The Free Press

DETROIT, Michigan — “It’s a turning point for our nation.”

That is how Amir Makled, a Dearborn lawyer who has made a career out of anti-Israel advocacy, described the ascent of his longtime pal Abdul El-Sayed, now the Democratic nominee for a Michigan U.S. Senate seat. At El-Sayed’s primary night party in downtown Detroit on Tuesday, Makled, 39, predicted the campaign’s progressive populism would reverberate far beyond the state.

It’s something with which the lawyer is intimately familiar: Makled is the Democratic nominee for a seat on the University of Michigan Board of Regents and is running for office on an identical platform: antiestablishment, anti the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and anti billionaires.

“This platform is resonating with folks from Colorado, New Jersey, New York,” he told me over the din of Motown oldies. “It’s exciting.”

Polls had predicted a blowout for El-Sayed over opponent Representative Haley Stevens, but it wasn’t until Wednesday morning that the networks called it for El-Sayed, a 41-year-old who—to the chagrin of the Democratic establishment—has never held elected office. He’s now one election away from a seat that could determine control of the U.S. Senate.

On Monday, Abdul El-Sayed’s last day of campaigning to be the Democratic nominee for the Michigan Senate seat being vacated by Gary Peters, one event stood out. It was a pool party that took place in Detroit where El-Sayed chatted amiably with the progressive influencer Hasan Piker as other “content creators” took selfies and lounged on floaties.

El-Sayed ribbed Piker for his recent trend of wearing suits in contrast to the candidate’s usual tight-fitting black T-shirt. Piker expressed wonder at all the social media clips he had seen of “white dude bros that are so stoked to vote for you.” And then the two discussed the media’s “full-on freakout” over Piker’s role campaigning for El-Sayed during the final stretch of his primary battle with Rep. Haley Stevens.

It was a squeaker. Nonetheless, El-Sayed’s narrow victory is the clearest sign yet that his party’s old establishment is under siege. This populist turn began a decade ago when Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, surprised voters in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary and nearly defeated Hillary Clinton, the heavy favorite. Now the sons and daughters of Sanders are picking off incumbents from Denver to Philadelphia. If El-Sayed can win the general election in November he will likely emerge as a kingmaker, or maybe even a presidential candidate for 2028.

In the middle of this upheaval is Piker. Only a few years ago campaigning with someone like him, even for a progressive Democrat beloved by socialists, would be calamitous in a swing state like Michigan. This is not because Piker supports socialized medicine or is critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, which are mainstream Democratic positions these days. Rather, Piker represents a strain of American politics that demonizes the republic. That message has roused voters in deep-blue urban districts, but Piker’s brand of anti-patriotism was assumed to alienate normie voters.

It’s Wednesday, August 5. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: How did Cambridge fabulist Jason Arday get away with it? Tyler Cowen on why nothing can stop the AI juggernaut. Arthur Brooks on whether socialism is a fad. And much more.

But first: A crossroads for the Democratic Party.

Ahead of Election Day, the polls suggested that the closely watched Democratic Senate primary in Michigan would be a clear win for Abdul El-Sayed—and the ascendant left wing of the party—over moderate Rep. Haley Stevens. Last night didn’t turn out that way. As of early this morning, Michigan was still counting votes, and the race was too close to call. (At 5.30 a.m. ET, with 95 per cent of the votes counted, El-Sayed had 48.6 per cent and Stevens had 47.4 per cent.)

The tight Senate race chimed with the broader story, with the Democratic Party’s dueling factions fighting themselves to a draw. In St. Louis, the establishment won: Rep. Wesley Bell crushed former Rep. Cori Bush’s comeback bid. In Michigan’s House races, the progressives made gains. One notable example: Will Lawrence, the co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, who was backed by Bernie Sanders, won in Lansing.

The results, in other words, show a Democratic Party split down the middle—between progressives and moderates, between the Democratic donor class and the socialist influencer group chats, between the Blue Dogs and the Mamdani acolytes.

