In other notes, please scoop up your America at 250 hats for July. And remember that the best comments section now is at The Free Press Forum, especially our red-hot dating section!

→ The Vances got a chicken coop: Sure, it’s not the most important news. Sure, we’re bombing Iran again (why not, it’s summer, but then again maybe we’re not bombing anymore), but we begin with the coop. J.D. Vance has installed a chicken coop at the Naval Observatory, the home of America’s vice presidents. Inflation is so bad, the VP can’t even afford to buy eggs at the store. This is a sign of total Berkeley, California dominance. What was a weird, crunchy, left-wing hobby is now embraced by “guys who are definitely into QAnon and I just really don’t want to go to their house for dinner.” Yes, by our own J.D. Vance, homestead guy. And now the Vances are tradlife influencers posing for photos like this:

Move over, Ballerina Farm, it’s Usha’s turn. And I know there may be more pressing questions to ask the Second Lady, but there’s only one thing I want to know: midwife or doula, Mrs. Vance?

→ Insane amounts of money are about to be made: With the SpaceX IPO, it’s estimated that more than 4,000 people are about to become millionaires, with 400 projected to have fortunes over $100 million. And then there’s the upcoming Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs. Between space and LLMs, we’re looking at a new generation of wealth. And if I can climb back on my California soapbox for a moment, it’s always amazing to me that the East Coast produces none of this. The East Coast is the Europe of America. You go to New York when you decide it’s time to hire a dozen ADHD-identified individuals in Brooklyn who will sue you, not like, build stuff. For that, it’s all still the Bay Area or, thanks to SpaceX, Texas! And in the boom times, one group that’s thriving is (of course) prostitutes. Forbes has an amazing story about the nerdy escort boom. These ladies are charging upward of $2,000 an hour, even as much as $6,000 an hour—and you know they’re spending most of that hour talking about Moravec’s Paradox. One reports charging $23,000 a day. The absolute weirdest people in America have created artificial consciousness (probably Satanic) and despite all their efforts, they still exist in these pesky bodies that demand stupid things like [redacted], which the computer can’t quite do yet. Good for the prosties.

In other signs of new financial realities, women are hiring witches to help protect their weddings, or so Bloomberg tells us this week. Is it just me, or is heterosexuality getting weirder than being gay? Prostitutes and witches? Maybe you guys should take Pride this year, I think you need it.

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→ Trump walking back his slush fund: We finally found a scam that’s too scammy even for the Trump administration, and it’s his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund, in which Trump planned to hand out cash to people who felt they’d been unfairly targeted by the Biden administration and IRS. Scam cell phones, scam crypto, scam crypto platform—that we could handle, that we could ignore, fine. But an actual bag of cash? It’s a little on the nose, even in 2026. “We are not moving forward with the fund. Period,” said acting attorney general Todd Blanche, trying to assuage House lawmakers. It was part of his IRS truth and reconciliation program.

Now, to back up a bit about Trump vs. IRS: It’s not great that the IRS leaks personal tax information about people its employees don’t like, which is what happened when an IRS contractor leaked Trump’s and thousands of other wealthy people’s returns, much to the joy of ProPublica and The New York Times. It’s been memory-holed, but as a reminder: IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn, an alum of the St. Louis prep school Crossroads and UNC Chapel Hill, got his little paws on those documents and shared them with reporters. He was sentenced to five years in prison, and then I’m sure he’ll get an amazing sinecure somewhere.

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I’m Nick Gillespie, editor at large at Reason and occasional contributor to The Free Press, subbing in for Nellie Bowles, who may or may not be taking the day off to interview for a better-paying job aboard the Long Island Rail Road, which would allow her to work remotely with unlimited personal days while earning six figures in overtime alone. As some of you may know, I’m libertarian and, as I cautioned at The Free Press debate on immigration in 2024 with Ann Coulter, Sohrab Ahmari, and Cenk Uygur (more on him in a moment!), that usually means people think I’m mostly going to talk about drugs and economics. Which I am!—I just want to give fair warning. If that’s not your thing, don’t worry, Nellie will be back next week. And if you can’t wait that long, head over to the Free Press Forum at 2:30 p.m. ET today, where Nellie will answer all your questions in a subscriber AMA.

