The Free Press

Last fall, a Chicago headline caught my eye: A man who had posed with Governor J.B. Pritzker at a “Peacekeepers” anti-violence event had just been charged with murder.

The man was part of a state-funded program designed to prevent gang violence by paying locals—often former gang members—to mediate conflicts on the street. About a week after appearing with the governor, prosecutors say, the man participated in a smash-and-grab robbery of a Louis Vuitton store. In the chaotic getaway, another man was killed: Mark Carlo Arceta, whose son was born the next day without a father.

The story raised obvious questions: What exactly is a Peacekeeper? And how often do people in this program end up back in cuffs?

The local press quickly moved on. I started digging.

After three months of Freedom of Information Act requests, door-knocking, and speaking with ex–gang members, I answer those questions in today’s story.

The Peacekeepers program is just a single piece of an experiment in crime-fighting that has attracted around a billion dollars. It also is a program that a growing chorus of city leaders, law enforcement officials, and even a donor now say doesn’t work. One city alderman called it a “scam.” A member of the mayor’s own public safety team told me it is a “revolving door” for gang members.

Read my investigation, and watch our video report, on whether the Peacekeepers really keep the peace on Chicago’s streets. —Olivia Reingold

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS — Darron Randle said he used to believe anyone could change—even the hardened ex–gang members he counseled on the South Side.

“I was extremely optimistic,” he said.

As a life coach at the Firehouse Community Arts Center, a violence-prevention nonprofit that has received more than a million dollars in public funding since 2022, Randle advised participants on how to live an honest life. The men attended therapy sessions, worked toward their high school diplomas, and met with Randle twice a week. In exchange, they received up to $550 every two weeks.

Everything was fine, Randle said. Until the checks ran late one payday. Almost immediately, a mob of about 30 men gathered, some of whom blocked the office doors so no one could leave.

“We were held hostage almost. . . . It really was scary,” said Randle, who grew up in a Bronzeville project. “I was uncertain as to what could happen, like a fight could break out. I didn’t feel safe.”

Chicago has spent around $1 billion over the past decade on “community violence intervention” programs aimed at stopping gang violence. Their rise reflects a broader shift in cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, where some policymakers have pushed to move public safety responsibilities away from police and into the hands of community groups. …

The passing of Robert Mueller at 81 is a somber occasion for what remains of the Washington establishment. George W. Bush, in a statement, highlighted the former FBI director’s role in “helping prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil” after 9/11. Barack Obama praised Mueller’s “relentless commitment to the rule of law.” Other senators and congressmen praised his valor as a Marine fighting in the Vietnam War.

This was the way our republic used to mark the end of a life dedicated to public service. But that America seems like a distant memory when the current president of the United States is Donald Trump. “Good, I’m glad he’s dead,” Trump posted on Truth Social of Mueller’s death. “He can no longer hurt innocent people!”

Social media vituperations like this from a sitting president used to shock our conscience. More than a decade into the MAGA era, it’s routine. And part of the reason for that was the scandal that Mueller could have exposed, but ended up fueling.

Billionaires are walking away from the Giving Pledge.

If you do not recall the details, the Giving Pledge was a public promise to donate at least half of one’s wealth to charitable causes. Bill Gates, his then-wife Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett were initial signatories of the pledge when it launched in 2010. Since then, more than 250 donors have signed on.

Recently, however, some billionaires have been backing out, and the rate of new donors signing on has plummeted. The New York Times reported that only a handful of new signers joined in 2024 and 2025. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel told the paper that he had urged signers to revoke their commitments, and that many have expressed regrets about joining what Thiel calls an “Epstein-adjacent, fake Boomer club.” There’s no clear single reason for the decline of the pledge; some of it may be that billionaires have turned to political giving, or are reinvesting in their companies instead of giving to charity. Whatever the cause, the pledge has fallen out of fashion.

Since mid-February, about 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers have been working without pay during a partial government shutdown. A Congressional battle over immigration enforcement has held up funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and airport security is caught in the middle. On Friday, the Senate failed for the fifth time to advance a bill to fund the department, with no deal in sight.

More than 360 TSA officers have quit their jobs since the shutdown began, and absenteeism has climbed sharply, with 10 percent of the workforce failing to show up to work. At some airports, more than a third of officers have missed shifts. The situation has gotten so bad that ICE agents are being brought in to help.

