It’s Tuesday, December 31. 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: Should fifth graders be taught what it means to be transgender?; an Indian American’s heartbreak over the MAGA immigration rift; a tribute to a dog for all seasons; and more.
But first: Joe Biden’s latest lesson in deceit.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and as we close out 2024, now is a good time to reflect on the past 12 months, or as I like to call it, the big year for big lies.
Consider this far-from-complete list. There were the Democrats’ repeated claims that Joe Biden was “sharp” as a tack and at “the top of his game”—in fact, he was clearheaded enough to run the country for another four years!
Or remember when Kamala Harris was the “border czar”—until she wasn’t, and, really, had never been the “border czar?” Or the Ohio “cat eaters” who were nothing of the sort?
Then there was apostrophe-gate. After comedian Tony Hinchcliffe joked at a Trump rally that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage,” Biden retorted: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.” To anyone with eyes and ears, Biden was plainly calling Trump supporters “garbage.” But liberal pundits insisted he actually said “supporter’s.” In other words, Biden wasn’t really disparaging half the country, just the garbage belonging to the Trump-supporting Hinchcliffe.
But nothing could top Biden’s vehement denials that he had any knowledge of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. Indeed, he consistently said he never even met with any of Hunter’s business partners, or spoke to his son about his business ventures. And yet, here we are, weeks before Biden leaves office, and one last incriminating piece of evidence has emerged.
The official photos of the 2013 visit to China by then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were just released by the National Archives. They show Biden shaking the hand of future BHR Partners CEO Jonathan Li, and Hunter speaking with Chinese president Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee has documented 16 separate times that Biden lied about his knowledge or involvement with his family’s business.
“If this were just a case of a president and his aides trying to wriggle out of a scandal, it would be one thing. But the peculiar dynamics of the Trump era made the Democrats, the FBI, and the legacy press coconspirators in the cover-up,” writes Eli Lake in his column today. Read Eli on The Photos That Exposed Biden’s Lies.
Liberals Warned Me About MAGA’s Racism. I Didn’t Believe Them—Until Now
Growing up in Rhode Island to Indian-born parents who both immigrated to America, Kiran Sampath was quick to challenge the lazy use of terms like “racist” and “xenophobic” to shut down legitimate debate about immigration. Her many immigrant friends who voted for Donald Trump insisted the 45th president was anti-illegal immigration, not anti-immigrant, and she defended that position for years.
But a few days ago, after Trump appointed Indian American and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence, Sampath opened X to see her feed poisoned by anti-Indian vitriol—and she was forced to reckon with an ugly part of the MAGA coalition.
“My grandfather, a surgeon, came to America in 1973,” she writes. “Now 84, he's a three-time Trump voter who thinks immigration should be controlled to keep our system functioning. Yesterday, I tried to explain the MAGA fracture I was seeing online. But then I stopped. He is proud to be a Hindu and an Indian, and prouder still to be an American, someone who achieved the American dream. I didn’t want to fracture that pride with the news of an ugly turn in our country’s politics. How do you tell someone the country they’ve loved for 50 years is harboring a growing faction that wishes he’d never come?”
Read Kiran’s piece “Liberals Warned Me About MAGA’s Racism. I Didn’t Believe Them—Until Now.”
Meanwhile, the MAGA immigration debate rages on. Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, named by Trump as co-chairs of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a Trump advisory committee, are backtracking on their support for the H-1B visa program after backlash from immigration hardliners in the MAGA base. Both previously defended the program, which makes it easier for tech companies to hire foreign workers, largely from India and China. Ramaswamy defended the program by suggesting Americans were lazy and that employees from abroad grew up in cultures that inculcated a stronger work ethic. Now, he’s retweeted previous statements promising to gut H-1B. Similarly, Elon has said that the H-1B program is “broken” and suggested changes to it. It turns out even Musk and Ramaswamy can’t hold firm against the MAGA hard right.
Should Fifth Graders Learn What It Means to Be Transgender?
To most Americans, “sex ed” means learning about the biology of human reproduction. But for advocates of the National Sex Education Standards (NSES), it means children should be able to “define and explain differences between terms” like cisgender, transgender, gender nonbinary, and gender expansive by the end of fifth grade. The NSES already informs the sex ed programs of at least a half dozen states, including Colorado and Wisconsin, and now the New York City Council has proposed Resolution 94, urging the NSES be adopted across all of New York State.
Ben Kawaller met with Mimi Shelton, a board member of Trans formative Schools, which supports Resolution 94. Watch Ben’s interview with Mimi here to find out why.
Since around Election Day, Elon Musk has essentially moved to Mar-a-Lago, living in a cottage only a few hundred feet away from the future president, according to The New York Times. To put it another way, he is the president-elect’s tenant. This has allowed him to attend transition meetings, and drop in on dinners, such as when Trump dined with Musk’s arch-rival Jeff Bezos. And Trump only charges $2,000 a day for the cottage. For Musk, that’s not even pocket change.
