The Free Press

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.

Spencer Pratt’s campaign for mayor of Los Angeles ended with a losing third-place finish in the nonpartisan primary earlier this month.

His campaign was confined to social media, which meant it probably drew energy mostly from people who don’t vote in Los Angeles. It also connected with President Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters in ways that were predictably noxious to many LA voters. I went to a Pratt open house the Sunday before the election and found a small crowd. He left without addressing it.

I was skeptical he could make an effective mayor, and I never thought he could win the citywide election in November.

But Angelenos may miss him because, I thought, he did one crucial thing well: He changed the conversation surrounding the complex tangle of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, methamphetamine, and fentanyl.

He aired it out. He spoke frankly about a reality that most Angelenos knew to be true.

I thought this was why his campaign gained traction.

Los Angeles has talked about homelessness in one way for so long.

The Free Press was founded on a commitment to honesty, intellectual curiosity, and moral clarity, and we can think of few people who better embody those values than Douglas Murray. That’s why Douglas was an early contributor to this publication, launching our Things Worth Remembering column. It’s also why we’re thrilled to announce that Douglas is returning to The Free Press, and with a bigger mandate.

You’ll see Douglas’s name in our pages every week, and he’ll be writing on some of the most urgent questions we face today.

For those encountering his name for the first time, Douglas is a British writer and reporter whose work has taken him to Iraq, North Korea, Nigeria, Ukraine, and Israel after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack. Douglas is such a valuable voice because he never loses sight of the stakes: the why behind the who, what, and where of the biggest stories in the world. Douglas pursues those stories with courage. He’s unafraid to draw lines between good and evil and is dogged in his pursuit of truth. Douglas is unyielding in his portrayal of the world as it really is.

He has spent three decades reporting from the front lines of the most important fights of our time. Starting this week, he’ll be doing so in our pages. The Free Press is now the primary home for Douglas’s writing, and his columns are exclusively for paying subscribers. If that’s not you, you’re in luck: Subscribe now and enjoy 20 percent off.

We couldn’t be more thrilled to have Douglas back. Be sure to read his note below.

—The Editors

Back in 2022 when Bari Weiss was creating The Free Press, she asked me to be one of its first columnists. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to become part of something that had swiftly moved from a Substack to an already unmissable, news-making publication. So, of course, I said yes.

I first met Bari when she was at The Wall Street Journal, had followed her work at The New York Times, and joined her at The Free Press in the certainty that whatever she turned her attention to next would blossom. And so it did. From its very beginning, The Free Press has been an indispensable addition to open discourse in the West, and a defender of the values that underpin that discourse: fearless curiosity, rigorous standards, and a ferocious aversion to censorship.

But four years ago I was already writing several political columns a week for other publications and wasn’t sure I had another one in me. Bari suggested I write one on topics far afield of politics. She proposed the idea of the Things Worth Remembering column—a series of short essays, each on a single text, that capture eternal values and insights.

Of all the columns I have written in the past 25 years, few have given me greater pleasure to write. The response of Free Press readers moved me deeply and—not for the first time—proved that Bari was onto something. For the two years that I wrote that column, I felt like I was in a wonderful, enthusiastic, deep dialogue with readers.

But then other things—principally wars—got in the way. I remained a very occasional contributor to The Free Press. Yet I remained an avid reader and admirer of this amazing, growing publication. And I never drifted far from the FP family. One of the highlights of my past year was coming onstage in New York at a live event to introduce Coleman Hughes (who was on the trombone) and Justice Amy Coney Barrett (who was not).

Now I find myself in the very happy position of being asked to return to The Free Press as a regular columnist on the broadest possible range of topics. Nothing could excite me more.

That’s because the assault on Western values has become even more withering in the past several years. Internal critics in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and across Europe threaten to dismantle the systems that created mass prosperity, and suppress the teaching of history in favor of new ideological fashions. External enemies in the Middle East, Asia, and around the world seek to wear down opposition to their oppressive social systems, and expand their own influence throughout the free world.

