But first: Suzy Weiss on the AI robots coming soon to an apartment near you.

This week, the future arrived at my doorstep in the form of two sweaty college students, wearing cameras on their heads and wielding a tube of Clorox wipes.

I was getting free cleaning services through an AI training start-up called Shift, which bills itself as a gateway to an abundant new economy. In addition to two cleaners, it also sent a private chef to make me lunch.

But here’s the catch: Everyone running a vacuum over my floors or cooking me branzino did so while being recorded, their physical actions batched, analyzed, and transformed into training data for the next generation of AI-powered robots that the company intends to deploy across commercial and industrial sectors—to, eventually, complete chores autonomously.

I spoke with Bercan Kilic, one of the co-founders of Shift, as well as my college-kid cleaners, about the initiative. “What could happen, in 50 years, is basically all services and goods are free, or are close to free,” Kilic told me. But will turning our houses into self-imposed surveillance states spell the bright beginning of a liberated new age, or the bitter end of blue-collar work? Read my story to find out.

—Suzy Weiss

America’s 250th birthday is less than a month away, and we’re celebrating it by paying tribute to the Great Americans who made this country what it is.

Next up: Sandra Day O’Connor. From 1981 to 2006, O’Connor served as the Supreme Court’s enormously influential swing vote, often deciding cases split between the four liberals and four conservatives. Today, Charles Lane reflects on her extraordinary journey from a remote Arizona ranch to the highest court in the land—and how she “made herself a formidable justice the same way she had, as a girl, learned to brand calves, fire a rifle, or turn a bobcat into a house pet.”

David Mamet Joins The Lindbergh Conspiracies

On the night of March 1, 1932, someone climbed a ladder to a window of a remote New Jersey estate and stole the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, the famed American aviator. The baby was later found dead, and a man was arrested, tried, and executed—case closed. Or was it? Ninety-four years later, many of the details still don’t add up. Free Press journalists Joe Nocera and Poppy Damon became obsessed with getting to the bottom of it—and we think you will too. Listen to The Lindbergh Conspiracies, a new podcast from The Free Press hosted by Joe Nocera.

In case you’re not sold yet, after hearing about the podcast, acclaimed playwright David Mamet sent Joe Nocera a letter outlining his own theory of the crime—one that puts Charles Lindbergh at the center of the mystery. So, naturally, Joe set up an interview. Listen to a new, special episode of The Lindbergh Conspiracies with Mamet below, and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

EDITORS’ PICKS

Yesterday, SpaceX filed for the largest IPO in history. But the real story isn’t the $1.77 trillion valuation; it’s what SpaceX has made possible: a manufacturing boom—in space. “Musk’s company has lowered launch costs and increased launch frequency to the point where private businesses are planning to build data centers, manufacturing hubs, and labs in orbit,” wrote Sean Fischer this week. He spoke to Delian Asparouhov, the co-founder of space-based manufacturing start-up Varda, about the rapidly growing space economy, and why, in Asparouhov’s words, whichever nation “nails economic activity in low Earth orbit” may just win “the rest of the solar system and likely the rest of the galaxy.”

One of the biggest stories this month has been the personal life of Graham Platner, Maine’s embattled Democratic Senate candidate. Two weeks ago, Platner’s ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield told The New York Times that he emotionally abused her and became physical multiple times. But in the days that followed, many supporters of the #MeToo movement went on the attack, expressing skepticism about Fifield’s testimony—while others questioned her motives on the grounds that she is a Republican. Frannie Block and Audrey Fahlberg sat down with Fifield, who wants to set the record straight.

But if this kind of behavior is becoming more and more common among our politicians, what are voters meant to make of it? Should it matter to us if our elected officials are cheaters? Arthur Brooks says yes. Moral questions aside, he wrote this week, social science research “finds that adulterous behavior is an accurate predictor of professional misconduct, duplicitousness, low conscientiousness, and a tendency to betray promises.” In other words: Vote for faithful spouses.

Speaking of spouses, a very famous one—Jill Biden—has a new book out. The former First Lady’s new memoir is being criticized by journalists, ex-aides, and Democratic operatives—the same people who once pretended her husband was fit for office. But Jill is too convenient a scapegoat for Joe Biden’s brain fog debacle, argues Caitlin Flanagan: “If an old man can’t do his job anymore, don’t ask his wife to keep careful records on his decline. That’s not a wife’s job.”

Last summer, Vaibhav Duggal, a medical student at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, learned he would have to face the school’s disciplinary body after a patient accused him of asking inappropriate questions about her relationship status and then following her on Instagram. The next day, he died by suicide. Now, his parents are suing the school. Frannie Block has reported extensively on many examples of disciplinary overreach at schools across the country—and in her story this week, she investigated this tragic tale, and the question at its core: What do schools owe their students, even when they are accused of misconduct?

The neuroscientist, philosopher, and podcaster Sam Harris has built his reputation on intellectual honesty, moral clarity, and a willingness to follow arguments wherever they lead. Those traits were on full display in a piece he published last weekend: a methodical explanation of why he refuses to debate people whose obsession with Israel has convinced them that the Jewish state represents a unique form of evil. He isn’t talking about mere critics of Israel, but rather, those unwilling to honestly answer a simple question: What would each side do if it had the power to do whatever it wanted? The result is a powerful, rigorous essay that’s well worth your time this weekend.

As school lets out and the pool covers come off, the kids of America are entering three months of treasured freedom. But while that used to mean one simple thing—it’s time to go earn a paycheck—this year, only a third of teens will work summer jobs. Read Larissa Phillips’s essay on why that may be—and how years of sweating it out in restaurants, retail, and movie theaters brought her a sense of the world that traveling to Europe or lounging by the pool never could.

TGIF! In tomorrow’s Weekend Press, Josh Code spends the weekend at a Christian men’s retreat, where Marines and Muay Thai fighters go to war for Jesus. Niall Ferguson explains why loving football (sorry, soccer) is really all about suffering. Will Rahn reviews “Disclosure Day,” Steven Spielberg’s new alien movie. Kat Rosenfield ponders why Olivia Rodrigo just can’t seem to grow up. And much more.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

But first: Is the Trump administration going to deport this Iran war critic?

While President Donald Trump is grasping for a way out of his war in Iran, his state department is weighing whether to deport one of the conflict’s loudest opponents.

Perhaps no one in America has been a more vocal, and widely quoted, critic of the conflict than Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Whether he’s writing in left-wing magazine The Nation or commiserating with MAGA leader Steve Bannon, Parsi has carried a harshly critical message to Americans.

But now Parsi’s battle with the Trump administration has moved from print and the airwaves into the legal sphere. As I report in my latest story for The Free Press, Marco Rubio’s State Department has quietly been investigating whether to deport Parsi—an Iran-born, Sweden-raised, permanent U.S. resident green-card holder.

Administration officials and the president’s allies allege Parsi is more than just a pundit sharing his views on Iran. So do anti-regime activists in the U.S., one of whom told me he thought the Islamic regime “effectively positioned” Parsi “to advance [a] strategic agenda.” (Parsi denies this charge.)

Parsi isn’t likely to go without a fight—and he’s proven incredibly adept at playing Washington politics. He once called himself an “informal” adviser to the Obama administration’s negotiating team with Iran, and he now makes common cause with a range of conservative and MAGA leaders who oppose the Iran war and are sharp critics of the U.S. alliance with Israel. Will they rally to his defense?

Read my story on Parsi, the administration’s investigation, and the decades-long fight over Iran policy and Tehran’s influence operations here in America.

—Jay Solomon

With America’s 250th birthday less than a month away, we’re remembering the Great Americans who make it worth celebrating. Today, Charles Fain Lehman reflects on Irving Berlin, the Jewish immigrant who fled Russian pogroms as a child, wrote “God Bless America,” and never stopped being grateful for the country that took him in.

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THE NEWS

• The U.S. bombed Iran for the second straight night Wednesday, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warning, “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we will negotiate with bombs.” Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump said that the U.S. would “hit them again hard” after Iran downed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter earlier this week. Iran’s military is promising “heavy responses.”

• Inflation climbed to 4.2 percent in May—its highest point in more than three years—as war-driven energy costs ripple through the economy. Oil prices have surged about 35 percent since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February, with energy accounting for more than 60 percent of May’s overall price increase. Asked about the numbers, Trump told reporters: “When the war is over, it’s coming down.”

• Eight pro-Palestinian activists with ties to the University of Michigan were federally indicted on charges that they plotted to pressure campus leaders into breaking ties with Israel, allegedly through “spray-painting threats, breaking windows, and throwing glass jars filled with noxious chemicals into family homes.” If convicted on felony counts, defendants could face years in prison.

• Federal regulators took steps to legalize sports prediction markets nationwide, releasing a proposed framework that would allow platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket to offer bets on game outcomes, stats, and tournament results. Critics argue the move amounts to backdoor permission for sports gambling across the country, bypassing state and tribal laws.

• Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass at Barcelona’s Sagrada Família yesterday, and blessed its tallest spire on the 100th anniversary of its architect Antoni Gaudí’s death. The sprawling church was supposed to be completed this year, but construction has proven so complex that the end date has been pushed back to 2035.

• When SpaceX goes public this week, more than 4,400 current and former employees are expected to become millionaires. While Musk may become the world’s first trillionaire, the windfall will extend to engineers, launch workers, and others who took stock as part of their pay.

• Taiwan test-fired U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers into the strait separating it from China for the first time Wednesday, targeting waters where Chinese forces would have to cross in an invasion attempt. Trump has delayed approval of a $14 billion arms package for the island, calling it “a very good negotiating chip” in talks with Beijing.

But first: What happened after Lyndsey Fifield told The New York Times about her ex-boyfriend, Graham Platner.

Yesterday, Graham Platner secured the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Maine, and will face off against five-term Republican senator Susan Collins in the general election.

It’s a remarkable result given the scandals that have plagued his campaign. There was the Nazi tattoo that he had for 18 years before covering it up this past fall. The allegations of cheating and sexting other women while married to his current wife. The Reddit posts where he called himself a “communist,” insisted that white rural Americans “actually are” racist and stupid, and downplayed sexual assault, writing in one post that people should “just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.”

