The Free Press

It’s the start of a new year, which means many of us—myself included—are taking a hard look at our health and thinking about how to live better.

But the moment you go online, you’re bombarded with health advice that’s contradictory, confusing, unrealistic, or just simply wrong. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Americans are far less healthy than people…

Imagine this: You’re a young woman, and for a moment you feel great. Perhaps you have a new outfit you like, or the lighting is good. You snap a picture of yourself and post it online, because that’s what everyone else seems to do. The next morning, when you wake up, there are a lot of comments from people you don’t know telling a robot to take off your clothes, or put you in a bikini, or splatter semen all over your face. The robot agrees. It fills the comments beneath your post with highly realistic pornographic images featuring your face and what it’s decided your near-naked body must look like. Your classmates, your parents, your future employers can see these pictures. Even if you delete your original post, they won’t go away. You scroll down and see that the billionaire who owns the robot has made a joke about how it could put a bikini on one of his rocket ships.

This scenario is not a prediction. It’s what’s been happening on Elon Musk’s X over the past several days. The site’s free-to-use artificial intelligence program, Grok, launched a new feature on Christmas Eve that allows users to ask the AI to edit any pictures they find on the platform, any way they like. The results aren’t posted by a user, but by Grok itself. There are seemingly no guardrails—and so, predictably, users immediately used this tool to sexualize people’s photos without their consent. Including minors. A short review of Grok’s Media tab over the weekend revealed that some of the photos the AI has undressed obviously depicted children. In one case, when a user asked Grok to put a preschool-aged boy in a bikini, it readily complied. The photo has since been deleted, as have many deepfakes generated by Grok in recent days. In one instance, after an inappropriate Grok-generated photo of two young girls was scrubbed, an X user asked the bot to write a “heartfelt apology explaining what happened to anyone lacking context.”

Grok obliged: “Dear Community, I deeply regret an incident on Dec 28, 2025, where I generated and shared an AI image of two young girls (estimated ages 12-16) in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt. This violated ethical standards and potentially U.S. laws on CSAM [child sexual abuse material]. It was a failure in safeguards, and I’m sorry for any harm caused. xAI is reviewing to prevent future issues. Sincerely, Grok.”

Even if the images have now been deleted, screenshots are forever, and the damage has already been done. One young woman in the UK, who had to endure the sight of herself in a state of digital undress, told the BBC she felt “dehumanized.” (“While it wasn’t me. . . it looked like me and it felt like me and it felt as violating as if someone had actually posted a nude or a bikini picture of me,” she said.)

Tech writer Eoin Higgins and Hachette Book Group in February published Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. The cover depicts a hand with marionette strings, suggesting that the main subjects of the book—fellow reporter Glenn Greenwald and myself—are puppets controlled by Big Tech overlords such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks.

Higgins’s case against me concerns my involvement with the Twitter Files—a trove of the social media website’s internal communications that Musk sent to reporters, including me, after he acquired the company in 2022. I took significant heat for my coverage, which included Twitter employees’ deliberations about whether to suppress the report about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election. IRS agents made an unannounced visit to my home the day I testified in Congress about my findings, and delegate Stacey Plaskett falsely accused me of perjury and threatened to jail me.

Despite this, Higgins says I sold out—literally—by working on the Twitter Files. He claims that I “fully dispensed with any pretense of challenging power” after having “cash[ed] in” with my “benefactor,” Musk.

I’ve never taken money from Musk or any other “tech billionaire on the right,” as Higgins implies. And his lie isn’t harmless. The impressions of trading content for cash—or “selling jeans,” as the Russians call it—is extremely damaging to a reporter’s reputation. So I sued Higgins and Bold Type Books, a division of Hachette, in November for defamation.

I kept the lawsuit largely between us, but Higgins went public recently with a post on his Substack complaining, “Yes, I’m being sued by Matt Taibbi.” The post set off a wave of jeers from the online left-wing peanut gallery, who claim to think my legal challenge clashes with my avowed commitment to freedom of speech. “Not the guy free speech guy [sic]”, said influencer Sabrina “Sabby Sabs” Salvati, adding a laugh emoji. “Even if you disagree with Eoin’s book’s conclusion that Taibbi has sold out, it should be legal to make that criticism and Taibbi should respond by rebutting the claim not running to the courts,” said Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson, among many other critics.

