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About midway through the newest season of Fauda, the hit Israeli Netflix show, Palestinian terrorists are training for an attack when one of the trainees asks his superiors whether the sleeper cells within Israel will join the fight. The commanding officer looks to his own boss with a flash of doubt; the superior gives him a tentative nod. Yes, the trainees are told, terrorists within Israel will do their part as well.

That flash of doubt is either because the terrorist leader doesn’t actually expect much help from within Israel, or because he isn’t sure whether the trainee has a right to know the answer to that question. But the scene caught my attention because I’d been thinking about a slightly different aspect of the October 7 attacks and their aftermath: not whether terror cells within Israel would (or could) get involved, but how Israel’s Arab population defied Yahya Sinwar’s expectations that they would rise up and join the wanton destruction of their own country, the State of Israel.

Sinwar underestimated Arab Israelis. He also underestimated Israel’s resilience as a nation-state. There is great normalcy in what happened: A state’s citizens did not join a foreign invasion against their country.

For the longest time, Fauda was just a Netflix series about an Israeli counterterrorism unit, and even though it was compelling and smart, it was not especially important. It was an escape.

That was seasons 1 through 4, which aired from 2015 to early 2023.

Then, October 7, 2023, happened, and Fauda became something much bigger.

The fifth season, which came out earlier this month, opens two years after the Hamas attack on the Jewish state, and for the first six episodes, you don’t see much of the violence—just hints, fragments—but it’s ubiquitous nonetheless. Death presses in on everyone: their faces, their memories, the absences that fill up their lives. The dead loom larger than the living.

Doron Kavillio, the commander of the counterterrorism unit, has retreated to his grape farm, where he lives with his wife and kids. He is a broken soul attempting and mostly failing to repair himself. It’s unclear where the brokenness comes from—the end of season 4, in which the whole unit is nearly wiped out, or somewhere else? He cannot remember several hours from that day. The attack. The bodies. The kids. He seems to be floating.

Hello, and welcome back to another great week of disturbing news.

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→ Trump TV: Donald J. Trump has banned three large mainstream media outlets from the White House, a move that is likely unconstitutional and is extremely North Korea–coded. And which a judge promptly blocked. Here’s Trumpo, in his typical eloquent style:

Listen, as the woman married to the media villain of the decade, you think I like the mainstream press? I don’t. This week, 60 Minutes ratings are literally up over last year, and the media blasts out that they’re terrible. It’s annoying. But, you see, I’m not a tiny baby. We put on our big-girl pants and face the day. We save our rage for our Friday columns, and just barely. But Trump just cannot seem to find his husky khakis. And so he’s banning radical woke anti-American publications from the White House such as. . . Politico? This is a little like when Barack Obama banned mainstream media photographers from many of his events, allowing only White House staff photographers, thereby authorizing only those images that made him look heroic and hot. Understandable. But still: Such constant weakness from our commander-in-chiefs makes me miss the days of President Dick Cheney, a real man.

Trump held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for something or another several days after his media ban, but there was no audio because the remainder of the press pool had all dropped out in solidarity with their kin. So all we see is Trump, in a beautiful self-own, standing at a ribbon, shouting silently into the wind.

Not yet finished for the week, Trump then launched an official 24/7 White House YouTube channel called Trump TV, promoted like a 2007 TLC reality show.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m a little sick of 24/7 Trump TV. I’m just tired. I’m wondering if there’s anything else on. So much of our life has been this. The last season of Trump is just dragging on a bit. The formula is pretty repetitive. Hopefully the finale is as punchy as the early episodes.

→ Quotes of the week: “I am the code.” That’s Trumpo telling the (now former) White House ballroom architect to stop worrying so much about building safety codes. Note to self: Do not ever enter the White House ballroom. If you flush a toilet in there, the chandelier is going to crash down.

We all know dating is broken. Or at the very least, brutal. From endless swiping on dating apps to scrolling social media, modern courtship looks nothing like it used to—and our relationships, or lack thereof, are suffering for it.

