It’s Monday, January 26. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Mike Solana talks to the superrich Californians fleeing the Golden State. Joe Nocera on the problem with Donald Trump’s credit-card plan. The shaky foundations of sanctuary cities. Rabbi David Wolpe on Conversations with Coleman. And much more.
But first: The killing of Alex Pretti.
On Saturday morning, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by federal officers in Minneapolis. It was the second such incident in the city this month, and soon afterward, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem gave a press conference to explain what happened.
Noem said Pretti had been “brandishing” his weapon and suggested he was a “domestic terrorist.” According to a post on the DHS’s X account, Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the dead man an “assassin.”
Then the eyewitness videos came out—and told a very different story.
Our editorial today is on the information war that followed the killing of Alex Pretti, and the way in which the Trump administration is taking the American people for fools.
—The Editors
The Great California Wealth Exodus |
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Superrich Californians have been preoccupied by one thing lately: a ballot proposal that seeks to institute a massive one-off “wealth tax.” Mike Solana spoke to 21 billionaires about the proposal, what they stand to lose, and why almost all of them are planning to leave. | | |
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Why Trump’s Credit-Card Crackdown Will Backfire |
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Trump has proposed a one-year cap of 10 percent on credit-card interest rates to address the affordability crisis, an idea Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren also support. But such a move ignores the economics of credit cards, writes Joe Nocera. Instead of charging consumers less, banks will simply abandon those seen at risk of defaulting. In other words, most Americans would lose their cards. | | |
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Niall Ferguson: The Arrogance of Trump’s Foreign-Policy Critics |
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Last week, Niall Ferguson wrote in these pages that “Trump won Davos, hands down.” But countless commentators and academics rushed to condemn the president’s treatment of our European allies. Today, Niall follows up on his piece by asking why Trump’s full-time haters are incapable of considering the possibility that, like any U.S. administration, this one might get some things wrong and some things right. | | |
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