The Free Press

This piece was originally published in Tablet.

The embryos from which my son and daughter grew look like minuscule gray suns. I have pictures of them on my phone: tight clusters of cells with pale shells around them. The darkest parts, where the cells overlap, are dusty pink. My son’s shell is shaped like an ellipsis. My daughter’s is round. I can’t help but see them in the shapes: My son is pulled between extremes; my daughter, centered.

I read once that some parents have watercolors of their kids’ embryos made and then hang them in their bedrooms, which seems like a lot to impose on a kid, but I get it: On an existential level, and even an aesthetic one, embryos are beautiful.

Welcome back to A Man Should Know, a weekly column from Elliot Ackerman about how today’s lost boys can become tomorrow’s good men. This week, Elliot discusses one of the most important moments in any man’s life: the day he asks someone to marry him.

A few years ago, I was catching up with an old friend. He had gone to the same college as I did, though was a few years behind. We both had served in the Marines and had many areas of overlap. From time to time, he’d come to me for advice. His freshman year, he met a girl, and the two of them dated all through college, and through his deployments.

The fifth and final season of Stranger Things, now available after 40 months’ wait, has been among the more cursed productions in the contemporary history of television.

There was that three-and-a-half year gap between seasons, thanks to the pandemic and the Hollywood writers’ strike; there was the salacious revelation, courtesy of Lily Allen’s divorce album that dropped just weeks before the season premiere, that implied that series star David Harbour was the world’s most terrible philandering husband with a secret bachelor pad full of butt plugs. There was also an unfortunate (though thankfully short-lived) political scandal surrounding series star Noah Schnapp’s advocacy for Israel.

But there’s another, even worse issue plaguing the show—one that’s incredibly awkward and impossible to ignore.

Democratic governor Kathy Hochul and Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik are among the biggest political figures in New York state, and likely opponents in next year’s race for governor. Today, they are locked in a fight about China.

In a letter co-written with Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, Stefanik accused Hochul on Friday of allowing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to achieve “widespread political influence” over New York elections and policy on the governor’s watch. Since 2021, Stefanik said, the Empire State has become “a national epicenter for CCP election interference, political intimidation, and systemic violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and numerous other federal laws.”

For years, reports of Beijing’s meddling in American civic life were often dismissed as fringe or speculative. But a growing body of evidence reveals something more alarming: New York appears to have become a beachhead for CCP political influence operations in the United States. This letter—a formal escalation weeks before Hochul and Stefanik will begin their gubernatorial campaigns—argues that the scale of CCP activity in New York requires aggressive, coordinated action by state and federal authorities, and that Hochul has harmed the state by not taking the issue seriously enough.

Welcome back. Do you ever think about hanging out with other Free Pressers? The TGIF comments section come to life? We have just the thing for you: Free Press Meetups! Meetups are coming to five cities (well, four cities and one itty-bitty town in Vermont because that’s where our wonderful events chief lives). No panels or speeches, just fun conversations among readers like you. Best case, you leave with a new friend (or husband); worst case, it’s awful but interesting. Sign up here!

→ Anyone who calls me fat goes to jail: There’s been reporting of late that Trump, 79, is a little slower than when he was first elected at age 70. First of all, as a human who has met 70 and then 79-year-olds, my answer to them is always the same: You look great. I said you look great. Great. G r e a t. As is Trump’s wont, he began calling for those reporters to go to jail. So here’s Trump this week:

After all of the work I have done with Medical Exams, Cognitive Exams, and everything else, I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean “THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.” They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it.

It’s treasonous to suggest an almost-octogenarian is, in fact, old? We should do something about this immediately, the president says, asking the sun god for endless life. Boomers will Boom till they Boom Boom Pow, and when confronted with mortality, they will call for all young people to be jailed. The NYT reporters who wrote the story about Trump’s aging even have young people names: Katie and Dylan. The indignities of a Dylan documenting your decline. It would drive me crazy too. Is it a girl Dylan? God, I bet it is. One day there’ll be one of Elon’s offspring, X7!NP, writing about my bad hips and how it’s time for me to pack the column in, and I’ll be forced to hurl myself out the car window.

