Happy Thursday! As much as we at TMD love new technology, we’ll take an overly talkative Uber driver over whatever this is every time.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- Wildfires in the Los Angeles area continued to rage out of control on Wednesday, killing at least five people and displacing more than 100,000. Fueled by winds with gusts of up to 100 mph, the flames have overwhelmed firefighters—all three water storage tanks for fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades area were empty by early Wednesday morning, leaving little to no water pressure. High winds grounded firefighting aircraft until the early afternoon, and a third wildfire broke out Wednesday evening that threatened an area near Hollywood Boulevard. The fires have destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings and burned through 25,000 acres. At California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request, President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration for the state Wednesday, directing the Defense Department to deploy additional firefighters and equipment to the affected areas.
- President-elect Donald Trump filed an emergency motion Wednesday with the Supreme Court requesting that sentencing in his New York criminal case, scheduled for Friday, be delayed. Trump’s lawyers argued in a filing that the former president is immune from both prosecution and sentencing based on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision last July. They made a similar argument to a New York appeals court, which denied the request Tuesday. The Supreme Court requested that the case’s prosecutors respond to Trump’s filing by Thursday, suggesting the court could make a decision before the sentencing.
- Russia launched a missile attack against Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday, killing 13 people and injuring 60 others in the deadliest single strike in weeks. The bombing came just a few hours after the Ukrainian military announced a drone strike on a key Russian oil depot in Engels, a city more than 300 miles from the Ukrainian border. Ukrainian officials said the depot supplies fuel to a military airfield hosting Russian strategic nuclear bombers.
- A South Korean court on Tuesday re-issued an arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges of abuse of authority and orchestrating a rebellion. Last week, police called off arresting Yoon after a six-hour standoff between police and the impeached president’s security detail. Yoon’s detail has spent recent days increasing security at his private residence—where he is currently holed up—using buses to barricade the entrance. Protesters have gathered outside the residence in recent days, with Yoon’s supporters pledging to prevent authorities from executing the arrest warrant.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday he plans to release special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Garland detailed his plans in a filing requesting the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals lift Judge Aileen Cannon’s injunction temporarily barring the Justice Department from releasing a two-volume report. Cannon’s order on Tuesday came in response to emergency motions from Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case seeking to block the report’s release, given that the second volume pertains to the pending case. The attorney general argued there is “neither any need nor legal basis” for the injunction, because he does not intend to release the second volume while the cases against the co-defendants are pending.
- The Israeli military said on Wednesday that it discovered the body of October 7 hostage Youssef Alzyadni—along with evidence that his son, Hamza, may also have been killed—in tunnels beneath Rafah in Gaza. The announcement comes as the Biden administration and Trump both pressure Israel and Hamas to reach a ceasefire-for-hostage release deal before Trump’s inauguration on January 20. “We’re very close,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press conference Wednesday. Israel believes that 99 hostages, living and dead, remain in Gaza.
Justin Trudeau’s Downfall
Throughout the waning weeks of 2024, a growing chorus of Canadian lawmakers—including many members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s own Liberal Party—urged Canada’s embattled leader to “take a walk in the snow.” The saying isn’t a bizarre northern death threat. It’s a reference to an episode in the life of Trudeau’s father, Pierre, who took a walk during a snowy night in 1984 before deciding to resign his premiership.
Nearly 40 years later, the younger Trudeau has come to the same decision.
“I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process,” Trudeau said in a speech outside his Ottawa home on Monday. “This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election.”
Trudeau’s decision, while certainly welcomed by large numbers of Canadians, throws the country’s politics into turmoil as it faces a potential trade battle with President-elect ...
As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. You can read our 1,721-word item on Canada’s political future in the members-only version of TMD.
Worth Your Time
- Derek Thompson offered an in-depth exploration in The Atlantic of the alarming anti-social trends of the 21st century. “Eroding companionship can be seen in numerous odd and depressing facts of American life today,” he wrote. “Men who watch television now spend seven hours in front of the TV for every hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home. The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with friends of her own species. Since the early 2000s, the amount of time that Americans say they spend helping or caring for people outside their nuclear family has declined by more than a third. … The real problem here, the nature of America’s social crisis, is that most Americans don’t seem to be reacting to the biological cue to spend more time with other people. Their solitude levels are surging while many measures of loneliness are actually flat or dropping.”
- Writing for Foreign Affairs, Charina Chou, James Manyika, and Hartmut Neven examined the implications of the quantum computing race that is quietly accelerating amid the global buzz around artificial intelligence. “Whereas a classical computer must process one state after another sequentially, a quantum computer can explore many possibilities in parallel … making it orders of magnitude faster for certain tasks,” they wrote. “Quantum processors may one day be capable of breaking even the most advanced encryption. Today, national security experts assume that hostile state and private actors are already collecting encrypted information in anticipation of the new technology, an approach known as a ‘store now, decrypt later’ attack … There are multiple futures for a world with quantum computers. The best one would see liberal democracies leading both the technology’s development and its collective management. A worse one would have the United States and its international partners, through inaction or insufficient actions, cede dominance of the new technology to China and other autocratic countries.”
Presented Without Comment
Semafor: The Netherlands’ Panopticon Prisons Are Turning Into Arts Venues
Also Presented Without Comment
Bloomberg: Mexico’s President Jabs Back at Trump in Territorial Naming Spat
A day after the incoming US president said the body of water between his country, Mexico and the Caribbean should be called the “Gulf of America,” Claudia Sheinbaum presented early maps of the Americas at her daily press briefing.
The Gulf of Mexico’s name has held since the early 17th century and is recognized by the United Nations, she said. Sheinbaum also joked that states including California and Texas could revert to their former name, “America Mexicana.”
In the Zeitgeist
The trailer for Reacher Season 3 dropped today, continuing another Amazon series about an ex-military operative whose first name starts with “J” and last name starts with “R.” Hopefully star Alan Ritchson still enjoys consuming 4,000 calories a day and hitting the gym five days a week, because the tech giant has already renewed Reacher for a fourth season.
Toeing the Company Line
- In the newsletters: Scott Lincicome outlined (🔒) his big economic questions for 2025.
- On the podcasts: Sarah Isgur and David French dive into a whole lot of “antis” on the latest episode of Advisory Opinions, including anti-masking, anti-indoctrination, anti-retaliation, and anti-corruption.
- On the site: Kevin Williamson examines how ATF regulations affect firearms dealers in his fourth installment of a series on the agency and Joel Tannenbaum explains why eggs are so darn expensive.
