I discovered bird-watching when I was in my mid-30s, which as Philip Larkin said about the sexual revolution “was rather late for me.” You can take it up at any age, of course—start tomorrow if you haven’t already—but I envied the birders who seemed born knowing the difference between a Louisiana waterthrush and a northern waterthrush.

I am bad at names and faces, and a slow learner of systematized knowledge. I thought I’d have an easier time with warblers if only I’d started my journey in neuroplastic youth, when foreign languages and sports statistics stick to the brain like pollen to the fuzzy part of a bee. Except that I never could learn a foreign language or remember sports statistics. I’m dyslexic, with a spotty working memory; talking about the Yankees at recess I sounded like a 10-year-old having senior moments.

The wonderful thing about bird-watching is that none of that really matters. Which is all the more reason I wish I had taken it up sooner.

Last night, some 1,200 of you packed into a theater at Lincoln Center to hear Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speak. It was a rare opportunity to hear from the Justice—and she spoke about her faith, her judicial philosophy, and her new book, Listening to the Law. The full conversation will be up this Monday, so stay tuned. But for now, check out our write-up here.

On a personal note: I love being in a room with other Free Pressers, and last night was made even more special thanks to cameos from Douglas Murray, Coleman Hughes, and Noam Dworman. It was the perfect way to kick off a year jam-packed with events nationwide. (Including a debate in Pittsburgh next week!)

If you haven’t been a part of our community outside of the comments section, these are not to be missed. Subscribe to make sure you’re in the know and to get early access:

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A New School Year—and Ancient Tools of Learning

How do you teach a 3-year-old to read The Hobbit? Just ask Erik Hoel.

“There exists an agreed-upon best way to educate children. The problem is that this best way is unacceptable. That’s because it is profoundly unfair, privileging those at the very top of the socioeconomic ladder.” That method? Aristocratic tutoring, which worked for Marcus Aurelius, Voltaire, Tolstoy. . .and now, for Hoel’s son.

As literacy rates plummet and AI turns the education system upside down, can we teach our kids like aristocrats?

Read Erik Hoel:

Earlier this week, the University of Austin—an upstart school I’m proud to have helped found—welcomed a new class of students. At convocation, UATX president Carlos Carvalho delivered an address you won’t hear at any other university: a defense of inequality.

“All men are created equal. But all men are not the same,” said Carvalho. Each has “different strengths, abilities, and passions. . . . To pretend otherwise is to flatten human experience into mediocrity.”

Excellence, he argues, can only be cultivated by acknowledging the dignity and differences of every student.

I’d encourage you to read his speech in full:

Also on my mind: Maya Sulkin on the students rejecting AI; Joel Klein on what NYC schools will look like under a Mayor Mamdani; and, in case you missed it, Jonathan Haidt and his brilliant colleagues at After Babel became contributors this week.

Free Speech Crisis in the UK

On Monday, as Irish comedian Graham Linehan stepped off his plane at Heathrow Airport in London, British authorities arrested him, interrogated him, and eventually took him to the hospital as his blood pressure entered dangerous territory. His crime? Posting bad jokes about gender on X.

Linehan is the latest victim of a disturbing and illiberal trend in Britain—the criminalization of speech and expression. Read his story here, told from his hospital bed:

As J.K. Rowling put it: “This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.” The troubling thing is: There are many Graham Linehans. And policies that take root in one country—like the one that landed Linehan in jail for a joke—often have a way of spreading to others. When liberalism is under attack in the UK, it’s only a matter of time before it comes under threat closer to home.

Trust the Experts?

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) voted on a resolution this week that accused Israel of committing genocide in its war against Hamas. Legacy media outlets ran with the story, calling the IAGS “leading experts” in the process. The genocide experts in question? Anyone who fills out a form and pays a $30 fee.

Read our editorial:

Alright, folks—that’s it from me. We’ve got a gorgeous essay tomorrow by Jonathan Rosen and a beautiful Things Worth Remembering from Will Rahn on Sunday. And look out for my conversation with Amy Coney Barrett dropping this Monday.

