The Free Press
It’s Thursday, March 27. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: the runners and riders in the New York mayoral contest; the editors weigh in on Signalgate; and, should the postal service be DOGE’d? All that and more coming up.
But first: Play ball!
It’s Opening Day, baseball is back, and The Free Press is going to the ballpark. (Not literally: Bari-approved yard time is from 4:00 to 4:15 p.m. on Mondays, and today is Thursday.) But we’re bringing you two baseball-themed offerings.
In the first, my colleagues Joe Nocera and Will Rahn settle a newsroom argument with this week’s installment of Free Press Fight Club. The question is a simple one: Does baseball suck?
Now, I am a biased judge here. Cricket is my first sporting love: I am from the UK, as you’ll realize if you’re enjoying the slightly unsettling AI version of my voice reading this piece. (A subscriber perk! Sign up today!) But I fell hard for baseball when I moved to Washington, D.C. The summer I arrived, in 2019, the hometown team went on a miraculous run all the way to a World Series win.
Unfortunately, after that they sold their stars and they’ve now sucked for almost half a decade. And so, I have watched thousands of hours of inconsequential baseball in recent years and have no regrets. So I’m wholeheartedly with Will in today’s Fight Club. His argument is, basically: “Baseball is like love.”
And yet, half the Free Press newsroom seems to think the game is too long, too boring, and too complicated to bother with. The leader of this uncultured mob is Joe, who argues that the game is no longer America’s pastime and doesn’t deserve to be, because it hasn’t moved with the times. “Today, attention spans are short, and things move quickly. Except baseball.”
So here is a contest between all that is righteous and good and the forces of darkness over baseball, and whether we should still find the time for it.
Batter up!
Click here to read “Fight Club: Does Baseball Suck?”
In our second baseball offering, Freddie deBoer dissects a nasty—and really very dumb—political fight over one of the greatest ever to play the game. Last week, the Pentagon removed a page on its website that highlights Jackie Robinson’s military service as part of an anti-DEI purge. It was later restored. But the move triggered an argument over whether Robinson was a “DEI hire.”
Robinson, who broke the color barrier in 1947, has nothing to do with DEI, Freddie writes. Black baseball players like Robinson “had to be better than other players to get a chance. That’s not affirmative action, and it’s not DEI hiring.”
“The terms you might use to refer to Robinson’s courageous efforts are desegregation or integration. Those are good words, proud words with proud histories.”
Read Freddie deBoer: “No, Jackie Robinson Was Not a DEI Hire.”
From America’s Pastime to America’s Postal Service
Baseball isn’t the only thing Free Pressers disagree on. There’s also a lot of debate in our office about whether to order McDonald’s or Sweetgreen for lunch, who to vote for, and—naturally—the United States Postal Service.
The USPS has attracted the ire of the current administration, because it loses, to quote the president, “massive amounts of money”—$9.5 billion in 2024 alone. Elon Musk is talking about privatizing it—and Charles Lane, who’s covered the woes of the USPS off and on for a decade, thinks that’s a great idea.
“This is the age of drones, driverless vehicles, and artificial intelligence,” he writes. Though the USPS’s problems are legion, there are plenty of solutions to be had—with “fresh capital, fresh ideas, and—crucially—freedom to innovate.”
Click here to read Chuck: “Is It Time to Privatize the USPS?”
Maybe Silicon Valley has big ideas for the USPS. But our reporter River Page can’t help thinking of his parents’ house, three miles down a “winding, pothole-dotted road” in rural East Texas. It’s so remote that Amazon and FedEx don’t deliver there. But the postwoman, who happens to be the preacher’s wife, persists in bringing them news of the outside world.
A USPS operating on market principles would not see the value in what she does. But, River argues, the postal service isn’t a business: “The USPS doesn’t have to be profitable; it just has to get my mom’s birthday gift to her house.”
Click here to read “The Post Office Doesn’t Exist to Make Money.”
Can Anyone Whip NYC Into Shape?