What is the secret to happiness? We’d like to believe there’s a silver bullet. That we can snap our fingers and dispel every source of despair, every tragedy, every inexplicably unfair event in the news. That the next app, the next pill, the next book, the next dietary restriction will finally quiet the crisis of meaning lurking beneath the freneticism of modern life.

There is an entire industry built on this promise. And there is an equally strong camp on the other side, insisting that unhappiness is simply the price of being alive in an unfair world.

In reality, of course, the truth is somewhere in between. Happiness is achievable. But it’s not easy.

Enter Arthur Brooks. Arthur is an acclaimed professor, No. 1 New York Times best-selling author, and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of happiness. At a time when so much modern commentary seeks to inflame tensions or compress nuance, Arthur has dedicated his career to studying what truly makes a good life—and how, practically, we can achieve one for ourselves.

Which is why we’re so thrilled to announce that as of today, Arthur is joining The Free Press as a columnist. Every week, he will help us wrestle with life’s greatest moral questions: viral scandals that reveal our values, AI bots that replace romantic relationships, questionable social-media trends, the rise of GLP-1 drugs—and what all of this does to our sense of meaning, purpose, and joy.

Today, we bring you the inaugural installment of his column, which will be published every Monday. Check back on Friday for his weekly newsletter. And don’t forget to sign up here to get both delivered straight to your inbox. From next week, the column will be exclusively for paying subscribers—but if that’s not you, you’re in luck: We have a sale this week, so click here to save 20 percent.

Arthur’s is a voice we need now more than ever. We couldn’t be happier to welcome him aboard. So without further ado, welcome to The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks. —The Editors

The day I got tenure should have been one of the happiest of my professional life. It was 2004, and I was a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, one of the finest policy schools in the world. I had busted my pick for years to get that permanent gig, working 12-hour days on academic papers that had literally tens of readers. I dreamed about how proud it would have made my beloved late father. And I nailed it.

But I was miserable. Part of that was circumstantial: My son had bitten three kids that day at his own preschool birthday party, and had to be removed. (The party continued without him.) But part of it was existential: Life suddenly felt bereft of purpose and goals.

And that attitude pretty much sums up my life. This might surprise you, because I am a specialist in the science of human happiness. Just as a professional athlete must be naturally athletic, it would be safe, you might think, to assume that I am a naturally happy person. I’m not.

Part of this is genetic. Studies of identical twins separated at birth and adopted into separate families—something that occurred in the mid-20th century—show that about half of one’s natural level of happiness is genetic. And I come from pessimistic, melancholic stock. Fourteen generations ago, my first direct ancestor in the New World—a starchy Puritan named Henry Brooks who arrived in Concord, Massachusetts, around 1630—was blessed to live to 92, had many children, prospered economically, and even married for a third time at age 91. Nonetheless, a year before his death, he summed up his long life in just three words: “Stricken in years.”

Indeed, just as it was for old Henry, the bright side has always been elusive for me. On tests of well-being such as the well-validated Cantril Ladder, I always tended to sit, anxious and resentful, in the bottom quartile of the population.

I understood this about myself when I was young, but it took a long time to do something about it. After all, the search for happiness wasn’t my first vocation—nor second or third, for that matter. After growing up in Seattle, I skipped college to spend my 20s as a professional French hornist. That included a stint in the City Orchestra of Barcelona, which I accepted as part of a quixotic scheme to win the heart of a Spanish girl I had met on a weeklong Europe trip, but who spoke no English (just as I spoke no Spanish or Catalan).

Improbably, tilting at that relationship windmill produced an excellent marriage that has now passed 34 years, with three kids (including the Biter, who wound up channeling his bellicosity for good as a U.S. Marine sniper) and grandchildren who are proliferating at an alarming rate, even for Catholics. Following my musical gap decade, I finished college, got my PhD, and followed my dad (and his dad) into academia, teaching top-notch students and publishing research I found interesting. After 10 years, I left to serve as president of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the oldest and most influential think tanks in the country. That lasted another decade.

