The Free Press

It’s an article of faith among observers of the National Basketball Association that the league was saved by Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. At the time the two men left college for the pros in 1979, NBA players had a reputation for drug use, there was racial tension in many locker rooms, and arenas were mostly empty. The NBA finals usually ran on tape delay, as the networks knew there wasn’t enough interest to run them live.

Bird and Johnson—a white man playing for the Boston Celtics and and a black man playing for the Los Angeles Lakers—were charismatic players who could do it all with great style and verve. They were exciting to watch. They transcended race. Their rivalry made the NBA cool, with the result that, 47 years later, the NBA reaps $7 billion in annual TV revenue and the average player salary is $13 million—with stars getting tens of millions more.

In the three years since Caitlin Clark graduated from the University of Iowa and joined the Indiana Fever, it can look like she has had the same effect on the WNBA that Bird and Johnson once did on the NBA. After all, for most of its existence—it is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year—the WNBA was barely a blip on the radar for most sports fans. Today teams play to sellout crowds, especially if the game involves Clark’s Fever. Its TV deal has gone from $50 million to $200 million. For the first time, teams are flying in private jets instead of commercial. Salaries have risen dramatically; no longer do players have to go to Russia during the winter to make enough money like Brittney Griner did. And TV ratings have doubled since Clark joined the league.

Hi there! This is Will Rahn, filling in for TGIF Generalissimo Nellie Bowles. Where is Nellie? Beats me. All I know is that she sent me the following Slack message at 2:03 this morning: “Need you to do TGIF this week. No time to find someones [sic] better. I’m on a yacht owned by [REDACTED] and I just took a handful of [REDACTED] and so did [REDACTED] like 20 mins ago and now she’s tweaking out.” Nellie will, presumably, return next week. Until then, roast me in the comments. I promise it won’t be all politics. Just the first few items. And maybe a few at the end, and just a handful in the middle.

Some housekeeping first: Last week, Nellie announced we’re doing a Free Press Forum Book Club. Today, we’re happy to say the winner of the Forum Book Club is John Steinbeck’s East of Eden! Use this link to get book club announcements, and read and discuss alongside the other literate Free Pressers in the forum.

And ask Coleman Hughes anything! This Tuesday, August 18, at 3 p.m. ET, Coleman will take all of your questions—on music, race, writing, the precarious stack of books on his piano, and whatever else you can think up. Start dropping your questions in the forum now. Now let’s do the news!

→ The empire strikes back: It turns out the Democratic establishment has some fight left in it. After being consistently humiliated in primary elections by their socialist rivals since Donald Trump returned to power, they finally notched a victory on Tuesday when Milwaukee County executive David Crowley became the party’s candidate for governor in Wisconsin.

Who is David Crowley? Who cares! The point is that he’s not state representative Francesca Hong, a socialist and an inept campaigner whose campaign was already planning a “staff overhaul” should she win the nomination. Her preelection team included a deputy campaign manager who’s moonlighted as an OnlyFans model and who also won “Penthouse Pet of the Year” in 2024. Lest we forget: Hong called for the cancellation of Thanksgiving in 2020 because it’s a “colonizer holiday” and “the original superspreader event that killed Indegenous [sic] folx [sic] and women.” And just for good measure, she also had major issues with Fourth of July fireworks, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and the Pledge of Allegiance. If it’s not Indegenous [sic] People’s Day, forget it.

Needless to say, this all made Hong the runaway front-runner for the Democratic nomination in Wisconsin even as Bernie Sanders and AOC kept their distance from her. Polls had her leading by roughly 20 points in the weeks before the election as her opponents dropped out.

Is the tank obsolete? As drones and precision strikes transform modern battlefields, some have predicted that armored vehicles may soon meet the fate of the cavalry charge. Today on School of War, Colonel Jose A. Reyes and Lieutenant Colonel David “Cam” Smith of the 1st Cavalry Division make the opposite case. Drawing on their experience operating and c…

In this episode, Suzy Weiss and Dan Ahdoot unpack this week’s very important culture news and spotlight the bizarre stories you probably missed.

