense secretary, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday for his confirmation hearing. After four hours of questioning about his treatment of women, alleged alcohol abuse, and qualifications, Hegseth appeared on track to advance through the committee. The full Senate could vote as soon as this week on whether to confirm Hegseth, whose odds improved after Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, previously considered a potential Republican holdout, told a Des Moines radio station on Tuesday that she would support him. The nominee can afford to lose the votes of only three Republicans.
- Wildfires continued to spread in and around Los Angeles on Tuesday, covering more than 37,000 acres. Firefighters successfully extinguished several smaller blazes, but officials warned the Palisades and Eaton fires—now 18 percent and 35 percent contained, respectively—could take weeks to bring under control. After dropping its “Particularly Dangerous Situation” red flag warning on Tuesday amid lower-than-expected winds, the National Weather Service reinstated the designation for parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties through 6 p.m. PT today. At least 25 people have been killed, and more than 100,000 remain displaced, as a result of the ongoing natural disaster.
- The Department of Homeland Security announced plans on Tuesday to ban imports from 37 Chinese companies it accused of benefiting from forced labor in Xinjiang. The move—which included textile manufacturers, real estate firms, and mining subsidiaries—drew on the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a law aimed at preventing goods made with forced labor in China, particularly in Xinjiang, from entering the United States. Tuesday’s announcement marked the largest round of companies outlawed under the authority in a single day.
Civil War in Sudan
On September 9, 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to deliver much-anticipated testimony on the crisis in Sudan’s western region of Darfur. Eighteen minutes into his remarks, he became the first executive branch official in U.S. history to declare an ongoing conflict a “genocide.”
More than 20 years later, American officials are once again warning that a campaign of ethnic destruction has gripped Sudan.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally declared last week that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a successor group to the Janjaweed militias behind the 2004 atrocities, has committed genocide in the country’s ongoing civil war. “The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys—even infants—on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” Blinken said in a statement last Tuesday announcing the determination.
More than 20 months into the civil war, the declaration marked a last-minute push by the Biden administration to bring peace to Sudan despite multiple failed attempts at mediation. But some lawmakers and former officials see the lame-duck effort—coming just days before President Joe Biden leaves office—as too little, too late, particularly as ...
As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. You can read our 1,652-word item on the Sudan genocide designation in the members-only version of TMD.
Worth Your Time
- The bomb is back, the Wall Street Journal wrote. In a series of infographics, a team of reporters walked through the historical—and resurgent—threat of a nuclear arms race. “At the end of the Cold War, global powers reached the consensus that the world would be better off with fewer nuclear weapons. That era is now over. Treaties are collapsing, some nuclear powers are strengthening their arsenals, the risk is growing that nuclear weapons will spread more widely and the use of tactical nuclear weapons to gain battlefield advantage is no longer unimaginable,” they wrote. “The latest estimates indicate that China has about 600 intercontinental ballistic missiles in its arsenal, all of which can reach the U.S. mainland, according to a Pentagon assessment of China’s military released in December. Beijing has rejected past proposals that it meet with the U.S. and Russia to negotiate formal limits on nuclear forces.”
- In Bastrop, Texas, a rural town of 12,000 and the site of Elon Musk’s corporate compound, an entire education system “is being created in Musk’s image,” Lauren McGaughy wrote for the Texas Tribune. “Musk’s name isn’t on the school’s application or its website. It isn’t even on the paperwork of a nonprofit that reported total assets of more than $200 million at the end of 2022. But his foundation provided the seed money, his top advisers are leading the venture and Musk’s influence is everywhere. The initial curriculum, which The Texas Newsroom obtained from the state through a public records request, pulls heavily from a Montessori-inspired playbook of ‘individualized exploration’ and the school’s website promises students a course of study delivered in a ‘progressive learning environment’ focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math),” she wrote. “Even the name, ‘Ad Astra,’ sounds like something Musk would dream up. It means ‘to the stars’ in Latin. This isn’t the first time Musk has waded into the education world. He started programs for his and his employees’ kids in the past. But what starts here with Ad Astra promises to be Musk’s biggest foray into education to date, and, if successful, will add to his already massive footprint in Central Texas.”
Presented Without Comment
New York Times: Hegseth Spars With Senator Over Definition of ‘Jagoff’ During Confirmation Hearing
Also Presented Without Comment
NBC News: ‘If you want to take it outside ...’: Rep. Nancy Mace challenges Rep. Jasmine Crockett at House hearing
The war of words came during a discussion of civil rights and transgender rights, with Crockett calling for re-establishing a subcommittee on civil rights and criticizing Mace’s rhetoric about transgender people.
“I can see that somebody’s campaign coffers really are struggling right now. So [Mace] is gonna keep saying ‘trans, trans, trans, trans’ so that people will feel threatened, and child, listen —” Crockett said.
“I am no child, do not call me a child, I am no child,” Mace interjected, prompting committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., to unsuccessfully call for order.
“If you want to take it outside, we can do that,” Mace said, addressing Crockett.
In the Zeitgeist
Ringo Starr’s release of a Nashville-inspired country music album, Look Up, certainly wasn’t on our 2025 bingo card. But what can we say, the 84-year-old Beatle has still got it.
Toeing the Company Line
- In the newsletters: Nick Catoggio argued (🔒) that the MAGA movement has “incentivized degeneracy by treating it as a form of courage.”
- On the podcasts: Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined Jamie Weinstein to discuss Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the late queen, and more on The Dispatch Podcast. And on today’s Remnant, Jonah Goldberg and TMD’s very own James P. Sutton offer a sober, fact-based evaluation of the California wildfires.
- On the site: Raymond Powell walks through China’s aggressive maneuvers in the South China Sea, Charles Hilu reports on Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, and Jonah writes in favor of—peacefully!—acquiring Greenland.
