The Free Press

James Diggle, emeritus professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, and John Underhill, professor of geoscience and energy transition at the University of Aberdeen, join School of War to discuss their decades-long search for the real Ithaca of Homer’s Odyssey. Based on their recent Antigone journal article, “In Search of Ithaca,” they explain w…

Is porn empowering? Is it a scourge? And either way: Was it better in the ’80s?

In this episode, Suzy Weiss and Dan Ahdoot sit down with writer Allie Rowbottom to dig into her new novel, Lovers XXX, set in the cocaine-fueled “golden age” of Los Angeles’s adult film industry. They discuss the evolution of pornography from VHS tapes to OnlyFans and why fem…

Beefy muscles, assertiveness, ambition, dominance, wealth. These are the calling cards of a supposed “high-T man”—shorthand for high-testosterone males. And apparently, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is concerned there aren’t enough of them in the American military.

Hegseth announced on Wednesday that service members over age 30 will undergo an annual screening for their testosterone levels. Those who don’t meet the mark could be given the option to take testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).

“The modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting. It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness. And by addressing these health markers early, we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X yesterday titled “The High-T Department of War.”

The move was met with confusion and disdain. Wired called the plan a “junk science fever dream,” The New York Times said Hegseth “sought to cultivate an image as a manosphere-friendly leader,” and in an effort to roast Hegseth, many equated testosterone treatments for service members to “gender-affirming care.” On the other side, the backlash was pinned on “Hegseth Derangement Syndrome”—a play on Trump Derangement Syndrome, in which individuals have an irrational and reflexive hostility to Trump.

Vice President J.D. Vance has found the real culprit behind the collapse of the Trump administration’s peace deal with Iran, for which he led negotiations. It’s not the lying mullahs who spent the past 40 years murdering Americans and lying to credulous Democrats about their peaceful intentions. It’s not the lying Iranian negotiators who told Vance and other U.S. negotiators that they were signing a deal in good faith, only to fire on commercial ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz a week later. Certainly, it wasn’t Vance himself, who told CNN’s Jake Tapper how “cool” it was to be making progress in talks with Iran’s leaders.

No, the real culprit behind the collapse of Vance’s deal with Iran is conniving Israelis who used their shekels to pay influencers to character-assassinate the vice president, all for the crime of seeking peace.

This is what the vice president implied Wednesday on The Joe Rogan Experience. Vance described the opposition he has faced for brokering what many Americans, including myself, saw as a humiliating deal that suspended U.S. military operations without securing any of the aims President Donald Trump laid out at the beginning of the war, such as a permanent end to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. The language of the deal also made clear the Iranians would not honor their pledge to let ships pass through the strait, which was their only major concession in the agreement. It was clear from the get-go that this “deal” was a capitulation by the greatest superpower ever to exist to a country with no navy and barely any economy. The agreement was worse than the 2015 agreement with Iran struck by President Barack Obama—which Vance spent years mocking—because unlike the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it made clear that Iran now believes it has total control over the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil travels. We decimated them militarily, but they won—thanks to the terms Vance helped hammer out.

Let’s start from a position of charity: J.D. Vance is in an extremely difficult position. It is widely assumed that he opposed the U.S. war on Iran—correctly, in my view—but when President Donald Trump chose to launch it, Vance was fully on board. Who can blame him for that? Vice presidents don’t usually take public stands against their presidents.

His dilemma worsened when Trump’s war blew up in his face, thanks to Iran’s asymmetrical warfare—not merely seizing the Strait of Hormuz but a willingness to go for the desalination and gas-refining jugulars of Arab Gulf States, and accept the catastrophic suffering of its own population. The president named Vance chief negotiator to try to extract the U.S. from the mess Trump made.

The June 17 memorandum of understanding (MOU) negotiated by Vance collapsed under repeated Iranian violations of its terms—which the Islamic Republic had never quite accepted in the first place, which became unignorable after Iran attacked Persian Gulf shipping on July 6. In short, Iran made a fool of both the United States and the vice president—but then, given the sinister nature of the Iranian regime, that was always in the cards.

Trump himself shrugged at the recent NATO summit, calling further negotiations “a waste of time.”

Meanwhile, the midterms are approaching, Trump’s approval ratings are in the basement, and the administration is increasingly blamed by the right, which accuses Trump of betraying voters who believed he would keep America out of “forever wars.” What is Vance, assumed to be looking forward to running as Trump’s successor in 2028, to do?

