It’s Thursday, June 26. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Will SALT sink the Big Beautiful Bill? How much damage did the U.S. and Israel really do to Iran’s nuclear program? Reihan Salam on the forces that explain Mamdani’s win; a moral panic about Trump and LGBT youth; and much more.
But first: Can San Francisco’s new mayor turn the city around?
On Tuesday, a 33-year-old Democratic socialist became New York City’s mayor-in-waiting. San Francisco, which has seen this Shakespearean tragicomedy many times, is watching and wondering.
If ever there were a great American city that had experimented with radical chic—open-air drugs sites? Check; Defund the police? Hell yes—it’s fog town, which has long imagined itself at the progressive vanguard.
But at the very moment New York is apparently embracing Zohran Mamdani’s radical chic, San Francisco is going in the other direction. The city by the bay has a new mayor, Daniel Lurie, who was effectively elected to clean up this failed experiment in extreme progressivism. San Francisco is saying, “Enough with the hippies, the ideologues, the performers. We want what works.”
But can Lurie make his brand of “commonsense” Democratic politics work in such a progressive city? That’s the question at the heart of my profile of San Francisco’s new mayor.
—Peter Savodnik
Making Sense of Mamdani |
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We know the how of Zohran Mamdani’s unlikely victory: a powerful, energetic campaign. But Reihan Salam answers the more important question: why? What persuaded so many New Yorkers to vote for a self described socialist as their next mayor? Whether you’re hoping for a Havana-on-the-Hudson or dreading it, you need to understand the hopes, anxieties, and resentments driving Zohran Mamdani’s coalition. | | |
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Was Iran’s Nuclear Program ‘Obliterated’—or Just Set Back a Few Months? |
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Last weekend, the world watched as President Trump sent B-2 bombers into Iran, reconfiguring the world order in a single night. But now that the dust has settled on the war against Iran, one question remains: How much have the strikes set back Iran’s nuclear program? That’s the question intelligence agencies all over the world are racing to answer, and the one Jay Solomon reports on today. | | |
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Press 3 for Moral Panic |
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According to the media and prominent Democrats, the Trump administration has shut down a suicide hotline for LGBT youth. It would be a disturbing story—if it were true. | | |
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Congress, Please Do Not Pass the SALT Deduction |
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Republican lawmakers are running out of time to meet Trump’s July 4 deadline to pass the Big Beautiful Bill. And the biggest obstacle is SALT—a provision for wealthy blue-state voters who want help paying their property taxes. Will a subsidy for the wealthy sink the whole thing? | | |
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