The Free Press

On Wednesday night, less than 24 hours after socialists swept New York City’s Democratic primaries, hundreds of activists and supporters joined a victory call hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to discuss the next frontier.

Appearing onscreen next to far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, Darializa Avila Chevalier, who just clinched the Democratic nomination for a New York House seat, encouraged viewers to canvass for a 29-year-old democratic socialist with no prior political experience.

Melat Kiros, Avila Chevalier told them, is “just an incredible human being.”

Avila Chevalier, 32, said the Denver, Colorado, upstart was facing an “incumbent who is just as bad” as the one she had just taken down, referring to five-term representative Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“I really want us to be able to build this people power that will help us deliver in the long run,” Avila Chevalier said. “Next on the pipeline is Melat, so please support her.”

The rallying call seemed to have worked. On Tuesday, Kiros defeated Rep. Diana DeGette, a 15-term lawmaker who has been in office since before Kiros was born.

Tom Suozzi, the Democratic congressman, likes to talk about his maternal grandfather, an Irish electrician who helped install the lights on top of the Empire State Building. And his father, who came to this country from Italy and was a navigator on a B-24 bomber during World War II, got himself into Harvard Law and then, after graduating, couldn’t get a job because no one would hire Italians. These two stories were his story, but really, it was the Democratic Party’s story—that of melting pots and labor unions and upward mobility and optimism leavened with grit, loss, sacrifice, and a belief in the promise of America.

It is also the subtext of Suozzi’s Promise to America, a pledge to push back against the leftist tsunami engulfing his party. Suozzi formally unveiled it last Thursday, two days after a slate of candidates backed by New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani won Democratic House primaries in New York City. The pledge includes support for capitalism, free speech, and America—and, just as importantly, opposition to socialism, purity tests, and a belief that the country is the root of all evil everywhere. He was launching it, he told me, because he thought his fellow moderates had been “asleep at the switch” in the face of the ascendant far left.

A man walked into my locker room at the University of Pennsylvania, ready to compete on the women’s swim team. He was six foot four, and had spent three years swimming on the men’s team. We were told to call him a teammate, and the adults in charge expected us to act like it was normal. Girls who didn’t were treated like the problem.

That’s what happened when Lia Thomas (né William) joined the Penn women’s swim team in 2021.

My teammates and I raised our concerns to our coaches and the school administration. Repeatedly. We said how unsafe it felt to shower and undress in front of a man, how unfair it was to practice and race against one. Whatever he believed about himself, it should not have been our job to affirm it.

Talking to the people running our program got us nowhere. Instead of protection, we were offered counseling to help us come to terms with undressing in front of a male. The athletic department called a meeting. Lia being on the team was non-negotiable, they said. Speak out and regret it for the rest of your life. We needed safety. Instead, we got something out of George Orwell’s 1984: Sit in the room long enough, until you agree the man in front of you isn’t really a man.

Two hundred fifty years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, fundamentally different from the nations of Europe.

Most of today’s European nations originated as “ethno-states”—countries that belonged to a particular people sharing the same “blood,” typically named after that people. Germany, for example, was the nation belonging to and populated by Germans, but to be German, it was not enough to speak German. You had to be born German. You had to be born to German parents; you had to be German by blood.

In the late 18th century, there were also numerous multiethnic kingdoms and empires, embracing more than one ethno-state. Great Britain was an example. The Spanish and Russian empires were others.

America was none of the above. It was not an empire but a nation; not a kingdom but a democracy—and its people were not defined by blood. From the very beginning, America was a multiethnic, democratic nation.

“What then is the American, this new man?” asked Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur in 1782. “I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations.” A man might be from any nation, but if he came to our shores he became a citizen, an American. As Crèvecoeur famously added: “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”

After the Supreme Court heard arguments in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and the companion case, Little v. Hecox, earlier this year, it looked like the challenges to West Virginia’s and Idaho’s laws prohibiting biological males from playing girls’ and women’s sports would fail. Tuesday’s ruling confirms why: Sex categories in sports exist for a reason, and neither the Constitution nor federal law requires schools to pretend otherwise.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion gets the central point right. The question wasn’t whether transgender students deserve dignity, but whether the 1972 Education Amendments’ Title IX and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause forbid schools from maintaining girls’ and women’s sports for biological females. Kavanaugh’s opinion is admirably direct: “The answer is yes.” That is, schools may preserve female athletic categories based on biological sex.

