It’s Monday, June 2. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Tyler Cowen’s ultimate guide to spotting talent; Jed Rubenfeld says Trump’s tariffs are legal; Ruy Teixeira on the “greenlash” coming for the Democrats; and much more.
But first: a targeted terror attack in the name of Palestine.
Yesterday afternoon in Boulder, Colorado, a group of Jews was set on fire.
They had gathered in the afternoon for a march to draw attention to Israel’s hostages, who have been held by Hamas terrorists for more than 600 days. In what the FBI is treating as a “targeted terror attack,” a man reportedly threw Molotov cocktails at the group, injuring multiple people. The alleged perpetrator is named Mohamad Soliman; you can see him in videos from the scene shouting “End Zionists” and “Palestine free and for us.”
This attack comes 11 days after Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were assassinated outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. After he was arrested, the man charged with their murder, Elias Rodriguez, yelled “Free, free Palestine.”
The incidents are a watershed, writes historian Jeffrey Herf in The Free Press today. Not just two tragedies, but events of “great historical significance.” Why? As Herf explains, the Washington attack was “the first lethal attack on Jews in the United States carried out by a person who emerged from the leftist-Islamist climate in the universities before and since October 7.” And while we are still learning the details of what exactly happened in Boulder, Herf says “antisemitism has now taken on ever more dangerous forms in this country.”
Jeffrey’s essay sheds light on a dark reality: terror carried out against Americans in the name of “liberation” thousands of miles away.
—Bari Weiss
Last week, Trump’s tariffs were blocked by the courts. The rulings threaten the cornerstone of the president’s economic agenda and the Supreme Court is likely to weigh in. But did the judges get the law right? Jed Rubenfeld isn’t so sure.
How should we cultivate talent? That’s a question Tyler Cowen spends hours a day thinking about. And thanks to his Emergent Ventures program, he talks every week with some of the world’s smartest young people. In his column today he explains what he has learned—and why the next genius might be an obnoxious kid from Ontario with a failed science experiment in their basement.
As Democrats reckon with all the reasons they’re so unpopular—from the Biden cover-up to identity politics—one factor they shouldn’t ignore is energy policy. It’s clearer than ever that renewables are a political loser—and that the party’s bet on “net zero” has badly backfired.
In an operation dubbed “Spider’s Web,” Ukraine’s security services targeted a Russian air base deep inside the country. Ukraine deployed drones from concealed mobile units and reportedly destroyed over 40 strategic aircraft, including nuclear-capable bombers. This strike comes just before a fresh round of U.S.-backed peace talks in Istanbul.
Iran has sharply increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium—enough for about 10 nuclear weapons—marking a 50 percent rise since February, according to a new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report. Despite ongoing talks with the U.S., Iran has refused to cooperate with probes into undeclared nuclear activity, raising alarms about potential treaty violations. European nations are weighing renewed UN sanctions, while Iran has threatened to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The FDA has approved Moderna’s new low-dose Covid-19 vaccine, mNexspike, for adults over 65 and high-risk individuals aged 12–64. Delivering just a fifth of the original Spikevax dose, it demonstrated equal or better efficacy in trials. The decision follows the administration's cancellation of funding for Moderna’s pandemic flu vaccine project, a contract worth $766 million, and comes soon after an update to the FDA’s Covid booster recommendations.
Riots and looting broke out in Paris on Saturday after the Paris St. Germain soccer club won the Champions League final. The chaos ended in 294 arrested, 205 injured, and one dead.
The same night, in what authorities say was a coordinated act of vandalism, Paris’s Holocaust memorial, three synagogues, and a Jewish restaurant were defaced with green paint on Saturday night, just before the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau condemned the attacks as “heinous” and called for heightened security at Jewish sites.
On Wednesday, DHS agents entered Rep. Jerry Nadler’s Manhattan office for a security check, stating they’d been told protesters were there and the agents were concerned for the safety of Nadler’s staff. One aide confronted the officers and blocked access to the office, leading to her brief detention. DHS said the move was for safety; Nadler called it a violation of legal protocols and accused the Trump administration of using authoritarian tactics to intimidate officials and citizens.
Harvard has trained so many Chinese Communist officials that cadres in Beijing refer to it as the top “party school” outside of China, according to The Wall Street Journal. Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”
Obviously, these horrible, insane, murderous pro-Palestine terrorists are the best thing that could happen for PR for Zionism in America. How can they not garner great outrage and empathy for Israeli and American Jews, as they should? But Israel and World Jewry's problem is the long-term aftermath of the end of the Gaza war, which will wipe out all memory of these grotesque antisemitic murderers. As the courageous war correspondent Arwa Damon recently observed, if Israel allowed the world's journalists into Gaza for a single day, the way would end immediately. The world, and America, would not stand for it. Not what Tom Friedman has just said that dovetails with Dawon's comment. After noting, like her, that Israel has kept coverage away from Gaza as relentlessly, as Russia or China would have I might add, Friedman says this: "But there will be a day this war ends. I don’t know when. And when it does, Gaza is going to be overwhelmed by reporters and photographers. And when that happens, it’s going to be a very bad day for Israel, and it’s going to be a very bad day for world Jewry because the scenes are going to be horrific." It's going to be kind of like the world coming to see the Holocaust for the first time. Good luck trying to control the world and America's reaction to the horror with any spin whatsoever at that point. That will be Bibi's legacy forever. A Pol Pot legacy. The critics of Israel in Gaza are not wrong. They are just unable to document the horror--as in Heart of Darkness--yet. Think of all the courses on the Gaza War at Harvard and everywhere else, no matter what rich Dem donors and their hand-puppet Trump threaten, once the cover-up is over. And think of how Israel itself will be radically transformed, with the war over, the hostages returned, and everyone everywhere confronted what Israel did during the war. Friedman tells us directly that Israeli hostility towards Bibi and the war are building and building. The volcano will explode when the war ends and the real moral reckoning begins. At that point, Jews like Peter Beinart or members of B'Teslem will not be so scorned as "self-hating" traitors to their people. They'll be vindicated.
Almost no one’s views on carbon fuels and climate change are based on apprehension of the science. Few even have a firsthand knowledge of the degree of consensus of among the climatologists. What we know is what reporters write about it. So we are working with thirdhand knowledge. The proper intellectual posture with thirdhand knowledge is skepticism. But that’s not what we get. We get unquestioning belief.
Why? Well, some people are not happy unless the sky is falling. Also, misanthropy has always been strangely popular. But there’s a bigger reason.
The “planet in peril” narrative is the perfect, unanswerable justification for advancing collectivism while restricting individualism. When you add the assertion that it is an existential threat, you can then demand any sacrifice and swat away any demurral.
So collectivists are drawn to the narrative. I’m not saying they are conspiring to pretend belief in it in order to advance collectivism (though that was true for AOC’s former chief of staff or campaign manager). It’s subtler than that. It’s just that their sense that the narrative bends toward collectivism blunts their skepticism.