Our Best Stuff From the Last Five Years

Hello and happy Saturday. I don’t have the best memory, but I am really bad at deleting emails, so I can tell you what I was doing five years ago almost to the day. Declan and Andrew Egger had drafted a “mock” Morning Dispatch newsletter on Thursday, October 3, and Steve and I woke up before 6 a.m. Friday morning to edit it, so we could lock down our editing process and ensure that the first real edition of the newsletter next week would go out on time. (Steve might also have wanted to see if I could actually wake up before 6 a.m.)

On Wednesday, October 8, 2019, we published our founding manifesto, explaining our motivations for starting The Dispatch and letting readers know what to expect. The next day came the inaugural TMD: The top item was about conflict in the Middle East, and the second one was about Donald Trump’s displeasure with being investigated by the Department of Justice. We still abide by that manifesto, the Middle East is still embroiled in conflict, and Donald Trump, well …

To celebrate our fifth anniversary, I’m going to take a little stroll down memory lane. Bear with me: We have published about 4,600 articles, more than 4,000 newsletters, and 2,000 podcasts. I’m bound to leave out something really good. I have been thinking about the big stories we’ve covered: the first impeachment of Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic, the summer of racial justice protests—and riots, the 2020 election, January 6, Donald Trump’s second impeachment, Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two absolutely crazy elections for speaker of the House, Trump’s four separate legal cases, Hamas’ horrific attack on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed, and—of course—the 2024 election, which would be rejected as over-the-top and just a bit too much if it were a movie script. 

But that’s only one way of looking at our work over the last five years. We haven’t just bounced from one story to the next (or ping-ponged back and forth between them). We’ve written about a lot of “-isms”—conservatism,  progressivism, populism, nationalism, natalism, protectionism, antisemitism, and more. We’ve covered contentious issues—abortion, immigration, academia, the rule of law, the state of our institutions—with sober analysis and commentary. We’ve got a culture section now, and newsletters about religion and technology. I’m going to try to include as many good examples as I can, but if I missed something, feel free to share it in the comments.

The Dispatch has changed in a lot of ways since October 8, 2019. The first time I went to D.C. on Dispatch business, we had no office. Then we had one that sat empty because of the pandemic. Now we have one that would be a tight squeeze if we all showed up at the same time. Staffers have come and gone, and we’ve developed some smart and talented young journalists to complement our grizzled veterans. And I no longer get up at 5 a.m. every day. But we haven’t compromised our principles, and we’re working just as hard as we did on Day 1 to bring you reporting and commentary you can trust. Thank you for your support. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as much as we have. 

The Pandemic

In February 2020, we were trying to get our nascent fact-checking operation off the ground, and Declan had added that to his long list of responsibilities. We published a lighthearted fact-check debunking a silly poll that said Americans were refusing to drink Corona beer because of the coronavirus. That was probably the last time we made light of anything related to the virus that would soon upend life as we knew it.

One of my favorite pieces from the early days of the pandemic was by Ben Daxon, a doctor who took a break from his regular job at the Mayo Clinic to volunteer in a New York hospital in May 2020, when conditions were overwhelming and heartbreaking. Thanks to Tom Joscelyn, who was then writing our Vital Interests newsletter, we were quick to call attention to China’s role in the pandemic as well as its cozy relationship with the World Health Organization and its leader, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. We published regular updates on lockdowns and COVID relief packages in TMD, and we enlisted James Capretta and Scott Ganz of the American Enterprise Institute to keep everyone updated on vaccines and other developments. Our fact-checkers at the time, Khaya Himmelman and Alec Dent, spent two years—I’m not joking—trying to combat disinformation about the shots. And when it was all mostly behind us, Virginia Hume looked back with frustration at our nation’s collective failed response.

