It’s Monday, October 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: Helen Andrews on what the Cornell case reveals about the great feminization. Arthur Brooks says you’re chasing the wrong kind of happiness. The TikTok lawyer taking on Mamdani. And much more.
But first: The question El-Sayed won’t answer.
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is known for having a short fuse when speaking with reporters and TV hosts who pose questions he doesn’t want to answer. I got a taste of that myself during a press gaggle last week. I asked him whether he regrets saying during a private campaign strategy call earlier this year that “I just don’t want to comment” on the assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today” about his death.
Before I could even finish my question, he cut in to insist he is “just not interested in this dog and pony show” about leaked audio that is “not relevant to people’s lives,” even though he spends so much of his time on the stump talking about foreign policy related to Israel, AIPAC, and the Iran war. “Ask smart questions,” he admonished me.
Behind our exchange is a serious issue concerning El-Sayed’s reticence to engage with reporters’ foreign policy questions. It could make or break one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. Read my story on our testy back-and-forth, and the bigger picture in this crucial contest.
—Audrey Fahlberg
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THE NEWS
Houthi rebels hit Riyadh’s main airport again yesterday, a day after a strike on the same passenger terminal killed at least 12 people, including an American, and injured more than 300 in the deadliest attack on Saudi soil in over a decade. The Iran-backed group says it’s retaliating for a Saudi-led offensive against it in Yemen.
A gunman killed eight people, including two children and a pregnant woman, in a residential neighborhood of Erie, Pennsylvania, on Friday evening before apparently taking his own life. All but one of the victims were his relatives, and investigators have not yet identified a motive.
Pope Leo XIV announced Sunday that he will have surgery this week to remove a small lesion doctors found on his lung. The 71-year-old said it was caught at an early stage, and the Vatican expects his recovery to take about a week. He still plans to travel to South America in November.
President Trump said Friday that Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed to send millions of tons of diesel onto world markets in the coming months, with the U.S. temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian energy to allow it, as the price of diesel hovers above $6 a gallon amid the Iran war. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the move, saying any sanctions relief would only bankroll more Russian aggression.
Christa Pike has left the hospital and returned to the Nashville prison where she’s been held for three decades, her lawyers said Saturday, less than two weeks after she survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her. Pike is now walking with help and regaining use of her arms. Her attorneys are pressing the governor to commute her sentence to life in prison.
At least four people died and hundreds of thousands lost power after Hurricane Isaias tore into the Florida Panhandle, ripping roofs off homes and toppling trees throughout the region. The storm weakened quickly over land, but its remnants unleashed flash flooding as far as North Carolina over the weekend, and close to 390,000 customers in Florida and Alabama were in the dark as of Sunday.