And then there are the allegations that came out last week in The New York Times. The Times story detailed Platner’s behavior toward three of his ex-girlfriends. One of them, Lyndsey Fifield, spoke about an instance where Platner yanked her out of a cab after an argument, and another where he twisted her arm behind her back, pushed her into a room, and held the door shut so she couldn’t escape. She also said he cavalierly discussed violence, including threatening to “rape” home intruders. Platner’s campaign did not dispute the rape remarks, but strongly denied any allegations of physical abuse.

What happened after the story was published was, according to Fifield, “disgusting.”

Fifield has faced a vicious backlash for going public about Platner, including accusations that she could be “a scheming liar with a political agenda.” The day after the Times story dropped, Platner’s campaign raised $200,000, its best fundraising day since his main primary opponent, Democratic governor Janet Mills, stopped actively campaigning in April.

Overnight, Fifield’s accusations have become more than just a major development in perhaps the most closely watched race of the 2026 midterm cycle. The story set off a debate about journalistic bias, double standards, and what we expect of candidates for office today.

For our story today, we spoke with Fifield and Jenny Racicot, another woman who detailed Platner’s disturbing past behavior—as well as Genevieve McDonald, who used to work on Platner’s campaign—to understand the real Graham Platner, and what the reception to his ex-girlfriends’ accusations say about the political moment we find ourselves in.

—Frannie Block and Audrey Fahlberg

Who Is Winning the Iran War—and When Will It End?

On Tuesday, the war with Iran reignited—yet again. America pounded Iranian military installations yesterday after Tehran downed an Apache helicopter on Monday. This came just days after Iran fired a ballistic missile barrage at Israel, a move that followed Israel’s targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon. President Trump urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike back. But Netanyahu did anyway—prompting observers everywhere to ask: Did Bibi just defy the president?

Today, Niall Ferguson joins Rafaela Siewert to unpack the latest in the Middle East, whether the defiance was a genuine fracture or a strategic decoy—and whether the costs of this war will come to outweigh the gains of America, Israel, and the Middle East at large.

With the midterms approaching, leaks from the White House suggest that J.D. Vance and other senior Trump officials are looking for ways to create distance from the war in Iran. But to understand where the conflict stands and what’s next, Haviv Rettig Gur argues, we need to stop seeing the war “as an American political event, and see it for what it actually is: a chapter in a much longer regional story.” Read his latest piece on what comes next, why a U.S.-Iran agreement will never hold, and why the conflict may well last another 20 years.

Catch Up on Great Americans

You already know Washington and Lincoln. This month, we’re bringing you tributes to some of our other favorite Americans. Catch up on a few of our latest and greatest ones: Major Garrett on novelist John Steinbeck; Joseph Epstein on Sandy Koufax; Will Rahn on Jack and Bobby Kennedy. And later today, keep an eye out for our latest entry, which is something a little different from Colleen Shogan, former U.S. archivist: a tribute not to a single compatriot, but to a heroic group of great Americans—the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001.

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THE NEWS

• The U.S. struck Iran on Tuesday after President Trump said the Islamic Republic shot down an American Apache helicopter that was patrolling the Strait of Hormuz the day before. “There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured,” Trump said on social media. “Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”

• NASA announced the names of the four astronauts who will take part in the Artemis III mission to space next year. The crew will be made up of Commander Randy “Komrade” Bresnik; pilot Luca Parmitano; mission specialist Frank Rubio; and mission specialist Andre Douglas. The U.S. hopes to return humans to the moon in 2028.

• A report by the Social Security’s Board of Trustees says the program is on track to be insolvent by the end of 2032. On Tuesday, the Social Security Administration said it would slash benefits by 22 percent in the event of insolvency.

• Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old accused of killing his parents, director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, is attempting to get part of his inheritance to pay for legal fees. “Like anyone accused of a crime, Nick is presumed innocent, and he is entitled to mount his defense with the resources that are lawfully his own,” his lawyers said in a petition filed on Monday in Los Angeles.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping with two days of elaborate celebrations this week, indicating that Pyongyang still sees Beijing—not Moscow—as its primary ally.

• In primaries on Tuesday, Maine Democratic voters are expected to nominate embattled candidate Graham Platner to take on longtime GOP senator Susan Collins in the fall. Meanwhile in South Carolina, Trump-backed gubernatorial hopeful Pamela Everette is facing a crowded Republican primary that also features Rep. Nancy Mace, among others.

• Lesley Groff, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime assistants, told a House committee Tuesday morning that she had no knowledge of her late boss’s crimes. (For more on Groff, read Tanya Lukyanova’s deep dive into how Groff escaped unscathed from the Epstein scandal.)

But first: A school disciplinary email leads to suicide.

Last summer, Vaibhav Duggal, a promising medical student at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, learned he would have to face the school’s disciplinary body after a patient accused him of asking inappropriate questions about her relationship status during his ob-gyn clinical rotation, and then following her on Instagram. Hours later, he died by suicide. He left a note behind for his parents saying he “simply cannot bear the shame.”

The Duggal family blames the school for their son’s death. In January, Vaibhav’s parents filed a lawsuit accusing the school of negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violating their son’s due process rights.

Vaibhav’s story is one of the many examples of institutional overreach during disciplinary proceedings at universities across America that Frannie Block has reported on. In all of these stories, the students’ families told Frannie two things. First, that the universities failed to grant them due process. Second, that they failed to take the students’ mental health into consideration.

The Duggal family is no exception. But they face an uphill battle. Texas’s laws on sovereign immunity shield state institutions from liability except for in specific cases of negligence approved by each state legislature.

Whether or not they succeed in their legal fight, the Duggals have joined other grieving parents in a burgeoning campaign to persuade lawmakers to protect the rights of students like Vaibhav who face disciplinary action on campus.

“Whatever we are doing right now, he’s not coming back,” Vivek Duggal, Vaibhav’s father, said of his son, “but at least we can save someone else’s life.”

Read Frannie’s investigation into this tragic tale—and what schools owe their students, even when they are accused of misconduct.

—Dana Schuster

America’s 250th birthday bash is less than a month away, and we’re honoring some of the Great Americans of history. Up next: Martin Scorsese.

Comedian Colin Quinn honors the legendary Hollywood director by cautioning him never to leave New York City to make another film. When you make mundane urban infrastructure, like a stoop or fire hydrant, look like a “love poem,” Quinn asks, why cross the Hudson River?

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THE NEWS

• Israel and Iran ceased military engagement on Monday after a brief exchange of missile fire over the weekend. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed it would hold fire “for now,” but said the war was not yet over. Netanyahu also said IDF operations against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon will continue.

• On Monday a federal judge blocked a Trump administration policy that attached a $100,000 fee to H-1B visa applications, saying the policy was effectively a tax, a power reserved for the legislative branch. “[T]he Administration is confident this order will be reversed on appeal,” a White House spokesperson said after the ruling.

• Young Americans are souring on their view of America, according to a new AP-NORC poll. Nearly half of adults under 30 say there are other countries better than the United States. The poll also found a decrease in the belief in democracy’s centrality to the nation. Only about half of under-30 respondents consider democracy very important to the identity of the nation, compared to 81 percent of U.S. adults over 60 years old.

• The flesh-eating New World screwworm parasite has spread beyond its initial Texas outbreak, with federal officials confirming four U.S. cases—including infections in calves and a goat in Texas, and a dog in neighboring New Mexico.

• Pope Leo denounced the “scourge” of sexual violence committed by Catholic clergy, saying it is “still an open wound” for the church in remarks on Monday to Spanish bishops. “Every wounded person must be able to find sincere listening, welcome, protection, and real paths to healing,” the U.S.-born pontiff said. Pope Leo also addressed the Spanish Parliament, calling for a global response to the “tragic drama” of mass migration and to defend human life “from conception to its natural end.”

• Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author Gordon Wood died on Sunday after being struck by a motor vehicle in Providence, Rhode Island. Wood wrote more than a dozen books on the American Revolution and founding era. Wood was awarded the National Humanities Medal by Barack Obama in 2010. He was 92.

• A 7.8 magnitude earthquake off the shore of the Philippines killed at least 35 people and injured more than 200 on Monday. The tremor collapsed several low-rise buildings in the port city of General Santos and triggered a mudslide that killed 13 in the coastal Glan municipality. It is the first earthquake to hit the Philippines this year.

• Trump attended game three of the NBA finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden Monday night, watching the Knicks lose by four points in the final quarter. He’s the first sitting U.S. president to attend an NBA Finals.

But first: Two big questions about artificial intelligence.

The debate over artificial intelligence seems to be developing as quickly as the technology itself, with programmers, lawmakers, and everyday citizens all having their say. The latest turn was kicked off by Pope Leo, with his AI encyclical last month.

In his evenhanded take on the technology, there was one detail about which the pope was firm: There is no mind in the machines. “Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship, or responsibility mean,” he wrote.

The people building the machines aren’t so sure. Last week, we learned that Anthropic, Meta, and Alphabet have hired psychologists, philosophers, and other experts to probe whether there might be a spirit in their digital creations. So is AI conscious? It’s the latest in a series of questions we find ourselves facing that feel like they should be from a science-fiction novel.

Tyler Cowen tackles it in his piece for us today. Don’t miss his take:

In our second offering today, Senator Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri, grapples with more practical, but no less significant, questions about AI: Will it cause mass layoffs? How dangerous are chatbots with malicious designs? How will the spread of power-hungry data centers affect energy bills? And what can we do about all this?

Hawley offers a simple and absolute answer: Let the public set the rules about AI, not its creators. “The American economy will not automatically orient itself around the interests of American families,” he writes. “We must make that moral commitment ourselves.” Don’t miss this important contribution to perhaps the most important debate out there right now.

—Mene Ukueberuwa

In case you missed the news, we’re counting down Great Americans as we approach the big 250 next month.

