It’s Tuesday, April 7. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Coleman Hughes on Ibram X. Kendi’s latest provocations. New York City claims 5 million of its residents can’t afford to live there. And much more.
But first: Frannie Block reports from Mission Control.
Yesterday, three Americans and a Canadian traveled farther from Earth than any human has gone before—and then carried on. The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission circled the dark side of the moon, a part of the solar system few people have ever laid eyes on, where they lost touch with Mission Control for 40 minutes. It’s a triumph for the world’s greatest space agency.
It’s strange to think that less than a week ago, all four astronauts were in Florida. They launched into space from Cape Canaveral last Wednesday evening. I was watching from the beach, with hundreds of other Americans who had traveled across the country; it was the first time I’d ever seen a rocket launch, and it blew my mind. As the Orion spacecraft disappeared into the universe, I wanted to know: What’s next for NASA?
So two days later, I flew to Mission Control—which is, of course, in Houston, Texas—to talk to the man best placed to answer this question: the guy who leads NASA, Jared Isaacman.
A high school dropout who became a billionaire businessman, he’s wanted to be an astronaut since he was a toddler—so he used his riches to finance and command two SpaceX ventures, before his controversial nomination to be NASA administrator in December 2024. The right was suspicious of his donations to Democratic candidates; the left was suspicious of his relationship with Elon Musk. But Isaacman’s eyes are on the prize: He wants NASA to achieve “the near impossible.”
“Ten years from now, we’ll have, like, our Uber and Lyft fleets on the moon doing wild things,” he told me.
But for all Isaacman’s futuristic talk, the Mission Control that I saw seemed stuck in the past. There’s a very ’80s mural on the wall that looks distinctly like the title cards of Back to the Future—the female astronauts have perfectly permed hair, and the spacesuits look decidedly retro—and at one point the elevators broke down.
How’s Isaacman planning to bring this calcified, crumbling agency into the 21st century—and beyond? Read my report to find out:
—Frannie Block
On Monday, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office released a 50-page report reviewing every city service—from garbage collection to its entertainment commission. Unsurprisingly, Howard Husock writes, it found that the city suffers from “systemic racism” across the board. Mamdani’s solution is putting race at the center of every city decision, adding new layers of red tape, and making it even harder to build.
Meanwhile, dozens of colleges are withholding race-related admissions data from the Trump administration—data that would show whether they’ve actually stopped discriminating since the Supreme Court banned racial preferences in 2023. Today, Kenny Xu, a plaintiff in the 2023 Supreme Court case, wonders: What are they still hiding? And how much longer will universities be allowed to run out the clock?
Over the weekend, U.S. forces carried out one of the most ambitious rescue missions in American military history—and successfully extracted the pilot of a fighter jet shot down behind enemy lines. In today’s School of War, national security expert Garrett Exner and former intelligence officer Rich Goldberg join Aaron MacLean to discuss the historic feat, and how far the U.S. will go for a downed airman.
The first American pope has become one of America’s harshest global critics. With the U.S. at war in Iran, he’s issued pointed condemnations of “imperialist occupation.” Today, Mattia Ferraresi reports from Rome, with exclusive details from senior Vatican officials, on what happened behind closed doors when Pentagon officials summoned a papal delegation and delivered a stark warning: Get in line or get out of the way.
Jennifer Aniston injects them weekly. RFK Jr. wants to see them in more Americans’ medicine cabinets. Peptides are everywhere, promising to do everything from rejuvenating your skin to accelerating the body’s healing process. But do they really work? Faye Flam reports on the influencer-driven craze inspiring people to inject themselves with Chinese research chemicals, the science behind the hype, and the regulators struggling to keep up.
Our modern fixation on a suffering-free life has left us fragile, anxious, and unfulfilled, writes Arthur Brooks. In his latest column, he explains how suffering gives our lives meaning, what the Marines know about suffering that regular people don’t, and why he keeps a journal of his failures and disappointments.
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The Nigerian army rescued 31 Christians from an attack on a church in northwest Nigeria on Easter Sunday, according to military officials. Earlier this year, Madeleine Kearns spoke to the wife of Nigeria’s president, who is Christian; to understand religious persecution in the nation better, read her profile: “Is the First Lady of Nigeria Scared?”
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Regardless of skin color, we all get cancer, lose loved ones, suffer all the ups and downs of being human. My people paid taxes in North Carolina in 1790 on a mule and a cow — they were tenant farmers. Men died, women survived by picking cotton, moving west, putting their daughters to work at ten, and selling their most valuable asset — a son. They were white and worked with others who were not white, and to my knowledge, never discriminated against anyone. Poverty is a great leveler.
Also, I have to fess up to being totally wrong about Mamdani. I assumed with his privileged background and mingling with wealthy people that he'd just cosplay the Marxist, but not really threaten the elites. Oops. So far it looks like I was wrong.