The Free Press

Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Susie Kaufman, who writes the Substack Seventysomething, described the joys of the cha-cha at age 80. This week, Michael Friedman, 82, writes about dealing with the grief he has felt since losing his lifelong soulmate, his wife Harriet.

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My wife of nearly 49 years died from pancreatic cancer six months ago. I held her as she took her last labored breaths. She was 81 years old.

Harriet had had a long life and, as she said repeatedly while she was dying, a happier life than she ever expected. She accepted the inevitability of her death gracefully, and dare I say, optimistically.

To my surprise, I wasn’t ready to accept it. We had prepared, I thought. She and I had had all the conversations you should have about what we wanted to happen to our bodies and what kind of service we wanted. We had done our advance directives—wills, beneficiary designees, healthcare proxies, and all the rest of it. Our affairs were in order. We were ready.

Except: Our expectation had always been that I would die first, as men usually do, especially men like me with multiple chronic health conditions. Harriet had settled into the idea that she would be a widow, and so had I. She was close to her family and had many friends who would be there for her. We were both sure that her life after I died would continue to be fulfilling, and we were both comforted by that.

It turned out, when she was the one who died first, and I was the widower, I was not so ready after all. I was not ready to find myself crying with little provocation. I was not ready to be alone in our bed. I was not ready for her not to be there to talk to. As I said in my eulogy for her, when I finished writing it, I got up from my desk to go show it to her. I sat back down, stunned, when I realized she wasn’t there.

It’s Friday, January 30. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: How the American people fact-checked their government, why data centers are not the enemy, and Abigail Shrier delivers more tough love. Plus: Glenna Goldis talks to Emily Yoffe about why she was fired by Letitia James, this week’s editors’ picks, and much more.

But first: Why are so many British women now getting abortions?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for The Free Press about Britain’s collapsing birthrate. A day later, I saw something online that stunned me. It was this chart:

It showed that abortions in England and Wales are now at their highest level since the procedure was legalized in 1967—and that nearly one in three pregnancies are now ending in termination.

What was behind this sudden spike? To find out, I spoke to women across the UK: women who’d had one abortion, several abortions, routine abortions, and abortions that were physically brutal. I also discussed the trend with the former head of Britain’s largest abortion provider, who told me how terminating a pregnancy has transformed from a clinic-based procedure into medication you can order online to come to your door, and keep “just in case.”

What some believe may be a result of poverty or coercive control turned out to be something else entirely. This is a story about normalization, risk aversion, and most importantly, a generation of women who feel too imperfect to become mothers.

Read my reporting on why abortion has become easier than motherhood in today’s Britain.

—Kara Kennedy

Children are often hurt most by a rough divorce—and sometimes they can be hurt all over again when their parents move on. This week, our advice columnist Abigail Shrier responds to a question from Cassie, a 35-year-old woman whose teenage daughter doesn’t like her new boyfriend. Her dilemma is this: “Should I continue seeing this man and trust that my daughter will eventually adjust? Or should I wait until my children are older, even if that means risking my chance at remarriage and happiness?” Read Abigail’s answer:

Earlier this month, Glenna Goldis, a progressive consumer fraud expert and proud lesbian, was fired from her job in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office for opposing childhood gender transition surgery. James considered this “disruptive speech.” On Tuesday, Glenna told her side of the story for the first time, and did so in the pages of The Free Press. If you missed her account of the price she paid for speaking out, read it here. And if you want to go deeper on this important story, watch Glenna’s conversation with Free Press senior editor Emily Yoffe:

This week, all eyes were on Minnesota after a border patrol agent shot and killed Alex Pretti. Here are some of the Free Press stories from this week that you might have missed—on the fallout from that shooting, and everything else.

The second fatal shooting of an American citizen by a federal agent in Minneapolis this month was always going to set off a firestorm. But the outcry was made worse by inflammatory comments from administration officials immediately after the tragedy. Read our editorial on that response—and why it was so wrong:

Olivia Reingold has been on the ground in Minneapolis this week. On Tuesday, she spoke to protesters in the city who saw signs of the federal government backing down. Read her dispatch on which locals were celebrating Trump’s pledge to “de-escalate” and which were more circumspect.

