The Free Press

Roast comedy is one of the last places where truly unfiltered commentary still lands in public, says “Roastmaster General” Jeff Ross. Few people understand the art of the insult better than Ross, who has presided over the brutal, hilarious takedowns of everyone from Joan Rivers and Justin Bieber to Charlie Sheen.

Today, he joins Suzy Weiss to break down …

Arthur Herman, senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Founder’s Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump, joins School of War to discuss how America’s Founding Fathers helped create a culture of innovation in technology, industry, and warfare. Who are the most important founders of the past and pres…

A few weeks ago, I received a typewritten letter from David Mamet—the acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and longtime TGIF cartoonist for The Free Press. He’d been listening to our podcast about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, and he had thoughts. A lot of them.

Enclosed with the letter was something unexpected: a monologue he’d written in the voice of D…

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, Charles Fain Lehman paid tribute to Irving Berlin—the immigrant who wrote the song “God Bless America.” Today, Charles Lane remembers Sandra Day O’Connor, the rancher’s daughter who went on to become the most powerful woman in Washington, D.C. —The Editors

Sandra Day O’Connor came out of nowhere to become the first woman on the Supreme Court and, eventually, the most powerful woman in Washington, D.C. Maybe the most powerful ever.

What made O’Connor a great American was not the causes for which she used her clout—those were, in fact, varied and not particularly lofty. It was her attitude about how to use it. In a steadily polarizing country, O’Connor held out for compromise, incrementalism, and flexibility. As the unpredictable centrist member of a nine-member court often split between four liberals and four conservatives, she leveraged a strategic asset—her vote—to preserve equilibrium.

Much has been said about a Christian revival among Gen Z. Some statistics are disputed, but there does seem to be something happening.

I am curious about Christianity myself, and have noticed changes lately, conversations with young people who were raised as atheists and almost wish they hadn’t been, who wonder what it would have been like to grow up with more guidance and guardrails. That does seem new, different from even when I was a teenager. But part of me is still skeptical. For a while, I thought my generation might be finding God. Now I worry we are just finding content about God.

There is a lot of Christian content online. Learning about the faith feels easier than ever: Follow Christian influencers, listen to Christian podcasts, scroll through Christian hashtags; the Bible is bite-size now! Of course, this has been happening for a long time, Christianity being made easier and more convenient. Neil Postman warned in the 1980s that TV was turning faith into a form of entertainment. But now it feels as if all of Christianity can be done on a screen. To stay connected with God, all we need to do is subscribe, download, press play.

Summer was half over, and I still hadn’t found the courage.

It was 1986, and I was a high schooler, no longer a sophomore but not quite a junior, working in a restaurant kitchen where one of the tasks was to run down “the line.” On one side there was a monster stove bank pulsing heat, on the other a stainless steel counter of hot plates. In between, a trio of fast-moving guys—sous-chefs—twirled skillets of hot fat in a kind of frenetic dance as they prepared foie gras and ocean scallops, which they deftly transported from stove side to counter side, before clattering used skillets into bus pans tucked under the stove. It was my job to get those pans out.

To do this, I was meant to yell, loudly, confidently—to bellow, really—“COMING IN!” and then dart through the chaos, skirting the chef’s bodies, avoiding the impossibly expensive dishes, and crouch down, grab a bus pan full of still-sizzling dirty skillets, and race back out without hurting myself or, more importantly, causing undue disruption to the highly serious business of feeding the monied diners of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

A few times, I’d stood at the edge of the line, feeling the heat pulse at my face—and hesitated for too long. “I’ll do it,” a co-worker would say, pushing past me, shouting deeply down the line as he barged in. At 16, I wasn’t sure which part was more intimidating: the risk of colliding with one of the flying skillets or the embarrassment of shouting authoritatively to a group of men.

My colleagues in the dish pit were an old Portuguese man whose name I can’t remember, a young black guy named Columbus who was always spectacularly late and finally got fired, and a blond kid named Hank who had a Roman numeral after his name and went to one of the better private schools in the Northeast. Hank’s father required him to work summer jobs to build his character, he informed us, even though he’d probably follow in that father’s footsteps and land the kind of corporate career that would one day allow him to buy a house of his own on Nantucket. My own father hadn’t said anything about my character, but I was required to contribute $1,000 to my tuition at a much less esteemed private school than the one Hank went to.