Summer 2020 Protests

George Floyd is the name most commonly associated with the protests that broke out in the summer of 2020. But in April, a few weeks before Floyd died, David French wrote about the case of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who’d been jogging through a neighborhood when three white men chased him down and shot him. The shooting had taken place in February, but local prosecutors had declined to press charges, given that the shooters claimed they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest. David, who was among the first people to bring national attention to the case, wrote: “The only ‘offense’ committed in anyone’s presence is the report of a person walking into a construction site. If that merits mounting up an armed three-person, two-vehicle posse to chase a man in broad daylight and menace him with weapons, then many of us are lucky to be alive and free.”

Then, on May 25, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes after arresting him, killing him. Ted Sampsell-Jones, a law professor in Minnesota, wrote after Chauvin was charged in Floyd’s death that “​​given the video evidence of Chauvin’s brutality, a conviction is likely. Nonetheless, for both factual and legal reasons, this prosecution is more complicated than it may seem.” Chauvin was indeed later convicted, but it was important in that moment to take a sober look at the case.

As protests swirled around the country and those on the left started shouting about systemic racism and calling to “defund the police,” David wrote a heartfelt—and at times heartbreaking—newsletter about the racism his family had experienced after adopting their Ethiopian daughter. “The central and salient consideration of American racial politics shouldn’t center around pride in how far we’ve come,” he wrote, “but in humble realization of how much farther we have to go.”

Around the same time, as riots were breaking out in cities across the country, Declan wrote a profile of Virginia Ali, the owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl—one of a few black-owned businesses in northern Washington, D.C., that survived the race riots of 1968. “When I see what’s going on today—and I so appreciate those demonstrators and those protesters that do that peacefully—but I get very upset with the agitators that create the problems and cause the violence and the looting and all of that,” Ali, then 86, told Declan. “We definitely should not destroy our communities and our neighborhoods. For me, that’s just not the way to go.”

Election 2020 and January 6

My memories of election night 2020 are kind of a blur. We were remodeling the kitchen and floors in the Ohio bureau, so I had to watch the results in the basement on our very large projector screen (which is great for football and movies, not so much for cable news). That means the memories I do have—of Trump coming out to basically declare victory in the wee hours despite the uncertainty of the actual results—are bright, vivid, and in HDTV.

One reason Trump was eager to declare victory is that things weren’t going his way. The Fox News Decision Desk had called Arizona early—for Biden—and stuck to its guns despite mounting pressure to retract its projection. Three days after the election, Audrey Fahlberg profiled Arnon Mishkin, the director of the Decision Desk. 

In the days after the election, our fact-checkers were busy knocking down false claims about election fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and elsewhere. I remember days when we published five or six. 

We have a funny rule about publishing what we call standalone (non-newsletter) articles: We get them up on the site first thing in the morning, and anything that comes in after that goes up the next day. It’s part of our effort to slow the pace of the news. Sometimes a writer will ask for an exception, and I tell them we have a pretty high bar. 

On the evening of January 6, Rudy Giuliani attempted to call Sen. Tommy Tuberville to ask him to try to delay the certification of the electoral votes. One problem: Giuliani left a voicemail with a different senator, who passed it on to Steve. Steve wrote a quick piece, we made the audio available, and we hit “publish” late that evening. And that is our bar for breaking our rule about publishing “standalones” more than once per day.

We had two reporters covering the Trump rally on January 6, and they made their way to the Capitol before violence broke out. Their eye-witness accounts and the quotes they got from Trump supporters at the Capitol transport you right back to that unprecedented assault on our democratic process.

The horrific events prompted our first staff editorial. “Trump is dangerous to the peace and security of the American nation,” we wrote on January 7. “Indeed, he is exactly the kind of man the founders of the nation worried about when they gave Congress the power to impeach and remove the nation’s chief executive.”

A year after the events at the Capitol, our fact-checkers Alec and Khaya looked back at how disinformation had contributed to the riot that day and how pervasive it had remained since. “If we learned anything on January 6, 2021, it’s that disinformation can have dangerous consequences,” they wrote. “It is darkly poetic that more lies should come out of what happened that day; those spreading them cannot be allowed to do so unchallenged.” 

