It’s Tuesday, May 5. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Suzy Weiss and Elliot Ackerman debrief the best and worst dressed at last night’s Met Gala. Mene Ukueberuwa on the political virtue-signaling that killed Spirit Airlines. Josh Code has the exclusive report on a new class-action lawsuit taking on three of America’s biggest marijuana companies. And much more.
But first: Madeleine Kearns meets the free speech warrior of the Trump administration.
Does it matter to America if Europe backslides into soft authoritarianism?
I’ve reported extensively for The Free Press on censorship in Europe; for example, how anti-abortion volunteers in Scotland have been arrested and convicted for silently praying outside abortion clinics. Stories like these have provoked an unusually aggressive stance from the Trump administration, which has fiercely criticized democratic allies whose free speech standards appear to be slipping.
On the front lines of that fight is Sarah Rogers. Her official title is under secretary of state for public diplomacy, but she’s been nicknamed “America’s free-speech czar” for her viral criticism of European censorship. Today, she exclusively shared the State Department’s new Public Diplomacy Strategic Plan with The Free Press, which identifies “digital freedom”—encompassing online free speech—as a strategic goal for the very first time.
I sat down with Rogers to find out what this all means—and why she thinks it’s so important that Americans care about speech crackdowns an ocean away.
And threats to free speech aren’t only occurring abroad. Last September, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University. Months later, that same school canceled a planned commencement speech by best-selling author Sharon McMahon, after her posts condemning Kirk’s murder and criticizing some of his views provoked backlash and threats.
It’s an episode that captures some of the greatest tensions in the free speech debate, which is why we invited Sharon to share her story.
—Madeleine Kearns
When it comes to the demise of Spirit Airlines, hindsight is 20/20. But policy wasn’t the only factor behind the budget airline’s collapse this weekend, writes Mene Ukueberuwa. Fuel costs and inflation may have squeezed Spirit’s razor-thin margins for years, but what really killed it was the Biden Justice Department’s 2024 decision to block its merger with JetBlue. This is what happens, Mene argues, when anti-corporate virtue-signaling replaces sensible antitrust regulation.
Is Big Marijuana the new Big Tobacco? A landmark class-action lawsuit filed Monday in Illinois federal court is betting on it. The suit, reported on exclusively by Josh Code, could eventually include millions of plaintiffs across 12 states. It alleges that three of America’s largest cannabis companies marketed their products as medicine for anxiety, depression, and PTSD while knowing the science didn’t support those claims. The case gets at the core claim of the marijuana legalization movement: that cannabis is medicine, not merely a drug.
Dating apps aren’t going anywhere—so you may as well learn to use them well. Arthur Brooks breaks down new research on who’s actually swiping, and why those with “dark” traits like narcissism and dishonesty are overrepresented online (even though they’re not anywhere else). Read his piece to understand how to spot these people, avoid them, and ultimately use the apps to find your soulmate.
Few literary giants understood the psychology of young terrorists better than Fyodor Dostoevsky—a man who lived it himself as a member of Russia’s radical Petrashevsky Circle. Today, as highly educated suspected terrorists like Luigi Mangione and Cole Allen dominate the headlines, Dostoevsky scholar Gary Saul Morson writes about how the author understood something 150 years ago that we’re still struggling to grasp: what it means to live through “a period of fashionable terrorism”—and what we can do about it.
Where else can you find Kim Kardashian in a bronze breastplate and Madonna looking like a human circus tent? This year’s Met Gala, of course. Don’t miss Suzy Weiss and Elliot Ackerman on the fashionistas and fashion victims of last night’s event.
More From The Free Press
The News
The Supreme Court temporarily restored nationwide access yesterday to mifepristone—a pill that accounts for the majority of abortions in the United States. The original case was brought by anti-abortion doctors and medical groups who argued the FDA had cut corners when it expanded access to the pill.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will sit down with Pope Leo XIV in Rome this week—the first high-level meeting between the Trump administration and the newly elected pontiff. (For more on the tensions between Rome and D.C., read Mattia Ferraresi’s piece, “Why the Vatican and the White House Are on the Outs.”)
Three passengers have died and several more are ill following an apparent hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa. Hantavirus is rare, highly fatal, and typically spread through contact with infected rodents—making a shipboard outbreak unusual and alarming to health officials, who are investigating the source.
Ryan Cohen’s GameStop wants to buy eBay, a company roughly four times its size. GameStop accumulated a large cash reserve during the 2021 meme-stock frenzy, when retail investors on Reddit’s WallStreetBets drove the stock price up more than 1,000 percent in a matter of days.
San Francisco has a new celebrity: a colossal sea lion nicknamed Chonkers, who has taken up residence at Pier 39 and tips the scales somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 pounds—roughly two to three times the size of his neighbors.
Britney Spears has resolved her DUI case by pleading guilty to a “wet reckless”—a reduced charge of reckless driving involving alcohol—and is avoiding jail time. The plea is common in cases where defendants have no DUI history and demonstrate genuine motivation to seek treatment.
A 33-year-old German citizen drove into a crowd in the city of Leipzig on Monday, killing two people and wounding two others. The driver was arrested at the scene. German authorities are investigating the attack; no motive has been publicly confirmed.
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have reached a settlement in their high-profile legal dispute, which stemmed from the promotion of their 2024 movie It Ends with Us, and included accusations of sexual harassment and a coordinated smear campaign. (For more on the spat, read Kat Rosenfield’s essay “Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and the Art of the Smear.”)
Exactly - everyone knows the motive and everyone knows the solution. DT knows too - he closed the border. Germany? Are you paying attention?
Welcome back, Maddie Kearns!