Trump on the Back Foot at Philadelphia Debate

Happy Wednesday! The Dispatch staff fantasy football league is well underway after the first week of regular season NFL play: Everyone, pour one out for our friend Ryan Brown, who, after the first game, dropped from first in the power rankings to 14th. Early days yet, Ryan! 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it is “highly likely” that 26-year-old Turkish-American citizen Aysenur Ezgi “was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire” on Saturday, according to an IDF investigation. Investigators said that IDF soldiers had targeted a “key instigator” of violent riots in the West Bank village of Beita—where dozens of Palestinian protesters allegedly threw rocks at Israeli security forces and burned tires—but instead unintentionally struck and killed Eygi. In the wake of the investigation, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday urged the Israeli military to change its rules of engagement in the West Bank. 
• Meanwhile, the IDF said on Tuesday that it had killed several senior Hamas leaders—including at least three who were directly involved in the terror group’s October 7 terrorist attacks—in an airstrike that hit a Hamas command and control center operating within a humanitarian zone housing displaced Palestinians near Khan Younis. The Hamas-run Civil Defense authority claimed the attack killed at least 40 people, a figure the IDF said is inaccurate. Gaza’s health ministry—also operated by the terrorist organization—reported a lower death toll of 19 people, with at least 60 others injured. “Despite the extensive measures taken by the IDF to enable the Gazan population to move away from combat zones, including by designating a Humanitarian Area, the Hamas terrorist organization continues to embed its operatives and military infrastructure in the Humanitarian Area and systematically use Gazan civilians as a human shield for its terrorist activities,” the IDF said following the strike.
• The Biden administration Tuesday placed new sanctions on Iran and three Iranian-linked companies after Western officials confirmed that Iran sent a shipment of short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to aid Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The three companies sanctioned were involved in the transportation of the weapons from Iran and into Russian hands, including Iran Air—the country’s state-owned, national airline. “The expanding military partnership between Iran and Russia threatens European security and illustrates how Iran’s destabilizing influence reaches beyond the Middle East to undermine security around the world,” the State Department said in a statement. The U.S.-supplied Patriot air defense system will be the only Ukrainian air defense reliably capable of shooting down the missiles, though the systems are in short supply and Ukraine has shot down only 10 percent of Russian ballistic missiles fired in the last six months. 
• Ukraine on Tuesday launched more than 140 military drones at various sites across Russia, including Moscow, in one of its largest direct attacks against the Russian capital thus far. Russian authorities claimed a 46-year-old civilian woman was killed in the Russian town of Ramenskoye—located on the outskirts of Moscow—after drone strikes hit a residential apartment building, while more than a dozen people were injured across the country. The Ukrainian attack also caused Russia to temporarily shut down three airports near Moscow, though two resumed operations later on Tuesday.  
• Attorneys general from 42 U.S. states signed a letter on Tuesday urging Congress to pass legislation requiring social media platforms to display a surgeon general’s warning label. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy promoted a similar proposal in June, citing the mental health risk social media poses to children. “We sometimes disagree about important issues, but all of us share an abiding concern for the safety of the kids in our jurisdictions—and algorithm-driven social media platforms threaten that safety,” the attorney generals wrote. “A growing body of research links young people’s use of those social media platforms to a variety of serious psychological harms, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.”
• Michigan’s state Supreme Court on Monday reversed a lower court’s decision, ruling that former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy—who suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump—will remain on ballots in Michigan in the 2024 election. Because the ballots have already been printed, the court ruled, Kennedy did not have “an entitlement to this extraordinary relief.” Conversely, the North Carolina state Supreme Court ruled on Monday that state ballots will be reprinted without Kennedy’s name, stating that otherwise the ballots could confuse voters into believing Kennedy is still seeking the presidency in 2024. 
• Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday held a ceremony honoring the 13 U.S. service members killed three years ago in the ISIS-K terrorist bombing outside the Kabul, Afghanistan, airport in August 2021. Joined by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the families of the fallen, Johnson posthumously awarded the service members the Congressional Gold Medal—Congress’ highest and oldest award. “Our nation owes a profound debt of gratitude to these service members and those here today who were with them in Kabul,” Johnson said. “We also owe them something deeper, and that is an apology to the families who are here. … We are sorry.”
• Two commercial airplanes collided with each other on Tuesday morning on the tarmac at Georgia’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, though the accident caused no injuries. According to Delta Air Lines, a Delta commercial plane destined for Tokyo and carrying 221 passengers hit the tail-end of an Endeavor Air commercial plane—owned by Delta—that was carrying 56 passengers bound for Lafayette, Louisiana. It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the accident, but the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

‘A Bunch of Lies, Grievances, and Name-Calling’

Vice President Kamala Harris opened the presidential debate on Tuesday by chasing former President Donald Trump across the stage. 

