Happy Wednesday! It was the team-up you didn’t know you needed (and probably never wanted). Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was spotted dining in Washington, D.C., with Trump consigliere Steve Bannon. We couldn’t for the life of us tell you what they discussed.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- Roughly 700 Marines joined the 2,100 National Guard personnel present in the Los Angeles area Tuesday morning, following President Donald Trump’s order for federal forces to protect U.S. government property and personnel from anti-immigration protests and rioting. Neither the Marines nor the guardsmen will have the power to make arrests, as federal troops are barred from fulfilling civilian law enforcement functions by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The total National Guard deployment is expected to grow to 4,000 troops and last for at least 60 days, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose state sued the federal government on Monday to block the activation of National Guard troops, said Tuesday that Trump was “behaving like a tyrant, not a President.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ordered a curfew for parts of the city’s downtown area, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. PT, that she said she anticipated being in effect for several days.
- Russian forces on Tuesday launched what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described as “one of the largest attacks” on Kyiv since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago. The missile and drone strikes began early Tuesday morning and continued for hours, killing at least one person. The St. Sophia Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was also reportedly hit in the aerial assault on Ukraine’s capital. Also on Tuesday, Russia attacked the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, killing two people and striking a maternity hospital.
- Stephen Hubbard, a U.S. citizen who was captured from his home in Ukraine by Russian forces in 2022, has been located in a Russian prison, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The 73-year-old retired teacher was accused by Russia of being a mercenary for Ukraine and sentenced to seven years in a penal colony. Following months without contact, he was able to call his family in recent weeks from a prison in the southwestern region of Mordovia. Hubbard is the last remaining U.S. citizen whom the U.S. State Department has designated as “wrongfully detained” by Russia.
- A gunman opened fire at his former high school in Graz, Austria, on Tuesday, killing 10 people before killing himself. The shooter, who police identified as a 21-year-old Austrian man, reportedly used two firearms to carry out the attack. “The shooting rampage at a school in Graz is a national tragedy that has deeply shaken our entire country,” Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said of the attack, which appears to be the deadliest in the country’s postwar history.
- The United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Norway on Tuesday announced sanctions against two far-right Israeli Cabinet officials—National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—for allegedly inciting violence in the West Bank. “Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. These actions are not acceptable,” read a joint statement from the five countries, which are freezing the two men’s assets and banning them from entering their borders. Both ministers have pushed for an aggressive expansion of settlements in the West Bank and called for the resettlement of Gaza.
- The Trump administration is planning to increase the number of illegal immigrants sent to Guantanamo Bay for processing before deportation by thousands, multiple news outlets reported Tuesday. At least 9,000 people are reportedly being vetted for transfer to the U.S. military base located in Cuba, which since February has processed only about 500 migrants for deportation. It is unclear whether the facility, which was not designed for large-scale migrant processing, will be able to safely accommodate the increased numbers.
- The World Bank projected slowed global growth in its Global Economic Prospects report released Tuesday, predicting that global GDP growth would slow to 2.3 percent, down from 2.8 percent last year. In January, it had projected a 2.7 percent growth rate in global GDP, but now says that economic turbulence created by American tariffs will slow economic output. The World Bank also projected that the U.S., which now has the highest effective tariff rate in a century, will have a 1.4 percent growth rate—a decrease of 1.4 percentage points from 2024.
Leave a Voicemail
It’s a tough week for kids in D.C. Public Schools. The district announced that, beginning this fall, it will officially bar students from using their phones during the school day, and students … aren’t thrilled. “Anything but improving these lunches,” one user commented on a D.C. Public Schools Instagram post announcing the decision.
But among nonstudents, a bipartisan consensus has grown in support of restricting smartphone use in school. After the COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 schools around the country observed learning losses from which large swaths of students still haven’t recovered. And as educators try to make up for lost time ...
As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our full 1,393 word item on student cellphone use is available in the members-only version of TMD.
Today’s Must-Read
“It’s our job to win,” WelcomePAC co-founder Lauren Harper Pope said in opening remarks to a downtown Washington hotel ballroom of a few hundred conference-goers grappling with how to reverse the rightward shift of voting blocs—Hispanics, working class, young men—long considered core Democratic constituencies. The picture painted by Lakshya Jain, a data scientist who models voting behavior, is dire. He told the conference Democrats need to prioritize fielding candidates “who know how to talk to ordinary people.”
Toeing the Company Line
Frog Boil
Why Trump is doubling down in L.A.
DOGE Cuts at NOAA, Explained
Personnel cuts could affect forecasting this hurricane season.
This Won’t End Well
Rioters setting Waymo cabs on fire are playing into Trump’s hands.
Punching Hippies
‘I do think this will end with some sort of Kent State violence.’
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