It’s Wednesday, December 4. 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: Olivia Reingold’s dispatch from an anti-Israel training conference, Eli Lake on Trump’s FBI wrecking ball, and Tina Brown on selling your soul to fly private.
But first: two blockbuster cases on the issue of “gender-affirming care.”
The treatment of children with gender dysphoria should be a matter of evidence-based science. But like so much else in our world, it has become a cultural and political flashpoint that has led to multiple lawsuits. Now, in two courtrooms—one the highest in the land, the other in Houston, Texas—the Biden administration is fighting for the right of children to medically transition their gender.
In the first suit, the administration argues that Tennessee’s ban on these treatments is unconstitutional. In the second, it claims a doctor who blew the whistle on young people being transitioned at a Texas hospital broke federal law by violating patient privacy.
But increasingly, many people are speaking out and saying the government is not only wrong about “gender-affirming care,” it is enabling the greatest medical scandal of our time.
Jamie Reed is one of those people. Almost two years ago, she became the first whistleblower from a youth gender clinic in the United States to come forward, raising the alarm about the dangers of pediatric gender transition in The Free Press. Now, she’s cited in an amicus brief being presented to the Supreme Court in favor of Tennessee’s ban today.
Even though she is a progressive lesbian “to the left of Bernie Sanders,” Reed is supporting the Republican-led ban. This morning, she will appear on the steps of the Supreme Court to explain why.
“I saw regret in my patients a few months after it was too late,” she says of her four years working as a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “An 18-year-old girl who had a double mastectomy, only to decide to accept her female identity, begged us, ‘I want my breasts back.’
“I am here in favor of legislation that protects vulnerable young people from being misled by a medical system that has lost its bearings.”
Read her adapted speech here, “Why I Hope the Supreme Court Upholds the Ban on Child Transition.”
Meanwhile, another whistleblower facing off with Biden’s Justice Department is Eithan Haim. A 34-year-old surgeon, Haim risked his reputation and livelihood to speak out against minors undergoing gender transition at Texas Children’s Hospital where he worked, at a time when those services were meant to be “paused.”
Although Haim redacted all of his patients’ identifying information when he exposed the scandal, the Department of Justice is prosecuting him for violating patient privacy. If convicted, Haim could face up to 10 years in prison.
In an interview with Tom Bartlett for The Free Press, Haim said that defending his case had left his family “completely alone and hemorrhaging cash.” Though he has raised $1 million through crowdfunding, his legal bills are fast approaching $2 million.
Yesterday, the Justice Department filed a gag order to prevent Haim and his legal team from commenting publicly on the case. But that’s not shutting him up. “I think they wanted to make an example out of me,” he says of the DOJ. “Hopefully, they now realize they knocked on the wrong door.”
Read Tom Bartlett’s piece, “The Biden Administration’s Prosecution of Dr. Eithan Haim.”
What College Kids Learn at the Largest Gathering for Palestine in the U.S.
Last weekend, instead of watching football, snagging some Black Friday deals, or hanging with family, our intrepid Olivia Reingold was in Tinley Park, Chicago, reporting from the 17th Annual Convention for Palestine.
Thousands attended the programming, hosted by American Muslims for Palestine, a nonprofit currently facing a House probe over allegations it has “substantial ties to Hamas.” Olivia bought a two-day ticket to the convention to discover how the movement is prepping American college students for the next wave of anti-Israel protests. What does that involve? To find out, read her report, “How to ‘Make Your Campus Palestinian.’ ”
Trump’s Choice to Break the FBI
On Saturday, president-elect Donald Trump announced his pick for FBI director: Kash Patel, a Republican firebrand who earlier this fall vowed to “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.”
But that’s a counterproductive strategy, writes Eli Lake, since “to effectively improve the FBI, Patel will need allies inside the building as well as cooperation from Congress.” Does Patel have it in him to stop playing the bomb-thrower and start acting like a true reformer? Read Eli to learn more: “Will Kash Patel Fix the FBI—or Break It?”
On The Free Press Live: Michael Knowles, Rod Dreher, and Geoffrey Cain
Join us this morning at 9:30 a.m. ET for The Free Press Live. Hosts Michael Moynihan and Batya Ungar-Sargon will be joined in the studio by best-selling conservative author and Daily Wire host Michael Knowles. Batya will speak to Rod Dreher to delve into the controversy over Netflix’s decision to cast an Israeli Jewish actress in the title role of its Christmas film Mary. And Michael will discuss the political turmoil engulfing South Korea with Geoffrey Cain, a journalist, author, and scholar who specializes in East and Central Asia.
