Spies Like Us: “If the veiled nature of the deal was unusual– it was signed for the front company by a businessperson using a fake name – the timing was extraordinary. Only five days earlier, the Biden administration had announced it was taking action against NSO, whose hacking tools for years had been abused by governments around the world to spy on political dissidents, human rights activists and journalists.” Amazing reporting. Once tech is out there, it’s gonna be used. How the U.S. came to use the spyware it was trying to kill.

+ Arrested Journalist: “On Wednesday, the Russian state security service, the F.S.B., arrested my friend Evan. Evan Gershkovich, a thirty-one-year-old reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the son of Soviet-born émigrés who came to the U.S. in the late seventies, was detained while on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg, a city more than a thousand miles east of Moscow.” Joshua Yaffa in The New Yorker: The Unimaginable Horror of a Friend’s Arrest in Moscow. (It would be really nice if some of our more rabid politicians and media personalities could break with recent tradition and side with the American Jewish journalist and not Putin.)

+ Hand Grenade: Backed by an incredible shooting performance, LSU beat Iowa and its phenom Caitlyn Clark to take home the NCAA women’s college hoops championship. Axios has a good roundup of the action. Meanwhile, everyone is talking about the hand.

+ Higher Court: The most important election of 2023 is for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Why the Wisconsin Supreme Court election could have huge national implications. (There will never again be an election that isn’t insanely close and remarkably important.)

+ Tornadoes Strike: “Residents across a wide swath of the U.S. raced Sunday to assess the destruction from fierce storms that spawned possibly dozens of tornadoes from the South and the Midwest into the Northeast, killing at least 32 people.”

+ New York Post Facto: New York, city of Trump’s dreams, delivers his comeuppance. This has been the angle most absent from the narrative for years, and especially now. Donald Trump spent his entire life trying to be the king of New York. You cannot overstate this part of his personal journey. He plastered his name everywhere in the city. He is now deeply hated by the city he loves. He once planned to govern from Trump Tower. Now, NYC is a place where he only goes to face a judge. It’s a key part of what makes him a tragic figure (in addition to being an evil one). Of course, his legal issues won’t be limited to one jurisdiction. WaPo (Gift Article): Justice Dept. said to have more evidence of possible Trump obstruction at Mar-a-Lago.

+ Who’s on First? “A case of mistaken identity is sparking a selloff in Republic First Bancorp Inc., which had fallen by more than 40% this month because investors have it confused with embattled First Republic Bank.”