“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” So wrote President Donald Trump on Truth Social on Sunday. After weeks of back-and-forth, the announcement seemed to herald the end to a bloody conflict that has lasted more than 100 days.

In the following hours, the public learned that the U.S. had reached a memorandum…

Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where discussion about Zionism and indigenous self-determination became a debate about Canada’s future, the “new world order” arrives in a different part of the world, and Justin Trudeau goes on boyfriend duty at the World Cup. Let’s get to it!

It sounded like an extremely wonky academic event. The discussion was titled “Antizionist Colonization of Indigenous Movements—and Our Response.” Its speakers’ goal was to challenge a narrative that has increasingly taken hold in Canada since October 7, 2023: Israel is a colonial project, so indigenous groups should identify with the Palestinian cause.

This intellectual framework dominates much of academia and activism. Settler colonialism, identity politics, the division of society into the oppressors and the oppressed, and related ideas are used to cast Israel as a colonial enterprise and Jews as privileged settlers. While many Jews in Canada have become deeply skeptical of this view, it is just as deeply rooted throughout Canada.

Last week’s event at the University of Ottawa was organized by members of the city’s Jewish community and featured Harry LaForme, Canada’s first indigenous appeals court judge, and New Zealand historian Sheree Trotter, who is Māori. “People are forced into categories of colonizer and colonized, and the actual histories are often much more complicated than that,” Trotter told me. “It’s become a lens through which everything is interpreted.”

LaForme approached the subject through the vantage point of indigenous experience. He laid out what he described as the defining characteristics of colonization: language suppression, religious imposition, population displacement, settler colonization, economic exploitation, legal hierarchies favoring the colonizer, and cultural erasure. “We have experienced all that,” the retired judge told the audience. “In fact, Israel has experienced that. The Jews of Israel have experienced that.”

It’s Tuesday, June 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: Where does all the stolen art go? Elliot Cohen on School of War. What Spencer Pratt got right. Plus: Mr. President, publish the details of your Iran agreement. All that and much more.

But first: ICYMI, Douglas Murray is (re)joining The Free Press. Check out the details, including his note to subscribers, here.

Now to the news, starting with what both sides are getting wrong about America’s 250th.

On Monday morning, evidently still fired up after a raucous 80th birthday spent watching UFC fights on the White House lawn, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would be celebrating America’s 250th anniversary with “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.”

It is the latest example of the split-screen visions of the republic as it approaches the semiquincentennial. On one side, there is a Trumpian spectacle that often conflates celebration of the United States with celebration of the man in the White House. On the other side are those who find celebration of the country close to impossible given who is in the White House. The New Yorker summed up this sentiment in a recent story with the headline “How Problematic Is Patriotism?”

In our editorial today, we say both sides have it wrong. You can ignore the self-aggrandizement and self-flagellation. Read the full column to find out how:

As for Sunday’s UFC fight that was part of the president’s Freedom 250 celebrations? We sent River Page to take in the spectacle. Among the fans he spoke to was Antonio Sanchez, who mused: “This is like, the Founding Fathers’ house and they’ve got a fuckin’ Monster-sponsored octagon in the middle of the lawn. That is retarded. But also, it’s cool. People are gonna remember this fucking shit.”

Very true, Antonio. Read River’s full dispatch:

—Oliver Wiseman

From the pageantry of power to the substance of governing: Before Sunday’s fight, President Trump announced a new agreement with Iran that would end the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. On Monday, Washington was abuzz with debate over the merits of the memorandum of understanding that officials said had been signed electronically by Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. When Republicans complained that the deal looked like capitulation, officials vented about what they say is misinformation about the agreement. In our second editorial (what can we say, the editors ate their Wheaties yesterday), we propose a simple solution: Publish the deal.

And for more analysis of the war, the deal, and what’s next, tune in to the latest episode of School of War. Today, Aaron McLean sits down with Eliot Cohen, co-host of the Shield of the Republic podcast, to answer the most pressing questions about the conflict.