Next up in the series: the Kennedys. Will Rahn writes about Jack and Bobby and the family that was never a dynasty. Instead, he says, they were a “flash of light”—eight years of real power followed by six decades of afterimage that America just can’t quit.

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THE NEWS

• Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel yesterday in retaliation for Israeli air strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, jeopardizing peace deal negotiations and the ceasefire between Tehran and Washington. No major damage or casualties were reported. “I am going to call Bibi right now and tell him not to retaliate,” President Trump told Axios. “We are very close to a final deal with Iran.”

• A standoff over the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence led to a warning from Senators Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “plan for a potential significant gap in foreign intelligence collection.” To protest Pulte, Senate Democrats have blocked the reauthorization of an important foreign surveillance program.

• President Trump walked out of an interview on Meet the Press, accusing NBC of being a “one-sided crooked network” during a heated exchange over what he claims are “rigged” elections. In the interview, Trump also denied promising “no new wars” during his presidential campaign. “I didn’t promise anything,” Trump said, adding that the Iran conflict “is not an endless war.”

• A report commissioned by the leaders of Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis concluded that there has been a “deterioration in scholarly standards” in the social sciences and humanities. “Every field” reviewed by the report’s authors showed some signs of ideological distortion where “political criteria” substituted for “scholarly criteria,” the report said.

• The White House is considering a plan to buy the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean from the United Kingdom, which would snarl UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s plan to cede the territory to Mauritius, according to The Telegraph. U.S. leaders fear giving up control over the home of the joint U.S.-UK Diego Garcia military base to China-allied Mauritius. Starmer did not allow the U.S. to strike Iran from Diego Garcia at the beginning of the war.

• The Trump administration must restart asylum and immigration processing for people from 39 countries, a federal judge ruled on Friday. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services put a hold on all asylum claims and froze decisions on immigration applications from the 39 countries, largely in Africa and the Middle East.

• Nithya Raman edged past Spencer Pratt into second place as more votes were counted in the primary race for Los Angeles mayor. Election analysis firm Decision Desk HQ projected on Sunday that Raman will face off against incumbent Karen Bass in the November general election, while the Associated Press had not called a winner as of Sunday night. (Watch: Inside Spencer Pratt’s Viral Video Machine.)

But first: The SAT is back, but do we want it?

Over the last decade, our college entrance exams have been steadily dumbed down.

The longest reading passage on the SAT is only 150 words—and the shortest is 25, just a single sentence—because the College Board claims that the ability to read anything longer is “not an essential prerequisite for college.”

But in 2020, a lot of colleges ditched the test because of Covid, deepening a trend that began not because the SAT was too easy—but because it was supposedly too hard for certain students: the ones who didn’t benefit from tip-top exam prep.

The University of California was one of those places. As of this week, more than 1,400 faculty members have signed an open letter demanding the return of the SAT for STEM majors—after finding that 30 percent of incoming freshmen don’t have middle school–level math skills. In the last 18 months, plenty of other top universities have brought back the SAT, too.

But what’s the point of reinstating a test that’s not tough? And could there be an alternative?

These are the questions at the heart of Maya Sulkin’s latest piece, which focuses on a man who is trying to make college entrance exams rigorous again.

Jeremy Tate, who spent a decade teaching in public schools, is the inventor of the Classic Learning Test (CLT), which expects students to analyze long chunks of the Western canon and doesn’t let them use calculators. It’s been criticized for being too conservative and for being championed by the Trump administration—but Tate says this isn’t about politics.

It’s about making sure students are ready for serious academic work.

—Rick Brooks

In the latest installment of our Great Americans series, Major Garrett writes about John Steinbeck. From Of Mice and Men to East of Eden and beyond, his novels echo in our memory “like a favorite family hymn, a true American hymn,” writes Major.

EDITORS’ PICKS

From presidential assassination attempts to lethal assaults on places of worship to an arson attack on a governor’s mansion, it’s clear we are living through an age of political violence. But how does a seemingly normal teenager get so radicalized that he plots a terrorist attack? That’s the question Maya Sulkin spent months investigating for her new piece. It’s about a 14-year-old boy who was isolated, perpetually online, and autistic. He was targeted by jihadist extremists on a chat-room app. Her piece tells the story of a profound danger facing some of the most vulnerable Americans and the dilemmas parents face after they discover their child has been radicalized.

Last year, Frannie Block and Jay Solomon investigated the scale of Qatari efforts to influence American public life. They found nearly $100 billion of Qatari investments across key sectors, from education to defense—and exposed how Qatar sought to curry favor with the American public and politicians in both parties. Now, a fresh report suggests the spending is even bigger than anyone thought. Read Frannie’s story on the more than $400 billion in Qatari spending in the U.S. since 2010 and how it has changed the country.

Is artificial intelligence a blessing or a curse? It may be the defining question of the 21st century. The technology promises extraordinary benefits, from medical breakthroughs to unprecedented economic growth. But it also poses profound risks to how we live—and perhaps even to the future of humanity. As Niall Ferguson wrote this week, AI is turning out to be perhaps the most dangerous arms race in human history. And we have arrived at what may be its most dangerous point. To make matters worse, “the leadership of the competitors in this race is, to say the least, of mixed quality.” Read Niall to make sense of this important, precarious moment:

And for more on the AI arms race, don’t miss the latest episode of School of War. Aaron MacLean sits down with former intelligence officer Anthony Vinci, who explains how AI has upended our assumptions about espionage and intelligence and unpacks the future of spy craft in the 21st century.

How will the next generation prepare for this brave new AI-infused world? The answer, for some parents, is by spending their Saturdays vibe coding with their kids. Evan Gardner spoke to the people who think it’s a parenting prerogative to raise well-trained AI natives. Read his feature on the parents who have seen the future and want their kids to master it.

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s week keeps getting worse. The latest allegations against the scandal-ridden Democrat come courtesy of The New York Times, who spoke to several of his ex-girlfriends, some of whom found his behavior “intimidating and disturbing.” The story has triggered a familiar-sounding conversation about who to believe and how to judge contested claims about a public figure’s personal life. But Platner himself is not exactly shy about making accusations of his own—including against people no longer here to defend themselves. In a recently unearthed podcast interview, Platner accused Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL sniper made famous by the movie American Sniper, of targeting civilians in Iraq. It’s a serious claim, and one for which there is not a shred of evidence, says Leif Babin, Chris Kyle’s former platoon commander. Read his defense of his late friend:

Finally, if you’re looking for something to watch this weekend, Spencer Klavan wrote about the low-budget psychological thriller outdoing a Star Wars spin-off at the box office. Backrooms and its 20-year-old director are changing the scope of what the aging movie industry allows. Read his piece about why Hollywood may yet have hope, thanks to a generation of YouTubers.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

But first: Frannie Block on why she’s still following the Qatari money.

I started covering Qatari influence campaigns in the United States because of a map.

The map, which hung in a public elementary school in Brooklyn, depicted the “Arab world”—only Israel wasn’t on it. The classroom in which it hung, I uncovered, was funded by a nonprofit called Qatar Foundation International, run by the wife of Qatar’s emir. It turns out, in a four-year time span, QFI had given over $1 million to the New York City Department of Education.

Yesterday, QFI reportedly announced it would be “winding down” its operations—perhaps a sign that the Gulf country is wary of scrutiny as more people ask, “Why is this tiny, oil-rich country in the Gulf spending so much money in America?”

My colleague Jay Solomon and I spent months trying to understand just how much Qatari money was making its way into American life. The investigation we published last year revealed nearly $100 billion of Qatari investments in key American industries, including education and defense—and exposed how Qatar sought to curry favor with politicians and the American public on both sides of the aisle.

But widen the lens and the issue only grows in size. Today, a new report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tallies more than $400 billion in Qatari spending in the U.S. since 2010. The list goes on and on—each example another reason for worry and outrage about Qatar’s influence over American life. Read my story for the latest developments on one of the most overlooked stories in the country.

—Frannie Block

For the latest installment of our new Great Americans series, Daniel Akst tells the story of Elisha Otis—the Vermont farm boy who made the American skyscraper possible. Before Otis, elevators could plummet if their ropes snapped. His invention, the safety hoist, fixed that. Otis, Daniel writes, “embodied a country hell-bent to build.” Read his piece on the man who gave America its skyline.

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THE NEWS

• Iran struck Kuwait’s main international airport yesterday, killing one and injuring dozens, just two days after the terminal had reopened after a monthslong closure amid the war. Iran denied responsibility, claiming the damage was caused by a U.S. interceptor—a claim U.S. Central Command firmly rejected.

• Israel and Lebanon agreed to a new ceasefire Wednesday following U.S.-brokered talks in Washington. The deal requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. A previous deal struck in April failed to stop the fighting.

• The House passed a resolution to curtail Trump’s war powers in Iran, with four Republicans breaking ranks to hand Democrats a rare bipartisan rebuke of the president. The measure still needs Senate approval, but the vote signals growing unease in Congress over a war that has stretched past the 60-day limit requiring Congressional authorization.

• Senate Republicans advanced their immigration funding bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol Tuesday after dropping taxpayer money for Trump’s White House ballroom and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche abandoning a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that would compensate some January 6 convicts.

• SpaceX is planning a $75 billion IPO at $135 per share that would value Elon Musk’s rocket company at $1.75 trillion—likely making it the largest public offering in history. The stock is set to debut on the NASDAQ on June 12.

• After a 15-hour standoff, the FBI shot and killed a suspect who had barricaded himself with 10 hostages yesterday inside an office building in Bakersfield, California. The man claimed to have explosives strapped to himself and some of the hostages. Officials did not give a motive, and all 10 victims were released unharmed.

• Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner met with Democratic senators this week to assure them no further scandals were coming after reports emerged that he sent sexually explicit messages to other women while married. “The worst of the rumors we’ve all heard are not true,” Platner told the group, though many in the party remain uneasy with the primary just a week away.

• NASA officially pulled the plug on Maven, its Mars-orbiting spacecraft, after six months of silence. It went dark in December after passing behind the planet, apparently entering a spin that knocked it off course and depleted its batteries.

