But first: Happy Father’s Day!

When’s the worst possible time to decide to have a baby?

When you’re about to go to war? When you’ve just lost your job?

P.G. Sittenfeld and his wife decided to try for a second child when he was battling his way through the courts, trying to prove his innocence after being implicated in an FBI sting.

There are so many twentysomethings who don’t want kids, and when you ask them why, the answer boils down to: The future is uncertain and scary. They need to make more money first. They don’t want to bring a baby into a world that’s burning.

But in his essay today, P.G. gently suggests that uncertainty isn’t a good reason to reject fatherhood. He should know. When he was eventually sentenced to 16 months in prison, his wife was 32 weeks pregnant.

“Being an inmate and a father at the same time was anguishing,” he writes. Still, he never questioned his decision for a second. Don’t miss his moving case for becoming a dad—despite it all.

Even for those who aren’t in prison, fatherhood is no cakewalk—and society doesn’t offer a ton of good blueprints. “The media has stereotyped fathers as goofy, hapless fools who depend on their superhero wives,” Alex Berenson writes, in our second story today about fatherhood. “The only good dad is a feminized ‘gentle parent’ who never raises his voice, is always ready with a hug, and never lets his kid take a risk or get hurt.”

“In other words,” says Alex, “the only good dad is a mom.”

But in his piece, he rejects this very modern idea, and makes the case that dads must be free to be dads—with a few tips that any father might find useful . . .

Hollywood may have a long history of daddy issues—but there’s a new movie that finally gets it right: Toy Story 5. Pixar’s latest offering, which came out yesterday, follows our cowboy hero Woody—now a rotund, balding father to dozens of discarded toys—as he and the gang face a new villain. But according to Liel Leibovitz, the real story is about fathers confronting perhaps the hardest realization of parenthood: Their children are becoming adults, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

“Our kids grow up,” Liel writes in his marvelous review, “and we don’t get to decide how or when that happens. All we can do is be there to help them along as best as we can.”

Second Thought

This week on Second Thought, Suzy Weiss sat down with Luke Burgis, founder and director of the Catholic University of America’s Cluny Institute, which exists to “invest in the human person.” They talked about his new book, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. From the mobs of Knicks fans flooding the streets to endless Froyo lines, Burgis is fascinated by the ways in which we follow the herd—and has thoughts on how you can break out of the “cult-like” conformity that defines our culture in order to find your “solid self.”

You can listen to their conversation by clicking the link below, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to keep up-to-date with everything Suzy does (this week, she interviewed the new AI millionaires about how they’re spending their fortunes)—subscribe to her newsletter!

​​Knock, Knock, It’s Cupid!

A new batch of ads from single Free Pressers is live on our site! Click here to meet a teetotaling accountant in Chicago, a Bay Area venture capitalist looking for her lifelong dinner party co-host, or a healthcare worker from Portland, Oregon, with a love for ’90s comedies. (Party on, Wayne!) Your special someone could be just one email away! If you’d like to take a chance on Free Press love, write a paragraph that defines you—including your age, where you live, and what you’re looking for—and send it to Cupid@TheFP.com.

We’ve published plenty of other culture pieces this week, including . . .

How should you spend your weekend? We asked our features editor, Dana Schuster, for her recommendations . . .

See . . . Giant on Broadway, starring John Lithgow as Roald Dahl. It closes next week and is on my personal to-do list. My best friend, whose opinion I trust on everything (though apparently she didn’t think to invite me to the show), said that Lithgow “did a brilliant job portraying Roald Dahl as a charming egoist” and that the play shows just how little has changed in the conversations about antisemitism during the last 50 years.

Watch . . . I feel a little weird recommending Off Campus after my love-fest of an article devoted to the show. (Can you be too into a college romance series?) So may I instead suggest the second season of Beef? While there’s no hot hockey player seductively dancing, Beef will still delight. It’s weird, it’s dark, and it’s funny. Eat up!

Read . . . Among Friends. The debut novel from Hal Ebbott first came out a year ago, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Ebbott tells the story of two men who met in college and stayed best friends through middle age. Despite their seemingly perfect bond, the book explores the resentment and jealousy that festered for decades and comes to a head during a weekend away. The novel is out in paperback next week.

