The Free Press

In October 2020, Adrian Alvarez, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles, was so panicked that Joe Biden would not win the election and “dethrone” Donald Trump, he wound up in a hospital for 10 days.

“I woke up outside my apartment in Hollywood,” Alvarez, now 41, told me. “I hadn’t slept in three or four days, and I was watching MSNBC all day, and my blood pressure shot up, and my heart was beating like crazy, and then the ambulance came around, and they put me on an IV.”

Now, in a bit of a departure, Alvarez is making short, viral AI videos backing LA mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt from the two-bedroom townhouse in mid-city that he shares with his wife, 9-year-old son, and their tortoise, Spike—the headquarters of a budding online movement known as “Latinos por Pratt.”

Alvarez’s breakout video came in April, with “Spencer, Saca La Bassura!” or “Spencer, Take Out the Trash!” Pratt has taken to calling LA mayor Karen Bass Karen Basura, which is exactly the kind of politically incorrect put-down that Donald Trump (the mastermind behind “Low Energy Jeb” and “Little Marco”) might have conjured up. The nearly three-minute, animated video is meant to convey the same jaunty, angry, Archie Bunker, enough-with-these-people sentiment that courses through the whole Pratt campaign: It revolves around the candidate in a black T-shirt and pushing a garbage bin full of—well, garbage—plus Karen Bass past a cheering, multicultural throng. So far, it has racked up millions of views across all platforms. Pratt shared it. So did Billy Bush of Hollywood Access “grab ’em by the pussy” fame.

It seems like there’s no end to the embarrassing news about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine. This week, a former Platner campaign official revealed that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, discovered sexually explicit texts her husband had sent to several women, and reported them to his campaign shortly after he announced his run. Gertner has stood by her man since the news broke, and so have most Democrats. Yet Republicans see the story as yet another issue that could tarnish the troubled candidate in voters’ eyes and help reelect incumbent senator Susan Collins, who trails Platner by about nine points in most polls.

Yet those Republicans might be better served with a different line of attack, because there is little evidence voters care about Platner’s personal life. Story after story about his offensive tattoo, his racially insensitive social-media posts, and his riches-to-rags background have done little to dent his support. That’s likely because Platner’s flaws are familiar and forgivable to many of the middle- and working-class Mainers who make up most of the electorate. And many of the people attacking Platner are the same critics who complain about political correctness when it’s aimed at their own preferred candidates.

The drama over Platner’s background began in October, when a deleted Reddit account belonging to the Maine Senate candidate resurfaced. It revealed that, apart from being a progressive Democrat and a folksy oyster farmer, Platner was also a guy who’d once called himself a communist, used various slurs, complained that black people didn’t tip, and said rape victims should “take some responsibility,” among other things. Later that month, a video began circulating of Platner dancing shirtless and piss-drunk at a wedding, his Nazi totenkopf tattooed on his chest for all to see. Platner’s chief of staff bailed. Nobody wants to be on a sinking ship.

But as it turns out, the ship was fine. Democratic voters in Maine didn’t care about Platner’s Reddit account, the tattoo, or complaints that he was a rich kid LARPing as working class, since he presents himself as a humble veteran and oysterman, yet his parents are prominent professionals and he briefly attended an elite prep school. Platner continued to rise in the polls, so much so that in late April, Governor Janet Mills dropped out of Democratic primary, leaving Planter as the presumptive nominee. Republicans have recycled many of the same attacks Mills used against Platner, to no avail, hence his large lead over Collins. We can now say with certainty that the attacks on Platner’s character are simply not working on the median voter. Why?

Ten years ago, almost to the day, I was a finalist in the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee. My experience came rushing back on Thursday night while watching the 2026 finals unfold.

This year’s competition, which featured nine finalists, was hosted by ESPN’s Mina Kimes, fresh off her recent Celebrity Jeopardy! victory. The winner of the night was California eighth-grader Shrey Parikh, who aced 18 rounds of regular spelling before shocking the crowd in the last lightning round by correctly spelling 32 words—including chikungunya and bromocriptine—in 90 seconds.

