It’s Tuesday, October 15, and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today we lead not with the election or war, but with a man-made miracle in Texas.
Every once in a while—but especially in the middle of election season—it’s important to look up and focus on what really matters. Today, we mean that literally.
In fifty years’ time, I doubt we will talk about the strength of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s respective ground games, or California’s attempts to “Trump-proof” their climate policies, or Trump’s rants about Republican donors. (All of these stories were on page one of yesterday’s New York Times.) There is, however, a chance that, come 2074, people will tell their grandchildren about something that wasn’t on the front page of the Times, and that’s what SpaceX’s engineers pulled off a day earlier in Boca Chica, Texas, when they launched the largest rocket in human history to the edge of space and then steered it back to Earth where, somehow, this skyscraper-size hunk of metal was caught in the “chopstick” arms of a giant tower.
The sheer improbability of what SpaceX achieved was best captured not by footage from the company’s own slick video feed—but on an iPhone in the crowd a few miles away (included here with thanks to Shaun Maguire):
It’s a surreal sight, even on video. And Boca Chica is a surreal place. When I traveled there in late 2020, I made it to the end of a quiet road so close to Mexico I had to pass through border patrol checkpoints, and found a once-sleepy collection of small ranch homes in the process of conversion into a spaceport for interplanetary travel. Back then, the fanciful plans I heard about sounded like a far-off fantasy. But in just four years, many of them have become reality. (That fact should give pause to anyone who dismisses the other plans of SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk—like a manned flight to Mars—as the stuff of science fiction.)
You don’t need to be a space obsessive to be excited by this. Amid what sometimes feels like a relentless barrage of cynicism and doomsaying—including, ironically, from Elon Musk himself—the most ambitious project of the most ambitious private company on the planet is working, and pushing the boundaries of what humankind can do.
The author of the first of three pieces from The Free Press on the man-made miracle in South Texas is someone who has always been fascinated by space—and SpaceX. So when he heard that the rocket company would be attempting to launch and then catch its gargantuan Starship booster on Sunday, he knew one thing: “I sure as shit wasn’t going to miss this.”
But Tim Urban, author of the incredible blog Wait But Why, didn’t make the journey on his own. He took his 19-month-old daughter with him. Why? Because in a world filled with pessimism and pettiness he wanted to expose her to some “rocket launch emotion.”
Read Tim’s full account: “Why I Brought My Toddler to Watch SpaceX’s Flying Skyscraper.”
Our second piece on the Starship success is by Free Press columnist Katherine Boyle. What she memorably describes as “the fall of the century” was, according to Katherine, a victory for America.
“While America faces swifter competition from China in a host of manufacturing domains, space is now an American empire—as long as U.S. government regulators allow SpaceX to continue to thrive,” she writes. “If this sounds too hyperbolic, let me repeat myself: There is no space or defense mission that is not reliant on SpaceX.”
Read Katherine’s full essay: “The Fall of the Century.”
Last but not least, we bring you an essay by the historian Victor Davis Hanson on why we need more Renaissance people. For Victor, there’s no better example of a contemporary Renaissance figure than Elon Musk. And not in spite of, but in part because of, all the controversy that surrounds him.
“Renaissance people often live controversial lives and receive 360-degree incoming criticism,” Victor writes. He argues that because such a figure is “not perfect in every discipline he masters, we damn him for too much breadth and not enough depth—a dabbler rather than an expert—failing to realize that his successes in most genres he masters and redefines is precisely because he brings a vast corpus of unique insights and experience to his work that narrower specialists lack.” In other words: You can’t have Musk the genius rocket man without Musk the inveterate social media user. They are one and the same. (That’s what I’ll tell myself the next time I waste half an hour on X.)
Read Victor Davis Hanson’s piece: “We Are in Need of Renaissance People.”
Okay, time to bring things back down to Earth. It’s only 21 days till Election Day, so now we bring you two political offerings.
First, Ben Kawaller talks race on the latest Swing State Debate:
For this week’s episode of Swing State Debates, Ben Kawaller travels to Wisconsin to talk about race and racism. Race. . . in Wisconsin? Yes, because Milwaukee—where Ben held this week’s conversation—is one of the most segregated cities in America. It is a city where even if you don’t believe America is a structurally racist country, it’s hard to disregard the effects of an unequal past.
But even in a discussion as contentious as this one, Ben’s debaters surprised him. Rather than ending up in a brawl, his panel concluded their conversation with a hug. As Ben writes, “More than any other discussion I hosted, this race talk reminded me of what makes America great.”