Dear Abigail,

Are some kids just mean?

As a millennial mom, I am of course influenced by Dr. Becky, who says “all kids are good inside.” I used to believe that very strongly. Lately, though, I’ve been struggling.

My son turned 5 in March and is in his last month of preschool. It is a cooperative preschool, so parents volunteer in the classroom regularly. Because of that, we see a lot of what happens day to day.

There is one boy in particular whose behavior has really shaken me. I have seen him punch, kick, and push my son. One time he pulled my son to the ground by his sweater. He has called him “stupid” and “a baby.” I’ve also seen him slap another child across the face. Other parents have witnessed similar things.

This boy actually has very strong communication skills. What I often see is him choosing another child to align with and then encouraging that child to join him in excluding, mocking, or hurting other kids. Watching aggression and bullying emerge at this age has honestly been disturbing to me.

When I first noticed this, I spoke to my son’s teachers multiple times—and their response was mostly that this is “boy behavior.” Then, during the Mother’s Day event at school, the teachers gathered the children together to sing a song, and throughout the entire performance, this child repeatedly hit my son’s head, pulled on his sweater, and tried to push him down. I assumed the boy’s mother would remove him from the group, which is what I would have done if it were my child. She did not intervene. I shouted to my son to tell the other boy to stop. My son said “stop” and the kid kept going, so my son started to hit him back.

Eventually another mother stepped in, and finally a teacher addressed the aggression—far later than felt appropriate. I talked with the staff afterward and they agreed that what happened was not okay and admitted they thought his mom might step in and stop it.

I don’t want my son to hit other kids but after this incident, I feel like my only option is to tell him it’s okay to punch this kid if he has to. I am left wondering what is wrong with this kid, and also his mom.

I understand that preschoolers hit when frustrated, dysregulated, overtired, or unable to communicate. My son is not a perfect child; he’s rough-and-tumble, and impulsive at times. But what feels different about this other boy is that he hurts people without provocation, then shows no remorse.

I think what’s hardest for me is what this experience is doing to my worldview. I don’t want to walk around believing there are “bad kids.” That feels sad and hopeless. So I keep wondering: Is this a parenting issue? A school culture issue? Temperament? Something deeper going on with this child? Or is this simply human nature showing up early?

How do I hold onto the belief that kids are good while also acknowledging that some children can behave in ways that seem intentionally cruel? And how do I help my son navigate this without teaching him either to fear other kids or to accept mistreatment as normal? Please help.

Sincerely,

A worried mom, 32

Dear Worried,

Are all kids good kids? Are all kids “good inside”? What a lovely thought, postulated by every utopian political movement since Rousseau. Of course, if children were inherently good—if man were born good—we wouldn’t need authoritative parenting. Religion could be reduced to feel-good spiritualism. We could do away with criminal laws and defund the police. And when man acted badly, we could hold society accountable for corrupting him, blame trauma for misshaping him, poverty or racism for impelling him toward vice. An entire worldview, contained in a Fabergé egg of wishful thinking.

It’s true that most kids are not psychopaths (seventh-grade girls notwithstanding). When confronted with the suffering of animals or another child, most will feel the pang of conscience. But perfectly average kids—sons and daughters of good people—possess both good and bad impulses. Which ones they act upon depends largely on discipline and teaching. Kids who are extended endless understanding and empathy without correction can become jerks, cheats, bullies, liars. They hit, kick, bite, and humiliate.

It’s Thursday, June 11. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Why New York needs Gustavo Dudamel. What actually changed after Ron DeSantis took control at Florida’s New College? Plus: Charles Fain Lehman on the immigrant who penned “God Bless America,” and Walter Isaacson on the most important sentence ever written. All that and much more.

But first: Is the Trump administration going to deport this Iran war critic?

While President Donald Trump is grasping for a way out of his war in Iran, his state department is weighing whether to deport one of the conflict’s loudest opponents.

Perhaps no one in America has been a more vocal, and widely quoted, critic of the conflict than Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Whether he’s writing in left-wing magazine The Nation or commiserating with MAGA leader Steve Bannon, Parsi has carried a harshly critical message to Americans.

But now Parsi’s battle with the Trump administration has moved from print and the airwaves into the legal sphere. As I report in my latest story for The Free Press, Marco Rubio’s State Department has quietly been investigating whether to deport Parsi—an Iran-born, Sweden-raised, permanent U.S. resident green-card holder.

