Late last summer I stood with a small group of women in a Hudson Valley backyard, the last of the afternoon’s sunlight streaming over the hilly tree line. As we sipped our drinks, one friend mentioned a bit of news that caused the others to cheer—maybe it was about Israel; maybe it was transgenderism. Or Donald Trump, or Covid policy, or Black Lives Matter, or any of the other electric issues of the day. Whatever it was, I had an entirely different opinion on the matter than everyone else appeared to have.

This left me with a choice: Do I speak up and risk alienating myself and infuriating everyone there? Or do I say nothing? I chose the latter, as I often do. I smiled woodenly and nodded along as the group happily agreed on a stance I thought was hurting individuals and damaging society, and then I drove home, muttering to myself, saying all the things I would have liked to have said in person, irritated, stewing, and frustrated.

It’s been a few years now since I stopped talking freely among friends and family. I am the daughter of two leftist activists, and spent 15 years of my adult life happily living in uber-progressive Brooklyn. In these environments, I was often just on the edge of expected opinions, but even my most eccentric observations were firmly within the boundaries of the left. I never really seemed to bother any of my family, friends, or co-workers.

But by early 2020, something had changed. I had been rethinking my views, wanting evidence that various progressive policies—many of them new and quite radical—were effective, and finding little or none. At the same time, everyone I knew seemed to be transforming into warriors for the exact ideas I was critiquing. The pressure to conform ratcheted up.

Janiyah Thomas has spent her career in conservative politics, from the Republican National Committee to Senator Tim Scott’s presidential campaign, but she thinks that the Republican Party hasn’t always filled its ranks with people who are culturally in tune with African Americans. So when she joined Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign as Black Media Director, …

Hi folks. This was a hard week. As we wrote in our editorial in the wake of the worst political assassination our country has witnessed in decades: “Charlie Kirk’s assassination has hit the staff of The Free Press hard. . . . We’re journalists, which means we are used to reporting on horrible events, including gun violence, assaults, and murders. So why does this one feel different? Why is there sure to be a prolonged impact from this tragedy?”

It’s because Kirk was assassinated for his views. It’s because he was murdered while practicing the virtues we aim to stand for here at The Free Press: speaking freely, and inviting good-faith debate from all corners.

I am proud of our reporters and writers always, but especially over these past days.

They’ve helped me make sense of this precarious moment, helped separate the signal from the noise, and kept cool heads in a moment where so many others are raising the temperature.

Let’s get to it.

Ten Steps to Repair America

Over the past week, if you’ve logged online and seen students celebrating Kirk’s murder, right-wing influencers saying this means war, or mealy-mouthed politicians excusing the shooter’s actions—we wouldn’t blame you for asking: Is there a way back? How do we sew together the fabric of a nation so torn apart?

We offered a 10-step guide to fixing our broken country.

Yuval Levin: Have an Argument

Coleman Hughes: Demand Nonviolence

Abigail Shrier: Parent Your Kids

Mary Katharine Ham: Look for God

Tyler Cowen: Stop Blaming ‘Them’

Charles Fain Lehman: Don’t Tolerate Disorder

Sam Harris: Log Off

Greg Lukianoff: Bury the ‘Words Are Violence’ Cliché

Joe Nocera: Stop Worshipping Guns

Peter Savodnik: Be a Leader

Eli Lake: Grace in a Time of Violence

Close your eyes and imagine it’s 1972. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman ever elected to Congress, launched a long-shot bid for president. Her opponent? A proud segregationist, Alabama governor George Wallace. Weeks into campaigning, Wallace was shot five times in an assassination attempt that left him paralyzed.

Chisholm—against the wishes of her aides—visited him in the hospital. She did so because she believed in seeing the person behind the politics. She believed that grace had a place in public life.

Read Eli Lake on how that visit changed Wallace’s life and turned him into a man who asked civil rights leaders for their forgiveness.

Free Speech in Crisis

“Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.” That’s a quote from Kirk—and a great summation of how the Republican Party has positioned itself over the past decade as the Free Speech Party, turning the First Amendment into a signature issue at home and abroad.

So why, in the wake of his murder, did Attorney General Pam Bondi say she would prosecute people who “are targeting anyone with hate speech”?

Read our editorial:

Earlier this week, ABC late-night star Jimmy Kimmel quipped that Kirk’s alleged assassin was a MAGA conservative, prompting the network to pull his show off air.

