But first: Ben Shapiro on how to fix American institutions.

There was once a time in American society when fierce political differences didn’t preclude a shared moral foundation. Our core, foundational ideas—that violence is bad, that freedom of speech is paramount—were unquestionable, baked into the ethos of our nation.

It’s getting harder to argue that we still live in that kind of society. As we’ve written in recent days and weeks, the divisive tenor of public discourse seems to be reaching a fever pitch—with increasingly severe consequences.

The latest reminder of that came this weekend at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

How did this climate take shape?

Ben Shapiro’s answer is simple: “Our institutions are failing.” In his piece today, adapted from a recent speech at the University of Austin, he explains how plummeting trust in what were once the foundational pillars of American life—church, government, academia, science—is at the root of our social unraveling.

Read Ben’s essay for his view on what went wrong—and what Americans can do to fix it.

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THE NEWS

• A New York Times investigation revealed this week that the U.S. Mint’s “100 percent American” gold coins may actually contain gold sourced from cartel-controlled mines in Colombia. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says he will investigate.

• The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday it is exiting OPEC after more than 50 years in what will likely be a blow to the powerful alliance of big oil producers. The departure comes amid souring relations between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and will make it tougher for OPEC to control output and prices.

• Per new Gallup data, 55 percent of Americans say their financial situation is worsening. That’s the largest percentage in the last 25 years, including during the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.

• The cheapest cars in America may soon vanish from showrooms. Foreign automakers including Nissan, Hyundai, and Toyota have privately warned the Trump administration they may withdraw their most affordable models from the U.S. market if the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade deal favoring foreign car production in North America, is not renewed or materially weakened. Trump’s tariffs charge 25 percent on the non-U.S. content of vehicles that previously qualified as duty-free, making entry-level models unprofitable.

• The Justice Department announced criminal charges Tuesday against Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former top aide at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), accusing him of suppressing information about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The indictment alleges David Morens boasted he had “learned the tricks” to disappear emails and skirt public information disclosures from a friend who ran the NIH FOIA office.

• Amid tensions between the U.S. and UK over the war in Iran, King Charles urged cooperation before Congress, calling the story of the two nations “a story of reconciliation, renewal, and remarkable partnership.” A loud bipartisan round of applause erupted when Charles mentioned “the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”

But first: The shooter in D.C.—and our fraying social contract.

Cole Allen, the alleged shooter at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, is the only person responsible for his actions in the Washington Hilton. But it is impossible not to see the thwarted attack in the context of our increasingly upside-down culture, one in which political speech is derided as violence and political violence is tolerated, excused, and even celebrated.

If that sounds hyperbolic to you, we suggest sitting in on a seminar at any number of Ivy League schools with the words anti-colonial or indigeneity in the course title. Or just head down to Washington Square Park and ask the New York University students and twentysomethings if they think murder is ever an appropriate political tool.

Our Tanya Lukyanova did just that yesterday. Watch for yourself:

In our latest editorial, we dive into the culture that creates permission for political violence, and why it is incumbent on all of us to restore the guardrails upon which free speech and American democracy depend.

Douglas Murray was at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. He joins Aaron MacLean for the latest episode of the School of War podcast to discuss the events of that night and the dangerous moment we find ourselves in. You can watch their conversation below:

You can also read Douglas’s view in the below text, adapted from the episode. He covers the scene in the ballroom, why excuse-making for political violence is so evil, and why the suspect’s manifesto sounds so familiar:

One group of people whose job has been made immeasurably harder by the growing threat of political violence is the Secret Service. Former agent Bill Gabe talks to Tanner Nau about what went right and what went wrong on Saturday night, and how the Secret Service is handling the job of protecting the “most threatened president in U.S. history.”

—The Editors

How to Fix the Ivy League

Better late than never, the toniest institutions in higher education are coming around to the realization that “echo chambers do not produce the best teaching, research, or scholarship,” as a Yale University report put it earlier this month. Today, we have two looks at the Ivies’ about-face.

First, Arthur Brooks reflects on Yale’s admission about campus groupthink (what took so long?), the evolutionary biology behind the human impulse to conform, and how the ideological straitjacket on academia was put on in the first place.

Second, Jonas Du heads to Dartmouth College, which has set itself apart from other elite schools under president Sian Beilock. Dartmouth took a very different approach to the post–October 7 campus disorder, and is the only college in the Ivy League not to be investigated by the Trump administration for allegations of campus antisemitism.

Beilock quickly had protesters arrested, defied faculty, and now says American universities lost their way. Today, she talks to Jonas about why she thinks schools have a choice: Fix themselves, or “someone else will try and do it for us.”

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THE NEWS

• Florida governor Ron DeSantis is advancing a new congressional redistricting map that would add four Republican seats. It is the latest move to redraw a state’s voting boundaries to favor one political party over the other. Meanwhile, the Virginia Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in a GOP challenge to a voter-approved measure that would allow a similar gerrymander favoring Democrats.

• Iran proposed reopening the Strait of Hormuz and postponing formal nuclear negotiations yesterday in its latest offer to the Trump administration. Iran said the U.S. would have to agree to end the war and stop its blockade.

• The Supreme Court appears poised to rule that police must obtain a warrant before accessing location data from tech companies. So-called geofence warrants are controversial because they allow law enforcement to request data on all devices present in a given area during a specific time window, often pulling in thousands of individuals with no connection to a crime.

• Microsoft announced Monday that it is ending its exclusive right to sell OpenAI’s models, leaving OpenAI free to distribute its products on rival cloud platforms. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy confirmed that it will soon make OpenAI’s models available on Amazon Web Services.

• Republicans are seeking to attach federal funding for a Trump-proposed White House ballroom to upcoming legislation, citing security concerns following Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

• Donald and Melania Trump urged ABC to take action against Jimmy Kimmel after the late-night host said the First Lady had the glow of “an expectant widow.” Kimmel made the comment on Thursday. On Monday, Melania Trump said “people like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”

• Taylor Swift’s company filed three trademark applications in an apparent attempt to protect her voice and likeness. The move follows a similar strategy by Matthew McConaughey. Swift’s likeness was used without permission in AI-generated deepfakes, including pornographic images and a fake political endorsement shared by Donald Trump in 2024.

• Twenty-two monks were arrested in Sri Lanka after customs officials discovered 242 pounds of cannabis, including 11 pounds of Kush, a potent form of the drug, hidden in false compartments of their luggage. The monks were returning from a four-day trip to Thailand. Police said they might not have known what was in their bags.

But first: The dinner and the gunman.

One of the values that informs everything we do at The Free Press is a belief in the American project. Here’s how we explain what we mean by that on our website:

Our reporting and opinion can be harshly critical of our country and its leaders, but that is because we believe deeply in America and its promise. We make no apology for making distinctions between good and bad, liberalism and illiberalism, the rule of the law and mob rule, freedom and unfreedom—and we advocate forcefully for the former.

We were reminded of those distinctions on Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C. The evening was supposed to be a lighthearted affair. Instead it became a near-tragedy that threw those distinctions, once again, into sharp relief. Good versus bad. Liberalism versus illiberalism. The rule of law versus mob rule. Freedom and unfreedom.

Today, we offer five stories on the latest incidence of political violence in America and the permission structures that make it possible. What happened, why, and how to respond.

First, in case you missed it, read the editorial we published the morning after the thwarted attack. It’s about what it takes to stay free. “The shooting,” we wrote, “is a reminder that the First Amendment alone cannot uphold free speech.” Check it out, in full, here:

The Free Press’s culture editor Freya Sanders, a native of Great Britain, was at the event and was expecting a deeply American experience. She got that—just not exactly in the way she expected. Read her reckoning with America’s unique ailments for a perspective on what Saturday night’s ordeal looked like to an outsider.

How did the shooter get so close? That’s the question Elliot Ackerman, a Marine veteran, seeks to answer in his firsthand dispatch. “The security arrangement itself was riddled with holes—holes that, as the proximity of the gunshots to the ballroom revealed, could very well have ended in catastrophe,” he writes. Read his report:

But as with any calamity, the WHCD shooting had its unsung heroes. And for Suzy Weiss, that’s men like Ackerman, who kept the people around him—in particular the young women—calm as they ducked and covered. The security teams and Secret Service agents did their jobs. But today Suzy salutes the people in the ballroom, many of them veterans, who didn’t miss a step and stayed collected amid the chaos. In short: Dudes rock.

Finally, Free Press senior editor Peter Savodnik has written extensively about the spate of political violence that has rocked America over the last few years—including diving deeply into the biographies of the young men who take such despicable and disastrous action. Read his latest on what appears to have driven the man accused of storming the dinner:

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• Senator Thom Tillis announced Sunday he would drop his hold on Kevin Warsh’s Fed nomination after the Justice Department closed its criminal investigation into outgoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell—the inquiry that had led Tillis, a Republican, to block Trump’s pick in the first place. Tillis, a Trump critic who is retiring from the Senate when his term concludes next year, had been the White House’s major roadblock in replacing Powell. The Senate Banking Committee is now expected to allow Warsh’s nomination to advance.

