Hello and happy Saturday. I don’t want to jinx it, but we just endured what passes for a normal week these days. Kind of. President Joe Biden proposed sweeping—and likely unconstitutional—Supreme Court reforms, and Donald Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity in an interview with a panel of black journalists. Israel took out the leader of Hamas and a senior Hezbollah commander in separate strikes just hours apart on Tuesday. And Thursday, Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza and three Americans, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, were released from wrongful detainment in Russia in a complex prisoner swap involving seven nations.
But there was also plenty of normal news: Harris hit the campaign trail and speculation ramped up about whom she might choose for her running mate. On the Republican side, Trump’s lead over Harris remains slim, and running mate Sen. J.D. Vance appears not to be helping much.
All of that normalcy left a good amount of time to watch the Olympics, which I’ve always enjoyed but are an excellent antidote to the craziness of our politics this year and a reminder that America is pretty awesome. There was Simone Biles soaring through the air while leading the U.S. women to gold in the team gymnastics competition and winning another gold in the all-around competition, And Stephen Nedoroscik—a bespectacled and unassuming male gymnast—becoming a household name after a remarkable pommel horse routine that secured a bronze for the U.S. men, swimmer Katie Ledecky earning the title of most decorated American female athlete ever, a thrilling last-second win in the bronze medal match for the U.S. women’s rugby team, and more. And I haven’t even mentioned Snoop Dogg! Whoever suggested bringing him on as a commentator for NBC deserves a huge bonus. Check him out parading around Paris in custom T-shirts depicting whichever American athlete he’s watching that day, swimming with Michael Phelps, and providing commentary during a badminton competition.
The Olympics have always been special to me because I was a swimmer and a runner growing up, and so “my” sports were only ever on TV once every four years. And they were among the premier events. But this summer the Olympics are a wonderful reprieve. You read The Dispatch, so I don’t need to remind you how polarized and divided we are. There’s not a lot of domestic enthusiasm for the idea that America is special anymore. But when you tune into the Olympic Games and see athletes joyfully representing their country, proud to be wearing the red, white and blue, it’s a nice reminder that we are more than our political discourse.
I have more thoughts on the matter, but longtime foes Stephen Curry and LeBron James are working together to keep the U.S. men’s basketball team on the path to a gold medal, so I’m going to watch. (Good news—they beat Puerto Rico!) Thanks for reading and have a good weekend.
My own introduction to Gov. Josh Shapiro came when he gave a press conference the day after a gunman nearly assassinated Donald Trump at a rally in Shapiro’s home state of Pennsylvania. He was impressive, speaking with heartfelt compassion about Corey Comperatore, a rally attendee who was shot and killed, and calling for unity. Little did he know then that he would face a much brighter spotlight just a few weeks later. After Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee and found herself in need of a running mate. Shapiro has become the frontrunner, not because of that brief moment in the spotlight, but because he’s the popular governor of an important swing state. There’s just one problem, Kevin writes. Shapiro is Jewish, and the Democrats have a bit of an antisemitism problem. Kevin notes that Shapiro’s views on Israel are pretty mainstream: “He is a longtime, trenchant critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and a supporter of a two-state solution. He has gone much further than his fellow Pennsylvania Democrats in cultivating ties with the state’s Arab and Muslim communities. But he also has no time for Hamas apologists.” And there are more than a few Hamas apologists in the party’s left wing. Kevin wonders whether “the left wing of the Democratic party is going to think of him as one Jew too many, as the Jew who broke the camel’s back.”
