Happy Wednesday! As soon as we saw this headline yesterday—“Circus Elephant Gets Loose, Goes for Stroll Through Butte”—we knew we had to let you know about it.

But we’ll let you guess the elementary school-level punchline we came up with.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan announced new sanctions against Iran on Tuesday in response to Tehran’s multi-wave aerial attack on Israel over the weekend. The sanctions specifically target Iran’s missile and drone program, and are aimed at holding “the Iranian government accountable for its malicious and destabilizing actions,” Sullivan said, adding that the U.S. will also enact sanctions against entities supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s Defense Ministry. Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Israel’s military chief, vowed on Monday the Israel Defense Forces will respond to Iran’s attack, but officials have not yet given an indication of how or when such retaliation will occur. Israel’s war cabinet will reportedly meet today for the third time this week to discuss next steps.
• The House Select Committee on the Chinese Community Party (CCP) released a report Tuesday that suggested China is leveraging the U.S. fentanyl crisis for strategic and economic gain, including by subsidizing the production and export of illegal fentanyl and permitting its open sale online. The bipartisan committee—led by Republican Chairman Mike Gallagher and Democratic Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi—recommended the creation of a task force to combat the global illicit fentanyl trade, providing enhanced resources for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and aggressively sanctioning entities involved with the trade, among other measures. Gallagher, however, is resigning from Congress at the end of the week after deciding not to run for reelection. 
• Record rainfall in the Gulf states of the Arabian Peninsula this week caused flash flooding that killed at least 17 people in Oman and wreaked havoc throughout the region. The intense rainfall—which forced the closure of the Dubai airport—equaled what the United Arab Emirates typically sees in the entire year.
• The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case concerning the constitutionality of the felony charges against a participant in the January 6 riot. The defendant—a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021—faces charges under a federal law that punishes anyone who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” The justices seemed divided Tuesday over whether the law should cover the behavior exhibited by those who participated in the January 6 riot. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case—expected later this summer—could affect the prosecutions of more than 300 people charged for their actions that day.
• GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky on Tuesday joined Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia as a co-sponsor on her motion to vacate the speaker, which could force a vote on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s ouster. Massie—who sits on the powerful House Rules Committee—said the speaker was going for the “Triple Crown” in pushing Ukraine aid, last month’s omnibus spending bill, and the recent reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Massie urged Johnson to resign preemptively, but the speaker said Tuesday he will not step down and seemed to have the support of many of his House Republican colleagues.
• Republican impeachment managers from the House of Representatives formally delivered two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on Tuesday, related to Mayorkas’ handling of the southern border. The House approved the articles in a narrow 214-213 vote in February, and senators are expected to be sworn in as jurors in the impeachment trial later today. It’s unlikely, however, that the proceedings will last long in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where a two-thirds majority is needed for a conviction and Democratic senators are angling for an expedited vote to dismiss the charges. 
• Seven of 12 jurors—plus six alternates—were seated on Tuesday in the second day of jury selection in former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial related to alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. The judge overseeing the trial issued a stern warning to Trump against making intimidating remarks to any of the jurors after observing the former president “gesture” and make “audible” remarks toward a member of the panel. “I won’t tolerate that,” Judge Juan Merchan said. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear.” 
• One American News Network (OAN) on Tuesday reached a confidential settlement in a defamation case filed against them by Smartmatic, a company that specializes in electronic voting systems. The case, filed in 2021, stemmed from OAN’s broadcast of false election fraud claims involving Smartmatic that the company argued damaged its reputation. In the lawsuit, Smartmatic notes that it only provided election services to Los Angeles County in the 2020 election. Smartmatic also has pending litigation against Fox News and Newsmax for their related coverage. 
• Former Florida Gov. Bob Graham died at the age of 87, his family announced Tuesday. The Democrat, who also served as a U.S. senator, was a vocal critic of former President George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 2020. 

A Reckoning Over Gender Treatment 

Perceptive Morning Dispatch readers have probably noticed at some point in the last four-and-a-half years that this newsletter is not interested in fanning the flames of the culture wars and getting readers riled up as they start their days. We made a promise at the outset that we’d do our best to separate the signal from the noise and distill the goings-on in the world into something worth your time every morning. There have been a handful of exceptions—times where we thought we could add clarity—but for many years, the battle over the appropriate treatment of minors seeking to change their gender has been filled with more heat than light. It’s possible that may be beginning to change. 