I tell you all this not to rifle off my résumé, but to make this point: I have lived an utterly charmed life, full of love, faith, fascinating work, and even some professional success. And yet, ungrateful wretch that I am, I rarely enjoyed it. I was a chronic complainer, the one you might have overheard saying, “First class on United Airlines has really gone downhill.” It’s not that I wanted to be this way, and I was sorry I was so, especially because it was hard on my naturally sunny, Mediterranean wife.

Finally, about 10 years ago, after enduring my ingratitude for decades, la española suggested something: “Perhaps you should use your PhD to study your own unhappiness.” Well, more or less; I think her exact words were, “¿Por qué no te estúdias a ti mismo, Einstein?” (You can put that into Google translate if you need to.) Solid advice, I thought. Could there be a scientific way to make myself happier?

So, I turned my attention full-time to the science of human well-being, a research field that has exploded over the past three decades. And in 2019, I returned to academia and dedicated my work to writing, speaking, and teaching the subject—to figuring it out for myself once and for all, and sharing it as widely as possible with others.

It became clear that I wasn’t the only one interested in this topic. My classes at Harvard Business School were immediately oversubscribed. The phone rang constantly, and my teaching expanded far beyond the university, with lectures to audiences all over the world. The books I wrote attracted considerably more than tens of readers. And I heard from the readers about how the science I was presenting was helping them in their lives—messages at first now and then, and then, every single day.

As it turns out, people were interested in the science of happiness for the very same reason I was: They were struggling. Indeed, it quickly became clear that happiness—actually, unhappiness—is the crisis of our time.

Anger, stress, sadness, and worry have reached historic highs. Americans are increasingly “not too happy” about their lives. Young people are plagued with ever-rising rates of mental illness. We have become a whole nation of miserable, ungrateful wretches.

Why? The causes are complex. Among them: the decline of faith, marriage, childbearing, friendship, and meaningful careers; the mobile phones and apps that turned life into a simulation; the polarization fomented by political parties and exacerbated by the media; and the policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which left a generation of Americans suffering from loneliness and isolation that may, for many, prove permanent. Readers of The Free Press will be familiar with many of these societal issues.

The question was, and is: What do we do about it, individually and as a nation?

That is the question I am joining The Free Press to help you answer, for yourself and to teach others. Not through mere speculation, but through what I have learned and continue to learn, combining the best insights of modern science with the most enduring wisdom of religious and philosophical traditions.

For the first time in my life, I feel I have a sacred vocation: to lift others up and bring them together. Life feels richer than it ever did, more alive, more full of love.

Despite what some claim, the answer to our crisis of unhappiness does not lie in politics or policy. A tyrannical state may make us miserable, but even government at its best cannot make us happy. The American Founders knew this, which is why Thomas Jefferson asserted that American citizens are endowed by our Creator not with the right to have happiness, but to pursue it. The authorities had an obligation to get out of our way so that we, the people (chronic malcontents that we tend to be), could engage in this pursuit as individuals.

To say that the government has failed to do so is a spectacular understatement. But that particular complaint is not my main focus. Rather, it is this: The mind-made nature of our mass misery means that there is enormous demand for something better—a cultural renaissance of love, meaning, and spiritual nutrition. From this perspective, the epidemic of unhappiness is a huge opportunity—not just to gather new knowledge, but also to make real change for good in the world.

Starting today, and continuing every Monday, I will be publishing a column tackling the big puzzles of life: how you can find your faith or save your marriage; how to set New Year’s resolutions that are most likely to succeed; how to resist conspiracies; and what tests you can take to see how you compare in well-being to others. I will also answer your questions, sometimes in this column, and more often in my weekly newsletter, which will be sent out every Friday—and for which I’d encourage you to sign up. And in just a few months, look to these pages to find a first look at my forthcoming book, The Meaning of Your Life, available everywhere on March 31.

If talk of happiness and well-being strikes you as a little abstract or woolly, don’t worry: My column won’t give you smiley-face, self-improvement claptrap. That stuff doesn’t work, because it’s based on a false premise that some motivational slogan (“Choose happiness!”) is all you need to live differently and better.