→ Remember, kids: Real winners don’t use drugs!: It’s officially summer, and all kinds of sports events—the Indy 500! Baseball! The NHL playoffs!—are breaking out all over the place like prickly heat rashes. The upcoming NBA Finals will pit either the San Antonio Spurs or the Oklahoma City Thunder against the New York Knicks, who haven’t won a championship since 1973, when the team included future senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ), nicknamed “Dollar Bill” partly because he was a “famously frugal” cheapskate despite having signed one of the fattest NBA contracts of the era. Regardless of who the Knicks face, they are a lock, since Chicago-born Pope Leo blessed their victory.

The week’s greatest (read: saddest) sports story comes from the Enhanced Games, a new Vegas-based competition showcasing athletes openly using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), and vowing to crush records in marquee events like the 100-meter dash and the 100-meter freestyle swim. Interestingly, a competitor who vowed he’d “juice to the gills” performed worse than he did when he couldn’t use drugs. Even more embarrassing: The 50-meter backstroke winner was a non-enhanced athlete, thus, writes James Dator for SB Nation, “tearing apart the entire premise for the games.” All told, one world record was beaten while three unenhanced athletes won their events. It’s a victory for man over pharma.

Here’s the upshot: PEDs are not magic potions that will automatically create a race of super-athletes. They are one technology among many—including space-age fabrics for uniforms, weight-training and other practice regimens, diet and nutrition, surgeries on tendons and ligaments, and over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs—that can help world-class athletes improve their performances (often by speeding up recovery times). We should have more honest and open conversations about them in sports and regular life, but all the PEDs in the world aren’t going to make just anyone the Lance Armstrong of accounting, let alone cycling.

The biggest loser at the Enhanced Games wasn’t an athlete, though. It was Donald Trump Jr., who was among the high-profile funders of the games, and whose parent company’s stock tanked after the middling results. That may not even be the worst recent loss for Don Jr., whose father played the ultimate trump card to get out of going to an undesired destination wedding. I, too, might be tempted to start a war to avoid going to a rehearsal dinner where Don Jr.’s college buddies toast him. While the president swore he really, really wanted to go to the Bahamas to celebrate his son’s merger with “socialite” Bettina Anderson—with a name like that, I should hope you’re a socialite—he just had too much work to catch up on. “I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time,” he wrote on Truth Social.

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→ Massie lost but don’t worry, the party continues: The great all-our-problems-are-Israel coalition unifier, Kentucky Republican congressman Thomas Massie, lost his primary race this week. The far left and far right are very upset. Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California cried out that “He lost because he had the guts to take on the Epstein class.” It’s always fun to hear new dog whistles for Jews. Last week it was globalists, this week Epstein class, maybe next week we’ll get “Spielberg’s ilk.” A girl can dream. Or here’s Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut: “So there you have it. If you lead a campaign against powerful pedophiles, you get drummed out of the Republican Party.” Anyway, Massie lost the race to be a congressman, which is a little like losing a race to become, I don’t know, a septic tank cleaner. What I’m saying is it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. A lot more paperwork than you thought, and still, it’s mostly shit. And now I’m sure he’ll get rich on the new hard-right populist podcast circuit. It’s booming. Did you know that the new coalition of “Questions Regarding the Holocaust” is having a conference? Sorry, that’s not fair, they are just Men Who Perceive All Problems Jewishly. Yes, they’re gathering at a convention center in Dallas. The speakers have lots of beliefs that really appall people, like that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote in elections anymore. But let’s not focus on that, they say, not today. That’s not important. What’s important is the Epstein Class controlling everything. And lo, Americans are into it. It’s relaxing to think that there’s just this one skeleton key that makes everything magic and good. Any niche political ideologies that you want to get through fast, just attach it to being anti-Epstein. Women voting is vaguely Zionist, did you know that? Suffrage kind of sounds like Pentateuch, if you squint a little.

The only little tiny glimmer here that I see is the apparent drop-off in Massie support in the 17–25 crowd, from a poll taken a week before the election. Maybe their brains have been less rotted by China’s TikTok warfare against American morale? Or maybe Massie is too soft for them.

