NEW YORK CITY — In February 2024, a few months after The New York Times published an investigation into the sexual violence that occurred on October 7, 2023, Rama Duwaji, the wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, liked an Instagram post referring to the “mass rape” hoax that was “fabricated” by the paper.

That was just one of more than 70 Instagram posts uncovered by The Free Press in which the First Lady of New York City cosigned extreme positions against Israel. A sampling of the posts say Israel is waging a “vile land grab,” and the protesters who took over a Columbia University building in April 2024 were “on the right side of progress.” Another post liked by Duwaji, who identifies as Syrian but was born in Houston, Texas, calls for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—which Mamdani has said he would honor if the Israeli leader steps foot in New York City on his watch. One post she liked referred to then-President Joe Biden as “Butcher Biden,” and said, “Your legacy is genocide, Joe.”

Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Evan Gardner reports from the front lines of the AI revolution. Kat Rosenfield reflects on an eerily prescient Iranian vampire movie. Howard Jacobson explains why he yelled at his audience during Jewish Book Week. And more!

But first, there are tens of thousands of American servicepeople in the Middle East right now, and retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling knows exactly how they feel. . . .

As all-out war explodes out from the Middle East, uncertainty reigns. All week, we’ve been wondering: Is this how World War III begins? What’s next for Iran? What’s President Donald Trump’s plan? But war is never just about nations and politics. It is also about human beings, including the people asked to fight, and the families waiting for them back home.

At time of writing, six American service members have already been killed in this war. “There will likely be more before it ends,” Trump said after the first casualties were announced. Each one leaves behind an entire life—a clapboard house, a beloved spouse, a couple of kids maybe, a dog, a lot of plans that will never be fulfilled.

No one understands that more clearly than retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Mark Hertling. Over nearly four decades in uniform, Hertling completed multiple combat tours in Iraq and commanded soldiers at every level of the Army. But throughout those years, he couldn’t shake the very rawest form of fear: that he might not make it home. So he began writing a journal that, he thought, his two young sons would read in the event that their father never returned from the Gulf.

But he did. And in his new book, If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal—which will be released next week—Hertling shares those journal entries, as well as the wisdom he’s gained during the long life he once wasn’t sure he would have.

“I’d like to say that all my training and preparation helped me face going to war. But the truth is: I was very frightened,” he writes, in the exclusive excerpt we’re publishing today. “I wasn’t ready to die. I’m still not.” Yet there’s a reason parents risk their lives to defend their countries. “For years, men have been going to war in the hopes that their children wouldn’t have to,” writes Hertling. “That is part of what love is all about.”

We have another batch of Free Press singles looking for love, and this group is highly eligible: a painter in Jerusalem, a psychology PhD candidate, and a 68-year-old retired judge who is on a “semi-competitive” canoe team. And don’t forget MJ, who never left Atlanta after college because “something about the South—handwritten thank-you notes and never returning an empty dish—speaks to my soul.” Check out the newest FP Cupid ads here, and if you want the chance to be featured next week, write to [email protected]!

We’ve published plenty of other treats this week, from Suzy Weiss’s profile of the man charged with beautifying our government’s very un-chic websites to Nick Clairmont’s entertaining ode to “monitoring the situation” in the Middle East:

How should you spend your weekend? We asked our business and tech editor, Mark Gimein, for his recommendations . . .

📺 Watch . . . the films of Ruben Östlund. The problem with so-called black comedies is they are most often not funny. Not so with Östlund. His best known film, Force Majeure, is a tight family drama set on a ski trip. But his following movies, The Square, about the art world, and Triangle of Sadness, about the foibles of the rich, are even better. Vicious enough to merit the “black comedy” label, but they are genuinely funny, even if—spoiler alert—Triangle of Sadness kills off characters with more abandon than Game of Thrones.

📚 Read . . . City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai by Paul French. It is a story about how an Eastern European Jewish performer turned nightclub promoter teams up with an ex-con Navy vet who burned off his fingertips to make a fortune on illegal slots. The setting is the late 1930s, but here is the twist: The city in the title is Shanghai. Did you know that the pre–World War II Shanghai underworld was dominated by the Jewish mob? If so, you win the prize for mob history deep cuts.