But how do we get things back on track? Serena Kerrigan has gone on over 50 virtual first dates to find out—and she’s just w…

If America wants to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty, it needs to build more warships. China currently dominates global shipbuilding—producing vessels at a scale the United States can no longer match. Alex Wong, an executive at South Korean shipbuilding giant Hanwha Group and a former Trump administration national security adviser, thinks he has the solution…

“There’s a group to thank for August’s blockbuster jobs report: women.” That’s how CNBC opened its coverage of the latest employment numbers.

The data was clear: Women accounted for 158,000 of the 162,000 jobs added to the American economy in August—or 98 percent of the total. CNBC called it “the latest sign of the growing power of women in the labor market.”

You might expect me, a professional matchmaker, to look at those numbers and panic. After all, if women keep advancing economically while men fall behind, who exactly are all these successful women going to marry?

I hear some version of this question almost every day. Throughout my 19-years-long career, which has included running a successful matchmaking company, writing several books, and hosting a hit Netflix show, I have set up hundreds of marriages and spoken to thousands of single women. These women often tell me that they just want a man they can look up to. “I don’t need him to be rich,” they say, “but he has to be at least as successful as I am.” They go on to tell me that they are afraid they won’t respect a man if he makes less than she does.

Modern dating is making a lot of young singles feel defective. Almost all the advice out there starts with the same assumption: There is something wrong with you. Work out more. Earn more money. Heal your inner child. Looksmaxx. Optimize every inch of your face and body and life to finally be lovable. Become the best product on the market.

There’s big business behind this, too. Download more dating apps, then pay for premium. Take a course on upgrading your profile. Take another on your attachment style. Talk to a life coach. Invest in therapy. Try skin care routines, hair transplants, and cosmetic surgery. Of course, people have always worked on themselves to attract partners, but it’s beginning to feel as if love is for the best object, as if marriage is for whoever spends the most time marketing themselves. And if dating isn’t working out, well, you must be faulty somehow.

But is it always so personal? What if there’s nothing wrong with who you are, but something wrong with where you are?

The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) has launched a new interactive Marriage Map of where adults between the ages of 22 to 39 are getting married in the United States. It shows that young adults do face different odds depending on where they live. For example, among those who want to get married at a younger age, defined as 22 to 29, the highest marriage rates are in Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The lowest are in big coastal cities like New York City and Los Angeles, where marriage rates rise only later, among adults in their 30s.

The results of the midterm elections will send a signal to Washington—stick to the course set by President Donald Trump, or set a new direction. So far, the polls show moderate voters revolting against the White House’s direction on the Iran war, the economy, and immigration. If Democrats win big, Trump could lose support for his agenda.

Yet sometimes an urgent issue demands perseverance, even when the political heat is on. That’s what Douglas Murray argues about the need to reverse the trend of illegal immigration, which has transformed Western countries over the past decade. Douglas has warned about mass migration for more than a decade, beginning long before the issue came to dominate our politics. Today, he argues that politicians wise enough to see the problem must take the next step, and summon the courage to reverse it. —Mene Ukueberuwa

Can a country allow mass lawbreaking and retain its integrity? For almost any crime you can think of, the answer is no. No country would allow people to walk into another person’s house or let them drive on the wrong side of the road. Yet many politicians behave as if they have no choice when it comes to mass illegal immigration. It appears that even some Republicans are losing their will to deport illegal migrants and reverse the lawbreaking trend.

Their hesitation is understandable, since the public has little stomach for the reality of deportations, and the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have turned off many would-be supporters. A Gallup poll in June found that the share of Americans who support deportations has fallen to 39 percent from a recent high of 47 percent in 2024, while the share who oppose them has risen from 51 percent to 58 percent. On cue, Republican politicians are distancing themselves from the policy, going well beyond condemnations of the worst ICE excesses. Representative María Elvira Salazar became the face of this shift last week when she released an ad excoriating the president for detaining illegal migrants who “had no criminal record”—meaning those whose only crime was to cross the border in the first place.

