# El-Sayed’s Unanswered Questions. Plus. . . Canonical: https://brew.new/templates/substack/el-sayeds-unanswered-questions-plus Brand: substack.com Category: general ![Preview of El-Sayed’s Unanswered Questions. Plus. . .](https://cdn.brew.new/email-preview-560e1c76a077e57b-tracking_r57rg53qh0t40qcx7dxeh783vn8g51hm-1791804090254.png) ## Email content Forwarded this email? Subscribe for more The Front PageMonday, 10.12.2026View in App Upgrade to Listen Get the whole story. Join now.El-Sayed’s Unanswered Questions. Plus. . . Rod Dreher’s dispatch from NatCon Jerusalem. Arthur Brooks on why you shouldn’t pursue happiness. Helen Andrews says the ‘great feminization’ has come to Cornell. And more. Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed holds a campaign town hall on October 10, 2026, in Cadillac, Michigan. (Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images) By The Free Press It’s Monday, October 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: Helen Andrews on what the Cornell case reveals about the great feminization. Arthur Brooks says you’re chasing the wrong kind of happiness. The TikTok lawyer taking on Mamdani. And much more. But first: The question El-Sayed won’t answer. Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is known for having a short fuse when speaking with reporters and TV hosts who pose questions he doesn’t want to answer. I got a taste of that myself during a press gaggle last week. I asked him whether he regrets saying during a private campaign strategy call earlier this year that “I just don’t want to comment” on the assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today” about his death. Before I could even finish my question, he cut in to insist he is “just not interested in this dog and pony show” about leaked audio that is “not relevant to people’s lives,” even though he spends so much of his time on the stump talking about foreign policy related to Israel, AIPAC, and the Iran war. “Ask smart questions,” he admonished me. Behind our exchange is a serious issue concerning El-Sayed’s reticence to engage with reporters’ foreign policy questions. It could make or break one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. Read my story on our testy back-and-forth, and the bigger picture in this crucial contest. —Audrey Fahlberg Abdul El-Sayed’s Unanswered QuestionsAudrey Fahlberg • U.S. Politics Abdul El-Sayed’s Unanswered Questions Read story › Rod Dreher • Israel Rod Dreher: What I Heard from the New Right in Jerusalem Rod Dreher: What I Heard from the New Right in Jerusalem Last week, the National Conservatism conference was held in Israel for the first time. Rod Dreher attended the gathering of thinkers, and watched as several American speakers told the audience that young conservatives, weary of foreign wars and unmoved by the religious and historical ties that once drew the right to Israel, are turning on the Jewish state. “This is painful, but it’s reality, and there’s nothing to be gained by ignoring or minimizing it,” writes Rod. Read his dispatch on the blunt message delivered in Jerusalem. Read story › Arthur Brooks • The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks Arthur Brooks: Don’t Pursue Happiness Arthur Brooks: Don’t Pursue Happiness For a man whose column is called The Pursuit of Happiness, Arthur Brooks has some surprising advice: Quit pursuing it—at least in the way most people do. Treat it as something to chase, he says, and it will keep slipping away. When Jefferson enshrined the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence, he meant the fruit of a good life, not a passing mood. “The more you pursue feelings of happiness, the less of it you will get,” he writes. Read his column on what to do instead. Read story › Helen Andrews • Sex and Gender The Great Feminization Comes to Cornell The Great Feminization Comes to Cornell A year ago, Helen Andrews set off a lively debate with “The Great Feminization,” an essay arguing the woke era is best explained by women’s growing sway within American institutions. It came with a warning: that real courtrooms would start to resemble campus Title IX tribunals, where sympathy for accusers trumps due process. Now Andrews says the Cornell 7 case is proving her right. When Governor Kathy Hochul handed the case to Attorney General Letitia James, she suggested two women might see it differently than men would. On that point, Andrews agrees. Read her piece on why that should worry us all. Read story › Coleman Hughes • Conversations with Coleman The Bible Story Every Atheist Should Read, with Megan Phelps-Roper The Bible Story Every Atheist Should Read, with Megan Phelps-Roper Megan Phelps-Roper grew up as the public face of the Westboro Baptist Church, the hate group founded by her grandfather Fred Phelps, known for picketing gays, Jews, and veterans’ funerals. She left in 2012 after exchanges on Twitter exposed cracks in its theology she could no longer ignore. She joins Coleman Hughes on the latest episode of Conversations with Coleman to discuss the Bible verse that unraveled her worldview, why she still reads Scripture to her kids though she no longer believes in God, and why a society with no fixed values may be as dangerous as one that enforces the wrong ones. Watch now › SpotifyApple PodcastsRSS Lucy Biggers • The Free Press Interviews The TikTok Lawyer Fighting Socialism, 60 Seconds at a Time The TikTok Lawyer Fighting Socialism, 60 Seconds at a Time Before Zohran Mamdani became New York’s mayor, Joe Sweeny was just another New York lawyer. Now, fed up with the rise of socialism in the city, he has built a huge following with 60-second takes on capitalism, the DSA, and hizzoner. And despite what his critics think, he’s never voted Republican. Lucy Biggers sits down with Sweeny to talk about why his videos are resonating, and why Mamdani’s message is so effective. Listen to their conversation here. Watch now › SpotifyApple PodcastsRSS MORE FROM THE FREE PRESSElisha Wiesel: The Death of the Nobel Peace Prize Elisha Wiesel Read story Elon Musk’s Enemies Make His Best Case Liel Leibovitz Read story Why ‘The Social Reckoning’ Fails Suzy Weiss Read story Adults Are Regressing Kat Rosenfield Read story THE NEWS Fighters loyal to the Houthi authorities take part in a rally to recruit more fighters in Sanaa on October 7, 2026. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images) Houthi rebels hit Riyadh’s main airport again yesterday, a day after a strike on the same passenger terminal killed at least 12 people, including an American, and injured more than 300 in the deadliest attack on Saudi soil in over a decade. The Iran-backed group says it’s retaliating for a Saudi-led offensive against it in Yemen. A gunman killed eight people, including two children and a pregnant woman, in a residential neighborhood of Erie, Pennsylvania, on Friday evening before apparently taking his own life. All but one of the victims were his relatives, and investigators have not yet identified a motive. Pope Leo XIV announced Sunday that he will have surgery this week to remove a small lesion doctors found on his lung. The 71-year-old said it was caught at an early stage, and the Vatican expects his recovery to take about a week. He still plans to travel to South America in November. President Trump said Friday that Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed to send millions of tons of diesel onto world markets in the coming months, with the U.S. temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian energy to allow it, as the price of diesel hovers above $6 a gallon amid the Iran war. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the move, saying any sanctions relief would only bankroll more Russian aggression. Christa Pike has left the hospital and returned to the Nashville prison where she’s been held for three decades, her lawyers said Saturday, less than two weeks after she survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her. Pike is now walking with help and regaining use of her arms. Her attorneys are pressing the governor to commute her sentence to life in prison. At least four people died and hundreds of thousands lost power after Hurricane Isaias tore into the Florida Panhandle, ripping roofs off homes and toppling trees throughout the region. The storm weakened quickly over land, but its remnants unleashed flash flooding as far as North Carolina over the weekend, and close to 390,000 customers in Florida and Alabama were in the dark as of Sunday. COMMENT LIKE SHARE DOWNLOAD AS A PDF Become a paid subscriber To support our journalism, and unlock all of our investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is, subscribe below. UPGRADE TODAY Download on the App Store © 2026 The Free Press 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe [Open and remix this design](https://brew.new/templates/substack/el-sayeds-unanswered-questions-plus) [Browse email designs](https://brew.new/browse/templates)