Obamas Headline DNC Night Two

Happy Wednesday! We’ve written enough stories about artificial intelligence (AI) to know it’s an imperfect technology trained on imperfect human inputs. And apparently, one of those inputs is good, old-fashioned Rickrolling: One customer service bot helpfully provided a user with a link to a video tutorial that did not, in fact, exist. You can see where this is going.  

On a totally unrelated note, click here. For … reasons. 

Quick Hits Today’s Top Stories

• During the second night of the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, delivered a personal speech about his wife, followed by former First Lady Michelle Obama and former President Barack Obama, who painted Harris as the inheritor of his legacy. At one point, the former president encouraged the crowd in a chant of “Yes she can!”—a play on his 2008 slogan, “Yes we can!” But many speakers—including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and several current or former Republicans—emphasized the tight margins in the polls. Meanwhile, police arrested dozens of anti-Israel protesters in front of the Israeli consulate in Chicago on Tuesday night after many of them charged at a line of police.
• A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday upheld a challenge to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) ban on non-compete agreements set to go into effect next month, holding that the FTC did not have the statutory authority to set such a rule. The FTC first passed the rule along partisan lines in April, but it immediately faced a legal challenge. A spokeswoman for the FTC said the agency is “seriously considering a potential appeal” of the decision.
• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Tuesday that it has recovered the bodies of six male hostages held in Gaza—five of whom had previously been reported as deceased—found in Hamas-operated tunnels in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis. The six hostages, all of whom were kidnapped by Hamas militants during its October 7 terrorist attacks, ranged from 35 to 80 years old.
• The IDF also struck a Hamas command and control center on Tuesday that it said was hidden within a school compound in Gaza City, while Hamas government officials said the air strike killed 12 Palestinians. “Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians,” the IDF tweeted. “The Hamas terrorist organization systematically violates international law and operates from within civilian infrastructure and shelters in Gaza, exploiting the Gazan civilian population for its terrorist activities.”
• Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with officials in Egypt and Qatar on Tuesday to push for a ceasefire and hostage release proposal accepted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the day prior. Hamas leaders, who have rejected the latest deal, on Tuesday accused the U.S. of “blind bias” towards Israel.
• The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday agreed to make itself liable if a district court judge ruled against former President Donald Trump in a pending lawsuit centered around his removal of protesters at Lafayette Square in June 2020. In a four-page legal notice, DOJ officials explained that the DOJ would become the defendant in the case since Trump cannot be held personally accountable because he was “acting within the scope” of his executive authority as president. Three protesters initially filed the lawsuit 10 days after the Lafayette Square incident and argued that their removal infringed upon several rights, including those protected by the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.
• Lawyers representing the former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey—who officially resigned from the U.S. Senate on Tuesday following his conviction last month on 16 felony charges, including bribery—requested on Monday that a federal judge vacate Menendez’s conviction and schedule a new trial on the grounds that he was acting within the confines of the “speech and debate” clause of the Constitution which grants senators certain immunity from prosecution. “These convictions will make terrible, dangerous law,” Menendez’s legal representative wrote in the 52-page request. “All of Senator Menendez’s convictions must be reversed.” Meanwhile, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is expected later this week to appoint his former chief of staff, George Helmy, to fill Menendez’s seat until the term expires in January when a newly elected senator will take office.
• A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Hunter Biden’s bid to have his felony tax evasion charges dismissed. Biden’s legal team argued that the special counsel prosecuting the case had been improperly appointed, mirroring the legal reasoning successfully deployed by lawyers representing former President Donald Trump in his classified documents case. That ruling by Judge Aileen Cannon is now being appealed by special counsel Jack Smith. Biden’s team also cited Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in a recent ruling on presidential immunity, which questioned the constitutionality of special counsels. The judge overseeing Biden’s case, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, wrote in his decision that neither “Justice Thomas’s opinion nor Judge Cannon’s order is binding precedent” and therefore had no bearing on the case.
• The Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on former Haitian President Michel Martelly—who held the office from 2011 to 2016—for allegedly using his authority to help traffic illegal drugs and sponsor violent gangs. Martelly is a U.S. resident living in Florida, and it’s unclear how the sanctions will affect him. 

