But first: Is there a way out of the data-center bind?

America is living through a technological revolution—and the physical footprint of that revolution is data centers: hulking structures built on vast, multibillion-dollar campuses to store the computers needed to power the boom in artificial intelligence. These data centers are the biggest infrastructure build-out in U.S. history.

They are also becoming one of the most controversial issues in American politics. One recent survey found that just 14 percent of respondents are comfortable with a data center being built nearby. Across the country, more than 300 local governments have imposed bans or temporary moratoriums on data-center construction. Earlier this month, New York governor Kathy Hochul signed a one-year freeze on any new data centers.

Economically speaking, data centers are inevitable. Politically, they are anything but. This collision—between economic logic and political reality—touches almost everything, from who controls Washington next year to whether the U.S. or China wins the race for global supremacy. But with the stakes so high, is there a way out of the data-center bind? That’s what we asked Joe Nocera to investigate. He spoke to supporters and opponents across the country, the investors trying to get data centers built, the activists trying to stop them, and the policymakers searching for solutions. Here’s what he found.

—Oliver Wiseman

Ask Tough Love’s Editor Anything

Calling all Abigail Shrier fanatics: Submit your questions for an AMA with Tough Love editor Freya Sanders. On July 30 at noon ET, Freya will coach you on how to get your letter into Abigail’s inbox—and answer your questions live. Only paid subscribers can submit questions via this thread—become one today for access to The Free Press Forum, Tough Love, livestreams, and much more.

Trump’s Pause in Iran—and America’s Ammo Crisis

The Iran war has reached a stalemate—in part due to a shortage of U.S. munitions. But our missile shortages go far deeper than this conflict, writes Aaron MacLean. In his latest column, he dives into the past, present, and future of U.S. weapons shortages, and argues that the real problem is not to do with Iran, but China.

Increasingly, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and even China’s looming threat over Taiwan, are becoming intertwined. Today, retired U.S. Navy rear admiral Mark Montgomery joins School of War to unpack the pause in U.S. air strikes on Iran after intensified bombing, the possibility of a revised ceasefire, and how the wars of our time relate to one another.

MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS

THE NEWS

• Former JPMorgan banker Chirayu Rana retreated from some of the most salacious claims in his “sex slave” lawsuit against the bank and an executive, alleging in a new suit that he was the target of racism in the workplace. The new suit claims that colleagues called Rana racist names and sought to keep JPMorgan white and Christian. A bank spokesperson said the allegations have no merit, and the executive has filed a defamation suit against Rana.

• Authorities relied on an unvetted tip that turned out to be false to temporarily separate Pete Buttigieg from his 4-year-old twins last month, according to The Washington Post. Police only vetted the accusations of child abuse after taking the children into custody. The accuser was later found to possibly be “mentally unstable.”

• Firefighters are racing to contain raging wildfires in Spain and France that claimed two lives over the weekend and forced more than 300,000 people to flee. French president Emmanuel Macron called the fires “totally unprecedented” and warned that “the coming weeks will be tough.”

• A mass shooting at a Seattle food festival on Sunday that killed three people and wounded four others may have been gang-related, according to police. Authorities arrested a 15-year-old suspect on Monday, while another suspect was among those killed and a third suspect remains at large.

• New York City halted the conversion of a Manhattan office tower into a 32-story apartment building after city inspectors said they found multiple cracked beams in the building, according to The Wall Street Journal. The stop resulted from a wave of inspections after last month’s buckling of two columns in another Manhattan building undergoing a conversion.

• The Cracker Barrel CEO who oversaw a widely scorned rebranding effort that included banishing the overall-wearing icon Uncle Herschel and his rocking chair from the restaurant company’s logo is stepping down. Julie Masino reversed the changes, but same-store sales suffered. She said she felt “fired by America.”

• President Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Tuesday for the first time since the start of the U.S.-Iran war. “You’re fucking crazy,” Trump told Netanyahu in a tense phone call, accusing him of ingratitude, Axios reported.

• Trump asked the Supreme Court to allow his administration to enforce an executive order aimed at curtailing the use of mail-in ballots. The order would create a federal list of eligible mail voters and bar state governments from sending ballots to anyone not on the list. Lower courts have blocked the order in about half of all U.S. states.

But first: The inside story of how the Democrats lost the working class.

“On Tuesday, I voted for Donald Trump. It felt like the biggest middle finger I’ve ever raised to the party I’d supported for most of my adult life. When he won, I was utterly euphoric.”

These are the words of Evan Barker, writing in our pages on November 9, 2024. A lifelong Democratic operative from a working-class family in Kansas City, Missouri, Evan spent her career getting progressives elected. Then, as she put it, the Democratic Party “turned its back on me and my family.” At the time, Evan’s story captured a trend playing out across the country: The working class, once a cornerstone of the Democratic coalition, was drifting away from the party.

Now, with the progressive wing ascendant and the midterms approaching, that shift has only become more consequential. But how exactly did it happen? And what do Democrats need to do to win back the voters they lost?

Evan is better positioned than most to answer those questions. That’s exactly what she does in her new book, Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, which hits shelves tomorrow. In today’s exclusive excerpt, she pulls back the curtain on the transformation of the modern Democratic Party, from a rare vantage point: inside the belly of the beast.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• A car plowed into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride parade Saturday, killing one person and injuring 29 in what German authorities are calling an Islamic terror attack. The suspect, a German citizen with Lebanese heritage, had prior convictions for ISIS-related activity and was shot and killed by police Sunday after charging at officers with a knife.

• President Donald Trump attended a rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner Friday, three months after the original event was cut short due to an assassination attempt. Trump sparred with reporters throughout the night, joking, “When I’m gone, you’re all going to be broke,” and putting on a “Trump 2028” hat.

• Wildfires raging across France and Spain have forced more than 300,000 people to flee their homes in what French authorities are calling one of the largest evacuation operations since World War II. Soldiers and firefighters from across Europe are working around the clock to contain the blazes, while Spain recorded its first wildfire death of the season near Valencia.

• A federal appeals court upheld a ruling Saturday blocking President Trump’s executive order to create a national list of eligible voters and restrict mail ballot delivery to people on that list in 23 states. The courts found the order unconstitutional, ruling that states and Congress—not the president—have the authority to set election rules.

• Maine Democrats selected Troy Jackson as their Senate nominee Saturday, replacing Graham Platner after a sexual assault allegation led to his resignation from the race. Jackson, a former state Senate president and Bernie Sanders ally, will face Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November.

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will visit the White House tomorrow to meet with President Trump, as Russia intensifies its bombardment of Ukrainian cities. Zelensky is also in Washington to attend the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, who had visited Kyiv shortly before his death and was among Ukraine’s biggest advocates in Congress.

• A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts touched down in Kazakhstan on Sunday after eight months aboard the International Space Station. American Chris Williams, who was on his first spaceflight, conducted two spacewalks during the mission.

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

But first: What the Trump administration gets right about sex.

Ask the millennial woman in your life: What’s the craziest thing you were taught in sex ed?

Having been born in 1995, I was fortunately informed that I could get pregnant from sitting in a hot tub 24 hours after a guy—it could be a man I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW and he could be OLD and CREEPY—contaminated it.

At the time, the culture was reeling from the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic and spiraling from a spike in teen pregnancies. In the first year of the ’90s, there were a million of them in the U.S. Last year there were about 125,000. Teenagers just aren’t having that much sex anymore, for reasons we’ve explored plenty of times in these pages.

So you might think it’d be logical, and uncontroversial, for our Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), charged with helping Americans flourish, to stop putting quite so many tax dollars into preventing teen pregnancy. The money’s probably better spent elsewhere.

And yet, when it was reported this week that HHS was doing just that, sworn enemies of the administration saw not a sensible fiscal decision but a sinister plot to promote the idea that a woman’s womb must, at the earliest opportunity, be yoked into generating fresh new American citizens.

In today’s essay, Kat Rosenfield cuts through the hysteria and argues that the new guidelines for sex ed are a course correction designed for the challenges actually facing teenagers right now, in a world where girls aren’t taught what the contraceptive pill actually does and boys aren’t taught how porn might affect their minds and bodies.

May the next generation of young women be saved from believing that a hot tub can ruin their lives.

