It’s Wednesday, August 12. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Liel Leibowitz on why New York will never be “Habibi City.” Maya Sulkin talks to the white-collar Zoomers who feel owed their mental-health leave. And much more.
But first: Welcome to “Habibi City.”
The city formerly known as the Big Apple is now “Habibi City.” So declared a viral cover story in New York magazine this week, announcing the arrival of a new cadre of Middle Eastern residents building community and defining contemporary New York by resisting “xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Zionism.”
We wanted to make sense of this trend ourselves, so we turned to Liel Leibovitz, himself an immigrant from the Middle East to the United States.
He moved here, he writes for us today:
. . . for the one and only reason anyone should ever come to America: Because I believe it, firmly and passionately, to be the greatest nation ever endowed by God with the mission of spreading liberty and light to a benighted world, and because I consider it the honor of a lifetime to partake in the solemn work of making America ever greater. Apparently my fellow Middle Eastern immigrants have very different feelings.
Don’t miss Liel on “Habibi City” and why the viral essay gets the story of New York, and immigration to America, exactly backward.
—The Editors
Mental-health leave has gone from a seldom-discussed, stigmatized break to something that younger employees not only openly talk about but a workplace perk they feel entitled to. But what’s a manager to do when half the team is on mental-health leave? Maya Sulkin has the story on the Zoomers and millennials who reset, travel the world, become influencers, and even look for new jobs—all on the company dime.
Rumors of the death of American patriotism have been greatly exaggerated, argue Ruy Teixeira and Karlyn Bowman, and in the midterms, whichever party embraces a hopeful nationalism will see a boost at the polls. While one side of the aisle posits that America has faded from past greatness, the other doubts it was ever great at all. Today, Teixeira and Bowman dig into the data behind America’s patriotism gap—and the lessons each party can learn from it to win crucial races in the midterms this fall.
At a high school in Arlington, Virginia, Jewish students were mocked, threatened, and chased—then their desperate requests for help were met with indifference by school officials. In Rupa Subramanya’s latest investigation, she talks to students and their families about the double standards when it comes to fighting discrimination, and how a school’s failure to tackle antisemitism threw children’s lives off course.
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THE NEWS
Four crew members were killed by a suspected Houthi strike on an Egyptian-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea yesterday as tensions mounted in Middle Eastern waterways. Separately, a U.S. missile struck a second ship bearing the Panamanian flag near the Gulf of Oman as it tried to evade the region’s American blockade.
Per President Trump’s request, Russia has released U.S. Marine Robert Gilman, who had been imprisoned since 2022 and whose health had badly deteriorated in custody. Russia made no public demands in exchange for Gilman, who according to Russian state media was arrested and jailed for drunkenly kicking a police officer.
Donald Trump hid in an airline catering container to surreptitiously escape Turkey during last month’s NATO summit after intelligence officials learned of an Iranian threat to his life. Two senior U.S. officials confirmed Monday that the elaborate ruse involved using Air Force One as a decoy while Trump was whisked to another aircraft.
A Cleveland father set a new world record over the weekend for the fastest mile run while pushing a stroller: 4 minutes and 17 seconds. Guinness World Records has yet to certify the new record, which beat the previous one by nearly nine seconds.
Nobody won Monday night’s $905 million Powerball jackpot, sending the estimated prize for Wednesday’s drawing to $1 billion. It is now the eighth-largest jackpot in Powerball history.
The judge in charge of suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione’s trial announced yesterday that jurors will remain anonymous, citing prosecutors’ concerns of intimidation from Mangione’s supporters. “The People have documented threats, harassment, and exposure of personal information directed at individuals perceived as connected to the case, including witnesses and others,” the judge wrote in an order published Tuesday.
Colombian authorities are searching for survivors of a 7.4 magnitude earthquake that struck the South American country on Monday, leaving many trapped under debris. The death toll has risen to 181, with over 2,500 injured, according to president Abelardo de la Espriella.
