It’s Friday, October 30. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Audrey Fahlberg reports from Ohio’s bruising governor’s race. What are President Donald Trump’s options in Iran after the midterms? And much more.
But first: Is Massachusetts going to just say no to legalized weed?
You’ve heard all about the stakes of next week’s midterms: Will the Republican Party lose control of Congress? Will the far left pull off a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party? If you’re like me, you’re probably sick of the stump speeches, slimy attack ads, and “SOS” texts from campaigns that somehow got your phone number.
But Tuesday isn’t just about the candidates. Below the R’s and D’s are ballot measures, one of which I’ve been watching closely. It has to do with the consequences of legal marijuana, a topic that is personal to me and that I’ve thought a lot about. In Massachusetts, Question 8 would repeal the legalization of recreational marijuana, which was passed by voters a decade ago. This is the first anti-pot measure of its kind, and a similar one will likely be on the ballot in Maine next year.
Weed is legal in 24 states, but a cultural shift against it is underway, driven by concerns about the rising potency of marijuana, more instances of psychosis, and cannabis-related DUIs. Question 8 will test how big this vibe shift actually is. Some of the Massachusetts voters I talked to who voted to legalize marijuana a decade ago now regret it. Others see a ban as too extreme, especially now that pot is so easy to buy in many places.
Whatever the outcome next week, the fight over legal weed isn’t going anywhere.
—Josh Code
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EDITORS’ PICKS
Next Tuesday, Americans head to the polls to vote in midterms that could reshape the political landscape for the rest of Trump’s term. Ahead of Election Day, we brought you two pieces on the choices facing voters on both sides of the aisle.
If Democrats retake the Senate, it won’t be thanks to the progressive firebrands making headlines. Ross Douthat argued it will be because the Democratic Party ran candidates who can pass as moderates in red and purple states. The bigger question, he writes, is whether a party that spent years punishing its independent-minded members will let them survive once they’re in office.
On the right, radio host Erick Erickson wrestled with a different question: whether to vote for his own party’s nominee at all. The rock-ribbed conservative urges fellow Republicans to stop backing bad candidates just because they have an R next to their names, and explains why he plans to leave Georgia’s Senate line on his ballot blank rather than vote for Mike Collins. Wherever you’re casting your vote, Erick’s warning against closing your eyes and pulling the lever is one worth hearing.
Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday, and neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc nor challenger Gadi Eisenkot won a majority. This week, we brought you two pieces on what comes next.
Netanyahu’s right-wing party plunged from 68 seats to 53, its worst showing in two decades. Yet Haviv Rettig Gur argued that the prime minister may have done just well enough to deny Eisenkot an easy path to power, buying Netanyahu time for his top priority: bringing down the Iranian regime.
Many of Netanyahu’s critics abroad insist that their problem isn’t with Israel, only with him. Douglas Murray said that’s wishful thinking. Whoever leads the next government, he writes, Israel’s approach to its security won’t change much, and neither will the world’s hostility to the Jewish state.
In 2020, Tiffany Riley lost her job as a Vermont school principal over a Facebook post questioning the tactics of Black Lives Matter. A court later sided with her, but six years and more than 70 job applications later, she still hasn’t landed a single interview. This week, Frannie Block reported on why Riley can’t escape her cancellation, even as the rest of the country moves on. “It wasn’t just a loss of my job,” Riley said. “It was a loss of everything.”
Finally, since October 7, 2023, Jews across the West have been told to go “back to Poland,” the place where so many of their ancestors were murdered. Omar Mohammed, an Iraqi historian who anonymously documented ISIS’s reign over Mosul, decided to see what that phrase really means. He traveled to the concentration camps to write about being “a historian from Mosul who documented one genocide, standing for the first time at the site of another,” and came home with a demand for the Arab world.