—Freya Sanders

Reading and sharing The Free Press is the best way to show your support for our mission—but wearing FP swag might be a close second. Check out our three new merchandise items, which are available for a limited time and perfect for the summer, especially if you’re a TGIF or Tough Love with Abigail Shrier fan. And if you’re still feeling grateful for America’s 250th, grab some limited-edition A250 merch—there’s not much left!

Editors’ Picks

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to make Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a criminal in the eyes of the city, and Douglas Murray argues that the mayor’s ire extends way beyond one man. In Mamdani’s latest speech, Murray says, the mayor rehearses a long list of lies about all of Israel: “genocide,” “maiming of children,” and more. His campaign against Netanyahu is only the latest step in the left’s recent hard turn against the Jewish state.

Abolishing prisons. Ending the Supreme Court. No more private rental market. We know the policies of the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that will send several favored candidates into Congress next year. But what drives their radical vision? This week we got an answer from Jake Altman, a former member of the group. He says their goal is nothing less than the destruction of the American way of life.

#MeToo is back—and it has a new face. Olivia Reingold profiled Cheyenne Hunt, a 29-year-old lawyer-turned-progressive-influencer who helped bring down Senate candidate Graham Platner and forced Representative Eric Swalwell out of Congress and the California governor’s race after allegations of sexual misconduct. Now, with a new nonprofit targeting powerful men, Hunt says she’s “just getting started.”

Those who live by brutality deserve to meet a brutal end. The ancient Greeks believed this, and in a review of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Odyssey, Spencer Klavan praises the director for not shying away from that truth. Amid the sea of moral relativism that defines so many modern works, audiences can benefit from a film that confidently portrays the meting out of rough justice in the epic’s famous final act.

But first: Is #MeToo back?

In a matter of months, Cheyenne Hunt, a lawyer, influencer, and progressive activist, has become the face of a new #MeToo movement. The 29-year-old Democratic activist—who uses her online platform to find and help victims of sexual misconduct—was involved in two of the biggest political takedowns this year, claiming both Graham Platner’s and Eric Swalwell’s scalps.

Now Hunt plans to build on that success with a new nonprofit, Reckoning Action, and has named new targets: three Republican lawmakers. Many have called Hunt’s work “revolutionary.” But not everyone’s on board. Some, like Democratic heavyweight James Carville, worry that the same miscarriages of justice that happened with 2017’s first #MeToo will appear again. And Gloria Allred, the famed attorney who’s represented multiple Harvey Weinstein victims, warns that this brave new world, where people can fire off accusations with a simple social media post, may come back to bite some women. Can Hunt deliver the reckoning she promises while avoiding the excesses of the first wave of #MeToo? That’s the question at the heart of Olivia Reingold’s profile of Hunt. Don’t miss it.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for each ship Iranian shoots at in the Strait of Hormuz. The threat comes at an especially tense moment in the conflict, as the U.S. prepares to bury four service members who were killed by Iranian strikes this month.

• The White House announced Wednesday that President Trump has signed a 30-year nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that will create a civilian nuclear program in the kingdom. The deal opens the door for uranium enrichment, which is a key step in developing a nuclear weapon.

• The House passed a bill limiting Congressional stock trading by a 232–198 margin. Most Democrats opposed the legislation, citing its light restrictions and the inclusion of a voter ID provision.

• President Trump reportedly wants FIFA president Gianni Infantino to serve as the United Nations’ secretary-general. The suggestion, coming just weeks after Infantino granted Trump’s request to reverse Folarin Balogun’s red card during a World Cup match, will likely raise questions about corruption among his critics.

• New York City landlords sued the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, seeking to overturn a rent-freeze policy that affects one million apartments. The complaint accused Mayor Zohran Mamdani of pressuring the panel, despite its status as an independent governing body. (For more on the rent-freeze battle, read landlord Matt Miller’s excellent piece.)

• An independent autopsy found an undetermined cause and manner of death for Mississippi teen Nolan Wells. Wells was found dead two days after a July 4 outing to an island with friends, who returned without him. His case remains a mystery.

• The Louvre reopened the Apollo Gallery to the public for the first time since thieves stole $102 million worth of crown jewels last October. While visitors will be able to walk through the room again, it will not display any exhibitions; instead it will serve as a ceremonial space, as it did in the 17th century.

But first: How Fergie Chambers landed in a Spanish jail.

Back in August 2023, I traveled up to the Berkshires to meet Jim Chambers, known as Fergie, an avowed communist and an heir to the Cox family fortune. Fergie had just taken a massive advance on his inheritance, to the tune of a quarter-billion dollars, and he was gaming out how to distribute it: to the fight against a police training campus in Atlanta, to set up a dojo of sorts for young Marxist-Leninists, and generally to undo the empire that had brought his family such stupefying fortune.

Since I spent a day and a half with Chambers—driving around his gorgeous properties in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, picking up weed, listening while he lectured his daughter about the importance of class struggle, that sort of thing—a couple of things have changed.

First, Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and with it, Fergie found his ultimate cause. After a year or so of anti-Zionist campaigning stateside, which included getting arrested at a protest and footing the bail for his acolytes, like the radical activist Calla Walsh, Fergie became a Muslim and moved to Tunisia.

Then, this week, he was arrested in Ibiza at the request of the U.S. government, which has allegedly charged Chambers with funding terror groups. He is awaiting extradition in a Spanish jail. I’ve been keeping tabs on Chambers via Instagram. He seemed to be settling into his new life in Tunisia—funding a local soccer team, going to pray, and posting on his Instagram about how eager he is to see the imperial core fall.

His arrest—Spain has 40 days to decide whether to honor America’s extradition request—may be the only thing that could have stopped Chambers’ endless, wild campaign both to reinvent himself and bring everyone else along for the ride. Read Jay Solomon’s deep dive into Fergie Chambers’ strange journey in the months after I profiled him, and what might happen next.

—Suzy Weiss

MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS

THE NEWS

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs chairman Dan Caine asked Congress for approximately $70 billion in additional Iran war funding, as Hegseth revealed the conflict has now cost an estimated $37.5 billion, up from $29 billion in mid-May. Senate Democrats made clear they have no intention of supporting the request.

• President Donald Trump met Lebanese president Joseph Aoun at the White House on Tuesday as his country and Israel held rare direct talks in Washington over the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. Trump also announced the U.S. will resume direct flights to Lebanon for the first time since 1985.

• New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill said Tuesday that 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote in the state by a malfunctioning DMV software system, and that 400 of them cast ballots in recent elections. Sherrill said the problem had been identified under her predecessor, fellow Democrat Phil Murphy, but never publicly disclosed.

• The Trump administration is withholding more than a billion dollars in Medicare funding from California and Minnesota—$867 million from California and about $200 million from Minnesota—citing suspected fraud in both states’ public health programs. The Democratic governors of both states called the move politically motivated, while the administration said it would release the funds once the states proved the funds were legitimate.

• Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk filed a suit against Eli Lilly in federal court, accusing its rival of running misleading ads claiming its weight-loss drugs outperform Novo’s treatments for obesity and diabetes. Lilly said it would fight the lawsuit.

• A federal appeals court rejected Joe Biden’s attempt to block the publication of interviews he gave his biographer in 2016 and 2017, finding disclosure “is likely to advance the public interest.” A final decision has been pushed to August 3 while Biden’s attorneys weigh further appeals.

• An independent review commissioned by the Gates Foundation found that Bill Gates and foundation staff held roughly 30 meetings with Jeffrey Epstein between 2011 and 2014, including visits to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, despite internal concerns about the reputational risk. The review found no evidence of illegal activity or payments to Epstein.

• France’s parliament passed legislation that would ban social media access for users under 15 and prohibit cellphones in the nation’s high schools. President Emmanuel Macron has backed the measures.

• Tropical Storm Bertha is bearing down on the Gulf Coast, threatening heavy rain and coastal flooding from the Florida Panhandle through Louisiana into Thursday. The storm is expected to lose strength throughout the week.

• New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, who said repeatedly on the campaign trail last year that he would order the NYPD to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, admitted Tuesday that he did not have the power to do so. The admission came at the end of a two-minute video in which Mamdani repeatedly denounced Netanyahu as a “war criminal.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story referred to a property owned by Fergie Chambers as being in upstate New York. It is in Massachusetts. This has been updated. The Free Press regrets the error.

But first: The fight for American progressivism.