→ This is a Dem who is, so far winning, her primary: Lest you think there are only Massies on the right, here’s Maureen Galindo, who finished first in her Texas district’s congressional primary, moving ahead to a runoff next week. Galindo wrote that she will “turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. (It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists).” Don’t you just love when a politician has a light touch? It’s been missing from our discourse, I think, this level of civility and thoughtfulness. She later explained: “Putting Zionist billionaires in prison does not mean putting all Jews in internment camps.” Thank you for that clarification. Hands up if you’re relieved!

→ The IRS can never audit a Trump: It’s been a doozy of a week in President Trump Corruption Watch. It was too many corruptions, a scheme behind every gold picture frame. This week, after Trump sued the IRS for the leak of his tax returns (not cool guys), the government agreed to never audit Trump, his family, or his businesses again, which means Trump is never paying taxes again, my friends, if he ever even did. But there’s something worse. The government also moved to provide a new $1.8 billion slush fund—the “Anti-Weaponization Fund”—for Trump to give away to any of his allies who believe they were victimized by the Biden administration. A truth-and-reconciliation cash grab. I can only assume being victimized by the Biden administration means not getting an email back from the White House. Victimization is doing Meatless Mondays in the EEOB, right. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche says the fund will be “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” To be clear, that is $1.8 billion (actually, $1.776 billion; yes, it’s a 1776 reference, obviously) that is being taken from taxpayers and given to whoever exactly is a victim of Biden. Anyway, aren’t we all sort of Biden victims in that we had to watch while everyone pretended a lovely but senile old man was president? That caused me distress. Can I apply for some cash?

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→ American rage about the economy is hitting Trump: Inflation has hit 3.8 percent, and Americans are mad as hell about the economy. Per CNN’s new poll, Dems lead a generic ballot 45–42. And 65 percent of Americans say the tariffs have made their economic situation worse. Maybe President Trump’s visit to China will be part of getting those smoothed out to keep our cheap goods nice and cheap and microplastic-y. He’s there with Elon Musk and Tim Cook and 15 other major American business leaders this week, firmly establishing China as the official Other Great World Power and probably giving away Taiwan (at this point, fine, just make sure the knockoff furniture I ordered from Shenzhen comes in the right colors, and in two days). China is officially Mar-a-Lago of the East. Their history culminates in this moment—the Trump-Xi Summit featuring Elon and his son in a cute little vest. Trump was treated to a state dinner where a military band played the Trump and bathhouse anthem “Y.M.C.A.,” and the president took a little sip of champagne. One day this will mark the beginning of some significant geopolitical shift with centuries-long consequences, but for now it was just sort of cute and odd.

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And if your tastes skew less “ha ha” and more “drop and give me 50”: Aaron MacLean and historian Niall Ferguson are bringing the School of War podcast to the iconic New York Historical on May 19 for a special live recording. If you want to steal some talking points to elucidate on “the war,” this is your chance. Tickets here.

Let’s get to the news.

→ Iran was two weeks away from killing you: As schoolchildren gathered around to witness President Donald J. Trump reinstating the Presidential Physical Fitness Award to celebrate kids and athleticism, Trump gave some remarks.

Here is what the president said, as those kids stood around ready to accept a Sharpie, or be given two minutes to climb a very high rope:

“We just broke every record and now we’re gonna take a hit, because we have to make a journey down to Iran to take the nuclear weapon. They would’ve had a nuclear weapon within two weeks. Remember, we sent that beautiful B-2 bomber in? We blew up their nuclear potential. It was obliterated, for those that are not aware. To a point where it would take ’em weeks to dig down, and we wouldn’t let ’em dig down. We have our eyes on there all the time. But it was a very important thing. So, we would’ve had an Iran with a nuclear weapon, and maybe we wouldn’t all be here right now. I can tell you the Middle East would’ve been gone, Israel would’ve been gone. And they would’ve trained their sights on Europe first and then us, because they’re sick people. These are sick people. And we’re not gonna let lunatics have a nuclear weapon. The power of a nuclear weapon is something I don’t even want to talk about. It’s not gonna happen.”

Okay, kids, back to class now! You met the president. It went very well, didn’t it? I think so.

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Next, on May 17, we’re back at the Comedy Cellar for a Sunday afternoon of stand-up, emceed by Judy Gold. The only thing bigger than the laughs she gets are her glasses. And on May 19, School of War host Aaron MacLean sits down with historian Niall Ferguson for a live conversation at the New York Historical, covering the Middle East, China, military deterrence, the future of American power, and the compatibility of their astrological signs.

