Some quick housekeeping before the news: Suzy’s podcast has launched, since I guess there can’t be more than two consecutive months where a member of the Weiss family isn’t commandeering a microphone to tell everyone their thoughts on Ozempic. Suzy’s podcast, I’m told, is about pop culture. It’s called Second Thought and you can watch it here, or follow it here, or if you’re really old-fashioned, read the transcripts here. Now, to the news.

→ Scammers getting scammed: The Trump men have a cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial. For legal reasons I cannot describe it as a scam, so I’ll describe it as a spram. A yam-sc. And now one of its largest backers is suing the group, alleging that they took his money and won’t give it back. From CBS News, a great website:

Cryptocurrency billionaire Justin Sun is suing World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture co-founded by President Donald Trump and his sons, alleging the company illegally blocked him from selling digital tokens worth up to $1 billion.

Justin Sun is also the largest holder of $TRUMP coins, another Trump-backed crypto token. He’s in deep, kids. But for whatever reason, Justin Sun decided to try to see if this fake crypto bank could be a real money bank. And when he reached into the influence-payment pot to pull out cash, did he find any? Well. He says he did not. How much liberty does World Liberty Financial really offer? It’s not a bank, Justin, it’s a DeFi platform, which means money goes in but no money comes out. Like a piggy bank that’s run by the president’s sons and that you’re never going to see again. I don’t know what you were buying with all these investments—I try not to have impure thoughts—but I hope it was worth it. When you put a billion dollars into something called World Liberty Financial or wire money to a thing called $TRUMP, you can probably get off death row. You can probably do one free spouse murder if she is over 50 and going for a Pamela Anderson Makeup-Free look, but she’s not Pamela Anderson. Certainly you can do three full tax returns of financial crimes. But you cannot, under any circumstances, get your money back.

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→ Trump as Jesus himself: President Donald J. Trump posted a picture to Truth Social of himself as Jesus. It depicted him draped in white and a red shawl, hands glowing with divine light, healing a sick patient as a soldier, a nurse, and others looked on in awe. The Christian community did not particularly enjoy the image, and Trumpo got a rare rebuke from his base. The next day, outside the White House, after receiving a McDonald’s delivery, Trump explained that he “thought it was me as a doctor.” Do doctors wear red shawls usually? Anyway, he deleted it. Fine! Then, why not, he posted another Jesus meme, this time showing Jesus hugging Trump. Because they’re all good now, him and JC. Here’s the Yahoo! News summary of all this:

→ Quote of the week: “I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be. . . . My kids waited patiently in the car.” Who else could it be? It’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For those of you who might be freaked out by the admission, don’t worry. Bobby was cutting off the genitals of a dead raccoon apparently to “study them later.” It was research, heard of it? He’s a budding zoologist. It’s called primary sources. Onward.

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→ At this point, is he trolling us: Standing by the Easter Bunny, atop the South Portico balcony, our president gave an update on Iran. “I don’t think it gets much more hostile than Iran. They’re capable fighters,” he said, as Melania, with a bouncy blonde hairdo, and Bunny stood on either side of him. It’s up to the voters to decide who served a more chilling stare. My new theory: Trump knows this is funny. He’s trolling us. It’s a bit. He waits for Bunny to get there before he starts in on Iran. My other theory: Mike Johnson is the bunny.

Now in this next quote, I’m less sure of exactly what’s happening. This is Trump describing some good old-fashioned American warfighting, and I will make no further comment: “They came in so fast and so hard, and these guys knew exactly what—let’s go, come on, get in, let’s go, pwah. They came one right after another. Not at the same time. They don’t want to come at the same time. They had to come right after each other. They didn’t have any room.”

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→ We don’t care what the voters say: The big debate between California gubernatorial candidates has been canceled since it didn’t meet Hollywood’s DEI requirements. But really. It’s too white! And so the debate between all these pale nightwalkers was called off. The University of Southern California apparently used discriminatory criteria to decide who got to be on stage, and that criteria was to select the six candidates who were polling the highest and had raised the most, according to CalMatters. Sounds racist to me. The voters are wrong, and their opinions do not count unless they produce a Benetton ad. The donors are also wrong. USC, a school famous for having the hottest, richest student body, will alone decide who is allowed to run for office, and it’s the cast of Euphoria.

