The Free Press

Earlier this month, a judge declared that Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeffrey Rosen could not be trusted to do his job because he is Jewish.

That was not how she put it, but that seemed to be the unavoidable implication of her ruling.

To Rosen, whose father was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a baby, there was something “mystifying” about the whole thing.

Félicien Kabuga, one of the masterminds of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that left over almost a million Tutsi murdered, died on Saturday in custody in The Hague. He had been there since being arrested in 2020 near Paris after evading justice for over a quarter of a century, and by the time he was taken into custody in his late 80s he was so old that he was deemed unfit to stand trial for reasons of dementia. He deferred justice for long enough that it was never able to be served to him, even though he was one of the chief financiers and planners of one of the darkest crimes in human history.

When Kabuga was finally arrested, authorities reportedly found passports and identity documents from multiple countries in his name, a testimony to the international complicity that allowed one of the world’s most wanted fugitives to disappear in plain sight for so many years. He had apparently lived, over the years, in Kenya and France, operating with relative freedom and allegedly enabled by his family, his network of Hutu extremists, and his vast personal wealth.

At The Hague, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), the body set up to handle unfinished cases from the genocide of the Tutsi and the wars in the former Yugoslavia, charged Kabuga with seven counts related to the genocide. Prosecutors alleged Kabuga, a prominent and wealthy Rwandan businessman, was a principal financier of the extremist militias that carried out the genocide. They accused him of using his position as a founder of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) to incite violence and mass participation in the genocide by broadcasting anti-Tutsi propaganda, describing the Tutsi as “cockroaches.” He was also accused of financing importation and distribution of machetes used during the killings.

Welcome back to the Weekend Press! Today, Joe Nocera drinks with Alex Berenson, who just got the government to admit it violated his First Amendment rights. Spencer Klavan breaks down the brand-new Odyssey trailer. Peter Richmond reflects on returning to the farm that saved his father. And more!

But first: Is therapy making Americans weaker?

It’s not an opinion you expect to hear from a psychotherapist. But that’s exactly what Jonathan Alpert, who has been practicing for over two decades, believes.

“For years, my profession has trained clinicians to elevate validation over challenge, affirmation over interpretation, and emotional fluency over the harder work of behavioral change,” he writes in today’s essay.

By way of example, he tells the story of a patient who came to him feeling “furious with a friend” for canceling dinner plans. Instead of trying to understand what had happened, she used the language of therapy—“trauma,” “violation of boundaries,” “toxic”—to justify her anger.

What makes Alpert really worried is how this bad therapy scales up. “The same therapeutic scripts that encourage patients to pathologize difficult bosses and disappointing partners now teach citizens to reinterpret ordinary democratic differences as evidence of danger,” he writes.

Read Alpert’s piece to understand how therapy is making us emotionally articulate but psychologically brittle—and why that’s so dangerous.

Is Hollywood the new Detroit? From streaming to labor strikes to the specter of AI, many of us these days have been wondering if the movie industry is on its way out. On this week’s episode of Second Thought, Suzy Weiss sits down with screenwriter and 20-year film industry veteran Allan Loeb to discuss what’s changing on the big screen—and what might endure. Plus, they discuss the time he asked Tom Holland (of Spider-Man fame) about his attachment style; his AI companion Frank; and why betting on baseball is “the crystal meth of gambling.”

Listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the YouTube vid below. And if you want to keep up to date with everything Suzy does, don’t miss her newsletter!

Knock knock, it’s Cupid! A new batch of ads from single Free Pressers is live on the site. Click here to meet an album artwork designer in London with an impressive Duolingo streak; a fly-fishing, bird-watching cyclist in Reno; or a Kentucky-based Army reservist looking for his man. Your special someone could be just one email away! If you’d like to take a chance at Free Press love, write a paragraph that defines you, your age, where you live, and what you’re looking for, and send it over to [email protected].

We’ve published a lot of stories this week that’ll make you stop and think, including Suzy Weiss’s analysis of the latest Sydney Sweeney drama and Joanna Stern’s experiment in love and AI.

How should you spend your weekend? We asked our fellow Evan Gardner for his recommendations…

🎵Listen . . . To Kacey Musgraves’s new album, Middle of Nowhere. After a brief foray into psychedelia, Musgraves’s latest project is a return to form: a sober, straight-shooting country album. Songs like “Rhinestoned” or “Horses and Divorces” showcase her wordplay at its finest, and together they do what country music does best, which is zooming in on a map dot, a back road, or a worn-out barstool and spinning it into an entire universe.

🌅 See . . . The sunrise. I started going for a morning walk for MAHA reasons (the spectrum of light exposure within 15 minutes of waking up, I’m told, does wonders for your circadian rhythm), but even if you don’t buy any of that, I promise it’s worth it. For one, there’s nothing like feeling fresh air instead of a screen first thing in the morning—but you also get to see the sky turn colors it won’t go near at any other time of the day. Health hack or not, it’s hard to have a bad day when you’ve started it with that sight.

🍿Watch . . . Taylor Sheridan’s new Yellowstone spin-off, Dutton Ranch, which was released on Friday. (How is the man so very productive?) It’s worth a watch purely for the epic landscape shots, but the real draw consists of the protagonists, Rip and Beth. Rip is your typical brutal cowboy—large, bearded, domineering, and mean—and Beth is a natural-born rebel. And yet somehow, the two found their way into one of the most tender and complex relationships on TV. (Disclaimer: Yes, this show is on Paramount; and yes, I can’t wait to try our office’s Dutton Ranch–themed lunch, which I hope is more than just salad dressing.)

That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.