• Following Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump renewed his push for his $400 million White House ballroom, calling the Washington Hilton “not a particularly secure building” and posting that the attack “would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House.”

• Trump called off Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s diplomatic mission to Pakistan over the weekend, where the two were set to sit down with Iranian negotiators. Trump said Tehran’s latest proposal wasn’t up to par, though he claimed a stronger offer arrived shortly after. Iran wants the U.S. naval blockade of its ports to end immediately, while Washington demands the removal of uranium stockpiles from the country.

• Iran has caused an estimated $5 billion in damage to U.S. military bases across the Gulf region—far more than publicly acknowledged—hitting runways, radar systems, aircraft hangars, and command infrastructure across six countries, NBC News reported Saturday. Briefings for lawmakers on the full costs of the war have been scant. “No one knows anything,” one congressional aide said. “And it’s not for lack of asking.”

• Russia’s state-owned pollster recorded President Vladimir Putin’s approval rate dropping to about 65 percent—the lowest since before his invasion of Ukraine and a 12-point slide since January. This comes as Russians grow weary of the prolonged war, a cratering economy, and tightening internet restrictions.

• Al Qaeda–linked militants simultaneously attacked targets across Mali on Saturday, claiming to have taken control of two major cities while bombing military headquarters outside the capital of Bamako and leveling the defense minister’s home. Experts say it is a sign that the group is now a force capable of nationwide warfare.

• Democrats’ prospects of flipping the Senate this November have gone from unlikely to competitive, fueled by Trump’s eroding approval ratings and widespread unease about the economy. New polling shows voters now trust Democrats more than Republicans on economic issues for the first time in 15 years. Democrats are targeting open or vulnerable seats in Maine, North Carolina, Alaska, and Ohio, while Republicans see Michigan as their best chance to go on offense.

• Trump announced he will coat the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in “American flag blue”—ditching a $301 million granite replacement for a $1.5 million fix sourced from his personal pool contractors. “You’re going to end up with a beautiful, beautiful reflecting pool,” Trump said, adding it will be ready well before July 4.

But first: The moral inversion of The New York Times.

Strange though it may sound, you can trace the start of The Free Press back to the publication of a single article.

In June 2020, I was part of a team of editors at The New York Times Opinion page who published an essay from Senator Tom Cotton. It argued that the rioting, looting, and violence (he called it a “carnival for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements”) was a move toward anarchy, and that the president had the authority to take action against it by sending in the National Guard.

I’ve already recounted how this all played out, but suffice it to say that many, if not most, Times staffers erupted against the premise of the piece—a call for restoring order in cities—and the paper’s decision to “platform” it. Running it, they said, put lives in danger. (Never mind that more than half of the polled American public agreed with Senator Cotton’s position.)

Disagreement over that article would ultimately lead to my defenestration from the paper. Bari Weiss left the Times that same summer, because of the same broken newsroom culture that led to the uproar over the Cotton essay.

“If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired.”

Another thing Bari said in that note was this: “The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people.”

Six years on, the charge stands.

Consider, for example, the latest episode of the New York Times Opinions podcast, featuring the left-wing provocateur Hasan Piker, the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, and an editor named Nadja Spiegelman. The episode’s title: “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?” In the conversation, the panelists endorse and admit to theft (or “microlooting,” as Spiegelman calls it), celebrate looting, and excuse the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

There are more important things happening in the world than three out-of-touch media figures babbling in a podcast studio in New York. You can read about those here, here, and here, and in the other stories in our lineup today.

But a New York Times podcast about murder, theft, and looting is worth lingering over. Why? Because it is symptomatic of a deep moral crisis in America, where profoundly antisocial (and criminal!) behavior is put on a pedestal and valorized in our broken media.

The episode is what moral inversion looks like. The paper that saw it unfit to publish a United States senator on the rule of law now hosts a gleeful conversation about theft, looting, and the murder of a corporate executive and frames it as moral courage. And you can expect no internal revolt, no lengthy review or editor’s note. The point they are making is this: Stealing is laudable if you are stealing from the right people. Maybe even murder, too.

Today we have two must-read essays on this conversation, by Suzy Weiss and River Page. Read them to understand how some of the top voices in the media came to embrace criminality.

The Free Press was founded because there was an urgent need for an alternative. For an outlet that could still see the difference between right and wrong, and was committed to telling the truth—even if it is uncomfortable, even if it flies in the face of whatever ideas happen to be fashionable at that moment in time. That is as urgent and necessary today as it was on day one.

—Adam Rubenstein

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EDITORS’ PICKS

The literary world has a new obsession: Gaza. Not the reality of life for Palestinians there, however. But a fantasy of Gaza that serves ideological ends. In an essential essay published this week, Matti Friedman delved into a new literary genre he calls “Gazology.” He read these books so you don’t have to.

AI could change everything—including our politics. Right now, a big fight is bubbling up across the country. It’s over data centers, and whether or not local communities will allow them to be built. These vast structures are the physical infrastructure on which the AI revolution depends—and the target of a populist backlash against the technology. Frannie Block went to one of Ohio’s poorest counties, where local politicians and residents are battling over a huge Google data center planned for their town. Is it a much-needed shot in the arm for a struggling part of the country or “the next exploitation of Appalachia”?

“Why do I do this to myself?” That’s the question Free Presser and Mets fan Will Rahn was asking himself this week as he suffered through his team’s brutal 12-game losing streak. The answer, Will wrote in his ode to America’s pastime, is because the sport breaks his heart in a way he can handle. Baseball is undergoing a renaissance right now—and Will thinks most of the explanations for that comeback completely miss the point.

Untangling the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center isn’t easy. In an essential guide to the charges against the nonprofit, Jed Rubenfeld weighed the facts and the government’s theories in the federal charges against the nonprofit.

What’s the matter with Gen Z? That was the question at the center of our latest Things That Matter debate. Liberal commentator Harry Sisson and conservative Isabel Brown—two of the sharpest voices of their generation—joined us to hash out what young people argue over, from climate change to healthcare to religion, family, and the meaning of success itself. Don’t miss their debate on modern feminism, the rise of looksmaxxing, and whether or not ordinary middle-class Gen Zers will ever be able to own homes.

But first: Did the Southern Poverty Law Center break the law?

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice issued an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC raised millions on a promise to combat hate. Except, according to the indictment, the SPLC was secretly funding the very groups—including Ku Klux Klan affiliates—that it claimed to be fighting.

Like so much in our politics today, the case quickly became a Rorschach test.

To the left, it was yet another example of the Trump administration’s targeting of its political enemies. As we reported in our pages last year, the White House had been planning a crackdown on liberal nonprofits.

To the right, a pernicious organization was getting its just deserts. Once upon a time, the SPLC worked to overturn the wrongful convictions of black men. Today, it smears conservative organizations like Turning Point USA and Moms for Liberty as “hate groups.”

But what about the actual case? What the DOJ calls “funding” of hate groups, SPLC says was payment to informants, whose information they then funneled to law enforcement.

To get to the bottom of this politically explosive case, we turned to our legal columnist Jed Rubenfeld. The moral case against the Southern Poverty Law Center is strong, he says. But what about the legal argument? Read Jed’s verdict.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• David Scott, a Georgia Democratic congressman whose health had significantly declined in recent years, has died at age 80. Scott was seeking a 13th term in his deep-blue district where he faced a raft of Democratic challengers.

• Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced yesterday that it had taken control of two freight vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, adding to the tension around the ceasefire that President Trump had extended just a day earlier, shortly before it was set to lapse. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News that the president does not consider Iran’s actions to be a breach of that agreement.

• A chemical leak at a West Virginia silver recovery plant killed two people and left 30 hospitalized yesterday. The incident was the result of a “violent” reaction of several chemicals, a local official said at a news briefing.

• Kalshi has suspended three candidates for public offices from its site after discovering that they were betting on their own races, in violation of its terms. The prediction market said that the three individuals—Virginia Senate candidate Mark Moran, Minnesota congressional candidate and current state senator Matt Klein, and Texas congressional candidate Ezekiel Enriquez—were also fined. They will not be allowed back on the platform until 2031.

• The low-cost airline Spirit, on the verge of its second bankruptcy in two years, is seeking a $500 million loan from the government, according to Bloomberg, which added that the deal could result in the government owning up to 90 percent of the company. Spirit has not turned a profit since 2019.

• The FBI launched an investigation into New York Times journalist Elizabeth Williamson after she published a story about FBI director Kash Patel’s alleged use of agency staff to provide security and travel services for his girlfriend. According to the Times, the FBI was pursuing a potential stalking case against Williamson. The agency acknowledged to the Times that “while investigators were concerned about how the aggressive reporting techniques crossed lines of stalking,” it had decided not to pursue a case.

