The Mayor Who Wants to Save San Francisco from Itself. Plus. . .

It’s Thursday, June 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: Will SALT sink the Big Beautiful Bill? How much damage did the U.S. and Israel really do to Iran’s nuclear program? Reihan Salam on the forces that explain Mamdani’s win; a moral panic about Trump and LGBT youth; and much more.

But first: Can San Francisco’s new mayor turn the city around? 

On Tuesday, a 33-year-old Democratic socialist became New York City’s mayor-in-waiting. San Francisco, which has seen this Shakespearean tragicomedy many times, is watching and wondering.

If ever there were a great American city that had experimented with radical chic—open-air drugs sites? Check; Defund the police? Hell yes—it’s fog town, which has long imagined itself at the progressive vanguard.

But at the very moment New York is apparently embracing Zohran Mamdani’s radical chic, San Francisco is going in the other direction. The city by the bay has a new mayor, Daniel Lurie, who was effectively elected to clean up this failed experiment in extreme progressivism. San Francisco is saying, “Enough with the hippies, the ideologues, the performers. We want what works.”

But can Lurie make his brand of “commonsense” Democratic politics work in such a progressive city? That’s the question at the heart of my profile of San Francisco’s new mayor. 

—Peter Savodnik

• Exasperated by what he sees as Jerome Powell’s go-it-slow approach to interest rate cuts, Donald Trump is reportedly considering announcing his pick to replace him early. Powell has another 11 months left in his term as Fed Chair. According to The Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett, and former Fed Reserve Board of Governors member Kevin Walsh are under consideration. 

• NATO members agreed yesterday to raise military spending to 5 percent of their economic outputs by 2035, following years of pressure from President Trump. But only after French president Emmanuel Macron pushed back, criticizing Trump’s tariffs before agreeing to the hike: “We can’t say to each other, among allies, we need to spend more. . . and wage trade war against one another, it makes no sense.”

• A crew of four astronauts from Hungary, India, and Poland is headed for the International Space Station for the first time in its respective nations’ history. While the mission is backed by funding from the three countries’ governments, the astronauts will be traveling on board a vessel made by Axiom Space, a private company based in Houston, Texas. 

• China and Russia appear poised to revive a natural gas pipeline project connecting the two nations amid mounting concerns over instability in the Middle East. The Power of Siberia 2 pipeline would bypass Middle East disruptions—a strategic move given that over 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports go to China.

• Anti-government protests in Kenya erupted into violent clashes with police yesterday, killing eight and leaving several people injured. The demonstrations coincided with the anniversary of last year’s anti-tax protests that quickly turned deadly, killing 60 and leaving 20 others missing.

• China’s Ministry of Commerce has demanded business leaders share lists of all the mineral experts they employ in an effort to prevent rare-earth materials knowledge from landing in foreign hands. China is the leading global producer and processor of rare-earth minerals, and currently manufactures about 90 percent of the world’s rare-earth magnets.

• Oil giant Shell is reportedly in early talks to acquire BP, its longtime competitor. If the two strike a deal, the acquisition would mark one of the biggest oil deals in a generation, concentrating a large portion of the world’s energy production under a single entity.

• With the first pick in the 2025 NBA draft, the Dallas Mavericks selected the six-foot-nine Duke University forward Cooper Flagg. Flagg, 18, is the second-youngest No. 1 draft pick of all time, behind Lebron James.