But first: Niall Ferguson on the unseen perils of artificial intelligence.

Is artificial intelligence a blessing or a curse? It may be the defining question of the 21st century. The technology promises extraordinary benefits, from medical breakthroughs to unprecedented economic growth. But it also poses profound risks to how we live—and perhaps even to the future of humanity.

One thing we know is that the momentum behind more advanced AI is only building: On Monday, Anthropic—the company behind the popular Claude model—filed plans for an initial public offering that could value the company at nearly $1 trillion. Other AI giants are expected to follow suit.

Meanwhile, President Trump yesterday signed an executive order asking AI companies to voluntarily submit powerful new models for government review just 30 days before public release—a significantly watered-down version of the policy he was set to impose last month, which he reportedly rejected hours beforehand, saying it would “get in the way” of America’s competition with China.

Such are the stakes of the AI race: the promise and peril of unprecedented economic disruption, a winner-takes-all tussle for geopolitical supremacy.

With so much on the line, things could go very wrong, very fast. That’s the argument historian and Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson lays out in his essay for us today.

“The unfolding history of artificial intelligence has now arrived at what may be its most dangerous moment,” he writes. “We may be hurtling toward the most dangerous arms race in history.” And we are doing so, argues Niall, when “the leadership of the competitors in this race is, to say the least, of mixed quality”:

The chief executives of the most important companies include at least one with a record of duplicity, and at least two egomaniacs. Meanwhile, the president of the United States is a former real estate developer and reality TV star, roughly half of whose public utterances are mere bluffs, and the leader of the People’s Republic of China is a Marxist-Leninist who aspires to eclipse Mao Zedong as a dictator.

What could possibly go wrong? For an answer to that question, read Niall’s essay.

—Jillian Lederman

Last night, Californians took to the polls in the state’s “jungle primary” elections, teeing up an explosive one-on-one gubernatorial race and an exciting Los Angeles mayoral contest. At the time of writing, with 56 percent of votes counted in the Golden State, Republican challenger Steve Hilton leads the Gubernatorial race with 28 percent of the vote. In Los Angeles, with 63 percent of the votes counted, incumbent Karen Bass leads with 35 percent and former reality star Spencer Pratt is at 30 percent. Stay tuned for the thoughts of our man in Los Angeles, Peter Savodnik, on the final results later today. And while you wait, catch up with Peter’s live coverage in The Free Press Forum last night.

For the latest installment of our new Great Americans series, Joe Nocera pays tribute to jazz legend Louis Armstrong. Rising from the slums of New Orleans, Armstrong became “the first black entertainer to be truly embraced by Americans, whether white or black. Indeed, at the height of his fame, he was the most beloved entertainer in the world.” But beyond that, what made the self-taught “Satchmo” a key figure in 20th-century life, what drove his genius, and how did he become an unlikely Cold Warrior? Read Joe’s gorgeous piece. You won’t be disappointed.

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THE NEWS

• President Trump tapped Bill Pulte, the current chief of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to serve as acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte is one of Trump’s closest allies, sending criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Trump critics and leading the charge against former Fed chair Jerome Powell. Pulte will serve in both capacities simultaneously, according to the president. (Read Bethany McLean’s terrific profile of Pulte, “The Man Behind Trump’s Attack on the Fed.”)

• The Department of Justice is officially scrapping the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” after intense pushback from Republican allies in Congress. “We are not moving forward with the fund. Period,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. (Read Tanner Nau’s reporting about January 6 rioters who want money from the fund, “They Stormed the Capitol. Now They Want Millions.”)

• A large barrage of Russian missiles and drones killed at least 22 people in Kyiv, Ukraine, late Monday night. The attack included 650 drones and more than 70 cruise missiles, according to the Ukrainian air force, damaging dozens of residential buildings and medical facilities. President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote to President Trump last week, warning that the country is running low on American missile defense interceptors.

• The rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner will be held on July 24, according to the association’s president, CBS News’ Weija Jang. The dinner will be held a day after the three-month mark of the assassination attempt at the Washington Hilton hotel, this time at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Trump called the rescheduling a “sign of strength and fortitude.”

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio was peppered with questions while testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, his first public hearing since the beginning of the Iran war in February. Rubio said negotiations with Iran are ongoing during the current pause of hostilities, and that “there is the prospect” that Iran would negotiate the future of its nuclear program.

• Embattled Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner met with high-ranking Senate Democrats in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday afternoon. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was tight-lipped after the meeting, but told reporters, “We’re going to beat [Maine Republican senator] Susan Collins and take back the Senate.” Schumer initially backed Governor Janet Mills for the Democratic nomination; she suspended her primary bid in April.

• A wild bear injured four people in Fukushima, Japan, after it rampaged through two factories on Tuesday afternoon. It’s the latest in a rising trend of bear attacks in the country, with authorities reporting 13 deaths in more than 230 attacks by bears in 2025. Last year, the Japanese army was dispatched to the city of Akita after 60 people were attacked by bears.

But first: Jewish history is hard to find at the British Museum.

Last week, the British Museum—one of the finest museums in the world and an institution with a commitment to “all fields of human knowledge” and “open debate”—postponed a lecture on ancient Israel and Judea because some 25 attendees planned to disrupt it. The decision, writes federal judge Roy K. Altman, violates the most basic principles of free expression. “We don’t close our banks just because some people might rob them. The solution to rule violators is to punish and deter them, not encourage them with victory.”

But the museum’s problems with Jewish history began long before that event. When Altman visited the museum a few years ago, he found artifacts attesting to Jewish indigeneity in Israel displayed without mention of the Jewish connection to the land, some labeled with anachronistic references to Palestine. Read Altman’s deep dive into how one of the world’s great museums is subordinating free inquiry and historical truth to political pressure.

In a second story on free expression and the United Kingdom today, we tackle the decision by the UK government to deny entry to anti-Israel American commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur. The two Hamas apologists and their defenders blamed Israel for the ban. It’s an absurd if unsurprising claim that only goes to show that censorship like this is self-defeating. Read our full take in our latest editorial.

—The Editors

Introducing: The Great Americans Series

Yesterday we announced the launch of our Great Americans series. With just a month to go until the 250th, we’re bringing you a rundown of some of the greatest Americans to have lived. As we explained in the launch essay, we’re not proposing a definitive list of the country’s greatest patriots. We’re doing something simpler, and more personal: Every weekday between now and July 4, we’re bringing you a writer we love, writing about a great American they love. Leading off: Joseph Epstein—a great in his own right—on the baseball pitcher Sandy Koufax.

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THE NEWS

• Anthropic filed paperwork for an initial public offering on Monday. The move positions the company, currently valued at $965 billion, in a race with Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX to become the next tech giant to go public.

• Florida attorney general James Uthmeier filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI on Monday, alleging that the company knowingly released products that could harm the public. The suit comes less than two weeks after Meta was forced to settle with a school district over its products’ detrimental effects on users, and could signal the next major phase of the legal backlash against Big Tech.

• Tina Peters, a former Colorado elections clerk convicted of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, was released from prison on Monday. Peters’ release comes after Colorado governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence, following sustained pressure from the Trump administration.

• President Trump is reportedly planning to abandon his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for victims of political prosecution. The move comes after two federal judges raised doubts about its legality on Friday, and marks a sharp reversal of President Trump’s position, less than one month after he announced the program. (For more on the fund, read Tanner Nau’s “They Stormed the Capitol. Now They Want Millions.”)

• A new study from investment company TIAA and Stanford University shows that Americans’ financial literacy has fallen to a 10-year low. Among the participants, Gen-Z adults struggled the most, answering just 38 percent of the questions correctly. The baby boomers scored the highest, at 54 percent. (For more on Gen Z’s economic woes, read Maya Sulkin’s “Why Gen Z Hates Work.”)

• A new clinical trial revealed that daraxonrasib, a pill for treating pancreatic cancer, can keep patients alive for twice as long as otherwise. The discovery marks a scientific breakthrough more than four decades in the making, and could set a new standard for treating one of the world’s most dangerous diseases.

• Serena Williams announced her return to tennis on Monday. Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, will make her comeback at the Queen’s doubles tournament this summer, nearly four years after retiring from the sport.

Peter Savodnik will be tracking the California primaries all day tomorrow and engaging with subscribers in the Free Press Forum. If you haven’t already, upgrade now and get 20 percent off to chat with Free Press staff and other subscribers about what’s happening in the world.

UPGRADE NOW

But first: Graham Platner’s latest scandal(s).

How many scandals can one Senate campaign handle? Graham Platner, the progressive Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, may soon find out.

Platner had already faced his fair share of controversy. This is the candidate with the Nazi tattoo on his chest (now covered), who may not be quite as blue-collar as he makes out, who used assorted slurs and masturbation jokes in trollish posts on Reddit, who smeared cops as “trash,” who. . . you get the picture.

This weekend that list got a little longer. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that last year Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, found sexually explicit texts between Platner and several other women. The Journal also found that Platner has an active account on Kik, a private messaging app. In his profile picture he is shirtless with a towel around his waist.

“No marriage is perfect, and I don’t want a perfect marriage. I want my marriage,” said Gertner in a selfie-style video Sunday.

Today, we’re publishing two perspectives on Platner and his candidacy.

The first is about another Platner controversy that got a bit less attention than the salacious sexting story. In comments made on a 2024 podcast that resurfaced recently, Graham Platner suggested that Chris Kyle, the legendary “American Sniper” made famous by the 2014 movie of that name, targeted innocent Iraqi civilians to boost his kill numbers.

Kyle died in 2013 so cannot defend himself from these claims. But his friend and former platoon commander, Leif Babin, can—and does in The Free Press today.

“Those accusations are absolutely false,” writes Leif. Read his full response to the “slanderous accusations” of an “aspiring politician” and the toll they have taken on Kyle’s wife and children.

Our second Platner story comes from River Page, and it is an answer to a simple but central question: Why does none of this seem to be hurting Platner? River’s theory gets to the heart not just of this crucial Senate race, but the dynamics driving so much of our politics.

