It was approaching 9 p.m. on Friday, April 25, and outside the Los Angeles Center Studios, hundreds of people, almost all of them Gen Z, were waiting for the doors to open. It was a rowdy crowd, with lots of drinking, which was hardly a surprise, since they were about to watch the world’s first-ever sperm race. Or at least, that’s what they thought they were about to watch.

The anticipation was palpable. In the run-up to the race—in which, yes, the sperm of two “combatants” were supposed to race through a microscopic track to the “finish line”—the press could hardly have been more enthused. Headline writers searched for the perfect double entendre. “World’s First ‘Sperm Race’ Goes Off with a Bang in LA,” said the Daily Mail. “This time, it’s good to finish fast,” wrote the New York Post on its Facebook page. It was all over X and TikTok. One local news report highlighted the organizers’ Sperm Racing Professional Sperm Analysis Kit, which measures “concentration, motility, progressive motility, motile sperm concentration, and progressive motile sperm concentration.”

Did I get caught up in it too? Yes, I did. In the days leading up to the race, I interviewed 17-year-old Eric Zhu, the co-founder of Sperm Racing, the start-up company organizing the race, and other members of his team. “I really think we can be an Olympic sport,” said Sahana Mantha, who serves as Sperm Racing’s director of operations when she’s not attending high school in North Carolina. I also spoke to Austyn Jeffs, a video editor for The Free Press, who lives in L.A., and we made a plan to have him shoot a video at the event while I watched the livestream from my home in New York, along with thousands of other fans (if fans is the right word).

But then, during the event, Austyn started asking questions he wasn’t supposed to ask, and after it was over, I started doing the same—calling several experts, and pressing Zhu on what we had actually seen. And we discovered that much of what had taken place at the L.A. Center Studios last Friday was not what it initially seemed.

The team of architects and planners trying to envision the rebirth of Nir Oz, a kibbutz on the Gaza border devastated by the massacres of October 7, 2023, knew they’d face design challenges, from the placement of communal buildings to the size of family homes. But Shanee Shiloh, a daughter of the kibbutz and an architectural historian, discovered that they first faced a question both simpler and more complicated than expected: What is a kibbutz?

For much of the life of the state of Israel—which celebrates its 77th birthday today—if you knew one thing about the country, it was the kibbutz. Bernie Sanders volunteered on one, and so did Boris Johnson and Jerry Seinfeld. The kibbutz was a kind of agricultural collective, an experiment in practical communism, that began to appear in 1909, when the Ottoman Empire still ruled the region. All property was communally owned, with members giving according to their abilities, at least in theory, and receiving according to their needs. Kids were raised communally, sleeping away from their parents in a children’s house. Clothes (blue work shirts, khaki shorts) were issued by the kibbutz, and so were newspapers and cigarettes.

It’s Thursday, May 1. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Trump blames Biden for the economy. Harvard’s “disturbing” antisemitism report. Why Europe’s lights went out. Your letters to the editor. And much more.

But first: The case for escalating the trade war.

Whether you agree with President Donald Trump’s tariffs or not, it’s important to understand why many Americans who do business in China are fed up with how Beijing treats foreign competition. Some of the staunchest critics of tariffs that we publish in these pages, like Niall Ferguson, readily concede that we’ve never really had free trade with China because of how they openly flout the rules the rest of the developed world abides by.

We’ve covered tariffs a lot since Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” announcement, and many of the smartest people we know and publish—like Niall and Tyler Cowen—believe that they’ll cause a great deal of unnecessary hardship. Yesterday’s news that the U.S. economy contracted during the first three months of 2025 is certainly an ominous sign.

But today we’re running a piece that argues that Trump hasn’t gone far enough—at least on the question of China. It’s by famed investor Kevin O’Leary, the Shark Tank co-host known ironically as “Mr. Wonderful” for his love of tough negotiations. O’Leary walks us through exactly what it’s like to do business in China, and the hurdles Beijing puts up to rig the game in their favor. And he has his own suggestions for how to fight back and finally level the playing field for American businesses. His advice? “Squeeze China even harder.”