Surveying the dire political and geopolitical landscape, the vice president has decided that the real villain in all this is Israel.

Dear Abigail,

Five years ago, my wife blindsided me with the news that she was no longer happy in our marriage and wanted to move toward divorce. We’d been together for 16 years, married for seven, and I had thought—everyone who knew us had thought!—that we had an idyllic relationship. We spoke kindly to each other and had no conflict. We were very much on the same page politically and ethically. We had two children together, who were then 5 and 2 years old.

I was in shock. We did some therapy but it was clear that her mind was made up, and we separated within a few months, finalizing our divorce agreement later that year. I went through all the emotions. Sadness, of course, for myself and for our kids. Guilt, that I’d not seen this coming or been a better partner that could have held her love. And then the rage.

I moved on quickly, seeking solace in meaningless sexual dalliances. Fortunately for me, one of those casual affairs turned out to be the love of my life, a man of integrity who is his authentic self and who loves my children as though they were his own. I have learned that one can and should argue with one’s partner about all manner of things. I have learned that I am lovable and resilient. In love, I am happy.

But the rage, Abigail. I can’t let go of it. I’m angry for myself and I’m angrier for my daughters. Because I share custody with my ex-wife, I must interact with her constantly. I used to think she hung the moon. Now I think she’s a weak, pathetic coward who has prioritized self-indulgent therapeutic bullshit over what’s best for the babies she chose to bring into the world. I disagree with her on so many issues now, and every parenting decision is like a committee meeting where I need to stay calm and neutral, but inside I seethe. I hate her.

How do I forgive a person who betrayed me and torpedoed our family? Why am I so furious over something that ended up leading me onto a path that has made me so fulfilled? How do I let go?

—Anna, 43

Anna,

Your ex-wife seems to think the two of you had a fender bender. Sure, there were children involved, but these things happen in life’s daily traffic. You exchange information and depart like adults.

From your perspective, you were the victim of a debilitating hit-and-run. Blindsided by the woman you married, who trampled your heart and broke up your family. You responded with hurt, dabbled in sexual adventurism, and found new love.

But there are other characters in this story whose perspective you nearly omit. What have your girls’ lives been like—as they went from ages 5 and 2 to 10 and 7? Formative years, while one foolish mother broke up their family for no real reason, and the other, still reeling, reenacted her college years with strangers. Even the love in which you find yourself now—exhilarating for you—requires them to absorb another adult, another reconfiguration of home, and another mother’s reinvention.

I don’t hear you worry over any of this. Instead you ask what to do with your rage, which is just your old obsession with your ex-wife in even less flattering clothes.

It’s Thursday, 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: Niall Ferguson on how Holocaust denial made a comeback. What the discourse around Lindsey Graham’s death reveals. Ro Khanna’s Israel struggle session. And much more.

But first: New York’s war on the future.

Data centers have shot to the center of American public life this year. From town meetings to the Senate floor, the debate over the physical infrastructure needed to power the AI revolution has become a political powder keg. Polls show that building them is an unpopular policy. And now politicians are acting on that public anger.

This week, New York became the first state in America to ban new data center construction. Governor Kathy Hochul sold the yearlong moratorium as a pause to protect the power supply and control energy costs. But Josh Wolfe, a venture capitalist focused on emerging technologies, argues that Hochul’s election-year gambit is a stunt that will fail her state.

AI, he argues, is just the latest technology that will benefit everyday Americans and level the playing field, giving people “with below-average means above-average superpowers they could never otherwise afford.” But we won’t get there without the construction of the essential physical infrastructure powering AI, which is the data center.

The case for data centers may not be politically fashionable right now. But Wolfe makes it forcefully, arguing that the biggest losers from Hochul’s policy will be the very people she claims to be protecting.

—The Editors

• Three of President Donald Trump’s nominees faced Senate confirmation hearings yesterday, with acting attorney general Todd Blanche defending his tenure at the Justice Department against accusations of weaponization, while intelligence director nominee Jay Clayton and pick to lead the CDC Dr. Erica Schwartz both fielded questions about their willingness to operate independently of the White House.

