The Free Press

Heading into Tuesday’s Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary, Republicans couldn’t believe their luck. A suite of primary polls had suggested for months that 37-year-old state assembly member Francesca Hong, a dues-paying affiliate of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) with a vast catalog of embarrassing social media posts, was skating toward a blowout primary victory with a lead as high as 20 points. The GOP was confident that their own front-runner, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, had a strong chance to beat Hong in the general election.

Yet moderate Democrats in the state were as wary of Hong as Republicans were giddy. And they went into overdrive in the final weeks of the race to block her from gaining the nomination. In a wild turn of events, Milwaukee executive and mainstream Democrat David Crowley squeaked out a victory over Hong in last night’s primary, defeating her by a few thousand votes and dealing a blow to the insurgent socialist wing of the party that is hoping to remake the Democratic Party in its own image.

Crowley’s comeback is one for the ages. The Milwaukee county executive had suspended his campaign on July 8 amid what was then a crowded and fractured field that included Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez and former lieutenant governor and failed 2022 U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, both of whom dropped out of the race in the final weeks.

Evan Barker’s great new book, Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, is about how identity politics destroyed the party for which she used to work as a successful fundraiser. It’s easy for a conservative like me to read it with self-satisfaction, thinking, We told you so! Because hey, we did. But Barker’s book ought to be read as a warning to the right as well. We had better pay attention.

Barker, now 33, is a white woman from a working-class family in the Midwest. During one post-campaign period when she had no place to live before the next political cycle, Barker couldn’t go home, because there was no room for her in the house trailer where her mother and grandmother lived together to save money.

Born with a rare and potentially fatal genetic condition, Barker got into Democratic politics in the hope of improving the healthcare system she had struggled with her whole life. She also wanted to see political programs address the economic precarity her extended family lived under. This is why she became a Bernie Gal in 2016, and discovered she had a real gift for campaign fundraising.

As Barker details in Nothing Left (which The Free Press recently excerpted), her years working within the Democratic machine taught her some painful lessons. For one, she saw how party bigs sabotaged not only Bernie Sanders in 2016, but subsequent progressives contending for office in Democratic congressional primaries. As she puts it, party leadership would rather have seen progressive Democrats lose than surrender message control.

Her deeper warning, however, is that the party has become entirely controlled by both its donor class and its activists, who share the same destructive obsession with identity politics. In Barker’s view, the Democrats have become a party of man-hating girlbosses who prioritize race and gender over everything else, and who despise white people. The fact that many of these same people are themselves white is part of the party’s pathology.

Last Saturday night, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a video to her Instagram Stories saying 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; on Monday, TMZ reported that she and her fiancé had split up—a report she did not deny when the New York Post asked her about it Wednesday. It was like watching the life cycle in reverse.

Where was the “zero emission” engagement ring, the one made from “recycled gold”? Where was the boyfriend she’d begun dating in college, who supported her so much during her campaign? Things change.

In the videos, she sits alone in her apartment, looking especially beautiful—at times excited and at others a bit vulnerable. In fact, she looked like a woman who takes you aside to tell you she’s pregnant, not that she’s embarking on a moon shot. She talked about the current administration and its practice of “punishing us around our decision to be pregnant or not to be pregnant.”

Freezing your eggs is the universal signal for “Don’t rush me!” It’s the answer for your mother and aunts and the girl in the break room, who poke at you endlessly about when, when, when are you going to have a baby? And it’s a warm, Xanax-infused bath for any woman who feels her time to have a baby might be running out. Out here in real life you may be aging a little bit more with each passing year, but down there in the deep freeze, the real you—perfect and never getting a moment older than you were on the day you had the procedure—is safe. It will never be too late.