• Stanford University is awarding more money to the Muslim Student Union—$175,000—than all Christian student groups combined, The Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday. A student-led vote on activities funding also resulted in a campus drag troupe receiving five times more university funding than an undergraduate veterans association.

But first: The unlikely Americans standing behind Haitian immigrants.

President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign once looked unstoppable. But today, the gang of dissenters is growing, including in some unexpected places.

The House voted last week to extend a program that lets about 500,000 Haitian immigrants temporarily live and work in the U.S. with no risk of being sent home. Four Republicans joined Democrats to support the extension to a program the Trump administration said last year it planned to scrap. Though the bill will likely stall in the Senate, the GOP defections reflect deepening unease with Trump’s approach.

The move in Congress to shield Haitians with temporary protected status signals a broader shift. At least one deeply conservative community is rallying behind these immigrants. Members of First Baptist Church in Panhandle, Texas, were shocked when they learned that two Haitian members of their church had received deportation orders, as Carrie McKean reports. Many First Baptist members voted for Trump, but they are now desperate to spare their neighbors from his deportation campaign—and they believe that they are upholding Christian values through their efforts.

But what if the law is on the president’s side? Haitians have suffered mightily, with causes including a devastating 2010 earthquake and unending political violence. But their fast track into the United States was meant to be temporary, Charles Lane argues, and the president gets to decide when to close it. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a case about Trump’s effort to finally shut the door.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• President Trump extended the U.S.-Iran ceasefire on Tuesday, just hours before it was set to expire, saying he would hold off on attacks “until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.” The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and each side continues to accuse the other of violating the truce.

• Trump’s nominee to replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, faced his Senate confirmation hearing, pledging independence from the White House even as Trump said he would be “disappointed” if Warsh doesn’t cut interest rates immediately. Warsh’s nomination is in limbo, with Senator Thom Tillis vowing to block it until the Justice Department drops a criminal investigation of Powell.

• Virginia voters passed a redistricting plan that will help Democrats and boost their prospects in the midterm elections. The redrawn map will give Democrats a chance to flip as many as four Republican seats. Redistricting efforts have spread across the United States, with each party angling for an advantage in the battle to control the House.

• The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was indicted on fraud charges over its past use of paid informants to infiltrate hate groups. The Justice Department alleged that money from donors fueled white supremacy and extremism. The SPLC said it regularly shared what it learned with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI.

• Michael and Susan Dell are giving $750 million to the University of Texas at Austin to build what school leaders are calling the country’s first “AI-native” hospital, set to open in 2030 and designed to integrate artificial intelligence from the ground up rather than retrofit it onto existing infrastructure.

• The FBI is investigating possible connections between the deaths and disappearances of 10 scientists and staff at U.S. nuclear and space tech laboratories. The pattern has fueled online speculation about foreign espionage.

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ended the military’s long-standing flu vaccine mandate, saying service members can now decide for themselves whether to get the annual shot.

• Sullivan & Cromwell, one of Wall Street’s most prestigious law firms, apologized to a federal judge after submitting a court filing that contained AI-generated errors, including fabricated case citations. The mistakes were caught not by the law firm itself, but by opposing counsel.

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But first: Can you escape AI disruption—or should you embrace it?

Around a year ago we published an essay about how the world was about to change—and what you should do about it. “AI Will Change What It Is to Be Human. Are We Ready?” asked the headline of the piece. In the opening line, Tyler Cowen and Avital Balwit—no AI doomers—posed another question: “Are we helping create the tools of our own obsolescence?”

That question has grown only more urgent since last spring, with AI technology advancing at an eye-watering pace. Today, we bring you two stories about how AI is changing how we work—and two radically different approaches to the question on everyone’s mind: Will I survive the AI revolution?

Up first, River Page visits a trade school to investigate the idea that as the AI “jobpocalypse” comes for white-collar professions like lawyers and accountants, people who work with their hands (think plumbers and electricians) will remain safe. But does the logic really hold, or is “learn a trade” the new “learn to code”—a meaningless slogan that is no match for the fearsome disruption already underway? Read River’s piece to find out.

For another perspective on the disruptive power of this new technology, we turn to futurist Jamie Metzl. He’s just published a book about AI—with AI. And no, this is not a tale of a writer caught in an AI authorship scandal. In fact, it’s right there on the cover: “By Jamie Metzl and GPT-5.” Jamie argues that you don’t need to dismiss the risks of the AI revolution to harness its miraculous power.

—Oliver Wiseman

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THE NEWS

• As the U.S. and Iran are set to resume peace talks in Islamabad this week, a White House official has told The Wall Street Journal that Donald Trump is not inclined to extend the ceasefire past Wednesday evening, when it expires.

• Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has resigned, the White House confirmed. Her departure follows months of reported misconduct allegations, including an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, drinking on the job, and travel fraud—all under investigation by the Labor Department’s inspector general.

• At the start of the 2026 cycle, Democrats retaking the Senate seemed like a long shot—they needed to flip four Republican-held seats, including two in states Trump won by double digits. Now, with Trump’s approval at 40 percent and strong candidates in Ohio, Alaska, North Carolina, and Maine, the betting markets have moved to a toss-up.

• White House strategists are growing increasingly alarmed that rising gas prices, up more than $1 a gallon since the U.S. war against Iran began in February, could devastate Republicans in the midterms. Trump’s own energy secretary has acknowledged prices may not drop below $3 until 2027.

• A gunman opened fire at Mexico’s Teotihuacán pyramids yesterday, killing a Canadian woman before taking his own life. At least six people were wounded, including tourists from Colombia, Canada, and Russia.

• FBI director Kash Patel is suing The Atlantic for $250 million over a story alleging excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job. The magazine, which cited six current and former officials, says it stands by its reporting.

• The House Ethics Committee published a list of all 28 publicly disclosed sexual misconduct investigations into members dating back to 1976, as two congressmen resigned last week over separate allegations. At least half of the probes occurred in the past decade and one sitting member, Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), remains under active investigation.

But first: Will Americans pull the plug on AI?

A small Ohio community and a big tech proposal. It’s a local fight that’s still unfolding.

In Scioto County, Google has proposed a large data center campus that includes hundreds of acres, major tax incentives, and the promise of jobs and long-term investment. Local officials framed it as an economic turning point for a region that has struggled for decades.

But opposition has grown steadily, as Frannie Block learned when she arrived to investigate. Some residents say the process moved too quickly and lacked transparency. Others question whether the tax breaks are too generous, or whether the long-term benefits will match the scale of the project.

With tech firms racing to build the infrastructure of the AI revolution, similar disputes are happening in towns across the country. The campaign to stop them is expanding on the left, with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushing to freeze new construction until they can impose nationwide regulations.

As the politics of AI begins to take shape, what’s happening in Ohio is part of a larger question: Who bears the costs—and who decides—when the infrastructure of the digital economy moves in? Read Frannie’s dispatch from the front lines in one of the most important political fights of the moment.

—Mene Ukueberuwa

The Latest in Iran

The cessation of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran is set to formally expire on Wednesday, but the region has hardly been quiet. On Friday, the Iranians effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz just hours after President Trump announced they had agreed to reopen it. Two India-flagged commercial vessels were fired upon on Saturday, and the U.S. Navy interdicted an Iranian-flagged vessel on Sunday.

Trump announced Sunday that he is green-lighting a second round of negotiations with Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan. Before the Americans jet off, Eli Lake writes, the president should probably figure out who is actually running Iran, a country that has kept the status of its leadership obscured—only to its advantage. Read Eli’s latest reporting on who America is negotiating with, and what the biggest challenges are ahead of possible talks this week.

If negotiations prove fruitless or the ceasefire expires without an extension, that will tee up a possible resumption of the war—a war that, as Michael Doran argues in a sweeping essay today, is badly misunderstood. Michael examines the seven myths that have clouded and misrepresented the logic and progress of Operation Epic Fury. If you want to understand why the cognoscenti keep getting this conflict wrong, read this piece.

Poison Ivies and the Future of College

Last week, a Yale University committee published a report acknowledging that American colleges in part have themselves to blame for declining trust in higher education. That may seem like a statement of the obvious to a Free Press reader, but it was a strikingly honest confession from inside the ivory tower.

So are America’s top schools finally getting it? And what, if anything, can they do about their many issues? One person who has spent a lot of time thinking about the ways in which American colleges have lost their way in recent years is Rep. Elise Stefanik. The Republican congresswoman played a key part in exposing campus antisemitism after October 7—including by grilling former Harvard president Claudine Gay and other college presidents. Now she’s written a book about higher ed, called Poisoned Ivies. She sat down with Maya Sulkin to discuss it as well as what the future holds for higher education, the GOP, and her own career as she departs Congress.