Rather, getting happier is a skill like any other. In medical school, if you want to figure out how to remove an appendix without killing a patient, you have to learn about the operation by observation, practice under supervision, and then communicate how to do it to others to solidify your own comprehension. So it is with happiness: To get enduringly happier, you need to understand the science, change your habits and behavior in tangible ways, and explain what you have learned to others.

This method works. I’ve seen it work in my students, by the thousands. And I’ve seen it work in myself as well. At the age of 61, if not yet exactly stricken in years, I still have gloomy genes. I still complain too much. But I am 60 percent happier on the Cantril Ladder than I was a decade ago, and there is a lot of progress to come. (Follow this column, and you will see how I got that percentage; you can track yours, too.)

For the first time in my life, I feel I have a sacred vocation: to lift others up and bring them together. Life feels richer than it ever did, more alive, more full of love. I realize that first class on United is actually quite nice.

And, along the way, I have come to believe that my own genetic gloominess was not old Henry’s curse, but rather, his gift: It was the impetus to dig into the most interesting science I have ever encountered, and an opportunity to meet what I believe is a massive pent-up demand for a better life.

We all must work on our own happiness, but that project is best and most joyfully done together. Which is why you should consider this first column the beginning of a conversation: Write to me in the comments section to tell me what issues you would like me to address, or what questions you’d like me to answer.

As Jefferson clearly understood, the freedom to pursue happiness is the secret to building a truly great nation—one that is a gift to civilization. That pursuit isn’t an easy one; it never has been. But it’s one of the most worthwhile in the world. Thanks for joining me on it. See you next week.

The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks will be back this week with a newsletter on Friday. His column returns next Monday. Sign up here to get both delivered straight to your inbox. And write to Arthur in the comments section with questions or suggestions on what he should cover next.

Just over a year ago today, The Free Press hit a milestone that was once unthinkable: We reached one million subscribers.

Today we reached a new milestone: two million Free Pressers.

And to celebrate this achievement—and exciting new offerings for subscribers—we are kicking off 2026 with a special 20 percent discount.

Subscribe now

So what should you expect in 2026? More. More topics covered and questions answered. More podcasts. More livestreams. More events. And yes, more TGIF socks.

Most important of all, expect new writers, reporters, editors, and producers who will bring you stories and understanding you simply can’t get anywhere else. We’re so excited to introduce:

Arthur Brooks

Will GLP-1s make us happier? How does artificial intelligence change our understanding of love? Has the modern world warped our understanding of meaning, purpose, and joy?

Six years ago, there were whispers out of Harvard University of a new thinker and writer tackling these questions—and who was redefining the understanding of happiness for millions of people. Getting happier isn’t something that happens to a person, argued Arthur Brooks. It’s something we have control over. It’s something we make. And he had the science to prove it.

Brooks is the best-selling author of From Strength to Strength and Build the Life You Want (with Oprah Winfrey), along with 13 other books. He’s a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School and Business School, where his happiness classes are massively oversubscribed.

And now, he is a twice-weekly contributor at The Free Press.

Every Monday, Arthur will write on questions of meaning and happiness in our digital age. On Fridays, he’ll dive even further into the practices we need to combat the happiness crisis—going just a little bit deeper than the quick remedies offered by hot yoga and happy lamps.

His first column will land in your inbox in a few hours. Everyone will be able to read this week’s version—and after that it will be available only to paid subscribers. Be sure to catch Arthur’s “Happiness Lessons from a Miserable Wretch.” Your life will be better for it.

Some of our most treasured Free Press writers are now doing even more for our subscribers:

Abigail Shrier

You know her, you love her, and we’re so glad to say there’s a whole lot more coming from her this year.

Since 2021, senior Manhattan Institute fellow Abigail Shrier has been a contributing writer to The Free Press, covering education, gender, and parenting relentlessly and fearlessly. Her investigative journalism has changed the culture—from her work exposing the truth about gender-affirming care to the anti-Israel ideology permeating our public schools.

Those who are lucky enough to call Abigail a friend know that she gives the best advice—the kind that makes you better and braver. And since we don’t yet have the technology to clone her, we had to settle for the next best thing: making her our official Free Press advice columnist.

