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The stunning arrest of the former British ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, will produce a blast radius in the UK that may be even bigger than Jeffrey Epstein’s. If you are drowned by the volume of the Epstein emails, just wait for the leaking of all the Mandy memorabilia, which will undoubtedly include revelations and scuttlebutt from 30 years at the beating heart of British politics. There is no one Mandelson hasn’t advised, conspired with, gossiped with and, God help us, texted with in his high-flying life as a political homme du monde as much at home on oligarchs’ boats as at dinner parties at Chequers and 3100 Massachusetts Avenue.

The strategic architect of Tony Blair’s new Labour was dubbed the Prince of Darkness for his sinuous skills as a media spinmaster. He’s been up and he’s been down, but up to now, he’s never been out, and may not be yet as the charge of misconduct in public office is notoriously knotty to prove.

Before he was sacked as ambassador last September, Lord Mandelson was forced to resign twice from cabinet positions: for failing to disclose an improper loan in 1998, and again, three years later, for helping a wealthy Indian donor to the Millennium Dome get a British passport. He kicked up more dust in 2005 when, as EU trade minister (admittedly, the world’s most boring job), he flew from Davos to Siberia with his friend Nat Rothschild to join the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska for a banya sauna session. Inappropriate was Peter’s middle name. But he always surfed back because the depth of his strategic know-how was unrivaled. It kept him relevant among power elites who valued his acerbic expertise. Even Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who hated him, gave him the post of business secretary. Brown is now incandescent at how casually Mandelson, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, was allegedly leaking real-time, market-moving information from their private meetings to Epstein.

Amid the glitz and glam of awards season, the BAFTA Film Awards are usually treated like the annoying little brother—or odd, distant cousin—of the much more prestigious Academy Awards and the much more intoxicated Golden Globes. But this year, a surprise outburst at Sunday night’s BAFTAs ceremony has them trending in the discourse on two continents, after a man named John Davidson yelled a racial slur (yes, that racial slur) at actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo as they presented the award for Special Visual Effects.

Davidson, 54, is afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological condition whose symptoms cause involuntary tics, including coprolalia—or, to the layperson, shouting swear words. A film based on Davidson’s life, rather providentially titled I Swear, was up for six BAFTAs that night; the audience had been alerted that someone with Tourette’s was in the building, and BAFTAs host Alan Cumming acknowledged the outburst with an apology from the stage. But Davidson’s involuntary shout was picked up by the cameras, as were Lindo and Jordan flinching a bit in response, fueling a controversy that has continued to escalate in the days since.

Within 24 hours of the incident, two distinct teams had emerged: Anti-Racists on one side, Anti-Ableists on the other, locked in battle over who had been the victim of the greater offense.

For anyone who lived through the era that my friend and podcast co-host Phoebe Maltz Bovy refers to as the Long 2010s, the rhetoric coming out of the Team Anti-Racist camp will be the more familiar of the two. Woke may be in cultural decline, but its die-hard adherents still exist in alarmingly large numbers, and they’re starving. Davidson looked like so much fresh meat.

Taylor Fogarty once made $15,000 a month for making content on OnlyFans.

She was a self-described “degenerate” party girl in Brooklyn—drinking, doing drugs, dating women, drifting between identities, and eventually signing up for sugar-daddy websites because, as she tells it, “It just felt normal.” Sex work was empowering, she was told. Men were going to…

It’s Tuesday, February 24. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Arthur Brooks on how to deal with stress after you unplug. In defense of hazing. The American suing the Palestinian Authority over his murdered son. Plus: Looking for love? Free Press Cupid is here to help. And much more.

But first: The state of the union.

On Monday, President Donald Trump offered a brief sneak preview of the State of the Union address that he will deliver to Congress tonight. “It’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” Trump said. But what will Trump say, and how much of a difference will it make for his presidency?

According to Ruy Teixeira, it is inevitable that the punditocracy will assign huge significance to everything Trump says, while Democrats will try to outdo their previous demonstrations of white-hot hatred for him. But how much does the political theater actually matter for President Trump and his approval ratings? Read Ruy’s essay here:

The audience that might matter most for Trump on Tuesday night is those Americans who voted Republican in November but have since cooled on the president. For some, that change came because of the president’s aggressive crackdown on immigration. Tanner Nau reports on a Mississippi town that voted for Trump but cast aside their loyalty to him when they caught wind of plans to open an immigrant detention center nearby.

As for the speech itself, why not watch along with The Free Press? We’ll be livestreaming at 8 p.m. Eastern time, with senior editor Will Rahn and Free Press contributor Reihan Salam hosting.

