It’s Tuesday, October 6. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: James Kirchick on the problem with the ascendant European right. Martin Gurri on Europe’s Russia fearmongering. Tyler Cowen on what the critics get wrong about effective altruism. Plus: Michael Oren on School of War, and more.
But first: Olivia Reingold reports from Cornell.
The town of Ithaca, New York, is the epicenter of a national scandal: the case of the so-called “Cornell 7.” It is the most explosive story about campus sexual assault in years, and has been in the headlines ever since an anonymous Jane Doe filed a lawsuit last month alleging that seven male students gang-raped her at their fraternity house in 2024.
With everyone from New York’s governor to the president weighing in on the case, we sent Olivia Reingold to Cornell. She found a campus rocked by the story: The night before she arrived, a student building had been vandalized. Yesterday, she was among a vast crowd of protesters gathered to declare “Justice for Survivors,” and carrying signs that read “I DON’T WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL WITH RAPISTS.” This is her dispatch from the school at the center of the national conversation.
—The Editors
Russia War Fears and the Rise of the European Right
Today we have two stories on the rise of the right in Europe, and how the continent’s incumbents have reacted. The first comes from James Kirchick. He takes stock of the continent’s surging right-wing populists, who are rocking the political order in France, Germany, and beyond. “It would be a grave mistake to condemn these movements as betokening the return of fascism,” writes Kirchick. “It would also be a mistake to cheer them on.” In his latest piece, he explains why the cure to the excesses of the European establishment could be worse than the disease.
Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst, detects the threat of the surging new right in the recent warnings from European elites about a widening war with Russia. He argues that fear of Russian aggression beyond Ukraine—while understandable—has become overblown. Do centrist and establishment politicians from London to Berlin see Russia as a convenient tool in delegitimizing their opponents rather than a truly existential threat? “Russia is the new Covid—a crisis so dire that the state must be allowed to trample at will on individual rights to prevent the overthrow of civilized society,” Gurri writes. Read Gurri’s essay on what, besides national security, is at stake.
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THE NEWS
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An apparent outbreak of pneumonic plague in Russia has spurred the quarantine of some 200 people in Siberia, where a 28-year-old researcher at a Russian germ lab died last week. The pathogen that caused the researcher’s illness is of “unknown” origin, according to Russian officials. “I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause just to keep an eye on it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Monday.
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Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and candidate of the right-wing Liberal Party, is headed to a runoff election for president of Brazil against incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula. Flávio won the most votes—though not a majority—in the first-round election. He’ll face off against Lula in a two-way contest on October 25.
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The co-pilot and attempted hijacker of FlyDubai Flight 1073 planned to crash into Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport last week and had plotted the attack for over a year, Israeli officials told CBS News. He should not have been permitted to fly the plane into Israel, one official said, noting that it was “a huge failure” that his profile was not flagged by security checks.
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The Nasdaq reached an all-time high on Monday as oil prices slipped, with AI chipmakers Nvidia and Microsoft leading the surge. “With the economic data calendar being light and earnings about a week away, investors are really groping for anything positive to glom onto, and clearly they’re looking at lower energy prices,” one market analyst told Reuters.
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Former American Idol contestant Caleb Flynn was sentenced to life without parole on Monday for the murder of his wife, while he maintained his innocence. Prosecutors said Flynn fatally shot his wife while she slept in her bed on February 16, before calling 911 to claim a home intruder was responsible.
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Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is headed to Fox News for a new job as on-air contributor. Leavitt, who will start on November 1, said in a statement that she looks forward “to bringing my unique perspective from my experience as White House Press Secretary, along with the same energy and candor that defined my tenure, to Fox’s millions of viewers across their many platforms.”