With America’s 250th birthday just a few weeks away, we’re honoring some of the Great Americans who shaped our country. Today, Ann Bauer remembers L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Baum’s story started as a popular 1900 children’s book—and then grew into a franchise that has raked in billions of dollars and been adapted in hundreds of forms. Read her piece to find out how this “sickly, studious boy” became one of America’s biggest cultural forces, penning a story that will outlive him for centuries to come.

• Oil prices fell and the S&P 500 jumped 1.7 percent on Monday after President Trump and Iran struck a peace deal. The Strait of Hormuz is set to reopen Friday, reviving one of the world’s biggest passageways for oil and liquefied natural gas.

• Russia launched a new round of missiles and drones into Ukraine on Monday. The attack damaged at least 14 residential buildings and caused the Dormition Cathedral, one of the country’s oldest and holiest sites, to burn down.

• British prime minister Keir Starmer announced a new plan that would ban social media for all children under age 16. Starmer framed the policy as an attempt to protect young minds, but some critics fear it will add to the UK’s crackdown on free speech.

• President Trump arrived in France on Monday for this week’s G7 summit. The meeting of world leaders comes at a crucial geopolitical moment, with Ukraine continuing to suffer major blows and the terms of the final U.S.-Iran deal uncertain.

• California governor Gavin Newsom said Monday that the Trump administration is investigating him and his wife. Newsom accused the president of political prosecution, saying Trump targeted him because Newsom is considering a presidential run in 2028.

• A consumer lawsuit filed Monday against Anthropic alleges that the AI company misled customers about the limits of its $200-a-month plan. The suit might deepen scrutiny of Anthropic, which has clashed with the Trump administration.

• Fox agreed to acquire the streaming giant Roku on Monday in a deal worth $22 billion. The agreement marks a major consolidation of live television programming with streaming platforms, as Fox looks for new ways to attract viewers.

Eliot Cohen, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; author of The Strategist: How to Think About War and Politics; and co-host of the Shield of the Republic podcast, joins School of War to discuss the recent agreement between …

In the run-up to America’s 250th birthday, we thought President Donald Trump risked peaking early by hosting an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bonanza on the White House lawn on Sunday. It turns out we were wrong. By Monday morning, the president upped the ante, announcing that he’ll be celebrating the semiquincentennial by hosting a “Trump rally” on the National Mall on July 4.

To the foreign soccer fans spread all over the country for the World Cup, it could appear there are two Americas celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary—a sort of split-screen version of the republic.

One version of America celebrates the spectacle of Trump’s UFC battle, in which one fighter accused Michelle Obama of being a man. (French visitors, already aware that American podcaster Candace Owens is accusing their First Lady of something similar, could be forgiven for thinking such accusations are a regular part of American debates. In reality, it happens only rarely.)

In mid-2023, as a horrific and little-covered civil war began to convulse Sudan, soldiers made their way to a dun-colored modern building in the center of Khartoum. The National Museum of Sudan housed a stunning collection of antiquities dating back to the Paleolithic period—including a series of major works from ancient Egypt and the neighboring Nubian kingdoms.

So when the troops affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces—a paramilitary outfit that had just staged an assault against the government—began looting the museum’s displays, there was plenty to steal. They smashed cases and ripped open mummies’ coffins, focusing on lighter pieces like jewelry and gold. Others pried open storage rooms, searching for anything of value. The RSF retained control of the site until 2025; when they finally abandoned it, curators found that some 60 percent of the collection was gone. Among the missing items: a priceless gold collar dating to the fifth century BCE, found in the pyramid of a Nubian king.

The looting in Khartoum, which was repeated at a smaller scale in provincial museums across Sudan, was widely reported. It was hardly an isolated instance. In recent years, significant looting has been reported in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Ethiopia, all places where war and breakdowns in civil order have created opportunities for thieves.

But with opportunities come problems: how to dispose of the loot. The thieves, after all, can’t just show up at an auction house or a major dealer with pieces obviously taken from a war zone. But there appears to be a significant black market—and enough avenues to launder the provenance of stolen works—to make such a heist worthwhile.

“This is like, the Founding Fathers’ house and they’ve got a fuckin’ Monster-sponsored octagon in the middle of the lawn,” laughs Antonio Sanchez. “That is retarded. But also, it’s cool. People are gonna remember this fucking shit.”