It’s not just radical politics. American colleges face a litany of threats—from financial pressure to AI. So is higher education’s decline terminal? That’s the question at the heart of Tyler Cowen’s latest column. Read Tyler’s predictions for the future of college:

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THE NEWS

• Eight children are dead after a “domestic issue” turned into a mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana, early Sunday morning, according to local authorities. The victims, seven of whom were the suspected shooter’s children, range in age from 1 to 14 years old. Police killed the suspected shooter after he stole a vehicle and fled from the scene.

• President Trump signed an executive order on Friday to make certain psychedelic drugs more available to treat mental health conditions. The order provides federal funds to make them more accessible and orders the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track a review of drugs such as psilocybin and ibogaine.

• Former president Barack Obama and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani led a sing-along and read to preschoolers at a local childcare center on Saturday. It’s the first time the former president and the mayor have met during Mamdani’s term, and comes days after Trump said Mamdani is “DESTROYING New York” with tax increases and threatened to yank federal funding for the city.

• Two U.S. Army soldiers based in Anchorage, Alaska, were injured after a brown bear attacked them during a training exercise on Friday, CBS News reported. “Both individuals sustained injuries and are currently receiving appropriate medical care,” read a statement provided by the 11th Airborne Division. Both soldiers were able to ward off the bear using bear spray.

• Oil prices surged Sunday after tensions in the Strait of Hormuz intensified over the weekend. Futures on crude oil deliveries spiked nearly seven percent. Oil prices had seen a 11 percent plunge on Friday before the weekend close.

• Former Bulgarian president Rumen Radev and his party, Progressive Bulgaria, won a landslide victory on Sunday, likely securing a parliamentary majority of the NATO country. Radev has been an outspoken opponent of providing aid to Ukraine and is likely to pursue closer relations with Russia.

• Six-time NBA champion and Hall of Famer Michael Jordan’s NASCAR Cup Series team, 23XI, is dominating. Tyler Reddick, one of three 23XI drivers, won at Kansas Speedway on Sunday, securing his fifth win this year in the first nine races, the first driver to do so since Dale Earnhardt did the same in 1987. “When you win, it’s always fun,” Jordan said after the race.

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

But first: The trials and tribulations of the girlboss.

Pity the girlboss. She’s been blamed for so very many of America’s problems. The rise of the toxic workplace. The malaise of young men. And, of course, the falling birth rate.

But what if the girlboss is actually a scapegoat? What if she did nothing wrong?

In today’s piece, Patrick T. Brown tackles that third narrative: that America’s birthrate is falling because women have become too career-orientated. “AMERICA IS IN A FULL-SCALE BIRTH RATE COLLAPSE,” Katie Miller, wife of top Trump staffer Stephen Miller, recently warned on her podcast—before explaining that women’s “biological destiny is to have babies, not slave behind desks chasing careers while our civilization dies.”

But, writes Patrick, the birthrate isn’t actually falling that much among professional women. “A typical girlboss is not having as many kids as her grandmother,” he writes, “but she’s having, on average, as many as her mom, or is getting quite close.” The recent plunge in the birth rate can be pinned on low-income women without a college degree—although even that feels unfair.

Because it’s not that they don’t want kids; in surveys, they consistently say they’re childless struggling to find a guy “who will treat them with affection, provide for them, and upon whom they can depend.”

Read Patrick’s whole piece here:

Still, we must pity the girlboss. For though she’s more likely to end up married—she invariably seems to make a miserable wife.

If you’ve ever glanced at The New York Times, you’ll have read that working women are often saddled with more domestic chores, more childcare, more emotional labor than their gainfully employed husbands—whose careers will always take precedence.

This cultural anxiety runs deep, and it’s explored in the buzzy new Peacock show, The Miniature Wife, which is all about a couple bitterly fighting for space inside their own marriage. Our critic Kat Rosenfield just finished watching it, and was left with a question: What happens when we normalize the idea that you can’t be married to someone without resenting them?

She answers it here:

—Freya Sanders

EDITORS’ PICKS

The backlash to artificial intelligence has turned deadly, fast. Last week, a young man threw a Molotov cocktail at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, authorities alleged, and went on to attack the AI giant’s headquarters. Journalist Andy Mills spoke with the suspect months before the violent outburst, and saw the roots of the hatred that spawned it. Read Andy’s account of the conversation for a view of the extremism spreading among AI’s most radical online critics.

Has the government been lying about UFOs—and if so, what is it actually hiding? Whistleblowers have testified before Congress, Barack Obama has said aliens are “real,” and even lawmakers in D.C. seem convinced the government isn’t telling the whole story. Will Rahn sits down with journalist Michael Shellenberger in the first of a four-part series to make sense of what we know—mapping out the full landscape of unexplained incidents, cover-up theories, and why none of the explanations quite add up.

Few institutions have attracted the wrath of the president like the Supreme Court. After the Court struck down some high-profile administration decisions, some worry that Trump’s broadside against the coequal branch will weaken it. Not so fast, writes Sarah Isgur, author of the new book, Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court. She says that attacks on the Court only make it stronger.

Hampshire College, a venerable liberal-arts school in Massachusetts, announced this week that it is closing its doors. Michael B. Horn believes these closures will keep coming. Colleges have countless problems these days, from politicized classrooms to lost government funding. But shrinking enrollments are what’s sending them spiraling.

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

But first: a conversation with the man accused of trying to kill Sam Altman.

This week, 19-year-old Daniel Moreno-Gama, a part-time community college student from Texas, was charged with attempting to kill Open AI CEO Sam Altman. In the early hours of Friday morning, authorities say, he threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s home in San Francisco. He allegedly then traveled to OpenAI’s headquarters and threatened to burn down the building. When he was arrested, police say, he was carrying with him an anti-AI manifesto, and a list of the names and addresses of other AI CEOs.

Months before all of this, in late January, reporter and podcast producer Andy Mills had a conversation with Moreno-Gama. He and his colleagues were making a podcast about debates around AI, and had found the teenager in a Discord server called Stop AI, where he was posting in support of violence to stop the technology from triggering the extinction of mankind. As Moreno-Gama put it, he was interested in “Luigi-ing some tech CEOs”—an apparent reference to Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Andy asked if Moreno-Gama would speak to him, and Moreno-Gama agreed.

“As Moreno-Gama told me his backstory,” Mills writes today, “I realized that he was, in a way, an embodiment of our society’s fears about the social experiment we’ve been running on Gen Z.”

Read Andy’s piece on what he learnt when he spoke to the man now accused of attempting to kill Sam Altman—and listen to the conversation yourself.

—The Editors

The AI Cyber Threat Is Here

Fears about the existential risks posed by the rapid pace of AI development are not confined to the radical fringe. Indeed, some of those at the helm of top AI firms are themselves concerned about the harm their creations might cause. Last week, Anthropic announced Mythos, a new model so powerful the company said it wouldn’t release it to the public. The model, it claimed, could find and exploit vulnerabilities in almost any software system on Earth—a capacity that could wreck havoc instantly. We wanted to know more about why Anthropic is so worried about Mythos, so Sean Fischer spoke to the company’s chief science officer, Jared Kaplan.

And what does the new threat of AI cyberattacks mean for everyday people? Ryan Fedasiuk is a China and technology expert who once survived a state-sponsored cyberattack. In his piece today, he explains what you can do to protect yourself in this new tech landscape—and why “we are already living through the early stages of a much less secure world.”

For more from Eli on the war, don’t miss his debate with NonZero podcast host Robert Wright. Listen to their conversation here.

Last Chance to VOTE: Two Free Press Podcasts Are up for Webby Awards

Conversations with Coleman and Spiral have been nominated for Webby awards—and the people will decide the winners. Coleman is neck-and-neck with Oprah’s podcast in the Talk Show category, while Spiral has a narrow lead in the Crime and Justice category. Voting closes today—and you can vote for either or both of our shows below.

Vote for Coleman

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THE NEWS

• On Wednesday, a jury found Live Nation and Ticketmaster guilty of illegally monopolizing the ticketing market, a victory for attorneys who rejected the DOJ’s earlier settlement and continued to pursue a lawsuit. Last week, Poppy Damon and Evan Gardner went in depth on the trial in “Did Live Nation Kill Live Music?”, featuring independent promoter Tommy Dorfman, who sued Live Nation 15 years ago and now has said the verdict confirms the company didn’t just break antitrust law; it destroyed the independent music business entirely.

• Influencer Clavicular, known for promoting extreme “looksmaxxing” and openly using meth to stay lean, was hospitalized after suffering a suspected overdose during a Miami livestream Tuesday night. He posted afterward that substances are “just a cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public.” (For more on the looksmaxxing craze, read River Page’s “The Boys Breaking Their Bones to Be Hotter.”)

• Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk pulled out of a highly anticipated Tuesday event with Vice President J.D. Vance after receiving “very serious threats,” part of a relentless harassment campaign targeting Charlie Kirk’s widow since his assassination last September.

• Trump threatened to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell if he doesn’t resign after his term ends May 15, escalating a standoff between the two. Powell, facing a DOJ probe into a costly Fed renovation project, has called the investigation politically motivated and vowed to stay until it concludes.