As the Democratic Party figures out a way forward, our political editor Mene Ukueberuwa says the party isn’t paying nearly enough attention to the candidates who could actually deliver a durable majority. Read his column on the pragmatic Democrats hiding in plain sight, and what Democrats nationwide can learn from two Senate races—one in the booming Sun Belt, one in the stagnant Rust Belt—that say more about the party’s potential future than any of the far-left spectacles getting the headlines.

Longtime readers will remember Evan Barker’s explosive 2024 essay in The Free Press, “I Raised $50 Million for the Democrats. This Week, I Voted for Trump.” Her new book, Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, was published last week—but here’s the thing you probably didn’t know about Evan: She used to work for El-Sayed. Whatever Michigan decides, she’s seen exactly how the party got here. Today, she sits down with Lucy Biggers for a tell-all—about her former boss, and how progressives like him captured the Democratic Party from the inside.

—The Editors

• Todd Blanche cleared his biggest hurdle to becoming attorney general Tuesday, when the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced his nomination 12–10 along party lines. The confirmation came just one day after he rescinded, in writing, the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that had holdouts John Cornyn and Thom Tillis threatening to sink him.

• The U.S. has burned through “virtually all” of its long-range precision missiles in five months of war with Iran, along with nearly half its global supply of Tomahawks, sources familiar with U.S. weapons data told Reuters—raising alarms about America’s readiness for a future conflict with Russia or China. In response to the report, the Pentagon insisted the military “has everything it needs.”

• OpenAI agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle Justice Department allegations that it discriminated against American workers by steering jobs to visa holders. Fewer than 10 positions were at issue, but the message to Silicon Valley was clear: It’s the DOJ’s 13th such settlement since 2025.

• The Trump administration unveiled new guidelines urging states to tighten oversight of autism therapy providers, after federal data showed Medicaid spending on applied behavior analysis jumped 421 percent between 2021 and 2025. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the recommendations target “fraud schemes that exploit children with autism,” while critics warned the crackdown could squeeze families who rely on Medicaid for care.

• A 37-year-old man with a prior manslaughter conviction was arrested for arson in connection with the largest of three wildfires ravaging the Spokane area, where more than 700 buildings have been destroyed and 67,000 people remain under evacuation orders. Governor Bob Ferguson called it likely “the worst natural disaster in Spokane history.” No deaths have been reported.

• Guatemala evacuated hundreds of villagers as the Fuego volcano erupted Monday, prompting authorities to declare an “orange alert” and close a major highway. In 2018, a Fuego eruption killed 215 people and buried an entire village.

• Singapore banned the two core members of the band Massive Attack from reentering the country after they unfurled a Palestinian flag and shouted “Free Palestine” onstage at a concert last week. Police issued the British duo “stern warnings,” citing threats to the city-state’s racial and religious harmony; the band said it was proud of the gesture and urged Singapore to let its citizens express their views “without fear of state persecution.”

• Mike Lindell is stepping down as CEO of MyPillow to focus on his Trump-endorsed run for governor of Minnesota. “This decision is not about walking away,” Lindell said. “It is about stepping forward to serve.” He is expected to win next week’s primary and face Amy Klobuchar in November’s general election.

• Europe’s brutal drought has dropped the Danube so low that at least 20 Nazi warships—some still loaded with explosives—have become visible, along with the bones of a woolly mammoth. The wrecks have surfaced before, in 2022 and 2024, though the mammoth is new.

Letting the left wing steal the show may become a debacle for Democrats in countless ways come November. The obvious part is that they would risk blowing winnable races this year. A late July poll showed that Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic firebrand who is currently deadlocked in a Michigan Senate primary as of Wednesday morning as votes continue to be tallied, is trailing his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, by three points in the general election. Meanwhile, El-Sayed’s more moderate opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, would kick off the general with a two-point lead.

