The Free Press: The Free Press Interviews

WATCH: Mamdani’s Allies Just Swept New York. What Comes Next?

Rafaela Siewert — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 22:59:54 GMT

On Tuesday night, the democratic socialists swept New York.

In a series of closely watched congressional primaries, all three candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeated more moderate rivals, including two incumbents. Their victories, which in heavily blue districts all but guarantee their election to the House of Representatives come November, …

Trump Blinks First in Iran, with Haviv Rettig Gur

Rafaela Siewert — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 19:02:49 GMT

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. The agreement set up a 60-day period of negotiations and covers the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, frozen funds, sanctions relief, Iranian oil exports, Lebanon, and more.

In the hours since, figures acr…

I’m Jewish. Can I Still Be a Democrat?

Rafaela Siewert — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 09:01:51 GMT

Over the past several years, American Jews have watched as prejudice against their community has risen precipitously. In 2025, a string of violent events began to unfold: In April, someone tried to set fire to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home. In May, two young Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were gunned down by a …

Karim Sadjadpour: A Strategic Defeat for Trump

Rafaela Siewert — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:33:17 GMT

“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” So wrote President Donald Trump on Truth Social on Sunday. After weeks of back-and-forth, the announcement seemed to herald the end to a bloody conflict that has lasted more than 100 days.

In the following hours, the public learned that the U.S. had reached a memorandum…

Has the U.S. Lost the Iran War?

Rafaela Siewert — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:22:27 GMT

On Sunday, the war with Iran reignited—yet again. Iran fired a ballistic missile barrage at Israel, a move that followed Israel’s targeting of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

President Trump urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike back. But Netanyahu did anyway—prompting observers everywhere to ask: Did Bibi just defy the president? Did the t…

Confessions of a Former Jihadist

Maya Sulkin — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:05:27 GMT

Mubin Shaikh grew up in Toronto, in a devout Muslim family, caught between two worlds he couldn’t reconcile. By day, he was a public school kid with non-Muslim friends, playing sports and going to parties. At night, he sat in Quran class, where he was beaten with a stick for mispronouncing Arabic words. The identity crisis that built slowly through his …

Confessions of a Former DEI Officer

Maya Sulkin — Wed, 27 May 2026 18:06:52 GMT

For the last five years, if you walked onto almost any American college campus, you would have found an office and staff dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). DEI in higher education grew out of civil rights–era efforts in the 1960s and ’70s as a well-meaning attempt to recruit more diverse faculty and students—but the movement exploded after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

DEI officers at higher education institutions tripled after July 2020. At the University of Michigan alone, DEI staff grew to 241 people at an annual cost of over $30 million.

And it wasn’t just universities. There was a moral panic about structural racism in nearly all of our most important institutions. What followed was a cultural shift that permeated into job interviews, mission statements, and email signatures across the Western world.

At face value, those missions—diversity, equity, inclusion—seemed pretty noble.

But what did it look like for those words to be implemented?

Critics would say: A new rubric emerged, where people’s value was determined by the historic suffering of their identity groups and not individual merit.

Eventually, the tide turned on DEI. In 2023, the Supreme Court ended race-based affirmative action. And when the second Donald Trump administration took office in January 2025, it moved aggressively against DEI. Today, over 300 colleges and universities have eliminated DEI requirements, closed DEI offices, or altered their DEI policies.

So what actually happened inside those offices? My guest today, Michael Yassa, was a professor of neuroscience at University of California, Irvine, when, in 2020, his university asked him to serve as associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at UC Irvine’s School of Biological Sciences.

In this episode of Confessions, Yassa and I discuss how DEI initiatives became performative and failed to realize their promise. We agreed on some things (that land acknowledgments are performative), but not everything, and that’s why I hope you’ll watch.

Yassa still believes in “good DEI,” though he tells me he wouldn’t use those words anymore. We debated the data on class versus race as a proxy in admissions, what DEI offices actually did, and whether there’s a need for DEI offices to be reformed rather than gutted.

WATCH: Haviv Rettig Gur and Coleman Hughes on the New Fight for Western Values

Maya Sulkin — Wed, 13 May 2026 21:33:00 GMT

In the nearly three years since Hamas’s attack on October 7, as the world has changed, I’ve often wondered what future there is for Jewish life in the West.

It doesn’t take much prompting to think about: One scroll on social media and you’re flooded with blood libel conspiracies. When I turn my phone off, in the hopes of touching some grass, I look up to…

The West Is on a Suicide Mission

Rafaela Siewert — Fri, 08 May 2026 09:01:58 GMT

This week, a few news stories caught my attention.

Former congresswoman Katie Porter said she supports taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants during the Democratic California governor’s candidate debate.

Closed-circuit television cameras helped catch two men who violently attacked a 77-year-old man in Seattle, undermining Mayor Katie Wilson’s c…

The Battle over Hormuz, the UAE, and Why Hamas and Hezbollah Endure

Rafaela Siewert — Tue, 05 May 2026 01:59:29 GMT

The Middle East remains in turmoil. Trump is waging “Project Freedom” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz; the war with Iran continues; the United Arab Emirates just dramatically departed from OPEC; Israel is still fighting on its northern border with Hezbollah; and Hamas’s grip on Gaza persists.

