It was July 7, and President Trump had plenty to celebrate. America’s military strike against Iran’s nuclear program had been a success. The Supreme Court had issued rulings favorable to his administration. Trump had signed his signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, into law as a B-2 bomber flew overhead. Trump was eager to spend the rest of the summer publicizing his achievements. He was keen to dive into next year’s midterm campaign.

The FBI scrambled his plans. In a brief memo, the agency announced that it had reviewed its records on the late Jeffrey Epstein and found “no incriminating ‘client list.’ ” Nor was there “credible evidence” that the Palm Beach sex criminal had committed blackmail. Epstein had killed himself, said the FBI. What’s more, “No further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

Famous last words. The announcement ignited a firestorm over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. The fight set Trump officials against each other, Trump against parts of his base, and Trump against Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal.

The media seized on Trump’s Epstein connection. Democrats sensed an opportunity—the first in months—to play offense. “Rich and powerful men shouldn’t have impunity from accountability,” Californian congressman Ro Khanna told Politico. “And that’s something that both people on the left and right are sick of.” Khanna and Republican Trump foe Rep. Thomas Massie are trying to force a vote to release the Epstein material.

Chances are they will fail, and not merely because rank-and-file discharge petitions rarely make it to the House floor. By Friday, July 18, Trump had quelled the brewing MAGA rebellion. He used his supporters’ hatred of mainstream media and suspicion of Democrats to regain control—at least for now.

The episode was a rare instance of Trump losing his grip on the narrative. It holds five lessons for the White House.

The most viral video on the internet right now is of an adulterous couple cuddling at a Coldplay concert. America’s reaction has been merciless. It’s proof that, as Kat Rosenfield argued over the weekend, whereas the original function of public shaming was to keep the bonds of community strong, it’s now a spectator sport.

I sat down with Kat for a lives…

The United States—once the manufacturing hub of the planet, the envy of the world, the birthplace of the Manhattan Project and the Hoover Dam, the country that defeated the Nazis not with better weapons but superior factories, the nation that built the Empire State Building in a year—has become a country that orders Chinese-made goods on Amazon Prime.

That China has overtaken us is not just a meme. It’s reality.

China builds 2,000 ships a year to our five. It refines 90 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals. It accounts for a third of the world’s manufacturing output, twice what the U.S. produces. It’s also become the largest exporter of cars, with factories that are so automated they’re called “dark factories” because they don’t need lights—there are no humans in them that need to see. 

In short, China is eating our lunch. It’s no secret that America’s manufacturing decline has resulted in the decimation of Rust Belt communities and an epidemic of suicide and fentanyl overdoses. Less visible is the crisis in sovereignty it has brought about, with our supply chains—indeed, our economy—largely dependent on what many view as our greatest adversary.

But help is on the way. Or at least that’s what the help promises.

You cannot have a great civilization without the ability to make things. That ability—manufacturing—is the foundation of power.

Every great power—the Dutch, the British, and then the Americans—rose to dominance by building the strongest industrial base of their time. That industrial strength produced unmatched military power and global economic influence. It also gave them the reserve currency of the world. It’s not trust alone that keeps the dollar dominant. It’s the belief that America can project power, produce what it needs, and manage a war or crisis. Lose that industrial edge, and we risk losing the dollar’s central place in the global system.

That’s why the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency today—not only because of Wall Street, but because of Detroit, Pittsburgh, and the industrial base that made America indispensable. Remember: We won World War II because we had the strongest industrial base in the world. We didn’t have the best tanks; we had the strongest capacity for production.

But roughly every 120 years, global leadership shifts hands.

When news of Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program flashed across my phone in June, my first instinct was to get Haviv on the phone.

That would be Haviv Rettig Gur, who is, to my mind, one of the sharpest and most insightful interpreters of the modern Middle East. His analysis has been indispensable throughout the harrowing multifront war facing Israel since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre.