Turn Down For What? 

CHICAGO—The final speaker for Tuesday night’s program at the Democratic National Convention may have been a popular, two-term former president, but even he recognized he was playing second fiddle.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling fired up. I am feeling ready to go,” said former President Barack Obama shortly after taking the stage at the United Center. “Even if I’m the only person stupid enough to speak right after Michelle Obama.”

The former first lady’s act was indeed a difficult one to follow. Michelle Obama brought the house down in her hometown of Chicago, bringing the energy in the arena to a crescendo that not even her husband—who has been delivering barnburner speeches at DNCs for the past twenty years—could match.

Both Obamas closed out the night of prime-time programming—which began with some creative introductions to each state’s roll-call vote—with pointed attacks on the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. Michelle had perhaps the most effective and well-received line of the night when she knocked the Republican former president for what she called his “limited, narrow view of the world” that made him “feel threatened” by her and her husband’s success.

“I want to know,” she said with a look of mock concern on her face. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘black jobs’?”

The Democratic crowd went nuts at the reference to Trump’s comment during last month’s presidential debate, against then-candidate, President Joe Biden, that illegal immigrants were taking “black jobs.” The phrase has become a punchline among the delegates here in Chicago, and the reaction to Michelle’s jab reflects an openness from the Democratic faithful to leaders who take on the Republican standard bearer with ridicule rather than high dudgeon about Trump’s threats to democracy—which the Biden campaign favored. 

“Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” said Barack. “It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala.”

Slamming the door on the “When they go low, we go high” era, Barack went on to make a not-so-subtle insinuation that Trump is insecure about his manhood. “There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” he said, making a suggestive motion with his hands.

Some lines were more effective with the crowd than others. “The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day,” Barack said, his voice rising up to indicate he thought the observation was a good joke. The reaction in the arena was relatively muted, however.

Beyond the critiques of Trump, however, both Obamas also made a positive case for Harris. The former president cast her as a tireless advocate for people facing off against powerful interests. He even praised Harris for taking the fight to his own administration when she was attorney general of California.

“After the home-mortgage crisis, she pushed me and my administration hard to make sure homeowners got a fair settlement,” Barack said. “Didn’t matter that I was a Democrat. Didn’t matter that she had knocked on doors for my campaign in Iowa. She was going to fight to get as much relief as possible for the families who deserved it.”

And for a convention that had once been planned around arguing for a second term for Biden, the current president was something of an afterthought on Tuesday night. Michelle did not mention Biden at all. Barack made only passing references to his former vice president, praising Biden’s “empathy” and “decency.” 

“History will remember Joe Biden as an outstanding president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger, and I am proud to call him my president,” he said. “But I am even prouder to call him my friend.” 

Israel in a Holding Pattern

Roughly three weeks ago, Israel assassinated a top Hezbollah commander in a suburb of Beirut and was likely behind the killing of Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in an elaborately planned bombing in Tehran, Iran’s capital, as the city feted the country’s new president.

Israelis and regional leaders braced for an imminent, large-scale retaliation by Iran and Hezbollah—an Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group—that would almost certainly prompt a severe response from Israel and perhaps even from the United States. But the Iranian government and its proxies have yet to act, even as Hezbollah continues its now regular cadence of strikes in northern Israel.

For now, Israel remains in limbo, anticipating the potential outbreak of a wider war with Iran with some hope that it could be forestalled by a ceasefire deal with Hamas, Iran’s proxy in Gaza. As U.S. negotiators express optimism about a deal, though, Hamas remains intransigent, rejecting the latest round of ceasefire negotiations even as the IDF continues its clearing operations in Gaza.