For Ben’s accompanying piece, click here. And to catch up with the other Swing State Debates, click here.
And on the latest episode of Honestly: The Dems Voting for Trump
A few weeks ago on Honestly, Bari spoke to Sarah Longwell and David French, two conservatives who will be voting for Kamala Harris next month. Today’s episode features three people traveling in the opposite direction. Each of them have spent their lives identifying as liberal or progressive. And each of them—for their own reasons—is planning to do the unimaginable: Vote for Donald Trump.
Tech venture capitalist Shaun Maguire says the Biden administration’s disastrous foreign policy is why he’s backing Trump. Lifelong progressive Maud Maron, who once worked for former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver, says the Democratic Party’s fixation on race over merit has pushed her to the right. And Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent graduate of Harvard who once supported Bernie Sanders, says the antisemitism he experienced on campus has made him see the left in a new light.
To listen to Bari talk to these three former Democrats about how they became so disaffected, how they contend with Trump’s questionable character, and much more, hit the play button below, or catch the conversation on the Honestly feed wherever you get your podcasts.
Whole sections of Kamala Harris’s 2009 book, Smart on Crime, appear to have been lifted from other sources without attribution, reports Christopher Rufo. He offers some examples on his Substack and they certainly look a lot like plagiarism. No wonder “plagiarism hunter” Stefan Weber tells Rufo that the book, which Harris co-authored with Joan O’C Hamilton, contains more than a dozen “vicious plagiarism fragments.” How did The New York Times report on the revelations that a presidential candidate might have plagiarized? Their headline: “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book.” But of course.
Kamala Harris will be interviewed by Fox News’ Bret Baier on Wednesday evening, the cable news channel announced yesterday. It promises to be the toughest interview Harris has agreed to so far (tougher even than Stephen Colbert!). The move suggests Harris feels she needs to take some risks. (And, Madame Vice President, if you’re open to proper interviews, it’s not too late to schedule that Honestly interview. Drop us a line: tips@thefp.com.)
Four Israeli soldiers were killed and more than 60 people were injured after Hezbollah launched a drone strike on an army base in northern Israel. The attack, the bloodiest on Israel’s soil since October 7, was not anticipated by Israel’s air defense system, which is better suited to detecting rockets and missiles.
On Saturday, an official with the U.S. Forest Service emailed all federal responders with a warning to abandon their recovery efforts in Rutherford County, NC, due to FEMA alerts about “trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA,” reports The Washington Post. The Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office said a lone man armed with a handgun and rifle was arrested on Saturday night. FEMA workers returned to their posts on Sunday, but it sure would be nice if emergency response efforts weren’t interrupted by civil war LARPing.
On Monday, China sent a record 125 aircraft, an aircraft carrier, and ships to surround Taiwan in aggressive military exercises. China announced its actions were “a resolute punishment” for Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te’s remarks last week, in which he pledged to “resist annexation or encroachment.”
Republicans hoping for a big Senate win this November may be disappointed. According to an internal polling memo obtained by Politico, only one GOP candidate is apace with Trump in battleground states. Republicans are ahead in Montana, and are catching up to Democrats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But Michigan and Maryland are headed in the wrong direction. They’re still behind in Ohio, GOP senator Ted Cruz is up by just one point in Texas, and Nebraska is “a serious trouble-spot,” according to the memo.
“Start protecting Jewish students,” two Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to the FBI obtained by the New York Post. “Rarely has the FBI had such public and obvious evidence of potentially imminent violence,” wrote Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), citing statements from Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). Last Tuesday, CUAD said: “In the face of violence from the oppressor equipped with the most lethal military force on the planet, where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”
President Biden quietly instructed his National Security Council to make it clear to Iran that if they try to kill Donald Trump, it’s an act of war. U.S. intelligence officials have warned that Tehran’s threats to the former president have “heightened in the past few months” and are “extraordinarily serious.”
Inspired by a social media trend of people feeding each other food, Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer tried promoting the CHIPS Act by placing a Dorito directly into the mouth of Liz Plank, a progressive podcaster, as she knelt on the floor. (Chips, get it?) At best, the stunt was bizarre. But some Catholics assumed it to be a blasphemous reference to holy communion. “Over 25 years in public service, I would never do something to denigrate someone’s faith,” Whitmer said in a statement. Pro tip: If your attempt to “raise awareness” for semiconductor supply funding ends with Catholics holding a “Rosary Rally” outside your home, you’ve failed.
Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman.
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