It’s Friday, July 17. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Pete Hegseth’s plan for high-testosterone troops. Don’t believe what you read about Chinese electrical vehicles. Batya Ungar-Sargon on J.D. Vance’s strange tirade against Israel. The hunt for Odysseus’s hometown. And much more.
But first: Was President Donald Trump’s elections speech a “bombshell,” or bluster?
Before Trump’s prime-time speech Thursday night, the White House promised a bombshell revelation about election interference. Did the president deliver? Absolutely—if you take him at his word.
Trump described a vast, well-funded conspiracy by the Chinese government to sway the 2020 presidential election in the U.S., and he called the related data breach a “nightmare.” That includes theft of voter information, attempts to manipulate journalists, and even the manufacture of fake ballots.
And the president’s boldest claim is that Joe Biden’s administration saw some of the evidence for this, and chose to suppress it.
So should Americans be alarmed? Perhaps not just yet. As Eli Lake explains, the burden of proof lies with President Trump. And he’s made himself hard to trust on this particular issue.
Instead of brushing off Trump’s claims like much of the press did, Eli examines them in detail. Where exactly did the new revelations come from, and is there any reason to trust the intelligence behind them?
—Mene Ukueberuwa
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You Get Testosterone! You Get Testosterone! |
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has long bemoaned the lack of masculine verve in the U.S. armed forces, but as of this week, he’s doing something about it—or trying to. In a video announcement, he explained a plan to screen service members for the hormone and assist them in receiving testosterone replacement therapy. Yet some doctors have doubts about the proposal. So Rafaela Siewert set out to sort the facts from fiction, and find out if the troops really need a testosterone boost. | |
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Everything You’ve Read About Chinese Cars Is Wrong |
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American business writers are obsessed—almost suspiciously obsessed—with Chinese electric vehicles. So it’s worth examining the motivations behind the hype, writes Jack Baruth. Today, he reviews the curious phenomenon—from one almost-deadly test drive in a Chinese EV, to the influencers hawking the cars to an American audience. | |
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The Real Cause of J.D. Vance’s Failure in Iran |
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In an interview with Joe Rogan this week, Vice President J.D. Vance accused Israel of “manipulating” American public opinion in order to prolong the Iran war. Today, Batya Ungar-Sargon argues that Vance’s ire is less about foreign policy and much more about his own 2028 ambitions: “Vance seems to be seeking the approval of a very online, conspiratorial, and rather seedy faction of the far right, betting that its influence will rise and help power him to the presidency.” Will his pandering pay off? | |
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Daniel Mendelsohn: The Immortal Appeal of ‘The Odyssey’ |
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It’s no surprise that we’re still asking these questions millennia after the age of Homer. As the author and translator Daniel Mendelsohn wrote last week, “The Odyssey” will never cease to animate the Western imagination. | |
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