It’s Wednesday, September 2. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Rep. Tom Suozzi on how the DSA could set Democrats back a decade. Alex Berenson on the escalating fight over measles in Pennsylvania. Rod Dreher on why conservatives loved the left-leaning poet Wendell Berry. And much more.
But first: The latest on the fight in Iran—and the Pentagon.
The Iran war—locked in a stalemate for almost all of August—is heating up this week after the U.S. launched new strikes on Iran over the weekend, and again on Tuesday. Oil prices are up and global markets are on edge as Scott Bessent threatens sanctions on countries doing business with Tehran. Meanwhile, on the home front, another fight is escalating inside the Pentagon.
The latest fissure: Army Secretary Dan Driscoll personally tendered his resignation to Donald Trump on Monday following ongoing clashes with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Though the reasoning behind Driscoll’s resignation isn’t publicly known, one Trump official told Eli Lake that the heart of the feud is the Pentagon’s promotion process: Driscoll was trying to preserve it as a meritocracy while Hegseth purged or sidelined senior officers without explanation, instead favoring political allies.
To the Hegseth camp, the purges are necessary to push wokeness out of the military. But in practice, Eli reports, it looks like something else.
Today, Eli probes the divides inside the Pentagon and what it means for the Department of Defense to lose so many leaders while it prosecutes a war against Iran.
—The Editors
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THE NEWS
Bank of America vice president Erin Piacenti, 32, of New Jersey, was identified as the woman killed in Monday’s Times Square stabbing. Pamela Cisneros, the 49-year-old attacker who was fatally shot by police, had a history of interactions with police during prior mental health episodes, according to her brother.
An anonymous federal whistleblower warned on Tuesday that the system U.S. Postal Service (USPS) built to carry out Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting risks a “catastrophic failure” that could “derail the midterm elections.” In response, Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal wrote to the postmaster general: “We urge you to abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan and ensure that all Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote, including by mail, without interference by USPS.”
A Utah judge ruled on Tuesday that 23-year-old Tyler Robinson can be tried for murder in the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. After the ruling, Robinson pleaded not guilty to all charges. He could face the death penalty. Kirk, 31, was shot dead last September during a rally held at Utah Valley University.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made 2,100 arrests across New York last month as part of “Operation Rotten Apple,” Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Tuesday. Mullin criticized sanctuary policies enacted by New York governor Kathy Hochul and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, claiming they made it harder to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Pierre Damas Bel, a 20-year-old Haitian migrant, died by suicide Monday after walking into traffic in Springfield, Ohio, his family said. Bel had been upset after being forced to wear an ICE ankle monitor following the Trump administration’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. The jury deliberations took fewer than three hours. Davis, who faces a life sentence, has indicated his plan to appeal.
Nicki Minaj will join a panel of judges, including Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and investor Grant Cardone, at the Small Business Administration’s “Million Dollar Pitch Competition” on September 18 in Washington. Five small businesses will compete for a share of $1 million in prize money in a Shark Tank–like competition.
Because Hegseth is not one of them.
Speaking as a retired accountant, mail in voting makes it impossible to validate the integrity of the vote. Once that ballot enters the postal system, document control is completely lost. The absolute best practice is that a ballot goes straight from the voter's hand into a machine to be recorded. Almost as good is to have voters deposit ballots into drop boxes that would only be accessed by registered election workers. Any person who can get to a post office to mail a ballot can surely take that ballot to a drop box. A system can be worked out for extreme cases where taking a ballot to an authorized collection center is not physically possible.