—Oliver Wiseman

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THE NEWS

• A D.C. district judge ordered Trump’s name removed from the Kennedy Center on Friday, ruling that only Congress—not the center’s board—has the authority to rename the venue. The decision also blocked the planned two-year closure for renovations. Trump responded Saturday by calling the judge “an anti Trump Hater” and warning the center will “soon be closed, probably never to open again.”

• After several musicians dropped out of “The Great American State Fair”—a celebration of America’s 250th anniversary on the National Mall—over the event’s ties to Trump, the president announced Saturday he would headline it himself. Trump dismissed the departing acts as “Third Rate ‘Artists.’ ” Event organizers confirmed Trump will kick off the festivities on June 24.

• Federal ICE agents agreed to withdraw from the parking lot outside a Newark immigration detention center Friday, ceding control to state troopers after days of clashes with protesters. The ACLU says hundreds of detainees inside had been staging a hunger strike over spoiled food and poor medical care—a claim that the Department of Homeland Security denies.

• Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered troops deeper into Lebanon on Sunday, expanding the ground offensive against Hezbollah despite a ceasefire that has been in place since mid-April. Israeli forces seized Beaufort Castle, a 12th-century fortress in the deepest incursion into the country in 26 years, just days before Lebanon and Israel are set to hold direct talks in Washington.

• A potential U.S.-Iran peace deal remained unsigned Sunday after Trump asked for significant edits to a draft agreement, sources with knowledge of the matter told Axios. The president wants stronger language around Iran’s nuclear stockpile and the Strait of Hormuz, but a response from Tehran could take days—“They’re literally in caves and they’re not using email,” a senior administration official said.

• Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League victory over Arsenal on Saturday sparked widespread rioting across France, with 780 people arrested as fans set off fireworks, torched bikes, and clashed with police. Authorities had deployed thousands of officers after similar celebrations turned deadly when PSG won last year.

• A meteor exploded off the coast of Massachusetts on Saturday afternoon, rattling windows and shaking homes across the region with a boom heard as far as Rhode Island. “The energy released at breakup is estimated to be equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT,” NASA said.

• The San Antonio Spurs are headed to the NBA Finals after ousting the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7 on Saturday night. They will now face the New York Knicks, who won the Eastern Conference Finals. The last time the two teams met in the NBA Finals, 27 years ago, San Antonio won, four games to one.

It’s Friday, May 29. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Alex Berenson on why the latest health-tech fad device is actually making us less healthy. Matti Friedman joins School of War. Our editors’ picks. All that and more.

But before we get to today’s stories, it has been an exciting week over at 60 Minutes, with Bari announcing a new executive producer for the most storied show in TV news: the award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Nick Bilton. Read more about it here, and check out Nick’s note to the show’s team. We’re excited to tune in.

Now, our lead story: The Baltimore miracle.

What’s broken? That’s a question we ask a lot here. It’s one you can’t ignore if you want to understand the world, and perhaps even make it better. But if you want to fix what is broken, you need to ask another question—one the media is prone to ignore: What works?

Today’s lead investigation, by Charles Fain Lehman, is an answer to that question, focused on one vital issue in one city. For decades, Baltimore has been synonymous with homicides. In 2020, homicide rates in the city were eight times higher than the national average. Then, starting in late 2022, the rate started falling precipitously. Today’s numbers would have been unimaginable even a few years ago. In April, Baltimore had four homicides, a lower total than for any single month in 50 years.

“What has happened in Baltimore was supposed to be impossible,” writes Charles. The cycle of homicides was, we were told, never going to fall unless America ended its war on drugs, or until systemic racism was fully disassembled. But those fatalistic predictions turned out to be wrong.

So how did Baltimore do it? Charles went to find out. Take the white pill this Friday morning, and read his fantastic dispatch.

—Oliver Wiseman

EDITORS’ PICKS

This was a big week at Free Press towers, with the launch of The Free Press Community. That means a whole slate of new offerings for Free Pressers. There’s the Free Press Forum, an online meeting place to discuss, debate, and debrief the news. You’ll also find a place to chat with Free Press staff—including our own Queen of TGIF, Nellie Bowles, today at 2:30 p.m. ET.

Want to get offline? Sign up now for The Free Press Supper Club and mark your interest for Free Press Excursions and Retreats. Check it out—you might meet your next spouse or business partner at one of these events. For more on all this, read Bari’s note laying out the next chapter of The Free Press:

While you can pick your friends—and we hope yours read The Free Press—who you get as your parents is a sort of cosmic roll of the dice. This week, one of our favorite pieces was by a young woman who won the dad lottery—her father is former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, the moderate Republican who is now dying of pancreatic cancer.

Most parents ask their kids “what did you learn today?” after school. Sasse asked his kids, including his daughter Alex Sasse, “Who did you serve?”

Alex’s essay this week is about her parents’ values—and how they have shaped her. It’s one of the most moving things we’ve published:

Knowing your father is going to die and celebrating his life is one thing. Knowing your daughter doesn’t want to live and trying to talk her out of it is another.

This week, Rupa Subramanya spoke with Omar and Cizzy Dekker, whose 19-year-old daughter, Iris, chose to end her life after years of severe depression.

“I tried to understand how loving parents could be persuaded that the best decision for their daughter was an early death,” writes Rupa. “What I found was a system that turns young people’s ambiguous wishes into a diagnosis of incurable depression.”

The headline news this week was Iran—and the always-imminent-but-never-actually-materializing deal to resolve the conflict. We ran two essential pieces of analysis on the state of play this week. One, from Michael Doran, lifted the lid on what the president plans to do next and looked at whether it will work.

In the other piece on the conflict, Niall Ferguson compares the Iran war to a roller-coaster ride on magic mushrooms. What happens when the ride ends and the drugs wear off? Read his piece to find out:

The Free Press has a new culture podcast—Second Thought with Suzy Weiss—and this week’s guest is a big one. Last week in LA, Suzy sat down with arguably the biggest villain in the music industry: Scooter Braun.

You may know him as the man who discovered Justin Bieber and made him a teen sensation. Or, more likely, you know him because, in 2019, Taylor Swift accused him of denying her a fair opportunity to own her original studio recordings.

The real story, like any with suspiciously obvious heroes and villains, is more complicated. That’s why Suzy spoke to the mega-manager, onetime Kanye West collaborator, and archnemesis in Swift’s fairy tale. He says: “I legitimately don’t know her.”

We move from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., where Tanner Nau spoke to some hopeful former January 6 defendants about their hopes for getting a piece of the action from President Donald Trump’s new $1.776 billion fund for those targeted by the Biden Department of Justice.

One man, who sprayed an aerosol irritant at three Capitol Police officers, entered through a broken window frame, and threw a punch at another officer, is hoping for up to $10 million. But he told Tanner he’d settle for $3 million.

Read Tanner’s report on the rioters hoping to strike it rich—and what the law says about whether or not they’ll ever see a dime.

The biggest tech news of the week came out of . . . the Vatican? Pope Leo XIV published his encyclical on artificial intelligence, warning that AI risks creating a new Tower of Babel. The introduction to the English translation was written by our very own Arthur Brooks. We adapted it for our pages and you can read it here:

For more on AI: Tyler Cowen offers his tips for how to keep your job in the age of employment disruption. Don’t miss his dos and don’ts:

It’s Thursday, May 28. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Kat Rosenfield asks, is Belle Burden telling the truth? Patrick McGee on how Intel saved itself, and may soon save America. Joe Nocera on Old School. And much more.

But first: The Pentagon official defending the kind of war he once opposed.

In Washington, they say personnel is policy. That’s why Donald Trump’s appointment of influential foreign policy guru Elbridge Colby to a top Pentagon job last year was seen as a big deal. Colby is in the vanguard of MAGA thinkers who reject the bipartisan interventions that have defined U.S. foreign policy for the last quarter century. Anti-war populists saw in Colby’s rise a sign that Donald Trump would govern as a “restrainer” in his second term.

With Trump having toppled Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, prosecuting a war with Iran, and eyeing Cuba, that prediction aged like milk.

Now Colby finds himself having to defend the kind of conflict with Iran that he has spent most of his career warning against. Colby’s story is a way into a bigger tale, about the worldview governing Donald Trump’s unconventional and potentially era-defining foreign policy in his second term.

Which is why we asked Eli Lake to profile him. Eli speaks to Colby, and dives into the backstory of this unlikely populist with impeccable Washington credentials and a controversial grandfather. Read Eli on the MAGA guru whose influence and resolve is being tested by the Iran war.

—The Editors

And, ICYMI: Check out Joe’s introduction to The Lindbergh Conspiracies, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

At 12 p.m. EST, Suzy Weiss will hop on our new Free Press Forum for her first AMA. She’ll be around for an hour to talk about all things culture—so click here to drop your questions about the latest books, movies, summer trends, or anything else, and don’t forget to tune in this afternoon for her answers.

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THE NEWS

• Israel launched another round of attacks against Hezbollah on Tuesday, striking several targets across Lebanon. The renewed offensive comes at a particularly volatile moment, as the U.S. continues to push for a peace deal with Iran.

• Oil prices fell on Wednesday morning, as the temporary ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran remains largely intact. The S&P 500 ended Wednesday slightly higher, but will be closely watched as diplomacy continues in the Middle East.

• After 88 days of large-scale shutdown, the Iranian government is reportedly restoring internet access across the country. If it holds, the change would mean the end of one of the longest nationwide internet blackouts in history, and the ability for Iranians to finally return to reading news and communicating with friends and family online.

• Former president Joe Biden filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department on Tuesday. The action came as part of Biden’s attempt to block the release of audio files and transcripts from interviews he gave to a biographer in 2016 and 2017, which eventually became part of the investigation into the then-president’s handling of classified documents.

• The Trump administration is reportedly planning to send U.S. citizens who are exposed to Ebola to Kenya for treatment. The program would be a stark contrast to previous public-health policies, which returned Americans to specialized domestic facilities.

