The Free Press

Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where Mark Carney’s tough talk in Davos feels like a distant memory, our newspaper of record finally did the right thing, and thousands of Americans want to be just like us. Let’s jump in!

Had you fallen into a coma during Canada’s election campaign in 2025 and awakened last Thursday at the Economic Club of New York, it would be easy to conclude that Canada and the United States had settled their differences: tariffs and other trade tensions, warnings about Canada’s dependence on the U.S., and even that bombast about tuning us into merely the 51st state.

There was Canadian prime minister Mark Carney delivering what amounted to a love letter to the U.S. economy to one of America’s most influential business audiences at a venue that has hosted presidents, central bankers, CEOs, and heads of state for over a century. “The United States approaches its 250th birthday as the most dynamic, resilient, and inventive country the world has ever seen,” Carney told the audience.

This was not the sort of thing Canadian politicians have been saying lately, especially Carney. (Remember Davos?) He even offered up the idea of a North American version of MAGA. “Canada strong will help make America great again.” Call it MNAGA for Make North America Great Again.

Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, liked that line, writing on X that “a lot of Americans can get behind that kind of positive message.”

Why would Carney talk like this? The former central banker was speaking directly to people who decide where capital flows—and making the case that Canada is a good place to invest. He met executives from BlackRock, Blackstone, Morgan Stanley, Netflix, and others. He explained that Canada needs to diversify its economic relationships and reduce its vulnerabilities—and that American investors should invest more money in Canada.

Carney pointed out that Canada buys more American goods than China, Japan, and Germany combined. Seventy percent of Canadian exports are inputs for American products, and Canada supplies 99 percent of U.S. natural gas imports, 85 percent of its electricity imports, and 60 percent of its crude oil imports.

It’s Tuesday, June 2. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Our new series celebrating great Americans. Why the Iran negotiations are stuck. Why Ferrari is making a car no one wants. Why Britain’s ban on Hasan Piker is a mistake. And much more.

But first: Jewish history is hard to find at the British Museum.

Last week, the British Museum—one of the finest museums in the world and an institution with a commitment to “all fields of human knowledge” and “open debate”—postponed a lecture on ancient Israel and Judea because some 25 attendees planned to disrupt it. The decision, writes federal judge Roy K. Altman, violates the most basic principles of free expression. “We don’t close our banks just because some people might rob them. The solution to rule violators is to punish and deter them, not encourage them with victory.”

But the museum’s problems with Jewish history began long before that event. When Altman visited the museum a few years ago, he found artifacts attesting to Jewish indigeneity in Israel displayed without mention of the Jewish connection to the land, some labeled with anachronistic references to Palestine. Read Altman’s deep dive into how one of the world’s great museums is subordinating free inquiry and historical truth to political pressure.

In a second story on free expression and the United Kingdom today, we tackle the decision by the UK government to deny entry to anti-Israel American commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur. The two Hamas apologists and their defenders blamed Israel for the ban. It’s an absurd if unsurprising claim that only goes to show that censorship like this is self-defeating. Read our full take in our latest editorial.

—The Editors

Yesterday we announced the launch of our Great Americans series. With just a month to go until the 250th, we’re bringing you a rundown of some of the greatest Americans to have lived. As we explained in the launch essay, we’re not proposing a definitive list of the country’s greatest patriots. We’re doing something simpler, and more personal: Every weekday between now and July 4, we’re bringing you a writer we love, writing about a great American they love. Leading off: Joseph Epstein—a great in his own right—on the baseball pitcher Sandy Koufax.

• Anthropic filed paperwork for an initial public offering on Monday. The move positions the company, currently valued at $965 billion, in a race with Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX to become the next tech giant to go public.

• Florida attorney general James Uthmeier filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI on Monday, alleging that the company knowingly released products that could harm the public. The suit comes less than two weeks after Meta was forced to settle with a school district over its products’ detrimental effects on users, and could signal the next major phase of the legal backlash against Big Tech.

• Tina Peters, a former Colorado elections clerk convicted of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, was released from prison on Monday. Peters’ release comes after Colorado governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence, following sustained pressure from the Trump administration.

• President Trump is reportedly planning to abandon his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for victims of political prosecution. The move comes after two federal judges raised doubts about its legality on Friday, and marks a sharp reversal of President Trump’s position, less than one month after he announced the program. (For more on the fund, read Tanner Nau’s “They Stormed the Capitol. Now They Want Millions.”)