They celebrate Brad Pitt’s return to drinking “in a more restrained manner” after seven years of sobriety. They explore the Tokyo government’s decision to let men wear shorts to the office—and the resulting conc…

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” So spoke Don Tancredi to his uncle in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s famous novel The Leopard. Few truths are more important for understanding the current American predicament when it comes to immigration policy.

The issue cuts in the exact opposite direction of how many critics understand it. Opponents of immigration often picture a rosy image of American life to which they want us to “retvrn”: the widely shared prosperity of the 1950s, backed by a growing economy, and leavened by an optimistic culture focused on family life. But if we wish to keep a dynamic, pro-wealth, pro-family American ethos in place, we will need a liberal immigration policy.

Unfortunately, we seem to be tightening. The migration inflow into the U.S. has declined precipitously, and it is not just because illegal border crossings have been curtailed (I do support that particular development). For instance, net inward migration was 2.7 million in 2024, but only 1.3 million by 2025.

It’s widely understood now that dating apps have destroyed romance, and Gen Z is struggling to couple up. We’ve published a few stories about how this happened—but here at The Free Press we’re also frustrated by the pessimism we see, everywhere, when it comes to the pursuit of love. The New York Times declares “Gen Z Can’t Afford a First Date” (ever heard of a walk in the park!?) and “Gen Z-ers Are Ditching Sex. They Might Be Onto Something” (on what? Libido-crushing medication!?). The Cut writes that “heterosexual women have reached a breaking point.” Celibacy is glamorized. Our fear is that, if you say the search for love isn’t worth it, young people come to believe it.

And they give up on one of the greatest joys life has to offer.

Plenty of our columnists have injected some romantic optimism into our pages. Kat Rosenfield wrote, “Stop Saying Dating Is Terrible.” Larissa Phillips declared: Bring back matchmaking! Arthur Brooks explained how to make dating apps work for you. And for today’s feature, Kara Kennedy—who, lest we forget, married a man she’d known a few months—interviewed half a dozen post-app dating pioneers, young people who decided that just because Tinder is terrible, they didn’t need to give up on dating completely. Instead, they got creative, inventing new ways to track down The One . . .

While reporting, she spoke to Jake Kozloski—founder of Keeper, an AI matchmaker—who gave her a scoop we think is representative of the dating crisis. He told her that Hinge had been interested in acquiring his company, but took issue with their mission—which is, controversially, “to give everyone on Earth the opportunity to marry the right person.”

During negotiations, Kozloski said, “I ended up getting a stern call from someone on their team saying that they read our blogs and did not like that they were pro-marriage, as they felt that was a value judgment they weren’t comfortable making.”

It’s almost as if the aim of the apps was never to get people coupled up for life—but rather, to keep us swiping. Read on to meet the young people with other ideas.

In April of this year, 22-year-old Erin St. Gull printed out a hundred copies of a one-page document and hung them up around Toronto. She calls it a “dating doc,” and in it, she lays out what she needs: marriage; kids; someone, male or female, who is in their late 20s or early 30s and who, preferably, can make her feel excited about life. She also includes what she can offer potential suitors: fertility and youth. She writes that she is extremely smart—and that she can “say this with little pretension as it is the one most provable trait I can claim to have”—as well as “philosophically inclined [and] ruthlessly committed to reason.”

She is also, as you can probably tell, incredibly self-starterish. St. Gull recognizes, like most of her generation, that the modern dating landscape is broken. But instead of waiting around for someone vaguely acceptable to swipe right, she is willing to put herself out there and scour continents to find the one.

She left Toronto shortly after covering the city with posters, returning to her native France, but on the way she embarked on a 13-city tour of Europe, “a big part” of which was “trying to find the person.” She went to an effective altruism conference, conscious that there would be, she told me, “a high concentration of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in this circle . . . so I knew to scan the room.”

For St. Gull, dating apps are just “one channel,” and one that often doesn’t lead to much.

