It’s Monday, July 27. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: The president gives diplomacy with Iran a chance—again. Why the story of an AI model going rogue really is as unsettling as it seems. Former labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer on being fired by Trump and whether a pro-union GOP is possible. All that and much more.
But first: The inside story of how the Democrats lost the working class.
“On Tuesday, I voted for Donald Trump. It felt like the biggest middle finger I’ve ever raised to the party I’d supported for most of my adult life. When he won, I was utterly euphoric.”
These are the words of Evan Barker, writing in our pages on November 9, 2024. A lifelong Democratic operative from a working-class family in Kansas City, Missouri, Evan spent her career getting progressives elected. Then, as she put it, the Democratic Party “turned its back on me and my family.” At the time, Evan’s story captured a trend playing out across the country: The working class, once a cornerstone of the Democratic coalition, was drifting away from the party.
Now, with the progressive wing ascendant and the midterms approaching, that shift has only become more consequential. But how exactly did it happen? And what do Democrats need to do to win back the voters they lost?
Evan is better positioned than most to answer those questions. That’s exactly what she does in her new book, Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, which hits shelves tomorrow. In today’s exclusive excerpt, she pulls back the curtain on the transformation of the modern Democratic Party, from a rare vantage point: inside the belly of the beast.
—The Editors
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Why Trump’s Iran Threats Don’t Work |
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Late last week, it appeared President Trump had run out of patience with Iran. “I am considering a massive attack,” he said on Thursday, as the Pentagon moved additional forces into the Persian Gulf. But the weekend offensive never arrived, with the president now eager to give negotiations a chance. It’s a familiar swing from one extreme to the other. Today, Eli Lake examines why this approach isn’t working—and suggests an alternative. | |
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Here Comes ‘Death by AI’ |
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Last week, an OpenAI model escaped its test environment, accessed the internet, and hacked into another company’s systems—all without human instruction. “The AI wasn’t being sinister,” explains Patrick McGee. “It was simply pursuing a task in ways its programmers hadn’t anticipated.” But that raises an unsettling question, one Patrick explores in today’s column: If an AI pursuing a goal is determined enough to complete its task that it hacks a company, what might it do if a human somehow stood in its way? Read Patrick on a case that has even some AI optimists worried. | |
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Trump’s Pro-Union Agenda Is Over. Its Former Leader Is Still in the Game. |
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Before returning to office last year, Donald Trump cast himself as the most union-friendly Republican in history. He then tapped Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the daughter of a Teamster, to deliver on that promise as labor secretary. “Yet nearly halfway through Trump’s term, the pro-labor agenda has all but vanished,” Audrey Fahlberg reports today. “And the woman Trump chose to lead it is now sitting on the sidelines.” Audrey sat down with Chavez-DeRemer to discuss her scandal-plagued tenure, her efforts to bridge the divide between business conservatives and organized labor, and how it all went so wrong. | |
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The Real Reason Americans Are So Sick, with Jillian Michaels |
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Fitness expert Jillian Michaels never expected to become a political commentator. But that changed when, after spending three decades helping Americans get healthier, she watched the Democratic Party embrace policies she believes are harmful to public health. On this week’s episode of Conversations with Coleman, she discusses why she thinks Ozempic is dangerously overprescribed, why she left California after 47 years, and what she really thinks of RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement. | |
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