Administration officials and the president’s allies allege Parsi is more than just a pundit sharing his views on Iran. So do anti-regime activists in the U.S., one of whom told me he thought the Islamic regime “effectively positioned” Parsi “to advance [a] strategic agenda.” (Parsi denies this charge.)

Parsi isn’t likely to go without a fight—and he’s proven incredibly adept at playing Washington politics. He once called himself an “informal” adviser to the Obama administration’s negotiating team with Iran, and he now makes common cause with a range of conservative and MAGA leaders who oppose the Iran war and are sharp critics of the U.S. alliance with Israel. Will they rally to his defense?

Read my story on Parsi, the administration’s investigation, and the decades-long fight over Iran policy and Tehran’s influence operations here in America.

—Jay Solomon

With America’s 250th birthday less than a month away, we’re remembering the Great Americans who make it worth celebrating. Today, Charles Fain Lehman reflects on Irving Berlin, the Jewish immigrant who fled Russian pogroms as a child, wrote “God Bless America,” and never stopped being grateful for the country that took him in.

• The U.S. bombed Iran for the second straight night Wednesday, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warning, “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we will negotiate with bombs.” Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump said that the U.S. would “hit them again hard” after Iran downed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter earlier this week. Iran’s military is promising “heavy responses.”

• Inflation climbed to 4.2 percent in May—its highest point in more than three years—as war-driven energy costs ripple through the economy. Oil prices have surged about 35 percent since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February, with energy accounting for more than 60 percent of May’s overall price increase. Asked about the numbers, Trump told reporters: “When the war is over, it’s coming down.”

• Eight pro-Palestinian activists with ties to the University of Michigan were federally indicted on charges that they plotted to pressure campus leaders into breaking ties with Israel, allegedly through “spray-painting threats, breaking windows, and throwing glass jars filled with noxious chemicals into family homes.” If convicted on felony counts, defendants could face years in prison.

• Federal regulators took steps to legalize sports prediction markets nationwide, releasing a proposed framework that would allow platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket to offer bets on game outcomes, stats, and tournament results. Critics argue the move amounts to backdoor permission for sports gambling across the country, bypassing state and tribal laws.

• Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass at Barcelona’s Sagrada Família yesterday, and blessed its tallest spire on the 100th anniversary of its architect Antoni Gaudí’s death. The sprawling church was supposed to be completed this year, but construction has proven so complex that the end date has been pushed back to 2035.

• When SpaceX goes public this week, more than 4,400 current and former employees are expected to become millionaires. While Musk may become the world’s first trillionaire, the windfall will extend to engineers, launch workers, and others who took stock as part of their pay.

• Taiwan test-fired U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers into the strait separating it from China for the first time Wednesday, targeting waters where Chinese forces would have to cross in an invasion attempt. Trump has delayed approval of a $14 billion arms package for the island, calling it “a very good negotiating chip” in talks with Beijing.

If America has a mission statement, it is this:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In a special conversation recorded at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, acclaimed biograph…

Since the United States and Israel went to war against Iran, perhaps no one in America has been quoted more often as a critic of the conflict than Trita Parsi, co-founder of the think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

From the far-left Democracy Now! and The Nation to Steve Bannon’s pro-MAGA War Room podcast to television networks CNN, MS NOW, and Al Jazeera, Parsi has said again and again that President Donald Trump faces a quagmire in Iran and that diplomatic accommodation with Tehran’s ayatollahs and generals is the only way out. Parsi’s writing in Quincy’s online magazine and his own newsletter on Substack also reports what he describes as threats to the U.S. from the Islamic Republic, often attributing them to “sources in the Iranian capital.”

“Tehran is likely to target American data centers in the UAE,” he wrote in May, essentially warning the U.S. and Israel not to abandon the ceasefire that took effect in April by resuming attacks against Iran. “Tehran sees an opportunity to cripple the UAE’s ambitions to become a global artificial intelligence hub.”

In the eyes of some inside the Trump administration, Parsi isn’t just another Washington pundit eager to share his point of view. The State Department has launched an investigation of Parsi and could try to deport him, according to U.S. officials and documents reviewed by The Free Press. Parsi was born in Iran, grew up in Sweden, has lived in the U.S. for over 25 years, and holds a green card.