There are a series of consequential political fights raging in America at the moment. The midterm battle for the Senate and the House, of course. The arm-wrestle for the MAGA crown after Trump departs. The civil war in the Democratic Party. Within that third contest is another clash, and it may be the most intense of them all. It’s over control of the left wing of the Democratic Party, and what it means to be a progressive in 2026.

The stakes are huge. How it plays out will not only define the future of one of our major parties but the outer limits of mainstream politics in America. It could end somewhere constructive—or somewhere very dark. (Only yesterday, one of the leading media figures on the left, the streamer Hasan Piker, praised the mass murderer Mao Zedong as “one of the great leaders of this world.”)

Today, we are bringing you three dispatches about this fight.

First, Peter Savodnik reports from Maine, where Democrats are set to nominate another progressive to replace Graham Platner, the scandal-ridden Senate candidate who dropped out of the race after an ex-girlfriend’s rape allegation earlier this month. The oysterman is out; a logger, Troy Jackson, is in. Platner built a powerful movement brimming with anger. Peter reports from anti-ICE protests and the campaign trail. He talks to voters who “trust no one,” and are setting the running in the Democratic party, not just in Maine but nationwide.

Up next, River Page profiles a group he calls the “Anti-Platners.” While the disgraced faux-oysterman painted a false picture of himself as a blue-collar populist and relied overwhelmingly on a base of college-educated supporters, other left-populists on the ballot this fall aren’t quite so inauthentic. River travels to Nebraska to meet mechanic-turned-candidate Dan Osborn, and digs into other races where the Democrats have nominated a progressive candidate who is neither a socialist nor a fake. Read River’s piece on what he thinks the party could learn from a mechanic, a smoke jumper, and an ordinary firefighter.

Candidates are one thing. The most important organization on the far left of our politics is the Democratic Socialists of America. They are on the march, with membership surging and their candidates winning primaries from New York to Colorado. But what they actually believe is the subject of much debate. The president calls them communists, plain and simple. Some of their defenders say they just want European-style welfare spending and an end to forever wars. There’s a simple way to settle the debate: Let the DSA explain itself. The group released a policy platform last week. We asked Jake Altman, who was once a DSA member himself before moving to the right, to read it and explain exactly what kind of a future the DSA wants.

—Oliver Wiseman

MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS

THE NEWS

• On Monday, the U.S launched strikes on Iran for the 10th consecutive night, as gas prices climbed to $4 a gallon nationally and Yemen’s Houthi rebels threatened to cut off Red Sea oil exports—potentially closing off the last major alternative shipping route to the blocked Strait of Hormuz. Pakistan’s interior minister said diplomatic talks with the U.S. and Iran are underway.

• Trump levied a 50 percent tariff on most Canadian imports yesterday, including cars, alcohol, and dairy, citing longstanding trade disputes and retaliatory measures Canada took against earlier U.S. tariffs. The move covers goods that had been shielded under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which expired earlier this month.

• The Food and Drug Administration rescinded its finding that Taylor Farms lettuce tested positive for cyclospora—a parasite that causes severe diarrhea and stomach pain—saying the result was a false positive. It continues to advise consumers not to eat recalled lettuce, and officials say evidence tying the company’s produce to thousands of reported illnesses remains compelling despite the lab error.

• A U.S. Army veteran was arrested after lighting off fireworks and starting a fire outside a federal building in Manhattan that houses the FBI, ICE, and other agencies. Authorities said Andrew Arrabaca, 43, allegedly arrived with axes, knives, and a cart bearing an anti-ICE slogan; three people suffered minor injuries.

• Darline Graham Nordone, the sister of the late senator Lindsey Graham and his appointed placeholder, confirmed she will run in the special election to hold the seat for a full term. Trump has endorsed Nordone ahead of the August 11 Republican primary.

• A California federal judge temporarily blocked the proposed $81 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, issuing a 14-day restraining order while the courts weigh an antitrust challenge brought by a dozen states. The deal, which had sailed through federal regulators, now faces a new hurdle with a preliminary injunction hearing set for early August.

• Andy Burnham was sworn in as Britain’s new prime minister, becoming the country’s seventh leader in a decade after Keir Starmer stepped down following two turbulent years in office. Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, pledged to cut the cost of living and restore public trust in government, saying that politicians “need to be better.”

But first: Michael Doran on the expanding war with Iran.

Iranian ballistic missiles struck a U.S. air base in Jordan on Friday, killing two soldiers and leaving a third missing. (The remains believed to be the missing soldier’s have since been recovered.) Another American service member died Saturday during the disposal of a downed Iranian drone in Iraq. Tehran has since struck Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan again, targeting water desalination plants, power facilities, and military bases. The United States is sending additional F-16s and F-35s to the region and launched a new round of strikes on Iran over the weekend.

All signs point to the return of major combat operations. But is that really what is coming next? Michael Doran dissects the latest developments in his piece for us today, a must-read analysis of the war at a pivotal moment.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• Spain claimed the 2026 World Cup title Sunday at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, defeating Argentina 1-0 in extra time to deny Lionel Messi a second consecutive championship. Substitute Ferran Torres scored the winning goal after Argentina had a player ejected. It is Spain’s second World Cup trophy and its first since 2010.

• Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in Miami on Saturday as part of UK extradition proceedings on rape and sex trafficking charges. British prosecutors announced additional charges the same day, bringing the total number of alleged victims to seven.

• An American woman wrongfully held in Iran for nearly a year and a half on espionage charges touched down in San Francisco on Saturday. Earlier last week, President Trump called her release a “gesture of goodwill.”

• New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani said his administration is still weighing whether to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York for the UN General Assembly in September. “I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said. City lawyers are exploring whether he has the authority to detain a sitting foreign leader, though legal experts say the move would face serious obstacles.

• A wave of severe weather killed at least eight people across the U.S. over the weekend, including a Utah fire captain, his wife, and three of their sons, all swept away by a flash flood during a family hike. The Northeast is recovering from Saturday flooding that left drivers stranded on highways and led to the cancellation of over 1,000 flights.

• Nine people were wounded in a shooting in downtown Tucson, Arizona, early Sunday morning, with police officers opening fire on the suspect. The suspect, whose identity has not been released, was hospitalized in critical condition.

• Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey debuted at No. 1 with $124.5 million domestically over the weekend, the biggest live-action movie opening of the year. Demand was so fierce for the film, which was shot entirely on 70-millimeter IMAX, that theaters added 2 a.m., 3 a.m., and 6 a.m. screenings to keep up, nearly all of which sold out. (For more on The Odyssey, read Spencer Klavan’s review.)

But first: Was President Donald Trump’s elections speech a “bombshell,” or bluster?

Before Trump’s prime-time speech Thursday night, the White House promised a bombshell revelation about election interference. Did the president deliver? Absolutely—if you take him at his word.

Trump described a vast, well-funded conspiracy by the Chinese government to sway the 2020 presidential election in the U.S., and he called the related data breach a “nightmare.” That includes theft of voter information, attempts to manipulate journalists, and even the manufacture of fake ballots.

And the president’s boldest claim is that Joe Biden’s administration saw some of the evidence for this, and chose to suppress it.

So should Americans be alarmed? Perhaps not just yet. As Eli Lake explains, the burden of proof lies with President Trump. And he’s made himself hard to trust on this particular issue.

Instead of brushing off Trump’s claims like much of the press did, Eli examines them in detail. Where exactly did the new revelations come from, and is there any reason to trust the intelligence behind them?

—Mene Ukueberuwa

EDITORS’ PICKS

Free Press historian Niall Ferguson has admitted defeat. In the not-so-distant past, the best response to antisemitism was the truth—but today, the weapon of truth has been dulled to the point of uselessness, thanks to a combination of social media algorithms, artificial intelligence-generated content, and irony-poisoned Generation Z humor. In an essay co-written with AI researcher John-Clark Levin, Niall traces how America’s technological and cultural revolutions built our post-truth era, and explores “a remedy, if there is one.”

As much as people of all political stripes claim to value the truth, sometimes it’s no match for a good story. In the latest example, California congressman Ro Khanna this week turned a brief confrontation in the West Bank into a national controversy. Khanna lied about being “detained” by “violent” Israelis, argues Haviv Rettig Gur. But the real story runs deeper than lies, or even exaggerations. Underneath Khanna’s theatrics lies a dark revelation about the place Israel occupies in the political imagination of the American left.