🍳 Eat . . . Everyone with a kid needs a comforting oven-baked or stovetop casserole to pull out. So here’s mine. Take one pound of ground beef, and 17 ounces (one package) of tteokbokki, as in Korean rice cakes. Brown the beef, add five cloves of chopped garlic, white parts of about eight scallions, and lots of fresh ginger cut into matchsticks. Boil the tteokbokki, and toss in with the beef. Then add a mix of five tablespoons of gochujang, two tablespoons of sugar, a quarter cup of soy sauce, one tablespoon of sesame oil, two tablespoons of cooking oil, and a quarter cup of water or chicken broth. Cook until sticky with crispy blackened bits. Serves four, or two adults and one hungry teenager.

This past Tuesday, Chinese communities around the world celebrated the Lantern Festival, which, coinciding with the full moon, marks the end of Chinese New Year celebrations. Releasing lanterns into the sky is supposed to symbolize letting go of your old self. Here’s how the festival was celebrated in Taiwan:

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

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

The Iran war is the biggest story in the world right now, and it’s moving fast. Since day one, The Free Press has mobilized the deepest bench in independent journalism to make sense of it: Niall Ferguson, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Eli Lake, Michael Doran, Haviv Rettig Gur, and more, with each bringing the kind of expertise and independence you won’t find anywhere else. Below is everything we’ve published so far. The war isn’t over. Subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.

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This war will likely go on for weeks. Don’t miss a thing—subscribe for free for full access to everything we publish, starting with the stories that matter most right now.

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“If you’re in this room, all your family and friends think you’re crazy,” the host calls out.

It’s Wednesday night and, along with over 1,300 others (the line wrapped around an entire block), I’m at New York City’s inaugural ClawCon. Here, passionate fans of the personalized AI agent OpenClaw can meet each other and, among other things, chat about all the ways they love it. Launched in November under the name Clawdbot, then changed to Moltbot in January and finally OpenClaw, it can do everything from organize your email to set your alarms to even set up an options trading portfolio.

The host is Michael Galpert, a mega-fan of the product, who has come all the way from San Francisco. “Everyone’s here because we’re ready to ride the claw,” he said. “It’s not normal for the rest of the world. So it’s going to be on us to help shepherd that new era that has already started.”

In the past two months, OpenClaw has taken the AI world by storm: What started as a self-described “weekend project”—the brainchild of an Austrian man named Peter Steinberger—drew two million visitors in a single week, charted unprecedented growth on GitHub, and eventually earned Steinberger a shiny new job at OpenAI. In January, OpenClaw went viral when a man named Matt Schlicht created a social media platform for its bots called Moltbook, where the AI agents could talk to one another; soon after, the bots used that network to sprout “Crustafarianism,” a religion complete with its own five tenets.

All of which is to say: The Claw community is perhaps the closest thing we have to a post-human world. And yet here we are, in a sweaty New York auditorium, surrounded by hundreds of living, breathing people, sipping from plastic cups of liquor, hovering around a DJ table, dancing beneath flashing red lights—and decimating a mountain of lobster tails, piled high atop a tower of ice.

“This isn’t a meetup; it’s a movement,” declared Scott Breitenother, CEO of Kilo Code, who co-sponsored the event. “People truly are hungry for the claw.”

Welcome back to Second Thought! Before we get into it—don’t worry, I will of course be covering the sex politics of the upper echelons of the artificial intelligence industry—some housekeeping.

Firstly: Free Press Cupid has relaunched, and it’s even better than I could have imagined. I’m not saying The Free Press is a matchmaking service wrapped in a media company, but I’m also not not saying that. If you want to believe in love again, read these ads, then email us at [email protected] with a 200-word or so letter about who you are and what you’re looking for.

Secondly: I’m looking forward to seeing some of you in Manhattan this coming Tuesday! I’m hosting a conversation with Kat Rosenfield about her new, thrilling novel “How to Survive in the Woods.” If you live nearby, there are still a few tickets left—take a break from monitoring the situation and join us!

America’s favorite Mormon mom—and its favorite Mormon mom to hate—is now, at 35, a mom of nine. Hannah Neeleman is a former pageant queen and ballerina, and the face of Ballerina Farm, a lifestyle brand and direct-to-consumer food business. On Instagram, she pumps out gorgeously addictive videos that show her making cheese, bags of bone broth, and hot cocoa mix and organic flour that she sells on her website. She usually has a baby strapped to her somewhere, and often a toddler or two wanders into the shot; occasionally we see her husband, Daniel (whose father has founded five airlines). Though it doesn’t really need to be said, they live in Utah.