In July, the Israeli military killed Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah founder and senior leader, following a rocket strike on a soccer field that killed 12 children in northern Israel. Observers feared the Lebanon strike, plus the Haniyeh assassination in the Iranian capital, would lead to a joint response from Hezbollah and Iran sufficient to spark a broader war.

The region came close to such a conflagration in April when Iran launched its first-ever direct attacks against Israel following the suspected Israeli killing of an Iranian general in Syria. Israeli air defenses—plus support from the U.S. and some Arab countries—kept the attack from doing any real damage.

That might not be the case for any pending Iranian attack if Hezbollah—which boasts an arsenal of 150,000 to 200,000 rockets, missiles, and mortars—joins in this time around, as such volume could potentially overwhelm Israeli air defenses. “Whatever the consequences, the resistance will not let these Israeli attacks pass by,” the leader of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said a week after the killings.

Such an attack initially seemed imminent, but it appears to have been delayed for now. “Time is on our side, and it’s possible that the waiting period for this response will be long,” Ali Mohammad Naeini, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Spokesman, was quoted as saying by Iranian state TV on Tuesday. “It’s possible that Iran’s response won’t be a repeat of past operations.” Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Iranian-backed terror group, took credit for an attempted suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Monday that killed the bomb carrier and injured one bystander. There are no public indications that Iran was directly involved in the bombing, but Israeli authorities are reportedly investigating the possibility. 

Iran has put itself in a sticky situation: The regime likely doesn’t fancy a war that could spiral to involve the U.S., but after back-to-back humiliations, it’s still looking for a way to save face. “The Iranians are hesitant, given the risks involved in either retaliating too forcefully or not forcefully enough,” said Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a Middle East-based security and risk consulting company.

The limited effect of the April attacks likely complicates the situation for Iran. “The last thing the regime wants is to be seen as a paper tiger yet again,” Raphael Cohen, director of the RAND Corporation’s Strategy and Doctrine program, told TMD. “If they’re going to launch a strike, they sure as hell want to do something that has some sort of effect.”  

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Iran has held off on any retaliation so as not to disrupt ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, which have regained momentum in recent weeks. “The ceasefire negotiations, at a minimum, have given Iran and Hezbollah political cover for delaying any reprisal until they figure out what to do and how to save face,” argued John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) who previously worked as national security adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “There’s at least a slight possibility that, if the ceasefire goes forward, it offers them a way to climb down from the tree their public threats of major retaliation put them in by allowing them to claim that it was their threats that forced Israel to accept the deal and save Hamas for now.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken touched down in Israel on Sunday to meet with Israeli leaders and move negotiations forward, and on Monday, he announced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a “bridging proposal” for a ceasefire with Hamas. That plan, aptly, would “bridge the gaps” on sticking points in the three-phased ceasefire agreement that President Joe Biden outlined back in May. The full agreement would see an initial six-week ceasefire, during which Israeli hostages would be released and Palestinian prisoners held in Israel exchanged, giving way to negotiations for a lasting ceasefire.   

What sort of “bridge” the negotiators are building—and over what—is fuzzy. “I can’t comment on specific issues that remain, but, as I said, there are questions of implementation,” Blinken said on Monday.

Some of the issues reportedly involve the ongoing role of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the Philadelphi Corridor, the southernmost strip of land in Gaza that borders Egypt, over which the IDF has had control since June. In recent weeks, the IDF has discovered dozens of tunnels in the area—some large enough to literally drive a truck through—that Hamas used to smuggle weapons and ammunition into Gaza. The Egyptian government has reportedly agreed to Israel’s request to maintain an IDF presence for an indefinite amount of time.

The Biden administration had seemed hopeful in recent days that the latest round of talks could produce a breakthrough. “We are closer than we have ever been,” Biden said on Friday. “We may have something, but we’re not there yet. But much, much closer than it was three days ago.” 