The lightning round, as well as Kimes’ role as host, are new additions to the spelling bee this year, made in an effort to boost viewership after years of declining audience numbers. It’s unclear if it worked—viewership last year was less than half of its 2012 peak of 1 million, and this year’s numbers haven’t been published—but those who did watch Parikh storm through the final round would find it hard to disagree with sports writer Rodger Sherman, who called it the “new greatest athletic accomplishment of 2026.” (Even if Bee purists, myself included, are critical of the newfangled lightning round.)

But some viewers were less than impressed. As Parikh dominated the competition, someone wrote on X, “What is this skill going to help you accomplish in life?” The post went viral, and Kimes took to X herself to answer it.

“Shrey knew those words because he’s spent countless hours studying them—not just how to spell them, but what they mean, and how they’re put together,” she wrote. “The @ScrippsBee is a testament to not only the power of hard work, but also a reminder of what the HUMAN brain is capable of.”

Welcome back to the Weekend Press! Today, Eli Lake has two drinks with Ben Shapiro. Bernard-Henri Lévy is starring in a new play about the Dreyfus Affair, which may be more relevant now than ever. Nicholas Delbanco on overcoming the genius’s curse: early death. Plus: Don’t miss Suzy Weiss’s sit-down with Scooter Braun. And more!

But first: a school’s-out special.

Summer is fast approaching, which means parents across the country will be faced with the age-old question: What are your kids going to do when the school year ends?

Gone are the days when children played outside until dusk, left to fend for themselves in the great outdoors. In its place has come hypervigilant parenting: chaperoned play dates, cell phones tucked into summer camp bags, and endless résumé-building activities. At the other extreme, some parents opt out of oversight altogether: handing their children an iPad and letting them scroll the days away.

It’s not hard to see how we got here. A world saturated with technology and alarming headlines can make real life feel riskier than anything behind a screen. The problem is: That perception is entirely backward. Screen time makes kids depressed and anxious, while micromanagement leaves them with no independence at all.

So, what’s a modern parent to do? Today, we bring you two pieces answering that question.

For years, NPR reporter Michaeleen Doucleff struggled to pry her daughter away from screens as bedtime approached. Eventually, she hit a breaking point, and two summers ago, she eliminated screens entirely—hiding devices and steering her daughter toward biking, crocheting, and other hands-on activities. The results, she writes, exceeded her wildest expectations. Read her piece on how her family embarked upon a screen-free summer—and how you can, too.

As for those risk-averse parents who can’t stop micromanaging, primary care physician Charlotte Grinberg has some news for you: If you think a sheltered child is a safer child, think again. “Modern parenting seems saturated with the language of safety and the avoidance of immediate risk,” she writes. But allowing kids to encounter everyday messiness—from scraped knees to shared germs—is the key to building resilience that lasts a lifetime.

This week, Suzy sat down with Scooter Braun, once one of music’s most powerful kingmakers, who helped define pop culture in the internet age. He reflects on discovering Justin Bieber, discusses how Kanye West’s antisemitic spiral ended their relationship, and reveals exclusive new details about becoming the villain in Taylor Swift’s fairy tale: “I legitimately don’t know her,” he said. And wait till you hear what he says about his new girlfriend.

Listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the YouTube vid below. And if you want to keep up-to-date with everything Suzy does, don’t miss her newsletter!

A new batch of ads from single Free Pressers is live on our site. Click here to meet a cello-playing Southern belle in Philadelphia; an espresso-making Rolling Stones fan; or a Hawaiian Israeli who has dual citizenship and three cats! If you’d like to take a chance at Free Press love, write a short paragraph that defines you, including your age, where you live, and what you’re looking for, and send it over to [email protected].

We’ve published plenty of other excellent culture pieces this week, including Caitlin Flanagan on Pratt Daddy’s revenge, Alex Sasse on how her father, Ben Sasse, raised her, and Kat Rosenfield on why Belle Burden’s fan base isn’t going anywhere . . .

How should you spend your weekend? We asked Free Press fellow Tanner Nau for his recommendations . . .