They will be joined by voices from across the political spectrum, including former Obama speechwriter David Litt, former Trump deputy assistant May Mailman, and former presidential candidate Dean Phillips.

Plus: Former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams on the foreign policy stakes as tensions with Iran loom; linguist John McWhorter on the rhetoric of the speech; and CBS News’ Caitlin Huey-Burns on the mood from Capitol Hill.

These guests—and many more—will join us before and after the president’s address. Tune in right here at 8 p.m. Eastern.

—The Editors

If the prospect of braving another blizzard—or the midterm elections—all alone bums you out, The Free Press is here to help. Our old-school, straightforward matchmaking service, Free Press Cupid, is back and better than ever. This past week, we ran letters from a 22-year-old who is “substance-free, but with substance,” a Paris-born hotelier, and an “evangelical Christian slowly making my way toward Rome.” (And a few more!) Read all of last week’s letters from the eligible Free Pressers here (you’ll get their emails, too). If you’d like to be included in next week’s romantic batch, email [email protected] with a short write-up about who you are and what you are looking for in a mate.

• Nick Reiner pleaded not guilty yesterday in the stabbing deaths of his parents, film director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele. Read Jed Rubenfeld on whether an insanity plea could exonerate Nick, and Jonathan Rosen on the danger of nurturing delusion—and how some of the best intentions can create the worst outcomes.

• More than 40 million people saw blizzard conditions pummel the East Coast, with snow accumulations totaling over two feet in some areas. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani increased the pay rate for emergency snow shovelers to $30 an hour from about $19.

• Iranian entities with links to terrorist groups received about $1.7 billion through cryptocurrency exchange Binance, internal investigators found. The New York Times reported that potential legal violations were found even after Binance vowed in 2023 to crack down on suspicious transactions. The warnings about Iran emerged before President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao last October. He spent four months in prison for money-laundering violations.

• London police arrested Peter Mandelson, a former UK ambassador to the U.S., over his alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Emails released by the Justice Department appeared to show that Mandelson shared confidential information with Epstein while Mandelson was in government.

• Trump’s top general, Dan Caine, has warned the president against bombing Iran, citing the risk of a prolonged conflict, Axios reported. “General Caine, like all of us, would like not to see War but, if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won,” Trump wrote on Truth Social later on Monday.

• The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case from Boulder, Colorado, that seeks billions of dollars in damages from oil and gas companies for allegedly misleading the public about the impact of fossil fuels. The case could determine whether climate lawsuits must proceed in federal court, where past claims have seen little success.

• The BBC apologized for failing to edit out a racial slur during its Sunday coverage of the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs). John Davidson, who suffers from Tourette syndrome and whose life story is the basis of the film I Swear, yelled the N-word as two black actors took the stage to present an award during the ceremony.

Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where second place is good enough, neighborly relations are at a low ebb, real estate is worse than Los Angeles, and the snowbirds are voting to secede.

Canada has always taken hockey seriously, and an Olympic hockey match with the U.S. is no laughing matter. Now the U.S. is treating hockey like it’s war, with Canada as the enemy. Within seconds of the U.S. victory over Canada on Sunday, American X looked like the U.S. had just won World War III. MAGA didn’t differentiate between Trump-supporting Canadians or Boomer liberals, Alberta versus the rest of Canada, or any of the usual internal fault lines. It was all just “Canada,” flattened into a single target.

The White House account resurfaced a 2025 X post from Justin Trudeau featuring a bald eagle pinning a Canadian goose to the ice. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh gave off full 51st-state energy, celebrating that the U.S. had “vanquished” Canada—“the most evil and depraved country on Earth”—which feels like an overreaction for an overtime hockey win, and makes one wonder what he would have said had it gone to a shootout. U.S. congressman Randy Fine chimed in to remind everyone that America is better than Canada in “Every. Single. Way.” Dave Portnoy, founder and owner of Barstool Sports, kept it subtle: “CANADA IS BROKEN. WE OWN THEM ON EVERY LEVEL POSSIBLE. WOMENS AND MENS GOLD IN HOCKEY.” And then there were the “medical assistance in dying” jokes—posts suggesting that the Canadian team might apply after the loss.

State of the Union addresses are always breathlessly anticipated and then dissected endlessly. What was said? What was not said? How much time was devoted to each topic—and in which order? How many times was the speech interrupted by applause (or something else)? And—the big one—will the speech put wind in the sails of the incumbent president or drag that president down into the abyss? It can sound like everything is at stake.

