It’s Friday, July 31. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: The meaning of the Salman Rushdie verdict. Should you skip your annual physical? How Markwayne Mullin drew the ire of President Donald Trump on July 4. Is Ukraine turning the tables on Russia? And much more.
But first: The chaos in Ceuta.
Sixty thousand. That’s how many people local authorities estimate have crossed from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta over the past 24 hours. It is, by any measure, an extraordinary figure, coming close to the territory’s total permanent population of nearly 84,000. Also extraordinary: the footage of the crossings. Droves of mostly young men jumping out of trucks at the border, swimming around breakwaters, clambering over fences, sprinting down streets. At least 18 people have died during the chaos, and the Spanish government has deployed the army to Ceuta.
The scenes recall the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis a decade ago—and underscore how little Europe’s elites have done to address the problem in the intervening years. Rod Dreher recently returned to the U.S. from living in Europe, where he watched as political leaders repeatedly refused to tackle the issue, and Europeans only grew angrier. In our pages today, he reacts to the dystopian scenes from Ceuta, and asks: What will it take to break the immigration taboo? —The Editors
Nearly four years ago to the day, an Iranian-backed assassin nearly killed the novelist Salman Rushdie. On Wednesday, Rushdie’s would-be killer, Hadi Matar, was found guilty of all charges, including engaging in an act of transnational terrorism. It was an important verdict. Not only was justice done but, as we argue in our latest editorial, the verdict makes clear the nature of the threat free societies face today.
Have you had your annual physical yet? Millions of Americans flock to the doctor’s office every year just to “check in.” But according to Charlotte Grinberg, MD, most of these appointments are a waste of time. Read her column on a better way to track your health.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking from the halls of the State Department, delivered a sharp rebuke to communism. “The world [communism] envisions for all of us,” Rubio said, “is small, flat, gray, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul.” It would deprive the world of great human accomplishment. Stirring words, but for Gregory Conti they didn’t recall communism but the world as imagined by the AI founders building our future. Read his chilling warning against the transhumanism now dominant in Silicon Valley—and what it takes to fight back.
It’s been a rocky stretch for Markwayne Mullin, the former senator Trump tapped to calm the turmoil inside the Department of Homeland Security. He has one of the toughest jobs in the administration and has been rebuked by the president for pausing Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle stops. But, as Audrey Fahlberg writes today, cool relations between Mullin and Trump could be about something else entirely. She reports on an earlier clash with the White House—not about deportations but . . . a fireworks display.
After four years of war, Ukraine appears to have turned the tables on Russia. Its powerful drones are destroying refineries, military depots, and Amazon-like warehouses—some of them a thousand miles or more from the Russian border. Russian soldiers dread leaving their bunkers for fear of a drone killing them. But Vladimir Putin vows to fight on, and despite its recent successes, Ukraine still has plenty of its own military and political challenges. Aidan Stretch, the Ukraine correspondent for CBS News, talks with Aaron MacLean about what life is like in the country today, and what the next phase of the war is likely to be.
EDITORS’ PICKS
All across the country, Americans are angry about data centers. They’re too big, they say, too noisy, and too costly for the communities that have seen their electric and water bills rise. But data centers are also inevitable, and absolutely essential in the coming age of AI. Joe Nocera lays out a “peace plan” that will allow for the continued build-out of data centers while mollifying the concerns of local communities. It includes transparency, improved construction technology—and plenty of money.
In early July, when Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham said that women shouldn’t have to play sports against biological males, America more or less shrugged. When, a week later, reporters gave her the opportunity to walk back her remarks, she doubled down: “I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense.” This, says columnist Kat Rosenfield, is a sign of progress. Not so long ago, there would have been howls of outrage and attempts to cancel Cunningham. What has brought on this sea change? Kat’s thesis: “Americans of all political stripes are sick and tired of pretending they can’t see the emperor’s whole entire ass.” Who can doubt it?
For years, Laura Loomer, the MAGA influencer, sided with Russia in its war against Ukraine, even contributing articles to Russia’s state-run network, RT. But after visiting Ukraine, and meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials, she concluded she had been on the wrong side. On Tuesday, from her hotel room in Ukraine, she spoke to Eli Lake about her change of heart, and tells him she now considers Zelensky “an essential ally.” Notes Eli: “By the looks of things, so does the president.”
When Alex Berenson’s 81-year-old mother got a tax bill for $55,048 she was baffled. She had lived in her New York City townhouse for 30 years—and she knew she didn’t owe that kind of money to the city. The answer, it turns out, was Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new “pied-à-terre” tax, which is designed to dun out-of-towners who own fancy New York apartments but whose primary residence is elsewhere. The incident leads Alex to muse on everything from inept city bureaucracy to Mamdani’s socialism, to the heartlessness of social media. “Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax isn’t just about pied-à-terres,” he writes. “It’s about stoking resentment toward an ever-expanding list of class enemies.”
Every six months, Tanya Lukyanova spends a few weeks in Moscow, where she was raised and where she still has friends and family. Since 2022, when the war against Ukraine began, she never saw the effects of the war in Russia’s capital, as the government sought to keep it insulated. But this visit was different. Tanya reports that she saw long lines of people waiting for their ration of gas, heard people talking about seeing drones and hearing explosions, and discovered a bitterness about the war that she hadn’t experienced in earlier trips. “Nobody can explain what we’re fighting for,” said one man after a few drinks. “Why do people die every day? To what end?”
“It includes transparency, improved construction technology—and plenty of money.”
“Transparency.” Right. In the age of Fauci and Biden. Is there a bridge for sale too?
It's incredible how wrong some of the thought-leaders have been about so many things. EU Migration, COVID, Russia, and so on.....