The candidates are: Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco and Democrats Tom Steyer, Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell, and Matt Mahan. Okay, reading these names, I kinda see their point. Steve, Tom, and Katie? Is this a Little House on the Prairie remake?

Now, all of those candidates need to sit alone and ask themselves why they are not women of color. Once they decide to drop out and find a woman of color to march in their stead, then we can resume the gubernatorial debate. Or if one of them wants to go trans, that would be acceptable. Steve (Stephanie?) Hilton, do what everyone who applies to USC does: Fake an ethnic ancestry.

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My only announcement this week is to keep submitting questions for Abigail Shrier’s brilliant advice column.

→ Joe Kent joins the new right circuit: The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who was confirmed last July, resigned this week over the war in Iran, writing that the only reason it started is because of Israel “and its powerful American lobby.” He quickly scheduled an appearance alongside Candace Owens and showed up on Tucker Carlson’s pod. The new circuit. Now, of course, “four people with direct knowledge of the investigation” have leaked that Joe Kent has been under FBI investigation for allegedly sharing classified information. A theme of Kent’s letter and chat with Tuck-Tuck is the idea that Israel is behind everything, that no other group has agency. Kent writes that he is a “Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel.” But his wife was killed in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria, for which ISIS claimed responsibility? He writes that the Israelis drew us into “the disastrous Iraq war.” But Israel was against that war and expressed concern to America about its possible consequences. Even Grok, the one AI that you know could get Nazi-licious if it wanted to, agrees with me. (I’ll be real here, the name Grok sounds like a guy who maybe used to be a skinhead. Oh, him? That’s just Grok, don’t ask about the tattoos, okay, he’s over all that.)

You see the same obsession echoed here: “Pakistan dropping bombs on Afghanistan is completely unacceptable. And we can only conclude that the Pakistan military has been compromised by the U.S., and therefore Israel,” writes the editor of a Muslim news website. Actually loads of popular writers are echoing that, claiming Pakistan is attacking Afghanistan because it’s been inspired by Israel or something. Anything that happens anywhere between any two groups of people can be described by its proximity to Israel. Which one is Israel-coded? Why is it Pakistan?

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We have new items going up in The Free Press store: a Think for Yourself crewneck; a Free Press beanie (first ever); and, an America at 250 hat. Check out the shop if you’re open to getting into verbal altercations at your next community board meeting.

We also have an urgent, truly desperate job posting: Senior Director of Finance to track subscription metrics and run the books—until now, it’s been three monkeys in a closet with a calculator. The Free Press needs YOU. And our last announcement is just a note of appreciation for a great man named David Giaramita. He has answered all our questions, philosophical and otherwise, as we switched over our IT systems, which sounds easy but is not. This will shock you but journalists aren’t great at calendar migration. Thank you, David! In honor of your labor, you get one America at 250 hat.

→ Two terrorists and a lie: Two young men—Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi—are accused of trying to use homemade bombs on New York’s Upper East Side this past weekend. Outside of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, someone yelled “allahu akbar” and Balat allegedly threw one of the bombs. Once in custody, Balat pledged allegiance to ISIS, according to authorities, and later gave the ISIS salute to a camera crew.

Their target: a small anti-Islam rally led by a racist right-wing troll named Jake Lang. The scene: about 20 people with Lang and more than 100 counterprotesters. While one of the counterprotesters was speaking the familiar language of progressive acceptance into a bullhorn—about how everyone is welcome in New York—Balat reached over his shoulder to throw a lit bomb. The carrot of acceptance—and if not, then the stick of an IED! All in one moment. It’s all caught on video.

Call me crazy, but I just don’t really think we should kill people willy-nilly on the sidewalk like that, even if they disagree with my politics. This was a clear-cut Bad Moment. On this front, I am apparently an outcast among journalists. Because my comrades did something clever. They blamed the right-wing trolls. The establishment news media worked this week to make a great lie: that the right-wing group threw the bomb. And if a bomb was indeed thrown by the side of the good, then it wasn’t a big deal at all.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a tour.

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Also, we are looking for a photo editor! Are you in Brooklyn but also sick of having friends? Join us. More info here.

Now, to the news.