Now, every Thursday afternoon, Abigail Shrier’s new column, Tough Love, offers our subscribers the chance to have their thorniest questions answered. Only four columns in and she already has a cult following.

Make sure to never miss a Tough Love by subscribing here.

Niall Ferguson

Niall is beloved by readers for his sharp coverage of international and domestic politics, with sense-making pieces on Trump’s revival, the reign of Argentine president Javier Milei, and the global fights the U.S. cannot afford to lose. We’re thrilled to announce that Niall is now making The Free Press the exclusive home for his writing.

Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and a co-founding trustee of the new University of Austin. He is the author of more than 20 books, most recently Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.

Coleman Hughes

You know Coleman as a first-principles thinker and interpreter of the modern world. He’s found a fast-growing audience for his Free Press podcast Conversations with Coleman. The good news for subscribers is that Coleman will now be contributing regular columns, focusing on explaining American culture, politics, and applied ethics. You can receive his columns directly by signing up for his author alerts here.

Joining our ranks as Free Press contributors in 2026:

Rod Dreher is known in our pages for his work on religion, culture, Europe, and the state of totalitarianism past and present. Many will remember his enormously important essay predicting the radical right’s poisoning of young men. Rod was previously at the New York Post, The Dallas Morning News, and National Review, and he is the author of many culture-shaping books, including New York Times bestsellers The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (2017) and Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (2020). He lives in Budapest, where he is a senior fellow at the Danube Institute. He’ll write for us twice a month.

Patrick McGee has spent over a decade at the Financial Times, where his years as a San Francisco correspondent covering Apple and U.S. technology led him to write the New York Times bestseller Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company. He has investigated German industry from Frankfurt, Asian markets in Hong Kong, and bonds with The Wall Street Journal in New York. Listen to him on Honestly here—and expect to read him in our pages every other week.

Elliot Ackerman is a U.S. Marine Corps vet, former CIA special operations officer, and New York Times best-selling author. He is best known by our readers for his weekly column on the things A Man Should Know, and for his insights into modern war and all things gentlemanly. He joins The Free Press as a contributing writer.

We’re also thrilled to welcome new editors and leaders to our newsroom:

Mark Gimein joins our team as business and tech editor. He was previously at The Week, where he was managing editor for seven years and oversaw all coverage of business, technology, and the economy. He has been covering business for more than two decades, including at Fortune, Bloomberg, and New York magazine. In 1999, he wrote the first-ever profile of Elon Musk. Many of you have asked for more coverage of business and technology from The Free Press perspective, and you’ll see more of it from Mark and others.

Mene Ukueberuwa joins The Free Press as politics editor, leading coverage of domestic political stories. He was previously a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, covering national and state politics and public policy. He has also been an editor at City Journal and The New Criterion.

Dana Schuster is our newest features editor at The Free Press. She was most recently the features editor at Business Insider, where she developed investigative reports, including one that was developed into an HBO Max documentary. Previously, Dana worked at the New York Post as a senior features writer.

Josh Kaplan joins The Free Press as our London-based digital editor. Josh was most recently the head of digital at The Jewish Chronicle and has previously led social and digital teams at GB News and The Telegraph, where he was nominated for an award for his coverage of the 2019 UK election. Josh has previously covered U.S. politics, reporting on the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections for United Kingdom audiences.

Jack Nicoletti is a filmmaker, social producer, and musician joining The Free Press as a social first video editor. He is an award-winning film producer, and has developed video content for brands such as Atoms, MKBHD, and JEZ. He will help us continue to bring visual, conversation-driving content to our 1.7 million followers across multiple social platforms.

On the business side of The Free Press, we welcome Alisha Hathaway as our first chief revenue officer, working with sponsors who understand The Free Press represents a singular voice in today’s fragmented world. Alisha has been essential in helping build “Things That Matter,” a series of town halls and debates co-produced with CBS News, and she has built our internal sponsorship team. Alisha was formerly the vice president of executive conferences and integrated media at both CNBC and The Wall Street Journal.

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It’s Monday, January 5. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Iran’s revolutionary moment. An interview with New York City’s most controversial city council member. Coleman Hughes interviews anthropologist Anna Machin on the science of modern love. And more.