President Biden is going out in quintessential political fashion: by putting forth a proposal that his supporters love and has almost no chance of becoming official policy. The president published an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing for Supreme Court term limits, a constitutional amendment to say there is no presidential immunity for crimes in office, and a “binding code of conduct.” Adam White explains why the term-limits proposal is not only unconstitutional—our founding document says justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” meaning they can be replaced only upon death, retirement, or impeachment—but would have negative consequences for the court. Biden’s term-limits proposal would shift justices into a reduced role after 18 years, and allow each president to appoint two new justices every four years, and that would make the court vastly more political. “The possibility of Supreme Court appointments is an increasingly prominent part of presidential politics,” he writes. “Still, we’ve never gone so far as to officially treat Supreme Court seats like Oval Office couches—automatically delivering two new ones to the White House on Inauguration Day.” In a separate piece, Keith Whittington argues that the proposals ignore the important concept of judicial independence. And John reports that while the reform proposals raise a lot of questions about how they would be implemented and whether they would pass constitutional muster, neither the White House nor the Harris campaign are eager to answer questions about them.
Last Saturday, a Hezbollah rocket attack killed 12 Israeli Druze children in the village of Majdal Shams. On Tuesday, Israel responded with a strike that killed senior Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon. But that was just a warmup of sorts. Hours later, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, died in an explosion in Tehran. He’d been in Iran for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and had just met with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “It is a humiliation for the Iranians, because it is an assassination in their capital, on a very important day, and two hours after Haniyeh met with the supreme leader,” Meir Litvak, a senior research associate at Tel Aviv University’s Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, told Charlotte. The Israelis are now preparing for various possibilities in terms of a response—a Hezbollah strike deep into Israel, a coordinated response from multiple Iranian proxy militias, or even a direct attack by Iran. “With the region on the brink of a broader escalation, the dual attacks on Haniyeh and Shukr could push Israel’s simmering multifront conflict into an all-out war,” Charlotte writes.
And here’s the best of the rest.
- Evan Gershkovich, Radio Free Europe correspondent Alsu Kurmasheva, and former Marine Paul Whelan are out of Russian prisons and back on American soil after a remarkable seven-nation prisoner swap that saw a notorious Russian assassin released from prison in Germany. Friday’s Morning Dispatch has the details.
- Is liberalism on the decline? Luis attended the recent Liberalism for the 21st Century conference, designed as a counter to the National Conservatism Conference in Washington in July. Luis writes that the event “highlighted that even those who embrace the liberal label and worry about the rise of illiberalism have different approaches and points of emphasis.”
- Donald Trump was looking at an easy path to election when he announced J.D. Vance as his running mate. Then Kamala happened, creating a surge of enthusiasm on the Democratic side, and Vance’s polling has been … less than ideal. Many Trump supporters are ready to blame Vance if Trump loses in November. In Boiling Frogs, Nick writes: “Vance’s first two weeks as a national figure have the feeling of a murder mystery in which a dozen different suspects each turn out to have their own motive for wanting the deceased dead.”
- Perhaps a little panicky about the prospect of another Trump administration, many on the left have attacked Project 2025, a roadmap for a potential incoming Republican president put out by the Heritage Foundation. Trump noticed the negative attention and disavowed the project, effectively throwing Heritage under the bus. In his Wednesday G-File, Jonah writes about “The Snake,” a song that Trump reads as a poem at rallies about a snake that bites a woman who takes him in. Trump very explicitly says he’s referring to immigration. But Jonah reminds readers—using the Heritage Foundation as an example, “Donald Trump is the snake. He does what he must.”
- The Dispatch Politics team is out on the campaign trail, and Wednesday’s edition features dispatches (har har) from Kamala Harris’ rally in Atlanta and a rally featuring Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Harris’ behalf in Pennsylvania. The atmosphere in Atlanta was electric and party-like, with the crowd breaking into chants of “lock him up,” while Shapiro and Whitmer promoted a message that the Democrats would protect Americans’ freedom, a notable shift from the negative messaging that Trump is a threat to democracy.
- On the pods: On The Dispatch Podcast, the gang welcomes Megan McArdle of the Washington Post to discuss the presidential campaign and the 180-degree turn it’s made in the last two weeks. You know you want to know what Sarah and David French think of Biden’s proposed Supreme Court reforms, so don’t miss Advisory Opinions. And on The Remnant, Jonah talks about a wide array of topics with his old friend John Podhoretz: the Harris campaign, the Democrats’ antisemitism problem, and Israel’s strike against Ismail Haniyeh.
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