Last week, Neeleman announced her ninth pregnancy in a highly produced video featuring some strong brass instruments and a big American flag. Along with the new kid, she promoted some protein powder. She also reflected on the discipline and beauty of ballet. “Before the curtain rose, there existed discipline, sweat, blistered feet,” she said, after a shot of her cradling a massive bump under a gingham dress. “Despite what some people think, that strength never leaves you.”

Then this week, the Neelemans had the baby. It’s a girl, their sixth in a row.

SOHO, London — Howard Jacobson’s big brown eyes are ringed with purple bruises, and he has a wrist brace on his right hand. He slipped off the curb the afternoon before we met. I’m not in much better shape: My right hand and wrist are bandaged after a bout of overexuberant gardening.

When Howard shuffles into the café down the street from his apartment in London, all leonine beard and bedraggled mane, our server greets him as a regular. She looks at his bruised face and then at my hand—and asks me if I did it.

As the war with Iran enters its second week, it’s easy to focus on the abstractions of conflict—geopolitics, strategic objectives, oil prices, escalation risks. But war is never only about nations and interests. It is also about individuals: the people asked to fight, and the families who wait for them to return.

At least six American service members have already been killed in the Iran war, alongside many more from other countries. There will almost certainly be more. Each of them leaves behind a life and legacy: parents, spouses, children, memories, and unfinished plans.

Few understand this more viscerally than retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Mark Hertling. In his new book, If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal, out on March 10, Hertling reflects on the most intimate dimension of war—the fear of leaving your family behind, and the quiet courage required to face that possibility. The following exclusive excerpt begins in 1990, when Hertling, then a young cavalry officer preparing to deploy to the Gulf War, began writing a journal for his two young sons in case he never came home.

His pages carry lessons today’s newest generation of soldiers may come to know all too well. —Jillian Lederman

In the late fall of 1990, I had a premonition that I just might die.

My cavalry squadron had just been ordered to war in Iraq, and our mission carried a blunt forecast: We might suffer over 50 percent casualties. Today, many Americans forget that Desert Storm was not expected to be easy. Saddam Hussein had the fourth-largest army in the world, and they had just fought an eight-year war with Iran. Hussein had also just used chemical agents against his own citizens—the Kurds—in a town called Halabja. Back then, many of us were expecting the worst.

That number hung over the squadron like a cloud. We weren’t overcome with panic—we were, after all, soldiers being asked to do our duty. But I had the sober and nagging realization that my two young sons, then 10 and 7, just might grow up without really knowing their father.

My remedy was to begin a journal, recounting my time in service and my reflections on it. If I didn’t come home, I thought, at least our boys would have my words, know my actions, remember some things about me as they grew.

The human tendency to see patterns in a noisy sea of stimuli is called apophenia. Once, probably, this was important to our survival. To make the connection between a shift in the wind, a darkening sky, and the likelihood of coming rain; to discern the evenly spaced tracks of a rabbit or bobcat in freshly fallen snow; to be lost in the dark, only to gaze up at the stars and discover a map that will lead you home.

Today, instead of alerting us to a rhythmic rustling in the underbrush that could be just the wind but could also be a knife-wielding member of an enemy tribe, apophenia is mainly a means of telling ourselves stories—imposing narratives, theorizing conspiracies, chalking up to destiny or devilry what some would see as random happenstance. Did you know that Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were both shot in the head, in the presence of their wives, by assassins with 15-letter names? Did you know that if you start playing Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon at just the right moment during the opening credits of The Wizard of Oz, an eerie synchronicity emerges? Did you know that The Simpsons predicted 9/11?

The women of Iran have risked not just something, but everything, to defy their government in broad daylight.

To search the art of the past for harbingers of the present is a precarious enterprise; it’s all too easy to see something prescient, sinister, or supernatural in the imaginings of a previous decade. It is more precarious still to do this in search of narratives that not only predict the future but confirm our biases, political or otherwise, proving we were not just right but on the right side of history all along. We know this. We do it anyway.

