Zohran Mamdani, the odds-on favorite to be the next mayor of New York City, has said precious little about education. But as someone who ran our school system for almost a decade, I can tell you what little he has said is alarming.

He is opposed to charter schools and said he wouldn’t allow any more of them. He is opposed to gifted and talented (G&T) elementary and middle schools. He is troubled by the admissions criteria for the city’s specialized high schools. He is opposed to mayoral control of the schools.

And he was even rumored earlier this summer to consider Jamaal Bowman, the highly polarizing, extremely left-wing former congressman, as a potential candidate to lead the school system as chancellor. I held that position from 2002 to 2010 while Michael Bloomberg was the city’s mayor.

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.

Let’s start with charter schools, an issue on which the evidence is overwhelmingly compelling. Charter schools are a public-school option—free to students and available to all, by lottery if oversubscribed. But in contrast to traditional public schools (called “district schools”), charter schools are operated by private, generally nonprofit organizations rather than by government bureaucrats.

As a child, he was legally considered less than fully human.

A black man born in segregated Washington, D.C., in 1937, George Raveling and his family were second-class citizens, denied basic rights and dignities.

At age nine, his father died. At age 13, his mother was committed to an asylum. This could have been another sad story from a long time ago. Instead, his life became something beautiful and inspiring—a classic American story.

Of all Zohran Mamdani’s proposals to make life in New York more affordable, none is more beguiling than the Democratic mayoral nominee’s promise of free bus rides throughout the five boroughs.

Mamdani describes this as a blow for social justice: Working-class commuters would save $2.90 every time they board. But there would be other benefits too, at least in theory: No-fare rides would limit driver-passenger friction over fare enforcement, thus helping speed up New York’s notoriously slow-moving buses. And they would likely increase public transportation ridership, which would bring environmental benefits.

“[It’s] been proven to work in many parts of the country,” Mamdani backer and former Big Apple mayor Bill de Blasio enthused Tuesday on Morning Joe.

Not so fast. Even as the 33-year-old Mamdani was glad-handing his way to victory in the Democratic primary, making himself the favorite in November’s general election, a free-bus plan was coming to a screeching halt halfway across the nation.

Economists working on rent control are forced to adopt an attitude of weary resignation. The studies on it are so universally negative, the lamentable results so consistent, that reiterating them can feel both necessary and tiresome. 

Yet rent control endures. The presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris both advocated it, and now Zohran Mamdani has made freezing rents a centerpiece of his New York City mayoral campaign. Rent control remains the great rejoinder to all of those who cherish the belief that evidence and experience can sway policy. The question is why rent control remains so popular despite its profoundly negative effects. The reason lies in the strange aspects of housing that make it different from every other good in America.

Some argue that low prices are always popular, but even radical politicians in America don’t advocate for price controls on sofas or cars. Mamdani bemoaned high food prices in addition to high rents, but he did not propose price limits on halal cart meals. Politicians treat housing differently.

One reason rent control seems attractive to politicians is that housing is big and immobile. If price controls are imposed on pita, a pita black market can open up or pita manufacturers can ship their wares elsewhere. It’s not easy either to hide a house or ship it to more appealing business climes.

But rental housing is less immobile than many rent-control advocates think. For one, the owner of a house or an apartment does not have to rent it out. During World War II, the American homeownership rate rose a shocking 10 percentage points, accounting for about half of the increase in homeownership in the entire twentieth century. According to one research paper, a major explanation of that shift is that rent control during the war forced landlords to transfer their units to buyers. Similarly, when San Francisco expanded rent control to some small houses and multifamily units in 1994, researchers found a 25-point reduction in renters living in them. Time and again, the reduction in the number of apartments made rents in the nonregulated units go up.

One late summer afternoon in San Francisco, some 200 people in their early 20s arrived at the Marina Theater, an old-style movie theater with musty felt seats. The group, almost entirely male, came from all over: India, New Zealand, Ohio, New York. They wore chintzy black robes bought on Amazon, sweatshirts emblazoned with hackathon logos and, occasionally, Rolexes. 

They had gathered for a “Dropout Graduation” in San Francisco, a tongue-in-cheek commencement ceremony for students who chose to never have one. Unsurprisingly, it had been organized on X.

It used to be that college dropout success stories were the rarest of exceptions. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey—all were the superhuman oddballs who left Harvard and Stanford and were the better for it, going on to build billion-dollar empires while defining themselves against the traditional path college offered.

For everyone else, college was a rite of passage. A degree meant status, employability, and upward mobility. 