Last but not least, feast your eyes on one of the most beautiful paintings on fatherhood, in all its beauty and melancholy: Breaking Home Ties, by Norman Rockwell.

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

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

Host of Old School and our in-house bibliophile Shilo Brooks chooses a front-row account of 1970’s rock and roll, The Uncool: A Memoir, by Cameron Crowe.

The Uncool is a coming-of-age rock and roll odyssey doubling as an electric teenage dream. Cameron Crowe, best known for writing and directing the films Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, and Vanilla Sky, became a rock journalist in 1971 at age 14. By 16, he was criss-crossing America on smoke-filled tour buses, profiling acts like Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, and David Bowie for Rolling Stone magazine.

Crowe’s memoir exposes the creative essence of the ’70s rock gods and goddesses who shaped American culture in a Watergate world of guitar solo protests and Hyatt House hijinks. The awkward journalism nerd who goes everywhere with a tape recorder philosophizes in hotel rooms with Ziggy Stardust, sneaks into bars with Kris Kristofferson, lives with the Eagles off Mulholland Drive, and coaxes Jimmy Page and Gregg Allman into poetic confessionals.

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And I was celebrating right alongside them. After being a Knicks fan for all of two minutes.

I’m not the only bandwagon fan to root for the Knicks only once it got fun. Across the city, bars have been packed with girls in orange crop tops and blue hats, scrolling their phones in front of the TV; Taylor Swift and her friends caught some strays for sporting matching Knicks T-shirts and taking up multiple courtside seats, despite not being “real fans.”

So why was everyone so quick to jump on a hype train they knew nothing about? I invited author and professor Luke Burgis to come on Second Thought and go deep on the answer to why being a fan is so intoxicating.

Burgis studies what philosopher René Girard calls “mimetic desire,” or imitation of the wants of the people around us. Burgis says that we’re all under the spell of the “desires we catch from other people and imagine are our own.” As far as the Knicks go: “It’s an emotional contagion,” he said, but beyond that, ”our culture has become cult-like.”

Maybe you’ve noticed that, more and more, everyone wears the same outfits, waits in the same frozen yogurt line, idolizes the same celebrities. And what’s worse, our uniform desires are even starting to change who we are: We used to have unique aesthetic preferences; now, everyone embraces the same “tasteslop.” We used to have our own quirks; now, as Freya India wrote in our pages, “Nobody has a personality anymore.”

“Groups are becoming homogenous,” Burgis said. “It makes people boring.”

That’s the problem he tackles in his new book, The One and the Ninety-Nine, about forming a “solid self” who can participate in group dynamics without melting into it.

“It’s easy to go with the flow,” he said. But “if you do that for too long, you’ll end up with a pseudo-self.” It’s something Burgis knows about firsthand: In his 20s, feeling unsatisfied, he sold his posh Las Vegas home, broke up with his girlfriend, and moved to Rome to join a seminary. He told me that deciding to uproot his life to find his higher purpose was one of the hardest things he’d ever done—but leaving the seminary was even harder.

Years later, when the AI company Anthropic came to him and asked him to be a spiritual adviser to their AI, helping to “make Claude good,” he said no. “They were using me,” he claims, “and using the Pope.” When an Anthropic representative came to the Pope’s encyclical, Burgis took a sharp stand: “It was a bad idea.”

His fellow Catholics told him he was neglecting his duty and tried to shame him out of his position—but Burgis wouldn’t budge. In fact, he said, being canceled is a “modern rite of passage.”

Why is our culture so fanatic, and punitive? How do you say no to the comfort of the crowd—and, perhaps more importantly, how do you discover who you really are? Watch my conversation with Burgis below, or listen wherever you get your podcasts, to learn how to find your “solid self” and break out of a culture where everything feels the same these days.

Meet the New Money Millionaires

Is AI ushering us into a brand-new gold rush?

Last week, the world got some pretty good signs that the answer is yes. Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public at a $1.77 trillion valuation, making him the world’s first trillionaire. Dario Amodei’s Anthropic (valued at $965 billion) and OpenAI ($852 billion) have also filed the paperwork to go public, and will likely do so soon.

