The Free Press

This weekend, the Green Party of England and Wales crossed a line. A dangerous line. One that it is unacceptable to cross. It passed a resolution which effectively denounced the State of Israel’s right to exist.

By a vote of 1,022 to 813, the party passed a motion entitled “Zionism Is Racism,” which commits the party to a single Palestinian state covering all of historic Palestine—which is to say, to a world in which Israel, the state which contains the largest population of Jews on Earth, does not exist.

To understand the full depth of this shift, consider what the motion says. It defines Zionism not as the movement for Jewish self-determination in the historic Jewish homeland, but as an ideology demanding “an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population.” It instructs that Zionism will be “treated as any other form of racism” and rejects any attempt “to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.”

Since at least two-thirds of British Jews call themselves Zionists, the party has, in effect, branded the majority of the country’s Jews racists, while declaring that doing so cannot be antisemitic.

Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where breaking up is still hard to do despite Quebec’s election results; we are worrying way too much about Trump’s machinations; and more. Let’s jump right in!

After Monday’s provincial election results in Quebec, the political party that wants to take Quebec out of Canada is back in power. That could lead to another confrontation over independence, even though support for Quebec actually dumping Canada is low.

Vote results as of late Monday showed that the Parti Québécois (PQ) won 59 of the 127 seats in the provincial legislature, ahead of four other parties.The governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), the nationalist but non-separatist party that has governed Quebec for the past eight years, was wiped out.

In 2022, the PQ won only three seats in the National Assembly of Quebec and looked close to irrelevant. Now that party leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has brought the party back, so is the question Canada largely left behind in 1995, when Quebec came within a whisker of leaving the country. In a referendum that year, Québécois who wanted sovereignty were defeated by just 54,288 votes out of nearly 4.8 million.

St-Pierre Plamondon voted yes on sovereignty when he was 18 years old, then worked as an Air Canada flight attendant, graduated from McGill and Oxford, became a corporate lawyer, moved in federalist circles, and donated to the federal Liberal Party before finding his way back to sovereignty.

It’s Tuesday, October 6. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: James Kirchick on the problem with the ascendant European right. Martin Gurri on Europe’s Russia fearmongering. Tyler Cowen on what the critics get wrong about effective altruism. Plus: Michael Oren on School of War, and more.

But first: Olivia Reingold reports from Cornell.

The town of Ithaca, New York, is the epicenter of a national scandal: the case of the so-called “Cornell 7.” It is the most explosive story about campus sexual assault in years, and has been in the headlines ever since an anonymous Jane Doe filed a lawsuit last month alleging that seven male students gang-raped her at their fraternity house in 2024.

With everyone from New York’s governor to the president weighing in on the case, we sent Olivia Reingold to Cornell. She found a campus rocked by the story: The night before she arrived, a student building had been vandalized. Yesterday, she was among a vast crowd of protesters gathered to declare “Justice for Survivors,” and carrying signs that read “I DON’T WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL WITH RAPISTS.” This is her dispatch from the school at the center of the national conversation.

—The Editors

Today we have two stories on the rise of the right in Europe, and how the continent’s incumbents have reacted. The first comes from James Kirchick. He takes stock of the continent’s surging right-wing populists, who are rocking the political order in France, Germany, and beyond. “It would be a grave mistake to condemn these movements as betokening the return of fascism,” writes Kirchick. “It would also be a mistake to cheer them on.” In his latest piece, he explains why the cure to the excesses of the European establishment could be worse than the disease.

Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst, detects the threat of the surging new right in the recent warnings from European elites about a widening war with Russia. He argues that fear of Russian aggression beyond Ukraine—while understandable—has become overblown. Do centrist and establishment politicians from London to Berlin see Russia as a convenient tool in delegitimizing their opponents rather than a truly existential threat? “Russia is the new Covid—a crisis so dire that the state must be allowed to trample at will on individual rights to prevent the overthrow of civilized society,” Gurri writes. Read Gurri’s essay on what, besides national security, is at stake.

• An apparent outbreak of pneumonic plague in Russia has spurred the quarantine of some 200 people in Siberia, where a 28-year-old researcher at a Russian germ lab died last week. The pathogen that caused the researcher’s illness is of “unknown” origin, according to Russian officials. “I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause just to keep an eye on it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Monday.

• Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and candidate of the right-wing Liberal Party, is headed to a runoff election for president of Brazil against incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula. Flávio won the most votes—though not a majority—in the first-round election. He’ll face off against Lula in a two-way contest on October 25.