• Despite massive star power from Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, and Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria season 3’s debut drew just 356,000 linear viewers and a 44 percent critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a disappointing return for a show that was once appointment television.

• Ye postponed his June concert in Marseille after France’s interior ministry moved to ban it, following the UK’s outright ban on his entry to the country last week over his history of antisemitism. The decision is part of mounting European resistance to his attempted comeback tour.

• Average tax refunds are up about $350 this year to $3,462. But that’s far below the White House’s promised boost of more than $1,000 from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with rising gas prices from the war with Iran eating up much of the projected gains.

But first: the Catholic case for the Iran war.

Lately it seems that many of our political conflicts are really theological ones, particularly when the American president is taking jabs at the first American pope. Just consider the debate over the Iran war. As The Free Press reported last week, senior Pentagon officials lectured top Vatican diplomats on how the Holy See should get behind President Donald Trump’s military campaign.

That happened behind closed doors. Now it’s all broken out in public, with both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance—a convert to Catholicism—engaging in a war of words with Pope Leo XIV. When Trump threatened to level Iran’s civilian infrastructure and end a “whole civilization,” Pope Leo called Trump’s comments “truly unacceptable.” Trump responded by saying the leader of the Catholic Church was, among other things, “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”

That brings us to today. The U.S. has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz and is turning back ships leaving Iranian ports. Democrats hope Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo will help them peel off some conservative-leaning Catholics. And the Pontiff says that, while he has no appetite for criticizing Trump, he’s also not afraid of the president.

The Pope is clearly on one side and the Trump administration on the other. But within the Church, the dividing lines are not so neat. Many of us American Catholics think the war with Iran ill-conceived.

But many others believe the war is justified, including Father Gerald Murray, an expert on canon law, and on what makes a “just war” in Catholic tradition. He explains why he thinks the strikes on Iran are just in our pages today. Agree with him or not, Murray is one of the country’s foremost Catholic thinkers, and his case is worth considering.

As for the progress of the war itself: So far, the U.S. blockade against Iranian ports seems to be holding. Aaron MacLean breaks down how it works, what it would take to force Iran to the table, and whether Iran’s leaders will cut a deal to save themselves or go down with the ship.

And on the latest episode of the School of War podcast, Aaron is joined by maritime history and shipping expert Sal Mercogliano to dive deeper into the history of naval blockades—how past ones have fared and what it would actually take to open the Strait of Hormuz.

—Will Rahn

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THE NEWS

• Israel and Lebanon agreed to “launch direct negotiations” following their first face-to-face talks in more than 30 years yesterday in Washington, D.C, brokered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A statement from the State Department reiterated each side’s core positions—Israel demanding the disarmament and dismantling of terror groups like Hezbollah and Lebanon asserting its territorial sovereignty—while the U.S. made clear any ceasefire must be brokered by Washington, not Tehran.

• The Trump administration rolled back sanctions on Venezuela’s state-controlled banking system, unlocking the country’s access to the broader global financial system for the first time in years. The relief comes as the U.S. tries to expand development in the Venezuelan oil sector and shore up the fragile government of acting president Delcy Rodríguez, who took power following the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro in January.

• Trump publicly rebuked Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni Tuesday in a blast at one of his closest European allies, saying he was “shocked” by her after she refused to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “I’m shocked by her,” he said. “I ⁠thought she had courage. I was wrong.”

• Democratic California representative Eric Swalwell and Republican Texas representative Tony Gonzales both resigned ahead of expected expulsion votes over separate sexual misconduct scandals. A new accuser also came forward against Swalwell, alleging he raped her in 2018.

• A federal appeals court ordered Judge James Boasberg to shut down his criminal contempt investigation of the Trump administration. The D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 that Boasberg’s yearlong probe into whether officials defied his order to halt deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador was a “clear abuse of discretion.”

• Representative Jamie Raskin introduced legislation that would create a commission to evaluate the president’s fitness for office and determine whether the 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove him, drawing 50 Democratic cosponsors. The bill has little realistic path forward given Republican control of Congress.

But first: new fronts in the transgender wars.

Is a war over transgender identity still raging in America? If you ask President Donald Trump, he’ll say the dispute was settled when he was elected in 2024. By Election Day, polls showed that a majority of Americans believed “changing one’s gender is morally wrong,” while more than 60 percent opposed transition surgeries and hormone treatments for minors. Trump and Republicans pledged to roll back transgender norms and practices, and their victory seemed to reflect a broad mandate.

Yet the war has simply shifted to other fronts. Proponents of transgender identity gained influence within America’s medical and legal institutions long before the issue became a matter of public debate. Today, lawyers, judges, doctors, and lawmakers are struggling behind the scenes, either to roll back that progress, or to entrench trans identity in how the country operates despite widespread public skepticism.

For a close-up view of this quiet war, take a look at the American Medical Association. In February, it took the bold step of discouraging gender reassignment surgery for minors. But then came the revolt, with many of its members and several other groups suggesting that the change was a gross kowtow to Trump. Benjamin Ryan has the details on the fight among doctors over the basic rules for how we treat our children.

The Supreme Court entered the fray last month with a major ruling. The justices held that the practice of discouraging patients from embracing trans identity is protected by the First Amendment. James Kirchick believes this type of counseling helps undo a new kind of “conversion therapy,” in which therapists steer children with same-sex attraction toward adopting an entirely new gender. Read the piece for an explanation of how trans identity and same-sex attraction often end up at odds, despite their shared support from progressive activists.

—Mene Ukueberuwa

Vote Today: Two Free Press Podcasts Are up for Webby Awards

Conversations with Coleman and Spiral have been nominated for Webby awards—and the people will decide the winners. Coleman is neck-and-neck with Oprah’s podcast in the Talk Show category, while Spiral has a narrow lead in the Crime and Justice category. Voting closes this week—and you can vote for either or both of our shows below.

Vote for Coleman

Vote for Spiral

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THE NEWS

• Pope Leo XIV told reporters yesterday he is “not afraid of the Trump administration” and will continue calling for peace, after Trump posted a lengthy message criticizing the pontiff over the weekend. For more on the escalating tensions between the Vatican and the White House, read Mattia Ferraresi’s piece “Why the Vatican and the White House Are on the Outs.”

• A federal judge on Monday dismissed Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting of a sexually suggestive birthday letter bearing Trump’s name that was included in an album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday. The judge ruled that Trump failed to plausibly allege the paper acted with “actual malice.” Trump can try to revive the suit.

• A CBS News poll released Monday found that 51 percent of Americans say high gas prices have been a financial hardship. The average price per gallon reached $4.13 on Sunday and is likely to climb now that the Strait of Hormuz blockade is in effect.

• Key NATO allies refused to join the Trump blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Among them was British prime minister Keir Starmer, who told the BBC on Monday that the UK would not support the blockade, “whatever the pressure.”

• Draft registration is going automatic. The Selective Service System will automatically enroll all American men aged 18 to 25 in the draft pool by the end of 2026, per a new law signed by President Trump in December. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to rule out a reinstatement of the draft, saying Trump “wisely keeps his options on the table.”

• The FBI yesterday raided the home of 20-year-old Daniel Moreno-Gama, who is accused of traveling from the Houston area to San Francisco last Friday to throw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home. Moreno-Gama allegedly also planned to burn down the AI company’s headquarters and kill those inside.

But first: Did Iran just blow it?

The mullahs had a rough weekend. Forty-eight hours ago, the ceasefire in Iran looked like the beginning of the end of the war—a first step by President Donald Trump toward pulling out and accepting a new status quo with the regime intact. But then talks collapsed and now Trump is escalating.

American destroyers are patrolling the Strait of Hormuz with both offensive and defensive aims. If Iran opens the waterway to free-flowing traffic, U.S. ships will be there to escort commercial vessels through. But if the regime continues charging a toll for the passage, the United States will close the gate.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said Sunday. And the strait isn’t his only target. By that evening, government sources said the U.S. is considering strikes in Iran’s interior. In other words, the war is back on.

What changed in a weekend? The White House got its closest look yet at how stubborn their counterparts are. Weeks after its supreme leader was killed, and facing even more destruction, the regime shot down every firm U.S. demand during marathon negotiations in Pakistan. What were they thinking, with so much at stake? Eli Lake explains the Iranians’ approach at the crossroads of the war.

Few could have predicted Trump’s renewed pressure campaign, and reopening the strait will require tactical genius. But Zineb Riboua believes it will be more than worth the effort. That’s because closing the waterway is the last card Iran holds. If the U.S. calls its bluff by successfully keeping it open, there will be nothing left to negotiate.

President Trump seems to seize every opportunity to talk things through, preferring a masterful deal over risking even a single American life. But one of Trump’s former advisers thinks the president was wrong to ever slow down. John Bolton spoke to The Free Press’s Nicholas Clairmont before the negotiations over the weekend, and made the early case for how U.S. armed forces can press ahead.

