The Free Press

Mass migration. Net-zero carbon goals. Expansive welfare states. Identity politics. Limited defense spending. Throughout the 2010s, all these policies became causes du jour across the European continent. It was an intellectual mood captured by three famous words from former German chancellor Angela Merkel: wir shaffen das, roughly meaning “we can handle…

This week I joined The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan, who has generously agreed to let us share the conversation here. Andrew and I go way back, and few people are as willing as he is to really go toe-to-toe over our disagreements—especially on Israel and America’s role in the world.

In our discussion, we cover a broad range of history and politics: from…

In Canada, if you go on Facebook and say that a man is not a woman, it can cost you CAD$750,000. That is exactly what happened to Barry Neufeld, a school board trustee in Chilliwack, British Columbia.

The decision ordering Neufeld to pay was not made in a traditional courtroom. It happened in a human rights tribunal, an administrative body that sounds like a court but operates under different, much looser rules that allow accusers to remain anonymous. Its rulings can be reviewed by real courts but are rarely overturned, since the original ruling needs only to have been reasonable in a judge’s opinion.

At the heart of today’s Big Read is a riddle.

We are living in a “wild moment” in human history, filled with questions—about AI, about artificial wombs, about drone wars—that are “so incredible they’re effectively spiritual.” And yet, at this exact point in time, “the world suddenly entered a vortex where, instead of engaging on these many phenomenally interesting and challenging topics, all anyone can talk about is. . . Zionism.” Why?

That’s the question our friend Alana Newhouse sets out to answer in a sweeping, provocative essay that was first published in Tablet magazine. Her argument is that the obsession with Zionism is about much more than Israel, and goes to the heart of a deeper crisis in the West—over nationhood, self-determination, modernity, and the future of free societies. We’re honored to share it with you today. —The Editors

How do people change?

Some change involves things that happen to us, which isn’t what interests me. I’m curious about what happens, individually and to societies, when people face an unhappy reality—however it came to be—and decide to change what looks, at least at that moment, to be their fate.

In his 2015 novel Submission, Michel Houellebecq sketches a portrait of a near-future France, in which an Islamic party allies with the Socialists to take over the country. The story follows a literature professor faced with a decision to convert to Islam for career advancement, as the country’s social and political landscape is transformed by sharia law. His own disillusionment is heightened by his Jewish girlfriend’s decision to escape the Islamization of France by moving to the Jewish state. He almost goes with her but then doesn’t, uttering the book’s now-famous line: “There is no Israel for me.”

I remember snagging on that sentiment the first time I read it. I could see why a disgruntled non-Jewish academic might hesitate to make aliyah, but to the extent that Houellebecq’s fictional portrayal contained a commentary on the real world, the conclusion felt wrong. There quite clearly is, or could be, an Israel for this person. It’s France, if it could just get off the course it’s on.

Sweden is a country that prides itself on being a beacon of children’s rights. Swedes tend to take great joy in reminding people of the fact that, almost half a century ago, our country was the first in the world to outlaw corporal punishment. And this tradition has remained to this day.

In 2020, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was incorporated into Swedish law, which was widely regarded as a reinforcement of Sweden’s status as one of the world’s foremost promoters of children’s welfare.

But in recent years, Sweden is also a country where violent gangs, largely based in immigrant neighborhoods, are grooming children to commit serious crimes.

A zippy 1962 hit song by Bobby “Boris” Pickett tells the tale of a monster who comes to life in a lab and enlivens some other sepulchral misfits—vampires, zombies, ghouls—into a dance party. “Monster Mash” is campy and light. On Thursday night, a doppelgänger party that is neither campy nor light will lumber out of the ether into a different kind of life in Washington, D.C.

That would be the “Catholic Prayer for America Gala 2026,” hosted by a group called Catholics for Catholics. Both the host and the event sound innocuous—unless you’ve heard of social media, Jew-hating and Jew-baiting, or Candace Owens, among the featured stars of the Catholics for Catholics show. Many people long for internet fame. Owens has earned hers fair and square with statements like Mengele’s Holocaust experiments are “bizarre propaganda,” a small group of political Jews control U.S. policy, Israel or Jews were behind 9/11, and other tropes calculated for clicks and cash.

With war raging in the Middle East, we want to bring you as many trusted voices on the news as we can. One such voice is the Israeli journalist Amit Segal. Here’s Amit’s daily newsletter, It’s Noon in Israel, which we’re pleased to publish in The Free Press.

Ali Larijani was not an easy target.

One of the reasons Iran was caught off guard at the opening of this war with Israel and the U.S. is that its leadership did not take Yahya Sinwar or Hassan Nasrallah’s approach. The Iranian regime—a state built on terror—was acting like a state and forgot what happens to those who spread terror. What Hamas and Hezbollah understood, and what Iran forgot, is that when you attack Israel, you become prey.

After the regime’s decapitation on the first day, Larijani grasped that reality. As Iran’s most senior surviving security official, he never stayed in the same place twice, and maintained exceptionally high security awareness.

As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week Jonathan looks at the British abandonment of Boston, and the loyalists who left with them. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors

The loyalists in Boston had hoped the day would never come, but come it did on March 17, 1776, when the British evacuated the city after a nearly yearlong siege by patriot forces. There would be chaos and confusion, but no refugees left to swim after ships that had already sailed, no scenes as tragic as the ones that the country born out of the American Revolution would one day leave behind in Saigon and Kabul.

As we commemorate the birth of the United States, there’s no shame in admitting there are still lessons worth learning from the example the Mother Country set. Two hundred fifty years ago this week, the British showed how a great power can abandon a city without forsaking its friends.