They were “kidnapping our loved ones and replac[ing] them with a bitter hollow shell of what they once were.”

This sounds like a line from the campy 1978 sci-fi horror flick Invasion of the Body Snatchers, about aliens from a dying planet that come to Earth and replace humans with clones that are devoid of their old personality.

But it’s not.

It’s actually a quote from a recent study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships about the QAnon conspiracy theory, which alleges that the governing elite is dominated by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic, deep-state pedophiles. Participants in the study described watching the theory take hold of their friends and family members, transforming them beyond recognition.

Perhaps this scenario sounds familiar. You too may know someone who started “doing his own research” on politics, science, or the economy—and then went down an internet rabbit hole of posts claiming that some event or phenomenon was plotted by a clandestine group of powerful people or organizations, usually with sinister or malevolent intentions. Before you know it, he seems like a different person. His new beliefs dominate conversations and ruin relationships.

It’s Monday, March 30. 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 future of war. How to fix air travel. The company promising man-made human eggs. Tyler Cowen on Conversations with Coleman. Ruy Teixeira on how Democrats learned to stop worrying and love losing. All that and much more.

But first: An unforced error in Jerusalem.

As a Free Press reader, you’re no doubt aware of an antisemitism problem within Catholicism. It’s an ancient issue turbocharged by social media algorithms and far-right Catholic influencers, who insist that Zionism and Catholicism are incompatible despite the Vatican’s insistence that antisemitism is a grave sin and Israel has a right to exist.

Gasoline was thrown onto this already flammable situation yesterday, when Israeli authorities blocked the top Catholic in the Jewish state from celebrating a Palm Sunday Mass. Police stopped Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa from walking to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Christianity, where he was set to hold a livestreamed Mass.

Critics of Israel said that it was proof that Israel hates Christians. The Israeli government insisted that the police stopped Pizzaballa due to security concerns, as Iranian missiles continue to hit Jerusalem and damage holy sites; earlier this month, for example, a fragment of an Iranian missile landed within walking distance of the church.

Today, Avi Mayer, founder of Jerusalem Journal and former editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, reports on the controversy for The Free Press. One well-connected Israeli rabbi who works on interfaith issues blamed the incident on “a perfect storm of clumsiness, closed-mindedness, and rosh katan,” a Hebrew phrase denoting a tendency to do the bare minimum without taking the bigger picture into account.

For his part, Pizzaballa is hitting a conciliatory note, saying there were “misunderstandings” and that “everything was done in a very polite manner.”

Meanwhile, Israeli president Isaac Herzog expressed his “great sorrow” that the Mass was prevented, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has directed authorities to “enable [Pizzaballa] to hold services as he wishes.”

Read Avi’s story on the messy reality of life during wartime, how an avoidable bureaucratic mishap turned into an international incident, and why the Israeli government’s unforced errors are so costly.

—Will Rahn

ANTROPIC, ANDURIL AND THE FUTURE OF DEFENSE TECH

February 27, 2026, was a flash point in the cold war between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The AI giant Anthropic had drawn a red line with the Pentagon, forbidding the military from using its product for autonomous weapons or the mass surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon retaliated by ending their contract and designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk. Anthropic has since sued to overturn this designation.

• Israeli air strikes hit Tehran on Sunday, and the Iranian regime launched ballistic missiles into Israel. The exchange of fire comes as diplomats gathered in Pakistan, hoping to negotiate a peace deal.

• A 26-year-old man has been arrested for planning to violently attack pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani. Authorities said Alexander Heifler was arrested in Hoboken, New Jersey, with eight Molotov cocktails. According to CBS News, police said Heifler is an “extremist with no criminal record with the NYPD.”

• The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen launched a missile attack into Israel on Saturday. The attack raises concerns that the Houthis could block Red Sea shipping routes, further constraining global trade.

• Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned the U.S. against launching a ground invasion into the region. According to Ghalibaf, Iranian forces are “waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever.”

• Thousands of protesters gathered across the country on Saturday for a series of “No Kings” rallies, protesting President Trump. This weekend’s marches were the first since last October, and came just as this year’s midterms are beginning to take shape.

• The United States Coast Guard is allowing a Russian oil tanker to reach Cuba. The ship, expected to arrive Tuesday, will supply the island with a critical energy source after the Trump administration imposed an effective oil blockade on the country for the past several months.

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio told G7 leaders on Friday that the war in Iran will last another 2–4 weeks. Rubio’s comments mark the first time a senior U.S. official has indicated the conflict could last longer than President Trump’s initial 4–6 week timeline.

• FBI director Kash Patel’s personal email was reportedly hacked by cyber criminals linked to Iran. The attack raises serious concerns about cybersecurity as the war continues to heat up on multiple fronts.