The legal history is straightforward. Congress enacted Title IX in 1972 against a background of grossly unequal athletic opportunity: In the 1971–1972 school year, about 300,000 high-school girls played sports, compared with about 3.6 million boys. Two years later, the Javits Amendment directed federal regulators to address athletics.

The resulting regulations in 1975 required “equal athletic opportunity for members of both sexes” and expressly allowed “separate teams for members of each sex” when competitive skill or contact sports were involved. In other words, rather than abolishing sex distinctions, the statute and its implementing framework depended on them.

Citizen Vigilante is an ugly film. It has been banned in Germany, viewed by millions of people on X, and is currently the number one film in North America on major streaming platforms. It can’t be avoided, and it shouldn’t be.

In some ways the low-budget action film stands in a familiar genre of vigilante movies. Think Death Wish (1974) or John Wick (2014). If the setting were different, the leading man might have been Liam Neeson. But director Uwe Boll’s leading man is Armie Hammer, making his first appearance since one of the crazier #MeToo cancellations. And that is because Citizen Vigilante is meant to be—and is—controversial. It is set in present-day Europe, where crimes are committed every day by some of the millions of illegal migrants who have recently arrived on the continent, even though Europe’s politicians and cultural elites would rather ignore them.

The film opens with a beautiful German mother being stabbed in the neck by a migrant after leaving a supermarket with her young child. It closes—if you don’t mind the spoiler—with the antihero protagonist going to the house of a young Syrian man who has been involved in the gang-rape of a local girl.

I graduated from college in 1987, into a rip-roaring bull market, when the only requirements for employment were a heartbeat and a clean drug test. You had to be a complete moron not to get a job. None of my friends lived at home with their parents, even those who graduated with student loans.

Still, it’s tempting to downplay the role of luck in one’s life. I’ve written a couple of books about money, and what to do with it, and I’ve noticed this: My generation (older Gen X and younger boomers) likes to assume its experience is universal.

Parents, you look at your young adult children and think: Why can’t you just do what we did? Work hard. Save your money. Buy a house.

You don’t want to accept that your kid is struggling because of things beyond their control, and beyond your control. The fact is, housing costs have increased dramatically. Inflation has exploded. Interest rates surged. Industries are now being reshaped by artificial intelligence.

Young people, you lament: I have been dealt a terrible hand.

You have every right to feel bad for yourself—for about five minutes. Then you need to get off the pity pot and deal with it. You cannot control mortgage rates. You cannot control inflation. You missed the housing market in 2021 when interest rates were on the floor? That sucks. You took out loans to finance a degree that’s not paying off? That’s frustrating. Now what?

Start by ignoring your parents’ financial advice. And moms and dads, if you’re still with me: Listen up. I’ve spent decades thinking about money—as a commodities trader, chief investment officer, certified financial planner, and CBS News business analyst. Over that time, the rules have changed dramatically. Your understanding of what your kids should do with their money may be out of date for the world and the economy we’re living in. Allow me to give you some examples.

“Buy a Home Once You Can Afford To.”

I’m close to a couple in their 30s, who live in New York City. They have a baby, earn roughly $400,000 a year between them, and have diligently saved hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They’re renting.

They can afford a down payment on a million-dollar home, but tying up $250,000 of their precious savings in a house feels like a risk to them.

Their parents don’t understand. “You’re throwing your money away,” they say. They are not.

Many of us are emotionally attached to the idea of homeownership and the sense of stability it evokes. But telling a 30-year-old in a high cost-of-living city to buy at all costs ignores today’s math. Just five years ago, the typical mortgage consumed about 30 percent of a median household’s income, which is just barely on the edge of affordability. Today it’s roughly 42 percent.

