The Free Press
It’s been a heavy week. Anyone who cares about the health of this country will be alarmed by the murder—and the increasing popularity of the anti-American, anti-civilizational worldview of their alleged killer.
They were both Israeli Embassy staffers—one a Christian man from Jerusalem, the other a Jewish woman from Kansas—who were about to get engaged. Instead, on Wednesday night, they were gunned down by an anti-Israel fanatic just a mile away from the U.S. Capitol.
If you haven’t already, please read this piece by Yaron’s friend Mariam Wahba. It’s a beautiful remembrance of a young man who had always wanted to be a peacekeeper. “He moved through the world with care and thoughtfulness,” she writes, “as if everyone and everything he touched might break.”
While the murders were taking place, I was in New York speaking at another Jewish museum in memory of a teenager, Ari Halberstam, who was killed on the Brooklyn Bridge by an Islamist terrorist in 1994. It was a surreal and deeply emotional moment. You can read my reflections on the murders of Yaron and Sarah—and the environment in this country that led to it—here.
Or you can listen to it by pressing play on this video:
Earlier on Wednesday, The Free Press published an investigation into an antisemitic incident at Harvard shortly after Hamas’s October 7 massacre. It went viral at the time but was quickly forgotten, overtaken by the countless number of similar incidents on campus and across the country. It’s a story you have to read to see how far America’s most powerful and revered institutions will go to excuse antisemitism—and how the refusal to shut it down has transformed our culture into one increasingly less safe for Jews. Read the whole thing here.
Yaron and Sarah. They were beautiful. May their memory be a blessing.
The Never-Ending Biden Scandal
You know it’s been a rough week when questions like “Who was running the White House during Joe Biden’s long physical and mental decline?” get bumped to the second item. Yet here we are.
The book of the moment is the just-released Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Our Olly Wiseman read the book and examined its biggest scoops.
“The book provides jaw-dropping details about our slack-jawed former president and the people who tried—and failed—to deliver for him another four years in office, even though he was obviously incapable of doing the job,” he writes. “Yet these are bombshell revelations of a strange sort. They are vivid and enraging, but fundamentally unsurprising.” Read his piece here.
You know one person who wasn’t surprised by any of this? Former Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips, who effectively ended his political career to mount a hopeless primary challenge against Biden in 2024. The argument that drove his campaign, much mocked by his colleagues and the legacy press at the time, was that Biden would be unable to lead the country in a second term, and that nominating him again would effectively hand the White House back to President Trump.
Needless to say, Phillips has since been vindicated. And this week he wrote a piece for us explaining how the Democratic Party ignored his repeated warnings about Biden’s condition. It’s a true insider’s look at how one of the great scandals in American political history unfolded. Read it all here.
Tapper and Thompson will be discussing all this with me on Honestly next week. What should I ask them? Share your questions in the comments.
President Rahm Emanuel? He Thinks So.
Rahm Emanuel sure sounds like he’s running for president in 2028. So our own Peter Savodnik went to Chicago to check in with him.
How’s he doing?
“I don’t have prostate cancer,” he quipped. Sharp, funny, a little nasty, a little glib—and aimed directly at the proverbial elephant in the room. Classic Rahm Emanuel.
No one will deny that Emanuel—Obama’s chief of staff; the former mayor of Chicago—is a force of nature. But he is also a creature of the Democratic establishment. And the Democratic establishment has never come in for more deserved disdain and distrust.
So: Can he pull it off? Read Peter’s profile here.
Other Free Press Stories I Loved
Horrors of the world aside, I have to say I really loved so many of the pieces this week.
There’s River Page’s wonderful essay on whether A.I. chatbots can ever be your friend. There’s Austyn Jeffs on “Area 52,” also known as the Tonopah Test Range in southern Nevada, where veterans say they became sick due to their work there but have been denied compensation because what they did was so secret. There’s famed writer and longtime pilot James Fallows on why the heck American air travel suddenly feels so dangerous and what passengers need to know. There’s the great Yuval Levin on how Trump’s presidency has exposed that the U.S. is not the steady and reliable nation it once was.
And speaking of fantastic pieces, Joe Nocera introduced his “Ancient Wisdom” Sunday series on how to grow old well. It’s timeless (sorry) advice from people who have (unlike Joe, by his own admission) pulled off the trick of aging gracefully. Read the whole thing here.
We’re about to enter Memorial Day weekend, which means many of you will be getting some long-deserved rest. So, if you’re able, I hope you take in a ballgame, go to a cookout, be with family, kick your feet up, and just generally have a good time.
Life is both hard and, as we’re regularly reminded, short. Enjoy it. And also be on the lookout for a beautiful “Things Worth Remembering” on Sunday from our friend and Marine Corps veteran Elliot Ackerman.
See you Tuesday.
Bari, First thank you for the opportunity to submit a question for Honestly, here is my question.
It has been said the job of Vice President is to inquire as to the health of the President on a periodic basis, so why as the President became more and more isolated by his staff and unavailable to Cabinet secretaries why do the Original Sins authors think she did not fulfill her duty under the 25th Amendment?
There seems to be a conspiracy of silence surrounding President Biden’s cognitive decline. Key Democratic leaders—Vice President Kamala Harris, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Senator Schumer, Rep Clayton are not being mentioned or interviewed by the press. . They surely would have been aware of his condition. Why the silence?
Should Kamala Harris, Chuck Shummer, Rep Clayton and Nancy Pelosi be barred from running for political office.? President Obama should also be publically shamed.