🚶Walk . . . to a park. I’ve never fancied myself a walker, but late afternoon and early morning strolls have become a godsend for me. It’s the best way to clear a busy or worried mind and prepare for the week ahead. Living in Washington, D.C., I am fortunate to have dozens of parks, but if you don’t have one close by, walk to the closest patch of open grass or bench. My thoughts are clearer when I’m breathing fresh air, taking in the sun (or sunset), and listening to birds chirping. Bring a book, too, preferably a novel. (I just finished Norman Mailer’s An American Dream after reading it during my visits to Lincoln Park just east of the U.S. Capitol.)

🎵 Listen . . . to one of my favorite non-Free Press podcasts, How I Write, with David Perell. Tom Segura—arguably the funniest person in the world—joined the show last week to talk about the craft of comedy, and how random observations about day-to-day life are typically the genesis of his best jokes. It’s fascinating to see how he does it, and, of course, the episode is full of classic Segura wit.

🚗Ride . . . in a Waymo, or any other self-driving car, to mark National Autonomous Vehicle Day on Sunday. The (real, I promise) holiday comes as self-driving taxis expand into large cities around the country—and soon the world. Kick back, relax, and let a robot take the wheel.

Last but not least: Feast your eyes on one of Hilma af Klint’s greatest creations . . . 

That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.

If it was up to the self-proclaimed mandarins of the new right, Ben Shapiro would have been canceled by now. In the last year, the dot-connectors and demagogues have tried to kick the 42-year-old media entrepreneur and author out of the MAGA coalition. His crimes? He’s pro-Israel. And he agrees with President Donald Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran. Among other things.

On the other hand, spend a few hours with him, as I did Thursday night on the veranda of Mamush, a kosher grill in balmy Boca Raton, Florida, and you quickly discover that not everybody on the right hates the guy. Au contraire. “My father listens to you every day,” one young woman tells him before asking him to pose for a photo. Another couple approaches Shapiro to encourage him to keep up the fight.

Shapiro orders a “Jerusalem martini,” a syrupy sweet concoction that he barely touches. “I am definitely not an alcohol connoisseur,” he says. “My usual strategy when ordering is to ask them to just bring me the girliest drink they can find, because I have the palate of a child.”

In the last month, I’ve seen two art installations in New York. Both of them consist of work from earlier times and other places: one focused on 18th-century Salzburg and Vienna, and the other on 16th-century Florence and Rome.

The first, at the Morgan Library and Museum, is relatively small and devoted to the career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). It features his childhood violin and early musings and scores; there are portraits of the young genius, his ink-stained clavichord, a set of loving letters to his family and wife, and descriptions of his death. The second is a blockbuster exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the largest ever assembled this side of the Atlantic focused on the life and work of Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520). Sketches, studies, and finished paintings of the Madonna and the artist’s mistress abound. With more than 170 of his drawings and a selection of oil masterpieces on loan from Europe and elsewhere, it’s the major event of the exhibition season and, no doubt, the year.

Mozart was just 35 and Raphael 37 when they died. Admittedly, our life expectancy has much increased since the years of their youth, and it’s now less the rule than the exception that a career ends early. More human beings live longer, and that’s true of artists too.

But we still carry with us the idea that men of genius expire young and not in older age. Substitute Caravaggio or Schubert for Raphael or Mozart and the pattern seems the same. Neither Felix Mendelssohn nor Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec attained the end point of 40; what more might they have done? John Keats—another preternaturally gifted child—was dead at 25. What if Jimi Hendrix or Jean-Michel Basquiat had produced music or art past the age of 27, their last year? The question is always, what if?

Two years ago, I arrived at the end of my rope with my 8-year-old daughter’s screen time.

Throughout her life, my husband and I closely followed pediatricians’ advice around screens. Starting around age 6, we allowed our daughter Rosy to watch Netflix or YouTube for about an hour each day. We rarely let her viewing go beyond two hours, as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has long advised.

Several years later, I found that I was struggling harder and harder to pull her away from devices. She would beg for screen time all day. When the timer went off, our thoughtful and helpful daughter suddenly began acting like a rude toddler. She yelled and fought with me. Sometimes, she would run around the house at 9 p.m., crying or begging for “one more episode.” One night, she curled up into the fetal position and hid under her desk, whimpering. I had to coax her out by rubbing her back gently and talking to her in a whisper.

