It’s Wednesday, May 13. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Suzy Weiss asks, you’re shocked by Sydney Sweeney? Really? Joe Nocera speaks with Alex Berenson after his free-speech victory. Peter Berkowitz on the right-wingers opposed to America’s founding values. And more.
But first: Trump’s meeting with Xi.
President Trump lands in Beijing today for his first visit to China in his second term. The agenda could hardly be more consequential. On the table: the war in Iran, trade, AI, political prisoners, and Taiwan. This morning we have two stories on the summit’s stakes.
The first comes from two people for whom the summit could determine their father’s freedom. Sebastien and Claire Lai’s father, Jimmy, is the 78-year-old Hong Kong publisher convicted of sedition and colluding with foreign forces for publishing a pro-democracy newspaper. He has spent years in solitary confinement, his health deteriorating and his family limited to 30 minutes of visitation per week. Today, they appeal directly to the president who they believe can free him. “When Air Force One lands back in the United States,” they write, “we pray our father is on that plane.” Read their message in full:
Perhaps the most important item on the agenda in Beijing is Taiwan. Tanner Nau asked four China experts about that all-important issue and what this week’s talks might change. Their answers range from cautiously hopeful to seriously alarmed. Read their takes here:
—The Editors
It feels like America loses its mind over Sydney Sweeney approximately once a week. This time, it’s over the latest antics of her character on Euphoria, Cassie, dressing up as a sexy dog, and then a baby, to grow her online following. Somehow, people are surprised. Suzy Weiss says they shouldn’t be: The show is designed to make “normal people” uncomfortable. Plus, “isn’t it a little fun, in 2026, to learn that after every taboo has been broken, you can still be shocked?”
The Trump administration just settled Biden v. Berenson—forcing the federal government to admit it violated the First Amendment by pressuring Twitter to ban Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who was one of the loudest skeptics of Covid vaccines and mandates. It’s a landmark victory that’s barely made a ripple in the mainstream press. Joe Nocera sat down with Berenson to get the full story.
American politics can sometimes feel like a fight between two camps who want to burn it all down. The postmodern left and the “post-liberal” right disagree on a lot, but they share a contempt for the values on which America was founded. Political thinker Peter Berkowitz takes aim at both camps in his latest essay for The Free Press. The solution, he writes, is to ignore the intellectuals preaching revolution from positions of bourgeois comfort, and recommit to the principles that still undergird the American project 250 years after its founding.
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THE NEWS
Food and Drug Administration commissioner Marty Makary resigned yesterday—days after Trump had reportedly signed off on a plan to fire him over disagreements on vaping, abortion, and drug policy. “It was really Secretary Kennedy himself who made this decision,” an administration official told Politico. Kyle Diamantas, the agency’s former top food official, will succeed Makary in an acting capacity.
The Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors Tuesday in a 51–45 mostly party-line vote, setting up a vote on his nomination as Fed chair to succeed Jerome Powell, whose term ends Friday.
Inflation rose to its highest level in three years in April, with the consumer price index reaching 3.8 percent over the past year according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Energy prices, driven by the ongoing war in Iran and effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, accounted for more than 40 percent of the increase.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced tough questioning on Capitol Hill Tuesday over the Iran war’s rising price tag—now pegged at $29 billion, up from $25 billion two weeks ago—and the depletion of U.S. weapons stockpiles, though Hegseth insisted inventories were “absolutely” secure and that the military had “won every component of what we’ve fought in this conflict.”
The U.S. and Ukraine have drafted a memorandum laying the groundwork for a defense deal that would open the door to joint drone manufacturing and Ukrainian military technology exports to the United States. Kyiv’s drone output has surged far ahead of Washington’s—one Ukrainian manufacturer alone plans to build more than 3 million units this year, compared to the 300,000 the U.S. produced in all of 2025.
Ahead of Trump’s visit to China this week, a Chinese think tank reportedly tried and failed to gain access to Anthropic’s powerful new Mythos AI model—withheld from public release over cybersecurity fears—after approaching Anthropic officials at a Singapore conference last month. U.S. officials believe the overture was approved and directed by Beijing.
The Justice Department charged the operators of the cargo ship that crashed into and brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in 2024, killing six construction workers, with 18 counts including conspiracy to defraud the United States and misconduct resulting in death. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called it “a preventable tragedy of enormous consequence.”
A new drug called daraxonrasib may be on the verge of transforming how doctors treat pancreatic cancer—a disease that has long resisted virtually every therapeutic advance. The pill targets a protein long thought to be beyond the reach of medicine, and in clinical trials it nearly doubled how long patients survived. The FDA has fast-tracked its review, and approval could come before the end of the year.
“The Justice Department charged the operators of the cargo ship that crashed into and brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in 2024, killing six construction workers, with 18 counts including conspiracy to defraud the United States”
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Turns out those H1B DEI ship captains need a bit more training when it comes to properly disguising their false flag infrastructure attacks?
“A new drug called daraxonrasib may be on the verge of transforming how doctors treat pancreatic cancer—a disease that has long resisted virtually every therapeutic advance.”
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Does this drug block the COVID vaccine from being injected into your body?