Read O’Leary’s piece to understand why he and other American entrepreneurs feel that, when it comes to China, there’s a serious argument to be made for Trump’s trade war.

—Bari Weiss

On Monday, Spain’s power grid went dark. Trains lurched to a halt. Planes were stuck on the runway. Within hours, the Spanish government declared a national emergency. The crisis was entirely avoidable, writes Emmet Penney, and is a warning about the risks of relying on renewable energy.

Harvard’s long-delayed antisemitism report was published this week, and it paints a grim picture of life on campus for Jewish students. Our Maya Sulkin combed through the “disturbing” findings.

“The elites were a disaster,” writes Christopher Rufo in response to Tyler Cowen’s recent column defending intellectual elitism. Plus more letters to the editor from Free Press readers.

• Donald Trump blamed Joe Biden for the shrinking U.S. economy. As stocks tumbled Wednesday, Trump said in a post on Truth Social, “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th.” He later added in response to reporters’ questions that “You could even say the next quarter is sort of Biden. We’re turning it around.”

• J.D. Vance said that Trump has plans to “juice the economy” with the “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill on Capitol Hill. Speaking to Fox News at the administration’s 100-day mark, he said the next 100 days will require Congress to “step up to the plate.”

• Ukraine and the U.S. have signed the long-awaited minerals deal. The agreement—the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund—was supposed to be signed months ago, but then the disastrous Oval Office meeting between Zelensky, Trump, and Vance meant a White House signing ceremony never happened.

• More than 160 crews are battling wildfires in the Jerusalem hills in what officials say could be Israel’s largest ever. According to a Wednesday night estimate, 2,900 acres of land have been burned in the blaze so far.

• A Vermont judge ordered the release of Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi from custody on Wednesday. Mahdawi, who is from the West Bank, is a legal U.S. resident and was arrested at a naturalization interview last month.

• The Trump Organization signed a new real estate and golf course development deal in the Middle East with support from a Qatari government-owned firm. Eric Trump, speaking from the region, announced that properties could be purchased with cryptocurrency.

• Pakistan says it has “credible intelligence” that India will launch a military action against it in the next “24 to 36 hours.” The announcement came after days of tension between the two nuclear-armed rivals following an attack by Islamist militants in the disputed territory of Kashmir. Pakistan denies any involvement in the attack, while India says it has identified at least two of the assailants as Pakistani nationals.

• Former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick is accusing CBS of using “selective editing” to create a “false narrative” that his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, improperly interrupted an interview that aired on Sunday. Hudson said, “We’re not talking about this” after a network host asked Belichick, who is promoting a new book, how he met Hudson, who is 49 years younger than him.

Trump has been in office for 100 days. Israel has been at war with Hamas in Gaza for 570. And Russia and Ukraine, 1,160 days.

Douglas Murray has had a front-row seat to all three of these unfolding stories, bringing us reportage and analysis that have illuminated the most urgent issues of our time.

While we love Douglas, his reporting and willingness to call out bad actors across the world and the political spectrum has earned him his fair share of adversaries. Earlier this month, Douglas went on The Joe Rogan Experience—the most popular podcast in America—to debate both Joe and comedian-turned-pundit Dave Smith. They sparred for some three hours, with the debate earning millions of views and becoming its own viral news story.

The interview became so popular in large part because Douglas, as always, refused to pull a punch. In this case that meant fighting back against antisemitism, the kind we’re seeing rise on the online right.

George Orwell once famously wrote that “to see what’s in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Nobody knows that better than Douglas who, unlike many of his contemporaries, never gets lost in excuse-making and needless ideological abstraction. He sees the world clearly and reports it back to us, which is a big reason why he’s such a unique and valuable voice in our era of dishonesty.

That gift is on full display in his new and best-selling book, On Democracies and Death Cults, and in the conversation we had Monday in The Free Press newsroom.

Paying subscribers were able to ask Douglas questions—and we are doing more and more talks like this. So to join us live and get in on the conversation, become a paying subscriber today.

Readers of The Free Press are smart, opinionated, and ideologically diverse. That means we get a lot of really fascinating letters. We can’t publish all of them, but every month we print a handful that have us talking in the office.

