| | | | | By Charlotte Lawson and Ross Anderson | | The Dispatch is proud to provide educators, clergy, retirees, military veterans, and students discounted access to our journalism. Check out the list and apply here if one of these categories applies to you. | | Happy Friday! If you didn't get your fill during her recent " ask me anything" series on The Remnant, be sure to catch Sarah Isgur on ABC's This Week at 9 a.m. ET on Sunday. | Quick Hits: Today's Top Stories | - During an overnight meeting, Israel's Security Cabinet approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan for a military operation to take over Gaza City. The plan involves evacuating all civilians from Gaza City by October 7, while providing humanitarian aid outside of combat zones. The plan is more limited than Netanyahu's original proposal. He told Fox News yesterday that Israel intended to retake all of Gaza and pass governance to Hamas-opposed Arab forces. Ahead of the Cabinet meeting, Hebrew media reported that Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir had pushed back against a broader plan, saying it would endanger the hostages and "drag Israel into a black hole." Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich voted against the operation, with Ben-Gvir opposing the provision of humanitarian aid, and Smotrich demanding a Cabinet resolution committing that the operation would not be stopped, under any condition.
- The United States has brokered a peace framework between Armenia and Azerbaijan, to be signed by the heads of both countries during a meeting at the White House on Friday. This would mark the first U.S.-brokered bilateral declaration between the two nations, which have been at odds since Die Hard was in theaters. Under the deal, Armenia will grant the U.S. a 99-year lease over the mountainous Zangezur Corridor—Armenian territory between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave—which Washington has named the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity," or "TRIPP." The U.S. will sublease development in the 27-mile corridor to private firms to build rail, energy, and fiber-optic lines, in a move seen as boosting American influence in the South Caucasus and curbing Russian sway. The pact follows Azerbaijan's 2023 military offensive that triggered the exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians, and comes after a March 2025 draft peace treaty between the two states. U.S. officials hope the agreement could open the door to further negotiations to add Azerbaijan to the Abraham Accords.
- Haiti's transitional council on Thursday appointed a new president, Laurent Saint-Cyr, a businessman who previously served as head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti and of the country's Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In his swearing in, Saint-Cyr emphasized the importance of restoring security amid a surge of gang violence, calling on international military support. Haiti remains underpoliced, with gangs controlling up to 90 percent of the capital of Port-au-Prince. Haitian authorities are still trying to locate eight people, including an Irish missionary, who were kidnapped from an orphanage early Sunday morning.
- The Bank of England cut interest rates from 4.25 percent to 4 percent, the lowest rate in two years, marking the fifth such cut since Prime Minister Keir Starmer won last year's U.K. General Election. However, the bank's Monetary Policy Committee was split 5-4, with four members of the committee voting to hold interest rates stable, citing concerns about inflation. This was also the first time since the nine-person committee was created in 1997 that it required two votes to reach a majority consensus, with the first round split 4-4-1.
- On Thursday afternoon, OpenAI launched GPT-5, its most advanced model yet, with a particular focus on improved writing and providing more reliable answers to health questions. The company says the upgrade delivers faster, more accurate, and less "hallucinatory" responses, with internal tests showing up to an 80 percent error reduction and fewer sycophantic or misleading outputs. GPT-5 is now the default in ChatGPT for all users, but free accounts face usage limits, with GPT-5 Thinking only available for Plus users, and the GPT-5-Pro research version exclusively limited to the $200 per month Pro tier.
- President Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post Thursday that he had directed the Commerce Department to begin work on a new census that excludes illegal immigrants. Trump attempted to add a question to the census about citizenship during his first term, a move blocked by a federal court, with the Supreme Court choosing not to intervene. Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, as modified by the 14th Amendment, requires a count of all persons residing in each state, citizens and noncitizens alike, and the next regular census is scheduled for 2030. It's unclear whether the president intends to hold an unprecedented mid-decade count, and civil-rights groups say the proposal to remove non-citizens from the census is "politically weaponized" and unconstitutional.