→ Trump at war: We’re officially bombing Iran. And Iran is bombing, well, everyone they can. They’ve reportedly lobbed missiles, drones, and deck chairs at the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Turkey as well as Israel, its number-one bombing love. But it’s been a pretty dismal showing. We’re very much and clearly winning. Like, really, really easily. Here’s Trump on the war timeline: “We also projected four weeks to terminate the military leadership, and as you know, that was done in about an hour so we’re ahead of schedule there.” And here’s Trump on who should become Iran’s new leader: “Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead. . . we had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports.” And they should stop picking one among themselves: “They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela.” It will be done in ancestral Trump fashion, via swimsuit competition in an indoor/outdoor pavilion at a resort. In other war news, a U.S. submarine sank an enemy ship by torpedo for the first time since World War II. Welcome back to water warfare, baby! There’s unbelievable footage of a fighter pilot shot down over Kuwait, in a bright and cheery mood as locals approach her there in that dust bowl. They thank her for what she’s doing, and offer her help (thank goodness she didn’t land in Minneapolis).

For anyone shocked that Trump “the Dove” would bomb Iran, it’s helpful to remember that federal investigators discovered two alleged Iranian-backed Trumpo assassination attempts, so of the Ayatollah, Trump said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first.” He also, if you’ll recall, kept talking about how he’d bomb Iran when he was campaigning. That might explain why J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard have been sidelined to their own special war room, where I assume The Hurt Locker is playing on a loop so they feel like they’re in on the action. They’re the future of the GOP, but the Boomers have to retire first, and we all know Boomers don’t retire. Boomers only die. Clutching their scepters. So, for now, for one last war, it’s a little picnic table for those cuties to sit around. Well, it’s the Situation Room. But honey, this is Mar-a-Lago’s war.

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→ Olympics heroes and villains: The U.S. men’s hockey team won the gold, defeating Canada! It gave us an incredible photo of Jack Hughes, mouth bloody, missing teeth, American flag around his shoulders. Iconic. Inspiring. Or is it? It is not. Because then Donald J. Trump (the current president of the United States) called the boys in the locker room to congratulate them, on speakerphone, and they were thrilled. Jubilant! And then Trumpo made a mild joke about the women’s team, and they laughed. Wrong move, boys.

Here’s the New York Times’ sports section, The Athletic:

Ah, yes. It is the responsibility of sports teams to police who is rooting for them. Everyone knows this. Or here’s HuffPost:

If my political opponents cheer for you, it means you’re bad. You’re the villain. Them’s the rules. Actually, if Americans celebrate you, you’re probably racist, says the American press. Did you know that Eileen Gu, a young woman from California but who competed for Team China, is not being celebrated as much by Team Trump? Well, then she’s good. The best. We root for Team China here. Think I’m being hyperbolic? Here’s Vox making it really simple:

Me, as the reasonable centrist, who everyone loves to yell at, I think both are incredible. I love Eileen Gu and I love the men’s hockey team. Listen to Eileen’s explanation of how she controls her mind. The woman’s amazing. I don’t care who she does the sports for, she’s American. I’m a little afraid of her, and I respect her for that. And look at Jack Hughes wrapped in the flag with that broken, bloody smile. Amazing. U-S-A! U-S-A!

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And now, to the week that was:

→ Are you monitoring the situation?: Two U.S. E-3 Sentry radar aircraft en route to Saudi Arabia. Russian Il-76TD aircraft in Iran. A U.S. Air Force KC-46A Pegasus tanker, call sign ROMA11, attempting an Atlantic crossing alongside six F-22 Raptors from Langley Air Force Base, marking a third try after two earlier tanker-related aborts. Which is all to say: Are you monitoring the situation?

Do you have your laptop, external monitor, and phone open to see where the Pegasus tanker is today? As America looks to alarm Iran—and potentially strike it—we are inundated with real-time information. The Situation Room is now the Situation Planet, and any man with internet is a four-star general. What used to be really hard to do (real-time tracking military aircraft and tanks) is now insanely easy. And so there are many, many OPSEC (operations security) accounts sharing OSINT (open-source intelligence) that just let you watch war unfold, refold, and unfold again (never-ending hellscape). The average American dad can have more information about global military movements than Churchill had on any given day. It’s 2026, and we are all OPSEC experts. About once a week, an unnamed member of my household pulls up one of these accounts and announces that WAR WITH IRAN IS TONIGHT. (Yes, it’s my 3-year-old.) War with Iran is never tonight, and yet every night I wait.

Regardless of which tonight the war will start, I salute everyone who is monitoring the situation. And for those who aren’t, I recommend this OSINT account for beginners. Now get to your command stations! Do not abandon your post, cadet!

