Happy Monday! Some bittersweet TMD news to start the week: As The Dispatch continues to grow, we are working to build out the business side of our operation—and given his background in communications and public relations, James was the perfect candidate to fill a foundational role on that side of the house. We’re very excited about the work he’s going to do to get our articles and newsletters in front of more people, but will of course miss his contributions here on TMD.

In corresponding moves, Mary and Grayson have been promoted to editor and deputy editor of TMD, respectively. Each of them has been working on this newsletter for more than a year, and they both understand what makes it tick. We couldn’t be more excited about the future of The Morning Dispatch. —Declan Garvey, Executive Editor

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• A terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow, Russia, on Friday night killed at least 137 people and injured 150 more. The attackers shot into the crowds inside the venue and set off explosions that caught the building on fire. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, and four men—all reportedly from Tajikistan—who officials believe were responsible for the violence have been arraigned in Moscow on terrorism charges. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Ukraine was responsible for the attack, suggesting in a speech on Saturday that the attackers were attempting to flee to Ukraine when caught by Russian security services. “ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said in a statement. “There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.” The U.S. had received intelligence about a potential terrorist attack and shared the information with Russian authorities earlier this month, though Putin called the warnings “blackmail” from the West. 
• Russia launched a series of strikes against Ukrainian electrical infrastructure over the weekend that knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the war-torn country. One of the Russian missiles targeting Western Ukraine violated Poland’s airspace, according to the Polish military. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed the disruption in U.S. military aid for the severity of the attacks. “It is important to understand the cost of delays and postponed decisions,” he said. “We need air-defense systems to protect people, infrastructure, houses, and dams.” Russian forces also struck Kyiv with a barrage of dozens of missiles and drones on Sunday, though Ukrainian forces claimed to have shot down the majority of the weapons used in the attack.
• The Israel Defense Forces clashed with Hamas over the weekend in Khan Younis and Gaza City in large raids on Nassar and Al-Shifa hospitals, both areas the Israeli military had previously secured and cleared in the southern and northern parts of the enclave. The fighting resulted in hundreds of Hamas members being killed or detained, according to Israeli officials, and the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said five patients died as a result of the fighting at Al-Shifa hospital. Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant arrived in Washington yesterday to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and other senior officials. 
• The Nigerian army on Sunday rescued 137 schoolchildren abducted by gunmen earlier this month. On March 7, local school officials in Kaduna state—an area north of the Nigerian capital, Abuja—claimed 287 students were kidnapped. But Uba Sani, the governor of Kaduna, claimed Sunday that only 137 students were missing from the March attack and that all had been rescued. 
• The Senate voted 74-24 early Saturday morning to pass a $1.2 trillion spending package, which President Joe Biden quickly signed to avert a shutdown and complete government funding through the end of the fiscal year in September. The government technically ran out of funds at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, but the Office of Budget and Management said in a statement it “ceased shutdown preparations” when the legislation’s passage became imminent. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson from his position on Friday as the House passed the spending package. Greene has not requested a vote on the motion and described the move as “more of a warning and a pink slip.”
• GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin announced Friday that he will resign from Congress on April 19. Gallagher, who serves as the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, had previously said he would not seek reelection, and his resignation before the end of his term will bring the House Republican majority down to a single seat.
• New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy suspended her campaign for Senate on Sunday, clearing the way for Democratic Rep. Andy Kim to secure the Democratic nomination to replace Sen. Bob Menendez. Menendez is facing federal bribery charges and announced last week that he wouldn’t seek reelection as a Democrat but hinted at running as an independent.
• Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced on Friday that she had been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. Kate, 42, explained in a video message that after she underwent “major abdominal surgery” in January, subsequent tests revealed the presence of cancer. She disclosed neither the details nor the severity of her diagnosis and requested privacy for her family, including her three children, as she undergoes treatment.

Congress Does Its Job … Six Months Late 

As Senators plowed through amendment vote after amendment vote late Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday morning in an effort to forestall a government shutdown, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont sat contentedly at his desk on the Senate floor, earbuds in, looking at his iPad. There’s even money on whether he was watching tape of an old boxing match or the Wolf of Wall Street. 