To the news.

→ White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Is it even big news anymore when people try to assassinate Donald Trump? It’s a blip. Happens so often. I’ll scrape the back pages of America’s newspapers to find tidbits. Okay, so: It appears that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was derailed after a crazed left-wing gunman allegedly stormed the hotel lobby to try to kill Trump. Shots were fired. Then he was stripped and rolled up in a tinfoil wrap like a little burrito (our copy editor tells me it’s a Mylar blanket). The only times a person gets wrapped in tinfoil are if they try to shoot the president or if they finish a marathon. Quite a delta between those endeavors, but the same outcome. And the dinner was canceled. Nothing to worry about.

When journalists walked out of the ballroom, they were met by normal, run-of-the-mill protesters who carried signs reading: DEATH TO ALL OF THEM (a Wendy Williams reference). And DEATH TO TYRANT (the singular makes it more aggressive, I think). Everything is good. There is no relation between the protester holding a sign that says DEATH TO ALL OF THEM and the gunman inside trying to bring. . . death to all of them. He’s just mentally ill, I’m sure. There is no popular movement encouraging people to slaughter their political enemies en masse.

Photos via Katie Pavlich of what she saw as she left the assassination-attempt dinner. No big deal, purely symbolic, no need for the mainstream media to cover any of this:

When I logged into Bluesky and Threads to check the temperature, some normal-seeming media figures were arguing the shooter himself was an inside job to garner sympathy for old Trumpo. But the dominant energy was bloodlust. Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of the progressive magazine Mother Jones (I like her a lot), tried to calm down her followers on Bluesky: “People here are being really shitty, including at fellow journalists who’ve been traumatized, and you will regret those posts. Or should. Also this does not help your political cause, whatever that might be.” But blood was what they wanted. Blood had been denied. She had to turn off replies.

Some interesting context from last month is that nearly half of Dems think the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt on Trump was faked. A Manhattan Institute poll found that 47 percent of Democrats believe “the July 2024 assassination attempt on Trump was orchestrated by his supporters to increase sympathy for him.” Half! Half of Democrats think Trump supporters organized for someone to shoot at the president’s ear and kill a random father in the stands.

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Some quick housekeeping before the news: Suzy’s podcast has launched, since I guess there can’t be more than two consecutive months where a member of the Weiss family isn’t commandeering a microphone to tell everyone their thoughts on Ozempic. Suzy’s podcast, I’m told, is about pop culture. It’s called Second Thought and you can watch it here, or follow it here, or if you’re really old-fashioned, read the transcripts here. Now, to the news.

→ Scammers getting scammed: The Trump men have a cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial. For legal reasons I cannot describe it as a scam, so I’ll describe it as a spram. A yam-sc. And now one of its largest backers is suing the group, alleging that they took his money and won’t give it back. From CBS News, a great website:

Cryptocurrency billionaire Justin Sun is suing World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture co-founded by President Donald Trump and his sons, alleging the company illegally blocked him from selling digital tokens worth up to $1 billion.

Justin Sun is also the largest holder of $TRUMP coins, another Trump-backed crypto token. He’s in deep, kids. But for whatever reason, Justin Sun decided to try to see if this fake crypto bank could be a real money bank. And when he reached into the influence-payment pot to pull out cash, did he find any? Well. He says he did not. How much liberty does World Liberty Financial really offer? It’s not a bank, Justin, it’s a DeFi platform, which means money goes in but no money comes out. Like a piggy bank that’s run by the president’s sons and that you’re never going to see again. I don’t know what you were buying with all these investments—I try not to have impure thoughts—but I hope it was worth it. When you put a billion dollars into something called World Liberty Financial or wire money to a thing called $TRUMP, you can probably get off death row. You can probably do one free spouse murder if she is over 50 and going for a Pamela Anderson Makeup-Free look, but she’s not Pamela Anderson. Certainly you can do three full tax returns of financial crimes. But you cannot, under any circumstances, get your money back.