→ That font is too woke: The State Department is cracking down on woke typefaces. They announced this week that the Biden-era font Calibri is banned from official forms, and we’re back to Times New Roman. A serif, like what this country was built on. Calibri is the streamlined font that has no serifs, and disability activists say it’s better for them, which doesn’t really make sense to me but whatever. I guess they want it to be like braille? Or Comic Sans, to draw in all IQ levels? I write in sans serif font but the lib one (Arial) and not the libertarian one (Helvetica). Tiempos is what you’re reading right now, a handsome, sturdy font that Suzy spent eight months deciding on, and which has decorative little serifs all over the place (fascist). Secretary of State Marco Rubio writes that Biden’s switch apparently cost the department $145,000, which also doesn’t really make sense to me. But I’m just glad we’re in such a time of peace that these are the battles our State Department can fight. Good. More of this. I want our biggest wars to be over which binder clips are too feminine.

Donald Trump was swept into office in large part by popular anger over inflation under his predecessor Joe Biden. Now things have reversed. Democrats have seized on the theme of an affordability crisis, while Trump himself claims it’s a hoax.

If affordability means rising prices, then there is no question that things have improved since the post-Covid surge in which inflation hit the 8 percent mark, a level not seen since the beginning of the 1980s. Since then, it has slipped to around 3 percent. Yet the fall in inflation has by no means been a cure for economic uncertainty. The Covid-era gain in wages for workers lower down the economic ladder has ebbed; employment growth is anemic or nonexistent.

Housing in particular has become a pain point for the middle class. A period of historically low mortgage rates saw a run-up in house prices. The rates are now elevated, and prices have not fallen. New homebuyers can’t enter the market; homeowners who bought when rates are low cannot move. For many, traditional aspirations of homeownership feel ever further away.

Yet at the same time, key sectors of the economy—technology, especially—are booming. Unemployment remains low. And the markets are remarkably buoyant.

The sense that the middle class is drowning has become a focal point of political debate, and of public anger. But how much of that perception is grounded in reality—and how should policymakers respond? We asked five people we trust on such matters to discuss the question: Is there, in fact, an “affordability” crisis for America’s middle class? If so, what should be done about it?

Roger Pielke Jr., a public-policy expert who had studied the intersection of politics and climate science, had been battling the prophets of doom for years. Those who insisted we were on the brink of civilizational collapse. Mass death. A biblical confrontation with ourselves that would out-Flood the Flood.

But it was his argument that the rising cost of natural disasters had no tie to greenhouse gases that cost him his career.

In February 2015, Congressman Raúl Grijalva announced an investigation into Pielke’s climate research, sending letters to several universities suggesting that faculty members, including Pielke, who taught at the University of Colorado, were secretly working for energy companies.

“Companies with a direct financial interest in climate and air quality standards,” Grijalva wrote to the universities, are behind “research that influences state and federal regulations and shapes public understanding of climate science.”

“Pretty much all the invitations to workshops and speaking engagements were canceled,” Pielke told me. “People were saying, ‘I’d love to support you, but I’m afraid they’ll come after me, too.’ ”

It was upsetting but hardly shocking: Even though Pielke agreed global warming was a big problem, he was skeptical of the “catastrophizing” that has gripped the scientific establishment and the elites for the last decade.

“Our ability to live is what’s at stake,” former vice president Al Gore declared in his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Welcome back to Tough Love with Abigail Shrier, a brand-new advice column from The Free Press! Every Thursday, our contributing editor will answer your conundrums, with no hesitation and no sugarcoating—just straight-up Tough Love. This week, Abigail answers a question from Greg (that’s not his real name), an FP reader who is trying to decide if his marriage is worth working on.

Abigail,

I have been married for a little more than five years, with a wonderful son who is toddler age. I’ve had spells of depression my whole adult life, and during a depressive spell early into the marriage I had what you might call an “emotional affair” with a female friend who shared many of my interests. Nothing physical came of it; I gradually lost my feelings for that person, and later my wife and I had our son. The two years that followed were the happiest of my life.

Over the last year, I met a woman who shares many of my interests and shares the same social milieu. We had a short affair, and I ended up developing major feelings for her that persist, leading to a major episode of depression.

It’s made me realize that my wife and I just don’t have very much in common, and share few mutual interests. We have always gotten along amazingly well, but I’m craving a companion with whom I share similar values and worldview.

I know what I’ve done is terrible, and I feel horribly for my son. I just don’t know whether to work on my marriage or to admit to myself that it was not the match I thought it was and cut my losses.

—Greg

It’s Thursday, December 11. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Has Trump made everyone worse? Is the left to blame for the rise of Nick Fuentes? Plus: Are “special” government employees engaged in self-dealing? The novel that explains life in a crumbling regime. Free Press meetups in a town near you. And much more.

But first: Where do the Republicans go next?