But it’s not just the CEOs raking it in; soon, legions of people who work at or close enough to an AI company are about to make a fortune. This week, I spoke to them to find out how they’re spending their new millions.

At SpaceX, their IPO made more than 4,000 new millionaires out of current and previous employees, including mechanics, factory workers—and recent immigrants, like a welder named Juan Hernandez. So begins the great AI shopping spree.

“I definitely want a cool house,” said one researcher I spoke to, who stands to cash in this winter. “Ideally one on each coast and a pied-à-terre in Paris.” Others I spoke to want pointillist paintings, a glass sculpture, a compound, and to endow their beloved local restaurants. One, Zach Kass, became part owner in a women’s volleyball team. “I made it,” he told me. “I mean, I bought a sports team!”

As the new class of millionaires games out which causes to give to, and which over-the-top vacations to take, one reflected, “You have to have mechanisms that tie you to the mast lest the siren song drive you to your death, so to speak.” After all, “After everything is said and done, the richest people in the world are deeply addicted to shitposting on Twitter.”

What Else I’m Thinking About:

The World Cup is in full swing, which means hundreds of international tourists are arriving on North American soil. And they’re falling in love with the best of American customs, from marveling at the halls of Buc-ees to peeling open their first pack of Chick-fil-A sauce. And that’s all before the game even starts. As my colleague Arthur Brooks wrote this week, sports fandom is a science-backed way for anyone to become a happier person. Read his piece for the definitive case on why we should all be sports fanatics, and read my colleague Jillian Lederman’s argument as to why Americans should care.

If the fun of being a fan isn’t enough to sway you, maybe the money will. Because of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, sports fans now have the chance to put their obscure sports knowledge to use, raking in thousands. Still, the rise of these platforms begs the question: Where should the betting stop? Is putting thousands on the invasion of Venezuela the same as five bucks on an early Knicks lead? We let our veteran writer Joe Nocera ditch his day job to explore the wild west of prediction markets. In his new piece, he explains why his betting was obsessive and exhilarating—and ultimately, deeply exhausting.

New York Magazine’s Simon van Zuylen-Wood called up FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently chipping away at a 25-year prison sentence, to see what the disgraced wunderkind has to say about, well, everything. Bankman-Fried went on about his favorite vegan prison recipes, his Adderall regimen, and the serialized memoir he’s been working on in jail. Two years in, SBF still maintains his innocence, and blames his fraud conviction largely on a simple accounting glitch.

Today marks the official release date of Toy Story 5—the latest installment of a series that nurtured an entire generation. For many critics, the new movie is a thinly veiled commentary on how modern parents lost the plot, raising their kids with an iPad instead of a stuffed cowboy named Woody; but my colleague Liel Leibovitz saw it differently. As we head into Father’s Day weekend, don’t miss his essay on why Toy Story 5 is the ultimate ode to American dads.

Evan Gardner contributed reporting.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

Ball sounded a bit frantic when I called him on Friday, June 12, around 3 p.m. We were supposed to meet for drinks an hour later, but I hadn’t gotten a confirmation. Something came up, he said on the phone, and he’d been dealing with it. We arranged to meet at a hotel bar in Midtown Manhattan.

He didn’t say what had been keeping him busy. But around the time we were ordering our second round of drinks—5:21 p.m. on Friday—the AI company Anthropic received a letter from the Department of Commerce informing them that two of their newest and most powerful AI models, Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, had been placed under an export control. According to Anthropic, this meant that they were banned from allowing foreign nationals, whether inside or outside the U.S., to access either product. “The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance,” the company wrote.

This is the same model that, Anthropic said, “found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities,” when it was first released to a limited number of companies in April, “including some in every major operating system and web browser.” Reportedly, the order came after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told White House officials that his team had found a way to “jailbreak” Fable 5—which is, confusingly, a version of Mythos—by getting the model to give them classified information about cyber attacks.