Last weekend, we lost South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who is remembered for his sense of humor, bipartisan friendships, and unwavering belief in American power as a force for good in the world. Catch up on our coverage of Graham’s life and legacy, as well as the rumors that dogged him throughout his life and after death.

In other news, a cruise ship called the Scarlet Lady carrying 2,000 homosexual passengers and Patti LuPone was barred from docking in two Islamic countries. Much of the press framed the refusal as part of a “broader global trend,” implying that President Trump’s right-wing populism has birthed widespread hostility toward gays all over the world.

But there’s something missing from the story—the obvious cause of the ship’s rejection. You can read more about the big gay scandal at sea in Douglas Murray’s latest column.

Each year, a growing number of intensive care unit patients receive at least part of their care via telehealth—from physicians who never set foot inside the hospital. That was the case for one 26-year-old Connecticut man, Conor Hylton, whose family is now suing the hospital that treated him, alleging that Hylton’s death resulted from negligent care.

As Tanya Lukyanova investigated Hylton’s tragic death, she wanted to know: Is telehealth offering a higher standard of care to more people, or is it just a cost-saving measure that, when implemented incorrectly, can actually increase risk to patients?

But first: New York’s war on the future.

Data centers have shot to the center of American public life this year. From town meetings to the Senate floor, the debate over the physical infrastructure needed to power the AI revolution has become a political powder keg. Polls show that building them is an unpopular policy. And now politicians are acting on that public anger.

This week, New York became the first state in America to ban new data center construction. Governor Kathy Hochul sold the yearlong moratorium as a pause to protect the power supply and control energy costs. But Josh Wolfe, a venture capitalist focused on emerging technologies, argues that Hochul’s election-year gambit is a stunt that will fail her state.

AI, he argues, is just the latest technology that will benefit everyday Americans and level the playing field, giving people “with below-average means above-average superpowers they could never otherwise afford.” But we won’t get there without the construction of the essential physical infrastructure powering AI, which is the data center.

The case for data centers may not be politically fashionable right now. But Wolfe makes it forcefully, arguing that the biggest losers from Hochul’s policy will be the very people she claims to be protecting.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• Three of President Donald Trump’s nominees faced Senate confirmation hearings yesterday, with acting attorney general Todd Blanche defending his tenure at the Justice Department against accusations of weaponization, while intelligence director nominee Jay Clayton and pick to lead the CDC Dr. Erica Schwartz both fielded questions about their willingness to operate independently of the White House.

• The U.S. and Iran exchanged fire for the fifth consecutive day Wednesday, with the U.S. reimposing its naval blockade on Iranian ports and hitting dozens of targets along Iran’s southern coast—as Iran threatened to cut off all Middle Eastern energy exports. Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance told Joe Rogan that while he was never enthusiastic about the Iran war, it was ultimately “legal and ethical.”

• British prime minister Keir Starmer announced that he had reached “the end of my political journey” in the House of Commons on Wednesday. He then exchanged jokes and tributes with members of his own Labour Party and the Conservative opposition as he left the chamber. Starmer is expected to formally hand power over to former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham on Monday.

• Trump pushed back on his own administration’s decision to suspend most ICE traffic stops, urging agents to keep making them despite three deaths during immigration enforcement encounters in the past week—including two people shot by agents during car stops.

• The Ebola outbreak in the Congo is now the fastest-growing in history, with over 2,000 confirmed cases—including 754 deaths—reported Wednesday. The same day, workers at one of the country’s largest medical centers went on strike over unpaid wages and poor working conditions.

• Ukraine struck numerous Russian ships in the Sea of Azov this week, opening a new front in its campaign to disrupt supply lines into Crimea. The drone offensive follows Ukrainian strikes on the peninsula’s roads, railways, and fuel infrastructure as Kyiv tries to pressure Russia to end the war.

• Wildfire smoke from blazes in northern Minnesota and western Ontario is expected to blanket much of the Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic through Friday, potentially affecting around 100 million people with unhealthy air quality. Minnesota governor Tim Walz declared a peacetime emergency over the weekend and called in the National Guard as more than a dozen large fires continue to burn out of control.

• The Pentagon announced it will screen service members 30 and older for testosterone deficiency as part of their annual health assessments. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that if treatment is recommended, soldiers can opt in to testosterone replacement therapy. “By addressing these health markers early,” he said, “we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality.”

• Defending champions Argentina came back from a goal down to defeat England 2–1 in the World Cup semifinals. A Lionel Messi assist set up Lautaro Martinez’s stoppage-time goal to seal their spot in Sunday’s final against Spain, where an Argentina win would make them just the third nation in history to retain the World Cup.

But first: The ICU without a doctor.

In August 2024, 26-year-old Conor Hylton was about to begin his second year of dental school when he came down with what his family assumed was a particularly nasty stomach bug. That night, he checked into the hospital.

The following morning, he was dead.

Later, state and federal investigators reached a striking conclusion: From the time Conor was transferred to the ICU until he went into cardiac arrest roughly four hours later, no physician ever examined him at his bedside.

How is that possible?

The search for an answer led me deep into one of the most consequential transformations of American healthcare today: the rise of the tele-ICU, where critically ill patients are monitored by physicians working from remote command centers, sometimes hundreds of miles away.

Over the past few months, I have spoken with the architects of the tele-ICU program at the hospital where Conor died as well as leading advocates and critics of remote critical care, to understand just what this transformation means. In the process, I have been able to reconstruct, minute by minute, exactly what happened inside the hospital that night.

This isn’t only a story about one grieving family—it’s about a healthcare system under financial strain, and what is lost when the doctors responsible for the sickest patients in the hospital are nowhere near their bedsides.

—Tanya Lukyanova

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THE NEWS

• The U.S. inflation rate was 3.5 percent in June, down from 4.2 percent in May and below economists’ expectations of 3.8 percent. The decline is apparent across most sectors of the economy, though some fear renewed hostilities in Iran may reverse the trend.

• The U.S. military reimposed its blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, even as President Trump reversed his earlier pledge to charge a 20 percent fee on cargo passing through the strait. This comes amid further U.S. strikes on Iran, as tensions in the region continue to escalate.

• New York governor Kathy Hochul announced a statewide moratorium on data centers on Tuesday. The ban is the nation’s first and would pause the construction of all data centers for one year, as the AI infrastructure becomes increasingly unpopular among Americans.

• The Trump administration has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to suspend most vehicle raids, except when executing a criminal warrant or operating alongside another agency. The move comes after ICE officers fatally shot two motorists in the past week.

• Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan testified before Congress Tuesday morning, fielding questions about the rise of the “shadow docket,” political criticism of the court, and the court’s $228 million budget request—which includes nearly $15 million for security. This marks the first time Supreme Court justices have appeared before the legislative branch since 2019.

• Spain defeated France 2–0 in the World Cup semifinal on Tuesday afternoon, advancing to the World Cup final. The team will compete against either Argentina or England, who will face off later today.

But first: What’s going on with Iran?

The on-again, off-again war against Iran is very much back on. Consider yesterday’s developments alone:

• Trump ordered U.S. forces to “reinstate” a blockade on Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and proposed a 20 percent toll on all cargo that travels through the strait;

• The White House sent a letter to Congress, dated July 10, declaring a resumption in hostilities with Iran beginning July 7;

• The U.S. conducted a third consecutive night of strikes on Iran to “impose a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack shipping in the strait”;

• The UAE said that Iran had struck two of its tankers in the strait;

• Oil futures saw their largest single-day gain since April;

• Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt that the U.S. might strike the Iranian nuclear site at Pickaxe Mountain with “a nice big fat shot right near the front door,” and that the U.S. would hit Iran “very hard” Monday and Tuesday.

Free Press columnist Aaron MacLean saw much of this coming last week, when he argued that the reality of the president’s predicament pointed to him reinstating a naval blockade to take control of the strait. That now appears to be the administration’s strategy. But will it work? And at what cost? To make sense of the flurry of Iran news over the last 24 hours, read Aaron’s latest column.

And for more on the conflict, don’t miss the latest episode of School of War. He talks to Mike Doran about the state of play in the Middle East, just how weak the Iranian military actually is at this point, and whether or not the conflict’s end is in sight.

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THE NEWS

• A federal judge ruled Monday that President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns was filed for “improper purpose.” The Obama-appointed judge claimed the IRS settlement with Trump was an exercise in self-dealing. She did not explicitly void the deal that created the $1.776 billion legal defense fund for alleged victims of Biden DOJ lawfare, though she recommended disciplinary action for one of Trump’s lawyers.

