Can the Fed Keep Its Independence? Plus. . .

It’s Wednesday, July 30. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Meet the Democrat who wants to talk about the Biden cover-up; what a trip to the zoo reveals about red and blue America; Rupa Subramanya’s latest Canada dispatch; and more.

But first: Matthew Continetti and Joe Nocera on Trump vs. the institutions.

In many ways, the defining trait of the second Trump administration is his ongoing fights with some of America’s most powerful institutions. The federal bureaucracy, the Ivy League, the Federal Reserve, the legacy media—the list goes on.

Why is Trump—and the right more broadly—so keen on fighting these battles? And why is he having so much success?

In his latest column, Matthew Continetti answers these questions. And he makes the case that years of mismanagement and rot have made President Trump’s crusade against the institutions far easier than it could have been.

But one institution that’s successfully held firm—so far—is the Federal Reserve, which has been led by Trump appointee Jerome Powell since 2017. Trump and Powell have fallen out because Trump wants the Fed to cut interest rates more aggressively. And the president has repeatedly threatened to fire Powell—a move that is legally dubious and without precedent.

Today, the Fed will meet to make another rate decision that is likely to disappoint the president. And our own Joe Nocera dives into the question of Fed independence, how long it can last, and—Trump’s bullying aside—whether the institution has an accountability problem.

—Will Rahn

• Millions of Americans were put on tsunami alert yesterday, after a 8.8 magnitude earthquake—one of the strongest ever recorded—hit the eastern coast of Russia, at 19.25 ET. Residents of Alaska, California and Oregon were cautioned to stay away from the coast, while an evacuation order was issued in low-lying parts of Hawaii. In the hours that followed, waves up to 5.7 ft higher than usual were reported to have hit Hawaii, but the state’s officials have said the worst is over. Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency lifted the evacuation order just before 11 p.m. local time. The West Coast remains on alert.

• Officials have identified the victims of Monday’s shooting in midtown Manhattan. They were NYPD officer Didarul Islam, Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner, security guard Aland Etienne, and Julia Hyman, a recent Cornell graduate. The shooter drove from Las Vegas, Nevada, to the heart of New York in an apparent attempt to attack the NFL headquarters housed in the building.

• British prime minister Keir Starmer announced on Tuesday that the UK will recognize Palestinian statehood in September unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire with Hamas. Starmer also called on Hamas to release all remaining hostages—and said the terror group cannot play any future role in governing Gaza. His ultimatum follows France’s planned recognition of Palestinian statehood in September and was condemned by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the announcement “rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism.”

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene labeled the war in Gaza a “genocide” in a Monday evening social media post, becoming the first Republican to do so in a series of escalating attacks on Israel and its war strategy. Her comments followed an effort to strip Israel of $500 million of U.S. defense aid meant to support its Iron Dome.

• President Trump claimed yesterday that Jeffrey Epstein “stole people” who worked for his Mar-a-Lago beach club spa, including Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers. “He took people that worked for me and I told him don’t do it anymore and he did it so I said stay the hell out of here,” Trump said.

• The EPA is seeking to repeal the 2009 endangerment finding—a government declaration that said planet-warming greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health, and the legal foundation of the government’s ability to enact climate-related regulations. Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said that “The proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” Former vice president Al Gore said the move “ignores the blindingly obvious reality of the climate crisis.”

• The Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads announced a $72 billion merger yesterday that would create the nation’s first transcontinental freight railroad. It would be the largest ever consolidation in the industry if approved by the Trump administration.

• The Trump administration has blocked Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te from stopping in New York en route to Central America after China, which does not recognize Taiwan, objected to the visit. Some American officials said the administration is trying to avoid jeopardizing a potential trade deal with China. In 2023, the Biden administration allowed then-president Tsai Ing-wen to make a similar stopover in New York.

• The University of California, Los Angeles will pay a $6 million settlement to Jewish faculty and students over antisemitism complaints. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit last year after university leadership told Congress it had not disciplined students who, among other things, set up what the suit called a “Jew Exclusion Zone” on campus. It is believed to be the largest private settlement in a campus antisemitism case.

• ChatGPT announced a new interactive “study mode” yesterday, aimed at helping students who use the service understand how to reason through problems. “Study mode is powered by custom system instructions we’ve written in collaboration with teachers, scientists, and pedagogy experts,” OpenAI, ChatGPT’s creator, wrote. Read Tyler Cowen’s recent essay: “Everyone’s Using AI to Cheat at School. That’s a Good Thing.”