- Trump on Thursday called for the resignation of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan in a Truth Social post, sending the company's share price tumbling. Trump's post came a day after Republican Sen. Tom Cotton sent a public letter to Intel Chair Frank Yeary, raising concerns about the CEO's reported links to China's People's Liberation Army. Tan took over the role in March, hoping to turn around the struggling chipmaker—which was dropped by Apple in 2023, as the company completed its transition to using in-house chips, and has largely missed out on the AI boom. But in April, Reuters reported Tan's investments in hundreds of Chinese companies, including eight with ties to the Chinese military.
- The FBI and local police launched an investigation into a suspected antisemitic hate crime in a suburb of St. Louis after three cars were set alight on Tuesday morning. In addition to the fires, "Death to the IDF" was spray-painted on the road outside the home of a U.S. citizen who had recently served in the Israeli military. In a post on X, Leo Terrell, the head of the Justice Department's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, condemned the suspected hate crime and vowed ot hold the culprits accountable: "We will pursue every avenue to bring the perpetrators to justice."
- Brian Driscoll—a senior FBI official who served as acting director at the beginning of the Trump administration—has been fired and will depart the bureau today, multiple news outlets reported Thursday. Driscoll refused to turn over to the administration names of FBI agents who participated in investigations of the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Also on Thursday, NPR obtained and released police body camera footage in which Jared Wise—a former FBI agent who was pardoned by Trump after allegedly telling rioters to "kill" police on January 6— could be heard calling officers "disgusting, "Nazi" and "Gestapo." Wise currently serves as an adviser to Justice Department official Ed Martin.
- Trump has nominated Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, to fill a vacant seat on the Federal Reserve Board, after Adriana Kugler's early resignation. Miran would serve through January 31, 2026, and is a longtime Trump ally who has advocated for lower interest rates, tariffs, and structural changes to the Fed. The move positions Miran as a potential successor to Chair Jerome Powell when his term ends in May 2026.
| What's Next for Gaza? | | A bird flies past an Israeli army infantry-fighting vehicle as it moves at a position along Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip on August 5, 2025. (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images) | Last night, as Israel's Security Cabinet voted to expand the war in Gaza, protesters across the country called on their government to reach a deal to bring home the remaining 50 hostages—whatever the cost. Among the demonstrators were family members of the abductees, who gathered outside of the Cabinet session to drape chains around themselves in solidarity with their loved ones. "Escalating the fighting is a death sentence and immediate disappearance for our loved ones," the Hostage Family Forum said in a statement on Thursday. "Look us in the eyes when you choose to sacrifice them. The stark warning came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to take over all of the Gaza Strip ahead of Thursday night's Cabinet meeting, which stretched on for more than 10 hours as the government and defense establishment debated the next phase of the war. In the end, the body voted to approve a plan to occupy Gaza City, leaving the prime minister's ambitious plan to control the entire enclave up in the air. | As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. You can read our full item in the members-only version of TMD. | | Today's Must-Read | | | | | Jack Rakove | By common consent, Americans live in an era of tense and bitter polarization. That polarization can be measured in many ways, including the fact that the most conservative Democratic congressman votes to the left of the most liberal Republican—assuming that such creatures even exist. Having the president tell an Iowa rally that he "hates" Democrats "because I really believe they hate our country" marks an abysmal low in presidential rhetoric. Polarization, as we use the term, means aggressive political partisanship. Yet when Madison and other framers of the Constitution spoke about faction in the late 1780s, they were not—or at least not yet—anticipating the national political parties they would soon be creating. |
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| | Toeing the Company Line | | | Nick Catoggio | Texas, redistricting, and the point of no return. |
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| | | Grayson Logue | The president's attacks on the Bureau of Labor Statistics follow proposed budget cuts to the agency. |
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| | | Julian Hill | Democrats are banking on the former governor to continue his winning streak in an increasingly red state. |
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| | | Kevin D. Williamson | It wasn't a problem for Democrats—until Republicans got good at it. |
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| | | Jonah Goldberg, Kevin D. Williamson, and Chris Stirewalt | Republican Paxton Agonistes enter the chat. |
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