Afghanistan

Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was not only disgraceful, it was entirely avoidable. In Vital Interests, Tom Joscelyn criticized the Biden administration for underestimating the Taliban. “The Defense and State Departments were heavily invested in the idea that a negotiated political settlement was not only possible, but also the only path forward,” he wrote. “This was rubbish. While American officials were prattling on about how there is ‘no military solution’ for the war, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were planning their conquest.”

Paul Miller, a former staffer for the National Security Council and intelligence analyst for the CIA—who was also a military intelligence officer who deployed to Afghanistan—pushed back against the misguided notion that our presence in the country was unsustainable and that defeat was inevitable. “Our presence for the past 20 years kept jihadists on the run, in hiding, and focused on avoiding our air strikes and special forces,” he argued. “They now will have room to breathe, which means room to plan, recruit, train, and fundraise.”

Ukraine

“You are likely in the last few hours of peace on the European continent for a long time to come.” That was a message sent to ABC News’ Martha Raddatz on February 23, 2022, by a source at the Pentagon, and it is how we closed out the next morning’s TMD, which reported on the airstrikes and ground invasion that signaled Vladimir Putin’s attempt to conquer Ukraine.

We know now that Ukraine proved far more resilient—and Russia far less powerful—than most predicted. The early days of the war were almost hopeful; Volodymyr Zelensky might have been an actor who once played a president on TV, but he was pretty good at actually being a president. He stayed in Kyiv and rallied support by (reportedly) telling the United States, “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Two-and-a-half years later, that tweet to Raddatz has proved prescient. The war rages. We’ve had a lot of coverage of the conflict, but I’d like to focus on the pieces written from the war zone.

Kevin went to Kyiv in the spring of 2023 and found bustling city streets where securing a restaurant reservation proved difficult. He went to Irpin, where Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian attack, and to Bucha, where Russians had committed mass murder and other atrocities. “The randomness, stupidity, and cruelty of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine doesn’t suggest a superpower at all, or even an expired superpower, or an aspiring once-and-future superpower,” he wrote. “What it most suggests is a stagnant psychotic state, not a new empire or khanate or emergent post-postmodern techno-autocracy but something a lot more like North Korea.” 

To mark the two-year anniversary of the war, Bennett Murray embedded with some Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk republic and found that pessimism had set in. A few weeks later, Tim Mak—an independent journalist covering the war at his Substack, The Counteroffensive—and Joseph Roche found Ukrainian troops frustrated with Congress’ dithering. And Roche has reported for us since, including from the scene of a Russian attack on a Ukrainian children’s hospital and from a prison in Ukraine where he spoke to Russian POWs being held after Ukraine’s surprising incursion into Russian territory.

Dobbs and the End of Roe v. Wade 

Pro-lifers fought Roe, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion across the country, for a half-century. And yet when the court overturned that decision in June 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the movement wasn’t ready. David French wrote about his conflicted feelings in the wake of the decision. “Now Roe is gone. Good. We should rejoice at its demise. 

But that’s not the end of the story. Not by a long shot.” David had hoped that the end of Roe would prompt pro-lifers to come together and “rise to the challenge of creating a truly pro-life culture,” but what he saw instead was “a wave of performative and punitive legislation” and a movement that was ready to punish women and question legal protections for mothers whose lives were in danger.

Months later, Patrick T. Brown tried to tackle the question of why the movement wasn’t ready, and cited “structural factors, short-term strategic choices, and the ‘unbundling’ of the coalition to overturn Roe.”

Israel-Hamas War

Hamas’ invasion of Israel almost exactly a year ago launched a war that still rages today, but it also ripped our social fabric in terrible ways. I would say there’s been an explosion of antisemitism, but rather a giant reveal—the sentiments were there, but those who held them suddenly felt comfortable airing them publicly.  

