It’s Wednesday, 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: Jed Rubenfeld on Joe Biden’s autopen and the real scandal; Ruy Teixeira on how progressives abandoned progress; join Bari and Nellie for the first Free Press town hall; and more.
But first: The new right’s bad history.
President Trump is MAGA. Or at least, that’s the line.
But if anything other than President Trump is a bellwether for Trump’s movement, it’s Turning Point USA, the activist group for young conservatives founded and run by Charlie Kirk. The organization planned to spend no less than $108 million for Trump in the last election. It sent thousands of volunteers door-knocking for Trump in battleground states. And Kirk himself is close to the president and his circle.
In other words, what happens at TPUSA doesn’t remain there—it comes to define the right.
Which is why it was alarming to see what was on display this past weekend at their annual summit for college students.
Among the lowlights: Tucker Carlson, speaking about Jeffrey Epstein, said: “It’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government.” He went on: “Now, no one’s allowed to say that foreign government is Israel, because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty.” As if criticizing Israel is taboo these days in American life. At another point, he said: “There are a lot of Americans who’ve served in the IDF. They should lose their citizenship.”
Candace Owens took a break from her regular programming of blood libels and an obsessive fixation on Brigitte Macron to praise Carlson’s remarks at the conference, writing, “Tucker is a real one.”
Kirk himself hosted a debate between comedian Dave Smith and conservative author Josh Hammer about U.S. support for Israel. During the debate, Smith said: “The level of Israeli control over our politics is frankly pretty undeniable." Hammer came prepared with Smith’s attacks on the president, among them that Trump “is a war criminal who should spend his life in prison,” and that Trump might be “the most impotent bitch of a leader imaginable.”
Which raises the question, one Hammer asked, about why Smith was onstage at a MAGA event in the first place. Why did the pro-Trump group invite an anti-Trump activist to debate Israel?
One answer, according to Rebeccah L. Heinrichs in today’s lead essay, is that there is a growing coalition of crazy on the revanchist right that is seeking to develop a new postwar consensus: The use of force abroad is bad for the world and even worse for Americans; that Jews have too much power or are insufficiently loyal to America; that our shared history is a lie; and that our heroes are suspect.
She calls it The 1939 Project.
Just as The New York Times and its 1619 Project sought to redefine America’s founding, Rebeccah argues that this faction on the right “seeks to discredit America’s role in World War II and the postwar international order it shaped.”
It’s a twisted vision of the past designed to undermine the foundations of the present.
This worldview is not going away. It is growing in its power. And we ignore it at our peril.
—The Editors
***
American progressivism is on the march. A Democratic Socialist just won the New York City mayoral primary. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have filled arenas with young voters across the country. But, Ruy Teixeira argues, today’s progressive politics are antithetical to progress—and to the universal values on which they were founded. Can the movement return to its original principles?
Both Congress and House Republicans are investigating Joe Biden’s use of an autopen to sign pardons. But is there any legal issue with the autopen? Jed Rubenfeld lays out the law, and argues that the autopen story is a distraction from the real Biden scandal.
Is Donald Trump really a “nationalist”? AI may benefit elites, but what about the rest of us? Are the grievances driving populism real or imagined? All that and more in this latest edition of Letters to the Editor.
LIVE TODAY: Off-the-Record Conversation with Bari and Nellie
This evening, Free Press co-founders Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles will take questions in our very first video town hall, available exclusively to premium subscribers tonight at 7 p.m. ET.
It’s a rare chance to have an unfiltered chat with Bari and Nellie about anything—from who at The Free Press is most likely to nod off during an afternoon meeting to the big events shaping the world right now. No scripts. No agenda. Just your questions. They’ll take as many as they can.
Don’t miss out—become a premium subscriber to join today:
Inflation came in at its highest level since February yesterday, with consumer prices for June rising 2.7 percent over the past year. The inflation data shows some signs of the impact of Trump’s tariffs, but economists are divided over how big an effect the levies will have in the coming months.
Trump released over half of the California National Guard troops deployed to address anti-ICE protests, marking a significant de-escalation in his administration’s efforts to quell disorder in Los Angeles. The 2,000 troops—who were federalized and deployed by Trump—became the subject of a fierce battle between Trump and Gavin Newsom last month. The California governor unsuccessfully sought to end their deployment in court.
Jamie Dimon sounded the alarm over the Trump administration’s attacks on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday. The JPMorgan Chase chief executive said that “Playing around with the Fed can have adverse consequences, the absolute opposite of what you might be hoping for.” Dimon is the first leader of a big U.S. financial institution to address Trump’s criticisms of Powell—and the idea that he may be replaced before the end of his term next year.
In a July 4 phone call, President Trump encouraged Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to escalate deep strikes in Russia, and asked him whether he could strike Moscow and St. Petersburg if the U.S. provided long-range weapons, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. Trump announced on Monday that the U.S. would send a “top-of-the-line weapons” package to Ukraine, paid for by NATO member nations. He also threatened “secondary tariffs” on Russia’s trading partners if a peace deal isn’t reached in 50 days.
Rick Singer, the ringleader of the “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal, will be allowed to return to admissions consulting but must disclose his criminal history to clients, a judge ruled this week. In 2019, Singer pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges, admitting to bribing standardized test proctors, university coaches, and administrators, among other tactics, to get the children of wealthy families admission to elite colleges.
All three members of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory resigned earlier this month, UN Watch revealed on Monday. The departure comes amid a Trump administration crackdown on international investigations into Israel. The commission, which was tasked with investigating alleged violations of international human rights law, came under fire for publishing one-sided reports that largely blamed Israel for the conflict.
The Pentagon awarded four artificial intelligence companies up to $200 million each to apply the technology for military purposes. Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Elon Musk’s xAI, the creator of Grok, will receive contracts to “develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.”
New York and New Jersey were hit with flash flooding on Monday, killing two people, shutting down subway lines, and stranding drivers, many of whom had to be rescued from their vehicles. “I probably don’t recall seeing that level of rain before,” said Mayor Eric Adams.
Why does anyone think it appropriate that the lobby of another (tiny) country should control, or even openly and proudly attempt to control, American politics and foreign policy with donations (i.e. bribes)? No other country on earth attempts this, for if it did, it would be a huge scandal, and rightly so. Yet Israel gets a free pass. Why? Surely, it’s absurd logic, as some may claim, that because Israel is “our closest ally in the region,” it follows as the day the night that it SHOULD therefore be given a unique free pass to attempt to control both our parties and American foreign policy with cash.
Japan is both infinitely more important as an ally and Asia infinitely more important as a region than little Israel and the “Middle East.” Yet Americans would be flabbergasted if there were a Japanese lobby eagerly buying our politicians in both parties in order to control our foreign policy.
Nothing has changed since Washington left office to invalidate in the slightest degree his sternest warning in his Farewell Address never to allow our affairs to get so entangled with those of another country that their interests could ever supercede our own. Yet that happens regularly with our entanglement with Israel. That’s not best for America, however much of a unique bonanza it has been for Israel.
Guys, none of this rightward lunacy exists outside Carlson and a few others. And Tucker and his odd giggle have been unbalanced since Jon Stewart ended his first career twenty plus years ago.
We are way over rotation on this stuff. Go outside and see the sun.