The idea that renting is “throwing money away” ignores the fact that mortgage interest, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance are all money you’ll never see again, too. Renting buys flexibility, liquidity, and freedom.

The American dream of homeownership wasn’t handed down from the heavens. It was largely a post–World War II creation aimed at men returning from war, fueled by government subsidies via the GI Bill, inexpensive housing, and an economy that no longer exists. Clinging to a model built for 1945 makes little sense in 2026.

“Get a Professional Degree.”

A friend of mine has a son who was working as a consultant in his late 20s. He wasn’t at one of the most prestigious firms, but he liked his job and was making a good living.

At his parents’ urging, he took the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), the entry ticket to MBA programs, and aced it. Suddenly, mom and dad saw the University of Chicago or Stanford in his future. With a business degree from one of the top schools, he could leave his middling firm, pivot to private equity, and turbocharge his career.

But he didn’t want to.

“What are you worried about? We’ll pay for it,” they offered.

He was progressing quickly at work, had just moved in with his girlfriend, was earning a good living, and couldn’t see the logic of stepping out of the workforce for two years to pursue a credential he wasn’t sure he needed.

For previous generations, an elite professional degree was a golden ticket. Today, its value is far less clear. Employers increasingly reward experience, judgment, and performance over another line on a résumé.

This young man’s parents were beside themselves. “Why are you squandering this opportunity?”

But just a year later, his career has flourished exactly where he was. He became a bigger fish in a smaller pond, earning more money and doing more interesting work. His parents thought the safer choice was another degree. He understood that, for him, the safer choice was staying put.

He was right.

“Pay off All Debt as Fast as Possible.”

A friend’s daughter called me one day. “My mother is up my ass because I want to put money into my retirement account.”

She was young, had a good job, and carried some student loans at a reasonable interest rate. She also had access to a company 401(k) plan with a generous employer match.

Her mother was adamant that every spare dollar had to go toward paying down debt before anything else. I get it. Many of us have a neurotic fear of owing money, often fueled by bad experiences where high interest debt stymied forward progress. Boomers, in particular, were raised by parents traumatized by the Great Depression, and taught to abhor all debt.

Not contributing to a retirement plan with a match is leaving free money on the table.

But not all debt deserves the same urgency. If you’re carrying a credit card balance at 22 percent interest, by all means, pay it off. Immediately. But a student loan at 5 percent or a car loan at 4 percent is a different proposition, especially if your employer is offering to match retirement contributions. Refusing that match in the name of “being responsible” is senseless. The reason is simple: Not contributing to a retirement plan with a match is leaving free money on the table.

I told her: At the very least, contribute enough to get the match. Get your money working for you. Start building the habit of investing. You can pay down debt and build wealth at the same time.

“Don’t ‘Waste’ Money on Fun”

This is the one that really drives me crazy.

You’ll hear all sorts of “experts” telling young people that their avocado toast habit is stupid and wasteful. Don’t eat out. Don’t go to concerts. Don’t spend on anything that doesn’t “compound.”

I find this bizarre. No one actually becomes wealthy—or stays wealthy—because they skipped enough iced lattes. What actually happens with this “don’t waste money on fun” mindset is that some wind up feeling deprived. The idea that younger generations are struggling because of discretionary spending is overblown. The real problems are the high cost of housing, soaring post-pandemic prices, and student loan burdens, all of which have grown faster than wages.

To be clear, I am not saying that you should be careless with your spending. But also don’t turn your life into a punishment because a centimillionaire on your Instagram feed thinks your sandwich is frivolous.

Check out my new show, Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger, where I offer actionable financial guidance without jargon or judgment.

Welcome back to Great Americans, a countdown to our country’s 250th birthday. We’re bringing you a writer we love on an American they love, every weekday between now and July 4. Previously, Matthew Walther paid tribute to Robert H. Jackson, the Supreme Court justice who went from pitching hay on a farm to prosecuting Nazis in Nuremberg. Today, David Mamet remembers Paul Dresser, the songwriter from Indiana who gave America its first great pop hit and, some would say, its first great poem. —The Editors

The randomized verbiage and punctuation—that drivel passing today as poetry—is fruit of the poisoned tree. The tree was Walt Whitman.