We’ve been lucky to have Charlotte based in Tel Aviv for much of the war, and she’s done fantastic work. It’s hard to pick favorites since she has been deft with on-the-ground reporting from kibbutzes, pieces on political infighting within Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and analysis of Israel’s burgeoning conflict with Hezbollah. If you’re still thinking about Israel’s assault on Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies, don’t miss her recent piece on the history of Israel’s covert operations.

We’ve also tried to report on how the war has affected those living in the middle of it—including this piece about a 1,600-year-old Christian church in the Gaza Strip—and those who are farther away but still grappling with it. Michal Leibowitz wrote a lovely piece last December about how Hanukkah hit a little different this year, and how it had become a major festival in Israel despite being a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar.

The Biden administration, at least in the early months of the war, provided a steadfast defense of our Middle East ally, but those on the far left have been vocal opponents of Israel defending itself. During the spring, progressive pro-Palestinian activists took over college campuses, disrupting student life and often exhibiting outright antisemitism. Other groups blocked highways (a particularly stupid tactic that will not encourage anyone to support a cause, if you ask me).

It wasn’t long before Jonah had had enough: “Organized protest is a form of speech, and, like speech, it is rightly protected by the First Amendment. But, also like speech, its morality—though not its legality—is wholly dependent on the content. You have a right to say, or protest for, awful things. Invoking that right doesn’t make your view any nobler.”

Election 2024

Where to begin? We used deep reserves of digital ink reporting on the Republican primary, wondering whether Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley might be able to unseat Donald Trump as the head of the party. We let Kevin imagine a primary debate wherein he served as the moderator, hooked the candidates up to a generator, and had Mitch Daniels waiting in the wings to zap them when they lied. We sent Michael Warren and David M. Drucker to New Hampshire to watch Nikki Haley barnstorm the state with her gloves off. And then, when the dust settled, we resigned ourselves to a repeat of the 2020 election, featuring two unpopular candidates and an electorate that was unhappy about its options. 

And then there was the debate. On June 27, Joe Biden turned in a dismal performance against Trump. He spoke haltingly and stared vacantly at the camera, and before it was over, pundits and social media users were wondering if it was the end of his campaign. While the Democrats were grappling with that question, an assassin shot Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, grazing him in the ear but killing a rally attendee and wounding two others.  The days after revealed significant failures by the Secret Service, and Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned.

There was a lot of talk about rhetoric prompting political violence in the wake of the shooting, but Nick wouldn’t let Trump off the hook for his own role in elevating such rhetoric: “Democracy is on the ballot. If Republicans don’t like hearing that, they shouldn’t have nominated a coup-plotter and coup-enabler. Just as an assassin shouldn’t deprive Trump of his life or the people of their choice of leader, neither should he deprive me of my prerogative to point out that MAGA’s emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.”

After the assassination attempt and with the Democrats still in turmoil over Biden, Trump named Ohio Sen.  J.D. Vance as his running mate, and the Republicans basically turned the Republican National Convention into a big party, buoyed by Trump’s survival. 

But then Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris. Harris was able to get the Democratic establishment united behind her almost immediately, and the switch away from the fading Biden created some enthusiasm among Democratic voters, as we reported in Dispatch Politics. And all of a sudden, Trump’s choice of Vance seemed ill-advised. He wasn’t as charismatic as the former president, and controversial comments he’d made in the past naturally “resurfaced” as the saying goes in our social media era. Nick predicted in Boiling Frogs that Vance would become the scapegoat if Trump lost. 

And that was before Springfield. In the days before the presidential debate between Trump and Harris, rumors emerged that Haitian immigrants in the Ohio town located between Dayton and Columbus had been stealing and eating people’s pets. Vance elevated those rumors—which were false, of course—and Trump repeated them in the debate. 