We’re staring at a giant screen at the Ellipse, a park south of the White House fence, with some 80,000 other people, watching MMA fighters beat the hell out of each other on the White House lawn. The event is supposedly in honor of America’s 250th birthday, but it also happens to be the president’s 80th.

Waves of shirtless frat boys are wandering around, drinking $20 cocktails; dads in golf shirts are waiting in lines that seemed to stretch forever to buy merch, or AI-generated MMA posters featuring their own faces; America’s long-suffering girlfriends are loitering around in flip-flops and peering at the Budweiser Clydesdales. Shortly after my arrival, Logan Paul, a professional boxer, influencer, and energy drink entrepreneur who was a big booster for Trump in the 2024 election, took to the stage to hype up the crowd.

“This is insane! Republicans as far as the eye can see!” Paul yelled.

There is something seriously wrong with how the United States equips and arms our military.

Americans should have realized this on August 29, 2022, when The Wall Street Journal reported that supplying Ukraine with 155-millimeter artillery shells was depleting U.S. stocks of the munition to “uncomfortably low” levels.

Then it turned out something similar was happening with other weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Sending 10,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine has cleared out roughly one-third of the total U.S. Javelin inventory, and will require multiple years of production to replace. It was the same story all down the munitions line—from guided multiple launch rocket systems and Hellfire missiles to ammunition plants in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Kingsport, Tennessee, which needed $678 million to ramp up production after supplying Ukraine emptied the cupboard.

Suddenly, there was no way for the American public to ignore what experts, Congress, and the Pentagon had known for nearly a decade: Our nation’s defense industrial base was in serious turmoil. And in the years since, though the current administration has made efforts to revive our standing, we still have a long way to go.

It wasn’t always like this. During World War II, the U.S. created the greatest defense industrial base the world had ever seen: one that sustained our ability to compete with the Soviet Union through the Cold War.

That has all changed. And the war with Iran and other conflicts looming on the horizon show that we don’t have decades to get things right. Either we correct the problem quickly—within three or four years—or we will surrender our superpower status the way Britain did after World War II, or France after the Napoleonic Wars, and all without a single shot being fired by our leading antagonist: China.

History is informative here. During World War II, the defense industrial base was built because President Franklin Roosevelt gave General Motors (GM) president Bill Knudsen the go-ahead to set loose America’s manufacturing might. From a virtual standing start in 1940, Knudsen and his business colleagues managed to produce, by the end of 1942, more tanks, ships, planes, and guns than the entire Axis.

Vice President J.D. Vance is frustrated. He wants his fellow Republicans to calm down and trust the U.S.-Iran negotiations. The problem is that so many in Washington now are trashing the memorandum of understanding, or MOU, that the president announced Sunday, without knowing all the facts. This crowd is “criticizing a deal based on unconfirmed media reports,” the vice president posted on X. What’s more, Vance added, politicians and journalists who insist that one cannot trust a word Iran’s regime says now “apparently believe anonymously sourced social media posts.”

We understand why Vance is concerned. If the reports from Iran’s official news agencies are correct, then he and the president have just capitulated to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Over the weekend, the Iranian state-run Mehrs News agency reported that over the 60-day negotiations period, Iran’s regime will receive $24 billion worth of unfrozen assets, $12 billion of which will reach their coffers before the talks even start.

Welcome back to Great Americans, a countdown to our country’s 250th birthday. We’re bringing you a writer we love on an American they love, every weekday between now and July 4. Previously, Mark Gimein wrote about Edwin Land, the man who put a darkroom in your pocket. Today, Ann Bauer pays tribute to L. Frank Baum, who took America on an unforgettable journey down the Yellow Brick Road. —The Editors

It’s commonly thought that The Wizard of Oz was the first Technicolor movie. It wasn’t, but it sticks in our memory because of that moment when Dorothy opens the door of her little gray Kansas house and steps into a strange new land. The dull, gray prairies suddenly become the full, better-than-life color of Oz: blue Munchkin country, yellow brick road, red poppies, and the skyline of a glittering Emerald City.