As Trump moved immediately to take his place behind his podium in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Harris crossed first to the middle and then to the far side of the stage—bobbing slightly to try to anticipate where he was headed—to shake his hand. They had, after all, never met. “Nice to see you, have fun,” Trump told her. 

And she seemed to. The vice president began the night as she planned … 

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our full 1,761-word story on last night’s presidential debate is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a gripping piece of history for Politico Magazine, journalist Garrett M. Graff in 2016 interviewed two dozen crew, staff, military personnel, and passengers who were on and around Air Force One immediately after the attacks that morning. “[Chief of staff Andy Card] and I are there with the president,” said adviser Karl Rove. “The president gets this call from [Vice President Dick] Cheney—we didn’t know who it was at the time, we just knew the phone rang. He said ‘yes,’ then there was a pause as he listened. Then another ‘yes.’ You had an unreal sense of time that whole day. I don’t know whether it was 10 seconds or two minutes. Then he said, ‘You have my authorization.’ Then he listens for a while longer. He closes off the conversation. He turns to us and says that he’s just authorized the shoot-down of hijacked airliners.”
• What does Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah think now of his last-minute push at the 2016 RNC convention to stop the first Trump presidential nomination? “When I showed him a photograph—the senator himself, on the convention floor back in 2016, screaming in opposition to a rules package that effectively ended the campaign to free delegates to vote against Trump—Lee grimaced,” Tim Alberta wrote in The Atlantic. “I asked him whether he’d changed over the past eight years. ‘All of us change as times change,’ he said, shrugging. As our conversation went on, however, the senator’s tone shifted. He began to insist that, in fact, he hadn’t changed; that what the world was seeing and hearing from him was no Trump-induced abnormality but rather the realest, rawest version of himself. ‘Those who know me,’ Lee said, ‘know that privately, this is who I am.’ … [The] more we dwelled on Lee’s actions during the 2016 campaign—suggesting that Trump was an aspiring autocrat, attempting to sabotage his nomination, calling for him to quit the race—the more contrite Lee sounded for having doubted Trump in the first place. ‘I was a jerk,’ the senator said. ‘I was a jerk to him.’”

Presented Without Comment

The Daily Pennsylvanian: [University Of Pennsylvania] To Limit Statements On Local And World Events In Move Toward Institutional Neutrality

Also Presented Without Comment

President Joe Biden, speaking to the press on Tuesday: 

I’m going up to my granddaughter’s birthday in New York, then we’re going to watch the debate and tomorrow I’m doing 9/11.

Also Also Presented Without Comment

Rolling Stone: Taylor Swift Endorses Kamala Harris, Signs Post ‘Childless Cat Lady’

In the Zeitgeist

Yellowstone producer Taylor Sheridan is back at it again with another modern frontier tale featuring Jon Hamm, Demi Moore, and Billy Bob Thornton—delivering a line only he could make sound convincing: “I quit drinkin’—I’ll stick with beer.” 

Toeing the Company Line

• Who won the debate? How did Harris put Trump on the defensive? Will it even matter? Steve was joined by Sarah, Jonah, Jamie, Kevin, Declan, and Alex to answer all those questions and more on a special post-debate Dispatch Live (🔒). Members who missed the conversation can catch a rerun—either video or audio-only—by clicking here. 
• In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics crew—and friends!—gave their previews of yesterday’s debate, and Nick explored whether Harris “rode the vibes” too long, past the point of diminishing returns. 
• On the podcasts: Jonah interviews AEI’s Christine Rosen about her new book, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World on The Remnant. 
• On the site: Jonah offers former Rep. Liz Cheney some advice and Dan Vallone explores how the U.S. let fear affect how we handled three recent generational crises.