It’s Thursday, July 16. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Niall Ferguson on how Holocaust denial made a comeback. What the discourse around Lindsey Graham’s death reveals. Ro Khanna’s Israel struggle session. And much more.
But first: New York’s war on the future.
Data centers have shot to the center of American public life this year. From town meetings to the Senate floor, the debate over the physical infrastructure needed to power the AI revolution has become a political powder keg. Polls show that building them is an unpopular policy. And now politicians are acting on that public anger.
This week, New York became the first state in America to ban new data center construction. Governor Kathy Hochul sold the yearlong moratorium as a pause to protect the power supply and control energy costs. But Josh Wolfe, a venture capitalist focused on emerging technologies, argues that Hochul’s election-year gambit is a stunt that will fail her state.
AI, he argues, is just the latest technology that will benefit everyday Americans and level the playing field, giving people “with below-average means above-average superpowers they could never otherwise afford.” But we won’t get there without the construction of the essential physical infrastructure powering AI, which is the data center.
The case for data centers may not be politically fashionable right now. But Wolfe makes it forcefully, arguing that the biggest losers from Hochul’s policy will be the very people she claims to be protecting.
—The Editors
Within hours of Senator Lindsey Graham’s death last weekend, social media was flooded with comments about his sexuality. James Kirchick, who wrote a book about the history of gay D.C., has been asked for years whether he thought Graham was gay, and he always gives the same answer: that we will likely never know. More important than the answer to the question, James writes, is what those who obsess over it—on both the left and the right—reveal about themselves.
Once a supporter of Israel, California Rep. Ro Khanna has spent the past year reinventing himself as one of the Jewish state’s leading opponents, and made headlines last weekend for claiming he was detained by the IDF in the West Bank. This week, on a podcast with the anti-Israel outlet Drop Site News, Khanna got a rude awakening about his new ideological bedfellows. Read Eli Lake’s column on the extraordinary exchange, and what it says about the Israel debate on the left.
For generations, the best response to antisemitism was simple: Confront the lies with the truth. As a historian, Niall Ferguson has spent his career doing exactly that. And, as he admits in his latest essay, co-authored with AI researcher John-Clark Levin, “I failed utterly.” Antisemitism and ignorance are rising—turbocharged by algorithms and artificial intelligence. What, if anything, can be done to fight back? That’s the question Niall and John-Clark tackle in this essential piece.
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Three of President Donald Trump’s nominees faced Senate confirmation hearings yesterday, with acting attorney general Todd Blanche defending his tenure at the Justice Department against accusations of weaponization, while intelligence director nominee Jay Clayton and pick to lead the CDC Dr. Erica Schwartz both fielded questions about their willingness to operate independently of the White House.
The U.S. and Iran exchanged fire for the fifth consecutive day Wednesday, with the U.S. reimposing its naval blockade on Iranian ports and hitting dozens of targets along Iran’s southern coast—as Iran threatened to cut off all Middle Eastern energy exports. Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance told Joe Rogan that while he was never enthusiastic about the Iran war, it was ultimately “legal and ethical.”
British prime minister Keir Starmer announced that he had reached “the end of my political journey” in the House of Commons on Wednesday. He then exchanged jokes and tributes with members of his own Labour Party and the Conservative opposition as he left the chamber. Starmer is expected to formally hand power over to former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham on Monday.
Trump pushed back on his own administration’s decision to suspend most ICE traffic stops, urging agents to keep making them despite three deaths during immigration enforcement encounters in the past week—including two people shot by agents during car stops.
The Ebola outbreak in the Congo is now the fastest-growing in history, with over 2,000 confirmed cases—including 754 deaths—reported Wednesday. The same day, workers at one of the country’s largest medical centers went on strike over unpaid wages and poor working conditions.
Ukraine struck numerous Russian ships in the Sea of Azov this week, opening a new front in its campaign to disrupt supply lines into Crimea. The drone offensive follows Ukrainian strikes on the peninsula’s roads, railways, and fuel infrastructure as Kyiv tries to pressure Russia to end the war.
Wildfire smoke from blazes in northern Minnesota and western Ontario is expected to blanket much of the Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic through Friday, potentially affecting around 100 million people with unhealthy air quality. Minnesota governor Tim Walz declared a peacetime emergency over the weekend and called in the National Guard as more than a dozen large fires continue to burn out of control.
The Pentagon announced it will screen service members 30 and older for testosterone deficiency as part of their annual health assessments. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that if treatment is recommended, soldiers can opt in to testosterone replacement therapy. “By addressing these health markers early,” he said, “we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality.”
Defending champions Argentina came back from a goal down to defeat England 2–1 in the World Cup semifinals. A Lionel Messi assist set up Lautaro Martinez’s stoppage-time goal to seal their spot in Sunday’s final against Spain, where an Argentina win would make them just the third nation in history to retain the World Cup.
VP Vance may be correct that the war with Iran is "legal and ethical" but that doesn't mean that it's good foreign policy, especially in the wishy/washy way that Trump is conducting it. Unfortunately, Trump has thrown his VP under the bus by putting him front and center in defending a war that Vance was privately opposed to in the first place. And assigning Vance to negotiate a truce with a bunch of murderous Islamic terrorists who can't be trusted to comply with anything they agree to is the ultimate indignity, in my opinion.
Did anyone notice what Dr Erica Schwartz was wearing around her neck? I’m sure a lot of democrats will lose their minds!