The Free Press

Of all the radical ideas at the heart of the American founding, freedom of religion stands apart. Rarely in human history has a nascent nation rejected religious uniformity and bet instead on liberty, trusting that faiths can live side by side, peacefully and equally. In doing so, America didn’t banish faith, but made room for it to thrive in all its depth and diversity.

For this month’s installment of our America at 250 series, a yearlong celebration of the country’s big birthday, we’re spotlighting faith and how it helped build our nation. You’ll hear from Catholic magazine editor R. R. Reno on how his marriage to a Jewish woman drew him closer to God; from David Wolpe on two towering prophets of history; from Matthew Walther on the kaleidoscope of American religious life; and more.

Today, we kick things off with the great Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who explains why the flourishing of biblical faith in the new country provided the basis for American equality. For, he writes, “In rejecting monarchy, Americans were not insisting that they had no king, but that their king was God.” —The Editors

A rabbi and a minister march in a parade.

This is not the opening of a joke. It is, instead, the description of an event that marked the advent of a wholly new approach to the role of religion in society. A rabbi and a minister, joined in unison, comprised a sublime symbol of the role that faith would play in the nascent nation known as the United States.

“Reject weakness in any form.”

“The world is hypercompetitive. If you’re going to be a man who’s going to sit and say, ‘I’m just sad,’ you are always going to lose in competition to men like me.”

“My sister is her husband’s property.”

“There is no such thing as an independent female.”

This is all Andrew Tate, the controversial “manosphere” influencer, whose…

Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where there are no imminent threats and yet no one is safe. But at least we can pretend—and even hope—that we will deal with it in January. This is my last newsletter of the year, so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thanks for reading.

What began as investigations of attempted abductions ended with the announcement last week of a long list of charges including terrorism against three men who allegedly were motivated by hatred toward women and Jewish Canadians. The news was even more alarming because it came just five days after the terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach.

Back in May, three men tried to kidnap a woman in Toronto, pointing a gun at her and demanding that she get into their car before she screamed and they drove away, according to police. In June, three masked men chased two women who were walking in Mississauga, fleeing when someone intervened.

Police made three arrests in August, including Waleed Khan, 26, of Toronto. By last week, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had traced Khan’s connections to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), alleging that the earlier incidents were part of a conspiracy to commit murder for the benefit of the terrorist group. A search of his home turned up a loaded AR-style rifle capable of automatic fire, a handgun fitted with high-capacity magazines, and more than 110 rounds of ammunition.

It’s Tuesday, December 23. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Tyler Cowen on the debunking of Oliver Sacks; River Page on how the Trump team lost its media savvy; and Russ Greene on “Total Boomer Luxury Communism.” Plus: Did J.D. Vance just take a side in the MAGA civil war?

But first: Gabe Kaminsky opens up the pardon playbook.

A round of golf at Mar-a-Lago. A letter delivered by Roger Stone. A lobbyist pal of the president’s eldest son. These are a few of the things that might be useful if you ever find yourself needing a pardon from President Donald Trump.

So far, Trump has granted clemency to more than 1,600 people during his second term, a big jump on the 240 pardons issued during his entire first term. Though he still has a way to go to beat Joe Biden’s 4,245 clemency acts during his presidency—the most by a president in American history.

The power to pardon has long been controversial. What makes Trump extraordinary is the pardon playbook that is being used to great success by those with wealth, or connections to Trump or people close to him, or both. For my investigation for The Free Press today, I dive into that playbook, and report on the ways in which the rich and powerful (and incarcerated) are trying to persuade the president to clear their name.

Trump’s allies deny any impropriety, and refute the idea that pardons are essentially for sale. But I heard from ethics experts and other sources who track the pardon process who say that it is cause for alarm under Trump. Read my full story for this look on how power and influence works in Trump’s Washington.

—Gabe Kaminsky

We failed to include the link to one of our stories in yesterday’s Front Page. We apologize for the mistake, have thrown the intern responsible into the piranha tank, and hope you’ll give it another try:

• President Trump announced plans to build two new “Trump class” Navy battleships, part of what Navy secretary John Phelan called “the president’s golden fleet.” The pair of ships, according to Trump, will feature hypersonic missiles and “high-powered lasers.” Phelan described the initiative as the “return of American maritime-industrial might.”

• A senior Russian general was killed in Moscow after an explosive was placed under his car. The officer, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, served as the head of the Russian Army training directorate, a key post for military readiness. Ukraine did not confirm involvement in the assassination.

• A federal judge in Brooklyn declared a mistrial after the jury could not reach a verdict in the case of a former Democratic aide accused of working for the Chinese government. Linda Sun, former deputy chief of staff to New York governor Kathy Hochul, and Sun’s husband were accused of doing the bidding of China, in exchange for lavish gifts.

• Over a dozen Heritage Foundation officials, including senior staff, have resigned and joined Advancing American Freedom, a think tank started by former vice president Mike Pence. Pence’s policy shop will also add the Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, formerly at Heritage. One official who made the switch called Heritage president Kevin Robert’s defense of Tucker Carlson in October a “seminal moment.”

• House Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie said that they will seek to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress for not releasing more documents about sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. “Our goal is not to take down Bondi,” Khanna said. “Our goal is to get the documents out for the survivors.” President Trump is backing a primary challenger against Massie in Kentucky.

