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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- At least 26 tourists in Kashmir, India, were killed—and more than three dozen others were wounded—on Tuesday after militants opened fire on a crowd in what police have deemed a terrorist attack. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but separatists opposing Indian rule have killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians alike in the region since the 1990s. The Indian army and local police are actively searching for the perpetrators of the attack, which authorities said involved at least four gunmen. The attack took place at a popular tourist attraction near the town of Pahalgam that is only accessible on foot or horseback.
- Massive explosions occurred at a Russian military base about 80 miles northeast of Moscow on Tuesday, in what the country’s defense ministry has attributed to a “violation of safety requirements” that resulted in an ammunition warehouse catching fire. Three of the four total people injured in the blast were hospitalized, the regional governor said, and 450 residents of nearby towns have been evacuated. According to Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, the Russian base stored about 100,000 tons of weaponry, including artillery shells and missiles.
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced a “comprehensive reorganization plan” for the State Department, which he said would “increase functionality” while eliminating “redundant offices” and non-statutory programs that are “misaligned” with American interests. “These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first,” Rubio said in a statement. According to an internal State Department fact sheet reviewed by Politico, the plan involves eliminating the department’s Diversity and Inclusion Office and Office of Global Women’s Issues. Some 700 positions and 132 offices are expected to be cut in the overhaul.
- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday sent notices of a “reduction in force” to 280 of its employees whose work related to environmental justice or diversity, equity, and inclusion, multiple outlets reported on Tuesday. Those employees are expected to be fired or reassigned to new positions elsewhere in the agency by July 31, when the workforce reduction goes into effect. Also on Monday, an additional 175 EPA employees were told they would be transitioning into new roles.
- Three federal prosecutors who worked on the criminal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams—and were subsequently placed on administrative leave—announced their resignation on Tuesday, accusing Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche of attempting to compel them to “confess wrongdoing” in the case. Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed the charges against Adams following a request by Justice Department officials that the case be dropped. The prosecutors—Derek Wikstrom, Celia Cohen, and Andrew Rohrbach—opposed dropping the charges and were put on leave “ostensibly to review our … handling of the Adams case,” they wrote in a letter, but were later told that they “must express regret and admit some wrongdoing” to be reinstated. “We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” they added.
- After taking a tumble on Monday, all three stock indices rebounded on Tuesday following Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s remarks predicting a “de-escalation” in U.S.-China trade disputes. “Neither side thinks the status quo is sustainable,” he said. Also on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he had “no intention” of firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell—an apparent reversal of his statement last week that the Fed chair’s “termination” could not “come fast enough.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 2.66 percent, the Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.71 percent, and the S&P 500 gained 2.51 percent.
‘We Do Not Trust You’
If you’ve been following the legal proceedings around President Donald Trump’s deportations to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), you’d be forgiven for thinking the administration was coming for retirees next. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the latest lawsuit challenging the deportations on Friday. The case caption? A.A.R.P v. Trump.
The American Association of Retired People (AARP) is totally uninvolved in the case, but an individual going by the pseudonym A.A.R.P. is a plaintiff. The association AARP filed an unopposed motion on Monday requesting that the plaintiff’s pseudonym be changed to A.R.P. and the case caption be switched to include another pseudonymous plaintiff party to the suit: W.M.M. v. Trump.
The AARP cards are safe for now, but an unusual Supreme Court ruling over the weekend in the ACLU suit rebuked the administration and signaled a potential new phase in ...
As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. You can read our 1,338-word item on the legal challenges facing Trump’s deportations in the members-only version of TMD.
Today’s Must-Read
Germany’s past has given it an especially ambivalent relationship toward free speech. In the wake of the horrors of World War II, the country reinvented itself as a “militant democracy,” one that puts special emphasis on using the law to combat extremist forces. As a result, it was one of the first European democracies to explicitly outlaw a range of radical sentiments, from hate speech to the denial of the Holocaust. But today, Germany is no longer an outlier within Europe; on the contrary, even countries that have long prided themselves on their liberal traditions have followed the country’s lead, making it astonishingly easy for the police to arrest citizens who say things that shock or offend.
Toeing the Company Line
Star Power
Is AOC 2028 for real?
How Iran Is Using a Familiar Playbook on Nuclear Talks
The Trump administration risks repeating the mistakes of Obama and Biden in reaching a deal with Tehran.
All the Best People, Cont’d
Of Signal chats, restaurant robberies, sketchy résumés, and grappling injuries.
The GOP Considers the Unthinkable: Tax Hikes
To pay for extending 2017 tax cuts, Republicans may target the wealthiest earners with increases.
Why Kilmar Abrego Garcia Deserves Due Process
The Constitution was designed to thwart abuse of power, and that is the only relevant issue in his case.
Judge v. (Unethical) Lawyer
‘This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.’
Gaslighting and Resentment in Biden’s White House
How Kamala Harris was set up to fail.
Worth Your Time
- For the Cato Institute’s Human Progress project, Gale Pooley and Marian Tupy measured the relationship between resource abundance and population over time. The results were uplifting. “All 50 commodities in the dataset were more abundant in 2024 than they were in 1980. The global abundance of resources increased at a compound annual growth rate of 4.22 percent, thus doubling every 17 years,” they wrote. “If resources were truly finite, as many people believe, an increase in population would be expected to lead to scarcity and higher prices. However, as [economist Julian] Simon discovered through exhaustive research spanning decades, the opposite was true. As the global population increased, resources tended to become more abundant. How is that possible? Simon recognized that atoms, without knowledge, have no economic value. Knowledge transforms atoms into resources—and the supply of undiscovered knowledge is limitless. He also understood that only humans can discover and create new knowledge. Therefore, resources can be effectively infinite, and humans are the ultimate resource.”
Presented Without Comment
Business Insider: Elon Musk Says He’s Stepping Back From DOGE
“Starting next month, I will be allocating far more of my time to Tesla,” Musk said Tuesday during Tesla’s earnings call, noting that “the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency” was done.
He said he’ll continue to spend a day or two a week on government matters, “as long as it is useful,” and the president wants him to do so.
Also Presented Without Comment
BBC: Films Made With AI Can Win Oscars, Academy Says
In the Zeitgeist
Andor returned to Disney+ for its second and final season on Tuesday, but expect more than lightsaber duels and space battles from this Star Wars installment. “Andor isn’t just a ‘gritty’ take on Star Wars,” Vulture critic Nicholas Quah wrote. “It’s a novelistic beast that’s confident enough to spend a third of its second-season premiere on what is basically a long boardroom meeting where bureaucrats talk about an energy-independence campaign that’s actually a weapons program.”
In case you’re worried that sounds too similar to C-SPAN, this behind-the-scenes look at the first three episodes doesn’t quite have that same feel. (Warning: contains spoilers.)
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