But it wasn’t ABC’s decision alone. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Brendan Carr pressured the network to do so, saying, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

There’s a word for this: jawboning. Silencing speech through government coercion. And it should alarm all Americans:

Nick Gillespie, our favorite libertarian and editor-at-large of Reason Magazine, has a different perspective. Donald Trump, he argues, is not the first president to abuse the power of the FCC, using the agency to punish critics and reward supporters. They’ve all done it.

There’s only one solution to this ongoing problem, Gillespie writes. Abolish the FCC.

Woody Allen on Life, Death, and Why He Doesn’t Care What You Think of Him

Everyone knows the name Woody Allen. He’s one of the most revered and acclaimed filmmakers of the last century. Now, at age 89, Allen has written his first novel, What’s With Baum? Its protagonist is an anxious, smart Jewish writer with a messy personal life. Yes, it’s like a Woody Allen movie in book form.

It also touches on a major theme of our age: the idea that an accusation, once made, is as good as a conviction.

We get into everything—from the accusations, to his cancellation, to his childhood in Brooklyn and his climb to the commanding heights of American culture. It’s one of my favorite conversations I’ve had on Honestly. Give it a listen:

Alright folks, that’s it from me. Keep an eye out for Suzy’s culture column tomorrow, and be sure to read Things Worth Remembering and Ancient Wisdom on Sunday.

Until then, be sure to check out Niall Ferguson’s conversation with Tina Brown. They discuss our very own Gilded Age: tariffs, immigration restrictions, and the ultrarich flaunting their wealth. It’s a treat, with two of my absolute favorite people.

It’s not often that we get a glimpse behind the scenes of the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency—and one of the most covert organizations in the world. But that’s exactly what Yossi Cohen, who led the organization from 2016 to 2021, offers in his new book.

Released this week, The Sword of Freedom pulls back the curtain on Israel’s defiance in the face of never-ending existential threats. We’re delighted to share an excerpt from the book today.

As a Mossad agent in the 1990s, Cohen was tasked with recruiting a Hezbollah terrorist to reveal information on the status of two Israeli hostages. It’s the type of moral dilemma—and remarkable ingenuity—that characterizes the Mossad’s work.

Read the excerpt below. And make sure not to miss Cohen’s conversation with Bari next week, spanning his life as a Mossad agent, his leadership of the agency, the future of the Middle East, and more. —The Editors

Joseph Fink, known to everyone as Yossi, was born in Manchester, England, on June 2, 1965, and moved to Israel with his family at age 6. Quiet and shy, he was a perfectionist, a keen sportsman and musician who aspired to excellence in everything he did.

He was kind and attentive, nurturing his younger sisters by helping them with their studies. In 1983, he joined a program which allows Orthodox Jews to combine their religious studies with military service in the Israel Defense Forces. They are enlisted for 16 months, rather than the usual three years.

Yossi proved to be a determined, adaptable soldier. Serving in an elite troop, he was being considered for promotion when, at midday on February 17, 1986, his military convoy was ambushed by Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon. Yossi was hit several times and was unable to defend himself due to the severity of his wounds.

Assassins often have unclear motives, but evidence is accumulating about what led Tyler Robinson to allegedly kill Charlie Kirk. The bullets were inscribed with anti-fascist messages. Robinson’s mother informed the government that her son had recently become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.” Robinson told his romantic partner, a trans-identifying male, that he had “had enough” of the conservative activist’s “hatred,” and that “some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Given the available information, it is reasonable to conclude that Kirk was killed on account of his political views by someone who believed that his death would advance anti-fascism and transgender rights.

And yet some on the left have suggested that Robinson was in fact a MAGA Republican. Others have suggested that, whoever killed Kirk, the victim was asking for it with his dangerous rhetoric. What these responses have in common is an assumption that the right is always to blame for political violence, even when it is committed by the left.

But an equally conspiratorial, reason-defying reaction has emerged in the independent media that wields so much influence on the American right. Figures such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson found in Kirk’s death an occasion to criticize Jews and Israel, doing their best to inject a suggestion of Jewish culpability into the conspiratorial brew even as they paid tribute to Kirk. Meanwhile, a predictable assortment of online cranks who see Jewish conspiracy behind the weather and any other event beyond their own control suggested that Kirk might have been murdered by Mossad. All this has been a reminder that for all the failings of traditional media, serious problems beset the independent media that proposes to take their place.