All of that led to probably my favorite Kevin piece ever, wherein he went to Springfield. He reminded people that Vance’s hillbilly ancestors had once sought opportunity in Ohio towns just like Springfield, and they weren’t universally accepted, either. He talked to employers who were grateful for their Haitian employees, and town leaders who were frustrated by the malicious rumors. And he took Vance to task: “A different and better sort of man would understand that bearing false witness against 15,000 poor and vulnerable people in the pursuit of political power is the same as bearing false witness against anybody else.”

Normally when I write this newsletter, I highlight a few pieces with longer write-ups and then put some under “the best of the rest.” I’m borrowing that language here since, although I could go on for another 2,000 words with more examples of favorite pieces, I want to be respectful of your time (and mine!). 

I asked my colleagues to send along examples of their own favorite pieces. When Jonah sent me this G-File, I did a double-take when I saw the date—it could have been written a month ago, but it was from 2021. “Since the first city-states were created—ironically in that neighborhood—the first obligation of any state has been to defend its inhabitants from outside aggression,” he wrote. “But when Israel does it—and really, only when Israel does it—those behind that decision are painted as the villains.”  

The Trump era has prompted—as you know if you read us with any frequency—many on the right to abandon their conservative principles to align with a man who heads the Republican Party but does not hold many, if any, actual conservative beliefs. In 2022, Charlotte and Audrey reported on the evolution of the Heritage Foundation, which has come to put partisanship over policy.

One of the figures who has evolved the most during this time is Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who promoted Trump’s claims of the 2020 election being stolen and who trekked to Russia to interview Vladimir Putin. He’s taken to spreading conspiracy theories and promoting people—like Alex Jones—whom he used to condemn. The thing is, Tucker got his start at The Weekly Standard, making him a former colleague of a few Dispatch-ers. This week, John McCormack asked—and answered—a question he was uniquely qualified to address: What, exactly, happened to Tucker? “Had he simply embraced crazy January 6 conspiracy theories because that’s where his audience was heading?” John wrote. “Had he actually come to believe it? Whatever his thinking may have been at the time, after his years-long pivot toward conspiracy theories, it’s hard to assess Carlson’s grasp of reality.”

Back when David French was more than just a permanent special guest on our Advisory Opinions podcast (and a member of the Dispatch Fantasy Football League), the Sunday editions of the French Press were generally about faith, or the intersection of faith and politics. With David now at the New York Times, we had a hole in our coverage that Michael Reneau has filled with the Dispatch Faith newsletter. One of my personal favorites ran just a couple of weeks ago, when Karen Swallow Prior wrote about how Christians can support public schooling even if they decide to put their children in parochial schools. Another one you should revisit is Hannah Anderson’s essay in response to J.D. Vance’s “childless cat lady” comments, in which she warned against treating children as a commodity in the culture war.

And I haven’t even mentioned our great culture section, which Luis Parrales oversees. He curates a wonderful mix of book reviews (two highlights include Jonathan Marks on Patrick Deneen’s flimsy Regime Change and Stephanie Murray on Jonathan Haidt’s insightful The Anxious Generation), essays on recent movies like The Holdovers or certified classics like On the Waterfront, and fun pieces on pop culture. My most recent favorite was his piece on Sabrina Carpenter, a budding pop star who (I must admit) I had discovered only days before he reviewed her new album. He reviewed both her music and her message, and was pleasantly surprised that it abandoned the clubbing and partying narrative so popular in that genre in favor of deeper connections and lasting relationships. 

As I said at the top, I’ve left a lot out. I haven’t mentioned our podcasts, which are a little trickier to review. I could go on for hours about what I learned about our discourse from the massive fact-check we did on Project 2025 (CliffsNotes version: The left can be just as hostile to getting fact-checked as the right). But what I hope you take away from this is that, as we’ve grown over the last five years, we’ve stayed true to our mission. We’ll always be honest, we’ll always try to turn down the temperature on heated rhetoric, and we’ll always try to give you our best work.