First up this month, Rob Henderson responds to Tyler Cowen’s recent column defending intellectual elitism. “Too many who despise ‘the elites’ do not look closely enough at the dissidents—or assess what they get right and wrong, and how they got there,” Cowen wrote. Henderson, on the other hand, says that mistrust in elites arises more out of a disconnect between “experts” and elites:

In reflecting on the collapse of institutional trust during the pandemic, one moment stands out: The summer of 2020, when many officials and media figures who had urged strict lockdowns pivoted to endorsing mass gatherings for Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

This sudden shift created widespread confusion and suspicion. If Covid was so dangerous that funerals and family visits had to be canceled, why were mass protests permitted? It seemed as though the rules weren’t grounded in science but in politics. Many interpreted this double standard not just as hypocrisy but as a revelation: If the cause was fashionable, restrictions were negotiable. Some people refused the Covid vaccine not out of ignorance, but as a way to object to what they saw as a double standard. If mass gatherings were permissible for political causes, then perhaps the threat wasn’t as grave as claimed.

Tyler Cowen recently argued that the “real elites”—the expert scientists—remained closer to the truth and that critics of elites aren’t looking far enough up the hierarchy with regard to Covid transmission and vaccinations. But this misses a crucial point. People too often conflate experts and elites. They are not interchangeable. When elites don’t care about a topic, the experts rule. But once elites turn their attention to an issue—especially when it carries strong moral overtones—elite opinion usually overrides expert consensus.

Elites like to portray their views as aligned with expert analysis, but this is often a mirage. Elite opinion is shaped more by prestige than by technical knowledge. And when moral righteousness enters the mix, it often supplants reasoned, evidence-based guidance.

This disconnect—between what the experts recommended and what the elites declared—helps explain why trust eroded. Many Americans weren’t rejecting science. They were rejecting what looked like elite political manipulation dressed up as science.

—Rob Henderson

Harvard University released its long-overdue report on campus antisemitism exactly 10 days after Trump officials demanded to see it. The findings are disturbing.

Nearly 60 percent of Jewish students at Harvard said they had experienced “discrimination, stereotyping, or negative bias on campus due to [their] views on current events,” according to the 311-page report. The report said that 73 percent of Jewish students expressed discomfort sharing their political opinions, while 75 percent believed there was an “academic or professional penalty” for expressing their views at Harvard.

Kevin O’Leary, a.k.a. Mr. Wonderful of “Shark Tank” fame, has a lot in common with President Donald Trump. Both are conservative. Both have built reputations as successful businessmen. And both leveraged those attributes into reality TV stardom.

But, like most tycoons, O’Leary takes issue with Trump’s 145 percent tariffs on most Chinese imports. The twist: O’Leary doesn’t think they’re too high. He thinks they aren’t high enough, arguing that China has been ignoring the trade rules that other developed countries abide by. Here O’Leary lays out his case against China—and what the U.S. should do about it.

When President Bill Clinton welcomed China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, the idea was to hold them accountable. China was supposed to adhere to WTO rules, guaranteeing intellectual property rights and cooperating with American producers.

But they never complied. Not in the first week, and not in the 20th year of doing business.

The WTO should have kicked them out for noncompliance. Instead, it’s a given that the Chinese Communist Party had free rein to cheat and steal from other members. Partly that’s because the West was able to import cheap Chinese goods, even if their own companies were being put out of business. But it’s also because too many governments were intimidated by China. Now the WTO is wracked and stacked with grievances from the U.S. and other countries that have never been arbitrated, litigated, or resolved. Frankly, I don’t see the point of the WTO even existing if it can’t keep China in check.

On Monday, Spanish grid operators found themselves sprinting against sunset. The entire country had blacked out. Planes paused on the runway for want of air traffic control. Trains lurched to a stop on the tracks or sat in their bays at the station. Within a few hours, the Spanish government declared a national emergency.

The blackouts even reached France and Portugal. Europe is learning another painful lesson about its power sector: If one nation mismanages its grid, its neighbors suffer with it. If these blackouts were caused by Spain’s green energy policies, as seems likely, these blackouts are a preview of the world to come.

