The Free Press
It’s Wednesday, January 8. 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: How Canadians enabled Justin Trudeau’s failures, why nicotine is increasingly conservative-coded, and the end of wokeness at McDonald’s.
But first: Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are vibe-shifting hard.
If you ever needed more evidence that elections have consequences, look no further than what’s gone on at Facebook’s parent company in the past 24 hours.
On Monday came the news that Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, would be joining Meta’s board. A longtime friend of Trump, White made a notable cameo at Trump’s election night victory party, thanking a motley crew of podcasters and streamers like Joe Rogan, Adin Ross, and Theo Von—mainstays of the young male mainstream media who helped deliver Trump the election, as I argued in November.
Then, on Tuesday, while wearing a $900,000 watch, Zuckerberg issued a mea culpa over video—as well as a full-throated defense of free speech. He announced that Meta was ending its controversial and politically biased fact-checking regime. He promised to reduce censorship on Instagram and Facebook, implement “community notes,” and allow the promotion of political content. He vowed to work with President Donald Trump to “push back against governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.” As if all that wasn’t enough, he also said that the company is moving their “trust and safety” and content moderation teams from California to Texas.
The hard-hearted in our newsroom say: Too little, too late. But I say: Better late than never. The cynic in me says people change their minds, often at very politically convenient times, but a good decision is a good decision, whether it’s made from the heart or the pocketbook.
And the salesman in me says: WE WARNED YOU!
From the start of The Free Press, we’ve been dogged in pursuing the story of Big Tech’s censorship—and defending free speech in the place where people actually discuss ideas in the twenty-first century: the internet. (To catch up on many of those stories, just click right here.)
If any of Zuckerberg’s recent moves sound familiar, it’s because X CEO Elon Musk has already made them, months before the election.
Elon was an early investor in the Trump political economy. The changes he made to Twitter (now X)—once one of the most censorious places on the internet—were both a blast from the open internet past and a path toward the future. His refusal to conform to Democrat orthodoxies around internet “safety” and his outspoken support for Trump were risky bets, and the president-elect has rewarded him for it: Musk has been made co-chair of DOGE, a new and seemingly powerful advisory board. Zuckerberg & Co. are obviously jealous, and they want in.
I suspect we’re all supposed to move on now, and forget how extreme and damaging Biden-era censorship was. We shouldn’t, and those of us who experienced it firsthand—like Free Press managing editor Margi Conklin—can’t.
In February 2020, when she was the Sunday editor at the New York Post, China expert Steven Mosher pitched her a story about the origins of Covid. Like everyone else at the time, she assumed that the new disease—which hadn’t yet spread across America—had originated from a Wuhan wet market. But Mosher had a different theory: He said it was much more likely that Covid had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had been experimenting with the coronavirus for years.
Margi was happy to publish the story, thinking it would add smart ideas to a crucial debate at an important time. Facebook users liked the piece and shared it widely—until Facebook’s fact-checking team stopped them from seeing it.
Read Margi’s piece, “Facebook’s Fact-Checkers Changed the Way I See Tech—and Speech—Forever.”
Canadians Share the Blame for Trudeau’s Failures
Yesterday, we wrote about Justin Trudeau’s resignation and the many mistakes that precipitated his fall from grace. And what a dramatic fall it was. When Trudeau first became prime minister in 2015, he was widely celebrated for his liberal values and striking good looks—and “skepticism about him was rare, almost taboo,” writes our Canadian correspondent Rupa Subramanya. “Any criticism was drowned out by a wave of euphoria bordering on adulation.”
In her latest for The Free Press, Rupa argues that Trudeau didn’t make this mess alone; Canadians are also complicit in the decline of their nation. Read Rupa’s latest piece: “Trudeau’s Not the Only One to Blame.”
Michael Knowles tells The Free Press: “Tobacco Makes You More Conservative”
We’ve come a long way from Barack Obama sneaking cigarettes in the White House. For decades, anti-nicotine efforts were bipartisan, and even Trump banned flavored vapes in his first administration. But, like so much else of late, the politics have changed. Big Tobacco spent big for Trump in the last election, and the majority of nicotine users voted for him.
In my latest for The Free Press, I write that nicotine is an increasingly conservative-coded vice. Read my new piece: “Donald Trump, the Smokers’ President.”