Biden has promised $5.9 billion in fresh aid to Ukraine—$2.5 billion for security and $3 billion to fund Ukraine’s domestic budget. Meanwhile, Putin has rejected incoming president Trump’s peace proposal, citing provisions that include delaying Ukraine’s accession into NATO by 20 years (Putin presumably wants Ukraine permanently barred from joining) as well as the plan to deploy UK and UN peacekeepers in Ukraine.
More than three years after his arrest in Russia for possessing less than an ounce of medicinal marijuana, Pennsylvania high school teacher Marc Fogel, whose plight we reported on earlier this month, has finally been declared wrongfully detained by the U.S. State Department. Fogel was arrested in Moscow in 2021 and sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony. The “wrongful detainment” designation means the U.S. government is now legally required to work for Fogel’s release. “Now that we have the full force of the U.S. government behind us, we must do everything in our power to bring Marc home as quickly and safely as possible,” Fogel’s wife and two sons said in a statement.
Break out those knitting needles, it's time to knit some pink pussy hats again! The women's march is coming back on January 18, only now organizers have taken the women out of it, rebranding as a “People’s March.” The idea is to include blacks, LGBTs, immigrants, and others who were ostensibly excluded the first time. Participants have been instructed not to bring Handmaid’s Tale costumes because such imagery has been proliferated “primarily by white women.” Heaven forbid.
President-elect Trump has given embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson his full-throated endorsement. This comes after a chaotic budget battle before Christmas that led some conservatives in the House to warn that they wouldn’t vote to reelect the Louisiana congressman as leader. Still, Trump’s endorsement might not be enough. Assuming the Democrats vote against him (which, of course, they will), Johnson can only afford to lose a single Republican vote if he wants to lead the party in the next Congress.
The FBI has issued a formal warning to sports leagues about organized robberies of professional athletes. Since September, nine pro athletes have had their homes broken into, including Kansas City Chiefs stars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Dončić, and Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow. According to the FBI, organized crime groups from South America have used high-tech surveillance and hacking methods to spy on athletes and disable their security systems. (It also helps to know when a team is playing an away game.)
On Monday, a federal appeals court upheld a jury’s verdict that President-elect Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-’90s, and that he owes her $5 million. Lawyers for Trump, who denies he assaulted Carroll, said that it was improper to show jurors the infamous “Access Hollywood tape,” in which Trump discussed how he could get away with groping women because he was a “star.” The judges ruled the tape was admissible as a pattern of behavior.
A female former prisoner at a Washington State prison filed a lawsuit against the state department of corrections last week, alleging that her cellmate, Christopher Scott Williams, a 6-foot-4 trans inmate, sexually harassed and assaulted her. The inmate transitioned after being sentenced for domestic abuse and the rape of a young girl, after which the convict was transferred to a women’s prison. Earlier in August, another inmate at the same prison alleged that Williams and other trans inmates frequently exhibited lewd and intimidating behavior and leered at them in the showers. “He also started threatening her with violence if she complained about him again,” the lawsuit said.
The German government has accused Elon Musk of trying to meddle in the country’s election after he repeatedly endorsed the right-wing AfD party on X, and called center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “fool.” What’s the point in having a democracy if people can’t tweet about it?
On Missing Man’s Best Friend
It’s the most wonderful time of year. Still, for many families the holidays are also “the bittersweet season of miracles and memories, when time touches eternity, and we revisit the vanished worlds of loved ones lost,” writes Jacob Howland. And that includes dogs.
This year, Howland’s family is coming to terms with the loss of Obie, their flat-coated retriever, a friend they loved, and “a dog for all seasons.” Obie was put down over the summer after a long and happy life, yet his memory lives on in mysterious ways.
Read Jacob’s beautiful meditation on “The Strange Grief of Losing a Dog.”
Again with the MAGA racist take, what gives FP? No where in the article does it cite to any proof of MAGA persons spewing racial epithets. Nothing more than online vitriol from low IQ individuals. These racists comments could have also been attributed to the far left nuts who repeatedly disparage minority conservatives. So I ask how does the author know if the racial remarks are from MAGA or some other group? A little investigation should have been performed before jumping to conclusions which undoubtedly would have revealed that there is no way to determine actual affiliation of the anonymous trolls posted racist bullshit. Come Bari let’s clean this up!
Talk about a big lie: “Should fifth graders be taught what it means to be transgender?”
There have been a number of studies that show that homosexuality occurs in nature (animal world) at around 5% of the population. That’s about the same number that I always remember seeing in the human population before the TQ+ stuff.
It’s a fact of life that homosexuality exists and thus, treating all people equally should be a no brainer but…there are no transgenders in the animal world. Gender dysphoria is a human phenomenon and the numbers skyrocketed among children since social media and especially TIKTOK began.
These children are troubled and need love and help, not gender affirming care. And, then as an adult, if they continue to believe this, so be it. At least the individual is an adult and not a minor anymore. Although, the whole trans things is a spiritually vacuous idea, because anyone who believes in a higher power (aka God) would know that God makes no mistakes. It seems like it's a homosexual person not wanting to be homosexual, and I get that - that's a hard path.
But, furthermore, 5th graders need to work on their reading, writing and math skills in school, at a minimum, and not fill their headspace with BS crap, like the transgender stupidity. They are only 10 years old!