Happy Monday! As we continue to build out the tech and marketing side of the house, The Dispatch is looking for a growth marketing lead with experience in lifecycle marketing. The position can be remote and we would also consider consult-to-hire opportunities. If you’re interested—or know someone who might be—you can find more information here.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss, among other things, the looming Israeli invasion of the southern Gazan city of Rafah—to which Biden has long been opposed. But the two leaders reportedly focused primarily on the prospects of a temporary ceasefire deal with Hamas in exchange for the remaining hostages the terror organization is holding. “Hamas has not fully rejected it—they are still considering this proposal on the table,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Sunday of the deal. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East over the weekend to continue to lobby for the agreement. Meanwhile, aid organization World Central Kitchen announced Sunday it would restart its operations in Gaza—which it paused earlier this month after seven of its employees were killed by an Israeli airstrike following their misidentification as Hamas targets—with local Palestinian staff. 
• Russian missile strikes over the weekend caused significant damage to Ukrainian energy infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said, pummeling power plants in three regions on Saturday. The commander of the Ukrainian Air Force said the country’s air defenses brought down 21 of the 34 incoming missiles Saturday. Also on Saturday, Ukrainian forces launched a drone strike against a military airfield and two oil refineries in strikes on Russian territory, the Ukrainian security services said, though the extent of the damage was unclear. Meanwhile, Bavarian authorities said they’d arrested a Russian national in connection to the fatal stabbing of two Ukrainian servicemen on leave in Germany on Saturday.
• The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, increased 2.7 percent year-over-year in March, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Friday—up from a 2.5 percent annual rate one month earlier. Even after stripping out more volatile food and energy prices, core PCE increased at a 2.8 percent annual rate in March, stubbornly above the Fed’s 2 percent target. The Federal Open Markets Committee is scheduled to meet later this week and is widely expected to hold interest rates steady.
• The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week regarding the question of presidential immunity related to special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case against former President Donald Trump. The justices seemed likely to decide that the former president is immune to prosecution for some official acts taken while in office, with a Supreme Court ruling in the case likely instructing the lower court to determine which conduct in Smith’s indictment constituted personal acts and which were official.
• The New York Court of Appeals on Thursday overturned film producer Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape, on the grounds that the trial judge should not have allowed witness testimony about allegations not part of the case. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has said it intends to retry the case. Last year, Weinstein was separately sentenced in Los Angeles, California, to 16 years in prison for rape and sexual assault.
• Law enforcement arrested more than 200 anti-Israel protesters on college campuses across the U.S. over the weekend, including at Northeastern University, Washington University of St. Louis, and Arizona State University. Meanwhile, Columbia University banned from campus Khymani James, a student protest leader who in a January social media video said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” 
• At least four people died—including a 4-month-old infant—after tornadoes tore through Oklahoma overnight on Saturday. The National Weather Service reported that at least 20 tornadoes touched down in the state Saturday night, leading Gov. Kevin Stitt to declare a state of emergency in 12 counties. The system also swept through Nebraska, Iowa, and other midwestern states on Friday, with reports of dozens of tornadoes causing damage and injuring several people. 

Global Democracy’s Big Event 

When Americans go to the polls in November, they’ll line up inside elementary school gyms and church fellowship halls to do their civic duty. But with approximately 1.1 million polling stations necessary for India’s election that kicked off earlier this month, some Indian voters will cast their ballots from more interesting environs. In India’s southern state of Kerala, for example, some voters will participate in the democratic process from a wildlife sanctuary. In the western state of Gujarat? A shipping container.

This is a big year for democracy, with elections in more than 50 countries. But nowhere is democracy bigger than in India, where some 970 million voters could go to the polls before June 1. The election is unlikely to be a nail-biter—Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is widely expected to walk away with a decisive win. But in a contest that has centered on Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda, the proceedings have already been marred by ethnic violence. 

The phased election—the second stage of which concluded Friday—aims to seat the Lok Sabha, the lower chamber of India’s 543-seat parliament directly elected by the voters. (The legislature’s upper chamber, the Rajya Sabha, runs on a different electoral calendar and is elected by state and union territory legislatures, not the populace.) The prime minister is elected by whichever majority party—or coalition of parties—controls the Lok Sabha, meaning that, when voters directly elect their parliamentary representative, they are indirectly selecting their preferred prime minister.