But by flirting with the radical left in this year’s midterms, Democrats have also ignored the better paths being blazed by other candidates that may lead them to a durable majority. Nominating Stevens would put Democrats in the best position to hold on to a Michigan seat. But their best shot at flipping GOP seats and expanding their coalition can be found in one Senate race in the booming Sun Belt, and another in the stagnant Rust Belt. The experienced candidates in these campaigns capture what a winning future for Democrats may look like more than any of the left-wing spectacles in other statewide races.

Unless you live in North Carolina or Ohio, you probably haven’t spent much time following the campaigns of Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown. Even journalists and political professionals tend to refer to these candidates with pat labels rather than the detailed analysis they’ve expended on far-left darlings such as El-Sayed—and Graham Platner, before a rape allegation forced him out of his Senate race in Maine. Cooper is the square, affable former governor whose middle-of-the road record will help him coast to victory in the purple Tar Heel State. Brown is the gravelly former senator, a skeptic of free trade and friend of the unions, who Ohio voters may rehire if the blue wave crests high enough.

A few days ago, I had lunch with a friend. An exceptional scholar, and a genuinely nice man, he had once again failed to secure a permanent academic position, despite a stellar publication record and a strong résumé. Now, having spent years in the halfway house of the postdoctoral world—neither fish nor fowl—he is ready to throw in the towel. He plans to spend one last year on the academic job market and, if nothing concrete materializes, he will leave academia forever.

As I offered the usual platitudes that were offered to me when I was in his shoes—you’ll get something, it’s a numbers game, they would be crazy not to hire you—I could not help but think of another young scholar, who had won spectacularly, while my friend had lost.

Jason Arday is a professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge and, as Cambridge’s press office keeps reminding the world, the youngest black person ever to hold a full professorship at the university.

On paper, Arday’s life story seemed remarkable. From an immigrant background, he is autistic and could not speak until the age of 11. He has said that he learned to read and write only at 18. During his PhD studies, he pinned a piece of paper on a bedroom wall, on which was written: “One day I will work at Oxford or Cambridge.”

For years, Evan Barker was an insider in the progressive Democratic political machine. A fundraising strategist, she helped raise about $50 million for candidates and worked with everyone from establishment Democrats to Bernie Sanders–backed progressives.

Raised in a working-class union family in Kansas City, Missouri, and born with a genetic disease tha…

A friend recently asked in a group chat, “What could stop or significantly slow down the advance of AI?” My answer to that question was simple: “Not much.”

The artificial intelligence revolution has cleared many major hurdles so far, and there is a clear path for further progress. The exact speed of advance will vary with economic and political circumstances, but the logic of artificial intelligence will do more than anything else to set the pace.

I realize that there are many people who fear that we are in an AI bubble, and I don’t dismiss the possibility. The latest scare came last week when an AI-oriented hedge fund, Situational Awareness, lost $35 billion in the space of two weeks in July. Although in truth, as I’ll get to shortly, I don’t view that as a particularly worrisome event.

Instead, I’d point to history. In the early 2000s, the dot-com bubble burst. In the mid-aughts, the housing bubble burst. As is always the case, few realized that these were bubbles until boom gave way to bust. Even so, important internet companies like Amazon, eBay, and Google continued to grow, and homes continued to be built.

Given that most of the major AI companies are spending billions while counting on future revenue that has yet to materialize, it is not crazy to think that one or more of them might go bankrupt. I am not here to give investment advice, and so I will not speak to the probability of this happening. The important point, from a social point of view, is that the foundation upon which AI models are being built will continue to exist—and to grow.

It’s Tuesday, August 4. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Audrey Fahlberg on whether Max Miller will resign. Joe Nocera on the 25-year-old who lost $35 billion. Aidan Stretch on what he saw in Ceuta. And much more.

But first: a turning tide on legal weed.

New government data shows an extraordinary change in America’s preferred vices: For the first time ever, more Americans now use marijuana daily than cigarettes or alcohol.

Where I live, in New York, this is not surprising. I smell it on every block. I watch dispensaries open faster than Blockbusters used to close. And I have friends who smoke nearly every night (as I used to).