In many ways, the war is pushing America’s military outside its zone of mastery. One difficult new dimension consists of drones, which the Navy has at times struggled to repel over the strait and across Iran. Americans have much to learn from Ukraine, which has mastered drone warfare over years of combat with the Russians. Aidan Stretch describes how U.S. companies are racing to adapt the cutting-edge tech that’s dominating a new front.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• A machete-wielding man calling himself “Lucifer” slashed three people on a Grand Central subway platform Saturday before being fatally shot by NYPD detectives after ignoring 20 orders to drop the weapon. The victims, ages 65 to 85, are in stable condition.

• Americans face steep price hikes on essentials, with grocery staples up nearly 43 percent since 2019 and coffee prices more than doubling. Housing has been hit hardest, with the median homeowner’s monthly payment jumping 72 percent to over $2,800.

• President Trump was booed by the crowd as he entered UFC 327 in Miami Saturday night, just as Vice President J.D. Vance announced from Islamabad that U.S.-Iran negotiations had collapsed without a deal. Trump, who walked in alongside Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, had yet to comment on the failed talks.

• Chinese car brands are growing rapidly in the UK, capturing nearly 10 percent of sales last year with well-equipped models like the Jaecoo 7 undercutting European rivals. Experts warn European automakers face an “existential crisis,” with Chinese brands forecast to claim 20 percent of the UK market by 2028.

• Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is investigating Representative Eric Swalwell after multiple women accused the California Democrat of sexual assault and harassment, including the sending of unsolicited explicit photos. Swalwell denies the allegations as “flat false” but has since decided to suspend his gubernatorial campaign.

• Justin Bieber delivered a stripped-back Coachella headline set, sitting with his laptop to revisit YouTube videos of his younger self and sing along to hits like “Baby” and “Beauty and a Beat.”

• A blast of record-breaking heat will sweep into the eastern U.S. next week, with Washington, D.C., expected to hit 94 degrees, and New York’s Central Park reaching 87 degrees, by Wednesday.

• Rory McIlroy won the Masters on Sunday, becoming the fourth-ever repeat champion and the first to accomplish the feat since Tiger Woods in 2002.

But first: AI isn’t about to change your job, your health, or the music you listen to. It already has.

This week, Anthropic quietly rolled out its most powerful model yet: Claude Mythos. It’s the first artificial intelligence model that officials believe could cripple a Fortune 100 company, disable vast swaths of the internet, or penetrate national defense networks. In testing, Claude Mythos autonomously identified and exploited vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser, some of which had lain dormant and undetected for decades.

That’s the version governments are scrambling to contain, for fear that it could rewrite human civilization. But farther from the headlines, and in a less dramatic way, AI is already remaking everyday life for ordinary people. The evidence is in three fascinating essays we’re publishing today.

Evan Gardner reports on how machines are throwing the music industry into turbulence. There’s the North Carolina banjo player who logged onto Spotify to find songs she had never recorded uploaded under her name. There’s the Mississippi choir singer who used AI to land a $3 million record deal. And there’s the billion-dollar platforms where you can type in “Write a song about my dog that sounds like Taylor Swift,” and it’ll do it in minutes.

“They’re not just stealing our work,” one artist told Evan. “They’re stealing us.” Read more here:

Then there’s Andrew Rodriguez, whose 25-year-old girlfriend has a brain tumor that has defied two surgeries—and was missed by multiple medical professionals. Rodriguez decided to take matters into his own hands: Armed with some AI chatbots and a background in biophysics, he began combing through research papers her doctors hadn’t seen. This is the future of medicine. Read it here:

And finally, Melanie Pasch had never written a line of code in her life. Then her boss told her that using AI as a tool wasn’t enough anymore—and asked her to rebuild her entire job around it. Melanie works in corporate communications and, in one night at her parents’ house, she built an automated system that lets her team of two operate like a team of 10. Click here to find out how AI could become your favorite colleague:

—The Editors

War Watch

Our coverage of the Iran war continues. Today, Eli Lake reports on who is actually running the Islamic Republic right now. He breaks down the five-man council with whom Vice President J.D. Vance will negotiate in Islamabad, Pakistan, this weekend and what that means for the ceasefire’s chances. Read the full thing here:

Haviv Rettig Gur argues that no matter what America decides, the war is far from over—and that Israel, unlike the United States, does not have the luxury of walking away:

Elsewhere, Michael Oren writes about the disappointment the ceasefire has brought Israelis, and why so many feel the war ended just short of finishing the job:

And on School of War, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies joins Aaron MacLean to discuss what’s actually at stake in the Islamabad talks, where the two sides are almost aligned, and where they’re miles apart. Listen here:

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EDITORS’ PICKS

Earlier this week, we published an exclusive report about an unprecedented meeting between the Vatican and the Pentagon, which took place after Pope Leo XIV’s “state of the world” address in January, in which he criticized those who chose war over peace.

Mattia Ferraresi reported that, days later, the Holy See’s then-ambassador to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, was summoned to have a conversation with Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, and other U.S. officials. Those with knowledge of the meeting told The Free Press that it was tense. One U.S. official reportedly referenced the Avignon Papacy—the period in the 14th century when the French Crown leveraged its military power to dominate the papal authority.

After we published this report, the vice president was asked about it by a journalist. Vance said: “I would actually like to talk to Cardinal Cristophe Pierre and, frankly, to our people, to figure out what actually happened.” The Department of Defense then released a statement: “Recent reporting of the meeting is highly exaggerated and distorted.” Meanwhile, the Financial Times, among other publications, has corroborated details of our report—including a U.S. official’s mention of the Avignon Papacy. “It went wrong. It was very bad form. Somebody misspoke,” one source told the London-based paper.

The four astronauts aboard Artemis II’s Integrity splash down off the coast of California tonight—and everyone is holding their breath as they wonder: Will the heat shield hold? Frannie Block reports on the known flaw in the spacecraft’s shield: It cracked and charred on the last unmanned mission, and NASA didn’t have enough time to design a new one. During reentry, the crew will pass through temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit and have no way to communicate with Mission Control. One veteran NASA engineer said, “We’re basically playing Russian roulette.”

This week in our newsletter tracking the global rise of antisemitism: Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield writes about watching Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed offer condolences after a man drove a truck into her synagogue, only to pivot the next day and say “Hurt people hurt people.”

Our own Olivia Reingold dove deeper into the coalition behind El-Sayed’s rise. “At this point, man, you can’t be pro-Israel. That’s like being pro-Nazi,” one socialist supporter told her at a rally in Ann Arbor. Reingold reports on how the Senate hopeful, dubbed “Michigan Mamdani,” is winning over Arab Americans and young progressives with a mix of affordability politics, anti-Israel hostility, and the support of Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.

But first: Olivia Reingold reports on the Senate race in Michigan that’s become a referendum on Israel and the Middle East.

September 11 isn’t usually a litmus test in American politics. For nearly 25 years, there’s been one perspective we expect leaders in both parties to take toward the attacks: They were acts of savagery, planned and carried out by al-Qaeda, motivated by fundamentalist hatred of the United States.

But one candidate’s remarks this week may mark a new era. Abdul El-Sayed is running for Senate in Michigan, and on Tuesday he held two major rallies with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker—one of the most influential figures on the young left today. Piker declared in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11,” and he gained fame in recent years by accusing Israel and the U.S. of a genocide in Gaza. Yet when a reporter asked El-Sayed about Piker’s views, he refused to disavow them—any of them. “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture,” he said. “I thought we were over it.”

Our Olivia Reingold attended one of those rallies, and today she explains why El-Sayed’s comments aren’t a fluke. He speaks for a movement comprising young leftists and Muslim immigrants—two fast-growing constituencies making their mark across American politics. He’s running a campaign unlike any Senate candidate before him—refusing to condemn Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and suggesting that Israel provoked an attack on a U.S. synagogue last month. Read what Olivia asked El-Sayed—and her conversations with the voters who are driving his surge.

—Mene Ukueberuwa

War and Peace in Iran

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THE NEWS

• Voters in Port Washington, Wisconsin, approved the nation’s first anti–data center referendum by a 2-to-1 margin, requiring voter approval before city leaders can grant tax incentives to any future projects—though it won’t stop an existing $15 billion OpenAI-Oracle “Stargate” facility already underway.

• A new poll found 48 percent of New Yorkers approve of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s performance as he nears his 100th day in office, with 56 percent saying the city is headed in the right direction. However, at this point in his term, Mamdani’s predecessor Eric Adams had a 61 percent approval rating.

• Democrats overperformed in elections this week, winning Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race by nearly 20 points, and cutting their margin of defeat by nearly two-thirds in one of Georgia’s reddest House districts. One former GOP strategist called it “a wow moment”—though many Republicans brushed off the losses as a product of low spring turnout.

