It’s Monday, September 28. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Inside the 50,000-person ceremony for the man who could become America’s next saint. Arthur Brooks on whether adult children have a duty to care for their aging parents. River Page meets Rachel Dolezal. And much more.
But first: Audrey Fahlberg talks to the man trying to salvage the midterms for the GOP.
Gas and diesel prices are at electorally dangerous levels. The U.S. is locked in a prolonged and unpopular war with Iran. And if you believe the polls, Donald Trump’s approval ratings are at record lows. No wonder some vulnerable Republican candidates are distancing themselves from the president in the final stretch of the 2026 midterm campaign.
And yet, the man leading Republicans’ 2026 midterm strategy, former deputy White House chief of staff James Blair, told me that the GOP’s electoral prospects aren’t anywhere near as dire as the polls or the party skeptics suggest.
“I don’t think there will be a blue wave at all,” he said, in an exclusive sit-down interview in his office. This isn’t a presidential contest, he emphasized, but rather “trench warfare” over a scattering of really close races. The idea of a “massive swing” for the Democrats just doesn’t track with what he’s seeing, he told me.
Wishful thinking, or the hard-nosed assessment of one of the most respected strategists in the GOP? Read my interview with a man who, in his words, usually avoids journalistic profiles “like the plague,” and judge for yourself. —Audrey Fahlberg
Last week, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was beatified—the penultimate step in the Catholic Church on the path to sainthood. If Sheen takes the final step, he’ll find himself among just 11 Americans ever recognized as a saint. Sheen was one of the most famous priests in America, having pioneered a new form of mass evangelization in the 1950s that drew an audience of 30 million people a week. He became eligible for beatification because a miracle was attributed to him: In 2010, a stillborn baby’s heart began beating after the parents prayed for Sheen’s intercession.
I spent last week in St. Louis, Missouri, where 50,000 Catholics turned out to celebrate a man who died years before most of them were born. In a Church deeply divided by liturgy and politics, why was Sheen able to bring them together? Read my dispatch to find out. —Madeleine Long
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Arthur Brooks: Your Parents Raised You. What Do You Owe Them? |
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Two years ago, Arthur Brooks and his wife moved to Virginia to live near their adult children, for two reasons: First, it would mean they could help take care of their grandchildren—and second, it would make it easier for them to be taken care of when they got older. As families fragment and birth rates fall, it’s become the norm for adult children to outsource care of aging parents to nursing homes and home health aides. But is this an abdication of duty? And what arrangement actually makes both generations happiest? Arthur tackles both questions in his latest column. | |
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Two Drinks with...Rachel Dolezal |
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Last week, a Philadelphia activist was forced to reveal that she is not the part-black, part-Arab woman she’d claimed to be; she is, in fact, white and Jewish. Her name is Hannah Gann, but in the media, she’s being called “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal.” How does the actual Rachel Dolezal feel about this? River Page recently sat down with the woman who spent her life presenting as a black woman, until she was outed as white in 2015, and all hell broke loose. Dolezal, who now goes by Nkechi Diallo, talked to River about why she started an OnlyFans page and trained as a sex therapist, whether she still identifies as “trans-black,” and how she feels about her name being shorthand for race fakery. | |
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