The Free Press

Winnie-the-Pooh turns 100 today.

Actually, that’s not quite true. Yes, A.A. Milne’s beloved book Winnie-the-Pooh, with equally beloved illustrations by E.H. Shepard, was first published on October 14, 1926. But the eponymous bear first appeared by name in a short story—illustrated by J.H. Dowd rather than Shepard—that Milne then expanded into the first chapter of what quickly became and has remained a classic of children’s literature. That story, “The Wrong Sort of Bees,” came out in London’s Evening News on Christmas Eve 1925; the previous year, Milne had written a poem for Punch that features Edward Bear, who, even in a brief appearance, is recognizably Winnie-the-Pooh’s prototype.

And perhaps Winnie-the-Pooh would never have had a birthday at all had a very young Christopher Robin Milne not received a stuffed bear from Harrods from his mother in 1921, only a little over a decade after people began speaking about “teddy bears.”

I imagine that Winnie-the-Pooh was read to me before I had a copy of my own, but I know for sure that I first leafed through the pages myself on my third birthday. I know this because my parents, in an experiment in delayed gratification, bought the four-part boxed set of the Pooh books (Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young, and Now We Are Six) and gave me one a year until finally I was 6.

It hardly makes me special that I loved the books then and love them still now, both for myself and for my 3-year-old daughter. But one passage in particular has stuck with me. I recite it to myself often:

For more than a century, feminism fought to expand women’s choices, and in that time a lot of progress was made.

The right to vote. The right to work. Equal access to education. Protection from discrimination because you’re pregnant.

Those battles changed America. But, somewhere along the way, a movement built around expanding women’s freedom became a sou…

It’s Wednesday, October 14. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Aaron MacLean on why Trump’s diesel deal is an embarrassment. A neuropsychologist explains why all the kids have extra time on tests these days. And much more.

But first: Who will govern Israel?

In two weeks, Israelis will vote for the first time since October 7, 2023, and the multifront war that followed. The country that goes to the polls has buried thousands since it last elected Benjamin Netanyahu. His main challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, is a former army chief of staff who served in Netanyahu’s war cabinet and lost a son in Gaza. The polls are tight and the stakes are enormous. The vote will be read as a verdict not just on Netanyahu’s current government but on the 19 years he has led Israel. It will also be a fork in the road for the Jewish state at a crucial moment in its history. Today, we bring you three offerings on the election and the two key protagonists.

Up first: Bibi. It is hard to find an Israeli without an opinion on their longest-serving prime minister. Meanwhile, outside of the country, opinions on Netanyahu and opinions on Israel often blur into one another, and the cacophony of bad-faith arguments about his time in office can make it hard to think straight about the man and his legacy. To cut through that noise we asked a range of contributors who have followed Netanyahu’s career closely, and read his record in different ways, to weigh in. Read Michael Oren, Yossi Klein Halevi, Bassem Eid, Sohrab Ahmari, Peter Berkowitz, and others on how Israelis—and history—will judge Netanyahu. You’ll find plenty of disagreement in this package, but it’s the kind that generates more light than heat.

But what about the man who is favored to unseat Netanyahu? Today, Yonah Jeremy Bob, a Jerusalem Post reporter and a chronicler of Israel’s halls of power, examines the life and worldview of Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief whose young opposition party is leading the polls. Yonah tells the unlikely story of Eisenkot’s rise, and describes where the breakout challenger may lead his country.

Last but not least, our trusted Middle East analyst Haviv Rettig Gur joins Maya Sulkin in the Free Press studio to break down what is on the ballot, and what he thinks is going to happen.

• Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned from her position as U.S. ambassador to Greece on Tuesday. The Trump administration had previously requested she step down, after evidence surfaced of her past financial misconduct.

• Cornell University announced Tuesday that they are suspending all fraternity parties for the remainder of the academic year. The decision comes as school administrators reevaluate the safety of the school’s Greek life in the aftermath of Jane Doe’s sexual assault allegations.

• The Supreme Court agreed to review a case evaluating a government watchdog group’s authority to review DOGE’s records. The case comes after the Trump administration blocked the group’s Freedom of Information Act request in early 2025, and will test the reach of free inquiry.

• Federal and state regulators asked a federal judge to hold Martin Shkreli in contempt of court on Tuesday. Shkreli was convicted of fraud for inflating drug prices in 2017, and permanently banned from the industry. Authorities allege he’s been violating that ban by trading pharmaceutical stocks on YouTube for years.

• British intelligence chief Ken McCallum warned that last month’s attack on an English air base was the beginning of a much larger security risk. In a speech on Tuesday, he called the strike part of a “major shift” in “Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets,” and urged the world to stay vigilant in the weeks ahead.

• The Houthis threatened a “swift and painful” response if the U.S. decides to join Saudi Arabia’s recent attacks against them. The remarks come after a week of extreme violence from the group, which killed at least 20 people at an airport in Riyadh.

• The Vatican announced that Pope Leo has been diagnosed with lung cancer. The 71-year-old Catholic leader had developed a small pulmonary nodule, which doctors identified as cancer and successfully removed during Tuesday’s surgery.