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For our Southern friends: On March 9, The Free Press is coming to Atlanta—to Ebenezer Baptist Church—with Ambassador Andrew Young, who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr., and Jonathan Eig, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life. Leading the conversation will be the great Coleman Hughes. Tickets are here!

→ Where is Nancy Guthrie!: America this week is gripped by the hunt for Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie’s mom, who appears to have been kidnapped. The strangest part right now is the video footage of the person who could have been involved in her disappearance. They waddle up to the house, a little knock-kneed. They’re masked and gloved, their eyebrows appear trimmed, and there’s a gun in a holster around their waist. But the gun is holstered right over the crotch, sort of bouncing loosely. The person sees the doorbell camera and waddles away into the shrubs to grab some plants and cover it up. What I’m saying is this all just looks kind of amateur? Wouldn’t a professional have known there was a doorbell camera? A professional definitely would have known how to holster a gun. And I’ll be honest, I’d rather be kidnapped by a professional. The wandering, slow, sloppy nature of this person alarmed me more than anything.

I don’t know about other cohorts, but America’s moms are united in panic over this situation. After preschool drop-off, a group of us were standing around hoping someone had a tidbit of new information. One mom apparently hit rock bottom when she was up after midnight just watching a livestream of a Tucson hospital. FaceTimes with my mother-in-law have turned into press conferences over the latest in the Guthrie case. We need to find Nancy. If we live in a country where Nancy Guthrie isn’t safe, then we need to burn the whole thing down. TGIF stands with the Guthrie family. Bring her home.

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If you’re a Free Presser in Atlanta, we have a big treat for you. Coleman Hughes will be at the Ebenezer Baptist Church next month, alongside former UN ambassador Andrew Young and MLK biographer Jonathan Eig. Get your tickets here.

And now, on to the biggest stories of the week, according to us.

→ The emails will continue until morale gets worse: A specter has been haunting America—the specter of jeevacation@gmail.com, also known as Jeffrey Edward Epstein. Last Friday, the Department of Justice said “release the Kraken” and made available to the public three million pages of documents connected to the late disgraced financier, including volumes of email correspondence. The fallout hasn’t let up since.

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→ Border fallout: The American public is fed up with ICE chaos and cruelty in the wake of the killing of Alex Pretti—and Trump seems to know it. Greg Bovino, our tiny border patrol chief who oversaw the Minneapolis crackdown, is reportedly retiring early (though the admin denies it), as he and several of his agents prepared to leave the city this week. Conservative radio host Erick Erickson said of Pretti’s death: “I went into this ready to blame Alex Pretti. After watching hours of footage from multiple angles. . . I can’t.” So they’ve lost Erick. They’ve also lost gun rights supporters: Rob Doar, senior vice president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said that “If Mr. Pretti was disarmed—absent any other evidence of any risk to an officer—I don’t see how deadly force would be justified.” Even the stately WSJ is calling all y’all a bunch of liars: “Videos Contradict U.S. Account of Minneapolis Shooting by Federal Agents.” The Trump admin defense just falls flat. Kooky Kristi (Noem) came out to claim that Pretti was trying to kill people: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Does it? If Alex Pretti had a gun and was trying to kill law enforcement, wouldn’t he have, like, drawn that gun and shot at them? Whatever he was doing it certainly doesn’t look like someone attempting to inflict maximum damage, à la John Wick. Finally, after days of outrage, Tom Homan said ICE enforcement in Minneapolis “can be improved” and that they’re working on a “drawdown,” which is the closest to an apology you’ll get from a Trump appointee.

A whopping 59 percent of voters see ICE actions as “too aggressive.” And to top it all off, a new Cato Institute paper out this week shows that “Overall, immigrants consumed about 24 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans.” Wait a second. . . I thought all those guys standing outside Home Depot were looking for welfare checks, not jobs. I’m simply shocked by this.

Meanwhile, Trump is fundraising off the news cycle because why the hell not:

Does it read a little flirty to anyone else?

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Now to the news.

