By The Free Press | Created at 2026-08-04 10:29:27 | Updated at 2026-08-05 04:18:31
18 hours ago
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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
Audrey Fahlberg • U.S. Politics
It’s not every day that a sitting senator declares a sitting congressman in his party unfit to serve—rarer still when the congressman was once his son-in-law. But that’s where things stand after Bernie Moreno broke his long silence on the custody dispute between Representative Max Miller and Miller’s ex-wife, Moreno’s daughter Emily, saying Miller “should not serve” in Congress. Audrey Fahlberg reports on what finally made Moreno speak up, why some Trump allies are pushing Miller to abandon his reelection bid, and why the president himself—an ally of both men—is staying neutral.
Seth M. Siegel • U.S. Politics
It sounds like the stuff of an airport thriller—last week more than 30 American water systems were targeted in a suspected Iranian cyberattack. The strike was thwarted, but it is a warning of what could soon happen, says Seth M. Siegel, who literally wrote the book on the safety of America’s drinking water. Read Seth on how we got here—and how to avoid catastrophe.
Joe Nocera • Tech and Business
How does a 25-year-old wunderkind investor lose $35 billion percent in a single month? Ask Leopold Aschenbrenner, whose hedge fund Situational Awareness bet everything on the AI revolution—going long on the winners and shorting the software companies he was sure it would destroy. Joe Nocera has covered bubbles, manias, and genius investors for decades. Read his column on where Aschenbrenner went wrong—and how he could bounce back.
Aidan Stretch • International
“I saw online, it said Spain has opened the door.” That’s what one Moroccan migrant told Aidan Stretch on the streets of Ceuta, the Spanish exclave where videos last week showed thousands of men flooding the shores in what looked like a stampede. Aidan’s dispatch captures both sides of the rush: the men who swam for the border on the strength of a rumor, and the locals who watched their hometown turn upside down overnight.
MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS
THE NEWS
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.
