It’s Monday, March 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: The future of war. How to fix air travel. The company promising man-made human eggs. Tyler Cowen on Conversations with Coleman. Ruy Teixeira on how Democrats learned to stop worrying and love losing. All that and much more.

But first: An unforced error in Jerusalem.

As a Free Press reader, you’re no doubt aware of an antisemitism problem within Catholicism. It’s an ancient issue turbocharged by social media algorithms and far-right Catholic influencers, who insist that Zionism and Catholicism are incompatible despite the Vatican’s insistence that antisemitism is a grave sin and Israel has a right to exist.

Gasoline was thrown onto this already flammable situation yesterday, when Israeli authorities blocked the top Catholic in the Jewish state from celebrating a Palm Sunday Mass. Police stopped Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa from walking to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Christianity, where he was set to hold a livestreamed Mass.

Critics of Israel said that it was proof that Israel hates Christians. The Israeli government insisted that the police stopped Pizzaballa due to security concerns, as Iranian missiles continue to hit Jerusalem and damage holy sites; earlier this month, for example, a fragment of an Iranian missile landed within walking distance of the church.

Today, Avi Mayer, founder of Jerusalem Journal and former editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, reports on the controversy for The Free Press. One well-connected Israeli rabbi who works on interfaith issues blamed the incident on “a perfect storm of clumsiness, closed-mindedness, and rosh katan,” a Hebrew phrase denoting a tendency to do the bare minimum without taking the bigger picture into account.

For his part, Pizzaballa is hitting a conciliatory note, saying there were “misunderstandings” and that “everything was done in a very polite manner.”

Meanwhile, Israeli president Isaac Herzog expressed his “great sorrow” that the Mass was prevented, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has directed authorities to “enable [Pizzaballa] to hold services as he wishes.”

Read Avi’s story on the messy reality of life during wartime, how an avoidable bureaucratic mishap turned into an international incident, and why the Israeli government’s unforced errors are so costly.

—Will Rahn

ANTROPIC, ANDURIL AND THE FUTURE OF DEFENSE TECH

February 27, 2026, was a flash point in the cold war between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The AI giant Anthropic had drawn a red line with the Pentagon, forbidding the military from using its product for autonomous weapons or the mass surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon retaliated by ending their contract and designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk. Anthropic has since sued to overturn this designation.

Anthropic Wins the First Round Against Trump

Jed Rubenfeld

The latest round in that fight came late last week, when a judge sided with Anthropic in the fight. So what does the law say about this? Our legal columnist Jed Rubenfeld breaks it down and forecasts where the long battle between Big Tech and Big Government could end. Read full story

Trae Stephens: Silicon Valley and Washington Must Build Together

Trae Stephens

The Anthropic-Pentagon dustup is part of a much bigger battle, between the technologists who want control over their own creation and the policymakers wary of an unelected tech oligarchy. Today, Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens explains why “patriotic cooperation” between public and private sectors is the only way out of that double bind—and why, if we don’t act on it soon, we could cede the next century to Beijing. Read full story

Government Doesn’t Have to Manage the Air

Judge Glock

If you’ve been anywhere near an airport these past few weeks, you know that America has a major air travel problem. TSA lines are longer than ever, and agents are calling out from work as the partial government shutdown drags on. The good news is that some TSA agents could see paychecks as soon as today. But, as Judge Glock argues, the real problem with air travel is much bigger than that. Read his piece to find out how our aviation infrastructure fell apart, and what it will take to finally fix it. Read full story

Can Man-Made Eggs Be the Future of Fertility?

Maya Sulkin

We’re living in a time of medical miracles—just ask one of the millions of people whose life has been transformed by GLP-1s. Today, Maya Sulkin has the scoop on the next frontier in fertility treatments: making functional human eggs from stem cells. The CEO of a company trying to do just that tells Maya that it will be at least five years before the first baby is born using this technology. Read full story

Have the Democrats Learned Anything?

Ruy Teixeira

Have the Democrats learned anything? That’s the question Ruy Teixeira asked in a prescient piece following their catastrophic defeat in the 2024 election. Now, as we approach the midterms two years later, Ruy argues that the party is confident of victory—and has given up on the idea that they need to do some soul-searching. Read his piece on the Democrats’ stasis, and the five major issues still holding them back.