• A new study from investment company TIAA and Stanford University shows that Americans’ financial literacy has fallen to a 10-year low. Among the participants, Gen-Z adults struggled the most, answering just 38 percent of the questions correctly. The baby boomers scored the highest, at 54 percent. (For more on Gen Z’s economic woes, read Maya Sulkin’s “Why Gen Z Hates Work.”)

• A new clinical trial revealed that daraxonrasib, a pill for treating pancreatic cancer, can keep patients alive for twice as long as otherwise. The discovery marks a scientific breakthrough more than four decades in the making, and could set a new standard for treating one of the world’s most dangerous diseases.

• Serena Williams announced her return to tennis on Monday. Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, will make her comeback at the Queen’s doubles tournament this summer, nearly four years after retiring from the sport.

Peter Savodnik will be tracking the California primaries all day tomorrow and engaging with subscribers in the Free Press Forum. If you haven’t already, upgrade now and get 20 percent off to chat with Free Press staff and other subscribers about what’s happening in the world.

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Rep. Michael Baumgartner, who represents Washington’s Fifth Congressional District, joins the show from Singapore at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue. What was the tone and significance of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech? How are the Asian economies fairing after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz? And what is the future of the American-led order i…

It’s no great secret that free speech culture isn’t exactly flourishing in Great Britain. The latest victims of British censorship are Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur, the inflammatory Hamas apologists from the United States, who are being given the same treatment as the far-right supporters of Tommy Robinson who were barred last month. The UK’s Home Office said it withdrew their permission of Piker and Uygur to enter the country because their presence “may not be conducive to the public good.”

Piker, Uygur, and their defenders naturally rushed to blame Britain’s decision on Israel. Without a shred of evidence, anti-Zionist activist and sometime journalist Glenn Greenwald claimed the entry denial was “solely because they criticize and oppose the one country deemed sacred and off-limits.” Uygur said his criticism of Israel was likewise the culprit, while Piker said his ban was “at the behest of Israel.”

The suggestion that Israel is “sacred and off-limits” to criticism in the UK or anywhere else is, of course, laughable. For one thing, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood—the government minister responsible for the decision—has long been an outspoken critic of the Jewish state. And it’s not like Piker is some low-key supporter of Palestinian rights. He has claimed that Israel is far worse than Hamas, justified both the October 7 and September 11 attacks, and is now the subject of a U.S. inquiry into his recent trips to Cuba and China, where he used social media to evangelize on behalf of the totalitarian regimes.

There’s been a theft at the British Museum. Unlike the jewel heist at the Louvre last year, the story has not appeared on the covers of most Western newspapers. Its operation won’t be recreated in sensational detail on the daily news. And no one will be arrested. In fact, no one will ever be caught—though the silent alarm has been sounding for years. And that’s because the object of the theft wasn’t a painting or the Crown Jewels, but the history of an entire people. And the co-conspirators include an ever-increasing share of “elite” Western institutions.

Last week, the British Museum postponed a lecture that Paul Collins, keeper of the museum’s Department of the Middle East, was scheduled to deliver on the histories of ancient Israel and Judea. The ostensible reason for the postponement was the discovery that some 25 of those who had signed up for the lecture, which was planned for Jewish Culture Month, intended to disrupt the event. That seems like an odd reason to postpone a presentation about historical artifacts at a museum dedicated to preserving and illuminating the past.

Prominent research institutions—museums no less than universities—shouldn’t be in the habit of postponing or canceling events simply because a few miscreants might break the rules. We don’t close our banks just because some people might rob them. The solution to rule violators is to punish and deter them, not encourage them with victory.

More fundamentally, the postponement gives those who threaten violence a curatorial role in the very institution whose history, methods, and purposes they reject. The British Museum declares its commitment to “all fields of human knowledge.” It describes its role as encouraging “critical scrutiny of all assumptions” and “open debate.” That commitment is consistent with the traditional role museums have played in open societies. The first museum, the famous Mouseion of Alexandria (built around 280 BCE), was a center of philosophical debate and research—not merely (or even primarily) a repository of historical objects. Stifling speech—whether about controversial or long-settled topics—would seem like an odd way of fulfilling the museum’s core commitments.

There’s an old saying in campaign politics that you should never post a photo of your candidate eating something at a state fair. Texas state representative James Talarico just reminded Democrats why.