The hardest part of my job is when I have to tell parents that their children are completely fine.

I’m a neuropsychologist in New York City with more than a decade of experience specializing in neuropsychological evaluations and therapy for kids with learning and attention deficit disorders.

But in recent years, I’ve noticed a marked shift in my private practice. Rather than dreading a diagnosis signaling their kid has a learning disability, my clients have come to expect and hope for one.

A diagnosis of ADHD, for example, can open the door to a range of accommodations in school, including extra time for testing, which can help students rise to the top of their classes and eventually score higher on college entrance exams. Often, all it takes is a neuropsychological evaluation, which can cost upward of $10,000 and is rarely covered by insurance.

These days, it’s rare that I hear of neuropsychologists who don’t recommend students get extra time. I don’t think it’s out of corruption or ill intent—I think providers genuinely want to help reduce students’ stress and anxiety, and see extra time on tests as a way to help. Plus, it’s hard to get clients if you gain a reputation for being tough. I know for a fact my practice has suffered because I take a more conservative approach.

Toward the end of his 2024 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump pledged to “cut your energy costs in half within 12 months after taking office.” The promise was outlandish, but Trump is hardly the first politician to make outlandish promises. In his first 12 months in office, the price of gas did come down, modestly, as did the price of heating oil. (Electricity and natural gas got somewhat more expensive, and diesel held steady.) The dramatic “Energy Dominance” agenda promised to further establish the United States as a net exporter of various forms of energy.

Then, this spring came the war with Iran, and prices in the United States, especially the price of diesel, went up, up, up.

At times, the president has shown leadership and political resolve in the face of these increases, making the case that they are a price worth paying if it means Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.

And then there are moments like the present. The midterms are three weeks away and diesel prices, which percolate through the economy in various inflationary ways, are a problem. The price of diesel has risen by roughly 50 percent since the start of the Iran war, prior to which it had been steady for several years. As the timing suggests, the fighting in the Middle East is the major contributing factor. In addition to the difficulty of getting crude oil out of the region, refining capacity throughout the Gulf has been extensively damaged. Making matters worse for diesel prices is the war between Russia and Ukraine, and Kyiv’s effective long-range strike campaign targeting Russia’s refineries.

In short, Trump has an acute political and economic problem. His attempt to address it in recent days has led to one of the most embarrassing weeks of his second term.

Israel will hold elections in two weeks, and the leading candidates to become the next prime minister are presenting different visions of the nation’s character. The entire world already knows the voice, mannerisms, and modus operandi of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led and shaped Israel for a generation. Today, we’re featuring a symposium on Netanyahu’s legacy, with contributions from Michael Oren, Haviv Rettig Gur, Sohrab Ahmari, and more.

But what about the man who is favored to unseat him? Below, we examine the life and perspectives of Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief whose young opposition party is leading the polls. Yonah Jeremy Bob, a Jerusalem Post reporter and a chronicler of Israel’s halls of power, tells the unlikely story of Eisenkot’s rise, and describes where the breakout challenger may lead his country.

—The Editors

I first met Gadi Eisenkot in March 2017 at Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. At the time, he was the chief of the Israeli military and he was explaining to legislators that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were handling a new challenge from Hamas. The terrorist group was operating freely within the tunnel network it had built beneath Gaza, the extent of which had first been revealed in an assault on Israel a few years before.

As he explained the crisis, Eisenkot struck me immediately as amiable and much more subtle in expression than you might expect from a typical commanding general. And that ability—to be commanding in practice but project the aura of an everyday person—is part of the magic that could make him Israel’s next leader.

As of this week, his Yashar party is topping the polls in the election to be held on October 27, with about 22 percent of the vote compared with 20 percent for Netanyahu’s Likud party. Although the most likely election scenario is a deadlock leading to a second round between Eisenkot and Netanyahu, Eisenkot is widely viewed as having a better chance to build a majority coalition after the election, as a large share of seats will likely go to parties that oppose Netanyahu on similar grounds.

Eisenkot, 66, has a public image that is relatable to less-elite Israelis, including his lack of fluency in English. He is capitalizing on being the un-Netanyahu—someone with little in-your-face charisma but who underneath projects a depth of power that is undeniable.

Eisenkot is from Eilat, which is known globally as a prized resort. But internally in Israel, for locals who live there, it is known as a more depressed development town. He would be the first prime minister of Moroccan descent, as opposed to the European-Israeli background typical of his predecessors.

In two weeks, Israelis will vote for the first time since October 7 and the multifront war that followed. The country that goes to the polls has buried thousands since it last elected Benjamin Netanyahu. His main challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, is a former army chief of staff who served in Netanyahu’s war cabinet and lost a son in Gaza. The polls show a tight race. Whoever wins, the vote will be read as a verdict not just on Netanyahu’s current government but on the 19 years he has led Israel as its longest-serving prime minister.