America has an antisemitism problem. It’s an issue we’ve covered extensively here at The Free Press. Most recently, with an investigation by Rupa Subramanya into one high school in Virginia, and how it failed to protect its Jewish students from harassment and intimidation. Today, we’re publishing an essay by Leo Lewis, a high school student writing about the antisemitism he sees spreading through his generation. His message to anyone older than him is stark: it is worse than you think. We came across Leo’s writing on Substack and were impressed by what we found. We are publishing an adapted and expanded version of his essay: a sobering account of the prejudice taking hold among young Americans, why it has flourished, and what must be done to confront it.

—The Editors

As a high schooler, I can tell you the scale of antisemitism among my generation is far worse than any adult realizes. Among young men, a new, mainly right-wing brand of Jew-hatred has become omnipresent and is calcifying into an insurgent political movement. And despite how widespread it’s becoming, it’s newer and far less understood than the more pervasive antisemitism on the left.

One word captures this new form of antisemitism: goy. A Hebrew word used to refer to non-Jews, it has been captured by the fringe right and used to imply that Jews see non-Jews as subhuman cattle to be controlled. A pro-Israel non-Jew, for example, might be called a “goy slave,” to indicate that he is loyal to his Jewish overlords.

Today, the word has migrated—through memes and TikToks—into the everyday vocabulary of young American men who in large part have no idea what it means. The chemistry teacher who gives too much homework might be called a goy. Bad food is called goyslop. There are TikToks with millions of views claiming that kosher-labeled food is healthier because Jews deliberately made non-kosher food into goyslop to keep non-Jews unhealthy, weak, and easier to control.

“We have two adult children, a son aged 30 and a daughter aged 27. We are estranged from them both,” wrote a 60-year-old mom.

“Our oldest son, 27, has gone no contact with our entire family,” wrote a 57-year-old mom.

“It seems like she’s been influenced by the “no contact” movement too common in her generation, which rejects normal parents as toxic,” wrote yet another mom, this one 55, whose daughter doesn’t speak to her.

I’ve read so many messages from people who are desperately sad that their adult children don’t talk to them. That’s because I’m the editor of Tough Love with Abigail Shrier, our weekly advice column, so it’s my job to sort through the letters she gets. You ask: How do you rebuild a relationship with your son when you’ve been cut off? If your daughter’s decided you’re toxic, how do you cope with the pain?

At the heart of these questions is another, even deeper one: How could my own child reject me like this?

In her essay today, Christina Buttons answers that question—explaining why she went no contact with her parents for five years, at the age of 19, and why she’ll always regret it.

If you’re one of the many people who’s told us that your child isn’t speaking to you right now: This is proof that there’s always hope.
—Freya Sanders

When I was 19, my therapist told me I was not safe living with my parents.

It was 2008, and I had been struggling with suicidal thoughts for a little while. I had admitted this to my best friend, who recommended her therapist to me, and in the months that followed, that therapist told me that my parents were “toxic” and “coercive”; I needed “boundaries.” Suddenly, all my problems had a tantalizingly simple root cause: my mom and dad.

So, I cut them off completely. I didn’t speak to them for five years. Now, I deeply regret it.

Nearly two decades later, the framework that felt revelatory to me at the time is everywhere. More people than ever are in therapy, and therapeutic language increasingly shapes how we understand family conflict. Going no contact with a relative is described as “self-care.” Painful experiences are “trauma”; hurtful words are “abuse.” Today, 10 percent of the U.S. population is estranged from a parent or child. And as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, increasing numbers of them are being encouraged to do so by their therapists.

I know firsthand how destructive this can be. I hope my story gives others reason to think carefully before allowing a therapist to help them sever a family relationship.

It’s Wednesday, August 12. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Liel Leibowitz on why New York will never be “Habibi City.” Maya Sulkin talks to the white-collar Zoomers who feel owed their mental-health leave. And much more.

But first: Welcome to “Habibi City.”

The city formerly known as the Big Apple is now “Habibi City.” So declared a viral cover story in New York magazine this week, announcing the arrival of a new cadre of Middle Eastern residents building community and defining contemporary New York by resisting “xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Zionism.”

We wanted to make sense of this trend ourselves, so we turned to Liel Leibovitz, himself an immigrant from the Middle East to the United States.