• The co-pilot and attempted hijacker of FlyDubai Flight 1073 planned to crash into Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport last week and had plotted the attack for over a year, Israeli officials told CBS News. He should not have been permitted to fly the plane into Israel, one official said, noting that it was “a huge failure” that his profile was not flagged by security checks.

• The Nasdaq reached an all-time high on Monday as oil prices slipped, with AI chipmakers Nvidia and Microsoft leading the surge. “With the economic data calendar being light and earnings about a week away, ​investors are really groping for anything positive to glom onto, and clearly they’re looking at lower energy prices,” one market analyst told Reuters.

• Former American Idol contestant Caleb Flynn was sentenced to life without parole on Monday for the murder of his wife, while he maintained his innocence. Prosecutors said Flynn fatally shot his wife while she slept in her bed on February 16, before calling 911 to claim a home intruder was responsible.

• Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is headed to Fox News for a new job as on-air contributor. Leavitt, who will start on November 1, said in a statement that she looks forward “to bringing my unique perspective from my experience as White House Press Secretary, along with the same energy and candor that defined my tenure, to Fox’s millions of viewers across their many platforms.”

Three years after October 7, the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history looms large over the Jewish state’s upcoming election. Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren says whomever takes the helm next is unlikely to “remove a single soldier from Lebanon, from Gaza, from Syria.” Today, Oren joins School of War to discuss Israel’s “80 perce…

ITHACA, New York — A sea of students hangs on every word as Saya Taylor, an 18-year-old Cornell University student, urged them to think beyond the trauma of the past few weeks.

“We are known as the rape school, but we don’t have to be,” Taylor boomed into a microphone before a vast crowd, her pink hair falling over her face. “We can be the students that lead a nationwide reform movement against the institutions that perpetuate rape at every single level.”

On Monday afternoon, Taylor was one of about a dozen speakers at a “Justice for Survivors” protest blasting Cornell for perpetuating a culture that allows rape to go unpunished.

Their fury was on behalf of Jane Doe, the anonymous student who filed a September 14 lawsuit alleging that seven male students gang-raped her at a fraternity house in 2024. The student, then 20 years old, initially described the evening—including her drinking and use of a dissociative drug called ketamine—as voluntary and consensual. Then, more than two weeks after the alleged incident, with rumors about her in full swirl on campus, Jane Doe requested a rape kit at a local emergency room. At the time, the Tompkins County district attorney declined to bring charges in relation to the case based on a statement Jane Doe had given to university police, finding the description of her participation to be “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”

The case has since exploded far beyond Ithaca, dividing the country as it wrestles with some of the thorniest questions that remain nearly a decade after #MeToo: What happens when a woman comes to understand a sexual encounter as rape in retrospect? How relevant should a woman’s alcohol and drug consumption be in determining consent? And should the names of the accused men be public given they have not been charged with a crime?

Right-wing parties are ascending across Europe, with some already playing a role in governing the continent’s most powerful countries, and others poised to do so soon. It would be a grave mistake to condemn these movements as betokening the return of fascism. It would also be a mistake to cheer them on.

It’s worthwhile to examine the rise of these parties in thorough detail. Recent victories by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in two recent provincial elections have focused attention on the right-wing party and its designs for national power. Last month, the AfD won 44 percent of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, and captured 38 percent in coastal Mecklenburg-Vorpommern two weeks later. Both states were part of the communist former East Germany.

While it was once easy to write off the AfD as the political manifestation of the anger and frustration that many in the heavily deindustrialized region continue to feel over 35 years since reunification, current polls placing the AfD ahead in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, indicate that the party can no longer be dismissed as a mere eastern phenomenon. Nationwide, the AfD stands at 28 percent, 8 points ahead of its closest rival, the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Germany’s main governing party since the republic was refounded in 1949.

The success of the AfD as a party that political scientists classify as “far right” is being mirrored across the continent. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s Reform, an outgrowth of the United Kingdom Independence Party that helped push the country to leave the European Union, led national opinion polls for 15 months until the ruling Labour Party replaced its unpopular prime minister this past July.

Effective altruism is the phrase of the last few weeks. The last issue of The Economist called it “this century’s biggest idea.” I concur, at least for the Western world. That’s especially true because many billions of dollars are now backing it up. Coefficient Giving is only the largest of many young philanthropic groups animated by effective altruism, and this year it’s set to spend more than $2 billion of its $40 billion fund on the movement’s favorite causes, from AI safety research to uncaging farm-raised chickens. That level of spending will likely exceed the Ford, Rockefeller, and Walton foundations combined.