Over the past decade, that promise has eroded.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is one of the most influential legal minds today. And on Thursday, September 4, she’ll sit down with Bari Weiss for an interview at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City ahead of the launch of her new book, Listening to the Law, out September 9.

The book offers extraordinary insights into the inner workings of the Supreme Court, and to Justice Barrett’s approach to its most consequential cases. We’re thrilled to bring you an exclusive excerpt today. —The Editors

A few months before I was sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice, I spent an afternoon with a favorite aunt. We’re close, despite fundamentally different opinions on a variety of topics. (In fact, she’ll openly say that while she loves me, she would have preferred my seat to be filled by the nominee of a Democratic president.)

My aunt isn’t a lawyer, but she began following the Supreme Court after I joined it. Sitting on her living room couch, she expressed disappointment that opinions (including mine) were often driven by what she called “legalities.”

“Amy, I thought the Court was supposed to be about doing justice,” she lamented.

It’s Wednesday, September 3. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Jonathan Haidt joins The Free Press; the rise of low-tech parenting; the students choosing an AI-free education; how a Russian spy destroyed a beautiful mind; and more.

But first: The comedian thrown in a jail cell for his posts.

You may not know the name Graham Linehan. But you should. The Irish comedian and co-creator of the popular sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd was long considered one of the most successful comedy writers in the United Kingdom.

Then he became one of Britain’s most outspoken critics of trans ideology. For taking a stand on that issue, Linehan has been the target of a relentless campaign by activists. He has been sued, repeatedly banned from X, and ostracized from the showbiz community. Linehan has said that accusations of transphobia have made it impossible for him to find work in Britain. Last year, he moved to the United States.

On Monday, Linehan was arrested by police at Heathrow Airport, tossed in a cell, then rushed to the hospital for dangerously high blood pressure. All of this for the crime of three X posts he wrote in April.

It’s the latest outrageous tale of Britain’s turn against free expression. Today we bring you Graham Linehan’s story, told from his hospital bed, and our editorial on why the sorry state of free speech in Britain matters to Americans too. In our third offering, Brendan O’Neill tells a related tale: He goes inside the UK’s working-class revolt against luxury beliefs.

—The Editors

Back to School: Jonathan Haidt, Low-Tech Parenting, and the Teens Rebelling Against AI

As kids across America return to the classroom, many of them will notice a big change: They’ll no longer be able to text or scroll TikTok at school. Nearly half of all U.S. states have instituted school smartphone bans. There are a lot of causes for this change. But for our money, the biggest reason is Jonathan Haidt. His hugely consequential book, The Anxious Generation, changed the conversation about phones and kids. Politico agrees. His book “has prompted an unlikely bipartisan revolution,” wrote their columnist Jonathan Martin yesterday.

Well, in case you missed it, we’re thrilled that Jonathan is joining The Free Press as a contributor. For more on that news, including details of an upcoming event with him in New York, click here. Today, two back-to-school stories on the revolt against technology in parenting and education.

On Breaking History: The Original Russiagate

This week, Breaking History dives into a century-old mind game: Russia’s information war against America. More specifically, how it keeps driving us crazy. From Soviet spycraft to this summer’s Russiagate revelations, the story is often familiar: a kernel of truth is buried in lies.

Eli Lake looks back at the haunted mind of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s original paranoia prophet. He spent his life chasing Russian ghosts, and what he saw and what he feared still echoes through Washington today. Listen to the episode by clicking the link, or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

• The U.S. military struck a Venezuelan drug vessel in the south Caribbean yesterday, according to an announcement made by President Trump during an Oval Office address. The vessel was suspected to be operated by narco-terrorist group Tren de Aragua. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later confirmed the strike, which came after an August directive from Trump to target drug cartels.

• A landslide wiped out an entire village in western Sudan’s Darfur region on Sunday, killing an estimated 1,000 people. “The scale and magnitude of the disaster are immense and defy description,” said Abdel-Wahid Nour, the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement-Army.

• Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa announced that she would retire from the Senate at the end of her current term. Ernst is the second GOP senator choosing to retire rather than seek reelection, joining Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina as Republicans try to hold on to their slim majority.

• New York City Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, 78, also announced Monday that he will not seek reelection next year, citing a need for “generational change.” Nadler, first elected in 1992, is the longest-serving New Yorker in Congress. He was facing a primary challenge from 26-year-old activist Liam Elkind.

• Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe it’s no longer true that “if you work hard, you will get ahead,” according to a new Wall Street Journal poll. Respondents cited difficulties in purchasing a home and general economic fragility as contributors to their lack of faith in the American dream. The poll also found that only 25 percent of Americans—a record low—feel that they have a good chance of improving their standard of living.