• Hawaii is bracing for another round of heavy rain and potential flash flooding from a severe Kona low storm Wednesday through Friday, just weeks after March storms caused damage expected to top $1 billion. “This comes at a time when many of our communities are still working to recover,” said Honolulu mayor Rick Blangiardi.

• The encrypted messaging app Telegram appears to have a problem with what’s known as “nonconsensual distribution of intimate images.” Researchers at AI Forensics found nearly 25,000 users trading tens of thousands of such images of women—some real, some AI-generated deepfakes, and some depicting minors—across 16 Telegram channels over a six-week study. The group criticized Telegram’s moderation as “insufficient.”

• Kristi Noem’s controversial $70 million luxury Boeing jet—originally purchased by ICE for deportations, and featuring a bedroom, shower, and marble bar—will now be available for First Lady Melania Trump and other cabinet members to use, per The Wall Street Journal.

But first: Is the war in Iran actually over?

President Donald Trump began Tuesday by saying a “whole civilization” would “die tonight, never to be brought back again.” He promised massive strikes against civilian infrastructure in Iran unless there was some sort of diplomatic breakthrough before his 8 p.m. deadline.

The world held its breath. And then, some 90 minutes before the attacks were set to begin, Trump announced that the U.S. had “received a 10-point proposal from Iran,” which he described as “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” Trump and Tehran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. And the president said the Strait of Hormuz, effectively blockaded by the Iranian regime since the start of the conflict, would reopen in some form in the meantime.

While it’s only a temporary truce, the announcement at least delayed the thunderous American attack Trump had threatened—which could have pummeled Iran’s long-suffering civilians. Some might see it as a cop-out, but as Eli Lake argues today, Trump has delivered a great victory for the U.S. Read the whole piece here.

However, it’s unclear whether the deal will last two weeks. Iran’s foreign minister stated that “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations”—caveats with implications that aren’t immediately clear. Plus, Iranian missiles and drones continued to attack Israeli and Arab targets after the deal was announced.

As Aaron MacLean writes today: “If the ceasefire doesn’t lead down the path toward diplomacy, or surrender, or Trump simply losing heart and moving on, we will be back in the standoff that gripped the world on Tuesday.” Read the full piece here:

But how are everyday Iranians responding to the ceasefire? Veteran foreign correspondent Amy Kellogg was on the phone with a friend in Iran when the news broke—and he wasn’t thrilled by what he sees as a lifeline for the regime. “They will spend the next two weeks making missiles. More to shoot at the Gulf and everywhere else,” he said. As for the regime’s supporters: “They are already out in the streets celebrating.” Read Amy’s report full here:

It’s a new day in the Middle East. Now let’s see if it lasts.

—The Editors

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THE NEWS

• American journalist Shelly Kittleson has been released by an Iran-aligned militia in Iraq after being held captive for one week, according to Iraqi officials with knowledge of the matter. (For more on Kittleson’s story, read Hollie McKay’s piece, “The American Journalist Kidnapped in Baghdad Is My Friend.”)

• Anthropic is debuting a powerful new AI model to a limited group of tech companies while delaying its public release, citing hacking concerns. The model, dubbed “Mythos,” is “extremely autonomous” and possesses hacking capabilities on par with an experienced cybersecurity researcher, one Anthropic scientist told Axios.

• An Indianapolis city councilor said yesterday his home was shot at 13 times, with the assailant leaving behind a “No Data Centers” note in what appears to be a politically motivated attack. Days before the shooting, the councilor had spoken in favor of a project that aims to develop a data center in the city.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission will pay an anonymous whistleblower over $50 million for information that helped lead to an enforcement action against an unnamed firm, the agency announced yesterday. As a result of the tip, regulators took action against a company that had allegedly deceived investors regarding the performance of one of its divisions.

• Voters in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District elected Trump-endorsed Republican Clay Fuller in a runoff election for the seat formerly held by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene did not endorse a candidate in the race after she resigned earlier this year, following a public falling-out with President Donald Trump over the Epstein files.

• Australian police arrested the country’s most decorated living veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, on Tuesday—alleging he killed five unarmed people while serving in Afghanistan. Each of the five war crimes Roberts-Smith has been charged with carries a potential life sentence.

• Billionaire investor Bill Ackman is pitching a $60 billion deal to take over Universal Music Group, the label behind Taylor Swift and Bob Dylan. The deal would merge the world’s largest record company with Pershing Square Sparc Holdings, a specially created acquisition vehicle, and list it on the New York Stock Exchange.

• The Trump administration is holding on to Kristi Noem’s controversial $70 million jet after her ouster last month, with plans to use it to shuttle select cabinet secretaries. The plane first attracted buzz as a symbol of lavish spending by the Department of Homeland Security under Noem.

But first: Frannie Block reports from Mission Control.

Yesterday, three Americans and a Canadian traveled farther from Earth than any human has gone before—and then carried on. The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission circled the dark side of the moon, a part of the solar system few people have ever laid eyes on, where they lost touch with Mission Control for 40 minutes. It’s a triumph for the world’s greatest space agency.

It’s strange to think that less than a week ago, all four astronauts were in Florida. They launched into space from Cape Canaveral last Wednesday evening. I was watching from the beach, with hundreds of other Americans who had traveled across the country; it was the first time I’d ever seen a rocket launch, and it blew my mind. As the Orion spacecraft disappeared into the universe, I wanted to know: What’s next for NASA?

So two days later, I flew to Mission Control—which is, of course, in Houston, Texas—to talk to the man best placed to answer this question: the guy who leads NASA, Jared Isaacman.

A high school dropout who became a billionaire businessman, he’s wanted to be an astronaut since he was a toddler—so he used his riches to finance and command two SpaceX ventures, before his controversial nomination to be NASA administrator in December 2024. The right was suspicious of his donations to Democratic candidates; the left was suspicious of his relationship with Elon Musk. But Isaacman’s eyes are on the prize: He wants NASA to achieve “the near impossible.”

“Ten years from now, we’ll have, like, our Uber and Lyft fleets on the moon doing wild things,” he told me.

But for all Isaacman’s futuristic talk, the Mission Control that I saw seemed stuck in the past. There’s a very ’80s mural on the wall that looks distinctly like the title cards of Back to the Future—the female astronauts have perfectly permed hair, and the spacesuits look decidedly retro—and at one point the elevators broke down.

How’s Isaacman planning to bring this calcified, crumbling agency into the 21st century—and beyond? Read my report to find out:

—Frannie Block

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THE NEWS

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a blueprint for how to regulate and tax AI yesterday, responding to worries about AI disrupting society, labor, and privacy as we know it. The document went live within hours of a New Yorker investigation into Altman’s professional conduct, in which critics repeatedly called him “sociopathic.”

• On Monday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Department of Justice to dismiss a criminal case against Steve Bannon, who had been accused of defying a congressional subpoena during the investigation of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The Trump ally’s lawyer said the order was “a welcome correction.”

• A federal judge dismissed 10 of 13 claims actress Blake Lively brought against Justin Baldoni last week—including claims of sexual harassment. Three claims will proceed to trial; they relate not to Baldoni’s behavior on set but his response to Lively’s accusations. (For more on the bitter fight between two former co-stars, read Kat Rosenfield’s piece, “Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and the Art of the Smear.”)

• The Nigerian army rescued 31 Christians from an attack on a church in northwest Nigeria on Easter Sunday, according to military officials. Earlier this year, Madeleine Kearns spoke to the wife of Nigeria’s president, who is Christian; to understand religious persecution in the nation better, read her profile: “Is the First Lady of Nigeria Scared?”

• Sixty-four days after her mother’s disappearance, Savannah Guthrie returned to Today. In February, camera footage showed a masked man on 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie’s front porch. Police are investigating the case as a kidnapping.

• Trump endorsed the British American Republican Steve Hilton for California governor on Monday. (For more on the crowded race, in which two GOP candidates sit improbably atop the polls, read Peter Savodnik’s piece: “Could a Republican Win the California Governor’s Race?”)

• Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service have struck a new tentative agreement on package delivery. Amazon had warned it would reduce its USPS shipment volume by roughly two-thirds by this fall, but under the new deal, that reduction has been scaled back to just 20 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But first: America’s advantage in Iran, and can it last?

It was a remarkable weekend in the Iran conflict. On Friday, for the first time in more than 20 years, two U.S. aircraft were shot down in combat: an F-15E fighter jet and an A-10C Thunderbolt. The A-10C pilot ejected safely, and one of the two F-15 pilots was recovered later that day. Then, early Sunday, news broke of a special operations mission that secured the second airman.

The moment felt almost miraculous. For more than a day, it was uncertain whether the Iranian regime would capture what Zineb Riboua calls “the single most valuable propaganda asset of the entire war—a prisoner whose image alone could have rewritten the narrative of a campaign that has been catastrophic for the Islamic Republic from the first strike.”

But America got there first—a moment, Zineb writes, that underscores just how decisively U.S. military power has eclipsed Iran’s, and leads to the increasingly inescapable conclusion that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is approaching its “terminal phase.” Read her full piece to understand why she says so.

