It’s Friday, February 27. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Maya Sulkin and Frannie Block on the bombshell documents at the center of Meta’s social-media addiction trial. Rafaela Siewert interviews neuroscientist and sex researcher Dr. Debra Soh on the social and moral costs of sexbots. How an antisemite hijacked the president’s Religious Liberty Commission. Miles Hargrove knows what it is like for a parent to be kidnapped. He offers his advice to the Guthrie family.
But first: What is happening in Nigeria?
Africa’s most populous nation is split almost evenly between Muslims and Christians. And for nearly two decades, it has been one of the most violent places on Earth.
Since the 2009 uprising of militant group Boko Haram, jihadist factions and criminal militias have burned churches, raided villages, killed tens of thousands of Christians, and displaced millions. In one attack, as Madeleine Kearns reported last year, more than 200 Christians were slaughtered in a three-hour rampage on a small town. President Donald Trump has called the violence in the country an “existential threat” to Christianity, and on Christmas Day authorized airstrikes against Islamic militants.
Yet sustained international attention has been scarce, largely obscuring the crisis from Western audiences. And some of the most powerful figures in the country—including the First Lady of Nigeria, who spoke with Maddy earlier this month—dispute claims of systemic religious persecution against Christians.
So, what is the truth on the ground?
David Patrikarakos went there to find out. In today’s story, he reports from three of the districts hit hardest by the conflict, speaking with displaced citizens, Christian farmers, a Muslim youth leader, and local officials. The result is a vivid, unflinching portrait of the front lines of a country trapped in a sectarian civil war.
Read his dispatch to understand why the bloodshed won’t end anytime soon—and why the world continues to look away.
—Jillian Lederman
As the search for Nancy Guthrie drags on, many Americans are wondering what it’s like to grapple with the fear that your loved one may never return. Miles Hargrove lived that nightmare in 1994, when his father was kidnapped in Colombia. “Your life cannot go on,” Hargrove writes. “You are waiting, inside a void, with almost no information or control. And there is no end in sight.” He writes about how he made it through.
Has Instagram made girls’ eating disorders worse? A new tranche of internal documents from Meta reveal a company scrambling to do damage control as reporters question whether it’s actually taking steps to limit the eating disorder content promoted on Instagram. Today, Frannie Block and Maya Sulkin report on the bombshell documents at the center of California’s social-media addiction trial—and whether or not Meta will change its business model to prevent more damage.
A Russian warship in Iranian waters. Hypersonic threats to U.S. carriers. A regime desperate to survive. These are all events that happened in Elliot Ackerman’s 2021 novel, “2034.” Somehow, yesterday’s fiction has become today’s reality. For The Free Press, Elliot writes about why parallels between his fiction and the real world in 2026 are so ominous.
It started with a mission to to “offer diverse perspectives on how the federal government can defend religious liberty for all Americans.” But when a Catholic commissioner named Carrie Prejean Boller grabbed the mic, things started to unravel. Read this account from legal advisers to the Religious Liberty Commission Francis J. Beckwith and Josh Blackman on how the White House initiative went off the rails, and the insidious—yet increasingly popular—lie that Catholicism is incompatible with Zionism.
Would you have an AI girlfriend or boyfriend? What about sex with an ultra-realistic doll? In an age where tech promises to fulfill our most human needs, scientists are reporting an impending sex recession. Rafaela Siewert sat down with neuroscientist and sexuality researcher Dr. Debra Soh to explore why people are losing interest in sex, what’s filling the void, and the social and moral costs of this new technology.
EDITORS’ PICKS
“We’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it,” Trump freestyled during his State of the Union address. Whether or not our country is winning as much as our president would like you to think depends on who you ask. But if you missed our coverage of Trump’s address, where vibes ran high and bipartisan harmony ran low, catch up on our livestream from the night, and read Eli Lake’s analysis of Trump’s “Feel-Good State of the Union” and Yuval Levin on whether or not Trump has finally run out of ideas.
To Trump’s credit, there is one arena where America’s winning streak is indisputable—and it’s a literal arena. Team USA finished strong in the winter Olympics last week with Alysa Liu’s gold medal in women’s figure skating—our first in 24 years—and a historic victory by our men’s hockey team.
Read Will Rahn’s tribute to Team USA. And don’t miss Suzy Weiss’s words to the pundits who want to use the victors as a political hockey puck: Leave our hockey heroes alone.
This past weekend, Tucker Carlson aired a confrontational, nearly three-hour interview with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee where a single question ran through every exchange: Does the United States government still belong to its citizens, or does it serve a transnational elite, dominated by the Jews? Why did Tucker take that line of questioning? Mike Doran answers that question in a must-read essay on what Carlson is trying to achieve. And where do things stand between Tucker and Trump? Read Eli Lake on the hot-and-cold relationship between the president and the podcaster. And don’t miss Ashley Rindsberg’s investigation into how podcasters like Tucker and Candace Owens foment rage and monetize antisemitism—and just how much money they make doing it.
“I needed to get home in time to be arrested by the FBI.” So begins P.G. Sittenfeld’s extraordinary account of how he went from up-and-coming politician to the target of an FBI sting. It’s a wild tale, featuring a spell behind bars and a presidential pardon, and it poses a lot of uncomfortable questions about our justice system. Don’t miss it.
A few more highlights before we go: part two of our “Epstein Tapes” release, Josh Code’s delightful account of his day as part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s NYC Socialist Snow Corps, and Catherine Morissette making the case for hazing.
The Front Page will be back on Monday morning. Until then, look out for The Weekend Press, featuring Freya India on how her generation of girls were taught to hate men, the latest round of Free Press Cupid ads, and an exclusive excerpt of Free Press columnist Kat Rosenfield’s new novel.
Robots don't get headaches. Muslims are a pain in the ass. Mamdani needs a snowball to the head. Democrats hate America and manly sports like Hockey. That's about it.
If you the missed the articles by Eli Lake and Yuval Levin, congratulations! You saved yourself a waste of time.