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It’s Wednesday, November 12. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Our pointless debt crisis. Enrollment in remedial math is surging at UC San Diego. Why Socrates was the first punk rocker. And more.
But first: Zohran Mamdani and the vicious libel cycle.
Over the last few years here at The Free Press, we’ve extensively covered the rising tide of antisemitism across the West. And to many, the triumph of Zohran Mamdani—a man who fashions himself an anti-Israel activist, and who has refused to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada”—in the New York mayor’s race last week was another data point in that trend. Others say Mamdani’s avowed “anti-Zionism” is not the same thing as anti-Jewish hate.
But for Adam Louis-Klein, this is the wrong frame.
In his latest essay, Adam looks at what he calls race libels—that is, “defamatory accusations leveled at Jews or other minorities.” They are not simply lies or misinformation, says Adam, but “social technologies” that “spread like wildfire, ignite moral certainty, and reshape institutions in their path. Their power does not come from proof, but from repetition, outrage, and a totalizing logic that shuts out contradiction.”
It is racism, pure and simple, Adam argues, because it “begins with a presumption of guilt.”
This piece helps you make sense of so much of the last two years—and offers a way out of the darkness. “This is not only a fight for truth,” writes Adam. “It is a fight against the belief that any people can be essentially evil.”
—Oliver Wiseman
Everyone knows that America has a debt problem—but most people don’t realize just how quickly it’s growing. With public debt now in excess of $38 trillion, James Hickman says that there is almost nothing to show for it. Now, after decades of wars, bailouts, and runaway spending, the U.S. must borrow trillions just to cover its promises. The bill is coming due.
Between 2020 and 2025, the number of freshmen at the University of California San Diego falling short of middle-school math standards grew nearly thirtyfold, reports Tanner Nau. Almost 10 percent of students now need remedial math that teaches basic first-grade concepts. The slide in math has also reached the Ivy League.
Nia Sioux was just 9 years old when she joined the original cast of Dance Moms, a reality show about kids who spent up to 60 hours a week filming and training for weekly dance competitions under their infamously harsh teacher. The show was entertaining but, as Sioux says in her new memoir, built on cruelty to children. She sits down with Rafaela Siewert to set the record straight.
On Breaking History
Punk music was born 50 years ago. But the first punk wasn’t Sid Vicious or Joe Strummer—or anyone from the 20th century. The roots of punk go back 2,400 years to Socrates, the father of philosophy. So argues Eli Lake in the latest episode of Breaking History. He explores why Socrates’ insistence on questioning everything wasn’t just punk rock; it also prevented his culture—and ours—from stagnating.
Click here to listen to Eli’s latest, or catch it wherever you get your podcasts.
A vote to reopen the government could come as early as this afternoon after the House Rules Committee advanced the Senate-approved funding package yesterday. Several progressive House Democrats have called on Senator Chuck Schumer to step down as minority leader, arguing that he gave in to Republicans and walked away essentially empty-handed.
A Utah judge has struck down a Republican redistricting plan, instead implementing a map that creates a solidly Democratic congressional district around Salt Lake City. The original plan would have created two competitive districts that favored Republicans. In four states, partisan redistricting efforts have yielded nine redrawn districts favorable to Republicans compared to five for Democrats solely in California.
In an interview on Fox News, President Trump hinted at what a Republican healthcare plan might look like. He proposed giving the health insurance subsidies at the heart of the government shutdown debate directly to consumers instead of insurers. “Call it Trumpcare! Call it whatever you want to call it, but—anything but Obamacare!” Trump said.
Internal government documents raised doubts about whether the Trump administration’s proposed multinational security force to keep the peace in Gaza can be deployed, Politico reported. The documents detailed issues such as legal and operational questions about the security force, Israeli hesitation to withdraw from Gaza, and the absence of a “legitimate Palestinian partner.”
During an immigration raid outside Chicago yesterday, federal agents pointed rifles at bystanders and tried to break down doors, arresting what the government called an “armed and barricaded subject.” One resident in the apartment complex where the raid occurred described the agents as holding “90 apartments hostage while they’re trying to get to one man.”
The United Kingdom will no longer share some intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it does not want to be complicit in American air strikes that it sees as illegal, CNN reported. Meanwhile, Venezuela, where officials believe many of the boats originated, is preparing a guerrilla response in the event of a U.S. attack.
Pixar released a teaser trailer for Toy Story 5, set for release next June. The 50-second clip shows the classic toy characters, including Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Mr. Potato Head, panicking at the arrival of Lilypad, a frog-shaped tablet device.
I am 77 years young senile demented and autism spectrum disordered. My wife is an American Socratic philosopher and graduate of the Chicago School when it was a real university not a factory turning out idiots and neoliberals. My wife's lab was next to David Suzuki and his drosophila melanogaster. My wife wrote science texts when the speed of light was a constant and superconductivity happened at temperatures approaching absolute zero. I was with her on the banks of Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories where she wrote her master's thesis on Community based Education. We spent a decade in Chicago's Woodlawn neighbourhood where the teachers can barely read and write and they are building a shrine to the American religion of neoliberalism because Hyde Park is neoliberal NIMBY and neoliberalism is neither New nor liberal it is feudalism writ large and David Brooks is a graduate of Chicago and does know Whigs from Tories. Edmund Burke was a Obama neoliberal not a conservative Tory like Samuel Johnson who wrote the Dictionary that Alice and I use to understand the American Constitution.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/johnson-taxation-no-tyranny-an-answer-to-the-resolutions-and-address-of-the-american-congress
https://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/chapters-script/through-the-looking-glass/chapter-6/
https://oxfordre.com/communication/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-176
I am a genius in abstract mathematics (logic) and I had a PhD vocabulary when they called my parents into school to tell them I was slothful and failing grade two. I am not a scholar . I am autism spectrum disordered and Kristi the National Socialist Gnome came to Stanstead home of the Haskell Library and Stanley Weir Memorial Park to tell us we would be assimilated in to the Great Borg Collective. Bernie Sanders is a hero and the Senior Senator on the southside of Stanstead. Stanstead Quebec is where Robert Stanley Weir wrote O Canada.
American citizen elected to put an end to American democracy last November and adopt the America First National Socialism of Charlie Lindbergh and Fred Trump when Woodie was dying of Huntington's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKSanwNEVmI&list=RDUKSanwNEVmI&start_radio=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh1QXhqXDbU&list=RDhh1QXhqXDbU&start_radio=1
You remind me of the old western adage….”the only good indian is a dead indian”. Typical of most racists that can only hate and will take great pride in finding all the reasons for that hate…whether or not they have any validity.