By The Free Press | Created at 2025-03-17 10:08:37 | Updated at 2025-03-17 17:56:27
7 hours ago
Produced by ElevenLabs using AI narration
It’s Monday, March 17. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: Andrew Shulz’s advice for Dems, Jews, and comics. Trump attacks the Houthis. Young conservatives look for love. And more.
But first: Americans don’t get the trade war. That’s a big problem for Trump.
It’s safe to say President Trump’s trade war isn’t going very well. The administration’s sweeping and chaotic new tariff regime has caused the stock market to tank. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent echoed the words of the president when he conceded the possibility of a coming recession.
Is it time for President Trump to call a ceasefire?
Christopher Caldwell says no—but it’s time for a better strategy. In his newest piece for The Free Press, Caldwell explains how the economic order of the Clinton administration turned America into an exporter of debt—and not much else. But Caldwell says that this, and other trade injustices, have not been properly explained to the public. Therefore, voters increasingly see the trade war as pointless, capricious, and damaging to their bottom lines.
“The problem with trade policy is that injustices can be both glaringly evident and tedious to explain,” Caldwell writes. “Yet explain them Trump must, and in a way that will be entertaining on a television screen. If he cannot engage the public in the trade war that is turning into the biggest debacle of his second term, he will have a hard time persisting.”
Read Caldwell’s piece: “Trump Has a Point on Trade. But He Is Losing the Argument.”
Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson, meanwhile, makes a forceful argument against Trump’s tariffs, saying they could be “calamitous” for America.
“What few Trump voters appreciated last year was that they were voting not just for lower inflation and higher border security but for a radical project to turn back the economic clock,” Niall writes.
Read his piece, “A User’s Guide to Wrecking the Global Financial System.”
Diversity, Equity, and. . . Hypocrisy?
Hyatt Hotel heir and Democratic Illinois governor JB Pritzker has described Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion as an attempt to “tear down” civil rights. Billionaire Pritzker, who has promoted DEI policies in office, is now setting himself up as a leader of the Trump Resistance.
But is JB practicing what he preaches?
In a new report, Free Press reporter Gabe Kaminsky found that despite Pritzker’s public defense of DEI, the family foundation set up by the governor and his wife—and entirely financed by the couple—recently scrubbed a number of DEI references from its website. Also disappeared from the site: a document detailing the foundation’s “ongoing journey” to advance the cause.
Read Gabe’s latest scoop: “JB Pritzker Wants to Lead the Trump Resistance. But Is He Turning His Back on DEI?”
WATCH: Andrew Schulz Has Advice for Dems, Jews, and Comics
We last spoke to comedian Andrew Schulz three years ago, right after he lost a deal with Amazon because he wouldn’t censor his jokes. Now he’s back, guns blazing and shooting blanks. In the newest episode of Honestly, Andrew and Bari discuss the taboo topic of male infertility, his 90-minute interview with Trump, and how comedy is finally getting its lewd back.
Listen to the podcast below, and follow Honestly on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or, you can watch the video on our site.
WATCH: “I’ve Lost 23 Relatives. We All Might Be Killed.”
Between March 6 and 10, Syria witnessed its largest massacre since the ouster of Bashar al-Assad. In just four days, more than 800 people, mostly civilians, were killed on the country’s northeast coast. Tucker Carlson falsely claimed Christians had been slaughtered—an assertion denied by Syrian Christian leaders themselves.
But while Christians weren’t massacred, another religious minority was.
Through our partnership with the Center for Peace Communications (CPC), The Free Press has obtained exclusive footage and spoken to survivors, eyewitnesses, and analysts to piece together what actually happened. “So far, I’ve lost 23 relatives,” one man said, choking back tears. “We don’t know what to say. We all might be killed.”
Click here to watch Tanya Lukyanova’s exclusive report on the massacre in Syria.
Date Night at Trump Tower
A girl who hides her MAGA hats in the closet. A pro-life activist who follows Andrew Tate and hasn’t had a date since high school. An old man with a very ornate cane. These are just some of the many characters our reporter Maya Sulkin met last week at a date night event for young conservatives at Trump Tower.
Nearly every month the app “Date Right”—a conservative alternative to Tinder—hosts events like this one for around $90 a pop. Dressed to the nines and checking crypto prices on their phones, America’s young right-wingers are feeling themselves. But are they finding love?
Read Maya’s piece “Right Young Things: A Night Out with the MAGA Kids” to find out.
And now. . . the Good News! Pope Francis has been photographed for the first time since his hospitalization for double pneumonia on Valentine’s Day. Sunday’s image shows the 88-year-old pope praying silently in a wheelchair after celebrating the Eucharist at a private chapel at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital—after a five-week battle that had millions praying for his return to good health. Although he has shown improvement in his condition, he is still too ill to be released, the Vatican said Saturday.
Trump ordered air strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels Saturday, while promising to hold Tehran “fully accountable” for their actions. The group, which controls large swaths of war-torn Yemen, has repeatedly attacked ships from Western countries and Israel crossing through the Red Sea. The Houthis said at least 31 people had been killed in the strikes; Trump’s national security adviser confirmed Sunday that “multiple” Houthi leaders had been successfully targeted.
A horrific cross-country storm left at least 37 people dead over the weekend. More than a dozen were killed in dust storms and wildfires that ripped through Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the same storm caused tornados that killed 12 people in Missouri, and three in Alabama.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order seeking to dismantle seven federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees outlets like Voice of America. Other scuttled agencies include the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness; the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, an agency that focuses on resolving labor disputes; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; and others.
In direct defiance of a federal judge’s ruling, the Trump administration has flown 250-plus alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador, where they will be held in a notorious mega-prison. The deportations come just hours after a U.S. district court judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from invoking the eighteenth-century Alien Enemies Act to remove the alleged gang members without a formal hearing. The Trump administration decided the ruling did not apply because the planes were “outside U.S. airspace.”
An “extermination site” complete with cremation ovens and human remains was found in Mexico last week on a ranch run by the New Generation Jalisco Cartel. It is unclear how many bodies are on the site, but officials have recovered more than 700 personal items including hundreds of pairs of shoes, plus clothing and children’s toys.
Take that, Kenyans: Matt Richtman won the 40th annual Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday, becoming the first American man to snag first place in 31 years. Kenyans have won the men’s race 22 times since 1999; Ethiopians four times in the same period. Meanwhile, Kenyans placed second and third in L.A. this year.
On Saturday, self-proclaimed Nazi Kanye West debuted new music featuring accused sex-trafficker Diddy and his own daughter, 11-year-old North West. He then deleted the track one day later after his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, served him legal paperwork, according to texts Kanye released. The texts also reveal that Kim had their daughter’s name trademarked at birth. Read my piece on why Kanye needs a conservatorship—the case grows stronger every day!