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On screens big and small, the fathers Tinseltown tosses our way are always too something: too dumb (Simpson, Homer), too murderous (Vader, Darth), too perfect (Cleaver, Ward), too self-absorbed (Tenenbaum, Royal), too likely to snap his fingers and literally destroy the world (Thanos). Complicated mothers capable of having meaningful, adult relationships? That we’ve had aplenty. But if Pop’s on the scene, you better believe he’s about to deliver either menace or mischief, never anything that too closely resembles actual, relatable, human emotion.

Well, dads, our long, national nightmare is finally over: We now have an on-screen dad capable of all of the above-mentioned empathy and then some. His name is Woody, and he’s a toy; maybe you’ve heard of him?

By now, of course, the mere mention of Woody and his franchise, Toy Story, may provoke even Pixar’s biggest fans into asking whether we really needed a fifth chapter in the series. The answer, I’m thrilled to report, is you betcha: No. 5 is easily the best of the Toy Story films, a surprisingly deep, frequently hilarious movie that has more to say about the current state of human affairs than anything Hollywood has produced in ages.

It’s also a remarkable meditation on fatherhood.

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There is no shortage of advice about parenting. And in recent years, fatherhood in particular has become a flashpoint in broader debates about masculinity, authority, family, and the roles men should play in raising children. Alex Berenson, an author, former New York Times reporter, and father of three, says many of the prevailing ideas about fatherhood are at best misguided, and at worst entirely backward. In his short new book, The Fatherhood Manifesto, he offers 50 of his own tips for today’s dads.

This Father’s Day weekend, we’re delighted to publish five of them, along with Berenson’s reflections on how men can be better fathers—and why it matters that they try. —The Editors

Fatherhood is underrated.

Much of the media enjoys portraying fathers as clueless, or worse. I’m not sure what underlying bias drives this impulse, but the stereotyping starts practically at birth. I remember reading the Berenstain Bears series with my kids. In every book, hardworking, practical Mama ran the house. She cooked, cleaned, took care of the cubs. Potbellied, entitled, dopey Papa got in the way.

I was surprised at how unsubtle the message was. I shouldn’t have been. The old idea that “father knows best” is long gone. For decades, if not generations, the media has stereotyped fathers as goofy, hapless fools who depend on their superhero wives to pay the bills and take care of their kids.

Meanwhile, feminist academics crank out research claiming fathers coast in married households where both parents work. None of those papers looks like the reality in the middle- and upper-middle-class suburban and urban families I know best. In those two-parent homes, child care is split mostly equally. Sometimes, when fathers are the primary wage earners, they get a slight break. But the same split occurs in reverse when the women of the house make more.

Of course, our cultural elites offer a second stereotype of fatherhood: the emotionally distant blue-collar dad who hardly notices his daughters, and whose interest in his sons begins and ends with their ability to put a perfect spiral into double coverage. If the white-collar father is a fool who tries but fails to share parenting, his blue-collar counterpart ignores the job entirely.

Throughout academia, Hollywood, and the media, the only good dad is a feminized “gentle parent” who never raises his voice, is always ready with a hug, and never lets his kid take a risk or get hurt. In other words, the only good dad is a mom.

These lies—and they are lies—have real consequences. They discourage men from being fathers. And they discourage fathers from being the kind of fathers they want to, can, and should be.

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“Yes,” Sarah replied.

Her contractions were being graphed on the monitor next to her bed, and the doctor told her she could begin actively pushing in rhythm with each contraction. Not too long later, our son emerged.

It was a scene I had experienced once before. But as our second son came into the world, tears streamed down my face. In that moment, I understood them as tears of elation, but in retrospect, there was more to it than that. I was experiencing a deeper recognition of everything that goes into a complete life: the journey of becoming oneself; the trial and error of integrating into the world around us; the inevitable joys and sorrows that come from being alive. My son was at the very beginning of all of it.

This beautiful moment co-existed with an inescapable realization: Sometime in the not-too-distant future, for a duration still unknown, I’d likely have to say goodbye to this sweet new baby and report to prison.