• A federal immigration enforcement officer shot and killed a man in Maine on Monday. Senator Angus King said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the motorist, a 26-year-old Colombian national, attempted to use his vehicle as a weapon against ICE agents.

• Fergie Chambers was arrested Friday morning in Spain on a U.S. extradition request for alleged money laundering, among other offenses. The heir to the Cox family fortune has spent the last decade funding radical left-wing causes and has worked alongside anti-Israel activists like Calla Walsh. (Read Suzy Weiss’s profile of Fergie Chambers: “He’s Got $250 Million to Spend on Communist Revolution.”)

• Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline Graham Nordone will serve out the remainder of his term in the Senate after South Carolina governor Henry McMaster formally appointed her on Monday. President Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune publicly indicated their support for Graham Nordone in advance of her appointment.

• Twelve state attorneys general are attempting to block Paramount’s $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court, alleges the combined entity would control almost a third of theatrical films and basic cable assets in the United States. Paramount, The Free Press’s parent company, says the suit “distorts settled antitrust law and is based on a misrepresentation of competition in the entertainment industry today.”

• Madonna’s latest album, CONFESSIONS II, hit number 1 on the Billboard 200 this weekend. The record, a spiritual successor to her 2005 dance-pop hit Confessions on a Dance Floor, marks the 10th chart-topping album in her four-decade career.

• Sam Neill, Jurassic Park’s leading man, died Monday at 78. The actor starred in more than 150 movies and TV shows during his five-decade career. His family announced his death via Instagram on Monday, though the cause of his death remains unknown.

But first: The death of Lindsey Graham.

In the 24 hours since Lindsey Graham’s sudden death was announced, the punditocracy has raced to define South Carolina’s senior senator. Even as he was being praised by President Donald Trump, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, his critics focused on his willingness to ally himself with a man he had once described as “a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party.” In The New Yorker, Ruth Marcus said that in befriending Trump, Graham had abandoned most of his principles. On X, Steve Schmidt, a “Never Trumper” and former adviser to the late senator John McCain, called him “a simple, tragic man” who “lacked a moral core.”

Our Eli Lake has a less jaundiced and, we dare say, more dispassionate view. By making his peace with Trump’s victory—and becoming the president’s friend and adviser—Graham was able to “catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” Graham’s advice, writes Eli, “helped guide Trump to take military action against Iran, reconsider a premature and sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, and perhaps avoid a full breakup with NATO.” Unlike so many other politicians who couldn’t countenance working with Trump, Graham got results.

“The republic lost a giant,” Eli writes. Read his appreciation to understand the full breadth of Graham’s influence.

—The Editors

Sentient Robots and Cheating Students: Two Dispatches from the AI Revolution

Last week, Anthropic published a paper arguing that its Claude AI models have “developed a small collection of internal neural patterns,” and that the AI has private thoughts. It is the latest example of Silicon Valley claiming AI might be more than just a tool used by humans—and that it could have a consciousness all its own. Not so fast, says Spencer Klavan, who pushes back on the creeping movement to equate AI with humans, as if large language models that use mountains of data are reasoning the way humans do. Read Spencer’s column to understand why AI really is a machine—nothing less, but nothing more.

On the other hand, if there is one thing AI has become very good at, it’s helping students cheat on their exams. Brown University professor Roberto Serrano estimates that half his students are using AI to cheat. That would be bad enough. But then Serrano alerted the school—and was shocked to discover that administrators didn’t seem much interested in punishing the cheaters. “What happened in my class should be a lesson to all,” Serrano writes: “In our new AI era, if you do not expose and punish cheating, you will encourage it. We must all have the strength to choose otherwise.”

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THE NEWS

• The United States conducted new strikes on Iranian targets throughout the weekend, according to United States Central Command. The strikes culminated in a Sunday barrage aimed at degrading Iranian ability to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

• A preliminary medical examination determined that Senator Lindsey Graham’s cause of death was aortic dissection, a tear along the inner layer of the main artery, due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Emergency radio dispatch reported a “cardiac arrest” event from Graham’s Capitol Hill home.

• Jannik Sinner won his second straight Wimbledon championship on Sunday, defeating Alexander Zverev. It was also his fifth Grand Slam title overall. In the women’s final, Linda Noskova beat her fellow Czech Karolina Muchova. It was her first Grand Slam title.

• Toronto Police are still searching for a gunman who killed two people and injured four after opening fire Saturday at the city’s Salsa on St. Clair festival. At least 13,000 people attended the festivals.

• Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the former Emir of Qatar, died on Saturday, Qatar’s top governing body announced Sunday morning. Al-Thani assumed power in 1995, handing over the reins to his son, Tamim ‌bin Hamad Al-Thani, 18 years later. He was 74.

• Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell broke his monthlong silence to announce that his absence from the Senate was due to a fall the 84-year-old took—and that he suffered a case of pneumonia while in the hospital. The senator said he is not yet able to return to the Senate floor, but remains engaged with his staff from a rehabilitation center.

• The Trump administration issued subpoenas to several New York Times journalists after they reported that Trump was unable to use his new Qatari-donated Air Force One due to security concerns. The paper’s top lawyer called it a brazen attempt to “intimidate journalists from doing their jobs.”

• The long-awaited return of UFC’s Conor McGregor to the octagon ended just a minute into the fight after the UFC superstar reinjured his leg in the opening seconds. “This came out of nowhere. I am beyond dark here. I can only describe it as hell,” McGregor wrote in a post after the fight.

But first: Frannie Block reports on a dark tale of a teenage boy accused of sexual assault, and the tragedy that came next.

Your child has been accused of terrible wrongdoing, the school you trusted presumes him guilty, and you can’t find any way to defend him.

I’ve spoken to so many families who have been through this.

There was the 12-year-old in Illinois who saw his friend tying a jump rope into a noose in the schoolyard—and asked if he was okay—only to be accused of a “hate crime.” And the 17-year-old in California whose life was derailed when someone found a picture of him wearing a dark acne mask—and claimed it was “blackface.”

But this is one of the hardest stories I’ve ever told.

“I didn’t do this,” 15-year-old Owen Poirier told his parents when they picked him up from school for the last time.

They didn’t know what he was talking about. They just knew that he had been suspended that morning and that he was facing a criminal investigation.

Later, they learned that a girl had claimed Owen touched her crotch on the school bus. Eventually, they discovered that there was scant evidence to support this allegation. The school’s principal admitted months later in an email: “There was no sexual assault.”

But by then, it was too late. Owen had killed himself.

If he was still alive today, he would be 18, working at the family business, and preparing to take over one day. Instead, his parents are locked in a legal battle over who is to blame for Owen’s death. The truth is starting to emerge in court, where a disturbing picture is being painted, of due process trampled, and a rush to judgment that cost a boy his life.

—Frannie Block

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EDITORS’ PICKS

The biggest story in politics this week was the dramatic fall of Graham Platner. Who could have seen this one coming? Anyone with two eyes, according to Caitlin Flanagan. In case you missed our coverage, read Caitlin, as well as Eli Lake and Kat Rosenfield, on the story of how the most controversial Senate candidate this cycle finally crashed out. And check out our editorial on the “Believe Women” double standard that allowed Platner to last this long.

For a prognosis on whether the Democratic Party can survive the far-left faction that promoted Platner, and has seen primary victories from New York to Colorado in recent weeks, we turned to Evan Barker. She was a Democratic operative from 2018 to 2023, which meant working for some of the people behind the victories by New York City’s Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Colorado’s Melat Kiros. Because she saw the coming earthquake from the inside, you should read her playbook for Democrats worried about this trend.

“Imagine being terminally ill, slowly losing your functions, your faculties, your dignity, your bladder control—and there at your bedside, fluffing your pillow and slipping ice chips through your pale, parched lips, is the star of Eyes Wide Shut.” This week, Kat Rosenfield took us into the world of death doulas, who are reintroducing some humanity into a process made sterile by corporate influence. They can absorb the burdens that a dying person and their loved ones don’t want to put on each other. Kat also wrestles with a giant question: Who can we trust to be beside us as we approach the threshold?