• Kraft Heinz announced yesterday that it will split into two public companies, citing “the complexity of our current structure.” One company will focus on faster-growing categories such as sauces and shelf-stable meals, while the other will focus on slower-growth grocery brands.

• The Trump administration is moving the headquarters of U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama, home of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Trump said the decision was in part because Colorado has all-mail elections, which means the state has “automatically crooked elections.” Defense contractors in Huntsville, including L3Harris and Lockheed Martin, have long lobbied for the move.

• Anna Wintour has chosen Chloe Malle, 39, to replace her as the editor of Vogue, the magazine announced yesterday. Malle, who ran Vogue’s website, is the magazine’s first new editor in 37 years and is a self-described “proud nepo baby.” Daughter of director Louis Malle and actor Candice Bergen, Malle said that “Vogue has already shaped who I am; now I’m excited at the prospect of shaping Vogue.”

• George Raveling, Hall of Fame basketball coach who mentored Michael Jordan, died yesterday at 88. Raveling was born into segregated Washington D.C., losing both of his parents by the time he was 13. Despite having been dealt this hand in life, he went on to become one of the most revered figures in basketball history. Bari had the chance to sit down with him last May. Listen to their conversation here and read his piece for The Free Press, “He Helped Michael Jordan Win—and He Can Help You, Too.”

Russia’s information war against the West is a century-old mind game that still warps American politics. It’s not just about bots and trolls or hacked emails. It’s about how disinformation expertly crafted by Moscow seeps into our institutions, distorts our public debates, and ultimately turns us against ourselves.

When Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released new Russiagate documents this summer, it was just the latest chapter in the long-running drama.

To understand how our country lost its mind about Russia, you need to go back to the very beginning of our modern intelligence community. This week on Breaking History: Meet James Jesus Angleton, a founding father of the CIA, a Cold Warrior, and a man who lost himself in the very paranoia he was trained to exploit—all because of a great betrayal.

Angleton spent his career hunting Soviet moles. But the deeper he went, the more convinced he became that everything—even our allies, even our own government—was compromised.

Before the farce of Russiagate, there was the tragedy of a beautiful mind destroyed by the reality of Russian interference. His story both explains our political moment and acts as a warning for us all.

On Monday, Graham Linehan—the creator of several hit British sitcoms, including Father Ted and The IT Crowd—arrived from Arizona at London’s Heathrow Airport. Awaiting him there were five armed police officers who were under orders to arrest him.

Linehan’s supposed crime? A series of posts on X deemed anti-trans by British authorities. As the Metropolitan Police put it, Linehan was under arrest on “suspicion of inciting violence.”

The closest he gets to that in his offending posts is a call to “make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, punch him in the balls” if any of his followers encounter a biological man “in a female-only space.” (It’s perhaps worth noting, again, that he is a comedy writer.)

The position Linehan finds himself in is all too common. Under the guise of protecting “public safety,” British authorities now routinely question or arrest people for online speech. According to The Times of London, police in the UK now make more than 30 arrests a day for purportedly offensive posts on social media.

J.K. Rowling’s blunt response to Linehan’s detainment was right: “What the fuck has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.”

You may not know Graham Linehan’s name. But you should. The Irish comedian and co-creator of the popular sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd was long considered one of the most successful comedy writers in the United Kingdom.

Then he became one of Britain’s most outspoken critics of trans ideology. First Linehan was criticized for a 2008 episode of The IT Crowd which activists called transphobic when it re-aired years later. Then, in 2018, Linehan praised as “heroes” protesters at London’s Pride Parade who had carried banners that read “transactivism erases lesbians.” Ever since, Linehan has been the target of a relentless campaign by trans activists. He has been sued, repeatedly banned from X, and ostracized from the showbiz community. Linehan has said that accusations of transphobia have made it impossible for him to find work in Britain. Last year, he moved to the United States.

On Monday, Linehan was arrested by British police at Heathrow Airport, thrown in a cell, then rushed to the hospital for dangerously high blood pressure. All of this for the crime of three posts on X in April.

Today, we bring you Graham Linehan’s story, told from his hospital bed. —The Editors

Something odd happened before I even boarded my flight from Arizona to London. When I handed over my passport at the gate, the official told me I didn’t have a seat and had to be re-ticketed. At the time, I thought it was just the sort of innocent snafu that makes air travel such a joy. But in hindsight, it was clear I’d been flagged. Someone, somewhere, had made a phone call.

The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three posts on X. In a country where pedophiles escape prison, where knife crime is out of control, the state had mobilized five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for these three posts (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up).