Effective altruism was first given a name in 2011 as it spread among a handful of academics, but it’s exploding in influence now because it’s drawn so many adherents within the suddenly dominant realm of artificial intelligence. After fears about AI safety exploded into the public last month, much of the press raced to expose the effective altruists and fellow travelers who work at the major AI labs, portraying them as a Bay Area sex cult determined to control our lives. And even when one considers effective altruism fairly, its core ideas differ from those of Christianity and from the commonsense morality of most Americans, whether religious or secular. So when you explain effective altruism, a lot of people end up hating it.

To understand effective altruism, we need to draw a distinction between its intellectual and sociological manifestations. Intellectually, think of it as a branch of utilitarianism. It suggests we should judge social policies by how much net utility they create, or alternatively, how much net suffering they avoid. This resembles the pleasure-pain calculus of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, including in its emphasis on the welfare of animals alongside humans. Vegetarianism and veganism are common in effective altruist circles.

Warnings about an approaching war with Russia have swept through Europe during recent weeks, propagated by presidents, opposition figures, and the news media alike. The tone has been strident, almost panicked, conveying a sense of utmost urgency.

Let’s start with Great Britain.

Sir Richard Knighton, chief of the defense staff, proclaimed this to be “the most dangerous period that I have known,” adding: “The war in Ukraine shows Putin’s willingness to target neighboring states . . . [which] threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK.”

Armed Forces Minister Al Carns, mixing his metaphors, asserted that “the shadow of war is knocking on Europe’s door.”

Sir Richard Shirreff, former deputy supreme allied commander of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), warned that without stronger European deterrence, “your sons and grandchildren and daughters are going to be facing a war with Russia. And a lot of them are not going to come home from it.” In a prophetic vision, Shirreff foresaw “white Commonwealth war graves . . .covering large amounts of Eastern Europe.”

Tory gadfly Jacob Rees-Mogg urged Britons to “do their duty” in case of war, even if some of them “have to die.” “If people aren’t willing to do their duty,” he explained, “then the country will be taken over by another country.”

BBC joined the war-talk frenzy with this astonishing headline: “War may be coming. Are we psychologically ready?”

On September 18, Jon Lovett, the former Barack Obama speechwriter and host of the political comedy podcast Lovett or Leave It, welcomed left-wing personality Hasan Piker to his show, calling Piker “the star of this year’s midterm elections” and “America’s sweetheart.”

Then, in a mock-serious tone, Lovett, a co-founder of Crooked Media, which produces the podcast, declared: “I do want to get this out of the way: I denounce you.”

That elicited a chuckle from Piker, who replied: “I denounce myself as well.”

The hard-to-miss point was: All the controversy around Piker—the streamer has declared that “America deserved 9/11,” that accusations of Hamas committing sexual violence on October 7, 2023, are “rape fantasies,” that he would pick Hamas over Israel “every single time,” that the collapse of the Soviet Union “was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century,” that “pound for pound” the U.S. is worse than Al Qaeda—was overblown.

Meaning it’s permissible—desirable—for Democrats to make room for Piker in their “big tent.”

“My view is: I am part of a pro-democracy coalition in the fight against fascism,” Lovett said, addressing Piker, “and it includes everyone from former Republicans like Nicolle Wallace and Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell, it includes establishment politicians, it includes Neera Tanden, it includes Shannon Watts, it includes AOC and Bernie, and it includes voices on the left like you.”

When I asked Watts, an anti-gun violence activist, how she feels about being lumped together with a streamer best known for his misogyny and antisemitism, she said: “What concerns me is the suggestion that, because the stakes are so high, we must overlook rhetoric or behavior we would otherwise reject.”

The deeper problem, Ravi Gupta, a Democratic podcaster, told me, is that Lovett and the rest of the Crooked team portrays themselves as a bunch of friends still in their post-adolescence just sitting around talking about politics, when, in fact, they are making huge decisions with long-term implications for the Democratic Party—like who belongs in the “pro-democracy coalition,” which candidates they’re leaning toward, which candidates they’re leaning against, what’s in, what’s out.

It’s Monday, October 5. 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 presidential hopeful fanning the flames in France. Sally Satel on why psychology’s top accreditor is in the federal crosshairs. Josh Code reports on Gen Z’s new addiction. And much more.

But first: The missed warnings about October 7.

In 22 days, Israelis will vote in the first national elections since the worst attack in the country’s history. At stake is the political future of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, and the direction of the Jewish state at a fraught moment in the Middle East.