“At some point,” she said, “my relationship with dating apps shifted from ‘I’m trying to find someone on here,’ to, ‘I am using this purely for entertainment, and on the off chance that someone comes along and is actually interesting, I’m going to talk to them.’ ”

Over the weekend, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a viral video to Instagram, sitting alone with a table of medication in front of her, talking followers through the first steps of her egg-freezing process. She was upfront about why she was sharing it, saying she hoped “to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context a…

Dear Abigail,

I’m the mother of a 23-year-old son, and I feel like I’ve lost him even though he’s still alive.

He grew up in what I believed was a loving, close family. We traveled together, celebrated holidays together, and genuinely enjoyed one another’s company.

During college, my son met a woman his age online. She lived on the opposite side of the country, and for the first two and a half years, their relationship was entirely long-distance. During that time, she was in constant contact with him, through texts, FaceTime, Snapchat, and online gaming. My son, who had always been outgoing and sociable, gradually stopped building friendships in college, and instead spent nearly all his free time talking to her.

After graduation, she joined my son on the East Coast, and they moved into a luxury apartment together, against our wishes. We had encouraged them to continue dating while living separately because we felt that, at 22, they were too young to become so dependent on each other. Instead, they both work remotely from their apartment and spend nearly all their time together. She knows no one on the East Coast, even after a year here. The only people she interacts with are people in my son’s friendship group, which has become smaller and smaller.

Since the beginning of their relationship, nearly every family gathering has become a source of conflict. After they visit us, my son will accuse us of having said or done things that offend his girlfriend—things that never happened. His girlfriend seems unable to tolerate him spending time alone with his family. On my husband’s birthday—an occasion he had always marked with a father-son golf outing—she insisted on riding in the golf cart throughout the round, and my son left immediately afterward without spending any meaningful time celebrating his father.

Most recently, my son declined to attend the wedding of the son of our closest lifelong friends, after learning that girlfriends were not invited. He made many excuses that were lies, saying for example that it would be logistically difficult for him to get there. My brother-in-law, whom my son deeply respects, spent hours talking with him, and even offered to drive him door-to-door, to eliminate any practical hurdles. My son still refused.

I know parents aren’t perfect, and I’m sure we’ve made mistakes. But we worked hard to give our son every opportunity in life, including a debt-free education and career guidance. Yet he believes we—in particular, me; he views my husband as my puppet—are controlling, judgmental people who ruined his life. (Think: Brooklyn Beckham.) It feels as though his world has shrunk to one relationship. The family, friendships, and interests that once brought him joy have slowly disappeared, diminished by his girlfriend, who is 100 percent emotionally, financially, and socially dependent on our young son.

We have continued inviting him to family events, and never stopped loving him, but my husband and I have lapsed into an ugly pattern: spending time analyzing every conversation we have with our son, and debating every text and every family interaction. We are exhausted, and terrified that any decision could permanently damage our relationship with our son.

When do you stop trying to convince your child that you’re not the person they’ve come to believe you are? When does continuing to pursue an adult child become counterproductive? Every attempt at contact with our son is fraught with stress and disappointment. It is now putting stress on our marriage, and our relationship with our other son. Is the loving response to keep reaching out, or to step back, leave the door open, and hope he someday finds his way back on his own?

—Heartbroken Mother, 63

Dear Heartbroken Mother,

Your son met a girl—yes, she seems clingy—from the other coast. They dated through college. After graduation, she moved across the country to be with him and despite your urgent advice, they moved in together.

You aren’t paying their rent—but you’re offended that your son is living in a “luxury” apartment with this girlfriend, while they both work from home. He still attends family gatherings but after, complains that you said something insensitive to his girlfriend, which strikes you as supremely unfair. Your son joined his dad for the annual father-son golf match (a several-hour outing, no doubt), but he brought his girlfriend along and didn’t spend “meaningful” time with his family after. Worst of all, he declined to attend your lifelong friends’ son’s wedding when his girlfriend wasn’t invited.

Let’s recap your son’s attendance record: The golf outing? Present! The family gatherings? Present! His uncle’s lecture? Present! (He suffered through it respectfully). The friend’s wedding invitation? He declined, as many in his situation would.