For more on Minneapolis, read former vice president Mike Pence on why the disorder in the city is a warning to the rest of the country:

Tuesday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, and we ran two pieces to mark the occasion. First, with antisemitism resurgent and the biggest industrial slaughter in history fading from living memory, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore reflected on the horrifying new wave of Holocaust denial and how its present manifestation is so different to the denialists of the past:

Second, we ran a remembrance by Suzanne Lentzsch of Elie Wiesel, whose story of survival during the Holocaust has resonated across the world in the decades since his liberation from Auschwitz. Suzanne, a German doctor who treated his terminal cancer 10 years ago, paid tribute to the kindness and respect afforded to her by the great man:

One in 20 deaths in Canada are now medically assisted suicides. Rupa Subramanya has reported extensively on the expansion of assisted suicide programs in Canada and beyond. This week she revisited the case of Kiano Vafaeian, who she first heard from two years ago. Vafaeian was not terminally ill—and until recently was not permitted to die under the country’s assisted suicide program. But Vafaeian was determined to die, and Canada keeps making it easier for people like him to choose to do so.

Finally, for a much-needed lighter offering, read River Page on the steamy new Netflix show Heated Rivalry—which is about two closeted gay ice hockey players and has been such a success that one of its stars called the reaction to it a “mass psychosis event.” River’s take? Everyone needs to stop being so weird about the gay hockey show. Read it here:

The Front Page will be back on Monday morning. Until then, look out for the Weekend Press—in which Suzy Weiss will deliver her verdict on the Melania movie and Gabe Kaminsky will grab two drinks with RFK Jr.

In Monday’s column I wrote about the very public schism in the Beckham family, between the parents (David and Victoria) and their son Brooklyn, who announced on social media last week that he was no longer speaking to them. I explained that this situation is surprisingly common—that 11 percent of moms over 65 are not speaking to at least one of their kids, as well as 26 percent of dads. Yet, like a death, estrangement feels uniquely sad to everyone experiencing it. The column got a lot of reaction for this very reason—and many of you shared your own family estrangement stories in the comments.

I don’t know the inside details of the Beckham case, of course, but it sounds a lot like the kind of intergenerational conflict I hear about all the time, from both aging parents and adult children. And the cause is very clear: The parents and their kids never developed a fully adult relationship.

When kids are little, they are helpless and totally dependent. That creates an asymmetrical relationship with their parents, which is as it should be. But some families never progress beyond this relationship, even after their kids are grown. You probably know parents who treat their kids as incompetent even in young adulthood, second-guessing all of their decisions and condemning their life choices—all while, all too often, funding their lifestyles, at least in part. This foments dependence: Kids see their folks as walking ATM machines long after they could already be completely independent. If mom and dad are paying the family phone plan, why rock the boat?

This leads to coldness and mutual resentment, if not outright schism. That shouldn’t surprise us: Kids deserve to be treated like no-kidding real adults, and their parents deserve to be treated like actual loved ones, not parent-shaped Pez dispensers.

So what’s the solution? The advice I give people my age is to adopt a nonjudgmental interest in their adult kids’ lives without intervening—unless invited. This can be incredibly hard, especially when it involves a breach of values. A common example is an adult child not practicing the family’s religion. (In that case, here’s my advice: Bug God about them; don’t bug them about God.) Or, they might hold radically different political views. (Take a sincere interest in their views, especially if they are strange to you.)

As for young adults, the advice I give is to become truly independent. Like, get your own Netflix account (gasp!). When this happens, love actually feels more like a free act and less like an obligation in exchange for filthy lucre. It might even motivate you to take an actual adult interest in those weirdos you call your parents.

If you are wondering how we try to practice what I preach in my own family, I’ll tell you in a few weeks in a column I am writing about deciding to live in an intergenerational household. Speaking of, here is my roommate-grandson licking my home office window as he impatiently waits for me to wrap up this newsletter so we can wrestle. The boy knows his rights.

Off to wrestle. See you next week,

Arthur

PS: Be sure to check out the latest episode of my show Office Hours. This week I am joined by Dave Ramsey, one of the most influential voices in personal finance, whose work has helped millions of people change their relationship with money. Most people assume that having more money will make them happier. The research suggests something more subtle: What matters is not how much money you have, but how you use it.