More than three-and-a-half years ago, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) commissioned the “Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People.” That study—which has come to be known as the Cass Review, named Dr. Hilary Cass, the chair of the project and the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health—was published last week, and the review provided a welcome and evidence-based respite from an otherwise toxic conversation with its wide-ranging examination of studies and research undergirding gender-transition treatment and the clinical practices for delivering that treatment. 

The nearly 400-page U.K. report could signal a sea change for Europe in the debate over the future of gender-transition treatment for children and young people, providing a case study in the dangers of letting cultural pressures influence medical treatment. But it’s unclear if the takeaways will translate across the pond, where many of those cultural pressures have led to the public conversation being dominated by the most extreme voices on either side of the debate.

The conclusions of Cass’ report were striking. “The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health,” the review found. It confirmed what some medical professionals and researchers had been arguing for years: There isn’t high-quality research showing that treatment delaying the onset of puberty is actually helping young people seeking a gender transition. “This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint,” Cass wrote in the report. “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender related distress.”  

The report included a variety of recommendations to improve care but concluded that “for most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.” Consequently, the NHS reversed its decade-long practice of prescribing puberty-suppressing hormones (PSH) to children with gender dysphoria—“a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender of at least six months duration, as manifested” in delineated criteria, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of PSH to make the treatment routinely available at this time,” the NHS said last month. PSH treatment will …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our full 1,925-word story on the Cass Review and the future of gender-transition treatment for minors is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• Writing for Christianity Today, Andy Olsen told the story of a nation and a people who feel like they’re facing the end times. “Pastor Frederic Nozil has learned to keep his head down,” Olsen said of one Haitian minister watching his country deteriorate. “He schedules church activities to wrap up before a mandatory curfew. He will cut a prayer service short if he has a bad feeling about a police vehicle he noticed on the street. Some of his congregation risk their lives crossing gang checkpoints on their way to the church, the Centre Chrétien International Maison d’Adoration, so he knows to expect a smaller turnout. Ministry looks different, he figures, at the end of the world. ‘We are living in an eschatological time,’ Nozil said. That’s how it felt in the early hours of March 18. It was a Monday, and the bespectacled minister should have been recovering from the usual slate of Sunday demands. Instead, he shut himself in his home for two days straight as heavy gunfire echoed through the hills.”
• For Reason magazine, Ronald Bailey explored a new progress movement counteracting the voices of pessimism. “All these projects direct people’s attention to Gapminder, Human Progress, Our World in Data, and other efforts that comprehensively document how much progress is still being made today,” he wrote. “These changes include increasing average life expectancy, cutting extreme poverty, reducing childhood mortality, increasing wealth, supplying greater access to education, and empowering women’s rights. Yet merely pointing out the facts of progress isn’t enough to persuade a lot of folks. It would be great, says [Progress Network founder Zachary] Karabell, if it worked just to tell people, ‘You should all just read the data and change your views.’ But it usually doesn’t.” These efforts, Bailey explained, are instead about a narrative of progress. “‘You can’t throw facts in the face of people’s emotions, or at least you’ve got to be very careful about how you do that,’ says Karabell. ‘You can’t tell people that they should feel better just because the data tells them they should.’ [Roots of Progress founder Jason] Crawford agrees: ‘Narratives have a lot of power and they have more power than charts and graphs.’”

Presented Without Comment

National Review: NPR Suspends Longtime Editor after Scathing Exposé on Left-Wing Bias

Also Presented Without Comment

Bloomberg: [Democratic Sen.] Bob Menendez Poised to Blame His Wife in Bribery Case Defense 

Also Also Presented Without Comment 

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton: “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.”

Toeing the Company Line

• How will Israel respond to Iran’s attack? Are Americans actually less polarized than social media makes it seem? Will Mike Johnson’s speakership survive? Declan was joined by David Daoud, Will, Drucker, and Charles to discuss all of this and more on last night’s Dispatch Live (🔒). Members who missed the conversation can catch a rerun—either video or audio-only—by clicking here. 
• In the newsletters: Nick explored the lessons learned from the “rolling disaster” of efforts to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson. 
• On the podcasts: Jonah is joined on The Remnant by our old friend Nancy French to discuss her new book, Ghosted: An American Story. 
• On the site: Jonah unpacks President Biden’s “take the win” argument against Israeli retaliation and Kevin writes about the rise of the “MAGA Democrat,” starting with Pennsylvania congressional candidate Mike O’Brien.