It’s Thursday, April 2. 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 Trump’s birthright citizenship case. Should we scrap presidential libraries? Kemi Badenoch on why Britain won’t tackle antisemitism. Is your home making you sick? And much more.
But first: Trump’s speech—and the state of the war.
Ahead of Donald Trump’s widely anticipated speech to the nation last night, some wondered if the president was about to declare the Iran war over and announce a deal with Tehran. Others speculated about boots on the ground or some other major change in course after a month spent fighting. But Trump delivered no such surprises last night: Instead, he restated the case for the war, declared that America was on track to meet its military objectives, and pledged to hit Iran “extremely hard” in the next two to three weeks before wrapping things up.
Eli Lake was watching the speech, and breaks it down in a piece for us this morning. Read his analysis on what Trump said, and what he is thinking:
The president was optimistic about the war last night. Was he right to be? To historian Victor Davis Hanson, the answer is a resounding yes. “The campaign has been brilliantly conducted,” he writes in our pages today, and will be over soon. And yet, he notes, the conflict’s critics make the “Orwellian” argument that we are losing. It’s just one of the ways in which the real hurdles for Donald Trump in this fight are not military, but political.
Reacting to Trump’s speech last night, Victor unpacks the war against the war, and lists the biggest challenges for the president in what he says will be the final few weeks of the conflict. Read his essay to understand where things stand in Operation Epic Fury—and where they’re headed.
Middle East expert and former George W. Bush adviser Elliott Abrams has a war-related question for the president. Why is he so quick to commend Israel as a staunch ally, yet so reluctant to acknowledge the help the war effort is receiving from Ukraine?
Yes, cooperation between Israel and the U.S. “surpasses any partnership in arms in the past several decades.” But Ukraine has supplied intelligence about Russia’s role in helping Iran, and has sent 200 counter-drone specialists to Middle Eastern countries that Iran is attacking—even as they are fighting their own war against Russia. The administration, writes Abrams, needs a “new understanding and appreciation of Ukraine.”
The Supreme Court just heard arguments in two important Trump immigration policy cases—ending birthright citizenship and curtailing asylum claims. For all the ink spilled over a rogue Supreme Court, writes Jed Rubenfeld, the cases are likely to show that the rule of law is alive and well in America. The Court looks like it’s going to hand the administration one loss and one win in these two cases—and if that’s what happens, the Court will be right in both. Read Jed’s explanation of why.
This week, President Donald Trump unveiled the first renderings of his planned presidential library, which, if all goes according to plan, will be the tallest structure in Miami. Meanwhile, former president Barack Obama is preparing to open his long-delayed library, which Trump has called “woke” and “a disaster.” Today, Free Press editors Nicholas Clairmont and Mene Ukueberuwa debate: Are presidential libraries really necessary? Or should we scrap the whole idea?
In Finland, it is now illegal to defend traditional Christian teaching about homosexuality. In a shocking court ruling last week, the country’s highest court convicted a Christian parliamentarian of hate speech for writing and circulating a 2004 pamphlet outlining the church’s stances on gay marriage and adoption. Today, Rod Dreher writes on the ruling, and the state of free speech in Europe.
Doctors ask their patients plenty of questions about their lifestyle—do they smoke? Do they drink? What do they do for work?—but there’s one thing they often don’t ask that can explain persistent discomfort: What is your living environment like? “We are trained to think of health as something that happens largely inside the body,” writes Dr. Charlotte Grinberg. But before we prescribe treatments, she adds, “it’s worth thinking through our habitats.” Read her piece, the latest in her series on what they don’t teach you in med school, on the things in your house that might make you sick, and how to improve your health from the outside in.
Dinner & Live Podcast in Philadelphia: Shilo Brooks in Conversation with Jon Meacham
On May 18, Shilo will be taping a live episode of Old School in Philadelphia at the Jack Miller Center’s National Summit on Civic Education. He’ll sit down with historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham to talk about history, leadership, and the future of the republic. Tickets include a cocktail reception and three-course dinner. Get $50 off with code TFP.
MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS
THE NEWS
House and Senate Republicans agreed to a bipartisan deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security, ending the agency’s six-week shutdown. The spending bill would fund most of the department’s operations, while leaving out parts of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which GOP lawmakers plan to fund through other means.
NASA launched its Artemis II mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday night, sending four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the moon and back. If the journey is successful, it will set a record for the farthest distance ever traveled from Earth: 252,000 miles.
SpaceX has filed a confidential draft registration for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in what would likely be a record-setting listing, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The company, which recently merged with Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, could seek a valuation above $1.75 trillion—making it the largest IPO in history.
New evidence cracked the 52-year-old cold case of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime’s murder after DNA evidence definitively linked the killing to serial killer Ted Bundy. Investigators also said that the full DNA profile developed during this case has already been shared with other law enforcement agencies, and they believe it will help close at least one additional cold case tied to Bundy in the near future.
Pakistan and Afghanistan held their first round of China-mediated peace talks Wednesday in the Chinese city of Urumqi after weeks of armed violence between the two countries. The conflict stems from Pakistan’s accusation that Afghanistan harbors domestic terrorists guilty of committing attacks within Pakistan.
Why is the Artemis II flight treated with so little interest? I actually wrote an email to the FP, with no response yet: “ Why has there not been a single article on Artemis II in The Free Press? I still remember the excitement in Dec.1968 when we were taken to our high school hall in Belgrade, Yugoslavia to watch the first view of Earth from the Moon’s orbit, live from Apollo 8! At home we used to plot the progress of the spacecraft on millimeter paper, the sizes of Earth, Moon and distance all in the right proportion. We felt elated by the progress humankind had made. Today - almost nothing. What has happened to our civilization?”
Believe me, it is with much more pleasure that I look forward to hearing about the Trans-Lunar Injection which is supposed to happen at 8:00 p.m. EDT (3 a.m. April 3, IDT) , than I am looking forward to the next alert of an incoming Iranian missile. With Artemis II - finally a good use of missiles!
https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/artemis-ii-missionmap.png
Thanks President Trump! Higher gas prices and food prices are exactly the reasons your were elected you mendacious grifter. Hey at least you have made billions as well as your cronies and you still have most of your brainless cult on your side until they lose their jobs and can't blame Biden for that!
The war in Iran threatens to raise grocery bills in the U.S just months before a critical U.S. election.
The war and subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran have rocked the global economy. Oil and gasoline prices have soared, fertilizer costs have spiked and markets have plummeted.
Those factors are likely to lead to higher costs for consumers, economists warn.