It’s Wednesday, August 19. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Who is to blame for Jason Arday’s tragic fate? P.G. Sittenfeld on the ex-convicts who the Supreme Court may send back to jail—unless Trump intervenes. Arthur Brooks on why Bumble ditched its women-message-first rule. And much more.
But first: With cliffs like these, who needs walls?
President Donald Trump’s plans to create a grand White House ballroom and his clumsy renovations of the reflecting pool have generated plenty of attention from the Washington media. But another, less closely watched fight over the president’s grand designs is shaping up in faraway West Texas.
Unlike in Washington, the people who live in the Big Bend region tend to be quite politically conservative. Yet they are infuriated by the administration’s determination to build a border wall in the area that they say is not only destructive but pointless—an expensive exercise in security theater in a place where natural barriers already make illegal border crossings exceedingly rare.
Those natural barriers are something to see, and the region depends in part on visitors looking to marvel at the 1,500-foot limestone cliffs in Big Bend National Park and the rugged, mountainous wilderness along the Rio Grande. And locals say this beautiful scenery is threatened by the project. But that hasn’t stopped the bulldozers from arriving at iconic landmarks like the Santa Elena Canyon.
The pressing issue for those who live in the Big Bend area is whether the wall can be stopped. This week, with the backlash growing, the administration paused part of the project. But can locals stop the federal government from tearing up some of America’s most breathtaking landscapes? Carrie McKean reports from Texas on this battle for us today. It’s a story about whether Trump will get his way on a signature issue. But it’s also a tale that illustrates the way politics can scramble when grand policy visions crash into local realities.
—The Editors
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THE NEWS
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Palm Beach International Airport is now officially Donald J. Trump International Airport, the first airport ever named for a sitting president. The new airport code, DJT, took effect yesterday, with the total rebrand cost topping out at $5.5 million, half of which came from Florida taxpayers.
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Opening statements in Meta’s blockbuster social media addiction trial began Tuesday, with the prosecution accusing the tech company of purposefully addicting children. Four state attorneys general are seeking a penalty that could theoretically be astronomical, and Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify.
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OpenAI announced ChatGPT for Teens on Tuesday, which will include parental controls, “responsible homework reminders” that detect AI-assisted cheating, and a ban on the chatbot expressing romantic feelings for its users. OpenAI is still facing a lawsuit from the family of a 16-year-old who killed himself following lengthy ChatGPT interactions.
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The Department of Justice unsealed a 14-count indictment Tuesday charging 17 Iranian cyber criminals with a massive hacking campaign on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—allegedly breaching 144 American universities and stealing 31 terabytes of research and intellectual property. The State Department is offering up to $10 million for information on five of the defendants.
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Riley English, a transgender Massachusetts woman who showed up to the U.S. Capitol in January 2025 with the intent to kill Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, was sentenced Tuesday to just over six years in prison. English, who claimed to be in a mental health crisis, told the judge, “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
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ABC, along with its parent company Disney, sued the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday alleging the agency’s threat to ABC’s broadcast license during the president’s feud with Jimmy Kimmel in April violated the First Amendment. Disney said the pressure is warping its programming, citing the fact that The View hasn’t booked a political candidate since February.
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The alleged ringleader of a cocaine trafficking ring run out of two Penn State fraternity houses surrendered to police Tuesday after skipping his scheduled arraignment the day before. Prosecutors say Agostino Abbatiello, 24, sat at the “very top of the chain” of an operation that required some pledges to cut and package the product as part of a hazing ritual.
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Khymani James, the former Columbia University student who went viral in 2024 for saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” has had his lawsuit tossed by a New York state judge. The judge dismissed his complaint, ruling that he failed to adequately plead discrimination claims.