It can be hard to keep track of this—much less make sense of it…

Her Son Was Kidnapped and Killed by Hamas. This Is Her Story.

Rafaela Siewert — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:51 GMT

“There is nothing like the feeling of putting someone you carried for nine months inside of your body into the ground wrapped in white fabric. I was burying part of myself. Not just my DNA and my soul, but my essence, my identity, my Before, my mouth, my personality, my breath, my rest of my life. Me.”

These are the words of Rachel Goldberg-Polin in her new memoir, When We See You Again.

Many will recognize Rachel as the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was abducted by Hamas from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.

Hersh survived 328 days in captivity. And during that time, Rachel and her husband did everything in their power to bring him home—traveling to Davos, meeting with Pope Francis, addressing the UN, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, and making countless trips to Washington, D.C.

And still, after nearly a year in captivity, Hersh was murdered, shot six times at close range by Hamas. There was gunpowder in his hair when he was found.

“And after all of that torture, misery, agony, burning, searing, battering, and torment,” Rachel writes, “I now found out: that had been the good part. He had been alive. . . . Hersh let me prove how much I loved him by letting me go into the arena to battle without training or armor, just with my tiny fists of primal love. He gave me hope that I could save him by wrestling with the world. He kept breathing so that I would be motivated; he kept me motivated so that I would keep breathing. I was, and I still am.”

I sat down with Rachel to discuss her new book, a firsthand account of her fight to bring Hersh home and the grief that followed. In it, she reflects on why she is grateful for the days she spent fighting for her son; what it meant to grieve so publicly; what she learned from former hostage Or Levy, who met Hersh in the tunnels; and how her faith deepened after Hersh’s death.

This is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

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

A Conversation with Crypto Billionaire CZ—the Richest Former Inmate in U.S. History

Rafaela Siewert — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 09:02:44 GMT

Some of you may know the name Changpeng Zhao—or CZ, as he’s almost universally known in the tech and finance worlds—as crypto’s richest man. Forbes calculated his net worth as greater than $110 billion. That puts him ahead of Bill Gates, though CZ denies it.

He founded Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, transforming it from a start-up …

Elise Stefanik on the ‘Rotten’ Ivy League, Mayor Mamdani, and Why She’s Leaving Congress

Maya Sulkin — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 19:34:01 GMT

Two years ago, in the wake of burgeoning antisemitism after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, Elise Stefanik sat across from the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania and asked them a simple question: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct? Their non-answers…

Niall Ferguson: Why Iran Thinks It’s Winning

Rafaela Siewert — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 01:00:39 GMT

Late last night, the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. But the first day has already proven rocky: Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel all reported missile and drone attacks from Iran; Israel carried out major air strikes against Hezbollah, raising questions about whether Lebanon is included in the ceasefire; and Ira…

Trump Says We’re ‘Winning’ in Iran. It’s More Complicated.

Rafaela Siewert — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 02:19:58 GMT

On Wednesday night, President Trump delivered a 19-minute address on Iran. As expected, he stressed his accomplishments: “In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield. . . . Iran’s navy is gone. Their air force is in ruins. Their leaders, most of them. . . are now dead.” And he issu…

Confessions of a Former Scientologist

Maya Sulkin — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:02:00 GMT

Most people have heard of Scientology, but have a limited understanding of what it really is. To many, it just seems wacky–associated with Tom Cruise jumping on a couch, and science fiction books staged as religious texts. But in preparing for my conversation with Claire Headley, who was born into Scientology and rose to a high-ranking position under le…

He Founded Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Now He Wants to Destroy It.

Rafaela Siewert — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:02:11 GMT

This week, I sat down with one of the founders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Mohsen Sazegara has witnessed nearly every phase of the modern-day Iranian regime—from the inside. In 1978, at the age of just 23, he was one of Ruhollah Khomeini’s closest aides and advisers, helping plan the final stages of the Iranian Revolution from Khomeini’s co…

Meet Iran’s 21-Year-Old American Propagandist

Rafaela Siewert — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:59:24 GMT

“It is the greatest honor of my life to be visiting the Islamic Republic of Iran right now.”

These were the words of Calla Walsh, a 21-year-old American from Cambridge, Massachusetts, while standing in the IRGC Aerospace Exhibition in Tehran last July.

She continued: Iran “is under genocidal siege by the United States, by the Zionist entity. It is a great…

Konstantin Kisin: The Iran War, Europe’s Decline, and the Future of the West

Rafaela Siewert — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:01:39 GMT

Mass migration. Net-zero carbon goals. Expansive welfare states. Identity politics. Limited defense spending. Throughout the 2010s, all these policies became causes du jour across the European continent. It was an intellectual mood captured by three famous words from former German chancellor Angela Merkel: wir shaffen das, roughly meaning “we can handle…

The Booming Business of Penis Enlargement

Rafaela Siewert — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:10:21 GMT

The 2026 Winter Olympics brought us Alysa Liu, the Hughes brothers, and a scandal colloquially referred to as “Penisgate.” It emerged when some ski jumpers were accused of injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid—the same substance used in lip fillers—to expand their suits’ surface area and improve their jump distance. Sounds niche, right?

Well, it’s…