Is WWIII Already Underway? Is Hegseth Toast? Plus. . .

It’s Thursday, December 5. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: Is World War III already underway? Young Canadians turn against Trudeau. The Russian draft dodgers who fled to paradise. Ryan Holiday on Honestly. And more.

But first: Is Pete Hegseth toast?

Call it the Hegseth rule. If your own mom is forced to defend you on cable news, your nomination fight probably isn’t going very well. Yesterday, Penelope Hegseth appeared on Fox & Friends to assure the nation that her son Pete, the Fox News host and Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, was the right man to lead the Pentagon.

Hegseth’s mother was dragged into the nomination fight after The New York Times published an email she wrote to her son in 2018 accusing him of being an “abuser of women.” On Fox News yesterday, she said “he’s not the man he was seven years ago” and “I’m not that mother.”

The email is just one headache for Hegseth and the Trump transition team. There’s also the woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017 and who he paid off as part of a settlement. And there are the claims, made in a whistleblower report seen by The New Yorker, that Hegseth was forced out of two nonprofit veterans organizations because of claims of inappropriate sexual behavior, financial mismanagement, and other bad conduct. And then there’s the NBC report (albeit one that relies entirely on anonymous sources) that Hegseth’s drinking “worried” colleagues at Fox News.

Hegseth has denied all these allegations and vowed to fight on. But the rolling revelations have been enough to give as many as six Republican senators pause over whether this is really the man to lead the Department of Defense—a vast, labyrinthine institution with more than three million employees.

And so, at the time of writing, Hegseth’s nomination is on life support, with Trump reportedly mulling alternatives—including, according to The Wall Street Journal, Florida governor and former Republican primary foe Ron DeSantis.

The Hegseth revelations would be a problem for a nominee at the best of times. But Republican senators are likely taking an especially hard look at Hegseth in part because the world is on a knife edge.

Things are so crazy across the globe right now it’s hard to keep up. Just when you’ve learned about rebel advances in Syria, you find out martial law has been declared in South Korea—a crucial U.S. ally. Six hours later, the Seoul coup is over (for more on that, watch this segment of our latest live show), but it’s still kicking off in Georgia, where protesters and the police have squared off every night for a week. And then you read about the wave of violence across Europe that, according to The Telegraph, means Russia’s “secret war” against the West has already begun. Oh, and the French government just collapsed. And I haven’t even mentioned Ukraine and Israel and Gaza and Lebanon and Sudan. At least our president is sharp as a tack.

“If it feels like the world is on fire right now, that’s because it is,” writes Jay Solomon in our lead story today. Things are so bad experts are drawing chilling historical comparisons to 1914 and 1939. They’re asking, could we be on the brink of another world war? Or has World War III already begun?

Read Jay Solomon’s full report on an “Axis of Upheaval” that is on the march—and what America should do to stop it.

How Young Canadians Lost Faith in Justin Trudeau

Amanda Vanderley, 25, is a nurse in London, Ontario. She and her husband Mattias, a 23-year-old data analyst, make a combined household income of $135,000. That might sound like a big amount, but after the Canadian taxman collects his share, they are left with the equivalent of $60,000 U.S.—which they say is barely enough to manage day-to-day living, let alone consider buying a home.

Because of this financial precariousness, Vanderley will be voting for Canada’s Conservative Party at the next election. And she is not alone among her cohort. In a dispatch from north of the border, Rupa Subramanya talks to members of the generation whose support was crucial to Justin Trudeau’s ascent—but who are now turning their backs on the prime minister and the liberalism he represents.

Read Rupa Subramanya on “How Young Canadians Lost Faith in Justin Trudeau.”

Draft Dodgers In Paradise

Young Russians have been flocking to Bali ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. But after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, they’re coming to the island in search of more than just a cheap getaway and a few weeks in the sun. They want to escape being drafted into Putin’s meat grinder.

For The Free Press, Brandon Caro meets the Russians in Bali who say “It’s not my war. I didn’t start it.” An estimated 100,000 Russians decamped to Bali in the year following the outbreak of war, and Russians now comprise the second-largest group of foreigners there, behind Australians.

Read his dispatch: “The Russian Draft Dodgers Who Fled to Paradise.”

Police on the scene where Brian Thompson was shot and killed in New York on Wednesday. (Photo by Bryan R. Smith via Getty Images)

• At around 6:45 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Brian Thompson—CEO of UnitedHealthcare—was shot dead in what police say was a targeted attack. The shooting, captured on CCTV, occurred outside the hotel where UnitedHealthcare was hosting a day-long meeting with Wall Street analysts. New York may be inured to violent crime, but the killing of a senior executive was shockingly brazen. As of Wednesday evening, the killer was still at large but not thought to be a threat to the public.
  