Sanders’ apparent boredom notwithstanding, the Senate ultimately passed—by a vote of 74-24—the 1,012-page government funding package worth $1.2 trillion a few minutes before 2 a.m. on Saturday, with no amendments that would have sent the whole thing back to the House to pass again. Though the Senate passed the bill after midnight on Friday, when funding technically expired, the Office of Management and Budget told federal employees to cease their preparations for a shutdown when it became clear that the legislation would …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our full 1,521-word story on Congress funding the government is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• Writing for his Substack, technology and culture writer L.M. Sacasas pushed back on Ted Gioia’s well-circulated essay, “The State of the Culture, 2024,” published last month (and featured in our February 22 TMD). “Gioia’s basic thesis is that we have moved from a culture dominated by entertainment, to one that is dominated by digitally mediated distraction, which in turn generates a culture of addiction, or, as Gioia memorably puts it, Dopamine Culture,” Sacasas wrote. “The dopamine framing, while grappling with real and important dynamics, is inadequate and may ultimately be counterproductive. Why, for example, do we turn to the media of ‘dopamine culture’ in the first place and what keeps us coming back long enough to get addicted (if that is, in fact, what is happening)? Are there no genuine human desires in play at all? Do we keep coming back because we are addicted or because we imagine that we have no better alternative or no good reason not to? What are the underlying fears and aspirations that might be driving our compulsive relationship to digital media? It seems to me that the dopamine framing is far too blunt an instrument to provide nuanced and adequate answers to these questions, hence it tells us too little.” 
• Writing for Christianity Today, Russell Moore unpacked how the evangelical subculture rejected virtue, “driven specifically by the very same white evangelical subculture that once insisted that personal character—virtue, to use a now distant-sounding word the American founders knew well—matters.” He continued: “Part of the vulgarization of the Right is due to the Barstool Sports/Joe Rogan secularization of the base, in which Kid Rock is an avatar more than Lee Greenwood or Michael W. Smith. But much more alarmingly, the coarsening and character-debasing is happening among politicized professing Christians. The member of Congress joking at a prayer breakfast about turning her fiancé down for sex to get there was there to talk about her faith and the importance of religious faith and values for America. The member of Congress telling a reporter to ‘f— off’ is a self-described ‘Christian nationalist.’ We’ve seen ‘Let’s Go Brandon’—a euphemism for a profanity that once would have resulted in church discipline—chanted in churches. If we are hated for attempted Christlikeness, let’s count it all joy. But if we are hated for our cruelty, our sexual hypocrisy, our quarrelsomeness, our hatefulness, and our vulgarity, then maybe we should ask what happened to our witness. Character matters. It is not the only thing that matters. But without character, nothing matters.”

Presented Without Comment

NBC News: [Former RNC Chair Ronna] McDaniel Defends Silence Over January 6th

NBC News’ Kristen Welker: Do you disagree with Trump saying he’s going to free those who have been charged and convicted? 

McDaniel: I do not think people who committed violent acts on January 6 should be free.

Welker: He’s been saying that for months. Why not speak out earlier, Ronna? Why speak out about that now?

McDaniel: When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right? This is what I believe.

Also Presented Without Comment

Wall Street Journal: Lawmakers Face Tough Lobbying on TikTok—From Their Own Kids

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics crew looked at Democrats’ cash advantage heading into the 2024 election, Chris argued (🔒) Republicans are overestimating the effectiveness of Trump’s victimhood appeal, Jonah discussed the consequences of Bernie Sanders’ 32-hour work week proposal, and Nick analyzed (🔒) how the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion medication could hurt Republicans in November.
• On the podcasts: Jonah ruminated on the Whigs, the dangers of Romanticism, the resilience of liberal democracies, and more on the Remnant. On today’s episode of The Dispatch Podcast, Jamie is joined by longtime media critic Brian Stelter to discuss the state of newsrooms and debate the blindspots of partisan outlets.
• On the site over the weekend: Patrick T. Brown reviewed Tim Carney’s new book on family formation, Tod Worner reflected on the 2oth anniversary of The Passion of the Christ and Elizabeth Grace Matthew reviewed a new movie about the life of Mother Francesca Cabrini. 
• On the site today: John reports on the abortion pill case before the Supreme Court.