The Morning Dispatch: Haiti in Crisis

Plus: The Olympics runs into yet another round of COVID restrictions in Japan.

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated this week. (Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

Happy Friday! Crazy how it’s always the people you most expect who try to extort Nike for $20 million and then get sentenced to a couple years in jail for it.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • President Joe Biden announced in a speech Thursday that the United States’ military mission in Afghanistan will conclude August 31—slightly earlier than his original target of September 11—and that his administration is working to accelerate the process by which Afghan interpreters can receive Special Immigrant Visas to come to the United States. In response to a reporter’s question, Biden said he does not trust the Taliban, but trusts “the capacity of the Afghan military” to stave off the collapse of the Afghan government.
  • Hours after Pfizer’s president of research and development told the Associated Press the pharmaceutical giant plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to authorize a third-dose booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine, the FDA and Centers for Disease Control issued a joint statement reiterating that fully vaccinated Americans do not currently need a booster shot. “We are prepared for booster doses if and when the science demonstrates that they are needed,” the statement read.
  • The Japanese government on Thursday declared a new state of emergency over the spread of coronavirus within the country, leading to a reversal of the Olympic host country’s earlier decision to allow some fan attendance at the games.
  • WinRed and ActBlue, firms which process online donations for Republicans and Democrats, respectively, are under scrutiny from four state attorneys general for allegedly misleading practices related to pre-checked boxes for recurring donations.
  • In a reversal of its previous position, the FDA is now recommending that the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm be prescribed only to patients in the early stages of the disease. (The drug was only studied in early-stage patients.)

Haiti in Crisis

Early Wednesday morning, an armed group invaded the Port-au-Prince home of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, killing him and critically injuring his wife, Martine. The president was shot at least 12 times. No one else in the house was harmed, though Moïse’s daughter was also home at the time.

24 hours later, security forces engaged with the alleged attackers in Port-au-Prince, killing four and arresting two. Haiti’s chief of police, Léon Charles, told reporters that additional assailants were still at large. Four others have since been arrested, including James Solages, a Haitian American. One other suspect is reportedly a Haitian American, but the authorities have not yet released the suspect’s name.  They have also not yet released any evidence of the involvement of those arrested.

Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, Bocchit Edmond, called the assailants “well-trained professionals, killers, commandos.” The group allegedly dressed as U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials, but both Haitian and U.S. authorities have confirmed they had no connection to the DEA.

In light of the assassination, it is unclear who is functionally in charge of the government. Claude Joseph—interim prime minister since March 2020—assumed leadership of the country despite objections from other government officials. Just a day before his assassination, Moïse singlehandedly appointed Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon, as prime minister. Henry was scheduled to be sworn in this week, but Joseph has declared a “state of siege” for the next 15 days with the support of Haiti’s law enforcement and military leadership.

The Olympics, Sans Fans

On March 24, 2020, as governments around the world were declaring total war on the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Olympic Committee bowed to the inevitable, announcing the Tokyo 2020 games would be postponed. A week later, the committee set a new starting date for the competition: July 23, 2021.

As that date has approached, the return of the Olympics has symbolized how far the world has come in its fight against the virus. But this week, that triumphant narrative got a gut check when the Japanese government announced it would institute a state of emergency for the fourth time since the beginning of the pandemic to counter new COVID-19 surges in the capital city.

For the Olympics, the consequence is simple: No fans will be permitted to attend. The order will take effect on Monday and last through August 22—meaning the Olympic Games, which open on July 23 and conclude on August 8, will take place entirely under emergency measures.

The declaration comes after organizers announced in June that up to 10,000 domestic fans would be permitted inside Olympic venues despite public opposition to hosting the games. Fans from abroad were barred from attending the games earlier this year.

“This is a sorry message that we have to announce,” Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee, told reporters. “I am very sorry for those people who will be disappointed. But in order to prevent the spread, this was the only choice available for us to take. I hope that you understand the difficult choice that we made.”

Worth Your Time

  • If you’re anything like your Morning Dispatchers, you’re getting a bit tired of hearing about the New York mayoral primary. But if you feel inclined to read one more article about it, make it Perry Bacon Jr.’s thoughtful piece for the Washington Post, which analyzes what the race reveals about the Democratic Party. “The progressive left faces some real structural disadvantages, so it probably needs to outperform the party’s center-left on electoral tactics—and that isn’t happening right now,” he writes. “Until more very liberal Democrats get better at politics, they will be stuck trying to push their ideas onto centrists like Biden and Adams who hold the power, a process that will have some successes but also many frustrations.”
  • In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf has an interesting piece on a new North Carolina bill that would restrict the promotion of certain concepts in public schools. “In short, proponents of the North Carolina bill have adopted critical race theorists’ call for explicitly limiting discriminatory speech in education, while bill opponents have rejected it,” he writes. And later in the article: “The closer one looks at the particulars, the more it seems as though the North Carolina bill’s advocates would be securing a symbolic political victory rather than a policy victory with any significant classroom consequences.”

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Toeing the Company Line

  • On Thursday’s Advisory Opinions, David and Sarah chat with Peter Canellos, Politico editor at large and the author of a new book about former Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. Tune in to hear Canellos explain how Harlan went from being a Southern slave owner to the lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous Supreme Court case that upheld segregation.
  • Even those defending anti-critical race theory speech codes can’t justify the laws actually being passed now, David argues in Thursday’s French Press (🔒). “Existing anti-CRT bills would ban teaching even some of the arguments of Martin Luther King,” he writes. “If you want to teach history, civics, and law more effectively, there are abundant examples of high quality curricula you can propose and enact rather than banning ideas.”
  • Thomas Joscelyn’s latest Vital Interests (🔒) tackles the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th anniversary and President Xi Jinping’s speech commemorating it. “The speech, which was transcribed into English and released on state-controlled media websites, provides a useful window into how Xi continues to see his party 100 years after its founding.”
  • Slate’s Will Saletan rejoined Jonah on The Remnant this week for a discussion of Biden’s first six months, critical race theory, former President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter and Facebook, and much more.

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Ryan Brown (@RyanP_Brown), Harvest Prude (@HarvestPrude), Tripp Grebe (@tripper_grebe), Emma Rogers (@emw_96), Price St. Clair (@PriceStClair1), Jonathan Chew (@JonathanChew19), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).