• A conservative-majority Supreme Court is poised to uphold a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors after hearing oral arguments on Wednesday. Trans advocates asked the court to follow a 2020 Supreme Court decision as precedent, which ruled that trans workers are protected from employment discrimination on the basis of being trans. Tennessee argues the ban isn’t about sex discrimination—it’s about protecting confused and often mentally ill children from parents and doctors who cause irreversible damage with medical interventions. In one standout moment, ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio acknowledged that gender realignment surgery for children does not prevent suicide—a core claim of many trans activists. For more on the case, read whistleblower Jamie Reed’s op-ed on why she supports the Tennessee ban.
  

• The White House is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for current and former government officials they believe could be targeted by the incoming administration in politically motivated prosecutions. Are you sure that’s a precedent you guys want to set? A flashback, courtesy of The Washington Post’s Jason Willick: In the presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court earlier this year, Biden’s own Department of Justice reassured the court that “The Executive branch and the criminal justice system contain strong safeguards against groundless prosecutions.” And, as Sarah Isgur notes, we were also told how dangerous any kind of executive immunity would be.

• France’s populist parties on the left and the right joined forces yesterday to topple Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government and stop an unpopular budget from passing. A joint no-confidence motion dissolved Barnier’s administration, making it the shortest-lived since the Fifth Republic’s founding in 1958 and thrusting the country into uncharted political territory. “We won’t have a budget, we won’t have a government—there is no sense of the day after,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist in Paris, summing up the uncertainty in Paris.
  

• Chinese hackers are still lingering in U.S. telecom servers three months after the initial hack. This week, American officials urged the public to move their communications to encrypted messaging services such as Signal and WhatsApp. “I think it would be impossible for us to predict a time frame on when we’ll have full eviction,” CISA executive assistant director for cybersecurity Jeff Greene said. If any hackers are reading this, could you please let me know what my Facebook password is? I’ve been locked out for years and have a few happy birthday messages I need to “like.”
  

• Donald Trump has named Gail Slater as his pick for a top antitrust post at the DOJ. Slater previously worked as a policy adviser for J.D. Vance, and her appointment was taken as a sign that Trump would continue Biden’s aggressive antitrust approach to Big Tech—dashing the hopes of a more lax approach among Silicon Valley bigwigs. Announcing the pick, Trump said: “Big Tech has run wild for years. . . using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” By “Little Tech,” we’re assuming he means the ill-fated Jeremy Renner App. Antitrust Avengers, assemble!
  

• In better news for the tech bros, Trump announced Wednesday that he has picked former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins to run the Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins is expected to bring a lighter touch to the role, and he has been especially critical of the SEC’s cryptocurrency crackdown. To the moon!
  

• In the wake of a podcast election won decisively by Donald Trump, the left has argued that it needs its own Joe Rogan. One candidate for the role is Hasan Piker, a podcaster and streamer who garnered almost eight million viewers on election night, and who has been featured prominently on CNN and NBC as the left’s Gen Z whisperer. The only problem? He has some—how to put this—edgy views on Israel and “Zionism.”
  

• American students fared worse than their peers during the pandemic, according to the results of international test scores. U.S. students’ performance on an international test measuring both math and science proficiency significantly declined between 2019 and 2023, and worsened compared to other countries. The decline is being attributed to prolonged school closures. Read David Zweig’s 2023 Free Press piece: “The School That Couldn’t Quit Covid.”

• The least datable generation out there (Gen Z) has found a new matchmaking method: Facebook Dating. And to whomever came up with “Facebook Dating,” Facebook Meat Market was right there, you guys! The Boomer-favored social media app has seen a surge in the number of daily conversations on their dating platform for users aged 18–29, with an increase of 24 percent. And the service has a high return on investment, with 72 percent of likes from women resulting in a match. Read Kat Rosenfield’s essay on love in the age of the apps: “Stop Saying Dating Is Terrible.”

Ryan Holiday on What We Can Learn from the Stoics

In another life, Ryan Holiday was the head of marketing for the controversial fashion brand American Apparel. But he blew up his corporate career with an exposé he wrote titled Trust Me, I’m Lying. Since then, Holiday has become a devoted stoic, and he reinvented himself as a translator of ancient wisdom for modern audiences on his podcast and in his best-selling books on stoic virtues.

He joins Michael Moynihan on the latest episode of Honestly to discuss some light topics, such as: why power corrupts, how ego can destroy you, and the limits of loyalty. You can watch their conversation below or catch it on the Honestly feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman.

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