→ Trump’s Board of Peace(™): President Donald J. this week has launched his Board of Peace. It’s a parallel United Nations, but run by the United States and Trump is the leader of it, indefinitely. Will it replace the United Nations? It “might,” he said, but later said the board would have “tremendous potential with the United Nations.” So really he’s just creating more competition for international federations. A free market for free markets! By the way, everyone’s invited to Trump’s version of the UN: Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, even the Pope. No one is quite sure what the new Board of Peace means, exactly. “The pope has received an invitation and we are considering what to do,” the top Vatican diplomat told journalists. “I believe it will be something that requires a bit of time for consideration before giving a response.” Does the Board of Peace have an army? A constitution? Does it include Trump golf club memberships? Gift bags? Is it just that you get invited to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff’s text chain? All we know for sure is that it costs $1 billion for a permanent seat on the Trump Board of Peace, which is just a little less than your average private K–8 school board seat.

When news broke about how expensive membership would be—ONE BILLION BIG ONES—the White House Rapid Response team pushed back. “This is misleading. There is no minimum membership fee to join the Board of Peace,” they wrote. Okay, cool, no membership fee! But then their next sentence: “This simply offers permanent membership to partner countries who demonstrate deep commitment to peace, security, and prosperity.” Okay, well. So. It’s not a membership fee, it’s just a demonstration of deep commitment that you want to keep your seat. This is like when the FP business team debates whether to rebrand our subscriptions as memberships. Like, I’m okay with that, I won’t fight it, but let’s all be adults here—it’s a subscription to a digital magazine, albeit with America’s most gorgeous Friday columnists. But it’s not a velvety club to drink a martini in. The United Nations, that den of iniquity, should absolutely be disbanded. I’m not sure I would replace it with the team behind the Trump Steak of the Month club and such, but no one else is offering. Not unrelated: Here is New Gaza, presented by Jared Kushner:

What is this, a clothing website I almost bought something from two years ago? And look at that new Board of Peace logo! It’s so. . . shiny and gold. Wasn’t NATO kind of the original Board of Peace? Are we ditching that one too?

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→ No one’s popular anymore: I’m not popular, you’re not popular, neither party is popular. The Democrats have been handed Donald Trump—who spends his days shaking people down, flipping off factory workers, spinning meme coins, and embossing things in gold, like citizenships—and they still have no idea how to win over America. It’s a mystery. Democrats are still putting their political capital behind. . . wait for it. . . arguing that there are no biological differences between men and women in sports (Ketanji Brown Jackson putting up the good fight this week! Like a Japanese soldier who doesn’t know the war is over.) Here’s the latest from RealClearPolling:

Funny how even after every media company of polite society in America has spent 10 years telling people Republicans are devils, devils we say!, Americans still like Republicans more. Much to mull there. It’s almost as though the mainstream media has lost credibility? Like we’ve fractured into two completely separate information bubbles that no longer intersect at all and someone should do something about that? Ah, reporters are hitting me with brooms. Fine, fine, it is the American people who have lost credibility! From now on every story will be simple. Headline: Trump bad. Story: Trump bad. That will do it.

→ This is dark power: France delayed the G7 Summit—that noble gathering of the seven strongest world leaders, now in its 52nd year—because the White House is double-booked. They’re doing a birthday party for Trump around then. It’s cage fighting! MMA, guys. America is so powerful on the world stage right now that we can literally postpone the G7 Summit because it conflicts with a cage fight we wanted to plan that week. Désolée. Aw, don’t plan it around us. . . just do it without us. You don’t want to? Oh, okay! We’ll send some dates that work for us. How’s October looking?

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Also: We’re hosting a comedy night Sunday, February 1 at the Comedy Cellar in NYC! Judy Gold is hosting. Colin Quinn is headlining. It’s part of America’s 250th birthday, which we’re marking by stress-testing the joke. Get your tickets here. Now let’s turn to the news.

→ ICE killing: On Wednesday in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in her SUV. Video shows agents approaching her car and ordering her to get out; she then accelerates forward, and an agent in front of her fires three times, ultimately killing her. The woman was identified as 37-year-old poet and mother of three Renee Nicole Good. Given that this was a protest in 2026, there’s video of it from multiple angles, and I’ve watched them all. She did refuse to get out of the car; she did accelerate toward the officer. And yet. You can easily imagine her panicking at that moment, with loud-voiced officers reaching through her window and grabbing her door. I don’t mean to be gendered, but the impulse either to hide (stay in the nest) or run (spin wheels and get out of the situation fast) is sort of hardwired in my female brain. There’s truly nothing more dangerous than a mom in her SUV—we’re the grizzlies with cubs. If a man in a uniform is reaching at me through the window, I’m flooring it. Whether there’s criminal liability on the officer’s end, I have no idea, but it’s a real tragedy. In our seesaw politics, our options are either Biden completely opening the border and gaslighting us about it—or Trumpo sending the military to rappel out of helicopters to tackle two guys in line at Home Depot. Our life is now just endlessly swinging between these extremes every four years.

