Thank Melania and Putin for Trump’s Turn on Ukraine. Plus. . .

It’s Tuesday, August 19. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: A Texas town renames its high school after a Confederate general. A pair of U.S.-Ukraine sister cities forge an unlikely, wholesome bond. And a look inside MAHA’s campaign against glyphosate, the pesticide America loves to hate.

But first: Melania Trump’s foreign policy. 

You probably remember February 28, 2025. It had to be one of the worst days of Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidency in Ukraine—and he has had a lot of bad days. He was berated at the White House by President Donald Trump and scolded by Vice President J.D. Vance, while the whole world watched on TV. Their message? Zelensky, whose country had been invaded by Russia three years earlier, was somehow the impediment to peace.

Our Eli Lake had a very different reaction to Zelensky’s return visit to the White House on Monday. “What a difference six months makes,” Eli writes in his analysis. Inside the Oval Office, it verged “on a love fest,” as Eli put it. Vance was there but kept his mouth shut. Zelensky was accompanied by half a dozen European leaders, all of whom pushed Trump to throw his full support behind Ukraine and stand up to Russian president Vladimir Putin. And the Ukrainian president shed his usual military fatigues for a modern black suit.

The European posse isn’t why Trump, who met with Putin in Alaska just three days ago, is now turning away from him and trying to broker a peace that would give Ukraine the security guarantees it needs. Rather, Eli writes, it is a combination of factors: Putin’s ongoing aggression, the declining influence of noninterventionists like Vance and—not least—the influence of Melania Trump. The First Lady even sent a letter to Putin asking him to think of the children who are dying.

—Joe Nocera

Rod Dreher warns that the far right is luring disillusioned young men into a cesspool of white nationalism and antisemitism under the guise of reclaiming masculinity. In this episode of Honestly, he tells Bari how we got here, why conservatives must act now to reverse this illiberal turn, and why he doesn’t like the term woke right.

• Russian strikes on northeastern and southern Ukraine killed 14 people and injured dozens yesterday. The attacks came just hours after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Washington, D.C., for another round of peace talks at the White House, where he was joined by seven fellow European leaders.

• Newsmax, the right-leaning cable media channel, agreed to settle a libel lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems for falsely alleging election fraud in 2020. As part of the agreement, Newsmax will pay $67 million over the course of three installments, before January 15, 2027.

• The Texas Democrats who fled the state to protest a new redistricting bill returned to the Lone Star State yesterday, ending their two-week walkout. The legislators confirmed that they had returned to Austin, a decision that all but ensures that the Trump-backed GOP redistricting plans will pass.

• Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi traveled to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The meeting between the two powerhouse Asian nations comes after President Trump hit India with a new set of tariffs, which will go into effect next week. Modi will return the favor by visiting China later this month.

• President Trump announced plans to outlaw mail-in ballots in a proposed executive order “to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,” according to a Truth Social post on Monday. The post came days after President Trump’s Alaska meeting with Vladimir Putin, where Putin reportedly told him, “Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.”

• ESPN is parting ways with Spike Lee over “creative differences” and will no longer produce the director’s highly anticipated docuseries on former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Over the weekend, Lee told Reuters, “It’s not coming out. That’s all I can say,” and cited a nondisclosure agreement.

• Legendary political journalist Jules Witcover died on Saturday at 98. Over more than six decades, Witcover covered everything from presidents to political assassinations to the civil rights movement, and was perhaps best known for his column with colleague Jack Germond in The Baltimore Sun.