This part of my story begins in November 2020. Sarah and I had been married for four-and-a-half years and had a one-and-a-half-year-old son when our family’s trajectory encountered extreme turbulence: I was federally indicted from an elaborate FBI sting operation. (You can read about the whole wild legal saga in these pages.) I was determined to fight the case every step of the way, and by late 2021, my trial date was looming six months out.

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But first: Coleman Hughes on loving America.

There is no denying that for many African Americans, the legacy of slavery makes patriotism complicated.

Today, on Juneteenth, we mark the day that American slaves in Galveston, Texas, heard the news of their emancipation. Two weeks from now, on July 4, some will find celebrating more difficult. Can we revel in the birth of American liberty that did not extend to black people?

Today, I’m making a case that I hope will persuade skeptics. Telling conservatives and independents that America deserves their love would be preaching to the choir. So I’m making the progressive case for loving America.

As I write today, progressives often take for granted the “precious gifts that most people on Earth still don’t have or have only partially—societal wealth, reliable law and order, political rights.”

If you’re a progressive, I hope this changes your mind. If you’re a conservative, read it for a different reason: a patriotism that can persuade only traditionalists is fragile. It might make you a better advocate for the country you already love.

—Coleman Hughes

Five years after Juneteenth became a federal holiday, Isaac Newton Farris Jr.—the nephew of Martin Luther King Jr.—reflects on the tension at the heart of the day: the horror of American slavery and the vindication of the founding principles that ultimately undid it. As Dr. King put it, “the goal of America is freedom.” And Juneteenth was one incredible step toward that goal.

Breaking Down Trump’s Iran Deal

At first glance, Donald Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran appears to be a wish list drafted by the mullahs. They get sanctions waived and $300 billion for reconstruction in exchange for a vague commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapon. But “real significance [of the MOU] is that it buys time,” argues Michael Doran—enough time to prepare for Iran’s next attempt to rebuild its nuclear arsenal.

Meanwhile, Jack Goldsmith argues that there’s another problem with the deal: It may violate a law Republicans passed to stop Barack Obama from making a similar move a decade ago. Will the courts intervene to block its implementation? Read Jack’s piece to find out.

Our columnists also weighed in: Niall Ferguson is cautiously optimistic, while Douglas Murray sees a regime with too dark a record to trust. Read the full pieces here.

Great Americans

In today’s Great Americans essay, Josh Code traces the life of Harvey Fite—a sculptor who spent nearly 40 years building a seven-acre stone sculpture with no plans, no collaborators, and no interest in either. His story reads like something out of an Ayn Rand novel. In the end, a tragic accident killed Fite at the site of the sculpture, uniting him forever with his masterpiece.

And speaking of Great Americans, we want to hear from you. We’ve launched a new channel in The Free Press Forum dedicated to America at 250—a home for patriotism, history, and spirited debate about the American experience. We’re also running a subscriber contest: Tell us who we missed by nominating your pick for a Great American in 500 or fewer words. We’ll be reading every entry, and as the series wraps up around Independence Day, we plan to publish a few of our favorites.

Engage

The Free Press Forum

America at 250

Let’s celebrate America’s 250th birthday. Share stories, traditions, photos, articles, and reflections on the people, places, and ideas that shaped the United States.

EDITORS’ PICKS

SpaceX’s massive IPO last week did more than make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. It also minted 4,000 new millionaires. Suzy Weiss spoke to some of Silicon Valley’s twentysomething nouveaux riches about what they’re spending the riches on—$36,000 glass sculptures, a pied-à-terre in Paris, a sports team, and solving world hunger.

If you don’t have AI money and are in search of a get-rich-quick scheme, read Joe Nocera’s deep dive into the world of prediction market betting. For a week, Joe left behind his day job with $1,000 at his disposal, becoming a prediction market day trader. He found that the most successful traders in this world carve out a niche and cash in. What will yours be?

This week, ahead of Father’s Day, social science professor Brad Wilcox took a close look at new fatherhood data to answer the question: Has fatherhood become the exclusive domain of the rich, religious, and right-leaning?

As Independence Day approaches, America has been celebrating in split-screen: One side relishes the spectacle of Trump’s Ultimate Fighting Championship battle while the other agonizes over essays like The New Yorker’s “How Problematic Is Patriotism?” Both sides are doing it wrong, argue our editors. Here’s how to celebrate America’s birthday, the right way.