→ Venezuela: This past Saturday, American forces blasted their way into Venezuela’s capital and grabbed President Nicolás Maduro, who was whisked away wearing a gray Nike Tech tracksuit and transported to the U.S., where he wished onlookers at the Manhattan DEA office a happy new year in heavily accented English. That’s just Saturday night in America now—tucking other country’s dictators into a cell downtown.

The authoritarian leader and his allegedly complicit wife were then taken to New York’s hottest club, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which has recently hosted Luigi Mangione, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Ghislaine Maxwell. Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking and weapons charges in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday.

President Trump has said the United States will “run” the country, offloading the job to Marco Rubio, whose stack of to-dos from his three other jobs is already grazing the ceiling. Apparently (and this is real), Maduro’s on-air imitation of Trump’s signature bendy-elbow dance—performed to a techno remix of “No War, Yes Peace”—was the final provocation. This mockery could not go unanswered; an equal and opposite retaliation was in order, which, for Trump, means sending in the troops and putting a blindfold and headphones on that man. Deprive his senses completely. “He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. But he’s a violent guy,” Trump said. Worse still, Maduro adds a Latin flavor—some salsa, some bouncing—whereas Trump’s version is all stiff knees and hinged elbows, like a rusty gate.

In the same press conference, the president said—trying out some Dangerfield-esque stand-up—“My wife hates when I do this.” He continued: “She said, it’s so unpresidential. I said, ‘But I did become president.’ She hates when I dance! I said, ‘Everybody wants me to dance.’ . . . She actually said, ‘Could you imagine FDR dancing?’ ” It’s unclear whether Melania knows FDR was wheelchair-bound, but the message stands: All wives in this country want all husbands to please stop doing their little routine in front of the guests.

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→ The Quality Learing Center: The big bizarre news in our dear country, and what much of this newsletter will be devoted to, is that the entire Minnesota economy is built on scams. A young independent YouTuber named Nick Shirley went knocking on “day care” centers door to door but weirdly found that the places were closed or otherwise devoid of children. We need more information but it definitely appeared he was finding scams, a bevy of scams. At one point, he went to a building with apparently more than a dozen supposed healthcare companies all located in the same building—and he was ushered out. He posted the 42-minute video investigation last week, and it went enormously viral, with some 134 million views on X alone.

Days after Nick Shirley’s video came out, two things happened. On the one hand, a bunch of kids were brought to the center Shirley found empty, to prove that it was, in fact, actively in use, so the press could cover it as a totally normal day care. Around the same time, a state agency claimed that that location had already shut down, so the press could cover it as a problem that has been long solved, silly gooses. The agency then said the center had “decided to remain open.” So it’s not a problem—but if it were, it’s been solved. One Minneapolis day care has now claimed that an unknown criminal broke in this week and stole paperwork documenting enrollment and employee information. I, for one, hate when that happens to my day care that’s being investigated.

Here was Minnesota lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan showing solidarity with the Somali community amid the probe.

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→ I love Susie Wiles: Members of President Trump’s close team met with Vanity Fair at the White House. I don’t know why they did this, but that’s not my job. Among the interviewees was one Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, my instant favorite of the lunch bunch. She said Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality,” and that Elon Musk is an “avowed ketamine [user]” and an “odd, odd duck.” J.D. Vance? That old queen? He’s been a “conspiracy theorist for a decade,” says Suz. Talking to Susie Wiles sounds exactly like talking to about half a dozen older women in my life, like I swear to you if you called my mother-in-law today this what she would say about me. It’s as though all women, at a certain age, converge on an omnipolitics in which there is no left and right, there are only odd ducks, kooks, out-to-lunchers, and real sick puppies. Susie Wiles, please come over for dinner, you remind me of my Yaiya; your wisdom is deep, your judgment is final. The Trump team, after being absolutely roasted by Susie Wiles, all came out in support of her, saying she’s great and no one should overreact. Which is exactly what I would do to defend the grandmothers in my life, too. We stand with and for Susie Wiles. Please come roast The Free Press anytime.