He moved here, he writes for us today:

. . . for the one and only reason anyone should ever come to America: Because I believe it, firmly and passionately, to be the greatest nation ever endowed by God with the mission of spreading liberty and light to a benighted world, and because I consider it the honor of a lifetime to partake in the solemn work of making America ever greater. Apparently my fellow Middle Eastern immigrants have very different feelings.

Don’t miss Liel on “Habibi City” and why the viral essay gets the story of New York, and immigration to America, exactly backward.

—The Editors

• Four crew members were killed by a suspected Houthi strike on an Egyptian-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea yesterday as tensions mounted in Middle Eastern waterways. Separately, a U.S. missile struck a second ship bearing the Panamanian flag near the Gulf of Oman as it tried to evade the region’s American blockade.

• Per President Trump’s request, Russia has released U.S. Marine Robert Gilman, who had been imprisoned since 2022 and whose health had badly deteriorated in custody. Russia made no public demands in exchange for Gilman, who according to Russian state media was arrested and jailed for drunkenly kicking a police officer.

• Donald Trump hid in an airline catering container to surreptitiously escape Turkey during last month’s NATO summit after intelligence officials learned of an Iranian threat to his life. Two senior U.S. officials confirmed Monday that the elaborate ruse involved using Air Force One as a decoy while Trump was whisked to another aircraft.

• A Cleveland father set a new world record over the weekend for the fastest mile run while pushing a stroller: 4 minutes and 17 seconds. Guinness World Records has yet to certify the new record, which beat the previous one by nearly nine seconds.

• Nobody won Monday night’s $905 million Powerball jackpot, sending the estimated prize for Wednesday’s drawing to $1 billion. It is now the eighth-largest jackpot in Powerball history.

• The judge in charge of suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione’s trial announced yesterday that jurors will remain anonymous, citing prosecutors’ concerns of intimidation from Mangione’s supporters. “The People have documented threats, harassment, and exposure of personal information directed at individuals perceived as connected to the case, including witnesses and others,” the judge wrote in an order published Tuesday.

• Colombian authorities are searching for survivors of a 7.4 magnitude earthquake that struck the South American country on Monday, leaving many trapped under debris. The death toll has risen to 181, with over 2,500 injured, according to president Abelardo de la Espriella.

The night before a JPMorgan software developer was due back at the office, he lay in bed, unable to sleep. “The best way I can describe it,” the 30-year-old said, “is I got time away from a toxic family member. When you have separation, it’s easy to forget how much you hated work.”

He’d spent six months using the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which guarantees eligible employees up to 12 weeks a year of job-protected leave for their own serious health condition, or to care for a spouse, child, or parent with one (while federal law doesn’t require the leave be paid, many states, including New York and California, offer partial wage replacement and some companies, like JPMorgan, will offer leave beyond the guaranteed three months).

But the software engineer wasn’t dealing with a life-threatening illness or caring for a family member with one. He was feeling “stuck” at work.

“I wasn’t advancing my career,” he said. He didn’t like his manager, and didn’t feel his contributions were going to make or break the multitrillion-dollar bank. He’d been planning to quit without another job lined up, until a colleague who’d already taken leave mentioned that “burnout” alone could qualify him for FMLA.

Burnout isn’t a recognized diagnosis under FMLA. But if you can get a healthcare provider to certify that an underlying condition—like anxiety or depression—requires ongoing treatment, you can typically get approved for FMLA. “The bar for FMLA is quite low,” Cassandra Lammers, a senior HR executive who has spearheaded leave policy at large employers including The New York Times and Audible, told me.

I immigrated to the United States from the Middle East for the one and only reason anyone should ever come to America: Because I believe it, firmly and passionately, to be the greatest nation ever endowed by God with the mission of spreading liberty and light to a benighted world, and because I consider it the honor of a lifetime to partake in the solemn work of making America ever greater.

