It’s Monday, April 28. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. And starting today: It’s new and improved, meant to save you time by getting right to the most important stories.
Today: Who’s up and who’s down after 100 days of Trump? Is AOC running—and can she win? A prosecutor’s “unusual” investigation into Wikipedia. Join Bari and Douglas Murray live, today at 3:30 p.m. ET. And much more.
But first: The explosion of foreign funding at U.S. universities.
Why have toxic, anti-American ideas prevailed at our most storied American universities? It’s a question I have thought about a tremendous amount since I graduated from Columbia 20 years ago—and especially since October 7, 2023.
I tend to think the most accurate answer is the most straightforward one.
The answer, in a word, is tenure. Tenure allowed postmodernist, postcolonial, post-nationalist, post-structuralist professors lifetime job security, and empowered them to hire their intellectual facsimiles. Repeat that process beginning in the 1960s and you’ll look around and notice that a morally relativist, anti-American, anti-Western worldview is not the fringe but the norm on the most prestigious college campuses.
But another answer—and one the Trump administration is currently focused on—is foreign investment. After all, if you’re an investor of the likes of China or Qatar, it’s hard to imagine a better bang for your buck than investing in institutions that are already educating the American elite against their own country.
And that’s what today’s lead investigation is about: the explosion in foreign donations to elite American universities.
Frannie Block and Maya Sulkin have
Tune In Today: A Live Conversation with Douglas Murray
Join Bari and Free Press contributor Douglas Murray today at 3:30 p.m. ET for a live conversation about Trump’s first 100 days in office, the state of the right, his best-selling new book On Democracies and Death Cults, the war in Gaza, and his recent news-making appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Tune in at TheFP.com, and bring your questions.
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It’s election day in Canada, where the polls point to a victory for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal party. If the incumbent comes out on top, it’ll be an extraordinary turnaround: The Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, were more than 20 points ahead when Justin Trudeau resigned in January. What happened? Donald Trump happened.
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A two-year-old U.S. citizen was deported to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” a Trump-appointed federal judge said Friday. The child—identified only as “V.M.L.”—has reportedly been released in Honduras with her Honduran-born mother and sister. “Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday. “If those children are U.S. citizens, they can come back into the United States if there’s their father or someone here who wants to assume them.”
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The son of a senior CIA official was killed in Ukraine last year fighting for Russia, the CIA has confirmed. Michael Gloss, a former Eagle Scout who dropped out of college and went to Turkey in 2023, died in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
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Donald Trump has urged Russia to “stop shooting” in Ukraine and make a deal. Marco Rubio said this week would be crucial for peace talks and that the White House would make a determination about “whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in.” Trump met Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the Pope’s funeral at the Vatican Saturday—their first meeting since the Oval Office shouting match.
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As Trump nears the end of the first 100 days of his second term, his approval rating is going in the wrong direction. According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, 39 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing, compared to 45 percent in February.
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India’s military test-fired missiles for “long-range precision offensive” strikes on Sunday, amid rising tensions with its neighbor Pakistan after the Kashmir attack that left 26 dead. India says its troops have responded to small-arms fire from Pakistani positions on their disputed border for three successive nights.
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Bradford G. Smith has become the third person to receive a Neuralink brain implant. He is the first nonverbal recipient of the implant, and the first with ALS.