The day after scandal-plagued Texas attorney general Ken Paxton walloped incumbent GOP senator John Cornyn in last week’s Republican Senate primary, the Democratic National Committee posted a photo of their guy Talarico on X. The photo showed the Democratic Senate nominee wearing a shirt with a Texas flag while chowing down on some barbecue. The caption read: “November, here we come.”

The intended takeaway for voters: Sure, Talarico may be a progressive former middle-school teacher, a Presbyterian seminarian from Austin who calls women “neighbors with a uterus,” thinks “God is nonbinary” and, in 2022, pledged to run a “non-meat campaign.” But he’s really a brisket-eatin’, gun-totin’, football-lovin’ Texan just like you.

The DNC also posted two glam shots of the candidate. In one, he harked back to Beto O’Rourke’s famous 2019 Vanity Fair cover, his hands in both back pockets, smiling into the distance against the backdrop of a Texas flag. The other had him posing once again in a Texas flag shirt.

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, Jane Kamensky wrote about Thomas Jefferson, the Founding Father who cautioned future generations against venerating the Founding Fathers. Today, Joseph Epstein pays tribute to Sandy Koufax, the star pitcher whose athletic prowess was as rare as his modesty. —The Editors

In 1958, the journalist Harry Golden published a book of essays under the title Only in America. The essays are no longer of interest, but the title lives on. Only in America, I believe, could an athlete like the baseball player Sandy Koufax emerge. After pitching for the Brooklyn and (when the team moved west) Los Angeles Dodgers between 1955 and 1966, Koufax’s career was cut short at the age of 30 by pain in his left, or pitching, elbow. Before that he had won all the awards and prizes offered by the game of baseball, including being named Most Valuable Player in 1963.

Baseball is a game dominated by statistics, and in his last six seasons, Koufax established himself statistically as among the greatest pitchers, if not the greatest, in the long history of the game. He threw 40 shutouts and averaged more than nine strikeouts a game. He led the National League in earned-run average in each of his last five seasons. Three times he won the pitchers’ Triple Crown—for the most wins, lowest earned-run average, and most strikeouts in a season—and three times the Cy Young Award. (An old joke asks who is the only great pitcher never to win the Cy Young Award? The answer: Cy Young.) Koufax threw four no-hitters in four seasons, and on September 9, 1965, he pitched a perfect game, facing only 27 opposing hitters.

The ceasefire between the United States and Iran has now lasted weeks longer than the period of major hostilities. And as is often the case with ceasefires in the Middle East, it involves a good deal of shooting. Every other day or so now sees an exchange of fire in or around the Strait of Hormuz. But nonetheless, every other day or so also sees recurring suggestions that, really, this time a deal between Washington and Tehran is all but at hand. And yet, like the eponymous character in Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot, the deal never arrives.

It’s easy to get lost following the complexities and twists of this drama, but the basic reason the negotiations and the leaks about the supposed progress of negotiations toward a happy resolution keep dragging on is simple: The two sides’ current demands are irreconcilable.

Iran, having seized control of the Strait of Hormuz at the beginning of the conflict, doesn’t want to give it back. The United States wants a return to the status quo in the key waterway. Iran also wishes to rebuild a nuclear program from its current rubble-ized conditions, though it appears willing to accept some form of time-limited restrictions in return for large amounts of money. This structure is, of course, the same as that of President Barack Obama’s nuclear diplomacy, and such a deal would be politically painful for President Donald Trump to sell to Senate Republicans. (It would also be subject to review by Congress.) The president also wants Iran’s highly enriched uranium brought out of the country or rendered safe under international supervision. The Iranians appear to be in no hurry to agree to this.

When you think about Ferrari, chances are you think about a sleek Italian car that looks kind of like a spaceship and costs more money than the average single-family house. Maybe you think about TV shows like Miami Vice or movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Chances are you don’t imagine a four-door blob of a car that looks like a Prius by Playskool, weighs as much as an F-150 pickup truck, and makes zero engine noise. But that’s exactly what Ferrari debuted last week. It’s called the Luce, it’s an electric vehicle, it costs $640,000, and it looks to be the biggest product introduction flop since Crystal Pepsi.

The Luce doesn’t resemble any other Ferrari in the company’s 79-year history. It looks pretty much like every other electric four-door sedan on the market, only worse. The button-free interior, with its bright colors and blank screens, looks uncomfortably like the evil digital tablet in the upcoming Toy Story film. The back of the car looks like it’s giving birth to another, smaller car.