It is a fact that reversing illegal migration is a logistically difficult and often unsightly business. Ten years ago, when I was researching my book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, I spoke with politicians across the Western world about the problem, which was already roiling global politics and seemed certain to get worse. One thing struck me: No matter how “right-wing,” “far-right,” or “populist” the politicians I spoke to were, almost none had thought much about how to actually reverse mass migration.

Dear Abigail,

I am the mother of an 18-year-old daughter who is about six years into her declaration of transgenderism. (I will spare you the background, but suffice it to say: pandemic, Discord chat rooms, peer group.) All this time, my husband and I have walked the tightrope of maintaining a loving relationship with her while maintaining strict boundaries. We fought with the school relentlessly about her name. We forced her to use her real name when she got a job, telling her it was linked to her bank account and doing otherwise would be too confusing. We told her we would only pay for her music lessons if she used her real name at the studio. We told her that if she wanted to use another name with her friends, that was fine: That’s what nicknames are for. For us, the line we did not want her to cross was asking adults to use another name, because it was not appropriate. (We know she broke this rule, but at least we tried.) And, of course, we prayed. We prayed this would resolve itself before adulthood.

This spring, she graduated high school. She has chosen a gap year at home (with us, imagine?) instead of college. Now, I am not sure what lines we are supposed to hold onto and which we can let go. We have been clear that, for this gap year and possibly beyond, she is welcome to stay home and we will financially support her, just as if she was off at school, as long as she holds down a job and has a plan. So far, she has held up her end of the bargain well: She has two paying jobs, plus a few irons in the fire related to her interest in music. (She plays gigs with a band, and is starting to intern as a student teacher giving lessons.)

Also, we continue to pay out-of-pocket for her “therapist” ($185 every other week). I put that in quotes because the therapist—an intelligent, progressive, married gay woman—intentionally let her license lapse so that she was no longer beholden to the guidelines of her profession, which dictate that therapists must unquestioningly affirm patients’ understandings of themselves. We chose and trust this woman, and if we stop paying for her, our daughter will likely find a harmful therapist, which concerns us.

She’s a good kid—driven, smart, and fierce in her beliefs. However, despite being visibly fine with us calling her by her real name and referring to her as our daughter at home, outside of the house she is increasingly using her other name (and pronouns). She is using it at her job and playing gigs in the area with her band. She is now using it at the music school where we used to pay for her lessons.

My daughter is a very progressive individual, and our family is very conservative. Her father, brother, and I attend Catholic Mass every Sunday. (I attend daily Mass myself.) Her brother is an altar server and attends a Catholic high school. We’re pro-life. We love America, fly a flag, and shoot off fireworks on the Fourth of July. My daughter makes signs in her bedroom, attends protests, and recently joined an anti-war organization. I’m not against her expressing herself (nor am I “pro-war”), but she takes every opportunity to show her disdain for our life choices. For example, during the cyclospora outbreak I was complaining about washing lettuce, and she said, “Well, you voted for this.” (My response was to ask, “I voted for diarrhea?” and laugh it off.) I am sure I should be lecturing her on respecting our views, but she’ll play her trump card, which is that we do not respect her truth as a transgender man. She holds all the cards.

And Abigail, I’m tired (and, frankly, my husband is losing his patience). I’ve spent the last six years fighting the establishment, holding my breath, walking on eggshells. I am still dancing around pronouns and avoiding using the “names” of any of her friends because they are all fake. I have surrendered her soul to the Lord, which has helped tremendously, but how does that translate to my daily life? Is it okay to . . . not care anymore? To just let her dig herself deeper into whatever hole she’s creating? The mom in me says: No, she’s only 18 and still very much a child who needs our help and our attempts to set boundaries. The human in me says: Ugh, go ahead and dig away until you uncover a natural consequence. And the human voice is getting louder. Help!

—Angela

Dear Angela,

Eight years ago, public health researcher Lisa Littman amassed evidence that peer contagion explained the sudden spike in trans identification among teen girls. In 2020, I helped bring her work to a large audience with my book Irreversible Damage. In the years since, the craze has received enormous attention. But one aspect of the phenomenon remains under explored: Why were girls from politically progressive families especially vulnerable to this destructive social contagion?