Now what do we do? President Donald Trump’s declaration on Wednesday that the ceasefire with Iran was over, along with calling the regime’s leaders “sick people” and “scum,” left many Americans wondering what our country’s options are. Aaron MacLean’s piece this week soberly assesses them, arguing that nothing will be easy or without risk, but there is no going back.

Ezra Jin, the pastor of one of China’s largest underground churches, spent 266 days in Chinese prison for the crime of practicing and preaching his faith. On the eve of America’s 250th birthday, he came home and was reunited with family members in Los Angeles. This week, Frannie Block broke the news of Jin’s release, how it happened, and what it might mean for other Christians who are still behind bars in China.

But first: The war with Iran is officially back on.

At the NATO summit in Turkey yesterday, President Donald Trump declared the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran dead. Iran attacked three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, triggering a wave of U.S. strikes that continued into Wednesday. Trump reimposed the naval blockade and said he wasn’t sure he wanted a deal at all. “We can play games,” he told reporters, “but I’m not sure I want to make a deal. Let’s just finish the job.”

So where do we go from here? Aaron MacLean argues that the administration’s original sin was failing to anticipate Iran’s most obvious countermove: closing the Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire agreed upon three weeks ago was built on self-deception, with the United States claiming that the MOU required Iran to open the strait when its text said nothing of the sort. Now, with the agreement dead and strikes resuming, Trump faces four choices. Read Aaron on what those options are, and why only one of them offers a real way out.

Meanwhile, as millions gather in Iranian cities to mourn the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad has been hearing a very different story from people inside the country. What the Islamic Republic is staging as a display of strength, she argues, is instead a performance. Read Masih on what’s really happening on the ground.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• The Trump administration cleared OpenAI to release its most powerful AI model, GPT-5.6, with a public launch set for today. The move follows a government-mandated staggered rollout last month of the same model, which restricted access to approved entities while officials conducted additional testing.

• A federal judge ordered yesterday that Trump must hand over a $5 million judgment to writer E. Jean Carroll, after the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal last week. A Manhattan jury awarded Carroll the sum in 2023 after finding Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming her. Trump’s lawyers have filed a rehearing request and said they would appeal the order.

• Kentucky governor Andy Beshear sent a letter to Senator Mitch McConnell’s office on Wednesday, urging him to be transparent about his health after 24 days of silence from the 84-year-old. With rampant speculation circulating about his condition, Beshear said his constituents deserve answers about whether McConnell can continue to serve.

• At the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump said the U.S. will allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot air defense systems by granting it a production license—a significant win for Kyiv, which has been pressing for the capability for years. Trump met with President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the summit, praising him as having “done an amazing job” in the war.

• The family of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during a Houston immigration raid Tuesday, is calling for an independent investigation into his death. The Department of Homeland Security said the agent fired in self-defense after Salgado Araujo attempted to ram an officer with a vehicle.

• Former Milwaukee County judge Hannah Dugan was fined $5,000 but spared prison after being convicted of obstructing the arrest of an undocumented immigrant. The penalty falls well below the 15- to 21-month sentence in the federal guidelines.

• Egypt filed an official complaint with FIFA after blowing a 2–0 lead in the final minutes of its World Cup game against Argentina, alleging that inconsistent Video Assistant Referee (VAR) decisions directly influenced the outcome.

• Emmy nominations are out, and HBO Max’s medical drama The Pitt led all shows with 25 nods. The final season of Hacks set a comedy record with 24 nominations. A win for Jean Smart in September would tie the all-time record for acting Emmys by a single performer.

But first, Douglas Murray asks: Will the truth win out at Tyler Robinson’s trial?

The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a grave national tragedy: a prominent political figure killed while exercising the First Amendment rights on which American freedom depends.

What has happened since Kirk’s killing may not be as shocking as the shooting itself, but it is just as disturbing. Over the last 10 months, some of the most prominent podcasters and influencers on the internet—including people who were once Kirk’s friends—have peddled deranged conspiracies about who killed him. This week, the baseless theorizing of Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and others finally collided with reality in a Utah courtroom. That’s where the main suspect in the case, Tyler Robinson, will stand trial once a judge rules that the evidence against him is strong enough for the case to proceed.

At a hearing on Monday, Kirk’s family, including his widow Erika, came face to face with Robinson for the first time. It’s also where these noxious conspiracy theories will be met again and again with actual evidence. The stakes could not be higher, which is why we asked Douglas Murray to tackle this important case in his latest column.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• Iran is the prime suspect in recent strikes that hit three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, which prompted the United States on Tuesday to revoke a license authorizing the sale of Iranian oil. The Islamic Republic did not claim responsibility for any of the attacks.

• President Donald Trump hinted at the possibility of allowing Turkey to purchase American fighter jets at a NATO summit in Ankara on Tuesday. The move would go against the wishes of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Friday asked Trump not to sell modern air force technology to Turkey, citing escalating anti-Israel rhetoric from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

• Marine Le Pen announced on Tuesday that she will run for president of France in 2027. The announcement came after a French appeals court ruling that upheld Le Pen’s embezzlement conviction, but reduced her sentence to one year of house arrest and lifted an immediate ban on her running for office.

• Prince Harry has lost a long legal battle against the publisher of the Daily Mail over claims that the tabloid unlawfully gathered information about him through phone tapping and impersonation, according to CBS News. While a UK high court dismissed the prince’s latest claims, the publisher of The Sun in 2025 settled a similar snooping suit with Harry, paying him “substantial damages.”

• Nokia is no longer making cell phones—the company is now manufacturing critical data center infrastructure, and has seen its stock price surge 90 percent this year. The Finnish corporation is “basking in the glow of the AI halo,” according to one analyst, selling software and equipment to route data traffic between servers.

• Argentina made one of the greatest comebacks in World Cup history with its defeat of Egypt on Tuesday. Trailing 2–0 with time running out, Argentina scored three goals in 14 minutes, won 3–2, and advanced to the World Cup quarterfinals. The reigning World Cup champion’s next opponent will be Switzerland, who defeated Colombia on penalty kicks.

But first: Is this just the beginning of the socialist surge?

If you look at the areas where democratic socialist candidates have surged to victory in recent weeks, you’ll find they all share one thing in common: The districts are deep, deep blue. Which raises a question: Shocking as these results are, is this all just a flash in the pan, limited to the most progressive enclaves of the United States?

No way, says Evan Barker, a former Democratic Party fundraiser who spent years training the progressive activists now leading the DSA wave. She knows exactly where this moment came from: a Democratic establishment that in 2018 decided to blacklist operatives working for progressive candidates, pushing them to build the ruthless campaign infrastructure proving so effective today. Read Evan’s piece to understand why “this far-left earthquake is only the beginning”—and what she believes Democrats must do to stop it.

Much of the power fueling this movement comes from young people, who are significantly more favorable toward socialism than older generations. But if you ask Tyler Cowen, those voters are embracing policies that will ultimately hurt them—in particular, by stifling the medical innovation they’ll depend on most. Read his analysis of why a movement promising young people the world may ultimately give them anything but.

But if this movement really is here to stay, who are these people anyway? What do they truly believe? Stu Smith, an investigative journalist at City Journal who has covered the DSA extensively, argues the organization has lurched so far leftward that a majority of its governing board now “openly identifies with Communist ideology.” Today, he explains what that means—and why he thinks “the DSA’s official name isn’t a reliable guide to the ideological makeup of its current leadership.”

—River Page

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THE NEWS

• A woman who dated Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from Maine, says he drunkenly forced her to have sex with him almost five years ago against her repeated objections. Platner said Monday afternoon that he is “taking time to reflect on the best path forward” after originally denying the claims as “categorically untrue.” Since then, reports have emerged that he is set to drop out of the race.

• Russian strikes bombarded Kyiv and its suburbs early Monday morning, killing at least 28 people. The attack exposed Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made missile interceptors, prompting President Volodymyr Zelensky to plead for Trump to help replenish the country’s stock.

• The United States, after losing to Belgium 4–1 Monday evening, fail to advance to the World Cup quarterfinals.

• Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party is surging in popularity among Israeli voters, threatening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection bid as the country prepares for its first national elections since October 7, which must be held before October 27 of this year. The military general joined Netanyahu’s coalition after the Hamas attacks but resigned eight months later, accusing the prime minister of prolonging the war and putting hostages’ lives in danger.

• The entire island of Cuba lost power on Monday, the latest outage to expose an aging and rapidly deteriorating electrical grid. The state-run Electric Union announced the blackout in a post on X, claiming investigators are working to determine its cause.