But can this military advantage last? Just hours after announcing the airman’s recovery, President Trump issued a threat on Truth Social:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.

As Eli Lake notes, it’s often difficult to tell when the president is bluffing. But bombing civilian infrastructure would harm “the very people whom Trump at first said he was hoping to liberate,” he argues. If America’s aim is to dismantle the regime, it should empower the Iranian people, not punish them.

Finally, Armin Rosen addresses the chorus of so-called expert voices pushing a very different note—that Iran is winning the war. His essay today unspools this narrative, why it has taken hold, and why Iran itself seems more aware of its precarious position than the “mandarins of American media and academia.”

—Jillian Lederman

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THE NEWS

• An Air Force officer whose jet was shot down by Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces on Saturday. The operation reportedly involved intelligence efforts from the Central Intelligence Agency. After extraction by Navy Seal Team 6, President Trump announced that the rescued officer “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine.”

• In an Easter Sunday speech yesterday, Pope Leo called on world leaders to choose negotiation over military might. “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!” he said. The comments came as President Trump is applying increased pressure on the Iranians to reach an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

• The Cuban government began its release of more than 2,000 recently pardoned prisoners this weekend. Cuba’s embassy in the U.S. called the move a “humanitarian and sovereign gesture,” one that follows months of pressure and an oil blockade from the Trump administration.

• The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal Friday night after a federal court blocked construction of the White House ballroom. In addition to the motion, the administration announced a $10 billion plan designed to beautify the D.C. area beyond White House premises. (For more on the government’s ambitions, read Suzy Weiss’s profile of Joe Gebbia, the country’s first chief design officer.)

• On Friday, a federal judge blocked Trump’s order requiring colleges to provide data proving they aren’t considering race in admissions. The judge said the government likely has the authority to collect the data, but delayed the demand due to its “rushed and chaotic” rollout.

• President Trump issued a directive designed to “save” college sports on Friday. The rules would add new regulations around athlete compensation and the transfer portal, and calls for more funds for women’s sports. (For more on how paying college athletes changed the game, read Joe Nocera’s “Paying College Athletes Has Created a Mess. It Was Still the Right Thing to Do.”)

• UCLA defeated the University of South Carolina in the women’s college basketball championship Sunday. The Michigan Wolverines will take on the UConn Huskies in the men’s final tonight.

Today: Ahead of the Final Four this weekend, Bruce Pearl on what makes college basketball great. A reformed climate activist says yes to oil. Aaron MacLean and Rafaela Siewert discuss Iran, nukes, and regime change. Our editors’ picks. And much more.

But first: Eli Lake on Pam Bondi’s abrupt exit.

President Donald Trump is reorganizing his cabinet just in time for spring cleaning. After weeks of rumors, he removed Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday afternoon. It’s Trump’s second high-profile firing in the past month, following his removal of Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security. Unlike Noem, who landed with a “special envoy” role, Bondi won’t get to stick around in the executive branch. Instead she’ll take a “much needed and important new job in the private sector,” Trump announced on Truth Social.

Bondi seemed to keep to one simple rule during her time in office: Do exactly as Trump says. When the president named a list of enemies to target—including former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James—Bondi sprang into action, making sure charges were filed on each in just over a month. While past attorneys general have stressed their independence, Bondi looked happy to play the loyalist.

That may have been what Trump wanted, but not what he needed, as Eli Lake explains. Bondi’s efforts to please Trump ended up backfiring, for the administration and for her. Flawed lawsuits against universities. Prosecutors who were improperly appointed, then removed by judges. And perhaps the biggest scandal of Trump’s term: the mishandling of the Epstein files. Read Eli on how Bondi’s blunders led to this point—and what comes next.

—Mene Ukueberuwa

EDITORS’ PICKS

America is on its way to the moon—for the first time in 50 years. On Wednesday in Cape Canaveral, Frannie Block spent an afternoon with a crowd of eager Americans watching the launch of Artemis II, the first NASA space crew to travel toward the moon since the Apollo missions—and the mood was electric. “This is American pride,” said one man wearing swim trunks and no shirt. Read Frannie’s dispatch from America’s Space Coast.

Meanwhile, down on Earth, Niall Ferguson wrote about the Iran war, and how the U.S. must avoid snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Britain tried to seize the Suez Canal in 1956, then turned tail and backed down. The Iran war is winnable, but if President Trump decides to cut and run, the result could be a global hit to U.S. power, just as Britain experienced 70 years ago.

In California, the gubernatorial race has taken a curious rightward turn with two GOP candidates leading the polls. The Golden State’s June 2 “jungle primary ” is fast approaching, in which the top two vote-getters, irrespective of party, proceed to the general election. Will Democrats get it together in time? Peter Savodnik dug into a race in which both parties have fielded awful candidates, and weighed the GOP’s chances of turning the state red.

For Jews all over the world, this Passover might feel a little heavier than usual. For the last few years, Jews have seen a rising tide of antisemitism met with platitudes from politicians. But British Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch is not one of those politicians. This week, she wrote an open letter to Jews in the UK: “Do not pack up your suitcases and leave,” Kemi writes. “Britain is your home.”

And in case you missed it, read Olivia Reingold’s deeply personal essay on her return to Judaism. Since October 7, she’s found herself in some of the most hostile spaces imaginable to Jews. This week, she reflects on faith, tradition, and how her work for The Free Press led her back to her roots.

Look out for a special Easter edition of The Weekend Press this Saturday, including Will Rahn on the case for normie Catholicism, Joe Nocera on JFK’s moon landing speech, and Larissa Phillips on the hardest part of farm life—taking lambs to the slaughter.

But first: Trump’s speech—and the state of the war.

Ahead of Donald Trump’s widely anticipated speech to the nation last night, some wondered if the president was about to declare the Iran war over and announce a deal with Tehran. Others speculated about boots on the ground or some other major change in course after a month spent fighting. But Trump delivered no such surprises last night: Instead, he restated the case for the war, declared that America was on track to meet its military objectives, and pledged to hit Iran “extremely hard” in the next two to three weeks before wrapping things up.

Eli Lake was watching the speech, and breaks it down in a piece for us this morning. Read his analysis on what Trump said, and what he is thinking:

The president was optimistic about the war last night. Was he right to be? To historian Victor Davis Hanson, the answer is a resounding yes. “The campaign has been brilliantly conducted,” he writes in our pages today, and will be over soon. And yet, he notes, the conflict’s critics make the “Orwellian” argument that we are losing. It’s just one of the ways in which the real hurdles for Donald Trump in this fight are not military, but political.

Reacting to Trump’s speech last night, Victor unpacks the war against the war, and lists the biggest challenges for the president in what he says will be the final few weeks of the conflict. Read his essay to understand where things stand in Operation Epic Fury—and where they’re headed.

Middle East expert and former George W. Bush adviser Elliott Abrams has a war-related question for the president. Why is he so quick to commend Israel as a staunch ally, yet so reluctant to acknowledge the help the war effort is receiving from Ukraine?

Yes, cooperation between Israel and the U.S. “surpasses any partnership in arms in the past several decades.” But Ukraine has supplied intelligence about Russia’s role in helping Iran, and has sent 200 counter-drone specialists to Middle Eastern countries that Iran is attacking—even as they are fighting their own war against Russia. The administration, writes Abrams, needs a “new understanding and appreciation of Ukraine.”

Dinner & Live Podcast in Philadelphia: Shilo Brooks in Conversation with Jon Meacham

On May 18, Shilo will be taping a live episode of Old School in Philadelphia at the Jack Miller Center’s National Summit on Civic Education. He’ll sit down with historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham to talk about history, leadership, and the future of the republic. Tickets include a cocktail reception and three-course dinner. Get $50 off with code TFP.

Get Tickets Now

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THE NEWS

• House and Senate Republicans agreed to a bipartisan deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security, ending the agency’s six-week shutdown. The spending bill would fund most of the department’s operations, while leaving out parts of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which GOP lawmakers plan to fund through other means.

• NASA launched its Artemis II mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday night, sending four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the moon and back. If the journey is successful, it will set a record for the farthest distance ever traveled from Earth: 252,000 miles.

• SpaceX has filed a confidential draft registration for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in what would likely be a record-setting listing, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The company, which recently merged with Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, could seek a valuation above $1.75 trillion—making it the largest IPO in history.

• New evidence cracked the 52-year-old cold case of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime’s murder after DNA evidence definitively linked the killing to serial killer Ted Bundy. Investigators also said that the full DNA profile developed during this case has already been shared with other law enforcement agencies, and they believe it will help close at least one additional cold case tied to Bundy in the near future.

• Pakistan and Afghanistan held their first round of China-mediated peace talks Wednesday in the Chinese city of Urumqi after weeks of armed violence between the two countries. The conflict stems from Pakistan’s accusation that Afghanistan harbors domestic terrorists guilty of committing attacks within Pakistan.