Ever since the killing of Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump has vowed to go after liberal groups that he said have done “tremendous damage to our country.” Now, his administration is considering different ways to fulfill that pledge.

Officials at the White House National Security Council have discussed the government using federal statutes related to “treason, sedition, and subversive activities,” according to sources briefed on the conversations, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Trump on Wednesday said he will designate antifa, a loosely organized and decentralized far-left movement opposing fascism, as a “major terrorist organization.” It’s not clear how that will be done, but a draft executive order has circulated in the White House that aims to target people identifying as antifa.

Welcome back to The Free Press’s news satire, which would be pulled off the air after 20 minutes if I were allowed on camera. Nexstar Media Group: Read no further. Nothing to see here, move along.

In other news, my new favorite merch just dropped: A T-shirt to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. America’s the best country in the world, which gives you a sense of how bad the situation everywhere else is. Get one here!

Let’s get to the news.

→ Fallout from a political assassination: The killing of Charlie Kirk is the highest profile political assassination in years, and the fallout across the right and left is showing just how unhinged our political reality is. And also, just how many political realities there are. Let’s begin with what the normie resistance moms are hearing—and by that, I mean let’s begin with ABC News. There, the dashing reporter Matt Gutman comes on to describe the beauty of the messages our suspected assassin was sending to his lover. The alleged killer’s text messages were. . . 

. . . very touching, in a way, that I think many of us didn’t expect—a very intimate portrait into this relationship between the suspect’s roommate and the suspect himself, with him repeatedly calling his roommate, who is transitioning, calling him ‘my love.’ And ‘I want to protect you, my love.’ So, it was this duality of someone who the attorney said not only jeopardized the life of Charlie Kirk and the crowd, but was doing it in front of children, which is one of the aggravating circumstances of this case. And then, on the other hand, he was, you know, speaking so lovingly about his partner.

Okay, so the message they’re getting is love. He killed for love. Like Romeo. ABC, are we rooting for the man whose love knows no bounds? I kind of think so! (Gutman later apologized, to his credit. Also, when you have a head of hair like that as a middle-aged man, I’m sorry, but you can say whatever you want.) Meanwhile, CNN’s national security analyst said of the suspected killer, “there is no dominant political ideology. Instead it’s a stew of irony, violence, gaming fetish, and Discord.” Hmm. Okay, so for the normies: It’s love, or it’s gaming. The messages were so mixed, so meme-heavy, it’s just impossible to decode them. May as well give up there. Stop reading the bullets!

Sensible people on the right and left are outraged about the fact that Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr threatened ABC over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. But those angry tweets and think pieces about the importance of free speech and open markets don’t go far enough. The real issue is the existence of the FCC itself.

Whatever technical functions it might have once served—it was founded in 1934 to regulate the radio, among other forms of communications—the FCC now serves almost exclusively as a way for politicians to police speech and block business deals they don’t like, all under the maddeningly vague cover of serving “the public interest.” That one of Donald Trump’s very first executive orders issued this year reversed what he called the Biden administration’s attempts to trample “free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties” only underscores the point. Trump was alluding to the jawboning uncovered in the Twitter Files and other investigations, but since resuming power, the president and his cabinet have felt free to openly bully media outlets, law firms, and private citizens.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, sounding more like a mob enforcer than a bureaucrat committed to impartial implementation of rules. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr’s wish was granted. That day, Nexstar, the nation’s largest owner of television stations, including 32 ABC affiliates, was quick to announce it would not air Kimmel’s show for the foreseeable future. The company did not say whether its pending merger with Tegna and requests to loosen ownership rules, which need FCC approval, played any role in its decision. But it’s hard not to draw that conclusion.

On Wednesday evening, ABC benched late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. That in and of itself is no great loss to comedy. But the circumstances under which he has been suspended should alarm anyone who cares about free speech.

The drama began on Monday, when Kimmel quipped on his show that Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin was a conservative. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” said Kimmel.

The host appears to have been so isolated in his Bluesky bubble that he actually believed that Tyler Robinson was a man of the right when all the evidence suggests just the opposite. If ABC on its own had fired the host for clueless material, that would have been entirely within their rights.

But that is not what happened. Instead, Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr went on Benny Johnson’s YouTube show and offered Disney-owned ABC a choice. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said the country’s top regulator of broadcast television. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

This is what’s known as jawboning—when state actors use threats to inappropriately compel private action. That’s an awfully nice broadcasting license you have there, Bob Iger. Shame if anything happens to it because of your Jimmy Kimmel problem.