• The Chinese navy launched a long-range test missile in the South Pacific yesterday, its first in two years, drawing criticism from neighboring countries. “Australia has been clear with China that we regard this as destabilizing to the region,” Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong told reporters in Fiji in response.

• A weeklong hearing for Tyler Robinson, the man who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk, began yesterday. Kirk’s parents and wife Erika attended the first day of the hearing, marking the first time his family appeared in the same room as the accused killer.

But first: Two takes on the 250.

America is officially 250 years old. For the past year, we have been counting down to the semiquincentennial of the greatest nation on Earth—and it delivered.

Across the country, Americans poured into stifling heat, decked head to toe in stars and stripes. They flocked to the annual hot dog eating contest in Coney Island; lined the streets for parades in Ohio; reenacted the Revolutionary War in Boston; watched fireworks over Los Angeles; and, in Philadelphia, lowered a time capsule into the ground for our descendants 250 years from now to discover: a snapshot of America in 2026.

It was brash and joyous. In other words, it was American.

Which means it wasn’t complete without politics. Over the weekend, Americans were also treated to a series of speeches from elected officials. Two speeches—by President Donald Trump and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani—were “built up by pundits as a political doubleheader,” writes Liel Leibovitz today, “offering twin visions of America present, past, and future, one from the left and the other from the right.” So what did these two addresses say about our politics? Liel’s verdict: Anyone hoping either would offer an accurate, let alone inspiring, account of American exceptionalism would have been sorely disappointed.

Read Liel’s piece to understand why our leaders got it so horribly wrong—and what he says is the truth about American exceptionalism at our 250-year mark.

—Jillian Lederman

Ezra Jin, Pastor Jailed by China, Is Free

On July 4, 2026, I woke up to learn that Ezra Jin, a pastor who had spent more than eight months in a Chinese prison, was free—and in the arms of his family members in America.

The Free Press’s Frannie Block has covered Ezra’s story tirelessly since his arrest on October 14, 2025, when Chinese police executed a series of raids across China, rounding up nearly three dozen pastors and church leaders. They were charged with illegally disseminating religious information online.

Ezra’s daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, worked endlessly for her father’s release. “The Chinese Communist Party will never be able to put God in a box,” she told The Free Press in October, adding that she would do “everything in my power to bring attention to his story” and to fight for his freedom.

Fight she did. She traveled the globe—from Geneva, London, Rome, Berlin, and Brussels—to tell her father’s story and put pressure on both the U.S. and Chinese governments to consider his case, speaking twice in front of Congress. The case made it onto the negotiating table when Trump met Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing in May; after the summit, Trump announced that the leader was “seriously considering” releasing Jin.

The Drexels believe that Ezra Jin’s release on the eve of the Fourth of July is a “miracle.” It surely is. But it is also the result of months of determined work to raise his case to some of the most powerful decision-makers in the world, including both the president of the United States and China’s president. It is a testament to the power of advocacy, international pressure, and to one family’s resolution to never give up even in the face of the most daunting obstacles.

Read the latest news here:

And don’t miss Frannie’s agenda-setting deep dive into this case, and Beijing’s war on Christianity, “China vs. God”:

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THE NEWS

• Tens of thousands of people flooded into Tehran this weekend for the funeral services of the former Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. One of the attendees was former child political star turned Islamist Calla Walsh, whom we’ve reported on extensively; you can read our full investigation of her descent into radicalism here.

• Michigan Democrat Mallory McMorrow withdrew her Senate bid this weekend. During her candidacy, McMorrow tried to strike a balance between the establishment candidate Rep. Haley Stevens and the hard-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed; her departure could leave El-Sayed with an easier path to victory.

• President Trump pardoned 11 people on Friday, most of whom were convicted of violating the Clean Air Act. He also pardoned Adam Kidan, a key Republican donor, raising questions about potential biases. (For more on the pardon industrial complex, read Gabe Kaminsky’s investigation.)

• The Trump administration piloted a new program providing investment accounts to millions of American children on Saturday. The so-called “Trump accounts” will start these children off with a $1,000 deposit, and families and employers will have the option to contribute more funds over time.

• A marine heat wave is sweeping the Pacific Ocean, extending across an area over eight times as large as the United States. The temperature change could signal a rise in intense storms and heat waves in the coming weeks, after this weekend’s storms took out power grids across several states.

• Team USA’s top scorer Folarin Balogun had his controversial red card repealed on Sunday. The decision reportedly came after Donald Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino, and makes Balogun eligible for today’s match against Belgium, which will kick off at 8 p.m. ET.

Two hundred fifty years ago, 56 men gathered in Philadelphia and signed a document that changed the world—a declaration that all men are created equal, endowed with inalienable rights, and entitled to govern themselves. Amid all the gloom and division that often dominates the headlines today, it’s worth remembering this: Our Founding Fathers would be astounded at the country this has become. They would also, we think, be proud that the foundation they built has been so enduring. That the democracy they first envisioned has been copied around the world. That America has been blessed by great statesmen and survived incompetent leaders. It has shaken off the scourge of slavery and witnessed the triumph of the civil rights movement and the defeat of the Nazis. The America they created is today a land of 342 million people bound by a set of common values and self-evident truths that the Founders first put forth in that sacred document.

We’ve run plenty about the ideas and history worth celebrating this year (more on that in a second). But as we close in on this very special Fourth of July—America’s semiquincentennial—we asked our favorite writers and columnists to describe one thing they love about America. And did they ever! Bari Weiss celebrates risk. Nellie Bowles makes the case for air-conditioning. Douglas Murray toasts our vast wilderness. Read all 11 of them here.

Caitlin Flanagan was a second grader in Berkeley, California, in 1968, a year when the country felt like it might come apart, when she learned the Pledge of Allegiance. Today, she writes about what it meant to say those words every morning, how it helped instill her deep feelings of patriotism, and why, for all her grumbling about America’s general decline, she still believes an American passport is the best thing you can have in the world. “When I see our flag flying,” she writes, “it means that America is still steady, that the world is still in its place.”

What does America look like to someone who’s just come back? After four years living in Europe, Rod Dreher returned to sticker shock at the grocery store, yes, but also magnolia trees and dive bars, and a South he’d almost forgotten how much he missed. Today, he reflects on what it’s like to see your own country with fresh eyes.

Great Americans

With America’s 250th birthday tomorrow, we are publishing the last installment of our Great Americans series: our columnist Niall Ferguson on Henry Kissinger.

In what other country could a penniless Jewish refugee become the secretary of state? Ferguson asks in his inspiring essay. He argues that Kissinger’s journey from shaving brush salesman to the center of American power captures something no other country could have produced. Only in America, he writes, could such a story have unfolded—“not only because he was an immigrant, but because his path to Harvard and academic success led through the battlefields of Nazi-occupied Europe.”

For the past month, we’ve enlisted a handful of writers to celebrate their favorite Great Americans. They’ve been a joy to read, from Colin Quinn on Martin Scorsese and Joseph Epstein on Sandy Koufax to Colleen Shogan on the heroes of Flight 93. Today, to wrap up the series, we’ve handed our readers the pen. The nominees who emerged from The Free Press Forum were David McCullough, the historian who spent his life bringing America’s story to life; Calvin Coolidge, the president who respected the limits of his office better than any before or since; and Louisa May Alcott, the woman behind one of the most beloved American novels ever written.

EDITORS’ PICKS: The Best of America at 250

America has always been a country in motion. For a year now—across essays, interviews, and debates for America at 250—we’ve traced that motion through individual lives: from rags to riches, from fear to courage, from unfreedom to freedom. These are the journeys that stayed with us.

Last July 4, Larissa Phillips traced her own arc—from a progressive Brooklynite uneasy about her kids reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to a farmsteader flying giant Stars and Stripes over her land upstate. “Yes, America is imperfect,” she writes. “But so is everything: family and work and life. This is my country—the only one I’ve got—and I believe in it.”

At age 7, in a village in northern Iran, Masih Alinejad learned to chant “death to America.” Decades later, her reporting on the regime forced her to flee to the very country she’d been taught to hate—which then had to save her life, foiling multiple assassination attempts on American soil. It’s the story of an immigrant and the country that gave her a new life and, twice, saved it.

