The Free Press
It’s Thursday, March 13. 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: Timothy Cardinal Dolan on rising antisemitism. Yale Law professor Jed Rubenfeld on the complicated case of Mahmoud Khalil. Will the GOP stop people from buying Twinkies with SNAP benefits? The EU targets America’s communion wafer industry. And more.
But first: Theo Padnos once escaped the Islamists who now rule Syria. Can his Alawite friends do the same?
Since taking control of Syria this past December, the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has attempted to soften its image. The group’s leader started wearing Western suits and dropped his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani in favor of his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa. Hoping to relieve sanctions from Western governments like the United States and the UK—which have officially designated HTS as a terrorist organization—al-Sharaa distanced himself from al-Qaeda, the jihadi group he once belonged to, and declared that no one had the right to “erase” Syria’s religious minorities.
But as Theo Padnos writes in our pages today, “asking Ahmed al-Sharaa to protect the religious minorities in Syria is like asking a fox not to eat a field full of chickens.”
He would know.
In 2012, Theo was captured by HTS’s predecessor group, Jabhat al-Nusra. For nearly two years, the jihadis now running the Syrian government held him prisoner in Aleppo, where his guards tortured him and sang daily war hymns about genociding Alawites.
Now, Theo is worried about his Alawite friends, who are wondering what fate awaits them.
They are right to panic.
In the past week, Syrian security forces have begun an onslaught against Alawites in the country’s northwest. They claim they are targeting pro-Assad militias, but so far they have reportedly killed more than 1,200 civilians, including entire families, most of them members of the Alawite community—the ethnoreligious sect former dictator Bashar al-Assad belonged to. Hundreds more have fled to nearby Lebanon.
Read Theo’s account: “Syria’s New Rulers Tortured Me. Now They Are Targeting My Friends.”
The Archbishop of New York: Jew-Hate Is Incompatible with Christianity
It’s been quite a month for antisemitism. Last week, TikTok conspiracy theorist Ian Carroll, who believes the Israeli government is behind both 9/11 and a Jeffrey Epstein cover-up, appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the country’s most popular podcasts. (This week, Rogan also plans to host Darryl Cooper, a.k.a. Martyr Made, a right-wing podcaster who made headlines last year for implying the Holocaust was an accident and saying Churchill was a bigger villain than Hitler.) Also last week, popular podcaster Theo Von interviewed conservative influencer—and StopAntisemitism.com’s Antisemite of the Year—Candace Owens. Oh, and in light of his ongoing feud with the president over a funding bill, far-right X accounts are rehashing a conspiracy theory that Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie’s wife was killed for criticizing AIPAC.
Today, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, speaks out against this rising Jew-hatred.
“While our country guarantees freedom of speech, no matter how loathsome,” Cardinal Dolan writes, “we should remember that there exists no tension between First Amendment legal protections and the Biblical obligation to denounce bigotry.”
Read: “Cardinal Dolan: The Evils of Antisemitism.”
How Tesla Became the New MAGA Hat
Tesla isn’t doing well. Shares have dropped 45 percent this year, with vehicle sales dropping for the first time in over 12 years. Last year, for the first time ever, Tesla lost its title—to a Chinese company!—as the best-selling EV company. Across the country, vandals have attacked Tesla dealerships and charging stations.
So naturally, Donald Trump did what any good friend would: He turned the White House lawn into a Tesla dealership on Tuesday and read from what appeared to be a Tesla sales pitch, complete with prices. At one point Trump showed off a new, cherry-red Model S, said he wanted one just like it, and marveled at the car’s high-tech amenities.
“Wow. Everything’s computer!” the president declared.
But a bump from Trump may not be enough. As Ethan Dodd reports today in The Free Press, Tesla isn’t just losing liberal, eco-conscious consumers; it’s also losing longtime investors who say that Elon has abandoned the company in pursuit of his political ambitions.
“Musk was already crazy, but that was cool,” one said. “Then he became crazy and political. That’s just bad business.”
But is it? As Ethan reports, the liberal backlash might just open a new market for Elon, as the president turns the White House into a Tesla showroom. Will the MAGA base buy the cars to own the libs?
Read: “How Tesla Became the New MAGA Hat.”