The GOP was one party under Trump when the 47th president assumed office in January. But now, at the end of 2025, a growing share of the party’s populists believe Trump has betrayed the movement he created. That faction includes online influencers like the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the irascible libertarian congressman Thomas Massie. And now, its most visible face may be Marjorie Taylor Greene—one of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress until a short time ago.

“America First should mean America first and only Americans first, with no other foreign country ever being attached to America First in our halls of government,” Greene said recently in a video announcing her pending resignation to her fans. Her message was veiled, but impossible to miss. Her allusion to foreign influence is meant to implicate Israel, which many of her supporters believe has forced Trump to bury the Jeffrey Epstein story, among other supposed betrayals.

But what do Republican voters make of this split? Free Press reporter Olivia Reingold visited Greene’s district in Georgia’s rural northwest to look for an answer to that question.

What she found there should worry the president. Read her dispatch on the rift tearing through the Republican base to find out why.

Things aren’t much better for the GOP back in Washington.

Republicans in Congress emerged from last month’s government shutdown believing the public had their back, but Democrats’ attacks over expiring health insurance subsidies have the GOP scrambling to pass a plan and show a sliver of competence on the issue. In an illuminating essay for us today, Yuval Levin, who has been at the heart of debates on this issue for decades, describes why Republicans keep coming up empty whenever they try to put forward a plan to control healthcare costs and put voters at ease.

—Mene Ukueberuwa

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” This famous line from The Leopard has become a shorthand for moments when a ruling order senses its own looming downfall. And it feels eerily relevant now, in an age when the liberal order we cherish seems increasingly unsteady. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel is about what it feels like to live inside history—inside the collapse of a social order and the disorientation that accompanies the fall of a ruling class.

In the latest episode of Old School, historian Dominic Green joins Shilo Brooks to explore why today’s American and British establishments resemble Sicily’s fading aristocracy: oligarchic, overregulated, and increasingly contemptuous of the people they rule.

For paid subscribers only, Free Press Meetups are coming to five cities—no panels, no scripts, just sharp conversation with curious, independent-minded readers. Best case, you leave with a new friend (or romantic prospect); worst case, it’s an above-average night out with a fresh group of people.

Get Tickets Now

Three months after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press and editor-in-chief of CBS News, sits down with his widow Erika Kirk for a conversation on life, loss, and the state of political discourse. The town hall will be broadcast on Saturday, December 13, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the CBS television network, and will stream on Paramount+ and CBS News 24/7.

• Eileen Higgins won the Miami mayor’s race Tuesday night. She will become the first Democrat to hold the office in nearly 30 years, and many see her victory as a sign of how Trump’s immigration crackdown is alienating Hispanic voters. Democrats also narrowly flipped a solidly Republican state house seat in Georgia.

• The Trump administration must withdraw its deployment of roughly 100 National Guard troops in Los Angeles by Monday, a federal judge ruled yesterday. The ruling states that the federal government illegally kept the troops long after immigration protests during the summer had ended.

• Increasing pressure on Ukraine to accept a peace plan with Russia, President Trump said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky “is going to have to get on the ball and start accepting things.” While Zelensky has agreed to take steps toward having elections, he has not agreed to cede any territory and wants to take out “anti-Ukrainian points” in the agreement.

• Foreigners who can travel to the U.S. visa-free may have to undergo a review of their social media profiles if a proposal from U.S. Customs and Border Protection goes into effect. Listing social media profiles on applications for entry has been an optional part of entry applications since 2016.

• While Trump rates the economy an “A+++++,”a Politico poll found that nearly half of Americans find it hard to pay for food and a majority blame the Trump administration for high prices. More than a quarter said they had skipped a medical checkup in the last two years because of costs.

• Sperm from a European donor who unknowingly carried a cancer-causing gene has been used to conceive at least 197 children, a joint investigation undertaken by numerous European news services revealed. People with the gene have a 90 percent chance of developing cancer, and some of the children have already died from cancer.

• Elon Musk implied he somewhat regretted running the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year. “Instead of doing DOGE, I would have. . . worked at my companies, essentially, and they wouldn’t have been burning the cars,” Musk told interviewer Katie Miller, in reference to acts of vandalism against Tesla vehicles.

• As part of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s push to rid the department of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the State Department will switch from the Calibri font back to the more traditional Times New Roman font. Calibri, according to the department, had been adopted to assist people with disabilities, but had failed. “Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s correspondence,” Rubio wrote.

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” This famous line from The Leopard has become a shorthand for moments when a ruling order senses its own looming downfall.

And it feels eerily relevant now, in an age when the liberal order we cherish seems increasingly unsteady. We are living in a moment when we shout “regime decline” f…