As lawmakers trade blame, the consequences are playing out at airports across the country. At New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, the security line recently stretched so far it wrapped across the entire terminal. A TSA officer who has worked for the TSA at LaGuardia for 23 years told The Free Press about the pressures that the agency’s airport staff face, and why he keeps coming in. Below is the account of the officer, whom we are calling Edward N. He did not want his real name used because he has been told he is not permitted to speak with the media.

Here we go again.

That was my first thought when I saw the news about the government shutdown last month. I wasn’t shocked.

In The Image, his landmark 1962 book about how mass media was warping American life, historian Daniel Boorstin coined the term pseudo-event to describe something that exists for the sole purpose of its own publicity. A pseudo-event, he explained, is anything that happens just to garner coverage.

We’re all familiar with the concept of the publicity stunt, of course. But Boorstin’s examination is subtler and wider. He explained how, from the fine arts to foreign travel to celebrity culture to publishing, a self-referential process was taking off that even more than half a century ago was making everything feel unreal, because the things one heard about existed only in order to get one to hear about them.

Sir Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and columnist at The Free Press, joins School of War to discuss how geography and choke points have always been pivotal in global conflicts. Just like the Dardanelles during World War I, today’s hot spots, such as the Strait of Hormuz and Taiwan, remind us that some strategic cha…

Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Josh Kaplan congratulates Afroman on knowing his constitutional rights. Maya Sulkin speaks to Bridgit Mendler, the Disney kid turned space CEO, about how to do it all. A titan of Jewish literature, Howard Jacobson, reflects on George Eliot’s humanitarian case for the Jewish state. Suzy Weiss loves “Project Hail Mary.” And more!

But first: This is what bad therapy looks like.

Right now, there’s a lot of bad therapy going on in America—something that, here at The Free Press, we’ve written and worried about for years. There are psychologists out there changing lives for the better, but there are also those who tell gay men they should be straight, encourage girls to become boys, and accuse patients of perpetuating “white supremacy culture.” Meanwhile, social media is awash with “therapy-speak,” which influencers use to justify cutting off family members or accuse ex-lovers of being narcissists.

This week, a couple of our writers noticed that bad therapy is also being celebrated in two very different smash-hit television shows—so we’re bringing you an essay about each of them.

First up: The No. 1 show on Apple TV right now is the comedy Shrinking. It centers on a therapist named Jimmy, played by Jason Segel, who decides one day that he doesn’t want to practice “traditional” therapy anymore but instead wishes to play a more active part in his patients’ lives. As someone who once made an entire podcast series about an abusive psychiatrist, Joe Nocera is disturbed by this show.

Jimmy offers one patient a place to live. He tells another that if she doesn’t get a divorce, he’ll end their sessions. He goes to another’s home, sits on her bed, and tells her she’s amazing. And in this latest season, he justifies his behavior by insisting it gives his patients hope. “If I break a traditional boundary, they get to see how far I’m willing to go to help them,” Jimmy says.

This, Joe writes, is troubling—because it promotes the idea that a therapist isn’t doing his job if he doesn’t show up at your house with a bunch of flowers on your birthday.

And then there’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the wildly popular reality show (it’s basically The Real Housewives of Utah) which has just dropped all 10 episodes of its fourth season. What struck Kara Kennedy, who watched it this week, is how often the moms use therapy-speak to justify their terrible decisions and awful behavior.

“No one embodies this dynamic more than Taylor Frankie Paul,” writes Kara. In the last season, the 31-year-old mom of three went on a monthlong therapy retreat—to process a complicated divorce followed by a tempestuous relationship with a recovering drug addict named Dakota Mortensen. She returned ready to draw “boundaries” and reframe her messy life as her “narrative.” In this latest season, she says, “Maybe it’s time to break the cycle of generational trauma”—moments after screaming at her mother.

And this week, Paul burst into the headlines when three-year-old footage emerged of her throwing a chair at Mortensen, who accused her of domestic violence in 2023. Because of the allegations, the filming of the fifth season of Secret Lives has been paused, and the coming season of The Bachelorette, which was set to feature Paul, has been shelved. Kara writes that viewers are left wondering whether all that “slippery therapy-speak” is just being used “for self-justification, not self-improvement.”

​​Knock, Knock: It’s Cupid!

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We’ve published plenty of pieces worth catching up on this week, including. . .

How should you spend your weekend? We asked our editorial assistant Madeleine Long for her recommendations. . .

🎵Listen. . . to “Badlands” featuring Gracie Abrams on Mumford & Sons’ new album, Prizefighter. I’ve been playing it on repeat since the day it dropped.