On the eve of that verdict, we’ve asked a range of writers to discuss Netanyahu’s legacy. The aim of this symposium is to take his record seriously and assess it on the merits. A deafening cacophony of bad-faith arguments about the Jewish state and its head of government has made that harder than ever. The writers here have followed Netanyahu’s career closely, and they read his record in different ways. Each weighs where he succeeded, where he failed, and what is at stake when Israelis head to the polls later this month.

First, due credit: Benjamin Netanyahu is the leader who, for over two decades, led the campaign to isolate and finally militarily confront Iran. For this, he deserves the gratitude not only of Israelis but of an ungrateful West.

And he delivered the Abraham Accords, Israel’s first peace agreement that promised genuine normalization with Arab countries.

If we could only end there, he truly would be, as he imagines himself, the Israeli Churchill.

Instead, Netanyahu turned into his own antithesis. He is the leader who promised to keep us safe and brought us the greatest catastrophe in our history. The anti-terror expert who facilitated the Hamas terrorist state. The “start-up nation” economist who also immeasurably strengthened the ultra-Orthodox state-within-a-state, the greatest threat to Israel’s economic viability. The expert on the American-Israeli alliance on whose watch Israel’s most important friendship began to unravel. The “national explainer” under whom Israel’s ability to explain itself collapsed.

He is our longest-serving prime minister, yet his political legacy is scorched earth. The anti-leader who erased personal responsibility from Israeli politics, rushing to the microphones to claim credit for successes that weren’t his while blaming everyone else for his failures; the first Israeli prime minister to refuse to appoint a commission of inquiry into a disaster that happened on his watch. He was the leader we trusted to be the moderate face of the Israeli right, but who instead empowered the extremist Kahanists and, unbelievably, handed them control over the police force; who turned the Likud, a bastion of democratic values, into an ultranationalist party. The man who politicized every aspect of the Israeli ethos, even grief, visiting only families of fallen soldiers or hostages who were his supporters, denying government aid to battered border towns whose mayors opposed him.

Recent years have seen a flourishing of BS institutions. There is the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization that suddenly leaped to prominence last year when it was reactivated in order to accuse Israel of “genocide” in Gaza; there is the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a politicized pseudo-court that seems determined to fast-track that same genocide allegation; there is the United Nations Human Rights Council, whose only standing agenda item devoted to a single country is, yes, about the Jewish state; and the list goes on.

But the institution that must win any and all awards for not being what it says on the tin is the International Criminal Court (ICC). Founded in 2002, the ICC has served as a political tool for a quarter century. In the 2000s, European signatories routinely criticized the George W. Bush administration for not signing up the U.S. to be a member of the new institution. But the Bush administration took the view that all Democrat and Republican administrations have taken before and since: No American statesman or soldier should ever find his actions judged under the jurisdiction of a foreign court. American justice is enough.

Many Europeans count this as evidence of American barbarism. Why would the U.S. refuse to recognize the jurisdiction of something as noble-sounding as the ICC? The reasons, in the years since, have become quite clear. To take only one notable example, in 2002, when the court was being established, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón sought to call former secretary of state Henry Kissinger as a witness for an investigation into human rights abuses by South American military dictatorships. Garzón wanted to question Kissinger about what the U.S. government knew about these alleged abuses. Authorities in Britain, where Kissinger was staying at the time, denied the request. But the incident served as an important reminder: If the U.S. ever submitted to a foreign court, international or foreign criminal jurisdiction could and would be used against America and her allies.

That is why, at the end of last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took American opposition to the ICC to a new level: sanctioning American individuals or businesses that transact with the court. As Rubio said in a statement posted to social media, “We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling their ability to operate against us because our message is clear: The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”

On the eve of October 7, many Israelis would have told you the greatest threat to their country came from within.

For nine months, hundreds of thousands of people had filled the streets every week to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to transform the judiciary. His critics said it would strip Israeli courts of their power to check the gove…

Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where your Thanksgiving hopefully was filled with turkey pie and happiness over whatever family arguments you managed to survive; the Israeli flag won’t fly if Mississauga’s mayor has anything to say about it; and more. Let’s get to it!

October 26 is Election Day in Mississauga, Ontario, which describes itself as “a connected, diverse, and experience-rich destination on the shores of Lake Ontario.” And as part of her reelection campaign, Mayor Carolyn Parrish offered an unusually candid explanation for her move to ban all national flags except for Canada’s from a city park known as Celebration Square.

Parrish proposed the ban, and it was approved by the city council in April. She explained the decision at a local mosque, which gives you a hint about where all this is going. “I met with Arafat many years ago in the desert,” she said about the former Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, according to a video posted Friday on X. “He took off his keffiyeh, and he gave it to me, and he made me an honorary Palestinian.”

Parrish then turned to the flag ban. “We also raised the Palestinian flag in Mississauga, and right after that, we banned all foreign flags because the next one would have been the Israeli flag. So we made sure that one was not raised.”

That’s not even close to the words Parrish used when she floated the idea. Her proposal to the city council said only that national flags “have recently become a source of controversy and at times division within the community, and are now taking up significant staff time and incurring legal costs.”