Rather unsurprisingly, however, Hamas flatly rejected the proposal this week. Representatives for the terrorist group—who for months have objected to any non-permanent ceasefire—claimed on Monday that the proposal included additional Israeli demands beyond what was originally laid out in Biden’s plan. “I was told Hamas is now backing off,” Biden said Monday as he left the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Hamas’ refusal to cooperate is likely coming from its leader, Yahya Sinwar. The mastermind of the October 7 terror attack on Israel, he became the political head of Hamas after Haniyeh’s death. “A lot of this falls on Sinwar not feeling compelled to agree to a ceasefire,” said Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies whose research focuses on Palestinian militant groups and Hezbollah.

Blinken said Monday that “it is now incumbent on Hamas” to accept the proposal. This week, the secretary has made stops in Egypt and Qatar, where officials have been interlocutors in the negotiations. “With every passing day that there’s not an agreement, two things can happen,” Blinken told reporters after his meeting with Netanyahu earlier this week. “One is, of course, more hostages can perish. And second, intervening events come along that may make things even more difficult, if not impossible.”

Underlining the urgency, hostage families received more heartbreaking news Tuesday, when the IDF recovered the bodies of six Hamas-held captives in tunnels under Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza. The men ranged in age from 35 to 80 years old, and five of the six men’s deaths had been previously confirmed by the IDF. 

The sixth hostage, 79-year-old Avraham Munder, had been believed to possibly still be alive, but according to his nephew, initial assessments now suggest Munder died in March. Munder’s son was killed by Hamas on October 7, and his wife, daughter, and grandson were also taken hostage but were released in November as part of a temporary ceasefire. 

The hostages were discovered as part of the IDF’s ongoing clearing operations in Gaza. The IDF has recently carried out targeted strikes against Hamas fighters and commanders while also conducting ground operations throughout the Strip to re-clear previously taken ground that Hamas and other smaller terror groups operating in the enclave have re-infiltrated. Netanyahu told Congress last month that Israeli “victory is in sight,” but the continued operations and raids of previously controlled areas highlight the challenge of fully defeating a group like Hamas militarily.   

Meanwhile, Gaza’s more than 2 million residents remain caught in the crossfire. The Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health claimed last week that more than 40,000 people have been killed since the war began—though the ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its numbers and has been assessed to overcount the number of women and children casualties. In May, Netanyahu estimated that 14,000 combatants and 16,000 civilians had been killed.

Israeli officials have claimed in recent months that the IDF has dismantled 22 of Hamas’ 24 military battalions. But according to an analysis by the Critical Threats Project, the Institute for the Study of War, and CNN, only three battalions were considered “combat ineffective” at the beginning of July, whereas eight battalions were assessed to be capable of carrying out continued attacks. The remaining 13 were degraded, the analysis suggested, “only able to conduct sporadic, and largely unsuccessful guerrilla-style attacks.”

The IDF could be running up against the limits of its initial war strategy. “Israel’s current theory of victory over Hamas is to keep grinding it down until there’s no serious force left and to ensure it has no access to the outside world to reconstitute itself going forward,” said Hannah, the former national security adviser. He suggested that Israel is forgoing holding territory and opting for repeated clearing efforts in an effort to reduce the exposure of Israeli forces to attacks while still degrading Hamas forces and gathering intelligence about the group’s operations to make future re-clearing operations even more effective.

Hannah added that many people close to the Israeli government think the military still has a few months of fighting to truly dismantle Hamas, at which point, the IDF could fully shift to a campaign of targeted raids to tackle the remnants of the group or any resurgence.  

The strategy has certainly damaged Hamas as a cohesive military force, but it’s unclear how effective it would be against an insurgency. “As long as Hamas and other terrorist groups can continue the strategy of resurging in different areas and being able to replace the manpower that they’re losing, they stand a chance of surviving this war,” Truzman argued, noting that the Israelis could be banking on their control of the Philadelphi Corridor choking off Hamas’ ability to resupply weapons and ammunition. But it’s unclear how large the group’s current stockpiles are, given the sustained attacks more than 10 months into the war. 

