It’s Wednesday, October 2. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Eli Lake reports on the latest news out of Israel—and a region on the brink; the latest episode of Raising Parents with Emily Oster; and River Page on the “sundown towns” myth. But first, Tim Walz and J.D. Vance faced off in a rather civilized sparring.
Vance Wins a Weirdly Normal VP Debate
When Kamala Harris was picking her running mate this summer, it was Tim Walz’s characterization of J.D. Vance and Donald Trump as “weird” in a series of TV interviews that helped earn him his spot on the ticket. In the weeks that followed, Republicans turned the insult on the Minnesota governor, accusing him of being a bit of a weirdo himself. (Their pretty flimsy case is based on Walz’s sometimes exuberant body language.)
But last night’s debate between Vance and Walz was surprisingly, almost disconcertingly, normal.
What was the third and, almost surely, the final debate of this presidential race was a far cry from the previous two. The first ended Joe Biden’s career. The second was a bizarre, bad-tempered spectacle in which Trump lost his cool—and then just lost. Last night was a return to something more familiar.
On even some of the most contentious issues in American politics—including abortion and immigration—Vance and Walz clashed in ways that were serious, detailed, policy-focused, and even polite. (You did the Midwest proud, fellas!) I’m pretty sure I heard the words “I agree with. . . ” or “I actually agree with. . . ” multiple times. “I’ve enjoyed this debate,” said Walz toward the end of proceedings. “There’s been a lot of commonality.” Okay, maybe it was getting a little too normal.
Like the previous two debates, this one had a clear winner: J.D. Vance. The 40-year-old Ohio senator arrived at the CBS studio with a clear plan: to tie Kamala Harris to the status quo and contrast the Biden-Harris years with the Trump years, especially on the economy and foreign policy. That has always been Trump’s best pitch to voters, albeit one the former president has been unable to stick to. Last night, Vance showed the discipline and clarity his boss lacks—and he reminded those watching of the political talent that got him to that stage.
As for Walz, he and his party had managed expectations ahead of the debate by admitting that the Minnesota governor was “nervous.” And that wasn’t spin. Walz seemed unsure both of himself and the message he wanted to communicate to voters. But if Walz seemed muddled, then so does the Harris campaign. Does she want to capitalize on the purported success of the Biden administration, or be the change candidate? She doesn’t seem to know, so it’s no surprise Walz doesn’t either.
Walz’s worst moment came when he was asked about a lie he was recently caught in over his trips to China and Hong Kong. (Walz said he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was actually in Nebraska.) “I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said during a long, rambling answer.
When Harris interviewed Walz for the spot on the ticket, he reportedly warned her that he was a “bad debater.” Based on last night’s performance, that was not false modesty.
This is the point in the analysis where I am duty-bound to inform you that VP debates don’t matter very much. They’re the equivalent of the bonus material on the second DVD that only superfans watch. And most of those superfans have probably made up their minds by now.
But in an abbreviated and close contest, Harris’s one big decision was her running mate. Watching Walz on the debate stage last night, it was hard to see how, exactly, Harris’s choice has boosted her chances of victory in November. And if anyone in the Pennsylvania governor’s residence was watching, they were probably wondering the same thing.
Eli Lake: Let Israel Win the War Iran Started
Yesterday evening, Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. Sirens rang out across the country, and practically everyone headed into bomb shelters.
The attack was met with an impressive determination to keep calm and carry on. One couple didn’t let the attack derail their wedding, continuing celebrations in a shelter. According to the Israeli military, the majority of rockets were intercepted and there were no casualties in Israel, though there were reports of a Palestinian man killed by shrapnel from a missile that landed near Jericho, in the West Bank. Earlier on Tuesday, gunmen killed six Israelis in a suspected terror attack in Tel Aviv.
“Iran made a big mistake tonight—and it will pay for it,” said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the missile barrage. The assault also prompted a vow of “severe consequences” for Tehran from White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (the same Jake Sullivan who, almost exactly a year ago, boasted of a “quiet” Middle East).
As we closed this newsletter late last night, one thing was clear: This is an extraordinarily dangerous moment, with Israel and Iran on the precipice of full-scale war.
How did we get here? The answer, argues Free Press columnist Eli Lake, is found not in Jerusalem or Tehran, but Washington. Since October 7, American support for Israel has been a “hug that comes with handcuffs,” writes Eli. And America’s efforts to restrain Israel have made the situation only more dangerous.
As for what comes next, Eli says that any hope of greater stability starts with the Biden administration dropping the discredited idea that it can deter Iran by handcuffing our closest and most important ally in the region.
Read Eli Lake’s full op-ed: “Let Israel Win the War Iran Started.”
For more on Iran’s strikes on Israel, the VP debate, and other stories in a busy news week, tune in this morning to the latest Free Press Live show. We’ll be broadcasting live on YouTube from our New York office at 9:30 a.m. ET. Hosts Bari Weiss, Michael Moynihan, and Batya Ungar-Sargon will be joined by Rep. Ritchie Torres plus writer and veteran Marine special intelligence leader Elliot Ackerman as well as journalist Haviv Gur, who’ll be calling in from Israel. Don’t miss it!