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→ Trump as Jesus himself: President Donald J. Trump posted a picture to Truth Social of himself as Jesus. It depicted him draped in white and a red shawl, hands glowing with divine light, healing a sick patient as a soldier, a nurse, and others looked on in awe. The Christian community did not particularly enjoy the image, and Trumpo got a rare rebuke from his base. The next day, outside the White House, after receiving a McDonald’s delivery, Trump explained that he “thought it was me as a doctor.” Do doctors wear red shawls usually? Anyway, he deleted it. Fine! Then, why not, he posted another Jesus meme, this time showing Jesus hugging Trump. Because they’re all good now, him and JC. Here’s the Yahoo! News summary of all this:

→ Quote of the week: “I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be. . . . My kids waited patiently in the car.” Who else could it be? It’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For those of you who might be freaked out by the admission, don’t worry. Bobby was cutting off the genitals of a dead raccoon apparently to “study them later.” It was research, heard of it? He’s a budding zoologist. It’s called primary sources. Onward.

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→ At this point, is he trolling us: Standing by the Easter Bunny, atop the South Portico balcony, our president gave an update on Iran. “I don’t think it gets much more hostile than Iran. They’re capable fighters,” he said, as Melania, with a bouncy blonde hairdo, and Bunny stood on either side of him. It’s up to the voters to decide who served a more chilling stare. My new theory: Trump knows this is funny. He’s trolling us. It’s a bit. He waits for Bunny to get there before he starts in on Iran. My other theory: Mike Johnson is the bunny.

Now in this next quote, I’m less sure of exactly what’s happening. This is Trump describing some good old-fashioned American warfighting, and I will make no further comment: “They came in so fast and so hard, and these guys knew exactly what—let’s go, come on, get in, let’s go, pwah. They came one right after another. Not at the same time. They don’t want to come at the same time. They had to come right after each other. They didn’t have any room.”

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→ We don’t care what the voters say: The big debate between California gubernatorial candidates has been canceled since it didn’t meet Hollywood’s DEI requirements. But really. It’s too white! And so the debate between all these pale nightwalkers was called off. The University of Southern California apparently used discriminatory criteria to decide who got to be on stage, and that criteria was to select the six candidates who were polling the highest and had raised the most, according to CalMatters. Sounds racist to me. The voters are wrong, and their opinions do not count unless they produce a Benetton ad. The donors are also wrong. USC, a school famous for having the hottest, richest student body, will alone decide who is allowed to run for office, and it’s the cast of Euphoria.

The candidates are: Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco and Democrats Tom Steyer, Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell, and Matt Mahan. Okay, reading these names, I kinda see their point. Steve, Tom, and Katie? Is this a Little House on the Prairie remake?

Now, all of those candidates need to sit alone and ask themselves why they are not women of color. Once they decide to drop out and find a woman of color to march in their stead, then we can resume the gubernatorial debate. Or if one of them wants to go trans, that would be acceptable. Steve (Stephanie?) Hilton, do what everyone who applies to USC does: Fake an ethnic ancestry.

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My only announcement this week is to keep submitting questions for Abigail Shrier’s brilliant advice column.

→ Joe Kent joins the new right circuit: The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who was confirmed last July, resigned this week over the war in Iran, writing that the only reason it started is because of Israel “and its powerful American lobby.” He quickly scheduled an appearance alongside Candace Owens and showed up on Tucker Carlson’s pod. The new circuit. Now, of course, “four people with direct knowledge of the investigation” have leaked that Joe Kent has been under FBI investigation for allegedly sharing classified information. A theme of Kent’s letter and chat with Tuck-Tuck is the idea that Israel is behind everything, that no other group has agency. Kent writes that he is a “Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel.” But his wife was killed in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria, for which ISIS claimed responsibility? He writes that the Israelis drew us into “the disastrous Iraq war.” But Israel was against that war and expressed concern to America about its possible consequences. Even Grok, the one AI that you know could get Nazi-licious if it wanted to, agrees with me. (I’ll be real here, the name Grok sounds like a guy who maybe used to be a skinhead. Oh, him? That’s just Grok, don’t ask about the tattoos, okay, he’s over all that.)

You see the same obsession echoed here: “Pakistan dropping bombs on Afghanistan is completely unacceptable. And we can only conclude that the Pakistan military has been compromised by the U.S., and therefore Israel,” writes the editor of a Muslim news website. Actually loads of popular writers are echoing that, claiming Pakistan is attacking Afghanistan because it’s been inspired by Israel or something. Anything that happens anywhere between any two groups of people can be described by its proximity to Israel. Which one is Israel-coded? Why is it Pakistan?