The breadth and depth of issues that The Free Press covers is something that most writers dream of being a part of. And so I am thrilled to rejoin the growing bank of writers who include many—even most—of the writers that I most admire. Back here, I hope to inform readers about world events and stay in the fight for the values we share.

A lot is going to happen in the coming years. I couldn’t be happier to be back at The Free Press and am ready to go through them with all of you.

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It’s Monday, June 15. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Tyler Cowen on what the Anthropic-Trump administration showdown is really about. Joe Nocera on why SpaceX stock went to the moon. And much more.

But first: Trump declares peace.

“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” So wrote President Donald Trump on Truth Social on Sunday evening.

According to the president, “This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole region.” The deal is really a memorandum of understanding to negotiate the terms of a lasting peace in the next 60 days. The agreement is set to be signed Friday, and while its terms have not been published, the fighting will stop and Iran will open the Strait of Hormuz.

“Ships of the World, start your engines,” wrote Trump. “Let the oil flow!”

The deal may be a welcome reprieve for the global economy—but what will it really entail? For an initial reaction to this important moment, we turn to Eli Lake. His advice: “Don’t break out the ticker tape just yet.”

Read his full analysis on an agreement he thinks does little more than “temporarily solve a problem Trump’s war helped create”:

Whether or not it delivers lasting peace—let alone peace on favorable terms to the U.S. and its allies—this agreement is undoubtedly a crucial moment in this conflict. We used the occasion to ask a range of analysts and thinkers a big-picture question: Has this war been worth it? To find out how Aaron MacLean, Elliott Abrams, Martin Gurri, Sohrab Ahmari, Michael Oren, Roya Hakakian, and Elliot Ackerman answered, click below:

With America’s 250th birthday just a few weeks away, we’re honoring some of the Great Americans who shaped it. Today, Mark Gimein remembers Edwin Land, the Polaroid founder who, as Mark writes, “was part scientist, part inventor, and part showman.” He lived by two mantras: “Never go to sleep with a hypothesis untested,” and “every problem can be solved with the things in the room at the time.”

• British Royal Marines seized a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the English Channel on Sunday—the first time Britain has acted alone to board one of the vessels Russia uses to secretly move fuel and dodge sanctions. The shadow fleet, which Britain says numbers more than 700 ships, carries about three-quarters of Russia’s sanctioned oil and serves as a key economic lifeline for the Kremlin.

• Trump endorsed Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia’s Republican Senate primary runoff yesterday, a blow to rival Derek Dooley, who has the backing of Governor Brian Kemp. Tuesday’s winner will take on Democratic senator Jon Ossoff in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country.

• Workers removed Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center’s facade early Saturday morning, complying with a court order requiring the change after a federal judge ruled that only Congress, not the center’s board, has the authority to rename the landmark.

• Senator Mitch McConnell was hospitalized on Sunday, his spokesperson confirmed, offering no details about his condition beyond saying he is “receiving excellent care.” The 84-year-old Kentucky Republican stepped down from Senate leadership in January and has had a series of health scares in recent years.

• Swiss voters rejected a referendum Sunday that would have capped the country’s population at 10 million and potentially forced the government to pull out of a free movement treaty with the European Union. The measure, backed by the country’s largest right-wing party, failed by about 10 percentage points—a wider margin than most analysts expected.

• Trump held separate calls with Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of this week’s G7 summit in France. Putin suggested Zelensky come to Moscow for a meeting—an offer the Ukrainian president has repeatedly turned down—while Zelensky said he and Trump agreed to continue peace discussions in person at the G7.

• All 12 people aboard a skydiving plane were presumed dead after it crashed shortly after takeoff Sunday near Butler, Missouri. The aircraft failed to gain altitude, made a sharp turn, and went down along a highway. Some family members of those on board witnessed the crash.