It’s Tuesday, August 4. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Audrey Fahlberg on whether Max Miller will resign. Joe Nocera on the 25-year-old who lost $35 billion. Aidan Stretch on what he saw in Ceuta. And much more.
But first: a turning tide on legal weed.
New government data shows an extraordinary change in America’s preferred vices: For the first time ever, more Americans now use marijuana daily than cigarettes or alcohol.
Where I live, in New York, this is not surprising. I smell it on every block. I watch dispensaries open faster than Blockbusters used to close. And I have friends who smoke nearly every night (as I used to).
Meanwhile, America is souring on weed. As rates of heavy use keep climbing, so does the evidence of what that heavy use does to people. Earlier this year the New York Times editorial board, once a champion of legalization, ran a piece conceding that America “has a marijuana problem.” Elton John even called legalization “one of the greatest mistakes of all time.”
Buried in that grim data, though, is a detail almost nobody caught—except Charles Fain Lehman, who has spent years covering drug policy. It sheds light on why legalization might not last: because a silent majority of Americans might lose patience with the legalization push. Massachusetts will vote this fall on a measure to repeal legal weed, a campaign I reported on earlier this year. It’s the first test of Charles’s theory, and it won’t be the last.
—Josh Code
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Will Republicans Renounce Max Miller? |
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It’s not every day that a sitting senator declares a sitting congressman in his party unfit to serve—rarer still when the congressman was once his son-in-law. But that’s where things stand after Bernie Moreno broke his long silence on the custody dispute between Representative Max Miller and Miller’s ex-wife, Moreno’s daughter Emily, saying Miller “should not serve” in Congress. Audrey Fahlberg reports on what finally made Moreno speak up, why some Trump allies are pushing Miller to abandon his reelection bid, and why the president himself—an ally of both men—is staying neutral. | |
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America Is Not Prepared for a War on Our Water |
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It sounds like the stuff of an airport thriller—last week more than 30 American water systems were targeted in a suspected Iranian cyberattack. The strike was thwarted, but it is a warning of what could soon happen, says Seth M. Siegel, who literally wrote the book on the safety of America’s drinking water. Read Seth on how we got here—and how to avoid catastrophe. | |
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How to Lose $35 Billion |
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How does a 25-year-old wunderkind investor lose $35 billion percent in a single month? Ask Leopold Aschenbrenner, whose hedge fund Situational Awareness bet everything on the AI revolution—going long on the winners and shorting the software companies he was sure it would destroy. Joe Nocera has covered bubbles, manias, and genius investors for decades. Read his column on where Aschenbrenner went wrong—and how he could bounce back. | |
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Dispatch from Ceuta: Inside the 48-Hour Migration Crisis |
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“I saw online, it said Spain has opened the door.” That’s what one Moroccan migrant told Aidan Stretch on the streets of Ceuta, the Spanish exclave where videos last week showed thousands of men flooding the shores in what looked like a stampede. Aidan’s dispatch captures both sides of the rush: the men who swam for the border on the strength of a rumor, and the locals who watched their hometown turn upside down overnight. | |
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