The Complicated Case of Mahmoud Khalil
Earlier this week we reported on the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent who had his green card revoked after leading anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. A judge has temporarily blocked his deportation, saying he can remain in the United States until the court weighs legal challenges to his detention.
Khalil’s case has sparked a fiery debate over free speech, antisemitism, and the law. The administration says it is plainly within its rights to strip the protester of his green card and deport him. Meanwhile, many progressives and civil libertarians say the Trump administration’s actions against Khalil are unconstitutional.
Today in The Free Press, Yale constitutional law professor Jed Rubenfeld says they’re both wrong. The law, he argues, isn’t obvious on either side. And anyone who says it is is not telling the truth.
Read “Both Left and Right Are Wrong About Mahmoud Khalil.”
SNAP: A Huge Problem Making Huge People
Americans are fat, especially the poorest among us. For years, reformers have called on Congress to prohibit the use of SNAP benefits—colloquially known as food stamps—to buy junk food like candy and soda. So far it hasn’t worked, mostly due to Big Food lobbying.
“Now, though, the lobbies’ hammerlock may be breakable, thanks to a convergence of interests between GOP spending hawks, both state and federal, and the MAHA movement, led by the new secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” writes Free Press columnist Charles Lane.
Read “Can MAHA Beat the Junk Food Lobby?”
The center-right Demokraatit party won Greenland’s parliamentary elections late Tuesday night. The party supports a gradual path to independence from Denmark, and opposes annexation by the United States. “We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders,” Demokraatit leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen told Sky News.
The EU has published a 99-page list of proposed U.S. products that could be subject to retaliatory tariffs in response to the Trump administration’s 25 percent global tariffs on steel and aluminum. They include beef, poultry, pickles, motorcycles, ice cream, and even communion wafers, among hundreds of other products. A list of non-tariffed items might have been shorter.
New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, announced that she will retire at the end of her term in 2026. Kamala Harris won the state only narrowly in 2024, and the lack of an incumbent might make the state one of the most competitive Senate races in the coming midterms.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—who “used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore,” according to President Trump yesterday—said Democrats plan to vote against the latest GOP funding bill as a government shutdown looms. Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, called the GOP bill “extreme,” but that it must be weighed against the effects of a government shutdown. “If it passes, it will hurt a lot of ordinary people on the ground. If the government shuts down, that will hurt a lot of ordinary people on the ground, and so that is the dilemma in which we found ourselves,” Warnock said.
Haden Kirkpatrick, a State Farm insurance executive, was fired after being caught on camera talking about spiking insurance rates for Californians fleeing wildfires. He also said homes shouldn’t have been built in the Pacific Palisades because of the arid climate, saying residents wanted to have “natural areas around them for their ego.” Kirkpatrick was secretly recorded on what he thought was a Tinder date by Project Veritas, a right-wing media company known for its controversial undercover investigations. Tough break, but that’s what you get for talking about work on a first date.
ICE returned all 40 of the migrants remaining in Guantanamo Bay to holding facilities in the United States yesterday, according to The New York Times. While the reason for vacating Guantanamo’s migrant facilities was unclear, the move came days before a federal judge is set to hear a challenge to major aspects of ICE policy. In February, the Trump administration sent dozens of Venezuelan migrants to Guantanamo for detention, only to return them stateside one week later.
Yesterday, California governor Gavin Newsom released an hour-long conversation with Steve Bannon on his podcast. Yes, the governor of California now has a podcast, which in 2025 appears to be the surest path to the White House. The show focused mostly on economic issues, and the two seemed to find some agreement around tax policy and a shared skepticism of Elon Musk. Gavin has been podding with the right a lot recently, and finding some common ground. Earlier this month, when Newsom featured conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, he broke with his party and conceded that allowing biological men to play women’s sports was unfair. Interesting strategy from Gavin here. In case you missed it: After the 2024 election, I argued that Trump and Vance podcasted their way to the presidency. Can Newsom do the same? Discuss among yourselves in the comments below.
Mahmoud Khalil. On morality he's obviously wrong. On legality you've done good reporting.
What's missing is a debate on what the law ought to be for students on green cards and free speech.
Newsome is full of s@#t, but he's a politician full of s@#t that is very good at worming his way into the hearts and minds of suseptible people who want to vote for someone with a D next to his name which is about half the voters. He could pull it off.