Apparently, my fellow Middle Eastern immigrants have very different feelings. In her now-viral cover story for New York magazine, journalist Zaina Arafat—who was born and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., but identifies as SWANA, an acronym that previously stood for the Solid Waste Association of North America but now apparently means Southwest Asian and North African, and represents anyone who is vaguely Middle Eastern and dislikes capitalism, America, and the Jews—kicks things into high gear by celebrating the fact that New York is now “Habibi City,” a full-on SWANA enclave.

What does the average day look like in Habibi City? Arafat is all too happy to tell you: There’s a workshop for kids at a Lebanese bookstore dedicated to Middle Eastern culture, then a fundraiser for Gaza at a “women-run Syrian supper club.” Which, Arafat concluded, made her feel “like in the blād,” which means “back home, overseas.”

Even if you ignore for a moment the fact that the real blād, for Arafat, is not overseas but a three-hour Acela ride away, a larger question remains: If all you care about is your native culture, if you wish to fill every moment of your day with swell SWANA sensations, why not, ya know, go back to SWANA?

Simple appreciation for America, and a desire to build on its strengths, has become nearly impossible to find among today’s politicians and pundits. The loudest voices in politics today say there’s hope for America, but only if you empower them to save it from itself. On the right, Tucker Carlson announced a manifesto last week to free America from the clutches of the elite “Epstein class.” On the left, the leading Democrat in Wisconsin’s race for governor, state representative Francesca Hong, has declined to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at legislative hearings, and in 2020 urged the cancellation of Thanksgiving, which she said honors colonialism.

Since pundits and politicians alike tend to mirror the public, can we deduce that Americans have simply lost interest in patriotism? We don’t think so. On the contrary, we believe that there is an unmet demand in this country for a revival of patriotism that politicians of both parties appear incapable of meeting.

The reasons why our politics has been a cold shower for Americans’ patriotism are not hard to discern. One of them is the president. Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016 by framing the U.S. as a nation in terminal decline, and he has frequently drawn a moral equivalence between the actions of foreign dictators and America’s own foreign policy. In the period since Trump overtook the Republican Party, right-wingers have become much more critical about America as it actually exists. And though Trump regularly expresses patriotism, his pageantry and truculent manner have been more polarizing than unifying. He seems to miss no opportunity to associate love of country with his own personal MAGA brand.

In less than three weeks, the first day of school arrives for Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia, which has about 2,600 students and is so academically ambitious that the 10 heaviest backpacks worn by students exceeded 20 pounds each, The Yorktown Sentry student newspaper reported in April. Yorktown’s mission statement says that it will “support students by name, strength, and need.”

But an investigation by the Virginia attorney general’s office into how the high school responded to complaints of antisemitism both before and after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel concluded that Yorktown failed to live up to its words or to protect Jewish students. The findings have not been released to the public, but The Free Press exclusively reviewed a 39-page summary of evidence gathered by the Virginia attorney general’s office and its conclusions, issued in October.

One male Jewish student reported being repeatedly targeted because he wore a kippah, which a female classmate tried to pull off his head. After a male student called him an antisemitic slur, he began covering his kippah with a baseball cap. A female Jewish student said that she was chased because she was Jewish, and other Jewish students described seeing Nazi salutes, hearing Holocaust jokes, and being told that they belonged in a gas chamber or that “Hitler should have finished the job.”

In detail after detail, the document paints not only a damning and dispiriting picture of surging antisemitism but also the indifference with which the incidents were met by school officials. Even though they warned that harassment of Jewish students would not be tolerated, Yorktown’s principal and other school leadership almost never followed through with any punishment. The result was a systemic failure to rectify the overarching issue of antisemitism affecting Jewish students, according to the report. It concludes that Arlington County Public Schools (APS), which includes Yorktown, was “deliberately indifferent to a discriminatory hostile environment against Jewish students at Yorktown High School.”

Investigators in the attorney general’s Office of Civil Rights also concluded that there was “reasonable cause” to believe that APS violated state and federal antidiscrimination laws by failing to adequately respond to the hostile environment at Yorktown.