It’s Friday, May 15. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Maya Sulkin visits a school without teachers. Aaron MacLean reveals the American academic Xi Jinping loves to cite. Charles Lane explains what everyone gets wrong about illegal immigrants and crime. River Page tells the story of the racist streamer who allegedly shot someone in broad daylight. And much more.
But first: an update on Pastor Ezra Jin.
Today in China, Donald Trump told reporters that Xi said he is giving “very serious consideration” to the release of Pastor Jin. No reporter has been following this case more closely than Frannie Block. Her long read on this case, with exclusive details on Jin’s brave fight to worship freely, is the most important story we have published this week. Read Frannie’s deep dive into Beijing’s war on Christianity—and say a prayer for Ezra Jin.
Next: Maya Sulkin visits a school where there are no teachers, the academic day lasts two hours, and a perfect test score earns kids $100. Is this the future of education?
How to prepare kids for the Age of AI? One place with a radical answer to that question is Alpha School in San Francisco, where the children of the city’s tech elite are taught to the tune of $75,000. I visited it recently, and it is unlike any school I have ever seen.
It’s a place where kids are given most of the day to work on their own projects, and where good work is rewarded with cash. It sounds like a tech-bro fever dream, and critics say it is gamifying education in a way that misunderstands how learning actually happens. But could it work? To find out, I spoke to students, parents, guides, and critics. Read my dispatch on this experiment in education for the automated age:
—Maya Sulkin
In recent years, a popular theory about U.S.-China relations has taken hold. It’s called the Thucydides Trap, named for the ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, and it’s the idea that when a great power is challenged by an upstart, war between them is all but inevitable. One of its adherents is the president of China himself, Xi Jinping, who brought it up in his meeting with Trump this week. The problem, according to Aaron MacLean: It’s a silly idea. Read his piece on what’s wrong with the theory—and why it’s being wielded as propaganda by Beijing.
Over the past year, Joanna Stern set out to weave “artificial intelligence into every corner of my existence” and see what would happen. She read AI-generated books, cooked AI-generated recipes, and spoke to an AI therapist. But how far could she take it? Could AI substitute for a human romantic partner? There was only one way to find out. Read her story of what happened when she tried to take a robotic lover.
Dalton Eatherly, a 28-year-old livestreamer who goes by the moniker Chud the Builder online, rose to internet virality with a very specific, very unpleasant niche: taunting black people on camera in the greater Nashville, Tennessee, area, including with the N-word. His fans call him a free speech hero, and pushed him to escalate his content even further: In a recent X post, Eatherly bragged that the “Series finale is a dead chimp on the pavement.” He was just arrested for allegedly shooting someone. This is a dark saga that says a lot (none of it good) about our internet-driven culture. Read River Page’s latest to understand what gave rise to the proudly racist streamer, and how the darkest corners of the internet are increasingly spilling into real life.
Stephanie Minter, a 41-year-old single mother, was waiting at a bus stop in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairfax County, Virginia, when Abdul Jalloh, an illegal immigrant with a long criminal record, approached and allegedly slashed her to death in February. The case immediately drew local outrage, with many pointing fingers at the progressive prosecutor and sheriff’s lenient immigration enforcement policies. On Thursday, that battle finally reached Capitol Hill, where the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to highlight their stories. Chuck Lane was listening in—and today, he explains how the testimony he heard reveals what both sides get wrong in the immigration debate.
Israel vs. ‘The New York Times’
New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof’s incendiary article this week alleging that Israeli security officers systematically subject Palestinian prisoners to horrific sexual assaults has earned plenty of pushback and criticism, including in our pages. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone so far as to threaten Kristof and the Times with a libel suit. But would Netanyahu’s case have a chance in an American courtroom? Jed Rubenfeld weighs in with his verdict, and explains why such a suit would go nowhere.
And for an in-depth look at how such extraordinary claims make it into The New York Times, check out this invaluable conversation between Call Me Back podcast host Dan Senor and our columnist Matti Friedman. Matti, a veteran Middle East correspondent, knows quite a bit about the propaganda apparatus that routinely pushes false or unverifiable claims about Israel, and examines how institutions like the Times can get duped by activists. “In the world of disinformation and social media, these institutions could have been islands of sanity,” he tells Dan. “Instead, my colleagues decided that they didn’t want to cover the circus—they wanted to be in it.” Read a transcript of their conversation here.
EDITORS’ PICKS
As Trump’s visit to China comes to a close today, we’ll see what—if anything—it accomplished. He had plenty to talk about with Chairman Xi, from AI to trade deals to flash points like Iran and Ukraine. But looming over everything, as Niall Ferguson noted in his must-read analysis of the relationship between the two superpowers, is Taiwan. Are China and the U.S. fated to fight over Taiwan? Read Niall’s piece on what might just be the most important question in the world right now.
On a much lighter note, HBO’s Euphoria is back after a long absence, which means co-star Sydney Sweeney is, once again, the subject of much debate. The new season features her character working as an OnlyFans model, which has ignited debate about whether profiting off her body is an act of empowerment, or a symbol of the degradation of women worldwide. Sweeney is no stranger to such battles, and if her behavior on- or off-screen makes you uncomfortable, argues Suzy Weiss, that’s entirely the point. She’s a modern-day Helen of Troy, with a body that launches a thousand takes. But the only take you need, whether you’ve been following Sweeney’s career or not, is of course Suzy’s. Read it here:
In other TV-star news, Los Angeles mayoral candidate and erstwhile reality show villain Spencer Pratt somehow seems like he just might be the first Republican mayor of Los Angeles in 25 years. The odds of him replacing incumbent Karen Bass remain slim, but he’s rising in the polls, delivering memorable debate performances, and using his entertainment chops to create viral ad after viral ad. So what can we make of Pratt’s unlikely rise? Peter Savodnik has the answer: “The Meaning of Spencer Pratt, which sounds like a short story by Oscar Wilde, is not at all ideological. It is not symptomatic of a red wave. It is about tens or even hundreds of thousands of voters waking up from their stupor and demanding to know what the hell happened to their city.” Read Peter’s masterful dispatch here:
And finally, we bring you another story of institutional failure—this time from the halls of academia. Four years ago, Harvard University committed $100 million to what it called the “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative,” an excavation of its historical involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Harvard wasn’t the only school to launch this kind of project; but the size of its investment was extraordinary. And perhaps just as spectacular was its failure, writes Novi Zhukovsky. In a sweeping investigation, Novi uncovered “a cascade of institutional embarrassments,” and exposed them all in The Free Press this week.
Like it or not, sex sells. Beauty and sex appeal often go hand in hand, but not always. I don't think Sydney Sweeney is as beautiful as many make her out to be, but she is without a doubt, as sexy as any woman can be. Mae West said, "When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better." Mix that with talent and she would be a fool not to capitalize on it while she still can.
"There is no evidence that immigrants, legal or illegal, increase aggregate crime rates..."
So?