This is so ridiculous, I thought. Why do we go through this horrible ritual every single night? So two years ago, I made a resolution: For the entire summer, our family would go screen-free.

No iPad for Rosy. No social media for me. No video games for my husband. No streaming platforms for any of us. We could text and call friends as much as we wanted, but outside of work, we would use no screens.

I initially worried we would fail miserably–or that we would succeed yet feel miserable. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. After a week, my daughter started to do things that I never expected. In the afternoons, she played outside voluntarily until dinner. One morning, I walked into her room and found her still in her pajamas, reading a book—and wanting to keep reading.

Getting rid of the screens wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. In fact, it was fun. Why? Because I had the tools and strategies to impose the policy successfully and overcome the pull of products intentionally engineered to addict children and captivate them for as long as possible. And you can too.

Let me explain.

During the pandemic, parents suddenly became obsessed about keeping kids away from all germs. Remember going out to dinner and feeling that even outdoors, even masked, it was still too risky if the kids touched each other?

I’ve been surprised to see that even after the pandemic ended, this behavior persisted. A child gets too close to another kid with a runny nose or a cough and a parent pulls him back. “Don’t touch.” “Don’t share.” “Don’t get sick.” One of my children’s friends canceled a playdate because he had been sick the week before.

Childhood is supposed to involve contact with the world itself. The immune system appears to benefit from ordinary contact with a world that has not been sanitized flat: soil, animals, other children, and early exposure to foods. The clearest example is peanuts: Early introduction lowers the risk of peanut allergy. The same pattern holds for pet exposure. Early-life contact with dogs and cats appears to reduce the risk of allergies, asthma, and food sensitivities.

Everyone who moves to the bougie Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope does so with big ideas about how their new life there will go. How they’re going to jog in Prospect Park; how their brownstone apartments will be an oasis in the concrete jungle, a place to read on-trend books and host delightful dinner parties for erudite neighbors.

And how they will make beautiful meals with ingredients sourced, of course, from the Park Slope Food Co-op.

The Co-op is one of the oldest cooperatively run grocery stores in the country. It is both an institution and an idea, that in exchange for volunteering shifts reracking carts or weighing out wedges of cheese, you too can have access to cheap, choice produce and single-source artisanal chocolate bars. The building is big and charming. About 17,000 people are members, and there’s always a chance you could run into a Brooklyn celeb—Ezra Klein!—or even a real one, like Maggie Gyllenhaal, among the dry goods.

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of it? Well, me.

Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, our weekly column in which writers share a literary treasure that all of us should commit to heart. This week, Bernard-Henri Lévy reflects on Jean-Claude Grumberg’s 1974 “Dreyfus in Rehearsal,” a play about the Dreyfus Affair, whose themes are hauntingly relevant amid today’s resurgence of global antisemitism.

The play is now the subject of a new production, “Dreyfus in Rehearsal Again,” in New York City—and for two nights only, on June 2 and 3, it will feature BHL himself. You can purchase tickets here.

To receive Things Worth Remembering directly in your inbox, sign up here.

Do you know Jean-Claude Grumberg?

He is one of the rare French playwrights to have entered the classical repertoire while still alive.

The son of a Jewish tailor deported and murdered at Auschwitz, Grumberg spent his life speaking not about the heroes of history but about its survivors, its ghosts, and that post-catastrophe humanity that continues to joke, love, breathe, and work.

He produced a masterpiece, L’Atelier (The Workshop), which brings together, in the Sentier district of Paris, seamstresses in the years after the Second World War talking about clothes, boys, and vacations, while also knowing that, behind the sewing machines, hovers the shadow of the Holocaust.

He created another masterpiece, Dreyfus in Rehearsal, which I remember seeing in 1974 at the Odéon Théâtre in Paris for its premiere. It portrayed a theater troupe in 1931, in a Lithuanian shtetl during the rise of Nazism, attempting to stage a play about the Dreyfus Affair.

He is one of those creators thanks to whom France still understands that antisemitism, in all its forms and colors—from barracks nationalism to a form of progressivism that has become delirious, is never merely an opinion but a monstrous crime.

Now, do you know Yonatan Esterkin?