It’s Thursday, September 18. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Why is Gen Z out of work? Charlie Kirk and Judaism. An afternoon with Woody Allen. And much more.

But first: Arrested, chained, and deported.

Over the last few weeks, Free Press reporter Frannie Block and freelance journalist Mónica Cordero have spent hours interviewing a 33-year-old Ecuadorian man who was arrested by ICE agents when he appeared in immigration court in June. These courts—where immigrants, following the rules, arrive to have their asylum claims heard—have become traps, places where ICE agents nab them and send them back without their claims ever being considered.

The man Frannie and Mónica spoke to, known only as R.A. in court documents, described a horrific ordeal after his arrest that no one deserves for simply trying to gain legal status in the U.S. He says he was put in chains, stuffed into crowded cells without enough beds or toilets, and shuttled to a series of nasty facilities before being sent back to Ecuador.

“I felt like the most wanted person in the world,” he said. “As if I had killed, kidnapped, or raped.” He says he saw dozens of other immigrants suffering a similar fate.

With 11 other deported immigrants, R.A. has filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the courthouse arrests deprive them of their due process rights. Getting their day in court was the one thing they had always been able to count on. Back in Ecuador, R.A. is trying to keep out of sight, knowing that the same people who caused him to fear for his safety—and were the reason he fled to America in the first place—are still there. Read Frannie and Mónica’s disturbing report below.

—Joe Nocera

• The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter-point on Wednesday. In the decision, officials pointed toward a weak job market and signaled that there could be more cuts to come. Newly appointed Fed governor Stephen Miran, Trump’s former top economic adviser, was the sole Fed member who dissented, advocating instead for a larger rate cut.

• Disney’s ABC is removing Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show from the air “indefinitely” after backlash to his comments following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The company said it “strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”

• Trump called Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to wish him a happy 75th birthday, a signal that the strained relationship between Washington and New Delhi might be warming up. The call came amid disputes over Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on Indian goods, which he levied as punishment after India continued to purchase Russian oil, for which U.S. officials accuse the country of financing Russia’s war on Ukraine.

• The U.S. government announced on Wednesday that it will invest $75 million into Ukraine’s mineral reserves. A matching pledge from the Ukrainian government will bring the fund to $150 million, giving the nation’s war-torn economy a hefty boost without military aid.

• Jerry Greenfield, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, announced he’s quitting the company. According to Greenfield, the iconic brand’s support of left-wing causes has been stifled by its parent company, Unilever, which acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000. “Ben & Jerry’s has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power,” Greenfield wrote on social media.

• Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, said Wednesday that two Western labs have proven that her husband was poisoned. Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most famous domestic opponent, died last year at a Russian prison camp at age 47.

• The FBI has arrested a man after he drove his car into a Pittsburgh bureau field office early Wednesday morning and draped an American flag on its gate. Nobody was injured, and an FBI agent told reporters that the suspect has a history of mental illness.

• OpenAI announced its new ChatGPT for teens program on Tuesday. The announcement comes on the heels of a new federal probe into artificial intelligence’s impacts on child safety and the increasing allegations that AI has encouraged child suicide.

• Former CDC chief Susan Monarez testified before a Senate committee on Wednesday to address her abrupt firing by Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month. When asked by Republican senator Roger Marshall whether she should have been confirmed in the first place, she replied, “If I am put in a position of having to say, ‘I will cede the scientific integrity to retain my job,’ then I am not the right person for this position.” She also told the panel that Kennedy had clashed with her over her pro-vaccine beliefs—and that RFK claimed the CDC is “corrupt” and “killing children.”

• Meanwhile, over at the House Judiciary Committee, FBI director Kash Patel got into an out-and-out shouting match with Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. After Swalwell said that Patel’s claim that the courts were preventing him from releasing more Jeffrey Epstein documents was “bullshit,” the FBI director replied that Swalwell’s entire career in Congress was “bullshit.” He added, “It is a disgrace to the American people.”

• Police in the UK arrested four people after images of Donald Trump and the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were projected onto Windsor Castle on Tuesday. The incident comes just after President Trump arrived in Britain for his second state visit and a meeting with King Charles III.

• An immigration judge in Louisiana ordered the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate student. The judge ruled that Khalil, whose status has been the center of heated debate, be sent to Syria or Algeria due to his failure to disclose information on his green card.