There are two books this year that are being talked about more than any other, by an order of magnitude. One is Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. The other is Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.

The relationship between the United States and China is the most important issue in the world today, and Breakneck is the book everyone should read to understand this moment: Does America need to be more like a society of engineers, as China is, or a society of lawyers?

Dan is not a fly-by-nighter; rather, he spent seven years traveling throughout China, visiting and sampling every aspect of Chinese life he could—most of all its factories and manufacturing expertise.

I am pleased and honored to have known Dan for about 10 years. He and I have seen a Brahms concert together, and we have eaten together in Yunnan, China, where Dan was born.

An important new figure has arrived on the intellectual scene. You can sample his work with this excerpt from Breakneck. —Tyler Cowen

Americans today are rarely excited about major construction projects. This is in part because they’re associated with environmental damage, and in part because they take so long to complete.

It’s also because they’ve become so rare that people have forgotten how much they can improve lives.

Contrast this with China. Modern China has been on a building spree. It began in the 1990s, after its economic reopening took hold, and then received another boost in 2008, when the central government approved vast public works to respond to the global financial crisis.

Today’s American right is a sprawling zoo. In one part of the park you have red-hatted nationalist populists clapping enthusiastically for lib-owning social media stars like Charlie Kirk. In another, you see the endangered old-guard Republicans—free enterprising, interventionist, Nikki Haley types. Massive statues of Donald Trump adorn the bridge between the two wings.

MAGA and the former establishment comprise the largest exhibits. But other, smaller habitats feature more exotic breeds. A workshop houses techno-futurists building reactors and robots. In the cathedral, Catholic Integralists chant devotionals to state religion. The weight-lifting room is reserved for denizens of the manosphere. The Libertarian playground has no rules. A warning sign hangs above the gate to the hunting grounds, where conspiracists and antisemites stalk vulnerable prey.

The exotic fauna isn’t new. There always have been different types of conservatives, reactionaries, and counterrevolutionaries. Internal disagreement is a hallmark of modern American conservatism. Factional arguments are loud. Intellectuals are nasty. But conservatives have cohered behind opposition to progressivism at home and abroad.

On Thursday night I sat down for a rare conversation with Justice Barrett at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City.

I asked her about key cases like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the birthright citizenship case, nationwide injunctions, the shadow docket, transgender minors getting medical treatment, her willingness to dissent with liberal justices, her response to people who call her an “evil DEI hire,” and so much more. Watch our full conversation below. —Bari Weiss

What drives Justice Amy Coney Barrett? What does she believe?

These are questions that have confounded liberals and conservatives alike in her nearly half-decade on the nation’s highest court. When President Donald Trump nominated her in 2020 to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democrats threw a fit, tarring her as a right-wing zealot and real-life “handmaid.” But many on the right now see her as a turncoat, in large part because of her willingness to buck Trump when she sees fit.

Barrett offered her own answers to questions about her motivations, beliefs, and just about everything else on Thursday night in a wide-ranging conversation with Bari Weiss at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City. In a rare public appearance, Barrett—whose book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, is out next week—opened up about everything from her Catholic faith and understanding of America to her recent rulings and some of the biggest political questions of the day.

I’m writing to you on just another normal, quiet day. Nothing of note. Just my typical complaints, shouted from a mountaintop via bullhorn, that I am being canceled, and also silenced.

And one quick announcement. I know this is the one you’ve been waiting for. It’s true: We’re getting into the institutional subscription game. If you’d like to bring your company, school, or library full access to The Free Press, please send us a note here: [email protected].

→ Everything’s a tip now: It’s nice to begin with new scam ideas. The Trump Treasury Department has released a list of 68 jobs that could qualify for the new $25,000 “no tax on tips” deductions. Among them: digital content creators, home plumbers, recreational pilots, and private event planners. I really think the tips exception should be limited to strippers, since if the tip is attached to a thong and covered in sweat, you earned it. No need to march that duffel to your accountant. Otherwise, people should pay normal taxes (but those taxes should all be lower!), especially if you’re a recreational pilot because God knows you got that money from some freak in LA who wants you to take him to Vegas in a propeller plane. Recreational pilots do not need special tax breaks, but the truth is every single recreational pilot is a Trump voter (and oddly, also a TGIF reader), so a tax break they shall have.

