The Dispatch

2 days ago | thedispatch.com | Grayson Logue

“Can I trust that that is now in the past? Can data and information change your opinion or will you only look for data supporting a predetermined conclusion?” That’s what Sen. Bill Cassidy said of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine views during a confirmation hearing for Kennedy’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The Senate confirmed Kennedy after Cassidy’s deciding vote to advance his nomination.

2 days ago | thedispatch.com | Nick Catoggio

My gut reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory over Andrew Cuomo was that it’s a useful reality check for anti-Trump conservatives. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a seductive fallacy, as one can’t help but sympathize a bit with allies in a common struggle. Joseph Stalin briefly became “Uncle Joe” in Western media during the 1940s because he was on the right side of a momentous conflict.

3 days ago | thedispatch.com | Kevin Williamson

Here is a useful bit of counterfactual history to think on right now:Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein had been … smart. If you were not around for the events that followed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, you may not appreciate how powerfully the U.S. response—Operation Desert Storm, launched in January 1991—shocked not only the Middle East but the entire world.

3 days ago | thedispatch.com | Nick Catoggio

There’s no inconsistency in my position, Trump would say. A ceasefire is in order now because the U.S. did achieve “total, complete victory” when it “obliterated” Iran’s enrichment facilities this past weekend. The problem is that it’s not clear that each of those facilities truly was obliterated, just as it’s also not clear what happened to the hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium that the regime had socked away for future bomb-building.

4 days ago | thedispatch.com | Nick Catoggio

One peacenik MAGA “influencer” after another dutifully lined up behind the president on social media once the bombs fell on Saturday night, sometimes in comically hypocritical ways. No other Republican (and certainly no Democrat) in 2025 could have proceeded with something as hair-raising as a bunker-buster bombardment of Iran’s nuclear program confident that the American right—or most of it, anyway—would hang together afterward.