“Welcome to New York City, home to $11 milk, at least 45,000 migrants, and one of the highest municipal tax rates in the country,” begins Olivia Reingold’s latest piece for The Free Press. (Bari recently described what happened when she was reading on a bench close to our office: “I look up and within spitting distance there’s two homeless guys—one sort of half naked; there’s litter everywhere.”)
“Now, at least 11 mayoral hopefuls are claiming they could turn the city around.” A socialist, a disgraced incumbent, a handsy ex-governor, and a crime-fighting cat lover are all duking it out to run Gotham. Who has the edge?
Read Olivia’s definitive analysis: “Who Will Be the Next Mayor of New York City?”
Why Can’t White House Officials Just Admit They Made a Mistake?
All week, Washington has been obsessed with Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s extraordinary story about how he was accidentally added to a group chat with some of the most senior officials in the Trump administration—who began messaging one another detailed information about an air strike against the Houthis, as Goldberg looked on.
Not great! Rather than admit their mistake, apologize, and make sure not to do it again, administration officials are spinning hard and smearing Goldberg. By doing so, they have only made things worse. In a Free Press editorial today, we argue: “You don’t have to trust the legacy media to recognize the problem here, and find the White House’s line unconvincing.”
Read the full editorial: “The Group Chat from Hell.”
NPR Gets a Grilling on the Hill
The name of our colleague Uri Berliner came up a whopping 20 times in a House of Representatives hearing yesterday. The House DOGE subcommittee questioned the CEOs of NPR and PBS on whether their networks should have their public funding cut. Last April, Uri wrote a viral essay for The Free Press about how his then-employer, NPR, had lost its way by prioritizing a progressive agenda over the pursuit of the truth.
The piece loomed large over yesterday’s proceedings, which you can watch on C-SPAN, but here’s one moment that caught our eye:
And in case you missed it, earlier this week Uri explained in a follow-up piece for The Free Press why he thinks NPR’s best course of action would be to refuse federal funding. “The broadcaster needs to stop pretending it’s a network for all of America, and become the progressive institution it truly wants to be,” he wrote.
Senior national security officials who took part in the Signal group chat discussion of military plans were questioned before the House Intelligence Committee yesterday. Officials included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe. Most Republicans present either sidestepped the issue or ignored it, with Democrats pointing to newly released screenshots of the messages as evidence that officials “undoubtedly transmitted classified sensitive operational information,” and calling for the resignations of Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth and other top officials.
President Trump has announced 25 percent tariffs on imported cars and car parts. The stock market responded negatively to the news with a downturn. Almost half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. are foreign-made.
The legalization of assisted suicide in the UK has been delayed by two years, leading some to suspect that the law will never actually be passed, let alone operationalized into the medical system. The earliest that could occur is now 2029. One MP noted that “delaying implementation risks pushing it beyond the next election, where it could be abandoned altogether.” The bill, if passed, would allow terminally ill patients with fewer than six months to live to medically end their own lives. Read The Free Press’s Madeleine Kearns’ November 2024 report on whether the legislation offers Brits a compassionate death, or is just a way for the NHS to save money.
A federal appeals court upheld a block on the Trump administration deporting migrants using the Alien Enemies Act. Trump argued that he had broad authority to deport Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members given the national security ramifications, and that the gang was “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” The court retorted that the law is specifically reserved for wartime. Read Free Press contributor Jed Rubenfeld: Are the Venezuelan Deportations Unconstitutional?
As Wall Street hungers for the cash generated by loans and repayments, food delivery service DoorDash partnered with fintech firm Klarna to give users the option of paying for their burritos in installments. These so-called takeout bonds are the latest in a series of moves to turn normal commerce into cash for Wall Street.
Baseball should be reserved for primary school children. It's not a sport for adults.
How is it that other countries groove on "soccer," while Americans prefer football and baseball? It's because Americans want to sit for hours and focus on the beer and hot dogs, without having to look at the field too often. Other than basketball (which has been further speeded up by recent rule changes) Americans are interested in the players, not the game.