Meanwhile, America is souring on weed. As rates of heavy use keep climbing, so does the evidence of what that heavy use does to people. Earlier this year the New York Times editorial board, once a champion of legalization, ran a piece conceding that America “has a marijuana problem.” Elton John even called legalization “one of the greatest mistakes of all time.”

Buried in that grim data, though, is a detail almost nobody caught—except Charles Fain Lehman, who has spent years covering drug policy. It sheds light on why legalization might not last: because a silent majority of Americans might lose patience with the legalization push. Massachusetts will vote this fall on a measure to repeal legal weed, a campaign I reported on earlier this year. It’s the first test of Charles’s theory, and it won’t be the last.

—Josh Code

• President Trump tore into Jeanine Pirro on Monday over her decision to drop vandalism charges against a former Olympic canoeist accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, telling reporters in the Oval Office that the U.S. attorney “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.” Trump repeatedly dodged questions about whether Pirro—a longtime ally—will keep the job he handpicked her for.

• After threatening over the weekend to “obliterate” Iranian power plants, Trump once again pulled back from a major escalation in the five-month-old war, saying Gulf leaders—including Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman—persuaded him to give diplomacy more time. On Monday he called the renewed talks Tehran’s “last chance” to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

• Acting attorney general Todd Blanche formally rescinded the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund meant to compensate Trump allies who claim they were politically persecuted, clearing the way for his confirmation as attorney general. Republican senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, who had threatened to sink the nomination, said Monday they’ll now vote to advance it.

• Michigan Democrats head to the polls today to choose between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and Representative Haley Stevens in a Senate primary that has become a proxy war over the party’s future. Olivia Reingold was on the trail with Stevens this past weekend—read her dispatch on the Senate race the whole country is watching.

• The Democrats’ reckoning with their 2024 defeat took another turn Monday when Paul Rivera, author of an election postmortem, released what he calls a missing chapter—one that questions Joe Biden’s decision to seek reelection and blames a consultant class that has grown “generationally wealthy off politics.” Rivera says he hand-delivered the chapter to DNC chairman Ken Martin in January; Martin insists he never saw it.

• Twenty-five states sued the Trump administration Monday over its newest round of tariffs, arguing that the double-digit duties on 59 countries and the EU—nominally punishment for forced-labor practices—are really a work-around for the sweeping import taxes the Supreme Court struck down in February. The new levies kicked in just as Trump’s temporary post-ruling tariffs expired.

• The 2027 Met Gala has its first controversy nine months out: The Costume Institute’s spring exhibit will honor John Galliano, the designer fired from Dior in 2011 and convicted in France over antisemitic rants. The Met says the show will confront that history head-on rather than offer a tidy redemption arc.

Yuri Fedorenko has spent four years turning a volunteer rifle company into the 429th “Achilles” Brigade, one of the most lethal units in Ukraine’s Defense Forces. Today, he joins School of War to discuss how the battlefield has evolved since Russia’s full-scale invasion: improvising with commercial drones in 2022, scaling a unit that now hunts targets …

A nasty and long-running child custody dispute involving Ohio GOP congressman Max Miller and his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, took a new turn over the weekend when the congressman’s former father-in-law, Senator Bernie Moreno, also of Ohio, broke his silence on the dispute and said he believes Miller “should not serve” in Congress.

“As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help. He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter,” Moreno, a first-term senator and former car dealer, wrote in a Sunday morning statement. “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives. I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.”

Child custody battles are often ugly, and this case is certainly no exception. Emily Moreno alleged multiple instances of abuse by her ex-husband, including that he held a gun to her head and threw scalding hot water on her, and has said that his history of alleged violence meant she couldn’t rule out that their daughter suffered a fractured clavicle under his care. No criminal charges were filed in relation to any of these incidents. The dispute grew nastier in March, when Moreno filed a request in court to reopen their child’s custody agreement.

Miller has flatly denied all allegations that he committed domestic abuse against his ex-wife and child, and filed a defamation suit against Moreno in May. He has alleged that she is a liar and has untreated bipolar disorder, a claim her lawyer has disputed.