• President Trump signed a memo on Friday ordering the Department of Homeland Security to restore pay for airport screeners across the country. The order came after TSA employees had missed two full paychecks, and were beginning to call out of work in record numbers.

• The House of Representatives passed a short-term bill funding every agency under the Department of Homeland Security on Friday. While the vote offered a bit of daylight for government employees, the shutdown will likely drag on as the bill awaits approval in the Senate.

• Figure skater Ilia Malinin, known affectionately as the “Quad god,” won his third consecutive world championship on Saturday. The win comes as a sorely needed redemption for Malinin, who made headlines for underperforming at the Winter Olympics.

• CORRECTION: A previous version of The Front Page said the diplomats were reportedly gathering in Iran to negotiate a peace deal to end the U.S.-Israel-Iran war. They are reportedly gathering in Pakistan. This has been updated. The Free Press regrets the error.

Tyler Cowen is an economist at George Mason University, co-founder of my favorite blog, Marginal Revolution, and a contributor to The Free Press. A true polymath known for his short but extremely substantive answers to questions, Tyler is one of my favorite people with whom to have a long conversation. On the show this week, I got to do the kind of inte…

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump was subjected to some of the most brazen examples of weaponized government I’ve ever seen. As president, he’s returned that favor in spades. His latest target is AI giant Anthropic, which just won a major injunction in federal court.

If turnabout is fair play, Trump must be the fairest president in history. During the 2024 campaign, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg tried to jail Trump under criminal charges so opaque and tortuous few people could understand them. At the same time, New York attorney general Letitia James tried to bankrupt him through an unprecedented civil fraud prosecution and a $500 million judgment that an appellate court has now found unconstitutional. These and other cases were classic examples of politically motivated, unconstitutional selective prosecution.

All of this stoked Trump’s desire to hit back against his critics—which is key to understanding his fight with Anthropic. Having been on the receiving end of lawfare, President Trump could conceivably have forsworn using governmental power against political enemies. Not on your life. Trump turned the tables on day one, when he began targeting elite law firms.

February 27, 2026, was a flash point in the cold war between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.

The AI giant Anthropic had drawn a red line with the Pentagon, forbidding the military from using its product for autonomous weapons or the mass surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon retaliated by ending their contract and designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk. Anthropic has since sued to overturn this designation.

The feud-turned-legal battle is an acute example of a long-festering dynamic: technologists who want control over the use of their creations and who do not trust the government to understand or regulate their products, and policymakers wary of an unelected tech oligarchy that has become its own power center in American society.

Trae Stephens is no stranger to this dynamic.

On Sunday morning, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa was stopped by Israeli police officers as he led a small entourage from his residence at the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem’s Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a seven-minute walk away.

Accompanied by Father Francesco Ielpo, the church official responsible for overseeing Catholic religious sites in the Holy Land, Pizzaballa was on his way to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass at the magnificently domed church, revered by Christians as the traditional site of Jesus’s crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. The Mass is part of a tradition stretching back at least 1,700 years, but upon his arrival, Pizzaballa was informed that he could not enter the site due to wartime safety restrictions put in place in response to the threat of Iranian missiles.

Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command directives currently limit gatherings to 50 people and require that a concrete bomb shelter be easily accessible in the event of a missile siren. There is no fortified shelter in the ancient church complex, and it—along with the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, sacred to Jews and Muslims—has been closed to worshippers since the start of the war.

Air travel in America is a mess right now. There are interminable lines at airport security, near misses or crashes on the ground and in the air, and the airports themselves remain overcrowded and antiquated. Although it is easy to blame short-term causes, such as the failure of Congress to appropriate money for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the bigger problem is the government is simply not good at running air travel.

The idea of letting the private sector manage passenger security, air traffic control, and airports may seem far-fetched, but it is the norm in much of the world. The United States, supposedly home to ardent free marketeers, actually has one of the most socialized air travel sectors anywhere. Other countries have demonstrated the success of a private-sector model. America should learn from them.

Take airport security. Just two months after the 9/11 attacks, a panicked Congress passed a bill to nationalize airport security under a new bureaucracy, the TSA. While older airport security systems, contracted out to private companies, had clearly failed on that day, nobody convincingly explained why a federal agency staffed by civil servants would be better.

The following is adapted from a March 26 post in The Liberal Patriot titled “No Learning Please, We’re Democrats!”

Last July I wrote a piece asking, in the wake of Democrats’ catastrophic defeat in the 2024 election and the obvious need for serious party-wide change, “Is Our Democrats Learning?” At the time, I saw little evidence that Democratic learning was, in fact, taking place.

Posing this question again in early spring 2026, it is my sad duty to inform you that our Democrats continue not to learn. If anything, they are increasingly adamant that such learning is not even necessary. Their mantra now might be, paraphrasing that old joke about the British: “No learning please, we’re Democrats.”