• The financial app Robinhood launched a new feature that will allow AI agents to trade stocks and make credit-card purchases. The addition will let users directly connect programs like Anthropic’s Claude or coding software like Cursor to their profile, and even provide the agent with its own dedicated trading account.

• A chemical tank at a paper mill in Washington State imploded on Wednesday. The accident killed at least two people, and nine more workers remain unaccounted for.

• Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has purchased a stake in the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. Kelce has long dreamed of a career in Major League Baseball, and his investment in the Guardians will officially make him part of his hometown team.

It’s Wednesday, May 27. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Why Trump is his own worst enemy. The J6ers who want millions of dollars of your money. Ben Sasse’s daughter on his parenting rules. Arthur Brooks on the pope’s AI advice. And much more.

But first: The next chapter of The Free Press.

By any standard, we live in the most connected age in human history—AI for everything, social media everywhere, and a device that holds all of human knowledge always in our pockets. And yet, we’ve never been lonelier.

That’s why we’ve launched a new community initiative to bring Free Pressers together, online and in real life, without bots or social media getting in the way. Thousands of paid subscribers have already found their way around our new Forum, where they’re getting job offers and marriage advice, and debating the war in Iran. Introduce yourself and join the conversation.

And that’s just the start. Free Pressers are also signing up for good food and great conversation with other subscribers in cities across three countries. In the first four hours, we had more than 500 reserved seats—and tables will sell out soon. Sign up for a Free Press Supper Club now, or request that we add your city here. Read Bari’s full announcement about what this means, and upgrade your subscription to join the fun:

Now, on to the news.

MAGA vs. GOP

Ken Paxton’s victory in yesterday’s Republican Senate primary in Texas was, of course, a victory for President Donald Trump as well. A week ago, Trump flexed his political muscles by endorsing the scandal-ridden state attorney general over sitting senator John Cornyn, pretty much guaranteeing Paxton’s victory.

Yet, as our politics editor Mene Ukueberuwa points out in our lead story, promoting Paxton over Cornyn is of a piece with other moves Trump has made since reclaiming the presidency—moves that may satisfy him personally, but are harming the GOP’s chances as the midterms approach. Paxton’s baggage will give his Democratic opponent James Talarico a far better chance of winning than if he had to face Cornyn.

It’s part of a bigger trend: Trump doing things that suit him, but harm his party. Take the funding for his White House ballroom, or his $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” Does Trump care that his actions could cost the Republicans their majority in the House, and perhaps even the Senate? And how high a price will his party pay? Those are the questions at the heart of Mene’s piece today:

Speaking of that $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, Tanner Nau asked some of the January 6 rioters whether they were planning to apply for the fund—and how much they thought they deserved. One man who pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police, and was sentenced in 2023 to four years in prison, told Tanner that he didn’t want any more than his “fair share” of the money. He said $3 million would do it. I know, shocker. Read Tanner’s piece for a window into the mindset of the people the president is prioritizing over the wavering voters he needs come November.

—Joe Nocera

A Teenage Girl Wanted to Die. Her Parents Said Yes.

Across the West, legalized assisted dying is surging. In Canada, 5 percent of all deaths in 2024 were voluntary, as part of the country’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program. The Free Press’s Rupa Subramanya has covered this important, controversial and, to many, disturbing story from the start. In her latest piece, she reports on one of the most morally complex aspects of the issue: How should a parent react when their son or daughter tells them they want to die? That was the gut-wrenching question faced by the parents of Iris Dekker, a 19-year-old Dutch woman. They talk to Rupa about how loving parents could willingly accede to a child’s right to die, and she investigates the system that is putting more and more parents in that position. Read her report:

And for more on this story—and Rupa’s other reporting on assisted dying—listen to the latest episode of Conversations with Coleman. Rupa and Coleman Hughes are both supporters of the right to die for the terminally ill, but they both have major concerns about the way this issue is being handled in countries across the West.

Today at 8:00 p.m. ET, Arthur will speak with Father Mike Schmitz about artificial intelligence, human dignity, meaning, and the future of humanity. You can tune in here.

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THE NEWS

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday that a peace deal with Iran may take “a few more days.” Following his comments on Monday that the U.S. would “deal with it another way” if a satisfactory agreement isn’t reached, Rubio added that President Trump is “either going to make a good deal or no deal.”

• After losing the Republican primary to a Trump-backed challenger last week, Rep. Thomas Massie filed paperwork on Monday to run for office again in 2028. “This allows me to raise funds to continue my political operations supporting my position as a current office holder and as a potential candidate for federal office,” he wrote on X. He said he hadn’t decided which office to run for—if any.

• Legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins has died at 95. Known for his soaring improvisations and constant experimentation, he was the last musician living from the famous 1958 Esquire photograph, A Great Day in Harlem, that gathered 57 of the greatest jazz artists in one of the most iconic images from jazz’s Golden Age.

• American journalist Thomas Pauken II, who was arrested by the FBI in February, was charged with acting as an unregistered agent for China. Pauken, who has lived in China for over a decade, allegedly prepared confidential reports his Chinese handler said were sent to Chinese president Xi Jinping. He also allegedly equipped a U.S.-based associate seeking a Trump administration job with a cell phone and laptop, and connected that person with his handler—believing the associate would pass classified information to China.

• Vice President J.D. Vance and his anti-fraud task force held a roundtable meeting yesterday, with 15 Republican state attorneys general in attendance. Twenty-four Democratic attorneys general declined a last-minute invitation to attend. During the meeting, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed that “we could balance the federal budget” if fraud were eliminated.

• Landlords who own the most distressed rent-controlled apartments in New York City will be spared from Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed rent freeze, he announced. Eligible owners will be able to charge a onetime rent increase on certain vacant units, to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

• Hoping to crack down on leaks to the media, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would require all current and future federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements. The Office of Personnel Management filed a notice in the Federal Register, citing “several recent instances” of leaks, including planned immigration enforcement action and details on the U.S. raid in Venezuela.

It’s Tuesday, May 26. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: A Democratic congressional candidate who wants to imprison “billionaire American Zionists.” Vindication for Harvard’s anti–grade inflation crusader. And much more.

But first: Michael Doran on Trump’s two-part peace plan.

Memorial Day weekend began with every indication that a deal with Iran might be imminent. It ended with U.S. strikes against Iranian forces.

On Monday, the U.S. sank two Iranian boats that officials said were attempting to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. also struck missile launchers in southern Iran after missiles targeted American planes. “U.S. Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire,” said Captain Tim Hawkins, a military spokesman.

In other words: A precarious ceasefire remains in place for now. Meanwhile, the diplomatic mood music still points toward a deal—even if the talks have slowed and President Trump threatens to walk away. “The deal with Iran will either be a great and meaningful one, or there will be no deal,” he said Monday on Truth Social.

So what will Trump do next? Michael Doran has answers to that question in his latest piece for The Free Press. Michael is one of the most astute observers of this conflict, and in a must-read account of the state of play, he lays out where he thinks things are heading—and reveals what senior Trump administration officials say are the president’s long-term plans on Iran.

As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan played a critical role in an administration with a very different Iran policy to Trump. He joins Aaron MacLean on the latest episode of School of War to discuss the state of his world and the state of the Democratic Party. Tune in for Sullivan’s views on China, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, foreign policy debates on the left, and more.

—Oliver Wiseman

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THE NEWS

• Pope Leo—who took his name as a nod to the pope who defended workers during the Industrial Revolution—released on Monday his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas. He called for governments to regulate AI companies, protect workers who are displaced by AI, and ensure humans retain oversight of autonomous weapons. “The primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology,” the pope wrote, “but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem.”

• Mexico agreed to host Iran’s national soccer team during the World Cup after the U.S. declined to allow the team to stay on American soil. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said there was “no reason to deny them the possibility of staying in Mexico.” The team will stay in Tijuana and fly Iran Air to its World Cup matches in Los Angeles and Seattle.

• A damaged chemical tank in Southern California that had been at risk of exploding is no longer considered a threat. A crack in the tank naturally vented pressure and brought temperatures down on the methyl methacrylate, a plastic-manufacturing chemical. More than half of the residents who had been evacuated were told that they could go home.

• The United States has spent years trying to keep China from building world-class computer chips, but Chinese tech firm Huawei said it may have found a way around that. The company announced a breakthrough Monday that it claims will match the world’s most advanced semiconductors by 2031, achieved by stacking chips on top of each other, rather than depending on manufacturing cut off by U.S. sanctions.

• A heatwave is scorching Europe, with the UK breaking its all-time May temperature record on Monday, reaching 94.6 degrees Fahrenheit. In France, two people died during sporting events. Health authorities have issued warnings about the rising risk of heat-related deaths.

• Uber and Lyft drivers in Massachusetts became the first rideshare workers in the country to unionize, with the newly formed App Drivers Union receiving state certification to represent about 70,000 drivers. The union can now begin bargaining over wages and job security—a potential model for similar efforts underway in California and Illinois.

It’s Monday, May 25. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. This Memorial Day, Aaron MacLean revisits one of the great novels about the sacrifices soldiers made during the Second World War. Plus: Tyler Cowen’s guide to how to save your job from AI. The betrayals of the LGBT movement. And more.

But first: Are we on the brink of a peace deal?

Deal or no deal? That is the trillion-dollar question looming over much of the world—and the White House—this Memorial Day. The president skipped his son’s wedding and spent the weekend at the White House, reportedly hammering out the details of an enduring peace plan to put an end to the war in Iran.

On Saturday, Trump said the “final details” of a deal were “being discussed” and would “be announced shortly.” By Sunday, a breakthrough seemed a little less imminent. “I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal,” the president said in a post on Truth Social. “Both sides must take their time and get it right,” he added.

So, what is the latest state of play? And why are we in this deadlock in the first place?

Eli Lake offers answers to those questions in his reported column this morning. Read his analysis to understand what is really pushing the president to make a deal.

