It’s Tuesday, May 19. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: A harrowing new report on the full scope of Hamas’s sexual violence on October 7. Arthur Brooks on what’s making us miserable. Anduril president Christian Brose on what the Iran war has revealed about American power. And much more.
But first: Tyler Cowen on the ideology that dethroned wokeism—and why it’s scarier.
In 2022, Tyler Cowen wrote an influential essay arguing that wokeness had peaked. At the time, it was a controversial claim. The cancellations hadn’t exactly stopped. Corporate boards were still pushing DEI policies.
We asked Tyler to revisit his claim four years on. Did he call the turning of the tide at the right time? And what has followed the period now remembered as “peak woke”? In his column today, he dives into all of that, and comes to a disturbing conclusion for anyone who might have thought that the ebbing wokeness meant a return to more moderate politics.
Read Tyler on what replaced wokeness, and why—from billionaire taxes to a new culture of assassinations—the “social energies of the American left have moved away from the realm of speech and into plans for concrete action.”
—The Editors
Yesterday we published an important essay by federal judge Roy K. Altman. In it, he detailed the many faults in the controversial Nicholas Kristof op-ed in The New York Times alleging systemic sexual violence in Israeli prisons, and brought new details to light that cast doubt on some of Kristof’s most explosive claims. If you missed Judge Altman’s piece, read it here.
One of Judge Altman’s complaints about Kristof’s op-ed is the timing of its publication, just a day before a landmark report detailing the sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. The effect of Kristof’s column, whether deliberate or not, was to overshadow these important findings.
We invited the principal author of that report, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, to explain in our pages what she discovered in the two years she spent meticulously cataloging the full scope of that day’s atrocities and how the sexual violence committed “was not incidental nor borne of the chaos” of that day, but rather “was part of the plan.”
Arthur Brooks: The Saddest Countries All Speak English |
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The saddest segments of the world’s population have one big thing in common: They all speak English. Is it the smartphones? The algorithm? It’s not quite that simple, argues Arthur Brooks. Today, he digs into new data on world happiness, and explores why our Latin American and Asian counterparts are more content than we are. | | |
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Packing the Court Would Shred the Constitution |
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It’s the political gamble Democrats can’t quit—and the one voters keep rejecting. Court-packing has become a litmus test inside the party, even as it polls as a loser outside it. Jed Rubenfeld digs into why Democrats keep coming back to the pack, what Kamala Harris’s recent endorsement of it signals, and how the move could backfire ahead of the 2028 election. | | |
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Grading Operation Epic Fury, with Christian Brose |
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What has the Iran war revealed about American military power? In this episode of School of War, Aaron MacLean sits down with Christian Brose—president of Anduril Industries and one of the best positioned to answer that question. Listen to their conversation and hear Brose assess how the war has gone so far, where defense innovation is actually headed, and where it’s falling behind. | | |
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