It’s Thursday, June 11. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Why New York needs Gustavo Dudamel. What actually changed after Ron DeSantis took control at Florida’s New College? Plus: Charles Fain Lehman on the immigrant who penned “God Bless America,” and Walter Isaacson on the most important sentence ever written. All that and much more.
But first: Is the Trump administration going to deport this Iran war critic?
While President Donald Trump is grasping for a way out of his war in Iran, his state department is weighing whether to deport one of the conflict’s loudest opponents.
Perhaps no one in America has been a more vocal, and widely quoted, critic of the conflict than Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Whether he’s writing in left-wing magazine The Nation or commiserating with MAGA leader Steve Bannon, Parsi has carried a harshly critical message to Americans.
But now Parsi’s battle with the Trump administration has moved from print and the airwaves into the legal sphere. As I report in my latest story for The Free Press, Marco Rubio’s State Department has quietly been investigating whether to deport Parsi—an Iran-born, Sweden-raised, permanent U.S. resident green-card holder.
Administration officials and the president’s allies allege Parsi is more than just a pundit sharing his views on Iran. So do anti-regime activists in the U.S., one of whom told me he thought the Islamic regime “effectively positioned” Parsi “to advance [a] strategic agenda.” (Parsi denies this charge.)
Parsi isn’t likely to go without a fight—and he’s proven incredibly adept at playing Washington politics. He once called himself an “informal” adviser to the Obama administration’s negotiating team with Iran, and he now makes common cause with a range of conservative and MAGA leaders who oppose the Iran war and are sharp critics of the U.S. alliance with Israel. Will they rally to his defense?
Read my story on Parsi, the administration’s investigation, and the decades-long fight over Iran policy and Tehran’s influence operations here in America.
—Jay Solomon
Making pharmaceutical drugs in space sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but thanks to SpaceX’s plummeting launch costs, it’s become a reality. Sean Fischer spoke to the founder of Varda, a start-up sending autonomous pharmaceutical labs into orbit to escape gravity, allowing for the production of drugs that are purer than their equivalents on Earth.
No American college has generated more op-eds, think pieces, and magazine-length features than New College of Florida—a tiny school once considered a far-left bastion of identity politics, and whose board was later packed with conservatives by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023. The school has become a pawn in the charged fight over higher ed. This week, John Oliver even compared the school administrators to Nazis. But what’s the real story behind the hyperbole? Jonas Du went to Sarasota to find out.
New York’s classical music scene has been suffering for years: a $550 million concert hall with the charm of an airport lounge, soulless orchestras, and attendance in free fall. Liel Leibovitz believes one man can turn it around. In September, the New York Philharmonic will come under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel—a conductor who spent 17 years in Los Angeles and, like Leonard Bernstein, Liel writes, “pulsated with joyous, sublime music.”
In this week’s episode of “Old School,” acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson sits down with Shilo Brooks to recount how America’s founders drafted, argued over, and revised the wording of the Declaration of Independence—and the enduring challenge of living up to its ideals today.
With America’s 250th birthday less than a month away, we’re remembering the Great Americans who make it worth celebrating. Today, Charles Fain Lehman reflects on Irving Berlin, the Jewish immigrant who fled Russian pogroms as a child, wrote “God Bless America,” and never stopped being grateful for the country that took him in.
MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS
THE NEWS
The U.S. bombed Iran for the second straight night Wednesday, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warning, “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we will negotiate with bombs.” Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump said that the U.S. would “hit them again hard” after Iran downed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter earlier this week. Iran’s military is promising “heavy responses.”
Inflation climbed to 4.2 percent in May—its highest point in more than three years—as war-driven energy costs ripple through the economy. Oil prices have surged about 35 percent since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February, with energy accounting for more than 60 percent of May’s overall price increase. Asked about the numbers, Trump told reporters: “When the war is over, it’s coming down.”
Eight pro-Palestinian activists with ties to the University of Michigan were federally indicted on charges that they plotted to pressure campus leaders into breaking ties with Israel, allegedly through “spray-painting threats, breaking windows, and throwing glass jars filled with noxious chemicals into family homes.” If convicted on felony counts, defendants could face years in prison.
Federal regulators took steps to legalize sports prediction markets nationwide, releasing a proposed framework that would allow platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket to offer bets on game outcomes, stats, and tournament results. Critics argue the move amounts to backdoor permission for sports gambling across the country, bypassing state and tribal laws.
Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass at Barcelona’s Sagrada Família yesterday, and blessed its tallest spire on the 100th anniversary of its architect Antoni Gaudí’s death. The sprawling church was supposed to be completed this year, but construction has proven so complex that the end date has been pushed back to 2035.
When SpaceX goes public this week, more than 4,400 current and former employees are expected to become millionaires. While Musk may become the world’s first trillionaire, the windfall will extend to engineers, launch workers, and others who took stock as part of their pay.
Taiwan test-fired U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers into the strait separating it from China for the first time Wednesday, targeting waters where Chinese forces would have to cross in an invasion attempt. Trump has delayed approval of a $14 billion arms package for the island, calling it “a very good negotiating chip” in talks with Beijing.
The “you’re a racist” troupe has been beaten into the ground. It’s a cudgel. It shows a lack of knowledge and inability to form a decent argument . Ignore it. And I can’t wait for the next Democrat to call me a Nazi!
The investigation into Trita Parsi is welcome news and long overdue.
@danlinnaeus on X has reported on Parsi
post from 4/25
https://x.com/danlinnaeus/status/1909752353026195794?s=46
Any ideas on why he never received US citizenship like the other anti American jew hating subversives from totalitarian countries that seek our destruction? like Ilhan Omar and Mamadani?