And tomorrow, we’re bringing you a Father’s Day–themed Weekend Press—including a personal essay from P.G. Sittenfeld about why he chose to have a child when staring at five years in prison, and Liel Leibovitz’s review of Toy Story 5. (He’s a fan!) Also: Douglas Murray and Abigail Shrier will be advising you on what to read this summer.

The horrifying stories covered in the report have been discussed throughout Britain for more than a decade, and one government after another has passed around blame, unable to explain why the state failed to stop the ruination of thousands of young women and girls. Yet an unlikely intervention helped bring the scandal back to the surface. Elon Musk began to discuss the story on X in January 2025 and demanded a fuller accounting from British authorities. His request spurred a new round of debate and launched the inquiry that culminated this week.

The Rape Gang Inquiry describes “the systematic targeting of vulnerable girls, overwhelmingly White British, by predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs across towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom,” and concludes that “this scandal constitutes one of the most horrendous failures in the history of the country.” It documents “organised networks of perpetrators” who transported victims between locations, supplied them with alcohol and drugs, recorded their abuse for distribution and blackmail, and “passed girls between multiple adult men.” These crimes “have been committed for decades, since the 1950s by Pakistanis in particular, and have affected every region of our nation.”

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“We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. . . . If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.”

So wrote my uncle, Martin Luther King Jr., in his famous 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

I was only 1 when he wrote these words. But today, on Juneteenth, five years since the day was made a federal holiday, those words remain profoundly relevant. Juneteenth officially commemorates the end of a dark chapter in American history: June 19, 1865, when enslaved blacks in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom. That day came a full two years after the Emancipation Proclamation—a long, arduous delay resulting from slaveholders deliberately withholding the news, and a shortage of Union troops to prevent them from doing so.

Yet equally as important as that history is Juneteenth’s demonstration of how the principles that inspired America’s creation—democracy and freedom—can, like Dr. King said, be temporarily compromised, but never ultimately replaced or defeated.

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Back in 2019, The New York Times released the The 1619 Project, by Nikole Hannah-Jones. It is remembered by its admirers as an ambitious and necessary attempt to retell the American story with white supremacy and slavery at its center. It is remembered by its critics as an exercise in ahistorical nonsense—in particular for the falsehood, put forth in Hannah-Jones’ lead essay, that the American Revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery.

What is less remembered is that the thesis of that essay was a progressive case for American patriotism—albeit a bizarre and twisted one. Hannah-Jones argued that African Americans, more than any other group of Americans, can claim ownership of this country’s great ideals. “Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused,” she wrote, “but black people did.” In fighting for our freedom and equality, she argued, we have made the American ideals of freedom and equality true for everyone.

Her backdoor case for patriotism, in other words, was that the Founding Fathers were ideological frauds whose poor handiwork in creating America 1.0 was luckily bailed out by African Americans—who built the America 2.0 that we all enjoy today. Nor was Hannah-Jones eager to share credit for this accomplishment with any other group of people. In her words, African Americans “fought back alone” against the forces of white supremacy that plagued the country prior to the civil rights movement. Thus, black people should be the most patriotic flag-wavers of all.

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It looks like an alien creation, like something extraterrestrials would make after graduating from crop circles.

In a forest near Woodstock, New York, circular platforms wrought from bluestone wind into curving edifices, wrapping around stone staircases, crevasses, and some scant foliage across nearly seven acres that are altogether a work of art. Two pools of natural freshwater sit at the sculpture’s base, enveloped by winding walls of stone. At the center of it all, a nine-ton monolith juts into the sky.

America has its own Stonehenge, and one man built it—all alone.

It’s called Opus 40.

The experience of seeing Opus 40 is hard to describe, and no photograph can do it justice. You can be in it, on top of it, and around it. You can walk through its narrow passageways, where cool air flows through, up steps and down inclines. Like Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty or the huge, contoured steel sculptures of Richard Serra, the artwork’s beauty lies in its simplicity, size, and harmony with the environment around it.