Today we’re bringing you the latest episode of Breaking History, the podcast where I go back in time, in order to make sense of the present. This week, we’re talking about the most dangerous nuclear nation on Earth, and the despots who’d like to join their club. Listen to the episode, which features voices from both the past and present, here:

If you’re a paying subscriber, scroll down to read the companion essay, which tells the story of how North Korea lied its way into nuclear power—and how Iran might do the same.

For two decades, one mission has galvanized four American presidents: preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb. George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden have all tried a combination of sticks and carrots to seduce or deter the mullahs from going nuclear. They tried sanctions. They tried censure. They tried sabotage. They tried bribery. They tried diplomacy.

And none of it has worked.

Iran has pressed on with its nuclear program, and has enriched enough uranium to fuel a dozen nuclear-tipped missiles. Although Iran hasn’t built the weapons yet, it’s already mastered the hardest part of that process: creating the fuel for a warhead capable of creating a mushroom cloud. By even the most conservative estimates, Iran is only a few weeks away from being able to produce the fuel for an A-bomb.

This isn’t good.

As the Trump administration desperately tries to avoid a hot war with Iran by entering negotiations, it’s worth remembering: We have been here before. Nearly 20 years ago, another Republican administration deployed its most seasoned diplomats to prevent the Hermit Kingdom from going nuclear. And despite those efforts, the diplomats failed. We now live in a world where a tin-pot tyrant in Pyongyang can turn Seoul and Tokyo into a pile of radioactive ash at the press of a button.

This is the story of how North Korea—the most rogue of all states—tested its first fission-powered bomb in 2006, and in doing so upended the nuclear status quo forever.

It’s Wednesday, April 30. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large.

Today is the 100th day of the president’s second term in office. If all goes according to plan, he has 1,361 days left.

A total of 143 executive orders! Eight “national emergencies”! DOGE and deportations! McDonald’s on Air Force One! Teslas on the South Lawn of the White House! The Gulf of America, the triumph of the plastic straw and, depending on who you ask, multiple constitutional crises.

In other words, there’s a lot to make sense of.

So for today we called up a handful of our friends and asked them what they thought. Among them: Bill Maher, Mike Pompeo, Victor Davis Hanson, Tyler Cowen, Jamie Reed, Coleman Hughes, Jonathan Haidt, Sam Harris, Christopher Rufo, Nellie Bowles, Derek Thompson, Jed Rubenfeld, and Kemi Badenoch.

Here’s a taste of what they think.

“Giddyup.” —Mike Pompeo

“A singular political talent.” —Reihan Salam

“Not a ‘constitutional crisis’ but political theater.” —Jed Rubenfeld

“Much-needed shock therapy.” —Chris Rufo

“No longer are food dyes something only whispered about between San Francisco moms.” —Nellie Bowles

“Shitshow.” —Bill Maher

As you can see, the responses were. . . wide-ranging.

—The Editors

• Harvard has released a long-awaited report on antisemitism on campus. The publication of the report—and an accompanying report on anti-Muslim discrimination on campus—had been delayed for months without explanation. Last week, the Trump administration demanded to see a draft of the report.

• The Chinese foreign ministry released a social media video Tuesday in which Beijing vowed to “never kneel down” to Washington. “History has proven compromise won’t earn you mercy—kneeling only invites more bullying,” the video said. “For China, for the world, we must rise and fight on.”

• The White House slammed a “hostile and political act by Amazon” on Tuesday after a report alleged that the e-commerce giant planned to start including the price increases caused by tariffs on product prices. The company walked back the proposal after Trump called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly and he did the right thing. He’s a good guy,” said Trump of Bezos later in the day.

• Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday he is “proudly” ending a program to advance women’s participation in peace-building and security. It was signed into law by Trump in 2017, and touted as an example of his first administration’s record on “women’s economic empowerment.”
  

• A new study estimates that exposure to phthalates—a chemical in common household plastics—contributes to 13 percent of all heart disease deaths in people between ages 55 and 64 each year.
  

• Asked by a reporter who he’d like to replace Pope Francis, Trump said Tuesday: “I’d like to be pope. That would be my number one choice.”