—The Editors

Remembering Those Who Served

In a Memorial Day edition of Things Worth Remembering, Aaron MacLean revisits Herman Wouk’s 1978 novel War and Remembrance, which describes a soldier’s sacrifice and the American cause during World War II. It’s a captivating work, bringing the reader face-to-face with the horrors of the Holocaust and the heroic Allied victory in the Pacific, and braiding together a “tale of American sacrifice and Jewish tragedy, and the complex but profound links between the two.”

Such a work is desperately needed, writes MacLean, at a time when influencers on the left and right have begun to question the righteousness of America’s war against the Nazis, and the stories of the liberating generation who fought in Europe and the Pacific begin to fade from living memory.

For more Memorial Day reading, revisit H.R. McMaster on the soldiers he remembers, Joe Nocera on why America still has heroes, and assorted Free Press contributors on the heroes who never made it home

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THE NEWS

• The Russian military pummeled the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv with missiles and drones late Saturday night, killing at least two and wounding 83. Russia launched 600 drones and 90 missiles, including a hypersonic ballistic missile. The attack targeted government offices as well as schools, supermarkets, and apartment complexes. “It is crucial that Russia does not get away with this,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said after the attack.

• A gunman was killed after opening fire just outside the White House on Saturday afternoon, prompting the Secret Service to return fire, killing the gunman and injuring a bystander. Approximately 15 to 30 shots were fired during the exchange, according to officials. President Trump was at the White House at the time, but was “not impacted.”

• Douglas McCain, the eldest son of late, longtime Arizona senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, died Sunday. He was 66 years old. “He was a truly wonderful, joyful man who supported me throughout my life. He brought humor, fun, and great conversation to every room,” Meghan McCain, his sister, said in an Instagram post after the announcement of his passing.

• A second Ebola screening center was made operational in Atlanta, Georgia, for Americans returning from countries that have experienced a severe Ebola outbreak in recent weeks. Located in the same city as the Centers for Disease Control, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport will be an additional point of entry, along with Washington’s Dulles Airport, for passengers returning from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, or South Sudan.

• China began its first space mission set to last more than a year on Sunday afternoon, launching three astronauts into orbit. The Shenzhou-23 mission will carry the crew to the Tiangong space station to study space’s effects on the human body in preparation for China’s goal of sending humans to the moon by 2030. China has been effectively banned from using the International Space Station since 2011.

• Felix Rosenqvist won the 110th Running of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday afternoon, overtaking David Malukas in a stunning last-second pass and winning by half a car length, the closest finish in race history. The race honored Kyle Busch—the champion NASCAR driver who died suddenly on Friday at the age of 41—during the 18th lap, commemorating Busch’s longtime number.

It’s Friday, May 22. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: What the Democrats’ “autopsy” of the 2024 elections accidentally reveals. Peter Savodnik profiles progressive LA mayoral candidate Nithya Raman. Plus: Martin Gurri asks, “Is the Cuban regime about to fall?” and Niall Ferguson joins Aaron MacLean to make sense of the new world disorder. All that and much more.

But first: Is the “doping olympics” the future of sports?

This weekend in Las Vegas, athletes will gather for the inaugural Enhanced Games. It’s like the Olympics, except performance-enhancing drugs aren’t banned—they’re encouraged. Competitors are juiced with testosterone, anabolic steroids, peptides, and all sorts of other chemical formulations banned in regular events.

Over 40 world-class athletes will compete in track, swimming, and weight lifting. Many are retired Olympians looking for another shot at glory, albeit with the help of drugs administered by doctors at a clinical trial and training camp in Abu Dhabi. Critics say the event is a gimmick designed to sell supplements. The games, which cost $31 million to put on, will certainly be a splashy event, complete with a closing ceremony headlined by The Killers. But is all that spectacle enough to attract sports fans who despise steroids and look down on the athletes who use them?

The company behind the event—which just went public, received early investments from both Peter Thiel and a firm tied to the Trump family, and is worth about $665 million—is betting the answer to that question is yes. Enhanced Group Inc. also says it will eventually make more money from supplements and over-the-counter drugs as from the events themselves.

In our lead story today, The Free Press’s Noah Bernstein delivers the inside scoop on how it all came together. He speaks to athletes and executives to understand whether the juicing Olympics are the future of sports—or an embarrassing disaster for all involved. Read the whole thing and decide for yourself.

—Will Rahn

EDITORS’ PICKS

On Monday, we ran a rigorous examination by federal judge Roy K. Altman of Nicholas Kristof’s inflammatory piece in The New York Times that alleged Israeli prison guards use sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners as a matter of “standard operating procedure.” Altman found that Kristof’s piece is a travesty on multiple levels, and one that undermines “the fundamental rules of fairness and due process that have, for centuries, served as the bulwark of our democracy.” It is perhaps the most damning critique of Kristof’s much-criticized piece out there—and a must-read if you want to understand how the American media lost its way on Israel and much else.

Have you heard about the cottage-food boom? All across the country, Americans are selling homemade foods like cookies and cake and making good money in the process. These often-delicious treats are a financial lifeline for growing families. So why, Suzy Weiss asks, are local governments trying to throttle the cottage-food industry? And is the bipartisan push to regulate kitchen-made goods really a question of whether we can still trust our neighbors? Read her eye-opening look at how the battle over cottage foods became a microcosm of American life in the 21st century.

The Trinidadian poet and author Jamir Nazir just won the extremely prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The only problem is that the story he submitted, about a rural farmer’s romantic longings, might have been written by artificial intelligence. Or at least that’s the accusation leveled by some AI experts. And while we might never know for sure whether Nazir wrote his story or outsourced it to a large language model, Novi Zhukovsky writes, the notion that we can no longer distinguish between brilliant writing and AI slop raises a number of uncomfortable questions about where literature—and our culture at large—is heading. Read this story if you want to understand just how fraught the questions of trust and authenticity are going to get in the age of AI.

In 2022, Tyler Cowen made the case that “wokeism” had peaked. It was a counterintuitive argument at the time, but it looks prescient in hindsight. In his column this week, Tyler updated his argument. The problem, he wrote, is what replaced it, which he calls “a new culture of anger and resentment.” So what does that look like? Everything from California’s unworkable proposal to levy a new tax on billionaires and the murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and, of course, the startling rise of antisemitism. Read Tyler to understand what’s coming—and why he hopes it’s not too late to change course.

It’s Thursday, May 21. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Shilo Brooks sits down with Amy Coney Barrett. Liel Leibovitz on why “Podcastistan” resembles North Korea. A Stanford professor on his school’s war against the Western canon. Charles Lane reflects on the legacy of legendary congressman Barney Frank. And much more.

But first: Is the president losing his political footing?

It must be a disorienting time to be Donald Trump. On one hand, his grip on his party has never been firmer. In recent weeks, he has ousted one Republican critic after another from elected office by backing their primary challengers. That includes five Indiana lawmakers who defied Trump’s redistricting plans, along with two of the president’s critics in Congress, Senator Bill Cassidy and Rep. Thomas Massie.

On the other hand, Trump is losing the pulse of the nation at large. His approval rating has been sliding for months, and recent polls show his unpopularity reaching a level not seen since the last days of President George W. Bush.

According to Ruy Teixeira, Trump is in a quandary of his own making. Americans reelected him to revive the economy, and they still rate it as their top issue, yet Trump recently said “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” while addressing the rise of gas prices amid his war with Iran. There’s an irony to Trump’s position, says Ruy: He’s repeating the mistakes of his predecessor that landed him back in the White House. Read Ruy on the echoes of the Biden presidency in Trump’s mistakes, and why the president seems not to realize where things are headed.

Trump’s popularity may soon sink even further, if Democrats follow through on their new midterm strategy. The Free Press’s new Washington correspondent, Audrey Fahlberg, reports on Democrats’ plan to paint the administration as one giant grift at the public’s expense, from crooked crypto deals to shady executive pardons. There’s more at stake than the midterms, she writes. If Democrats regain the House, they’ll use investigations to cripple the administration and taint the GOP brand in 2028.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• Federal prosecutors unsealed a new indictment against former Cuban leader Raúl Castro and five others on Wednesday. The murder and conspiracy charges are connected with the Cuban military’s downing of two planes in 1996, and come amid increasing tensions between the U.S. and the island nation.

• Media investor James Murdoch has purchased New York magazine, the Vox news website, and the Vox Media Podcast Network on Wednesday. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, but some estimates report that Murdoch has now acquired up to half of the Vox Media brand.

• Meta began laying off thousands of employees Wednesday morning, as the company continues to restructure around artificial intelligence. The company says the layoff will affect up to 8,000 employees, and 7,000 more will be reassigned to AI-focused roles.

• The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Wednesday that they will respond to any new attacks on Iran with an escalation of the war beyond the Middle East. The threat came shortly after President Trump delayed a “very major” attack on Iran, and will likely raise the stakes of future peace talks.

• On Tuesday, the Senate advanced a bill that would force President Trump to end the war with Iran. Senate Democrats have been pushing the resolution for months, but it received a major boost this week after Republican senator Bill Cassidy switched sides, following his ouster in this weekend’s primary.

• According to a new report from AAA, the average gas price is now above $4 per gallon in all 50 states. The rise in prices comes amid increasing volatility in the oil market due to the Iran war. (For more on oil prices, read Tyler Cowen’s “Why Oil Price Spikes Could Spark a Global Recession.”)

• On Wednesday, Harvard University faculty overwhelmingly voted to cap the number of A’s that can be earned in any undergraduate class. The move signals a return to increased competition among the school’s classes, after critics accused the university of rampant grade inflation. (For more on this, read Arthur Brooks’ “Grade Inflation Won’t Make You Happy.”)

• OpenAI is reportedly preparing to file an initial public offering, potentially as soon as this Friday. The move would come at a pivotal moment for the company, just one week after CEO Sam Altman triumphed over Elon Musk in a jury trial. Musk’s company SpaceX also filed paperwork making their finances public on Wednesday, as it races toward its own IPO. (For more on SpaceX, read Patrick McGee’s “SpaceX Is the Riskiest, Biggest Tech Bet in History.”)