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The New York Knicks have bookended my life, with elation on both ends and a deep trough of disappointment and agony in between. Measured by time elapsed, the bad years outweigh the good ones, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Looking back on my life, in this moment of great triumph for my team and my hometown of New York, it’s no exaggeration to say the Knicks helped rescue me.

In 1970, I was 13, an introverted kid, unsettled and frightened by the disorder and random violence of New York at the time. I was intrigued by drugs and spent a lot of time indoors. In other words, I was a mess. The Knicks were my escape.

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The MOU states that the United States pledges “immediately” to “issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.” These waivers presumably mean the removal of U.S. statutory sanctions against Iran.

The president lacks the authority under domestic law to waive these sanctions. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) of 2015, a law requiring congressional review of nuclear deals with Iran, temporarily bars a president from doing just that. The executive branch has counterarguments, and it’s doubtful that any institution will make the president comply. But INARA, properly read, bars the president from acting until Congress has had its review.

INARA was enacted with broad bipartisan support. It sought to make President Barack Obama submit the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran—to Congress, force his administration to publicly defend it, and give Congress a short window to review and possibly reject it, during which the president was barred from providing Iran with certain sanctions relief.

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→ Iran? Oh well, nevertheless: President Donald J. Trump traveled to France where, at Versailles, he signed an agreement giving Iran everything it ever wanted and more. He said that you gotta let them enrich a little bit of uranium. Trump: “It is a little hard, though, when you say that somebody wants it, other people have it, other adjoining states have it, and you’re not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that. It’s always a little tough. You have to use a little common sense.” As for ballistic missiles, it’s what anyone would want: “I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some.” And, actually, Hamas might be alright. When it comes to Hamas, Trump says: “They’ve actually behaved pretty well.” It looks worse than Obama’s Iran deal, which is a shock to all the neocons who thought Obama was Voldemort, but a vindication to the neolibs who thought he was fine. Not a great man of history like Hillary Clinton (I’m a 2008 election denier; it was stolen), but he was fine.

J.D. Vance—Mr. Eyelashes, Mr. Chicken Coop, a fellow who definitely spends too much time on right-wing Twitter/X—has been selling the deal all week. And he came out swinging yesterday against Israel, which has balked at the seeming surrender. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left.” And: “The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.” I’m appalled and offended and want him to be wrong. But he’s not that much wrong. Increasingly, Israel stands alone. I guess there’s always India. But here, the heir apparent of the Republican Party is close friends with Tucker Carlson, whose every podcast episode is him shrieking why can’t we talk about how evil Israel is, no one can say it. So I’m just saying this is what time it is. It’s name-change o’clock in America. I mean, I’m changing mine to Nili Bowlsky but I do understand that this is not popular at the moment.

→ Give me back my AI: Top artificial intelligence company Anthropic released its new ultra-powerful model, Fable 5. It was—in my brief moments with it, asking about rashes and the best swim shoes for kids—so incredible. And then the Trump administration forced them to suspend access to Fable 5, along with another model, Mythos 5. They stole from us the greatest artificial intelligence on Earth. Anthropic says that the government basically gave them no information other than vague hand-waving that it’s not safe enough. Inside sources said that Anthropic just began to displease the administration. From Axios:

Following Anthropic’s models going dark, the optics added fuel to the fire. Anthropic came out with a blog post dismissing the Amazon report. Then the company enlisted a cybersecurity expert viewed by the administration as a “radical Democrat,” who was then celebrated by Chris Krebs, who Trump just fired.

Oh, no! Anthropic, you have forgotten how to please the king. Amazon, whose executives have the permanent taste of metal in their mouths from all their truly impressive ring-kissing, apparently tattled to the admin to get this started. Per Axios: “On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressing concerns that Anthropic’s most powerful models, Mythos and Fable, could be jailbroken.” I love that. Amazon kneecaps a competitor and then makes sure everyone knows it was them. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei should expect a bloody horse head in his bed, delivered via Amazon package, any day now.