Maybe it’s because they lived in deep-blue school districts, where teachers, school counselors, and therapists were particularly enthusiastic about liberating girls from their feminine bodies. Maybe their parents felt so obligated to support anything “LGBTQ,” they failed to see the harm posed by “T” (medicalization) until it was too late. Maybe their insecurity over maintaining their progressive bona fides scrambled their defenses.

But there is something else, too. Progressive parents—many of them highly educated—were beholden to fashionable parenting theories that eschewed the thing kids most needed: parental authority. Not cold or unloving parenting. Just “these are my rules, and we’re not debating them” parenting. Conservatives were more comfortable with this sort of authority. Progressives, far less so.

It’s Thursday, September 24. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Bishop Robert Barron on the pioneering priest who could become America’s next saint. Masih Alinejad on the women who were blinded by the Iranian regime, then found their voice. Joe Nucci meets his AI therapist. All that and much more.

But first: The brawl over the most famous bar in America.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Three friends walk into a “Covid-cautious, gender-inclusive, anti-carceral, anti-profit lesbian bar.” It’s no joke. It’s an actual bar, specifically Last Ditch in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It’s also the subject of a viral article in The Boston Globe about a smear campaign by patrons who claim that the bar betrayed its mission and morals.

What was the bar’s crime? Relaxing its mask policy so that the queer ladies who come to Last Ditch to, um, drink can do so sans face coverings for one night a week. This is one of those stories that truly must be read to be believed. It includes a three-hour community meeting, accusations hurled by someone named Moss, and the phrase “WHITE THEY THEM TEARS.” To understand what it all means, you will need Katie Herzog, who delves deeply into Last Ditch in her podcast Blocked and Reported.

“When Last Ditch announced this policy change online,” Katie writes for us today, “you would have thought from the comments that they had lubed up their stripper pole with the blood of particularly cute baby seals.” Lately, I’m hearing that woke is over, since some champions of way-out-there progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are now waving off that era like it was just an embarrassing teenage phase. “Woke 1.0 was crazy,” AOC told ABC’s This Week last month.

Not so long ago, even using the word crazy might have been seen as ableist and an insensitive microaggression against the mentally ill. But what happened at Last Ditch shows that Woke 1.0 never ended in some parts of America. It just got crazier.

—Suzy Weiss

• Disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein was sentenced on Wednesday to 15 years in prison for his criminal sexual assault conviction last year. At the sentencing hearing, a former production assistant said that she “often felt like I was the one on trial.” Weinstein repeated his claim that he is innocent.

• Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian called Iranians “victims of terrorism” in a defiant address at the United Nations General Assembly. After seven months of war, Pezeshkian said that Iran was “ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations” but would never “bend the knee.”

• A federal judge seemed skeptical of the White House press ban during a hearing on Wednesday, but didn’t immediately strike down the ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. He said he would rule as soon as possible. In 2018, the same judge threw out the White House’s ban of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta.

• Only 26 percent of Americans said Trump was right to impose new tariffs on Canada last month, according to a Politico poll. Fifty-six percent of Americans and 83 percent of Canadians said the move was wrong. Canada responded to the tariffs with its own tariffs earlier this month.

• The son of Israel’s ambassador to the United States was in critical condition on Wednesday after a car-ramming attack in the West Bank denounced by his father as terrorism. Ambassador Yechiel Leiter said that his son Neria, who was serving as a reservist, “needs a miracle” to survive. Neria’s oldest brother also was a reservist when he was killed in Gaza in November 2023.

• “Packaged kratom” was found during the investigations of two University of Mississippi students who may have died as a result of drug overdoses. Kratom, an herbal drug with opioid-like effects, is banned in Oxford, Mississippi. Fraternities and sororities warned their members about cychlorphine, a synthetic opioid that isn’t detected in fentanyl test strips.