Some of America’s most fervent believers were born elsewhere. Last fall we ran two very different immigrant stories side by side: legendary New York restaurateur Keith McNally, and Cheikhou Niane, a Senegalese busboy at McNally’s own Balthazar. Both begin in a yellow cab; both are bound by a faith in hard work and the American dream.

A year ago, Free Press founder Bari Weiss revisited a cartoon created by Benjamin Franklin more than 250 years ago that still resonates today. It’s message: Join or die.

Finally, don’t miss these blockbuster America at 250 essays from writers who need no introduction.

But first: Is the president taking us for fools?

What has been the most striking thing about Trump’s year and a half back in office? The force of his immigration crackdown? The repeated showdowns between the president and the Supreme Court? His hyperactivity on the world stage—from the Liberation Day tariffs to the Maduro raid and the strikes on Iran?

It’s a crowded field, but one answer arrived in financial disclosures published this week: how much money Donald Trump has made since he returned to the White House. It may not be the most consequential thing about Trump’s second term, but it may be the most extraordinary.

President Trump earned a staggering $2.2 billion in his first year back in office. More than $1.4 billion of that came from crypto ventures.

As we have reported before, and as we lay out in our editorial today, there is more than a whiff of corruption to these schemes.

There’s also a stench surrounding the Boeing 747 donated by the Qatari government for use as Air Force One. Trump flew on it for the first time yesterday. When he leaves office, ownership of the $400 million aircraft will transfer to the Trump Presidential Library.

Read our editorial to understand exactly what’s so wrong with these deals—and why Trump is at the center of what might just be the biggest grift in American history.

And if you see the amount Donald Trump has made in office and are asking yourself “How is this allowed?” Mene Ukueberuwa has the piece for you.

—The Editors

Great Americans

David A. Price says the Declaration of Independence, now a couple of days shy of 250 years old, had “no truer friend” than Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist orator who shook a nation to its moral core, pointing out the blatant hypocrisy in permitting chattel slavery while declaring “all men are created equal.” It’s only fitting that one of the final installments of our Great Americans series is Douglass, a man whose moral conviction still echoes throughout the pages of American history today. Read Price on the great man and his much misunderstood July 4 speech.

Who do you think deserves to be considered a Great American? Let us know your pick(s) in The Free Press Forum now!

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THE NEWS

• The United States refused to extend its United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a senior administration official told reporters. U.S. trade with its neighbors totals $1.9 trillion worth of goods and services each year, meaning Canada and Mexico have supplanted China to become America’s top two trading partners. President Donald Trump signed the deal in 2018 but has since soured on it.

• The president embarked on the maiden flight of the new Air Force One—the Qatari-gifted $400 million retrofitted Boeing 747—as he traveled to North Dakota to visit the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library ahead of its official opening. The plane eschewed the traditional light blue hull for dark navy with red and gold accents, while its interior includes cream-colored leather seats.

• A U.S. Navy helicopter crashed into the Arabian Sea on Wednesday as part of an “emergency water landing,” U.S. Naval Central Command said. Three of the four crew members were rescued and are in stable condition aboard the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier, while the search continues for the fourth. The military said there was “no indication” the helicopter was shot down.

• Two people climbed to the top of the Empire State Building Wednesday, apparently got engaged, and proceeded to fly a banner from the top of the skyscraper about the “power of love.” The New Jersey couple is now in custody, according to law enforcement.

• Victor Willis, the lead singer of the disco group Village People, has died. The Village People’s hit song, “Y.M.C.A.,” has been a staple for President Trump at rallies and official events. Willis left the band in 1980, but returned in 2017. He was 74.

• Bobby Bonilla, the former professional baseball outfielder, celebrated the start of July with his 16th $1.2 million check from his former team, the New York Mets. Bonilla hasn’t played for the club since 1999, but he’s set to receive the same payout from the franchise every July through 2035 as a result of a uniquely structured deferred contract.

But first: The justices tangle with girls’ sports and citizenship.

The Supreme Court closed out its term yesterday with a flurry of major rulings. The justices upheld birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s attempt to deny it to children of parents in the country illegally or on temporary visas. It also affirmed that states can bar biological male athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. Today, our writers dig into what these rulings mean.

By a 5–4 vote, the justices held that children born to illegal immigrants and people on temporary visas are American citizens at birth. Jed Rubenfeld calls it a victory not just for the Constitution but for the country—regardless of which side of the issue you’re on. He walks through why the dissenters’ arguments, while not as crazy as the caricatured version of them presented by the media, get the history wrong. Jed also zooms out and looks at the bigger lesson from the decisions made by the Court this term. Read Jed to understand the most anticipated ruling of the year—and the state of play in the fight between the executive and the judiciary.

The Court also ruled yesterday that states may keep biological males off female sports teams. Ilya Shapiro explains the law behind the decision: Title IX, the 1972 law guaranteeing equal athletic opportunity for women, was built from the start around the existence of separate sex categories. The majority, Shapiro argues, simply read the law as it was always written.

Meanwhile, Paula Scanlan lays out the ruling’s stakes. She knows what it’s like to share a locker room with a male athlete and be told to act like it’s normal. As a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, she was one of Lia Thomas’s teammates, and one of the girls who raised concerns to coaches about showering and undressing in front of a male athlete, only to be offered counseling to help her come to terms with it. Today, she celebrates the Court’s ruling and describes what it will mean for the next generation of women in sports.

—The Editors

Democratic Party Civil War: Victory for the DSA in Denver

Last week’s socialist sweep of New York City’s Democratic primaries sent a loud message, and the party is still figuring out what to do with it. Today, our writers describe what comes next—and whether anyone can stop the wave.

The clash between socialists and “establishment” Democrats continued in another race this week—and socialism keeps on rolling. Olivia Reingold profiles Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old first-time candidate who yesterday defeated the longest-serving member of Colorado’s congressional delegation. She’s a political newcomer who declined to call a firebomb attack on Jews “antisemitic” and justified the attacks of October 7 as “inevitable.” Read Olivia’s piece on Kiros and what her candidacy says about where the party is headed.

Not every Democrat is going along with the tide. Peter Savodnik talks to Tom Suozzi, the Long Island congressman who, days after last week’s primaries, unveiled the “Promise to America”—a pledge to fight back on behalf of capitalism, free speech, and what he sees as the party’s founding ideals. The left and the right, Suozzi tells Peter, want to “tear it all down.” Read his piece to see what Suozzi is seeking for the country.

The socialist wave didn’t come out of nowhere. Olivia has been covering the far left since she first started reporting for The Free Press in 2022—and none of what happened last week surprised her. Today, between 2 and 3 p.m. ET, she’ll answer all your questions in the Forum.

Great Americans

Walt Whitman isn’t America’s greatest poet, David Mamet argues. Paul Dresser is. Dresser was the author of “On the Banks of the Wabash,” a friend to prostitutes and, Mamet argues, the true bard of the American Songbook. Like Irving Berlin, he couldn’t read music. Like Yeats, he could write it in a way you’d never forget.

MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS

THE NEWS

• American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Qatar yesterday to talk with mediators about ending the war in Iran, as Tehran said it had no plans for direct meetings with the U.S. in the coming days. Iran and Oman still plan to collect fees from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, despite American objections.

• National Public Radio quickly retracted an article on Tuesday that incorrectly reported Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring from the bench. NPR reporter Nina Totenberg apologized directly to Alito, saying, “It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism.”

• Representative Tom Kean returned to the House floor after a four-month absence from the chamber, revealing he had been hospitalized with depression. The New Jersey Republican missed more than 100 consecutive votes in what was one of the longest absences by a sitting member of Congress.

• Speaker Mike Johnson sent members on summer recess early after a group of House Republicans blocked a defense spending bill for a second straight week, demanding Trump’s election legislation be attached to it first. Neither chamber will return until July 13.

• LeBron James told the Los Angeles Lakers that he will not return next season, ending his eight-year run with the team and setting off a free agency chase among championship contenders. Golden State, Miami, and Cleveland are all expected to make pitches as he prepares for a record 24th NBA season.

• Actress Blake Lively is seeking $8 million in legal fees from director Justin Baldoni and his production company following the dismissal of his $400 million defamation suit, which her legal team called a “gross abuse of the legal system.”

• The White House tapped Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb to lead a new scientific advisory council focused on national security threats posed by UFOs. (Watch Will Rahn’s interview with Loeb about his search for alien life and what their presence might mean for humans.)