It’s Wednesday, May 20. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Jed Rubenfeld on the president’s IRS self-dealing, and why a court might not be able to stop him. Joe Nocera has a new podcast about the crime that gripped America like no other. Olivia Reingold on the Luigi Mangione fangirls who have NYC press credentials. Plus: a literary controversy for our time. And much more.

But first: One party, under Trump, indivisible.

The biggest primaries on Tuesday took place in Georgia and Kentucky, and on the Republican side, President Donald Trump triumphed in every single one.

Some victories were subtle. In the Kentucky Senate primary, Rep. Andy Barr defeated Daniel Cameron—a one-time protégé of Senator Mitch McConnell, who has become one of Trump’s staunchest critics within the GOP.

In Georgia, the top two finishers who qualified for the runoff in the governor’s race are a pair of MAGA Republicans, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones and businessman Rick Jackson. Far behind in the vote tally was Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who challenged Trump’s voter-fraud claims after the 2020 election.

Trump’s biggest victory came in the headliner race of the night, between Rep. Thomas Massie and Trump’s handpicked challenger, Ed Gallrein. Massie broke with the president in an explosive way over the past year, tying him to the Epstein files, voting to halt the war in Iran, and accusing him of being an Israeli stooge.

Massie lost by about 10 points Tuesday night, but as Seth Mandel notes, his movement may live on. There is a rising faction on the right that abhors foreign wars and believes Israeli conspiracies control U.S. policy. For now, GOP voters prefer Trump to that faction by a long shot. But who will fill the vacuum once the president is gone?

—Mene Ukueberuwa

Our Latest Podcast: The Lindbergh Conspiracies

On the night of March 1, 1932, someone climbed a ladder to a window of a remote New Jersey estate and stole the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, the famed American aviator. The baby was later found dead, and a man was arrested, tried, and executed—case closed. Or was it? Ninety-four years later, many of the details still don’t add up. Free Press journalists Joe Nocera and Poppy Damon became obsessed with getting to the bottom of it—and we think you will too. Listen to The Lindbergh Conspiracies, a new podcast from The Free Press hosted by Joe Nocera.

Listen to episode one below, and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

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THE NEWS

• Thirty-year Treasury yields have hit their highest level in 19 years amid persistent inflation fears related to the Iran war. The rising rates are pushing up the costs of borrowing for homeowners and businesses.

• Maureen Galindo, a candidate in the Democratic primary runoff for a Texas House seat, said in an Instagram post that she would turn an ICE detention center “into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.” She added: “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.” Texas Democrats have denounced Galindo’s comments.

• Google is changing its search box for the first time in 30 years. In place of the skinny rectangle will be a larger box to encourage longer questions for Gemini, Google’s AI. Users will see more AI answers in their results and fewer links to sites.

• The Long Island Rail Road strike ended after unions representing its workers reached a deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Monday. The deal includes a 4.5 percent salary increase and “delivers raises for workers while protecting riders and taxpayers,” Governor Kathy Hochul said.

• The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to suggest it didn’t have the authority to review the Pentagon’s decision to designate Anthropic as a national security risk, but it could review specific orders banning the government from using certain companies’ products. The hearing comes after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth designated the AI company a supply chain risk after Anthropic refused to remove contractual restrictions on use of its software for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.

• President Trump endorsed Texas attorney general Ken Paxton in his primary challenge to Senator John Cornyn yesterday. “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The two candidates will face off in a runoff next week, and early voting has already begun.

• President Trump said he “was an hour away” from resuming bombing Iran yesterday, but Iranian leaders were eager to make a deal. The head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee said Trump’s hesitation was because he knew “any move against Iran means facing a decisive military response.”

It’s Tuesday, May 19. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: A harrowing new report on the full scope of Hamas’s sexual violence on October 7. Arthur Brooks on what’s making us miserable. Anduril president Christian Brose on what the Iran war has revealed about American power. And much more.

But first: Tyler Cowen on the ideology that dethroned wokeism—and why it’s scarier.

In 2022, Tyler Cowen wrote an influential essay arguing that wokeness had peaked. At the time, it was a controversial claim. The cancellations hadn’t exactly stopped. Corporate boards were still pushing DEI policies.

We asked Tyler to revisit his claim four years on. Did he call the turning of the tide at the right time? And what has followed the period now remembered as “peak woke”? In his column today, he dives into all of that, and comes to a disturbing conclusion for anyone who might have thought that the ebbing wokeness meant a return to more moderate politics.

Read Tyler on what replaced wokeness, and why—from billionaire taxes to a new culture of assassinations—the “social energies of the American left have moved away from the realm of speech and into plans for concrete action.”

—The Editors

What I Learned Cataloging the Sexual Violence of October 7

Yesterday we published an important essay by federal judge Roy K. Altman. In it, he detailed the many faults in the controversial Nicholas Kristof op-ed in The New York Times alleging systemic sexual violence in Israeli prisons, and brought new details to light that cast doubt on some of Kristof’s most explosive claims. If you missed Judge Altman’s piece, read it here.

One of Judge Altman’s complaints about Kristof’s op-ed is the timing of its publication, just a day before a landmark report detailing the sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. The effect of Kristof’s column, whether deliberate or not, was to overshadow these important findings.

We invited the principal author of that report, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, to explain in our pages what she discovered in the two years she spent meticulously cataloging the full scope of that day’s atrocities and how the sexual violence committed “was not incidental nor borne of the chaos” of that day, but rather “was part of the plan.”

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THE NEWS

• Three people were killed by two teenage gunmen at a San Diego mosque Monday. The two suspects were later found in their car, dead by suicide. The shooting is being investigated as a hate crime. A law enforcement source told the Los Angeles Times that anti-Islamic writings were found inside the gunmen’s vehicle.

• The workers powering the country’s busiest commuter rail line walked off the job Saturday, having gone without a pay increase since 2022. Monday’s commute into and out of New York City was severely disrupted for more than a quarter-million riders as a result.

• The national average price of gasoline has surged 56 percent to roughly $4.52 per gallon since the U.S. struck Iran in late February. That’s up from $2.89 at the start of the year, representing one of the sharpest fuel price spikes in recent memory.

• A New York state judge ruled that several items recovered from suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione’s backpack—including his phone, passport, wallet, an ammunition magazine, and a computer chip—cannot be used as evidence in his murder trial. A journal and a gun found in the same bag were deemed admissible, according to the judge.

• Cuba has denied reports that the country has stockpiled more than 300 attack drones to use against U.S. targets, accusing President Trump of fabricating a case for war. The claims, first reported by Axios, suggested the drones—given to the country by Russia and Iran—could be aimed at targets including Guantanamo Bay, American warships, and Key West, which sits just 90 miles from Cuba’s northern coast.

• A coalition of more than 60 Trump allies, including Steve Bannon and conservative anti-AI activists Amy Kremer and Brendan Steinhauser, sent a letter urging the president to require testing and approval of powerful AI models before their public release. (For more on the broader debate over AI oversight, read Josh Code’s piece, “Who Should Control AI’s Most Dangerous Secrets?”)

• An Oakland jury rejected Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI on the grounds that he had waited too long to file, ruling the case fell outside the statute of limitations. Musk, who plans to appeal the decision, had alleged that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman steered the company away from its original nonprofit, human-centered mission in favor of commercial interests.

• The Trump administration dropped its $10 billion IRS lawsuit yesterday in exchange for a $1.8 billion taxpayer-backed fund to compensate people who claim they were politically targeted by the Biden Justice Department. The administration’s decision to settle appeared designed to sidestep a judge’s pointed questions about how Trump could legally sue an agency he now controls as president.

• The singer Shakira has been acquitted of tax fraud in Spain and will receive 55 million euros (plus interest) in repayments, the country’s national court announced yesterday. The case, which is more than a decade old, hinged upon allegations that the Colombian singer was legally a resident of Spain in 2011 and owed taxes to the country’s government for that year.

It’s Monday, May 18. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: the architect of a genocide who died without facing justice. How teachers’ unions became political big spenders. Did MAHA just sink a senator? Plus: Michael Shellenberger joins Conversations with Coleman.

But first: the Jewish prosecutor yanked from a case against campus protesters.

Last week, I got a video call from Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeffrey Rosen. It was late, and he looked tired. When I asked how things were going, Rosen smiled wanly. Earlier this month, a judge removed Rosen from a high-profile case because he had been a vocal opponent of antisemitism.

Rosen’s father emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust to seek a better life in America. He achieved that in Los Angeles, and for decades, it felt as if the family had escaped forever the backwardness of the Old World. That started to change when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. In June 2024, anti-Israel protesters broke into the president’s office at Stanford University. Rosen and his team were tasked with prosecuting them.

But now Rosen has been barred from finishing that job.

I wanted to talk to Rosen about what has happened to him, and about how much the world that Rosen thought he knew, the world that his father created here in America, has turned dark and uncertain.

—Peter Savodnik

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THE NEWS

• The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency following an outbreak of a rare variant of Ebola in Congo and Uganda. Health officials have tracked over 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths as of Sunday. The outbreak claimed 50 lives before being detected by health officials, with the first known death in late April. The WHO has not declared it a pandemic.

• Ukraine carried out deadly drone strikes on Russia on Saturday, including one of the largest attacks on Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia’s defense ministry said that over 1,000 drones were shot down or jammed. The strikes were seen as retaliation for a Russian drone attack that killed 24 people in Kyiv last week.

• Two Navy jets collided in midair at an air show at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho on Sunday afternoon. All four pilots successfully ejected before their Boeing EA18-G Growlers crashed, about 50 miles outside of Boise. The pilots were unharmed.

• Cuba has been discussing plans to use drones to attack the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay and even the Florida Keys, according to classified intelligence described by Axios. The Cuban government now has over 300 military drones, Axios said. On Sunday, the Cuban embassy in the U.S. said Cuba “has the right to defend itself against external aggression.”

• “Our rights do not derive from the government. They come from you, our creator and heavenly father,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson in a prayer gathering on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. The event was promoted as a “rededication of our country as One Nation under God.”