His knowledge derives from decades of deep study, first as an educator and then as a journalist for The Times of Israel. He has covered Israel’s politics, foreign policy, education system, and relationship with the Jewish diaspora since 2005, reporting from more than 20 countries.

Haviv brings compassion to his work, never reducing the people and ideas in the region to caricatures of good and evil. He likes to say that “it’s much more complicated than it appears,” which may well be a mission statement for The Free Press.

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Haviv is officially joining The Free Press as a Middle East analyst, meaning he will make our pages his first stop for breaking news. He joins Matti Friedman, our brilliant Jerusalem correspondent, who has reported on Israeli society and politics throughout the war. Haviv will also direct regular live question-and-answer sessions with our paying subscribers.

The first of these Q&A sessions will take place on Wednesday, July 23, at 12:30 p.m. ET, in which Haviv will help us understand: What do ordinary Israelis really think?

He’ll take us inside the mind of the average Israeli citizen, including how decades of war, intifadas, political upheaval, and broken hopes have shaped public opinion in the Jewish state about this latest conflict. If you want to understand Israel today—not just its political leadership, but its people—this will be essential viewing.

Paid subscribers can submit questions for Haviv HERE, and make sure to tune in at TheFP.com/livestream to hear his answers.

We will also run regular edited transcripts of Haviv’s excellent podcast, which we recommend that you check out.

We’re honored to have Haviv on board, and excited to bring his unmatched insight directly to our subscribers. We look forward to a deeper, smarter conversation about the Middle East.

It’s Monday, July 21. 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 war on free speech comes for the British pub. Andrew Ferguson on what makes Dave Barry so funny. Are we prepared for a drone attack? Do Democrats need their own Trump? And more.

But first: Is air-conditioning the mark of civilization?

As the sole member of the Free Press London bureau, I spend half my working hours reminding my American colleagues of a truth I hold to be self-evident: Europe is just as good as the U.S.

And in some ways, better! Our cities are prettier. Our trains are faster. We believe in taking vacation and—wait for it—not answering emails from the beach. (Can someone please remind Bari of this next month when I retreat to Crete?)

But there is one concession I will reluctantly make, and it is this: The air-conditioning on this side of the pond is less than ideal. Over the weekend, a tweet went viral in which a good American patriot named Billy Binion claimed the lack of AC in European restaurants makes eating out feel like “hot yoga with bread.” I was tempted to reply: I love hot yoga! And bread! Sounds like a great dinner!

But Billy, as a substandard British patriot I’ll admit that you have a point. When the heat wave struck earlier this month, we suffered. The London Underground became a furnace. Every British newspaper ran an article about “how to keep cool.” Shut the curtains! Put cold towels on your bare legs! I did all this and more, in the apartment where I both sleep and work, which is but 15 years old and has no air con.

Believe it or not, I’m one of the lucky ones. I read last week, with horror, that over 250 people died in London during that heat wave. And I learned today, from Free Press columnist Tyler Cowen’s latest piece, that more Europeans die heat-related deaths than Americans suffer fatal gunshot wounds.

He argues that our lack of air-conditioning is a sign that my continent is wracked by civilizational decline. And when I think back to my trip last July to our New York office—where the air-conditioning is so competent that I had to wear a sweater—I almost believe him.

—Freya Sanders

This week’s guest on Conversations with Coleman is Galen Druke. Galen is the founder of the GD Politics podcast and the former host of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. Coleman sat down with Galen to talk about public opinion six months into Trump’s second term: what pollsters get wrong about the president, why some people viewed Donald Trump as the more moderate choice in 2016, what that says about how voters think, and how Democrats might get back into the national conversation in a real way. They also talked about how polls work, when they matter, and what they often miss about what voters actually care about.

Hit the play button below to listen to their conversation, and make sure you follow Conversations with Coleman wherever you get your podcasts.

• The Democratic National Committee’s forthcoming autopsy of the 2024 election will avoid discussing critical decisions—including whether Joe Biden should have dropped out earlier, the choice of Kamala Harris as the candidate, and the Harris campaign’s focus on social issues. “We are not interested in second-guessing campaign tactics or decisions of campaign operatives,” Jane Kleed, the head of the association of Democratic state chairs, told The New York Times.