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We have new items going up in The Free Press store: a Think for Yourself crewneck; a Free Press beanie (first ever); and, an America at 250 hat. Check out the shop if you’re open to getting into verbal altercations at your next community board meeting.

We also have an urgent, truly desperate job posting: Senior Director of Finance to track subscription metrics and run the books—until now, it’s been three monkeys in a closet with a calculator. The Free Press needs YOU. And our last announcement is just a note of appreciation for a great man named David Giaramita. He has answered all our questions, philosophical and otherwise, as we switched over our IT systems, which sounds easy but is not. This will shock you but journalists aren’t great at calendar migration. Thank you, David! In honor of your labor, you get one America at 250 hat.

→ Two terrorists and a lie: Two young men—Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi—are accused of trying to use homemade bombs on New York’s Upper East Side this past weekend. Outside of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, someone yelled “allahu akbar” and Balat allegedly threw one of the bombs. Once in custody, Balat pledged allegiance to ISIS, according to authorities, and later gave the ISIS salute to a camera crew.

Their target: a small anti-Islam rally led by a racist right-wing troll named Jake Lang. The scene: about 20 people with Lang and more than 100 counterprotesters. While one of the counterprotesters was speaking the familiar language of progressive acceptance into a bullhorn—about how everyone is welcome in New York—Balat reached over his shoulder to throw a lit bomb. The carrot of acceptance—and if not, then the stick of an IED! All in one moment. It’s all caught on video.

Call me crazy, but I just don’t really think we should kill people willy-nilly on the sidewalk like that, even if they disagree with my politics. This was a clear-cut Bad Moment. On this front, I am apparently an outcast among journalists. Because my comrades did something clever. They blamed the right-wing trolls. The establishment news media worked this week to make a great lie: that the right-wing group threw the bomb. And if a bomb was indeed thrown by the side of the good, then it wasn’t a big deal at all.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a tour.

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Also, we are looking for a photo editor! Are you in Brooklyn but also sick of having friends? Join us. More info here.

Now, to the news.

→ Trump at war: We’re officially bombing Iran. And Iran is bombing, well, everyone they can. They’ve reportedly lobbed missiles, drones, and deck chairs at the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Turkey as well as Israel, its number-one bombing love. But it’s been a pretty dismal showing. We’re very much and clearly winning. Like, really, really easily. Here’s Trump on the war timeline: “We also projected four weeks to terminate the military leadership, and as you know, that was done in about an hour so we’re ahead of schedule there.” And here’s Trump on who should become Iran’s new leader: “Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead. . . we had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports.” And they should stop picking one among themselves: “They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela.” It will be done in ancestral Trump fashion, via swimsuit competition in an indoor/outdoor pavilion at a resort. In other war news, a U.S. submarine sank an enemy ship by torpedo for the first time since World War II. Welcome back to water warfare, baby! There’s unbelievable footage of a fighter pilot shot down over Kuwait, in a bright and cheery mood as locals approach her there in that dust bowl. They thank her for what she’s doing, and offer her help (thank goodness she didn’t land in Minneapolis).

For anyone shocked that Trump “the Dove” would bomb Iran, it’s helpful to remember that federal investigators discovered two alleged Iranian-backed Trumpo assassination attempts, so of the Ayatollah, Trump said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first.” He also, if you’ll recall, kept talking about how he’d bomb Iran when he was campaigning. That might explain why J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard have been sidelined to their own special war room, where I assume The Hurt Locker is playing on a loop so they feel like they’re in on the action. They’re the future of the GOP, but the Boomers have to retire first, and we all know Boomers don’t retire. Boomers only die. Clutching their scepters. So, for now, for one last war, it’s a little picnic table for those cuties to sit around. Well, it’s the Situation Room. But honey, this is Mar-a-Lago’s war.

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→ Olympics heroes and villains: The U.S. men’s hockey team won the gold, defeating Canada! It gave us an incredible photo of Jack Hughes, mouth bloody, missing teeth, American flag around his shoulders. Iconic. Inspiring. Or is it? It is not. Because then Donald J. Trump (the current president of the United States) called the boys in the locker room to congratulate them, on speakerphone, and they were thrilled. Jubilant! And then Trumpo made a mild joke about the women’s team, and they laughed. Wrong move, boys.