🍪Eat. . . I’m much more of a baker than I am a cook, and this recipe for raspberry chocolate chip cookies might be my favorite yet. They’re chewy, buttery, and studded with melted chocolate and pockets of raspberries (use fresh ones instead of frozen). Don’t forget the sea salt on top.

📚Read. . . My dad recently gave me Marseille 1940: The Flight of Literature by Uwe Wittstock, and it pulled me out of a long phase in which I read only novels. In 1940 Marseille, a young American journalist named Varian Fry smuggled Hannah Arendt, Max Ernst, Heinrich Mann, and hundreds more of Europe’s intelligentsia out of Nazi-occupied territory—as his own government looked the other way. Wittstock tells the story of a culture on the brink of extinction, and one man who refused to let it disappear.

🚶🏼‍♀️Move. . . After a couple of warm days in NYC last week, winter came roaring back. But good news: Sunday looks like it should be beautiful. If you’re suffering from cabin fever like me and itching to get outside, lace up your sneakers and walk the island of Manhattan from top to bottom, starting in Inwood and ending at Battery Park. This 16-mile route is a great starting point—bonus points if you do it without your phone. Not in New York? Map out a long walk in your area instead!

Last but not least, a beautiful thing to feast your eyes on: The Spanish singer, songwriter, and pop goddess Rosalía opened her Lux Tour in Lyon this week, and the photos that have come out of it are unlike anything we’ve seen in a long time—the show looks part ethereal ballet, part living, breathing performance of “El Aquelarre,” Francisco de Goya’s 1798 painting.

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

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

I admit it: I have a thing for tech CEOs who are trying to make America stronger and safer—like Alex Karp at Palantir and Palmer Luckey at Anduril—so I was excited to be in Washington, D.C. recently for a16z’s American Dynamism Summit. My goal was to interview another tech CEO I have a thing for: Bridgit Mendler, the founder of Northwood Space, a space-satellite company that a16z is helping to fund.

If you’re under 30 years old, you undoubtedly know the real reason I was so eager to talk to her. Before she was the beautiful tech CEO who has been written up in Bloomberg, she was Teddy Duncan, the main character of the Disney Channel sitcom Good Luck Charlie. In my youth, I lived for that show.

Mendler played a Goody Two-shoes who got upset when she got her first bad grade—a B. Like me, she tried a rebellious phase. And also like me, her parents reacted with laughter rather than horror.

I was hardly the only member of Gen Z for whom Good Luck Charlie is an iconic memory. When I announced in Slack here at The Free Press that I was interviewing her, those of us under 30 (a sizable portion of the place) were starstruck. Friends outside work who had zero interest in my interviews with Bill Maher or Larry Summers suddenly had newfound respect for my journalistic career.

But here was my question: How in the world did she go from being a Disney star to a space CEO? That’s what I wanted to learn.

“I actually don’t think that I’m very smart, and probably people that know me would think the same thing,” the 33-year-old Mendler told me within two minutes of our meeting. Rather, she attributes whatever success she’s had to one thing: determination. “If I want to do it, I will find a way to make myself do it.”

The awards season this year was particularly gnarly. Timothée Chalamet’s bid for an Oscar spawned its own genre of meta-commentary, and the breakout stars were in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. At the ceremony this past Sunday, red carpet interviews, led mainly by influencers angling for a viral clip, were a mess. You can’t have the people on both sides of the mic trying to promote themselves.

One particularly bad question, posed to the British actress Charithra Chandran, was “What does it smell like?,” which made me long for the now unchic “Who are you wearing?”

As for the ceremony itself, the results were deeply mixed. Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Aunt Gladys in Weapons? Sure, why not. Sean Penn didn’t even show up to accept his statue—opting instead to hang out with the Ukrainian president. And Javier Bardem wore a picket sign on his lapel to protest war. Groundbreaking stuff all round.

But just when I think I’m out of love with the movies, they pull me back in. Ryan Gosling has come out with a true sci-fi stunner. I know the Oscars were just last weekend, but I’m calling it now: Project Hail Mary should win all the awards next year. My campaign starts now.

The second time I shed a tear because a pile of rocks said something moving to Ryan Gosling, I thought to myself, Sister, get it together. Then it happened twice more. The space part of Project Hail Mary, the sci-fi thriller that dropped this week, is secondary to the sheer scale and humanity of it. Which is especially impressive since the lion’s share of the movie features just one human: a science teacher turned astronaut, Ryland Grace, played brilliantly by Gosling. He’s been recruited by an international space organization and tempted out of retirement after mysterious “space dots” showed up and began to cloud out the sun, dropping the earth’s temperature and imperiling the entire population.