Happy Thursday! A new study found people who wear glasses earn slightly more than people who don’t. It should come as no surprise that your TMD editors are delighted by this news. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the strike on the individuals they described as operatives in the terrorist organization. Hamas claimed four of Haniyeh’s grandchildren were also killed in the strike, which the IDF did not confirm.
• During a state visit by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday, President Joe Biden and his Japanese counterpart announced deepened cooperation across several areas, including the creation of a joint military command structure in Japan and a plan to work with Australia to build out coordinated missile and air defenses in the region. Biden also said Japanese astronauts will join NASA’s Artemis missions, which would make the Japanese astronauts the first non-Americans to set foot on the moon. Later today, Biden and Kishida will meet with Filipino President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos to discuss Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.
• Exit polls showed the South Korean opposition, the Democratic Party, had clinched a decisive victory over President Yoon Suk Yeol’s conservatives in national parliamentary elections on Wednesday. Yoon—who was elected in 2022 for a five-year term—has aligned the country with the United States and pursued closer ties with Japan. The opposition and an allied party, which appear to have captured a combined 175 seats in the 300-seat National Assembly, campaigned on stalling Yoon’s pro-business domestic agenda. 
• The Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent month-over-month and 3.5 percent annually in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday, up from 3.2 percent year-over-year growth in February and exceeding economists’ expectations. Stripped of more volatile food and energy prices, inflation rose 3.8 percent year-over-year. The hotter-than-anticipated data will likely keep the Federal Reserve from cutting rates when it meets at the end of this month, and possibly longer.
• A New York appeals court on Wednesday rejected former President Donald Trump’s third attempt in recent days to delay his criminal trial related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, which is set to begin on Monday. Meanwhile, former Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in prison for lying under oath during testimony related to the New York civil fraud case against Trump and his business associates. Weisselberg previously served five months for tax fraud he committed while at the Trump Organization.
• Speaking to reporters in Atlanta on Wednesday, Trump said that he would not sign a national abortion ban as president if federal legislation passed Congress and reached his desk. He also said the law that will soon go into effect in Arizona—which bans all abortions in the state with the exception of those necessary to save the life of the mother—went “too far” and will “be straightened out,” and predicted that the six-week restriction signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year would be rolled back by voters in November. “Florida’s probably going to change. Arizona’s going to definitely change,” Trump said. “Everybody wants that to happen. And you’re getting the will of the people.”

Section 702 Reauthorization Falters

In January 2018, then-President Donald Trump was doing what he often did in those days: tweeting. The House of Representatives, meanwhile, was preparing to reauthorize a key surveillance authority used by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies with the White House’s blessing—or, so they thought.

At 7:33 a.m. on January 11, 2018—just as the hosts of “Fox & Friends” happened to be discussing the effort to re-up Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—Trump fired off a tweet. “‘House votes on controversial FISA ACT today,’” he wrote, quoting a Fox News chyron. “This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?” As it happened, that was exactly what “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy was wondering aloud on air at about that time! 

As our very own Steve Hayes reported at the time for The Weekly Standard, Trump’s cable news-inspired pivot from the position his administration had held only hours before briefly put the reauthorization in doubt, although the president sent a follow-up tweet clarifying his support for reauthorization and the bill passed the House later that day. 

Though Trump no longer “tweets”—he “truths”—old, legislation-sinking habits die hard. On Wednesday, Republican House leadership hoped to reauthorize Section 702 ahead of its expiration on April 19. But at 1:43 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Trump wrote the following on his Truth Social account: “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!” 

The Biden administration, congressional leaders from both parties, and intelligence officials have all pushed for Congress to reauthorize Section 702, but renewal faces opposition from progressives and hardline Republicans, now buttressed by the former president. 

The House voted down the rule on the bill to reauthorize …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our full 1,700-word story on the effort to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• In a podcast for Christianity Today, Editor-in-Chief Russell Moore interviewed our old friend Nancy French about her upcoming book, Ghosted: An American Story. The conversation—at turns hilarious, tragic, and heartwarming—is worth listening to in its entirety. But we were particularly struck by Nancy’s response when asked what she’s learned covering high-profile instances of abuse in church and religious settings. “I’ve never really seen an institution with whom I’ve been connected respond correctly,” she said. “I think what happens is these institutions were created for God’s glory in various ways, and then they exchange that purpose for risk aversion [and] brand management. And so, as Curtis Chang has written, that is idolatry, and idolatry is all throughout the Bible. And when you read about idols in the Old Testament, they frequently demand sacrifice, including women and children. And I think that’s what’s happening now, with all of these organizations. They’re completely fine [with] sacrificing the lives and well-being emotionally of women and children just to survive and it’s quite shocking and it’s horrific.”
• America does not need its own Caesar, Jeffrey Tyler Syck argued in Persuasion, adding we should be wary of those on the right who say a strongman is necessary to meet the moment. “Advocates of Caesarism today see such centralization as the cost of achieving great things,” Syck wrote. “Like Julius and Augustus, they argue that deep transformation can only be accomplished through upending the entire political system. … But even if we had reached the dire situation extremists say we have, strongman rule is not a workable solution. Ultimately, Caesarists view equality, tradition, virtue, or some other cultural institution as the chief aim of politics—and they are willing to do anything to achieve it. In this way, they reveal not only their tyrannical impulses but a dearth of basic political knowledge. Art, virtue, and everything else of value that defines a society must be left to evolve organically. The will of a single individual cannot bring into being art—for innovation requires freedom. A strongman cannot build a well-ordered people—for that requires self-government. Caesar can never cultivate a great culture—he can only manage decline.” 

Presented Without Comment

NBC News: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Privately Tells Donors He Plans to Fundraise for Trump

Also Presented Without Comment

Politico: [Former White House Chief of Staff Ron] Klain on Biden: He is Focused Too Much on Bridges

“I think the president is out there too much talking about bridges,” Klain said, according to audio exclusively obtained by POLITICO. “He does two or three events a week where he’s cutting a ribbon on a bridge. And here’s a bridge. Like I tell you, if you go into the grocery store, you go to the grocery store and, you know, eggs and milk are expensive, the fact that there’s a [f—ing] bridge is not [inaudible].”

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics crew covered the Arizona Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, Scott broke down (🔒) what a “China Shock” actually means, and Nick argued that (🔒) that Mike Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are representative of two MAGA factions driving a new level of House GOP dysfunction. 
• On the podcasts: On today’s episode of Advisory Opinions, Sarah and David dig into the jury questionnaire in the hush money case before getting into the weeds of originalism. Plus, Jonah is joined on The Remnant by former Israeli lawmaker Dr. Einat Wilf to discuss the past, present, and future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 
• On the site: Nick Hafen explains Florida’s new social media law and Scott Salvato dives into the Catholic Church’s stance on immigration.