It’s Wednesday, December 31. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Will Zohran Mamdani keep New York’s top antisemitism official? Is “Marty Supreme” a victim of its own success? Eli Lake on how Seymour Hersh lost his investigative mojo. And much more.
(And George Clooney, if you’re reading this, bonjour! You’re welcome to come check out the Free Press newsroom, too. The coffee machine broke, so bring your own. Or if you’d prefer to host, we’d love to do our next off-site in Lake Como!)
On to the stories, starting with predictions, resolutions, and New Year’s Eve parties.
We’ve spent a lot of this week looking in the rearview mirror. We’ve waved goodbye to 2025 by admitting what we got wrong, acknowledging what we learned, paying tribute to the heroes of the year, and revisiting some of its lighter moments.
Today, we’re shifting our gaze to the road ahead and asking: What will 2026 bring?
Yes, it’s the annual Honestly predictions podcast. Bari and I are in the hosts’ chairs today, and we call up friends of the pod and experts in their fields to get a sense of what’s coming down the pike on the big questions.
Questions like: Will the war in Ukraine come to an end? (We asked Niall Ferguson about that.) And: Will Donald Trump be as busy in his second year back as his first? (We got Sarah Isgur on the line for that one.) And: Have we passed peak big pant? (Leandra Medine Cohen answers that one and yes, like I said, we hit all the hot-button questions today.) We also have our very own Suzy Weiss on culture, our favorite linguist, John McWhorter, on the words of 2025 and 2026, and Dr. Mark Hyman on how to get healthier starting January 1.
So please, tune in, and buckle up for a whistle-stop tour through everything you need to know ahead of the new year. It’s the perfect thing to listen to as you mix the punch ahead of tonight’s festivities.
One person who takes New Year’s Eve celebrations very seriously is Free Press senior editor Peter Savodnik. He’s expecting 22 for dinner at Casa Savodnik tonight. (I guess my invitation got lost in the post, Peter?) His wife will be serving beef stew. His daughter will be giving a violin concert. Peter will be . . . it’s not clear. Anyway, he has strong opinions about the how and the why of ringing in the new new year. The formula includes champagne, laughter—and a good argument. Read all about it here:
And finally, have you set your resolutions yet? If you still need some inspiration, we asked our newsroom what they’ll be doing differently in 2026.
From the Free Press family to yours, Happy New Year.
—Oliver Wiseman
In less than 24 hours, Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in as the new mayor of New York City. Yet Moshe Davis, the director of the city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, does not know whether he will still have a job when that happens. He talks exclusively to The Free Press’s Olivia Reingold.
Since Trump unilaterally, and some argue illegally, affixed his name to the Kennedy Center, performers have pulled out of shows at the Washington, D.C., venue. New Year’s Eve concerts have been canceled, as has a performance of “Hamilton.” Critics of the president present a binary choice for artists: boycott and join the resistance, or be labeled a collaborator. Not so fast, argues Kat Rosenfield.
Timothée Chalamet’s Ping-Pong epic “Marty Supreme” arrives on a wave of blimps, viral stunts, and unprecedented marketing hype. But does the movie live up to the PR spectacle? Suzy Weiss has the verdict.
A new Netflix documentary spotlights Seymour Hersh, one of the great investigative reporters of the 20th century. But something happened to the journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre and dragged the CIA’s darkest secrets into daylight, and late in his career he found himself laundering the reputation of Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad. Eli Lake investigates one of the investigative greats, and asks: How did he lose his way?
Tatiana Schlossberg, an environmental journalist and a granddaughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, died on Tuesday. In November, Schlossberg wrote an essay in The New Yorker announcing her terminal cancer diagnosis, acute myeloid leukemia, which she had been battling since May 2024. She was 35.
Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen’s port city of Mukalla on Tuesday after a weapons shipment from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrived for separatist forces. Saudi state-run press announced the strikes, saying the weapons shipment to the UAE-backed forces “threatens peace and stability.” The UAE later announced it would remove its remaining military presence from the country.
Meta has agreed to buy artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Manus for more than $2 billion, acquiring a fast-growing Singapore-based company known for its AI research tools and agent technology. The deal strengthens Meta’s push to compete in AI assistants, with Manus to be integrated into Meta’s products and its China operations discontinued.
Cases of the flu are spiking across the country, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday. The CDC estimates there have been 7.5 million cases of the flu, resulting in 81,000 hospitalizations and 3,100 deaths. Over 30 states are experiencing “high” or “very high” levels of flu cases. New York recorded a record amount of flu cases during the week ending December 20.
OpenAI is paying its employees more than any other major tech start-up in history prior to the company filing for an initial public offering. OpenAI’s approximately 4,000 employees received an average of $1.5 million in stock compensation, more than seven times what Google offered in 2003, a year before the company went public.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is expected to appoint Kamar Samuels, a veteran leader in the city’s public education system, as his schools chancellor, before his inauguration tomorrow. Samuels is a local superintendent in upper Manhattan with a past of championing desegregation and has indicated a desire to replace the city’s gifted and talented programs.
The U.S. stock market is closing out the year at a near-record high, with the S&P 500 up 17 percent and NASDAQ up 21 percent, respectively, marking the end of an impressive yearlong rally that began after tremors hit the market in the wake of President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs in April.
geez ollie, I must've missed your article on the Somali daycare scandal?
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1371260147384482/?fs=e&fs=e
Regarding the rising flu cases, there’s an angle that states that it’s simply environmental changes that are impacting our health, manifesting as the “flu.”
Some articles if anyone’s interested and the comments reflect what we’re seeing: people are getting sicker
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/the-shutdown-the-skies-and-the-sickness
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/why-disease-causing-viruses-are-pseudoscience-966