• Japan approved restarting the world’s largest nuclear power plant. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa has been closed since the earthquake in 2011 that led to the Fukushima meltdown. The decision could help make Japan a major player in the worldwide energy race.

• The Trump administration is removing at least two dozen career ambassadors from their positions around the world. The cuts among these Biden-appointed officials mark President Trump’s latest attempt to reshape American foreign policy. “It is the president’s right to ensure that he has individuals in these countries who advance the America First agenda,” one senior State Department official said.

• Marty Supreme, a new movie starring Timothée Chalamet, brought in $875,000 while playing on just six screens last weekend. The film won’t receive a wide release until Thursday, but it won a spot in the domestic top 10. Marty Supreme had the highest average ticket sales per theater since La La Land in 2016.

If there was any doubt about which side Vice President J.D. Vance is on in the MAGA influencer war, there is none left after his speech at AmericaFest Sunday. At the annual Turning Point USA conference, Vance began his speech with a thinly veiled reference to Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, who delivered a stinging jeremiad calling out by name leading Donald Trump supporters who had abandoned truth in the pursuit of clicks.

“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform,” Vance said. “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests,” he added.

Vance has aligned himself with the side that wants to keep the MAGA tent as wide as possible. And that means he is on Team Tucker Carlson. On the other side of the party’s civil war are conservatives like Newsweek senior editor Josh Hammer, Fox News host Mark Levin, and Shapiro. Shapiro’s speech denounced those inside the MAGA coalition who were too afraid to call out conspiracy theory hokum, lest they offend their very-online audiences. In short, Shapiro is asking the MAGA coalition to enforce its own borders and keep out the kooks, conspiracy theorists, and antisemites.

Businessman Timothy Leiweke was indicted in July for allegedly conspiring to rig the bidding process for a new arena at the University of Texas at Austin. Federal prosecutors threatened to lock him for up to 10 years. “Unfair business practices, like those employed here, make it very difficult for the American people to pursue prosperity like our founders intended,” U.S. Attorney Justin Simmons said at the time.

In December, Leiweke received a “full and unconditional pardon” signed by Donald Trump. The president did not say why he did it, but Leiweke said, “I do not have the words to adequately convey my profound gratitude to President Trump.”

When it comes to popularizing science, Oliver Sacks had few peers. The work of the neurologist and author was made into movies, inspired doctors and writers, has been featured in documentaries, and, of course, sold countless books.

Now Sacks is the leading exhibit in what looks like an epidemic of popular science debunking. In The New Yorker earlier this month, Rachel Aviv showed how many of his writings on neurological conditions significantly embellished their key claims. Sacks made the stories more dramatic and interesting than they really were, and in some cases, his tales may not have been real in the first place.

I come to you with a mouthful of crow. Last year, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s re-election, a lot of journalists and pundits, including yours truly, waxed lyrical about how good the Trump team was at media: how they understood how to dominate media cycles and their keen and fluent use of new media like podcasts and X (formerly Twitter), among other things that seemed true at the time.

But after less than a year in power, let’s face it: Trump World is losing its media edge.

A good place to start is Kash Patel’s goofy podcast appearance last week. The FBI director joined a show hosted by the wife of his Trump administration colleague Stephen Miller, only for the episode to be released during a manhunt for a Portuguese psychopath who allegedly killed two Brown University students and an MIT nuclear scientist before blowing his brains out in a storage facility.

I learned that Rob Reiner and his wife Michele had been murdered when a journalist friend texted me the tragic news, adding that the Reiners’ son Nick was the prime suspect. Though I grew up in New Rochelle, New York, where Rob Reiner spent his childhood, I did not have a personal connection to the victims; it only felt that way. Like millions of Americans who grew up in the ’70s watching All in the Family, I have a place in my brain where Meathead, the character Reiner played, is on permanent display, like Archie Bunker’s chair in the Smithsonian.

Our shared imaginary world is not the only reason my friend texted me; it was because of a book I’d written, The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, which is about my childhood best friend, Michael Laudor, who grew up across the street from me in New Rochelle, went to Yale the same year I did, but suffered a psychotic break a few years after graduating.

Brilliant and charming, Michael managed to go to Yale Law School despite a diagnosis of schizophrenia and an ongoing battle with delusions he sometimes recounted to his professors. After a profile in The New York Times showcased his battle with mental illness—it ended with the dean of Yale Law School calling Michael “a brilliant young person who has conquered what is always difficult—an illness—but has conquered it extraordinarily well,” he sold his life story to Ron Howard, who, like Rob Reiner, had been a beloved TV star before becoming a director. Brad Pitt was cast to play Michael, and I allowed myself to think that Hollywood had saved him. But he had stopped taking his medication, spiraled into psychosis, and stabbed his pregnant fiancée to death in a psychotic rage.

This piece was originally published in The American Mind.

For half a decade, the right has debated “free market fundamentalism.” This phenomenon is also known as “zombie Reaganism,” “libertarian neoconservatism,” and “neoliberalism.” Whatever you call it, it never happened. That is to say, the reduction in government expenditure and size that Reaganites promised and liberals feared turned out to be a mirage. What happened instead is that, starting in the 1980s, both parties set the country on a course toward Total Boomer Luxury Communism (TBLC).

TBLC is driving every aspect of American decline—from skyrocketing national debt and the erosion of our defense industrial base to the despair of young people. It’s not the only reason for the decline, to be sure, but it’s a major part of the problem. Yet TBLC has been entirely obscured from view.