Such re-clearing operations are typical in counter-insurgency situations, Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, explained. “The difference is that the (few) counter-insurgency operations that were successful generally included some political component—the infamous ‘day after’ plan that has been missing for months,” he said in a written exchange with TMD. “Without a clear and functioning alternative to Hamas, this game of whac-a-mole can last forever.”   

For the time being, Israel appears in a holding pattern regarding both the conflict in Gaza and a potential attack from Iran or Hezbollah. Horowitz argued that Iran likely sees this week’s ceasefire negotiations as “a good excuse to buy time for now,” but he added that “it may not last long, as the talks may end quite soon.”

Worth Your Time

• Why do left-wingers give anti-Zionist protesters a pass, despite some of the groups’ professed genocidal beliefs? Liberal Jonathan Chait took on his own side in New York Magazine. “What Democrats and progressives need to decide is whether to treat these groups as noble idealists broadly on the right side of history or as the fanatic adherents of an illiberal and unjust program,” he wrote. “In the Middle East, that program calls for endless war until the Jews have been expurgated from a soil on which they unnaturally reside. In the West, it means imposing social norms that make most Jews feel alien and unwelcome. To advance justice for Palestinians and Jews does not require placating, forming alliances with, or ceding ‘leverage’ to followers of this hateful program. The morally just response is to meet this ideology the way liberals meet other forms of hate: by calling it what it is.”
• One day, 17-year-old Kevin Lik was attending class and collecting plants for his herbarium. The next, he was imprisoned in a Russian penal colony. “The teenager—with dual Russian and German citizenship—was arrested last year while still at school and became the youngest person in modern Russian history to have been convicted of treason,” Sergei Goryashko reported for the BBC. In August, Kevin was freed as part of a sprawling prisoner exchange. “In Germany, after a hospital check-up, Kevin was finally able to greet his mother, who had got a visa to fly in from Russia. ‘She cried. I told her everything was fine, not to worry, that I loved her very much.’ Mother and son are now living in Germany and Kevin is full of enthusiasm to finish school. ‘I don’t have a desire for revenge, but I do have a very strong desire to participate in opposition activities,’ he tells me. Kevin still has his prison uniform, stuffed in a bag in the corner of his room. When I ask what he wanted most of all while he was forced to wear it, he simply replies: ‘To hug Mum of course.’”

Presented Without Comment

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, on the ticket’s future: 

There’s two options that we’re looking at, and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump—or we draw somehow more votes from Trump. Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and, you know, we walk away from that and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision.

Also Presented Without Comment

Politico: Democrats Blame ‘Raucous Applause’ for Massive Delays to Convention Programming 

Asked for comment, the convention officials said in a statement: “Because of the raucous applause interrupting speaker after speaker, we ultimately skipped elements of our program to ensure we could get to President Biden as quickly as possible so that he could speak directly to the American people. We are proud of the electric atmosphere in our convention hall and proud that our convention is showcasing the broad and diverse coalition behind the Harris-Walz ticket throughout the week on and off the stage.”

In the Zeitgeist

Michael Keaton takes over household duties from his wife in Goodrich, a very original, never-been-done-by-Michael-Keaton film. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics crew filed their first dispatch from the DNC, and Nick expressed hope that the era of messianic politics might be coming to an end.
• On the podcasts: Jonah is joined on The Remnant by Mike Pesca of The Gist to discuss antisemitism, Tim Walz, and Kamala Harris’ media strategy (or lack thereof).
• On the site: Kevin weighs in on Donald Trump’s recent comments taking aim at the Federal Reserve’s independence, Charles reports on a “Democrats for Life” event at the DNC, and Jonah pans Kamala Harris’ plan to combat “price-gouging.”

Let Us Know

Did you watch the Obamas’ speeches? What did you make of them?