Certainly, this particular speech to Congress, delivered in prime time on Tuesday night, seems primed for dramatic impact. President Donald Trump’s approval rating has been declining steadily, both overall and on issues ranging from inflation to immigration. It took Politico two long paragraphs over the weekend to summarize all the headwinds swirling around Trump about 13 months into his second term:

BYHALIA, Mississippi — The county that includes this tiny town voted for Donald Trump by seven percentage points in the last presidential election, has had a Republican in the House for more than a decade, and last helped elect a Democrat to the Senate in 1989.

It seemed like an ideal location when federal immigration officials showed up in the middle of January at a 798,000-square-foot warehouse about 10 miles out of town. They liked what they saw. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) planned to purchase the warehouse and convert it into a detention center as part of a wider strategy to help the president carry out his mass deportation plans.

Byhalia and surrounding Marshall County were about to become home to one of the largest immigration facilities in the United States, with room for 8,500 detainees, nearly six times the population of Byhalia.

In 2004, the Palestinian Authority launched its “Martyrs Fund,” promising to pay Palestinians who died or were thrown in prison as a result of committing terrorism against Israel. These “pay-for-slay” payouts add up to hundreds of millions of dollars per year. And while President Mahmoud Abbas claimed last year that he would end the program, it was enshrined by the proposed Palestinian constitution he released earlier this month.

Until last June, American victims of terrorist attacks in Israel had little legal recourse. Then the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) could be held liable for civil claims arising from their sponsorship of terrorists and their families.

One of the first lawsuits seeking to take advantage of that ruling is winding through a federal court in New York City. In 2016, 28-year-old Taylor Force was stabbed to death in Tel Aviv. His Palestinian killer was hailed as a martyr by the official PA news station. The lawsuit, filed in October, alleges that he was “induced” by “the promise of future reward” under the pay-for-slay program.

Last week, a series of police body-camera videos from a fraternity basement at the University of Iowa went viral. The footage is a little creepy. More than 50 male underclassmen stand in shorts and sneakers in the grimy storage room of a college house, blinking silently at the camera, caught like hapless deer in the beam of a headlight. Many are shirtless and blindfolded, unknown substances dripping down their chests. The officers tell the boys they can leave. The boys stare blankly back at them. The officers ask if anyone is hurt, and are met with unified silence. Then: “Anyone here that is against their will?” Finally, a ripple of no’s. You can smell the pools of stale beer through the screen.

It was November 2024 at the campus Alpha Delta Phi house, and the boys were in the midst of an initiation ritual. Police showed up in response to a fire alarm, only to find some kind of food fight, ketchup and mustard congealed to the boys’ necks. “Is that blood?” one officer asked. “You want to taste it?” an upperclassman leader replied. After several back-and-forths, an upperclassman told the boys to leave the basement, and they marched silently out and on their way. The university placed the fraternity on interim suspension, before officially deciding that the group had violated campus hazing policies and would be suspended until at least 2029.

But the body-camera footage wasn’t posted publicly until last Tuesday—at which point the internet pounced. In less than a week, it has accumulated over a million views on YouTube, and over 50 million on X. “Crazy what men will do for the validation of other men,” reads one X post with almost 500,000 views. “It’s really a grooming ritual—training members to normalize exploitation, hierarchy, and silence,” reads another. The New York Post called the incident “disturbing.”

When his mother decides he’s too gifted for public school and says she’ll be homeschooling him for fifth grade, Stefan Block has a dark sense of what’s coming. “Mom sometimes gets ideas which aren’t like other people’s,” he notes uneasily in his recent memoir Homeschooled, writing from the perspective of his child self, even though he’s 44 now, and his mother is dead.

He’s right to worry. In addition to generally neglecting his education, his mother insists that 13-year-old Block revert to crawling on all fours instead of walking upright, saying that this will restart his developmental process and improve his atrocious handwriting. “Mom doesn’t let me stand the rest of the day, and when I wake in the morning she’s upset to find me walking down from my bedroom,” Block writes. He crawls for the next several months, to the point that he gets rug burns on his knees and has body aches so painful it’s difficult to sleep. When he repeatedly suggests returning to school, his mother implies this would leave her alone and miserable, her eyes sometimes filling with tears at the thought.

This is not the first memoir that lays bare a dysfunctional family’s homeschooling journey. Block’s memoir joins Tara Westover’s Educated, which made a splash eight years ago. Westover, who grew up in rural Idaho with devout parents who didn’t trust the government, turned 18 having gleaned all the math she could from a single battered textbook and never having heard of the Holocaust. Dark stories like these confirm the popular narrative: that homeschooled kids are isolated losers from strange, cultish families, that they’re undereducated and unsocialized, and that homeschooling is general malpractice on the part of the parents.