Right now our whole tax code is designed to burden full-time wage earners. Like, if you have a job at a company, you’re a fool, I’m sorry to break it to you. Your tax burden is brutal. You can’t even write off the lease on your car? That you use to get to work in? And cry in the parking lot behind the wheel of? What kind of life is that? As Matt Zeitlen of the very smart eco-warrior site Heatmap News put it: “W-2 earners who rent and don’t have kids are holding up the entire sky.” It should not be thus! But thus it is. Our tax system is built to brutalize these people and make them work just a bit more (like, please check Slack on Sundays, Sean, the stability of the nation depends on it). Then the money collected as tax dollars is quickly funneled away. Also, read the great econ writer Noah Smith on why we are “the richest third-world country.”

But personally, I like “no tax on tips” expansion pack. See, I’m a digital content creator, baby. You don’t know this, but every $10 monthly subscription is delivered to me as cash, tucked into my extremely practical briefs.

Earlier this week the University of Austin (UATX)—a new university, whose founding was announced four years ago in these pages—welcomed its second class of undergraduates. At the school’s convocation ceremony, UATX president Carlos Carvalho delivered an address you won’t hear at any other university: a defense of inequality.

We live in an age where our most elite educational institutions have seemingly abandoned their core mission—the fearless pursuit of truth—and instead choose to lower academic standards in the name of equality. To abandon excellence in favor of false notions of equity. Carvalho and UATX have chosen to take a different path. Theirs is a meritocratic message our country sorely needs to hear.

We’re publishing Carvalho’s remarks in full. On the eve of a new school year, we encourage you—students, teachers, parents—to read and debate them over the dinner table. You won’t regret it.

—The Editors

Good evening—students, parents, and all the supporters helping us build the University of Austin. I am honored to be with you today at your convocation, at the most important and exciting university in America.

Thank you for trusting us with your education. We are thrilled to welcome you into the UATX family.

Tonight, as we gather on the threshold of America’s 250th anniversary, I want to share why this moment and UATX represent something essential about the American experiment.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, King George III formally declared Americans to be rebels and traitors. This dashed the colonists’ hopes for a peaceful reconciliation, and set the path to declare a new nation based on the proposition that all men are created equal.

But on the heels of America’s quarter-millennium since the Declaration of Independence, I want to do something a bit unfashionable: I want to defend inequality.

It’s Thursday, September 4. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Gazans against Al Jazeera. Inside the phenomenon of “dropout graduations.” And remembering basketball legend George Raveling.

But first: Mamdani’s policies and their consequences.

Until yesterday, Zohran Mamdani seemed all but assured of becoming the next mayor of New York City. The far-left state legislator won the Democratic nomination in June in an upset against former governor Andrew Cuomo, and has since then maintained a double-digit lead against a crowd of general election opponents including Cuomo, Republican Curtis Sliwa, and incumbent mayor Eric Adams.

Then came the (possible) plot twist: rumors that Adams could leave the race and take a job in the Trump administration with just two months to go before election day. So is the incumbent really quitting? That’s the subject of Olivia Reingold’s latest report. Read it here:

For now, however, Mamdani remains in the catbird seat. He’s been winning more endorsements from local officials, including former mayor Bill de Blasio’s earlier this week. And he remains a charismatic figure with a devoted base of support. But it’s a lot easier to run for the city’s top job than it is to run the city itself.

Being mayor is mostly about the unglamorous work of ensuring the trains and buses stay moving, overseeing schools and public housing, keeping crime in check, dealing with myriad union bosses, and the many other arduous tasks necessary to keep the nation’s largest city halfway functioning. It’s a very difficult and tedious job, in other words, which is probably why so many New York mayors either give up or go crazy.

So today we’re taking a close look at Mamdani’s policies—and what they would actually mean for the city.