Here’s the New York Times’ sports section, The Athletic:

Ah, yes. It is the responsibility of sports teams to police who is rooting for them. Everyone knows this. Or here’s HuffPost:

If my political opponents cheer for you, it means you’re bad. You’re the villain. Them’s the rules. Actually, if Americans celebrate you, you’re probably racist, says the American press. Did you know that Eileen Gu, a young woman from California but who competed for Team China, is not being celebrated as much by Team Trump? Well, then she’s good. The best. We root for Team China here. Think I’m being hyperbolic? Here’s Vox making it really simple:

Me, as the reasonable centrist, who everyone loves to yell at, I think both are incredible. I love Eileen Gu and I love the men’s hockey team. Listen to Eileen’s explanation of how she controls her mind. The woman’s amazing. I don’t care who she does the sports for, she’s American. I’m a little afraid of her, and I respect her for that. And look at Jack Hughes wrapped in the flag with that broken, bloody smile. Amazing. U-S-A! U-S-A!

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And now, to the week that was:

→ Are you monitoring the situation?: Two U.S. E-3 Sentry radar aircraft en route to Saudi Arabia. Russian Il-76TD aircraft in Iran. A U.S. Air Force KC-46A Pegasus tanker, call sign ROMA11, attempting an Atlantic crossing alongside six F-22 Raptors from Langley Air Force Base, marking a third try after two earlier tanker-related aborts. Which is all to say: Are you monitoring the situation?

Do you have your laptop, external monitor, and phone open to see where the Pegasus tanker is today? As America looks to alarm Iran—and potentially strike it—we are inundated with real-time information. The Situation Room is now the Situation Planet, and any man with internet is a four-star general. What used to be really hard to do (real-time tracking military aircraft and tanks) is now insanely easy. And so there are many, many OPSEC (operations security) accounts sharing OSINT (open-source intelligence) that just let you watch war unfold, refold, and unfold again (never-ending hellscape). The average American dad can have more information about global military movements than Churchill had on any given day. It’s 2026, and we are all OPSEC experts. About once a week, an unnamed member of my household pulls up one of these accounts and announces that WAR WITH IRAN IS TONIGHT. (Yes, it’s my 3-year-old.) War with Iran is never tonight, and yet every night I wait.

Regardless of which tonight the war will start, I salute everyone who is monitoring the situation. And for those who aren’t, I recommend this OSINT account for beginners. Now get to your command stations! Do not abandon your post, cadet!

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For our Southern friends: On March 9, The Free Press is coming to Atlanta—to Ebenezer Baptist Church—with Ambassador Andrew Young, who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr., and Jonathan Eig, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life. Leading the conversation will be the great Coleman Hughes. Tickets are here!

→ Where is Nancy Guthrie!: America this week is gripped by the hunt for Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie’s mom, who appears to have been kidnapped. The strangest part right now is the video footage of the person who could have been involved in her disappearance. They waddle up to the house, a little knock-kneed. They’re masked and gloved, their eyebrows appear trimmed, and there’s a gun in a holster around their waist. But the gun is holstered right over the crotch, sort of bouncing loosely. The person sees the doorbell camera and waddles away into the shrubs to grab some plants and cover it up. What I’m saying is this all just looks kind of amateur? Wouldn’t a professional have known there was a doorbell camera? A professional definitely would have known how to holster a gun. And I’ll be honest, I’d rather be kidnapped by a professional. The wandering, slow, sloppy nature of this person alarmed me more than anything.

I don’t know about other cohorts, but America’s moms are united in panic over this situation. After preschool drop-off, a group of us were standing around hoping someone had a tidbit of new information. One mom apparently hit rock bottom when she was up after midnight just watching a livestream of a Tucson hospital. FaceTimes with my mother-in-law have turned into press conferences over the latest in the Guthrie case. We need to find Nancy. If we live in a country where Nancy Guthrie isn’t safe, then we need to burn the whole thing down. TGIF stands with the Guthrie family. Bring her home.

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If you’re a Free Presser in Atlanta, we have a big treat for you. Coleman Hughes will be at the Ebenezer Baptist Church next month, alongside former UN ambassador Andrew Young and MLK biographer Jonathan Eig. Get your tickets here.