Which brings me to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a contemporary Western-cum-noir about a beautiful vampire whose hunting ground is an Iranian ghost town called Bad City. I saw it at the time of its release in 2014 and found it visually stunning but narratively unexceptional. But amid the ongoing unrest and violence in Iran, and in the wake of a U.S. military campaign that left the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dead—and his 36-year regime hanging onto its authority by a thread—I had a sense that it might make for an interesting rewatch. What I didn’t expect was a number of moments so bizarrely prophetic that they made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

It’s Friday, March 6. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is packing up her office. Tucker Carlson turns on the Jews (again)—and Donald Trump turns on Tucker. Plus: what you don’t learn in med school. And more.

But first: It has been one week of war in Iran.

Six days ago, in the early hours of Saturday morning, the Iranian regime was decapitated. In a joint military attack, the U.S. and Israel struck military sites across the country, killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, alongside dozens of senior Iranian leaders.

Then Iran started fighting back, striking Israel, U.S. installations across the Middle East, and countries across the region, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Iraq, and Azerbaijan. In Kuwait, an Iranian drone strike killed six U.S. Army Reserve service members—the first American casualties of the war. According to Trump, “there will likely be more before it ends.” Meanwhile, at home in the United States, polls show the public is skeptical of the war, with just one in four saying they back the strikes.

A week in, much remains unclear: How long could this war last? Could Iran slide into civil war? What kind of government might emerge after the fighting? How have the strikes changed the balance of power in the Middle East? And what does it mean for the world order?

We asked some of the people we trust the most on this story—including Elliott Abrams, Christopher Caldwell, and Aaron MacLean—to share their takeaways from this extraordinary geopolitical moment.

—The Editors

The Free Press’s Rafaela Siewert sat down with Behnam to discuss how each of these scenarios might unfold—and what they mean for a regime in turmoil. Watch their full conversation here.

This week, we’ve brought you wall-to-wall coverage of the war in Iran, as escalating hostilities threaten to reshape the region—and the world. But this story didn’t begin on Saturday. Just as important as the reaction to the strikes is the analysis of how we got here, and where events may lead next. Earlier this week, Aaron MacLean traced the full historical arc of how the Iranian regime squandered its ambitions, while Michael Oren explained why October 7, 2023, marked the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic. And don’t miss Jay Solomon’s analysis of why Iran’s Kurdish opposition may determine the future of the regime: whether it survives, or descends into civil war.

Is this more than just a regional war—and whose interests are at stake? As Haviv Rettig Gur explained in an incisive essay this week, the battle in Iran isn’t just an Israeli fight—at its core, it’s an American one. Read Haviv’s piece to understand the American interests at play. Then check out Zineb Riboua’s analysis of why this conflict is ultimately tied to our broader strategic competition with China, America’s most powerful adversary. Finally, Niall Ferguson answers a question on all of our minds: Could this be the start of World War III?

Lastly, on a lighter note, if you’re looking to round out a week of tough news with a breath of fresh air, Arthur Brooks has just the thing for you. In his latest column, he explains how AI will upend everything we know—and why we just might come out happier on the other side.

The Front Page will be back on Monday morning. Until then, look out for The Weekend Press, featuring retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling on how he confronted his fear of death on the battlefield, Suzy Weiss reviewing the newest Pixar film, a fresh batch of Free Press Cupid ads, a night among the Clawdbots, and more.

Americans have learned not to expect much from their public servants, yet a few politicians still manage to trip on the amazingly low bar. In little more than a year in office, Kristi Noem suffered countless self-inflicted embarrassments, repeatedly slandered her opponents, and helped tank public approval for her boss on what had been his best issue. On Thursday, the president corrected the error he made by hiring her in the first place, and proved that there is still a bar at all.

President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Noem will exit as head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at the end of the month, to be replaced by Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin once he secures confirmation. The shuffle came after a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday at which Noem offered dozens of insults and no apologies to lawmakers with valid doubts about her record.

Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, gave Noem a chance to explain and retract her claim that two people shot and killed by federal immigration agents in January had engaged in “domestic terrorism.” That term doesn’t match the activities of either Renee Good or Alex Pretti. Whether or not they broke the law in the course of protesting immigration enforcement, neither showed any sign of having arrived with the intention of attacking or killing anyone. Yet Noem made no apology, even after two months to reflect, and blamed her bad info on the “chaotic scene” on the ground. It’s more likely that she simply chose to use the term, since the deputies who informed her deny that they accused either Good or Pretti of terrorism.