The reasons for this complacency are not hard to discern. Trump and many of his administration’s actions are very unpopular and voters’ views on the economy, their most important issue, are dire. Consistent with these sentiments, Democrats did well in the 2025 elections, continue to clean up in special elections, and appear poised to have a very good election this coming November.

When a baby girl is the size of a sweet potato—about 10 inches from head to toe in her mother’s womb—she has the most eggs she will ever have in her entire life.

By the time she’s born, those 6 to 7 million eggs will have dropped to about 1 or 2 million. And by the time she’s 27.5—the average age an American woman has her first child—only 200,000 remain, if she’s lucky.

Most people, and especially most men, don’t think about those odds until they’re sitting in a fertility clinic.

That was the case for Travis Potter. In 2022, the then–40 year-old Wall Street hedge-fund manager and his wife, 37, had spent months in IVF clinics, and tens of thousands of dollars on hormonal treatment, trying to have a second kid.

Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Suzy Weiss celebrates the spring breaker who says, “Who the f— is Ayatollah!?” River Page drinks with the conservative influencer who gets so many death threats she’s got the FBI on speed dial. And as the “Hannah Montana” cast reunites for a 20th anniversary show, Sascha Seinfeld remembers the glorious original.

But first: Why are we so quick now to ask people if they’d like to die?

That’s the question Miriam Lancaster found herself asking last year. The 84-year-old woke up one day with excruciating back pain, was rushed to the emergency room, and was promptly asked by a doctor if she wanted help killing herself.

That’s because Miriam lives in Canada, where physicians are encouraged to ask patients in agony if they want MAID—medical assistance in dying.

“I was stunned,” Miriam writes in her essay today. “No one had even told me what was wrong with me.” She responded to the offer with a firm: No, thank you! And soon, she had a simple diagnosis: She had fractured her sacrum, the tiny bone at the base of the spine. With bed rest, the break healed.

“But being offered MAID changed something in me,” Miriam writes. Before, “I had assumed that in my 80s I would simply slow down: read my books, watch some television.” But the experience “made me want to lean into living.”

So she traveled to Cuba, where she sang, danced, and played piano with locals. Still, she’s haunted by what’s happening in her country—where nearly 1 in 20 deaths is a result of MAID.

We’ve covered the rise of assisted dying extensively here at The Free Press; it’s happening not only in Canada, but also in the Netherlands, and here in the U.S., where New York just became the 13th state to legalize it. Every week, there seems to be a new story about how such legislation fails to distinguish between irredeemable suffering and reversible hopelessness. This past Thursday, for instance, a 25-year-old Spanish woman—who had been left paralyzed from a previous suicide attempt in which she jumped from a building shortly after three men allegedly raped her—was granted permission to seek assisted suicide. Her parents desperately took her to court to try to stop her.

For everyone who is considering assisted suicide, Miriam has a message: “Think very, very carefully about what you’re giving up,” she writes. “The world is way bigger than you can imagine.” That’s what she found—after she chose to live.

—Josh Code

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Your special someone could be just one email away! If you’d like to take a chance at Free Press love, write a paragraph that defines you, your age, where you live, and what you’re looking for, and send it over to [email protected].

This week, we’ve published plenty of other pieces worth catching up on, including . . .

How should you spend your weekend? We asked our new international editor, Nick Clairmont, for his recommendations…

📺 Watch . . . the new Netflix stand-up special by Mark Normand, None Too Pleased. The 42-year-old’s new material veers between edgy and corny, truly clever and merely punny, and it’s never pious. He’s in it to make you laugh, not to lecture.

🎵Listen . . . to the new album by Sturgill Simpson, who with his band is now going by the moniker Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds. The country star with technically perfect vocal range and control has spent a career making albums that buck genre, and this strange, sexy, funky album keeps it up. Just as interestingly, Mutiny After Midnight has been released on every format except digital streaming. To hear it, you have to go outside and find a store that’s selling it on vinyl, cassette, or CD, or find a retailer online. It’s the first album since 2023 to hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart without existing on the internets. Speaking of which . . .

🚶🏼‍♀️Walk . . . outside. Consumption is for the dark days of winter; it’s spring! Find a park, a hiking trail, your own yard, whatever, and go find the things that grow. Find a plant you particularly like the look of, and learn its name. Find out what kind of soil it grows in and when it blooms. (This year, I am learning how to plant and tend raspberry and blackberry bushes.) Pl@ntNet is a great app for identifying species from just a picture. Nobody has ever regretted being able to see the green, growing world around them a little more knowledgeably.

Last but not least, a beautiful thing to feast your eyes on: Last Friday, Andie Dinkin opened one of her first solo shows in Soho at Charles Moffett Gallery for her new exhibition, In the Spirit World. Our art director Clara Grusq shares one of her favorite paintings in the show: an intoxicating ode to Jean Cocteau.

That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.