Listen Now: Raising Parents with Emily Oster, Episode Three
Listen up, moms and dads! Emily Oster is back with the latest episode in her new Free Press series, Raising Parents. Now that you know all about overparenting (week one) and discipline (week two), it’s time to talk diet. This week, Emily asks: Are we feeding our kids the wrong foods? The evidence suggests the answer is “yes.” Nearly 20 percent of American children and adolescents are obese, a 300 percent increase since the 1970s. Emily investigates why America’s childhood obesity rate is so high, why our efforts to lower it have failed, and what’s at stake if we fail to find a solution to this problem.
Listen to Episode Three of Raising Parents by hitting the play button below, and be sure to subscribe to the feed wherever you get your podcasts.
The Myth of “Sundown Towns”
With the death toll from Hurricane Helene passing 150 and communities across the southeast devastated by the storm, a bizarre conspiracy theory has bubbled up online: The idea that—as River Page puts it in his piece for The Free Press today—“the storm, guided by unseen, anti-racist spiritual forces, deliberately ravaged ‘sundown towns.’ ” Sundown towns were all-white municipalities where black people were threatened with violence if they didn’t leave before nightfall. Commenters suggested black ancestors or perhaps God himself punished the towns for their sins. Now that idea is obviously crazy—and believed only by the most nutso people on the internet. But, as River Page reports, the conspiracy theory has exposed a more widely held misconception: the idea that such places still exist.
Read River’s piece on how “Hurricane Helene Has Exposed an Insane Liberal Myth.”
American dockworkers are on strike for the first time in decades. Some 45,000 longshoremen across 36 U.S. ports say they want better wages and assurances about the threat of automation. Most already earn a six-figure salary. In 2020, more than half of 3,726 dockworkers at the Port of New York and New Jersey earned more than $150,000; one in five made over $250,000. But the International Longshoremen’s Association wants a 77 percent pay increase over six years, rejecting the offer of a 50 percent wage increase over the same period on the eve of the strike.
Rumor has it that Ken Chenault, former American Express CEO, could make an appearance in a future Harris administration. The Democratic donor, tipped as a possible Treasury secretary, ran Amex for nearly 20 years and was one of the few black CEOs of a major company. At his speech at the Democratic National Convention, he said: “Business requires stability and certainty.” Does politics?
Kamala Harris won’t say whether she would push to close private prisons as president—a move she supported when she ran for Senate in 2016. We doff our caps to Axios’s Alex Thompson, who, on what feels like a daily basis, politely asks the Harris campaign whether their candidate still supports various positions she advocated in the past. The campaign declines to comment, and most of the rest of the media ignores the story. Keep on trucking, Alex!
The IRS is charging late fees to Americans who have been illegally detained overseas. The agency says it lacks the legal authority to remove the charges—something that new legislation, introduced into the Senate, hopes to fix. If anything can command universal support on the Hill, surely it’s the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.
Students arrive at the top colleges in the country entirely unprepared to read books, according to dozens of concerned professors who spoke to The Atlantic. Part of the problem: High schools have stopped asking kids to read books in full. “In 1976, about 40 percent of high-school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11.5 percent who hadn’t read any. By 2022, those percentages had flipped.” We’re so screwed.
Speaking of idiot kids, the Columbia student who said “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists” in a video message earlier this year—and who also warned on social media that “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill”—is suing the school, claiming he was treated unfairly when he was suspended for his violent language. Khymani James, who was one of the leaders of the anti-Israel encampments on campus, said “The discrimination they’ve subjected me (& many others) to, in addition to cowering to billionaire donors and fascist politicians, has been disgusting.”
California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that bans private colleges and universities in the Golden State from considering a student’s family history of attending a school. “In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work,” Newsom said. If only he sang the same tune after the Supreme Court ruled last year that colleges can’t discriminate based on race.
On Tuesday, tech columnist Taylor Lorenz announced she’s leaving The Washington Post to join Substack, just weeks after she referred to President Biden as a “war criminal” in a private social media post. Lorenz, who said the photo had been doctored, hasn’t written for the Post since the incident and subsequent internal review. (At least four people confirmed the authenticity of her comments to NPR.) Lorenz promised her readers “more of what I love: helping people understand the world around them, inspiring them to build a better internet, holding power to account, and honestly, having a lot more fun!!” Not on the list: owning a mistake or telling the truth.
An 81-year-old man in Montana has been jailed for six months for illegally cloning sheep. Arthur “Jack” Schubarth imported sperm, tissue, and testicles from giant Marco Polo sheep in Kyrgyzstan to create a breed of his own he called the Montana Mountain King. The law says: “felony wildlife crimes.” I say: Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman.
To support The Free Press, become a paid subscriber today:
And if you’re enjoying The Front Page, consider forwarding it to someone else you think might like it.
our Comments
Use common sense here: disagree, debate, but don't be a .