On Tuesday, Chad Chronister, president-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, turned down the post via X. The sheriff, who currently serves in Hillsborough County, Florida, said that while it was “the honor of a lifetime” to be nominated, “over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration.” If only some of Trump’s other appointees could exercise this level of self-reflection. . .
Late Tuesday night, South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, only to revoke it hours later. After accusing the opposing liberal Democratic Party of attempting “to overthrow the free democracy” and cozying up to North Korea, he did an about-face in the wake of public backlash. Before martial law was lifted, lawmakers in downtown Seoul scaled the walls of the National Assembly and fought off armed guards with fire extinguishers in order to vote against Yoon’s measure, which they did 190–0. As one of South Korea’s largest newspapers editorialized: “The discussion regarding the president’s impeachment has become inevitable.”
Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas are approaching a postwar Gaza agreement that would end Hamas’s rule and pave the way for ceasefire talks with Israel. Following weeks of negotiations in Cairo, a Palestinian official confirmed that the two factions had tentatively agreed to cede control of the Gaza Strip to a committee of politically independent technocrats who would report to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. Whether or not Trump and Netanyahu will accept these terms remains unclear—both have threatened Hamas with continued carnage in Gaza until they return the 60 remaining hostages.
California governor Gavin Newsom is stockpiling $25 million of taxpayer dollars in preparation for legal battles with the incoming Trump administration. If Golden State legislators approve these funds, the California DOJ would get extra cash to mount legal defenses against Team Trump on issues like abortion access, environmental protection, and immigration. Meanwhile, Newsom’s personal money moves are sending mixed signals: He just bought a $9.1 million house in the Bay Area’s posh Marin County, and three weeks earlier he was seen lugging his own bag to an economy-class seat on an Alaska Airlines flight. What’s the truth, Mr. Newsom? Are you a member of the coastal elite or a man of the people? Pop by the Honestly studio and fill us in sometime.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha wrote a letter to NATO, which is meeting in Brussels this week, saying that “Ukraine’s full membership in NATO” is the “only real security guarantee for Ukraine, as well as a deterrent to further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states.” President Volodymyr Zelensky signaled on Sky News on Friday that he would accept a ceasefire deal—in which Ukraine would cede territory lost to Russia—in exchange for membership. But that increasingly seems like a pipe dream. The Washington Post, reporting from Brussels, noted that “many diplomats here said that was unrealistic, given uncertainties about Trump’s position and skepticism from some countries, such as Hungary and Slovakia, that are more sympathetic to the Kremlin.”
Shed a tear for Elon Musk. For the second time this year, a Delaware judge has ruled that he can’t pocket the monster $56 billion pay package the Tesla board granted him in 2018. Kathaleen St. J. McCormick—the same judge who turned him down the first time—repeated her rationale: The Tesla board lacked the proper independence from the Tesla CEO to have an arm’s-length negotiation over his pay. Musk’s response? “Absolute corruption,” he posted on X.
Flying Private Will Change You Forever
What is the pivotal moment when money corrupts a person? Tina Brown, editor extraordinaire, has the answer: “The acquisition of the private plane—it’s the moment when you leave the human race forever.”
It’s true that private jets explain a few celebrity falls from grace. Take Bill Clinton, who couldn’t say no to a ride on Jeffrey Epstein’s jet. Or Barbara Walters, who effectively sold her soul to use the plane owned by the crass CEO of a bra company. Then there’s Henry Kissinger, whose inner circle was mostly “dictated by who could fly him where and when.”
Tina warns that, after flying private, “you realize there is no one you wouldn’t kill, betray, or sleep with to ensure a lifetime of luxe relief from the armpit of mass transit.” Read her essay to discover why “There’s Nothing More Corrupting Than Flying Private.”
And if you love humor, insight, and literary flair, subscribe to Tina’s newsletter, Fresh Hell. No one does it like Tina Brown.
Madeleine Kearns is an associate editor at The Free Press. Read her recent piece “Should a Government Help People Die?,” and follow her on X @madeleinekearns.
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