• Amid constant rumors that the president might fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell before his term expires, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has reportedly been lobbying the president to leave Powell alone. Trump has been demanding that the Federal Reserve lower interest rates, while Bessent and others have warned that the market will react poorly if the president interferes with the Fed’s independence.

• Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigned on Saturday, days after he and the AI company’s “chief people officer” were caught canoodling on a Coldplay concert kiss cam. The video of the affair went viral, and at one point the CEO was the top trending Google search in the nation.

• A Somali American socialist has won the backing of Minnesota Democrats in the race for Minneapolis mayor over Jacob Frey, the incumbent who oversaw the city during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Omar Fateh, a state senator, is running on many of the same policies as New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, including rent control and higher taxes on the wealthy.

• President Trump is suing The Wall Street Journal, its parent companies, two of its reporters, and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, for $10 billion over a story detailing a letter the president allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein. In a court filing in Florida, Trump accused the reporters and publishers of “malicious, deliberate, and despicable actions.”

• Trump aides discussed ending SpaceX contracts after the Elon Musk–Donald Trump fallout, but the administration reportedly determined that it could not cut most of the federal government’s contracts with the rocket company because they were critical to the Department of Defense and NASA.

• Young male college graduates now have virtually the same unemployment rate as nongraduates. The rise in graduate unemployment over the past year was driven almost entirely by young men, rising from less than 5 percent this time last year to 7 percent today.

It hasn’t been a good decade for polling. In 2016, the national polls were humiliated by confident predictions of a Hillary Clinton win. In 2020, polls didn’t foresee how close the swing state margins would be. And in 2024, pollsters still underestimated Donald Trump’s support by nearly three percentage points. But as most media organizations continue t…

LONDON — The war on free speech is about to violate the most sacred recesses of British life—not the home or the workplace, but the pub.

On the night of Wednesday, July 16, the Labour government’s Employment Rights Bill passed its second reading in the House of Lords. If the bill goes into law in its current form—and there is not much to stop it now—Britons can be prosecuted for a remark that a worker in a public space overhears and finds insulting. The law will apply to pubs, clubs, restaurants, soccer grounds, and all the other places where the country gathers and, all too frequently, ridicules one another.

The bill has been dubbed the “Banter Bill” in a last-stand flourish of native wit. But it’s no joke. It is further proof of the state-sponsored decline of free speech in Britain—a decline rightly criticized by Vice President J.D. Vance, who, despite the demands of his day job, still finds time for some forthright banter on X.

As a novelist, I would struggle to imagine a more surreal or absurd scene than last week’s viral incident at a Coldplay concert—to the point where if I wrote it into one of my books, my editor would likely send it back with a note politely asking me to please tone it down.

The biggest scandal on the internet right now started with the video, which you’ve surely seen: a jumbotron lights up with the image of a middle-aged couple, obviously and blissfully in love, swaying in each other’s arms on a beautiful summer night. “Oh, look at these two,” says Coldplay’s lead singer, Chris Martin—and all hell breaks loose. Their smiles are replaced by looks of sheer panic. She spins away, flinging her hands over her very red face. He dives out of frame, frantically waving his arms like he’s trying to push the camera away with the power of telekinesis.

“Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Martin quips.

The internet understood the assignment. Seemingly within minutes, online sleuths had identified the pair. He was the CEO of a software start-up called Astronomer; she was his head of HR. And yes, they were both married to other people, whose identities the online masses also took it upon themselves to sniff out and publicize.

I was shocked recently to learn that more Europeans die of heat death—largely due to lack of air-conditioning—than Americans die from gunshot wounds.

I’m not saying America isn’t more dangerous in certain ways: We have higher non-gun murder rates and perilous weather patterns, among other problems. But it turns out European bureaucracy is literally deadly.

Case in point: the situation with air-conditioning on the continent.