It’s Wednesday, August 19. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Who is to blame for Jason Arday’s tragic fate? P.G. Sittenfeld on the ex-convicts who the Supreme Court may send back to jail—unless Trump intervenes. Arthur Brooks on why Bumble ditched its women-message-first rule. And much more.
But first: With cliffs like these, who needs walls?
President Donald Trump’s plans to create a grand White House ballroom and his clumsy renovations of the reflecting pool have generated plenty of attention from the Washington media. But another, less closely watched fight over the president’s grand designs is shaping up in faraway West Texas.
Unlike in Washington, the people who live in the Big Bend region tend to be quite politically conservative. Yet they are infuriated by the administration’s determination to build a border wall in the area that they say is not only destructive but pointless—an expensive exercise in security theater in a place where natural barriers already make illegal border crossings exceedingly rare.
Those natural barriers are something to see, and the region depends in part on visitors looking to marvel at the 1,500-foot limestone cliffs in Big Bend National Park and the rugged, mountainous wilderness along the Rio Grande. And locals say this beautiful scenery is threatened by the project. But that hasn’t stopped the bulldozers from arriving at iconic landmarks like the Santa Elena Canyon.
The pressing issue for those who live in the Big Bend area is whether the wall can be stopped. This week, with the backlash growing, the administration paused part of the project. But can locals stop the federal government from tearing up some of America’s most breathtaking landscapes? Carrie McKean reports from Texas on this battle for us today. It’s a story about whether Trump will get his way on a signature issue. But it’s also a tale that illustrates the way politics can scramble when grand policy visions crash into local realities.
—The Editors
Imagine getting out of prison, readjusting to civilian life—and then learning the Supreme Court says you have to go back. Thanks to a recent ruling, that’s the reality facing about a dozen former inmates freed under a criminal-justice reform law championed by Trump—unless he grants them clemency. P.G. Sittenfeld understands this kind of legal limbo, having himself been to prison and pardoned by Trump. In his latest piece, he spoke to the men who are going to work and raising kids, but could be back behind bars any day now.
In the wake of Jason Arday’s death, some of his most prominent defenders have decided to blame the tragedy on the journalists who scrutinized his work, and are even demanding that the UK’s laws be changed to punish those who reported on the story. In our pages today, British journalist Sarah Ditum states what should be obvious: The media did not kill Jason Arday. She dives into the cynical attempt to exploit his death to quash press freedom.
This week, the dating app Bumble announced it was scrapping its rule that only women could make the initial approach—a principle that’s been central to its success as a company. Arthur Brooks explains why today. He explores what has and hasn’t changed in the laws of human attraction. “Women might say they are open to making the first move,” he notes, “but in reality, they aren’t.” Read his whole piece on why you can’t escape the science of courtship.
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THE NEWS
Palm Beach International Airport is now officially Donald J. Trump International Airport, the first airport ever named for a sitting president. The new airport code, DJT, took effect yesterday, with the total rebrand cost topping out at $5.5 million, half of which came from Florida taxpayers.
Opening statements in Meta’s blockbuster social media addiction trial began Tuesday, with the prosecution accusing the tech company of purposefully addicting children. Four state attorneys general are seeking a penalty that could theoretically be astronomical, and Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify.
OpenAI announced ChatGPT for Teens on Tuesday, which will include parental controls, “responsible homework reminders” that detect AI-assisted cheating, and a ban on the chatbot expressing romantic feelings for its users. OpenAI is still facing a lawsuit from the family of a 16-year-old who killed himself following lengthy ChatGPT interactions.
The Department of Justice unsealed a 14-count indictment Tuesday charging 17 Iranian cyber criminals with a massive hacking campaign on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—allegedly breaching 144 American universities and stealing 31 terabytes of research and intellectual property. The State Department is offering up to $10 million for information on five of the defendants.
Riley English, a transgender Massachusetts woman who showed up to the U.S. Capitol in January 2025 with the intent to kill Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, was sentenced Tuesday to just over six years in prison. English, who claimed to be in a mental health crisis, told the judge, “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
ABC, along with its parent company Disney, sued the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday alleging the agency’s threat to ABC’s broadcast license during the president’s feud with Jimmy Kimmel in April violated the First Amendment. Disney said the pressure is warping its programming, citing the fact that The View hasn’t booked a political candidate since February.
The alleged ringleader of a cocaine trafficking ring run out of two Penn State fraternity houses surrendered to police Tuesday after skipping his scheduled arraignment the day before. Prosecutors say Agostino Abbatiello, 24, sat at the “very top of the chain” of an operation that required some pledges to cut and package the product as part of a hazing ritual.
Khymani James, the former Columbia University student who went viral in 2024 for saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” has had his lawsuit tossed by a New York state judge. The judge dismissed his complaint, ruling that he failed to adequately plead discrimination claims.
Clancy killed her 3 children. She knew what she was doing. She did not think she was strangling a tree or fighting an alien invader. She is not legally insane. But it is also more complicated than that. The psychiatric community failed her. From my understanding she went to 2 crisis centers and the first one turned her away after telling her to wean herself off her antipsychotics without telling her how or providing a doctor referral. The 2nd one kept her for 2 days and then loaded her up with more antipsychotics. Not one person in her life did anything to help her. Her husband who knew his wife was on massive amounts of drugs did not get her help in the home, (he also seems to have easily moved on with his life, which I find rather creepy) and neither her mother nor her mother-in-law stepped up to help.
Psychiatric drugs can have severe affects not the least of which is to make the psychiatric issues worse not better. That fact that the prescribing doctor and it seems her entire family was oblivious to what was happening is an indictment of massive proportions. This is a tragedy, not the least is that others besides Clancy need to also be held accountable.
No the press did not kill Arday. But there were plenty of those out there who piled on in the hopes that he would kill himself. And quite honestly, the DEI and academics who promoted this man threw him to the wolves once his glow was diminished and it was shown how poor was his academics and he was a fabulist. To say that the journalists who uncovered this fraud are to blame rather than the leftist DEI structure and the need for those to feel good about themselves and their pathetic social perspectives is authoritarian. Free societies do not clamp down on journalists because they uncover the truth. That is what fascist societies do.
While I'm generally-sympathetic to Disney's 1A arguments, I have to wonder what benefit any politician would get from appearing on "The View." Your demo analysis should be simple enough. Hmmmm...an audience consisting of overwhelmingly older women!
JDVP did show up, but only because he was trying to sell is book.
Otherwise, it's just really weak, predictable, material for Gutfeld the next few days.