He wrote “I Hear America Singing” in self-congratulation, mistaking the ability to feel for a license to create. His writing is poetry only by courtesy—its success not aesthetic, but political; a generous offer of the democratization of aesthetics: “I feel things; perhaps you do too. If you endorse this trash, then we are one—thus you too must be something of a poet.”

Carl Sandburg, ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and the Beats weren’t bad poets; they weren’t poets at all. You disagree? Quote me some. But we hear lines of Yeats or Shakespeare, the two greatest English-language poets, and we remember them. Of course we do, for their poems are songs. And songs are written for the ear—remembered as they can be sung.

What happens when a nation founded on a shared idea stops believing in itself?

According to The Honesty Project, a partnership between The Free Press and the polling firm Populace, 62 percent of Americans believe the greatest threat to the country is other Americans. Nearly four in 10 members of Generation Z believe violence may be necessary to save America. Ideas foundational to our country—that violence is bad, that disagreement is something to celebrate rather than fear—no longer enjoy broad consensus.

Major Nicholas Dockery understands the danger of this reality more than most. A retired U.S. Army officer who has been deployed multiple times to Afghanistan and earned some of the military’s highest honors, he has spent his adult life fighting to preserve the ideals that bind America together. On June 19, one day after receiving the Medal of Honor, Dockery reflected on what the U.S. looks like at its best: a nation that instinctively comes together in moments of crisis. His message is simple: We shouldn’t have to wait for disaster to remember why we love this country. We’re honored to share a version of his speech today. —The Editors.

As a young boy, I spent a large part of my time in Kansas. If anybody’s familiar with that part of the country, tornadoes are a regular part of life. When I was 16, I remember seeing the aftermath of what a tornado can cause. Specifically, in a place called Hoisington, Kansas. It was about 70 miles from where I was going to school at the time. You see what a 200-mile-an-hour wind ripping through a small rural town can do to homes: It levels them.

It’s the kind of wrath that only God, through nature, can unleash. In moments, it can undo what took man decades to build. There one minute is your home and your life; the next second, a town is gone. Along with other students from my school, I volunteered to go out there and help. When we arrived, I saw a movement of people from all over the state rushing in to help.

I saw people of all ages helping those who had lost everything—everything they had. They were picking through the rubble, trying to recover photographs or anything salvageable from a life where they had put down roots, where they had raised a family, where they had built a community.

I saw firsthand what we as one people can do for one another during a time of crisis.

How we can be there for one another.

How we can answer the call, and render aid and support and care for those who, at that time, may not be able to help themselves.

Five months later, early one morning in September, I shockingly watched—as did many of you in this room—as two commercial airliners crashed into the New York skyline. There, in my second-period math class, we all huddled around the television, confused and afraid.

We watched buildings crumble.

Welcome back to This Week in Canada—and Happy Canada Day! Debate over an Islamic call to prayer, a slew of multicultural holidays, and the many Americans claiming Canadian citizenship are all variations of the same two questions: What does it mean to be Canadian? And what holds us together?

On June 19, the Regina City Jamia Masjid mosque did something for the first time: It broadcast the adhan—the Islamic call to prayer—for three minutes on loudspeakers from its downtown mosque.

The call to prayer was entirely legal and complied with the Saskatchewan city’s noise bylaw. But it turned into a test of religious freedom—and a heated debate over what kind of country Canada really wants to be.

On one side are local residents and other people who welcome the broadcast as a legitimate expression of religious freedom in an increasingly diverse Canada. Freedom of religion is so important that it is one of the four “fundamental freedoms” in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s constitutional bill of rights created in 1982.

On the other side are those who argue that religious worship belongs inside places of worship, not over public loudspeakers. Some critics also see the adhan as more than just a call to prayer. They say it has symbolized the public presence, and even dominance, of Islam.