Hello, and welcome back! We have a few new Free Press job listings today, if you can believe it. If you want to save America while having fun, and can accept that the office is either freezing cold or extremely hot, please join us as an advertising operations lead or event manager.

→ Border fallout: The American public is fed up with ICE chaos and cruelty in the wake of the killing of Alex Pretti—and Trump seems to know it. Greg Bovino, our tiny border patrol chief who oversaw the Minneapolis crackdown, is reportedly retiring early (though the admin denies it), as he and several of his agents prepared to leave the city this week. Conservative radio host Erick Erickson said of Pretti’s death: “I went into this ready to blame Alex Pretti. After watching hours of footage from multiple angles. . . I can’t.” So they’ve lost Erick. They’ve also lost gun rights supporters: Rob Doar, senior vice president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said that “If Mr. Pretti was disarmed—absent any other evidence of any risk to an officer—I don’t see how deadly force would be justified.” Even the stately WSJ is calling all y’all a bunch of liars: “Videos Contradict U.S. Account of Minneapolis Shooting by Federal Agents.” The Trump admin defense just falls flat. Kooky Kristi (Noem) came out to claim that Pretti was trying to kill people: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Does it? If Alex Pretti had a gun and was trying to kill law enforcement, wouldn’t he have, like, drawn that gun and shot at them? Whatever he was doing it certainly doesn’t look like someone attempting to inflict maximum damage, à la John Wick. Finally, after days of outrage, Tom Homan said ICE enforcement in Minneapolis “can be improved” and that they’re working on a “drawdown,” which is the closest to an apology you’ll get from a Trump appointee.

A whopping 59 percent of voters see ICE actions as “too aggressive.” And to top it all off, a new Cato Institute paper out this week shows that “Overall, immigrants consumed about 24 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans.” Wait a second. . . I thought all those guys standing outside Home Depot were looking for welfare checks, not jobs. I’m simply shocked by this.

Meanwhile, Trump is fundraising off the news cycle because why the hell not:

Does it read a little flirty to anyone else?

Until last week, Glenna Goldis was an assistant attorney general for the state of New York in the Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau. Then, she was fired by New York attorney general Letitia James for opposing so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. In her piece for The Free Press this week, Glenna wrote about how she came to see childhood gend…

On October 17, 1961, tens of thousands of Algerians marched through the streets of Paris in peaceful defiance of a discriminatory curfew imposed by the French state. Police opened fire, beat protesters, arrested them en masse—and, in some cases, threw people into the Seine, where they drowned. Historians later called it “the bloodiest act of state repression of street protest in Western Europe in modern history.” At least 48—but possibly hundreds—were killed.

Yet for decades, the official story minimized the violence. The death toll, it was claimed, was three. Police had acted to defend themselves. The protesters were terrorists.

The French state actively buried the truth. Records were falsified. Evidence suppressed. Investigations blocked. Publications seized. The paper trail was shaped to match the story.

Rare is the political wave that will bring together Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders and Florida Republican Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has pushed to limit Florida data center construction and sided with Floridians blaming them for higher electric bills. Sanders would go further and wants a national data center construction moratorium, claiming that data centers will not just jack up power bills, but swallow up Lake Michigan.

It seems like most Americans are inclined to believe him. Over the last year, resistance to data centers has exploded. Recent polling indicates that only 44 percent of Americans would welcome a data center near them, and only 17 percent believe artificial intelligence will have a positive impact over the next two decades. In the fall, an Indianapolis city council meeting to discuss a proposed data center drew two overflow rooms of angry citizens, and the opposition was so intense that Google withdrew its rezoning request for a 468-acre data center just minutes before a vote.

Gemma is 28, British, and recovering from an abortion she had just over a month ago. She was far enough along—a few days shy of five months—that she had to be admitted to the hospital. She would have preferred to end the pregnancy earlier—but she didn’t know about it, even after getting checked out by a doctor after suffering from fatigue.

“I was still having periods. I wasn’t gaining weight. I was going to the doctor and getting blood tests, and nobody ever told me I was pregnant,” she told me.

When she finally took a pregnancy test and found out, she decided an abortion was her best option. “I had only been in a relationship with the father for five months. I knew it wouldn’t survive something like this,” she said. In Great Britain, abortion is legal up to six months into a pregnancy, with the approval of two doctors (or after six months if the woman is at risk of grave injury or death, or the child is at risk of being seriously handicapped.)