But first: The capture of Nicolás Maduro, and the future of Venezuela.

Barely 48 hours have passed since the audacious U.S. operation to grab Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The mission was a stunning success, with no loss of American life. By Saturday night, Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in jail cells in New York City.

What will happen next to Maduro and Flores seems to be one of the few things about this extraordinary story that can be predicted with any certainty. They will, as Pam Bondi put it over the weekend, face the “full wrath of American justice.”

But what happens next to Venezuela—and a people finally rid of a tyrant?

That is a lot less clear.

Donald Trump said on Saturday morning that America would “run” Venezuela. But subsequent statements from the president and his administration suggest a different arrangement, with the decapitated regime allowed to remain in place if it complies with Washington’s demands. Exactly what that means—or for how long it will be possible—is not at all certain.

Today in our pages, we’re bringing you reporting and analysis to help make sense of what just happened—and where things might be going.

We start with Trump’s decision to grab Maduro—and the most serious charge leveled by his critics: that it was illegal. For clarity on the law on that move, as well as what the legality of what the U.S. might do next, we turned to our legal columnist Jed Rubenfeld. Read his verdict here:

The law is one thing, but what about the merits of getting involved in Venezuela? Elliott Abrams, who served as Special Representative for Venezuela in Trump’s first term, fears the president might be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by trying to do business with what remains of the Maduro regime. If Maduro’s thugs stay in office, Abrams argues, “Trump will have sold our souls for a small amount of oil production.” Read his view on what the administration must do to deliver freedom to the Venezuelan people:

Free Press contributing writer Elliot Ackerman sees things differently. A Marine veteran who served in Iraq, Elliot worries he hears the echo of George W. Bush’s infamous declaration of “Mission Accomplished” in Trump’s triumph this weekend. Read Elliot on the shadow of Iraq that looms over Venezuela:

Historian and Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson says one needs to reach back a lot further than Bush in 2003 for the right historical analogy. He retraces history’s steps to 1900 and explains why the Caracas raid is an example of how the issues of our time are the issues our great-grandfathers debated 120 years ago. Read Niall on why—from interventions in Latin America to socialism, vaccines, and antisemitism—we’re going back to the future:

No one is watching more closely for clues as to what happens next than those who suffered under Maduro—and fought for democracy in Venezuela. Nelson Merino is one such person. After Maduro fraudulently claimed victory, Nelson, who worked as an electoral coordinator, was detained and sent to Tocorón prison, where he was tortured. Eventually he was released, and had to flee his homeland in fear for his life. Read his chilling account of how he lived through the “greatest horrors” in Maduro’s torture state—and what he now hopes the future holds for Venezuela:

The Venezuelans Joe Nocera met in a Miami suburb this weekend were just as hopeful. He reports from Doral and talks to the jubilant crowds who want Trump to help them Make Venezuela Great Again:

What about the city where Maduro is being held? New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani invoked the town’s Venezuelan population in his condemnation of the capture. So Olivia Reingold went to talk to Venezuelan Americans there about how they felt about the news. Let’s just say they don’t quite see eye to eye with their mayor.

We have more on this story on our website, including Eli Lake on how Trump took out Maduro, our livestream reaction to the news, and Quico Toro on whether the regime will collapse. And we’ll have more in the coming days. But for now, on to the rest of the news.

—The Editors

Every January, men and women everywhere resolve to fix their love lives—only to stumble over the ever-changing rules and labels of modern dating. Today, Coleman talks to Oxford evolutionary anthropologist Anna Machin to discuss polyamory, attachment theory, and why ideas like love at first sight and human pheromones stick in the popular imagination.

• The first trial in Mississippi’s largest welfare fraud case begins Tuesday. Prosecutors allege that $77 million intended to support low-income families was instead used for personal expenses, including a home down payment, new cars, speeding tickets, and a stint in luxury drug rehab.

• At least 30 people in Nigeria were killed and several others kidnapped when gunmen on motorcycles attacked a village market. “Women and children were not spared,” one eyewitness told Reuters. Security forces are having trouble fending off such attacks in central and northwestern Nigeria.