This week marks the third anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 rampage through Israel, and the attack, as well as the war that followed, are major issues on the campaign trail. For Netanyahu, the question that looms over his reelection bid is the same question that has dogged him ever since that dark day three years ago: How could he let this happen?

Making matters more awkward for Netanyahu is the handful of people who raised the alarm ahead of the Hamas attack. Today, Jay Solomon talks to one of them: Yigal Carmon, 80-year-old former counterintelligence analyst. He runs an organization called MEMRI, which monitors Arabic- and Persian-language media in the region. On August 31, 2023, he published an article on his website titled “Signs of Possible War in September–October.” War would soon arrive, of course. Carmon is out with a new report, his most comprehensive look yet at the signs of a coming attack and how they were missed. He shared the details exclusively with The Free Press.

Why did so few people heed warnings like Carmon’s? Elliot Kaufman, author of the new book In the War Room, sits down with Coleman Hughes in the latest episode of Conversations with Coleman and argues that Israel’s failure wasn’t due to a lack of red flags; it came from an inability to believe Hamas would act on them. Don’t miss their conversation on what happened inside Israel’s war room once the fighting began.

—Oliver Wiseman

Gen Z is obsessed with wellness and sobriety. We have smart devices measuring our blood pressure and telling us how well we slept, apps to track our calories, and injections to make sure we don’t consume too many of those calories in the first place. We’re also drinking alcohol at lower rates than our parents did when they were our age.

Enter Feel Free, a drink in a tiny blue bottle billed as an alcohol-alternative “social tonic.” A casual buzz without the hangover. The two-ounce bottle contains kratom, a natural substance unregulated by the Food and Drug Administration that can improve focus and produce an opioid-like high when consumed in higher doses.

The drink looks innocent. For some users, though, it ended up being addictive, and it can be so hard to stop that withdrawal is “absolutely comparable” to heroin, according to one person who used both. Many of the people I spoke to said they had never touched drugs before and got hooked by accident while seeking an alternative to alcohol, a study aid, or a way to get over their social anxiety.

Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes called Feel Free “gas station heroin.” Last month, she sued its manufacturer, Botanic Tonics, for allegedly violating a consumer fraud law.

I wanted to know: What the heck is Feel Free? And more importantly, how is it still being sold in over 30,000 stores across the country? Read my report to find out.

—Josh Code

• The United States abruptly pulled all 12 of its B-1 bombers from an air base in southern England over the weekend after officials received new warnings of an Iran-backed plot to attack the base. The unusually fast exit came a week after British police arrested five men on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act after their vans were spotted heading toward the base, an incident British prime minister Andy Burnham has linked to Iran, which denies involvement.

• Yemen’s Saudi-supported government launched an all-out military offensive against the Iran-backed Houthis yesterday, aiming to retake territory the group has held for over a decade. With more than 200 U.S. analysts reportedly helping the Saudis select targets, the campaign threatens to pull the U.S. deeper into the regional war with Iran.

• In a rare interview, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told CBS News’ Jan Crawford that he considered retiring earlier this year but decided he thinks he can “still make a contribution.” He also discussed his shock at the Dobbs leak, the damage done by attacks on the court, and more.

• The Coast Guard found flight debris off Nantucket, Massachusetts, from a Canadian air ambulance that disappeared early Saturday with six people aboard while flying from Bermuda to Boston. Before losing contact, the pilot declared an emergency and reported electrical trouble.

• Christa Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator after Tennessee’s two failed attempts to execute her last week, and it may be days before doctors know if she will recover, her lawyer said Sunday. The state’s prison chief, Frank Strada, announced Saturday he will step down as an independent review of the botched execution begins. (For more on Christa Pike’s attempted execution, read Noah Bernstein’s Q&A with a former executioner.)

• German chancellor Friedrich Merz announced 1 billion euros in new military aid for Ukraine during a trip to Kyiv on Sunday, as Russian drones hit the capital. German companies also struck about 6.6 billion euros in defense deals with Ukraine during the trip.

• The White House is tracking reports from Russia about a possible plague outbreak after a 28-year-old researcher at a Siberian lab died. Local officials said she broke a test tube holding the pneumonic plague bacterium in late September, though Russia’s health agency has not confirmed the plague and said that 200 people being monitored have tested negative.

• Israeli investigators said they believe the FlyDubai co-pilot accused of stabbing the captain and trying to crash a flight to Tel Aviv last week likely acted alone. Passengers helped subdue the co-pilot before off-duty pilots landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia. (For more on the thwarted terror attack, read our exclusive interview with Yaniv Hayoun, one of the passengers who stormed the cockpit.)