And now, on to the biggest stories of the week, according to us.

→ The emails will continue until morale gets worse: A specter has been haunting America—the specter of jeevacation@gmail.com, also known as Jeffrey Edward Epstein. Last Friday, the Department of Justice said “release the Kraken” and made available to the public three million pages of documents connected to the late disgraced financier, including volumes of email correspondence. The fallout hasn’t let up since.

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→ Border fallout: The American public is fed up with ICE chaos and cruelty in the wake of the killing of Alex Pretti—and Trump seems to know it. Greg Bovino, our tiny border patrol chief who oversaw the Minneapolis crackdown, is reportedly retiring early (though the admin denies it), as he and several of his agents prepared to leave the city this week. Conservative radio host Erick Erickson said of Pretti’s death: “I went into this ready to blame Alex Pretti. After watching hours of footage from multiple angles. . . I can’t.” So they’ve lost Erick. They’ve also lost gun rights supporters: Rob Doar, senior vice president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said that “If Mr. Pretti was disarmed—absent any other evidence of any risk to an officer—I don’t see how deadly force would be justified.” Even the stately WSJ is calling all y’all a bunch of liars: “Videos Contradict U.S. Account of Minneapolis Shooting by Federal Agents.” The Trump admin defense just falls flat. Kooky Kristi (Noem) came out to claim that Pretti was trying to kill people: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Does it? If Alex Pretti had a gun and was trying to kill law enforcement, wouldn’t he have, like, drawn that gun and shot at them? Whatever he was doing it certainly doesn’t look like someone attempting to inflict maximum damage, à la John Wick. Finally, after days of outrage, Tom Homan said ICE enforcement in Minneapolis “can be improved” and that they’re working on a “drawdown,” which is the closest to an apology you’ll get from a Trump appointee.

A whopping 59 percent of voters see ICE actions as “too aggressive.” And to top it all off, a new Cato Institute paper out this week shows that “Overall, immigrants consumed about 24 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans.” Wait a second. . . I thought all those guys standing outside Home Depot were looking for welfare checks, not jobs. I’m simply shocked by this.

Meanwhile, Trump is fundraising off the news cycle because why the hell not:

Does it read a little flirty to anyone else?

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Now to the news.

→ Trump’s Board of Peace(™): President Donald J. this week has launched his Board of Peace. It’s a parallel United Nations, but run by the United States and Trump is the leader of it, indefinitely. Will it replace the United Nations? It “might,” he said, but later said the board would have “tremendous potential with the United Nations.” So really he’s just creating more competition for international federations. A free market for free markets! By the way, everyone’s invited to Trump’s version of the UN: Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, even the Pope. No one is quite sure what the new Board of Peace means, exactly. “The pope has received an invitation and we are considering what to do,” the top Vatican diplomat told journalists. “I believe it will be something that requires a bit of time for consideration before giving a response.” Does the Board of Peace have an army? A constitution? Does it include Trump golf club memberships? Gift bags? Is it just that you get invited to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff’s text chain? All we know for sure is that it costs $1 billion for a permanent seat on the Trump Board of Peace, which is just a little less than your average private K–8 school board seat.

When news broke about how expensive membership would be—ONE BILLION BIG ONES—the White House Rapid Response team pushed back. “This is misleading. There is no minimum membership fee to join the Board of Peace,” they wrote. Okay, cool, no membership fee! But then their next sentence: “This simply offers permanent membership to partner countries who demonstrate deep commitment to peace, security, and prosperity.” Okay, well. So. It’s not a membership fee, it’s just a demonstration of deep commitment that you want to keep your seat. This is like when the FP business team debates whether to rebrand our subscriptions as memberships. Like, I’m okay with that, I won’t fight it, but let’s all be adults here—it’s a subscription to a digital magazine, albeit with America’s most gorgeous Friday columnists. But it’s not a velvety club to drink a martini in. The United Nations, that den of iniquity, should absolutely be disbanded. I’m not sure I would replace it with the team behind the Trump Steak of the Month club and such, but no one else is offering. Not unrelated: Here is New Gaza, presented by Jared Kushner:

What is this, a clothing website I almost bought something from two years ago? And look at that new Board of Peace logo! It’s so. . . shiny and gold. Wasn’t NATO kind of the original Board of Peace? Are we ditching that one too?

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