Joel Klein, who ran New York City’s public school system for nearly a decade under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, says that what little Mamdani has said about education is deeply troubling. “Mamdani’s platform is almost certain to hurt the mostly black and Latino kids who live in the city’s poorer communities while driving middle-class and affluent families out of the public school system,” Klein writes.

Next, Judge Glock offers a skeptical view of Mamdani’s plans to freeze rents, which always sounds nice in theory but, Glock argues, has consistently led to municipal catastrophe.

Likewise, Charles Lane takes issue with another signature Mamdani promise—free bus rides—and notes that it’s an idea that’s already been tried and failed. “The Soviet Union used to charge a few kopecks to ride the bus or the subway in Moscow,” Lane writes. “Mamdani’s idea of socialism doesn’t have room for even that much individual responsibility—or realism.”

—Will Rahn

• In a landmark antitrust case, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that Google will not have to break itself up. As part of the decision, the company will have to share some of its data and search results with rival companies deemed “qualified competitors,” but will not have to divest Google Chrome or any of its other signature products.

• The Chinese government put on a massive military parade Wednesday to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII. The showcase of arms comes days after President Xi Jinping met with Russian president Vladimir Putin and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. “The Chinese people are. . . not afraid of violence and are self-reliant and strong,” Xi said.

• Jack Schlossberg, President John F. Kennedy’s 32-year-old grandson, says he might run for the Manhattan congressional seat being vacated by longtime Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler. Schlossberg, a social-media influencer, told The New York Times that it was “certainly a possibility” he joins what’s becoming a very crowded Democratic primary for the seat.

• Eight women who say they were abused by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein spoke at a bipartisan press conference hosted by Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna on Wednesday, pleading for the Justice Department to release more information related to the disgraced financier. Meanwhile, President Trump maintained that the Epstein issue is a “Democrat hoax that never ends.”

• On Tuesday, German chancellor Friedrich Merz said in an interview that Russian president Vladimir Putin is “perhaps the most serious war criminal of our time.” The Kremlin denied all allegations of war crimes, and added that Merz’s opinions don’t matter.

• Earlier this year, progressive Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar told Business Insider that she had been victim to a “coordinated right-wing disinformation campaign” alleging that she’s worth millions of dollars. But this week, The Washington Free Beacon reported that she and her husband, Tim Mynett, are worth between $6–$30 million.

• For the fourth time in the past week, a grand jury has rejected the Justice Department’s request to pursue an indictment. Tuesday’s case involved a suspect accused of posting an Instagram threat against President Trump. “It is exceptionally rare for federal grand juries to reject proposed charges, given the low evidentiary bar for indictment and the Justice Department’s policy of pursuing cases only when there is sufficient evidence to both secure and sustain a conviction,” one former prosecutor told CBS News.

Over a platter of tuna rolls on Wednesday night near Grand Central Terminal, a top New York executive’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

“Have you heard the same rumor that I’ve heard about Adams?” he asked another power broker.

The rumor was that incumbent New York City mayor Eric Adams is about to quit a reelection campaign that he cannot possibly win, but has repeatedly insisted he will stay in no matter what. Whispers that Adams was going to drop out began to swirl on Tuesday. By Wednesday evening, the city’s one percent—some of the most prominent CEOs, real-estate developers, and politicians in the country—were wondering if the race they had written off as Zohran Mamdani’s to lose was suddenly back in play.

One of the great lessons of the past decade is that when you read a variation of “experts say” in a headline, you ought to think twice and for yourself.

This week, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) voted on a resolution that accused Israel of committing genocide in its war against Hamas. Like moths to a flame, the mainstream press ran wild with the story of the organization’s declaration.

“Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza, Leading Scholars’ Association Says,” ran the headline in The Washington Post.

The Guardian quoted the president of the association, Melanie O’Brien, declaring that the resolution represented “a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide.” In another interview with ABC News Australia, O’Brien boasted that the resolution passed with nearly 90 percent support.

The BBC’s headline read: “Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza, World’s Leading Experts Say.”

The problem for these publications is that if you kick the tires—even slightly—it becomes obvious that the resolution is a sham, top to bottom.