Happy Friday! Thanks to all the Dispatch members who joined Steve, Declan, and Andrew in Des Moines Thursday night. We hope you enjoyed getting to know each other a little better outside of the comments section—stay tuned for details on future meetups! 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The Biden administration expanded the Temporary Protected Status program for Venezuelan migrants on Wednesday, making eligible for employment an estimated 472,000 Venezuelans who entered the country before July 31. The program has already provided 242,000 Venezuelans with temporary status. Biden’s move comes as his administration faces pressure from the leaders of Democratic cities to help with the large influx of migrants. The border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, declared a state of emergency Thursday as more than 10,000 migrants are projected to enter the city of 28,000 this week. 
• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy failed again Thursday to bring a defense spending bill to the floor as a small contingent of Republican hardliners blocked a procedural rule, incensing the rest of the Republican conference. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down,” McCarthy said after the vote. The speaker had planned to pass the defense bill this week and then vote on a stop-gap measure to temporarily fund the government, but he sent lawmakers home for the weekend after the vote failed.
• The Senate voted to confirm Marine Corps Gen. Eric M. Smith and Army Gen. Randy George to lead their respective services on Thursday by votes of 96-0 for Smith and 96-1 for George. The confirmations mark more progress in bypassing Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s mass hold on military promotions. 
• Indian authorities announced Thursday that they would stop issuing new visas to Canadians and requested that Canada reduce its diplomatic mission in the country. The blanket visa hold is a further escalation in the countries’ conflict over the killing of a Canadian Sikh leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in British Columbia, which Canada alleges could have happened at the direction of the Indian government.
• Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States have signaled progress in efforts to normalize relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem as President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at the United Nations General Assembly this week. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the prospect of normalization is “getting closer every day” in a rare interview with Fox News on Wednesday. The Biden administration is reportedly weighing mutual defense pacts with both countries as part of the peace deal, but the contours of such agreements—and whether they would require congressional approval—remain unclear.
• David McCormick—an Army veteran and former hedge fund executive—announced Thursday he is running to unseat Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in 2024. McCormick ran in the 2022 Republican primary for the seat, narrowly losing to celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who in turn lost to John Fetterman in the general election. McCormick enters the race with the backing of Pennsylvania’s Republican congressional delegation.
• Rupert Murdoch said yesterday that he is stepping down as chairman of the boards of Fox and News Corporation. The 92-year-old media magnate’s son Lachlan will replace him as the chairman of both boards. Rupert will become chairman emeritus.

Mr. Zelensky Goes (Back) to Washington

In July 2022, Kevin McCarthy delivered a midterm campaign stump speech to a room full of Republicans in Columbia, South Carolina. Five months after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the then-House minority leader made a pointed historical analogy: He compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assault to Adolf Hitler’s actions leading up to World War II. In McCarthy’s telling, President Joe Biden—and former President Barack Obama before him—stood in as a modern-day Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who sought to appease Hitler’s bloodlust until it was too late.

“What did Hitler see?” McCarthy asked. “Weakness. And one year later, he invades Poland.” Then he fast-forwarded to February 2022. “Putin saw [in Joe Biden] the same thing Hitler saw: weakness. So what did he do? The same thing Hitler did. He invaded Ukraine.”

The point McCarthy wanted his audience to take away? Learn from history.“We don’t have to go to war,” he said. “Why don’t we just supply the weapons ahead of time so they can defend themselves?” His audience applauded.

Worth Your Time 

• Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a revealing profile of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and his role during the Trump administration. Goldberg interviewed not only Milley but other high-ranking administration officials, including former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. “‘Mark Milley had to contain the impulses of people who wanted to use the United States military in very dangerous ways,’ Kelly told me,” Goldberg writes. “‘Mark had a very, very difficult reality to deal with in his first two years as chairman, and he served honorably and well. The president couldn’t fathom people who served their nation honorably.’ Kelly, along with other former administration officials, has argued that Trump has a contemptuous view of the military and that this contempt made it extraordinarily difficult to explain to Trump such concepts as honor, sacrifice, and duty.” Goldberg details one telling example: “At his welcome ceremony at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall, across the Potomac River from the capital, Milley gained an early, and disturbing, insight into Trump’s attitude toward soldiers. Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing ‘God Bless America.’ Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. To Milley, and to four-star generals across the Army, Avila and his wife, Claudia, represented the heroism, sacrifice, and dignity of wounded soldiers. It had rained that day, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair threatened to topple over. Milley’s wife, Holly­anne, ran to help Avila, as did Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, ‘Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.’ Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley.” 

Presented Without Comment

NBC News: “We are very dysfunctional right now,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said, adding that the failure proves that GOP leaders “obviously can’t count” votes, unlike Democrats. Referring to McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., he said, “Speaker Pelosi, love her or hate her, she put something out there and they’d rally around it.”

Also Presented Without Comment

Financial Times: F-35 fighter jets can only fly 55 percent of time, U.S. watchdog says

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Nick asks (🔒) if it’s time to cut bait on DeSantis as the best GOP candidate to defeat Trump and Scott explains (🔒) how the farm bill showcases what’s wrong with Washington.
• On the podcasts: The Dispatch Politics crew takes over the DisPod to discuss the government shutdown fiasco, voter perceptions of Republican candidates, and senatorial attire.
• On the site today: Charlotte details Zelensky’s visit and the state of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and Audrey Baker breaks down what it would actually mean to dismantle the Department of Education (as several GOP presidential candidates have proposed).

Let Us Know

What did you think of Congress’ welcome for Zelensky? What message does it send to allies and enemies alike?