Southern California has been issued a red flag weather warning amid fast-moving wildfires that could affect as many as 19 million people. On Tuesday, a windstorm began sweeping the Golden State, which the National Weather Service described as “life-threatening” and “destructive.” About 30,000 residents were forced to evacuate, including people in Los Angeles’s wealthy Pacific Palisades area, as a fire fanned by winds of up to 100 mph burned through hundreds of acres of land. Cars choked Sunset Boulevard for miles as people tried to flee, with officials warning that the worst was yet to come. The rampaging winds are expected to last until lunchtime today.
Yesterday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on Donald Trump’s classified documents case after the president-elect and his co-defendants protested its release. Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who threw out the documents case last summer, barred Smith from sharing his report with the public until a federal appeals court has time to review an emergency motion filed by Trump’s former co-defendants seeking to block the report’s release. The report, which concerns Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left office, was expected to be released as early as Friday.
As we reported earlier this month, it’s no secret that Donald Trump would like to buy Greenland. But his former national security adviser, John Bolton, told The Free Press that to make it happen Trump needs to “close his mouth.” And he’s not exactly off to a great start. On Tuesday, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., landed on the island for what he described as “a little bit of fun.” (Greenland’s government said the visit was not official and they would not meet with him.) When reporters asked the president-elect if he would rule out the use of military force in acquiring Greenland, Trump said he wouldn’t “commit to that” since “we need Greenland for national security purposes.”
After a JetBlue flight landed safely in Fort Lauderdale from New York City, staff found something they were not expecting in the landing gear compartment: two dead bodies. The individuals have not yet been identified, nor is it known how they accessed the aircraft. Two weeks earlier, a body was found in the wheel well of a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Hawaii. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the landing gear compartment is often used by stowaways who aren’t aware of the dangers of being crushed to death or losing consciousness from low oxygen or freezing temperatures below the hold of a plane. In London, stowaways have reportedly fallen from the sky after being propelled out of an unpressurized part of the aircraft.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of French political leader and former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, died yesterday at 96. A Holocaust denier who was himself a former presidential candidate, he was expelled from National Rally (then still known as National Front), the party he founded, for antisemitism in 2015 by his own daughter.
First Lady Melania Trump has signed a $40 million documentary deal with Amazon. Directed by Brett Ratner of Rush Hour fame, the film will feature cameos by President Trump and the couple’s elusive young son Barron. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reportedly “took a personal interest” in the doc, but one has to wonder—is he, like other tech CEOs since the election, just sucking up to Trump?
Saad Almadi, 74, is a dual Saudi-American citizen but the Saudi government doesn’t recognize dual citizenship. Now the country is trying to force Almadi into renouncing his U.S. citizenship, according to his son. Almadi was arrested in 2021 during a visit to Saudi Arabia and imprisoned for over a year for Twitter posts that were critical of the country’s government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He was released in 2021, but remains subject to an exit ban.
Yesterday, Trump announced that he had struck a deal with Hussain Sajwani, an Emirati billionaire, to invest $20 billion in building new data centers across the United States. According to Trump, the “first phase” of the plan will take place in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana. Attracting foreign investment has been a priority for Trump, who has offered perks, such as expedited permits, for those who invest $1 billion or more in America.
We’re Lovin’ It: McDonald’s Ditches DEI
The vibe shift isn’t just coming to Big Tech; it’s also coming to the Big Mac! McDonald’s has announced it is ending some of the company’s DEI practices, including participating in external surveys that measure corporate diversity and requiring its suppliers to commit to certain DEI targets. And McDonald’s isn’t even the only fast-food restaurant getting ready for Trump. This inauguration season, yuppie salad company Sweetgreen is touting a January menu free of seed oils, which have become a target for RFK Jr. and others in the Make America Healthy Again movement. What’s next? Raw milkshakes at Dairy Queen? A Hardee’s Deportation Double Cheeseburger? Tariff Tacos at Chipotle? Only time will tell.
Dear Mark Zuckerberg; if you read this, please reconsider the "ha-ha" emoji that people use to respond to posts. It's supposed to be laughing because of the humorous nature of the post. But it's a nasty "you're ridiculous" button most of the time.
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