• The U.S. and Iran exchanged fire for the fifth consecutive day Wednesday, with the U.S. reimposing its naval blockade on Iranian ports and hitting dozens of targets along Iran’s southern coast—as Iran threatened to cut off all Middle Eastern energy exports. Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance told Joe Rogan that while he was never enthusiastic about the Iran war, it was ultimately “legal and ethical.”

• British prime minister Keir Starmer announced that he had reached “the end of my political journey” in the House of Commons on Wednesday. He then exchanged jokes and tributes with members of his own Labour Party and the Conservative opposition as he left the chamber. Starmer is expected to formally hand power over to former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham on Monday.

• Trump pushed back on his own administration’s decision to suspend most ICE traffic stops, urging agents to keep making them despite three deaths during immigration enforcement encounters in the past week—including two people shot by agents during car stops.

• The Ebola outbreak in the Congo is now the fastest-growing in history, with over 2,000 confirmed cases—including 754 deaths—reported Wednesday. The same day, workers at one of the country’s largest medical centers went on strike over unpaid wages and poor working conditions.

• Ukraine struck numerous Russian ships in the Sea of Azov this week, opening a new front in its campaign to disrupt supply lines into Crimea. The drone offensive follows Ukrainian strikes on the peninsula’s roads, railways, and fuel infrastructure as Kyiv tries to pressure Russia to end the war.

• Wildfire smoke from blazes in northern Minnesota and western Ontario is expected to blanket much of the Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic through Friday, potentially affecting around 100 million people with unhealthy air quality. Minnesota governor Tim Walz declared a peacetime emergency over the weekend and called in the National Guard as more than a dozen large fires continue to burn out of control.

• The Pentagon announced it will screen service members 30 and older for testosterone deficiency as part of their annual health assessments. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that if treatment is recommended, soldiers can opt in to testosterone replacement therapy. “By addressing these health markers early,” he said, “we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality.”

• Defending champions Argentina came back from a goal down to defeat England 2–1 in the World Cup semifinals. A Lionel Messi assist set up Lautaro Martinez’s stoppage-time goal to seal their spot in Sunday’s final against Spain, where an Argentina win would make them just the third nation in history to retain the World Cup.

Was Lindsey Graham gay? As the author of a book about the history of gay Washington, D.C., it’s a question I’ve been asked frequently for years, and even more so since his sudden death last weekend. The South Carolina Republican’s lifelong confirmed bachelorhood, vocal intonation, and Southern dandy demeanor (if not sartorial choices) prompted many to conclude that he was, as they say in that part of the country, “light in his loafers.” Graham’s repeated attestations to the contrary had zero effect on those invested in the narrative that he was. Only about the matter of J. Edgar Hoover’s rumored cross-dressing (for which there is some circumstantial but no direct evidence) am I questioned more.

Whenever I’ve been asked to speculate upon Graham’s sexuality—and speculate was all that I or anyone else could do—I always answered the question honestly.

Winston Churchill remarked in 1940 that an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile in the hopes that it will eat him last. On Tuesday, Rep. Ro Khanna proved the great man’s point yet again in an appearance on the Drop Site News podcast.

Like seemingly almost everything in American politics this year, the conversation was all about Gaza. The interview with one of the most pro-Hamas outlets in U.S. media should have been a victory lap for Khanna, who last week grabbed headlines for a stunt where he claimed he was detained by the Israel Defense Forces after local settlers pulled over his entourage in a once-restricted area of the West Bank.

Khanna has reinvented himself during the last year to curry favor with the populist fringe of his Democratic Party, devoting himself to the cause of releasing law enforcement files on Jeffrey Epstein and casting himself a defender of the forgotten working class. Once a proud supporter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Khanna is now one of the pro-Israel group’s leading opponents.

New York, birthplace of the power grid, the transistor’s commercial triumph, and the modern corporation, just became the first state in America to ban the future for at least a year.

This week, Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order imposing a moratorium on new data centers. She has sold the policy as a prudent pause to protect electricity bills, water, and the grid. “As data-center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” she said Tuesday. But strip away the press-release piety and you find something simpler, sadder, and short-sighted: pure political posturing.

Why sign this order now? Because the political winds shifted and Albany licked its finger. A recent Siena poll found that 46 percent of voters, squeezed by electric bills up nearly 68 percent since 2019, support a moratorium on data-center construction, and Hochul, facing a reelection battle this year, clearly thinks her anti-data-center stance is good politics.