It’s Thursday, May 8, 2025. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: How will Pakistan respond to the strikes from India? Why is former president Biden suddenly on a press tour? And is the main side effect of weight-loss drugs. . . happiness? All that and more coming up.
But first: Chicago police officers are killing themselves at an alarming rate. We wanted to know why.
Here’s our Olivia Reingold with the story behind her investigation:
I’m always looking for an excuse to report a story in Chicago, grim as the news there often is. It’s the home of my longtime boyfriend, so I often find myself typing phrases like Chicago lawsuit or Chicago protest into search bars, to see what’s brewing in the Windy City.
That’s how I stumbled across local TV coverage about Malissa Torres, a 34-year-old police officer who killed herself inside her station bathroom on April 10, 2025. The more I read, the more I realized she was far from alone.
When I started picking up the phone, my go-to Chicago sources told me off the record that the police department’s suicide problem was “staggering.”
“It’s got to have been dozens of suicides at this point,” one said.
So I went digging. The best public estimates were mysteriously vague—“two dozen” or “more than 30” since 2018. I submitted four public records requests: two to the Chicago Police Department, one to the police pension board, and one to the Office of Emergency Management & Communications. Two were denied (I’m still fighting those).
But then the pension board called me back. Out of 187 police deaths on their books over the past decade, 39 had been ruled suicides. “That’s about one out of every five deaths,” the caller pointed out.
Their list ended in 2024, so I added four more cases I had tracked through a spreadsheet I built. That brought the toll to 43.
Then it got worse.
A few days later, I opened an unexpected email from Chicago Public Safety. Inside were the names, badge numbers, ranks, and duty statuses of every officer who had died. And in black and white, the toll was even higher than anyone had admitted: Over the past decade, 53 officers had died by suicide.
This is the story of how a mental-health crisis quietly took root inside the Chicago Police Department—and how it exploded in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens to officers when city officials turn against their own police force. More than that, though, it’s a story about how bad ideas embraced by political elites wind up hurting the everyday people they were supposed to help.
—Olivia Reingold
Canada has become one of the most antisemitic countries in the Western world, reports Casey Babb. From October 7, 2023, through the end of 2024, antisemitism skyrocketed 670 percent. Open calls for jihad in Jewish neighborhoods have become the norm in a country that prides itself on tolerance. How will this end?
Joe Biden is back—or at least out of the house. In his first interview since leaving office, the former president went off on his successor (Trump is “not behaving like a Republican president”) and answered one long-awaited question—does he regret not dropping out of the presidential race sooner? The answer may not surprise you.
Long the target of elitist jokes, Mississippi now has the fastest-improving school system in the country, including among black students. The state spends comparatively little per pupil, yet students are now regularly outperforming their peers in better-funded blue-state schools. So what’s the cause of the Mississippi education miracle?
He helped Michael Jordan win—and he can help you too. George Raveling was born in segregated Washington, D.C. His father died when he was young, and his mother was subsequently sent to a mental institution. So how did he become one of the most revered basketball coaches of all time? He joins Bari on Honestly to discuss the most powerful lessons of his life, which he’s collected in a new book, What You’re Made For. Listen to it here.
India launched strikes on both Pakistan and in Pakistani Kashmir, to “avenge” the April 22 attack when gunmen killed 26 civilians, mostly tourists, in the Indian-controlled part of the region last month. Pakistan’s prime minister described the attack as an “act of war” and pledged to retaliate—a major escalation between the two countries. For more, check out this Washington Post explainer on how India and Pakistan wound up on the brink of war.
For the second time in eight days, an F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet—worth more than $60 million—fell overboard the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, and is now lost in the Red Sea. Both pilots were safely recovered. The carrier group has been stationed in the Middle East to support strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.
Vice President J.D. Vance indicated that the Trump administration’s patience with Russian president Vladimir Putin is wearing thin as the White House tries to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine. “What I would say is, right now, the Russians are asking for a certain set of requirements, a certain set of concessions in order to end the conflict,” Vance said at a Munich Security Conference event in Washington, D.C. “We think they’re asking for too much.”
The papal conclave is officially underway. The Catholic Church’s cardinal electors are now sequestered in the Sistine Chapel until they choose a new pope. One cleric told Politico that some cardinals watched the Oscar-winning film Conclave “in the cinema” to prepare for worst-case scenarios. The first unsuccessful vote happened yesterday, and black smoke billowed from the chimney, meaning they failed to reach a two-thirds agreement.
President Trump nominated Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford-trained physician and Free Press contributor, as his pick for surgeon general, noting her “impeccable ‘MAHA’ credentials.” The news comes a day after the FDA named Free Press contributor Dr. Vinay Prasad as the next head of its Center for Biologics and Research. Listen to Casey’s Honestly episode, “Eating Ourselves to Death,” and read her Free Press article, “I’m a Doctor. You Shouldn’t Always Trust Us.”
The Golden Globes are adding a Best Podcast category in 2026, a formal acknowledgment of the format’s cultural takeover and legitimacy as a creative medium.
Data shows that more than half the top holders of Trump’s meme coin—who are competing for dinner with the president—used foreign exchanges that ban U.S. users, suggesting many purchasers are likely not based in the U.S.
Rep. Don Bacon, a centrist Republican from Nebraska and frequent Trump critic, is warning that cuts to Medicaid to fund Trump’s new tax plan could cost the GOP its majority. His vote may prove pivotal.
Bernie Sanders and eight Senate Democrats are urging Paramount not to settle Trump’s lawsuit against CBS over a minor edit to a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. In a letter to Paramount owner Shari Redstone, they called on the company to stand firm.
Following raids in Britain over the weekend, seven Iranian nationals were arrested, mere hours before a suspected terror plot on the Israeli embassy was due to take place. One of the Iranian nationals arrested is reportedly “very well connected” to the Iranian regime, with close ties and major businesses in the Islamic republic.
Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the future is AI friends, an AI therapist, and AI business agents (inching dangerously close to AI family). In an interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, the Meta CEO said, “The average American I think has, it’s fewer than three friends, three people they’d consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it’s like 15 friends.”
Billionaire media mogul Barry Diller has come out as gay ahead of his new memoir Who Knew. “While there have been many good men in my life,” he wrote in New York magazine, “there has only ever been one woman,” referring to his “unique and complete love” with wife Diane von Furstenberg.
I suppose the "it takes a village" or "we are in this together" nonsense has taken over. We are not and it takes families, not villages to provide values and the tenacity to survive. Just look around at the hell holes most large cities have become and chased out those wiith values as to those opposed who choose to leach and be dependent. And please none of the racism, white supremacy bullshit.
I have never commented after being a long time subscriber but I'm commenting to tell you I loath the new format for your newsletter with links to articles it's awful go back to the way it was