Now, you are “heartbroken” and bereaved, feeling as if you have “lost” your 23-year-old son “even though he’s still alive.” You wonder if you should stop reaching out to your son and just hope he someday “finds his way back on his own.”

I read these lines, picturing myself as your son. And I was seized by an overwhelming desire to find a girlfriend on the internet, move into a luxury apartment with her, and visit my parents infrequently.

It’s Thursday, August 13. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: The strange fate of Francesca Hong. What Rod Dreher learned from a Democratic operative. The high school student fighting his classmates’ antisemitism. And much more.

But first: AOC’s race against time.

Heading into the 2026 midterms, the Democratic Party is plotting a rebrand, and 36-year-old congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the center of the action. And while she crisscrosses the country to stump for a new crop of socialist candidates, her personal life has suddenly spilled into view.

Last Saturday, AOC went viral after she posted on Instagram that she had decided to start freezing her eggs. The next day, she went on a Sunday show and took a fertility shot in the green room. And on Monday, TMZ announced that she and her fiancé had split.

Her decision sparked a debate about women preserving their freedom into middle age—but our columnist Caitlin Flanagan has a different take.

“It was like watching the cycle of life in reverse,” she writes. Read Caitlin’s essay on what’s wrong with AOC’s effort to “normalize” egg freezing.

—The Editors

When DSA-backed Francesca Hong lost her bid for the Wisconsin governorship on Tuesday, much of the press raced toward a premature conclusion. From Bloomberg to National Review, commentators declared that democratic socialism had “hit a wall.” The idea is that the populist movement sweeping the Democratic Party had reached a limit of sorts, rejected by primary voters in a politically moderate state.

Yet look a little closer and you’ll see that it took plenty of effort to make voters spurn her. Today, Audrey Fahlberg reports on how Hong’s opponent, David Crowley, and other moderate Democrats in Wisconsin mobilized to take down Hong with little time left in the race. It’s a comeback that should be studied closely by Democrats around the country who are desperate to halt the socialist surge.

But what gave rise to radicals like Hong in the first place—and how can a party stamp them out before they ever arrive? No one knows that story better than Evan Barker, a former Democratic operative who once worked for Abdul El-Sayed, and who witnessed the takeover of identity politics firsthand. This month, she laid out her takeaways in a new book—and when Rod Dreher read it, the message felt more familiar than he expected. Today, he explains what the Democrats’ turn has taught him about the future of the Republican Party—and how the GOP can avoid falling into the same trap.

And, in case you missed it, read Rupa’s investigation:

• Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell to a one-week low on Wednesday. The drop came amid increased volatility in the region, as President Donald Trump claimed “total control” over the strait, and the Iranian-backed Houthis killed six people in the Red Sea.

• Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth upset Trump-backed Mike Lindell, of MyPillow fame, to win the Republican nomination for governor on Tuesday. Demuth will run against Senator Amy Klobuchar in the general election.

• President Trump announced Wednesday that his press secretary Karoline Leavitt is stepping down at the end of August. Leavitt will be leaving to spend time with her two young children, and will remain a top outside adviser to the president’s team.

• The Trump administration is set to spend at least $900 million on White House construction by routing funds from other agencies and private donors. The renovation plans include a gilded East Wing ballroom, a new helipad, and a visitor screening center.

• Federal authorities arrested a former Southern Poverty Law Center employee, Heidi Beirich, on charges that allege she oversaw secret payments to informants inside of white supremacist groups. Prosecutors claim Beirich lived with and was romantically involved with one of the recipients. (For more on the scandals rocking SPLC, read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s essential piece.)

• Former Disney chief executive Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner are buying the Los Angeles Lakers for a record $12.5 billion. Their purchase marks a significant increase from the $10 billion Mark Walter paid for the franchise less than a year prior, despite star player LeBron James’ recent departure.

• A total solar eclipse swept across Iceland and Spain, the first to cross mainland Europe since 1999. Spain set up 350 viewing sites amid heat and wildfire warnings, where the eclipse produced a rare “sunset” effect.