Happy Wednesday! And congratulations to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who is set to fulfill her oft-stated, lifelong dream of becoming the “first Black, female Supreme Court justice to appear on a Broadway stage” on Saturday when she delivers a one-night-only performance in the musical comedy & Juliet on the Great White Way.
Break a leg, Justice!
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- Syrian rebels on Tuesday named Mohammed al-Bashir as interim prime minister in the country’s transitional government. Bashir previously administered an opposition-held area before the rebel offensive that began late last month and toppled President Bashar al-Assad over the weekend. On Monday, meanwhile, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against two high-ranking officials in the Assad regime, accusing them of torturing detainees, including U.S. citizens. Both men, who remain at large, worked for Syrian Air Force Intelligence and oversaw operations at the Mezzeh Prison near Damascus.
- Taiwan’s defense ministry on Monday warned of Chinese military vessels amassing off the island’s coast in what appear to be significant Chinese naval exercises following Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s unofficial stops in Hawaii and Guam during his tour of the South Pacific earlier this month. Taiwanese officials said Tuesday morning they had spotted dozens of ships and nearly 50 planes across a wider area than is typical of military exercises. Chinese officials have not announced any planned drills.
- The U.S. Missile Defense Agency, part of the Defense Department, intercepted an air-launched intermediate-range ballistic missile in a military exercise near Guam on Tuesday, the first time the island—a U.S. territory—has successfully conducted such a test. “Within the context of homeland defense, a top priority for the Department of Defense, Guam is also a strategic location for sustaining and maintaining United States military presence, deterring adversaries, responding to crises, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” the agency said in a statement.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testified Tuesday in his corruption trial for the first time, four years into the trial and eight years after investigators first opened an inquiry into allegations as part of three separate cases that he accepted bribes—including cigars and champagne—from businessmen in exchange for preferential treatment and favor. Netanyahu called the accusations “absurd,” and testified that he hated champagne and rarely had time to finish cigars. Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli prime minister to testify in court as a defendant.
- Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, underwent emergency brain surgery on Tuesday to treat a brain bleed sustained after a fall in October. The 79-year-old president is set to return to the capital, Brasilía, next week, and his vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, has taken over some of his duties in the meantime.
- A wildfire near Malibu, California, spread rapidly overnight on Monday into Tuesday morning, at one point tripling in size in just one hour. The fire, which forced Pepperdine University students to shelter in place on Tuesday and thousands of Southern California residents to evacuate, is now burning over an area of roughly 3,050 acres—compared with just 100 acres late Monday night.
- New York prosecutors late on Monday charged Luigi Mangione with one count of second-degree murder related to the shooting death last week of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, whom prosecutors say Mangione gunned down in Midtown Manhattan. Lawyers for Mangione, who was taken into custody in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, are challenging his extradition to New York to face the murder charges, as well as several other felonies related to his fake identification and weapons possession.
Forever West
A Big Year for Global Democracy Ends in Chaos
An independent candidate who surged from virtual anonymity to the head of the polls just days before the election. Explosive allegations of Russian interference by intelligence agencies. Claims that a presidential campaign was funded not by money but was rather “in God’s hands.” A constitutional court that affirmed the result before overturning it just days later, after all the votes were counted, and after a run-off had already begun.
In a year of strange electoral contests around the globe, Romania’s recent presidential election might just take the cake.
Last week, the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the results of the contest’s first round of voting, because of suspected campaign finance violations by far-right candidate Călin Georgescu, who won a plurality of votes.
The decision forces an election do-over sometime in the spring of 2025 and throws the country’s politics into chaos. The shock victory of an anti-Western, pro-Russian dark-horse candidate—and accompanying, if so far largely unsupported, allegations of interference by Moscow—could signal profound changes in the key NATO partner’s continued ...
As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our 1,714-word item on Romania’s contested presidential election is available in the members-only version of TMD.
Worth Your Time
- Big Data is taking over the world, but “little data” is taking over our lives, Nicholas Carr argued for Hedgehog Review. “We don’t give much notice to what might be called little data—all those fleeting, discrete bits of information that swarm around us like gnats on a humid summer evening,” he wrote. “But the view of reality that little data give us is narrow and distorted. The image in the mirror has low resolution. It obscures more than it reveals. Data can show us only what can be made explicit. Anything that can’t be reduced to the zeroes and ones that run through computers gets pruned away. What we don’t see when we see the world as information are qualities of being—ambiguity, contingency, mystery, beauty—that demand perceptual and emotional depth and the full engagement of the senses and the imagination.”
- Did weight loss drugs cause the recent dip in U.S. obesity figures? Maybe not, explains Joshua Cohen for Undark magazine. “It is premature to declare that GLP-1s have caused overall declining obesity rates in the U.S.,” he wrote. “There are a number of ways to interpret the CDC data, and not all of them suggest that obesity rates have actually fallen. Further, recent evidence indicates that GLP-1s might not be as effective for weight loss as initially thought. And there are reasons to question the comparison to cigarette sales. Taken together, all of this suggests that we may need to wait to understand how this new class of drugs affects weight loss at the population level.”
Presented Without Comment
The Hill: [Rep.] Susan Wild Absent From Ethics Committee Meeting After Gaetz Leaks to Press
Rep. Susan Wild (Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, was absent from the panel’s meeting last week after being traced as the source of leaks to the press regarding the investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), sources told The Hill.
It remains unclear if Wild voluntarily skipped the Thursday gathering or was asked not to attend, what information she leaked and to whom, and how the panel tracked her back as being the leaker. Two sources said Wild ultimately acknowledged to the panel that she had leaked information.
Also Presented Without Comment
The Guardian: [Former Rep.] Matt Gaetz Gets Prime-Time Talkshow on Hard-Right Outlet OANN
Also Also Presented Without Comment
NBC News: Trump Mocks Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the ‘Governor’ of the ‘Great State of Canada’
In the Zeitgeist
After almost four months of fierce competition, the Dispatch fantasy football season is coming to an end. Our fearless leader, Steve Hayes, now tops the standings after trudging all the way from 11th in the league in Week 1. Mary, Declan, and Peter fill out the other three playoff slots with a TMD showdown set for this week. Who do you have in the title game?
Toeing the Company Line
- In the newsletters: Nick Catoggio examined (🔒) what the reactions to Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione say about populism.
- On the podcasts: Jonah Goldberg is joined by Keith Whittington to discuss impeachment powers on The Remnant.
- On the site: David Drucker explores how Trump might handle the planned sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese-owned Nippon Steel, Michael Warren reports on who Mitch McConnell will be in the Senate when he’s no longer majority leader, Charles Hilu writes that GOP senators seem unconcerned with Tulsi Gabbard’s views on Syria, Kevin Williamson takes a look at the country club radical who allegedly murdered Brian Thompson, and Jonah Goldberg digs into Amnesty International, Israel, and the definition of genocide.