→ Is that you, DOGE? The only thing that’s given me a glimmer of happiness in the last several years is the idea of DOGE. The dream of DOGE. That smart young people could make our government ultra-efficient, that America’s working class could get the same services while giving less of their paycheck to D.C., that we could have half the federal workers if they all just agreed to use email instead of fountain pens and couriers. We know how my dream turned out (shattered, bloody, ruined, false). But lo, what’s this?

This comes from an official Trump account, so it’s probably all fake data. I don’t know. You don’t know. But I dream a dream. Of paying normal taxes, and then in return getting someone who isn’t asleep in the FAA tower. This is the promise of America.

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→ Anyone who calls me fat goes to jail: There’s been reporting of late that Trump, 79, is a little slower than when he was first elected at age 70. First of all, as a human who has met 70 and then 79-year-olds, my answer to them is always the same: You look great. I said you look great. Great. G r e a t. As is Trump’s wont, he began calling for those reporters to go to jail. So here’s Trump this week:

After all of the work I have done with Medical Exams, Cognitive Exams, and everything else, I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean “THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.” They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it.

It’s treasonous to suggest an almost-octogenarian is, in fact, old? We should do something about this immediately, the president says, asking the sun god for endless life. Boomers will Boom till they Boom Boom Pow, and when confronted with mortality, they will call for all young people to be jailed. The NYT reporters who wrote the story about Trump’s aging even have young people names: Katie and Dylan. The indignities of a Dylan documenting your decline. It would drive me crazy too. Is it a girl Dylan? God, I bet it is. One day there’ll be one of Elon’s offspring, X7!NP, writing about my bad hips and how it’s time for me to pack the column in, and I’ll be forced to hurl myself out the car window.

→ That font is too woke: The State Department is cracking down on woke typefaces. They announced this week that the Biden-era font Calibri is banned from official forms, and we’re back to Times New Roman. A serif, like what this country was built on. Calibri is the streamlined font that has no serifs, and disability activists say it’s better for them, which doesn’t really make sense to me but whatever. I guess they want it to be like braille? Or Comic Sans, to draw in all IQ levels? I write in sans serif font but the lib one (Arial) and not the libertarian one (Helvetica). Tiempos is what you’re reading right now, a handsome, sturdy font that Suzy spent eight months deciding on, and which has decorative little serifs all over the place (fascist). Secretary of State Marco Rubio writes that Biden’s switch apparently cost the department $145,000, which also doesn’t really make sense to me. But I’m just glad we’re in such a time of peace that these are the battles our State Department can fight. Good. More of this. I want our biggest wars to be over which binder clips are too feminine.

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Before the news, we just announced one of the biggest additions in Free Press history: an advice column by Abigail Shrier called Tough Love. Not only are we helping you make sense of the world, we’re therapizing you now too. You’re welcome. I was the first to publicly air out my neuroses—and I did get some beautiful advice.

Tough Love will land every Thursday afternoon, also known as TGIF eve—perfect timing to gain a little stability right before I knock you off your horse again. If you want to ask Abigail for advice yourself, click here to send her a letter. Happy venting!

Now, to the main event.

→ I stepped out: After the U.S. struck an alleged Venezuelan drug boat, two survivors clung to the wreckage and we struck it again. Gruesome stuff. And maybe illegal? Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says he wasn’t there for that part. Speaking to reporters this week, Pete said he “didn’t stick around” to watch them click “bomb” on the supposed drug couriers holding on for dear life that night. His underlings “made the right call” but also, it was “the fog of war.” And: He wasn’t in the room? You’re watching a livestream video of the major military action our country’s engaged in right now and you step out after the first big boom? Was he at least watching it on the Hulu app on his phone in the car? How many other random drone bombs did we drop that night? Actually, don’t answer that.

Meanwhile, Trump is giving himself his own Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, the United States Institute of Peace, which had no particular president attached to it, has been renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. I mean, he did do Middle East peace, and Obama was given a Nobel Peace Prize without doing any peace, really. So I’ll call it a draw.

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I might like to make fun of everything, sure. I might enjoy a little mockery, a little sarcasm. But once a year it’s good to put down the barbs and be grateful. So I’ll start with a couple thoughts. But mostly this post is for the comments section: Please share with everyone what you’re thankful for. Because as I’m avoiding chores on Friday, I’d love to…

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