It’s Thursday, June 4. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: What was Candace Owens up to in Moscow? An AI founder on why AI won’t take your programming job. Jon Meacham on the novel that explains America. And much more.

But first: Frannie Block on why she’s still following the Qatari money.

I started covering Qatari influence campaigns in the United States because of a map.

The map, which hung in a public elementary school in Brooklyn, depicted the “Arab world”—only Israel wasn’t on it. The classroom in which it hung, I uncovered, was funded by a nonprofit called Qatar Foundation International, run by the wife of Qatar’s emir. It turns out, in a four-year time span, QFI had given over $1 million to the New York City Department of Education.

Yesterday, QFI reportedly announced it would be “winding down” its operations—perhaps a sign that the Gulf country is wary of scrutiny as more people ask, “Why is this tiny, oil-rich country in the Gulf spending so much money in America?”

My colleague Jay Solomon and I spent months trying to understand just how much Qatari money was making its way into American life. The investigation we published last year revealed nearly $100 billion of Qatari investments in key American industries, including education and defense—and exposed how Qatar sought to curry favor with politicians and the American public on both sides of the aisle.

But widen the lens and the issue only grows in size. Today, a new report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tallies more than $400 billion in Qatari spending in the U.S. since 2010. The list goes on and on—each example another reason for worry and outrage about Qatar’s influence over American life. Read my story for the latest developments on one of the most overlooked stories in the country.

—Frannie Block

He Defended a Terrorist. Will Democrats Embrace Him?

Audrey Fahlberg

A retired Army doctor who once testified on behalf of a convicted terrorist just won a Democratic primary in New Jersey, and is likely headed to Congress. Audrey Fahlberg reports on Adam Hamawy’s past and how Democratic leaders are responding. “The idea that we’ve expanded the tent to the point that we’re putting people in that clearly are not in line with our values,” one Democratic congressman told her, “is a real long-term mistake.” Read full story

Why Candace Owens Went to Russia

Park MacDougald

As Russia launched one of its largest attacks on Ukraine in recent months, Candace Owens was in Moscow posting online about the glories of Russian life. What she forgot to mention was that she was there to speak at a Kremlin-backed economic forum, rubbing elbows with Vladimir Putin’s most loyal propagandists. What was she doing there? And what does the trip say about the Kremlin’s reach across the American right? Park MacDougald offers answers to those questions in his story on how American podcasters became Kremlin cheerleaders. Read full story

I Built an AI Company. Here’s Why AI Won’t Kill Coding Jobs.

Hoan Ton-That

Hoan Ton-That, founder of Clearview AI, is having the most fun he’s ever had, and it’s all thanks to AI coding tools. The lifelong software engineer argues that the companies warning you about AI taking your programming job are wrong. His fellow coders aren’t going to be obsolete, he predicts. “Each time a tool made a job easier, we didn’t run out of things to do,” he writes. “We found bigger things to do.” Read full story

The WWII Novel That Explains America

Shilo Brooks

In the latest episode of Old School, Shilo Brooks sits down with Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jon Meacham to discuss Herman Wouk’s epic novel “The Winds of War,” what it reveals about American character, and the books and events every citizen should know to better understand our country. Listen on

For the latest installment of our new Great Americans series, Daniel Akst tells the story of Elisha Otis—the Vermont farm boy who made the American skyscraper possible. Before Otis, elevators could plummet if their ropes snapped. His invention, the safety hoist, fixed that. Otis, Daniel writes, “embodied a country hell-bent to build.” Read his piece on the man who gave America its skyline.