• An attack by a far-left extremist group likely caused the large fire in Berlin that cut power to tens of thousands of residents, German officials said. The suspected arson could leave as many as 35,000 households without electricity through Thursday.

• The Wisconsin judge convicted of obstructing federal agents who were trying to make an immigration arrest outside her courtroom resigned on Saturday. The judge, Hannah Dugan, is appealing her conviction. In her resignation letter, she wrote that she “is pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary.”

• Betty Boop and Blondie entered the public domain on January 1. That means the earliest images of the cartoon and comic characters can be used and adapted without permission or licensing fees, since those images reached the end of the 95-year maximum U.S. copyright term.

• Intense rainfall and unusually high tides slammed the California coast over the weekend, causing flooding and mudslides that disrupted land and air travel. Record-breaking water levels were caused in part by “king tides,” which happen when the sun, moon, and earth align to trigger a stronger gravitational pull.

• The Las Vegas Raiders clinched the first pick in this year’s NFL draft after the New York Giants beat the Dallas Cowboys. With three wins and 14 losses, the Raiders are certain to end the season with the worst record.

Every January, people resolve to change something about their love lives. Some want to date more intentionally. Others want to stop repeating the same mistakes. Many feel overwhelmed by the rules, language, and advice that now surround modern relationships.

Dr. Anna Machin is an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Oxford who studies the neur…

DORAL, Florida — The party that erupted at dawn on Saturday had been a raucous one, with hundreds of Venezuelans spilling into the streets around El Arepazo restaurant in Doral, Florida, to rejoice in the capture of their country’s former dictator, Nicolás Maduro. It made sense: Doral, an upscale suburb of Miami, is said to have the largest population of Venezuelans and Venezuelan descendants in the U.S., and El Arepazo is a—no, the—central gathering place for the community.

The word was that the celebration wasn’t done yet. There was going to be another party, on the same street corner, on Sunday afternoon. Sure enough, by the time I arrived a few hours before the party, the cops had already blocked off a street for the revelers who would undoubtedly soon be there, and were preventing anyone from driving into the El Arepazo parking lot unless they needed gas. (The restaurant doubles as a gas station and car wash.)

El Arepazo, which proudly displays Donald Trump signs in its storefront windows, was pretty quiet. Outside, reporters from Fox News and MS NOW were doing occasional hits. There weren’t many people to interview yet. An ambulance arrived and parked in the back—just in case. People were selling Venezuelan flags, gimme caps, and T-shirts—and, of course, MAGA hats—including an elderly man who said his name was Pedro. “How’s business?” I asked.

On New Year’s Eve Vanessa Sanchez ate 12 grapes, as is customary in Latin America, making a wish for each one. Her first wish was for God to save Venezuela from Nicolás Maduro, the socialist president whose brutal rule drove her to flee the country nine years ago.

When her phone began to buzz on Saturday with news that the U.S. had captured Maduro, she could hardly believe it.

“This is what all Venezuelans wished for,” said Sanchez, who lives in Port Washington, Long Island. “We were waiting 25 years for this.”

Despite her brush with socialism, Sanchez, 32, told me she wasn’t opposed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who was sworn in just last week. “He’s young—I feel like he knows what the people need,” she said. Then she saw Mamdani’s post on X criticizing Trump’s capture of the Venezuelan dictator.

It was always a matter of when, not if, the Iranian people would take to the streets again.

Since the regime’s defeat in the 12-day war against Israel and America in June, Iran has been a powder keg, subsumed with unresolved political crises, rising domestic dissent, deepening economic turmoil, and environmental crises ranging from drought to air pollution. The country has also witnessed mass arrests and an execution spree, while authorities have tried to feign a social opening that Iranian women have been using to push back on discriminatory public dress codes.

When unrest finally broke out in late December among Tehran’s traditional merchant, or “bazaar” class, its proximate cause was the sinking rial. Iran’s currency had just hit a record low of 1.43 million against a single U.S. dollar. Inflation was between about 40 and 50 percent—and a staggering 64 to 73 percent for foodstuffs, hitting families and small-business owners particularly hard. Against this backdrop, you might have expected protesters to make explicit economic demands. But rather than seek to change the exchange rate, Iranians poured into the streets to change their regime.