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We dress dress alike, flock to the same restaurants, and chase the same goals—not because we’re adjusting our behavior to fit in, but because the people aroun…

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It’s only natural that Americans would worry about the deal. At first glance, the memorandum of understanding (MOU) looks like a wish list drafted in Tehran and rubber-stamped by President Donald Trump. It grants Iran consultations with Oman on regulating traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and even a $300 billion reconstruction and economic development fund to help rebuild and modernize Iran. In return, the U.S. receives little more than what Tehran has traditionally offered: a vague and completely dishonest commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapon.

The agreement proposes a grand windfall for Iran, including economic modernization, rebuilding infrastructure, and the removal of international sanctions. It envisions restoring Iran’s position as a major energy supplier, reopening international trade and investment, and providing access to frozen assets.

To many supporters of Trump’s stated war aims, this vision looks like a complete collapse of the American position. Words such as surrender, appeasement, and capitulation come easily. Before endorsing that assessment, however, let’s rewind to February 4, 2025, and recall the surprise that Trump sprang at a White House press conference alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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“I love Taylor Swift and I love mah-jongg, so I put them together,” said Magid, who added that it was “exciting” for her friends to learn the game. “I’m patient with them.”

Mahj is life for Magid. “I always ask my mom, ‘Can I play mah-jongg with you?’ ” the rising sixth grader told me. “I want to play mah-jongg all the time.”

Mah-jongg—a four-person tile-based game that originated in 19th-century China—used to be associated with 80-year-old bubbes glued to the table for hours a day at their retirement homes. But recently, it’s taken Gen Zers and millennial moms by storm. Mah-jongg nights have replaced the group girl dinner. There are $15,000 luxury mah-jongg sets for the truly elite. Even Blake Lively is a fan—she had her mah-jongg set delivered to court during the Justin Baldoni fiasco.

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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, Christopher Cox honored Alice Paul, the suffragist who picketed the White House without saying a word, was force-fed in prison at 60 pounds, and still rewrote the Constitution. Today Philip K. Howard pays tribute to Mary Parker Follett, the social thinker who understood the secret of group behavior—and why American democracy keeps getting it wrong. —The Editors

Mary Parker Follett was a seminal thinker in management theory. In the early days of large industrial organization, when Frederick Winslow Taylor was preaching the gospel of “scientific management,” Follett emphasized the social aspects of any group enterprise. Taylor was not wrong—improving efficiency remains an ongoing goal of successful manufacturers. But his efficient workplace could result in mind-numbing repetition. Follett understood that workers had human needs—for variety, for agency, for mutual understanding.

Follett originated the idea that, in the words of former Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria, “organizations perform best when they operate on the basis of shared responsibility and not . . . command and obedience.” Rigid organizational hierarchies, Follett argued, were counterproductive; the people on the spot should have the authority to adapt to “the law of the situation.” This, she saw, requires a system of “management with authority all down the line.” Follett understood that a “final authority” is always needed, but explained how better choices and better understanding resulted when “decisions are usually reached through a process” of interaction. The practice of exploring solutions and reconciling differences melds people into a common unit: “The strength of the group,” she wrote, “does not depend on the greatest number of strong men, but on the strength of the bond between them.” Healthy organizations have an “invisible leader—the common purpose.” (Unless otherwise noted, the quotes by and about Follett are from the 1995 book Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management.)

Follett (1868–1933) came to her understandings not through study but through life. Her father, a shoe-factory machinist in Quincy, Massachusetts, died when she was a teenager. With an ailing mother and a young brother, Follett was thrust into the role of head of the household. She taught school in Boston and could pursue her studies only intermittently, eventually graduating summa cum laude at age 30 from the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women—what we now call Radcliffe College. While teaching and studying she published her first book, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (1896), which described how the speaker consolidates and wields power. In a laudatory review, Theodore Roosevelt called it a “really notable contribution to the study of the growth of American governmental institutions” and praised Follett for presenting “facts as they are.”

After graduation, Follett became a social worker, creating a network of community centers for vocational training in Boston. These hubs for self-improvement succeeded, Follett realized, when people felt a sense of ownership and a part of how the centers worked. Their success would inspire hundreds of other American cities to build similar programs.

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