The day that Ferrari’s USA Instagram account introduced the Luce, Instagram followers left more than 1,500 comments on the post. I read all of them, so you don’t have to. There was not a single positive response. Nearly 60 of the comments were some variant of the idea that the new car is a betrayal of the company’s founder: “Enzo Ferrari is rolling over in his grave.” The other reactions ran the gamut from comedy (“Can you darken the pictures more so I can’t see the car?”) to outright insult (“Piece of shit”) to fear (“As a shareholder, this concerns me”). And that shareholder was right to be concerned: The day after the reveal, Ferrari’s stock price slumped 8 percent in Milan and 5 percent in New York.

You will search in vain for anyone who is particularly excited about the Ferrari Luce. I took my best shot, which was calling a high-net-worth Ferrari collector who has bought more than $10 million worth of cars from the brand. “It’s the worst,” he said. “I really hope I don’t have to buy one. Please don’t use my name.”

There are signs that Americans are finally warming up to the country’s semiquincentennial, and there’s a tantalizing array of events nationwide over the next month. (We can’t be the only folks excited about a tall ships parade!) Alongside the outdoor fun, though, there’s a glut of articles and books considering the ideals of the American revolution and the men behind them. Given how much is out there on the great men who founded America (including Jonathan Horn’s Free Press newsletter, This Week in American History), we thought we’d try something a little different for our final countdown to the country’s big birthday. This month, we’re taking a break from the Founders to celebrate some of the Americans the revolution enabled over the last 250 years.

The idea is not to downplay the brilliance of the names that you usually see on a list of Great Americans. It is to acknowledge a few names that are less familiar, but nonetheless helped make this country what it is. Did the inventor of air conditioning, Willis Carrier, not have as profound an effect on the country as anyone who, like Mr. Smith, went to Washington? So, while we will continue to revere Lincoln and Washington, it’s time for a little love to Sandy Koufax, Louis Armstrong, and John Steinbeck.

We’re not trying to come up with a definitive list of the greatest Americans who ever lived. We’re offering something more personal: a writer we love on an American they love. Every weekday between now and July 4.

To kick things off, we’re allowing ourselves one essay on one of the great men who founded this country: the historian Jane Kamensky, president and CEO of Monticello, on Thomas Jefferson’s misgivings about over-reverence for the Founding generation. Read Kamensky’s piece below, and then look out for our series on Great Americans starting in The Front Page tomorrow. —The Editors

By 1826, Thomas Jefferson knew his sun was setting. He turned 83 in April, rheumatic, dyspeptic, and fever-racked. The letters he wrote that year—169 of which survive—are haunted by debt and by death. “I must meet what futurity has in reserve for me,” Jefferson told his grandson Francis Eppes in March.

A week later, he wrote his will. Around the same time, he designed his tombstone. It was to be a simple obelisk six feet tall—less than his own human height—and feature an epitaph listing three accomplishments curated from four decades in public service “& not a word more.” Posterity would see him claim credit for the American Declaration of Independence, that avatar of self-government; for Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom, an originary statement of freedom of conscience; and for the University of Virginia, a beacon of citizen education. Author, Jefferson called himself in the inscription, and Father. Not founder, much less Founder. Across the vast course of his correspondence, Jefferson used that f-word just a handful of times, most often to talk about the working of iron.

As he mused on his own ending in 1826, Jefferson was also keenly aware that the Declaration of Independence, whose drafting he had come to count as his greatest contribution to the nation and indeed to the world, was approaching the ripe age of 50. For some time, he had kept track of the dwindling number of its living signers: In 1812, he thought there were seven, as he tallied for John Adams. A year later, he counted four, or possibly six. “I am the only one South of the Potomac,” Jefferson supposed. In his last public letter, penned on June 24, 1826, Jefferson described the pride he felt as “one of the surviving signers of an instrument, pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world.” There were then only three. On July 5, the day after Jefferson and John Adams both perished, only Charles Carroll of Maryland endured.

It had long been the ideals, not the author, which Jefferson wanted Americans to revere. “I have declined letting my own birthday be known, & have engaged my family not to communicate it,” he had written in 1803, toward the end of his first term as president. He felt “disapproving” of any attempt to transfer “the honours & veneration for the great birthday of our republic, to any individual, or of dividing them with individuals.”