Gemma wasn’t nervous. She knew what to expect physically, which medication would help with the pain afterward, and roughly what it would feel like psychologically. This was, after all, her third abortion in as many years.

When I asked Gemma whether she was unusual among her friends, she paused. “I wouldn’t say they’ve all had multiple,” she said. “But they’ve definitely all had one.”

Somewhere in the middle of my multiday bingewatch of Bridgerton—the sexy Netflix period drama which returns today for its fourth season—I started thinking about the Patagonian toothfish.

The Patagonian toothfish, to be clear, is not a character on this show (although the name does have a certain “Argentinian nobleman” ring to it). Instead, his filleted corpse awaits you in the seafood section of your local grocery and on the menu of upscale steakhouses. He has a mild flavor, flaky flesh, and, in fact, you’ve probably had him once or twice—albeit without knowing it. Because the Patagonian toothfish isn’t just a fish; he’s one of the greatest branding success stories out there, courtesy of a Los Angeles seafood retailer named Lee Lantz. It was 1977 when Lantz realized that a toothfish by any other name would taste as sweet, but that as names went, “Patagonian toothfish” was absolutely terrible. The fish needed a glow up—like when Facebook rebranded as Meta, or fat farms quietly transformed into wellness retreats.

And just like that, the Chilean sea bass was born.

What does this have to do with Bridgerton? Only this: that Netflix, in a genius marketing move of its own, has managed to persuade an entire generation of women that they’re consuming the Chilean sea bass of period dramas, a tale of feisty, independent women who defy sexist stereotypes and 19th-century social norms alike to have absolutely spectacular sex with their chiseled, handsome gentleman husbands. But make no mistake: While audiences might think that Bridgerton is something fresh and unprecedented, what they’re really consuming is nothing less than the exquisitely rebranded Patagonian toothfish of patriarchy.

It is astonishing, truly, that they managed to pull this off.

Dear Abigail,

I am a divorced mother of three daughters, ages 13, 11, and 7. I married young with the intention of staying married for life. Although I certainly made mistakes, the marriage ultimately ended due to my ex-husband’s infidelity. Having lived with her for several years, he married the “other woman” last month—an event that has stirred up a lot of emotions for my daughters and me.

Despite the hurt, I am committed to maintaining a cordial co-parenting relationship. He and I share custody 50-50, and I appreciate how present he is as a father. His wife treats my girls well, though blending two households is not without challenges. (They have three teenage girls.)

Last year, I felt ready to date again, and have been seeing a wonderful man for six months. We are aligned on values and, unlike my ex-husband, he shares my Catholic faith. He has never been married and does not have children, but he is kind to my girls and open to the possibility of becoming a stepfather. I can genuinely see a future with him.

The difficulty is my oldest daughter. She struggles deeply with the idea of me dating or remarrying. She is honest about her feelings, but she shuts down whenever I mention my boyfriend or the possibility of him spending time with our family. When he is around, she isolates herself; when he isn’t, she tells me how much she hates the idea of me moving on. This is particularly painful because she warmly accepts her stepmother. (My daughters do not know about the infidelity.) I will never disparage her father, but it feels unfair that his choices caused this rupture, yet the pressure is on me to protect everyone else’s feelings.

I understand my daughter’s fear. Her life has involved significant upheaval, and the security of a two-parent home was taken from her when she was young. She worries it could happen again. Yet I feel torn between honoring my daughter’s need for stability and pursuing my own long-term desire for love and companionship. I know that children of divorce often feel unheard, and I am deeply committed to making sure my daughters know their feelings matter. At the same time, I worry about holding back from my healthy, loving relationship, which might prompt my partner to walk away.

Should I continue seeing this man and trust that my daughter will eventually adjust? Or should I wait until my children are older, even if that means risking my chance at remarriage and happiness?

—Cassie, 35

Dear Cassie,

I have a colleague—I’ll call her “Amanda”—who was about the age of your eldest when her parents divorced. The circumstances were entirely different: Her mom walked out. For Amanda, the whole ordeal was devastating. More than 30 years later, her voice thickened with emotion as she told me about it.

One of the most painful points of contention between Amanda and her parents during that period had to do with therapy. Her parents insisted on it.