The Free Press
It’s Tuesday, February 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: The unique horror of a midair collision. Two communities panicking about ICE raids. The woman fired by the UN for refusing to lie about Israel. Why Trump isn’t the first conservative to obsess over the Panama Canal. A trade-war reprieve. And much more.
But first: What’s a Dem to do?
Democrats have had a rough go of it lately. After Kamala’s dramatic loss in November, they’ve been lost at sea with no captain and the waves are getting high. Trump is sucking up all the oxygen, only 3 out of 10 Americans have a positive view of the party, and the GOP is outregistering Democrats in key swing states like Nevada, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
The Democratic National Committee’s election this past weekend was a chance for the party to turn things around. But that’s not what happened. Instead, there was a conundrum where a nonbinary candidate gummed up the DNC’s gender balance rules. Then there’s David Hogg. Even his trauma-bonded classmates think he’s a grifter, but that didn’t stop America’s most controversial school-shooting survivor from being elected as one of three DNC vice chairs. Unlike David Hogg, I wouldn’t start a liberal pillow company. I’d start a libertarian one: memory foam, with a pinch of cocaine and a gun in every box, plus a pillowcase made from Nick Gillespie’s leather jacket.
But I digress.
The DNC seems to have learned nothing. Instead of examining the real reasons for Kamala’s defeat, every candidate for DNC chair blamed Kamala’s loss on misogyny and racism—the sort of whiny, coping message they’ve been losing on for years.
Things are grim. What’s a Dem to do?
In his latest Free Press column, Ruy Teixeira has some advice for a party lost in the wilderness. Rather than opposing everything the president does, Democrats must pick their battles, wait for Trump to make mistakes, and persuade the public that they are moderate and reasonable replacements. The alternative, he writes, “is four years of garment-rending, continued isolation on a few islands in Blue America.”
Read Ruy’s new column, “Trump 2.0: A Survival Guide for Democrats.”
Fired UN Employee Says She Was “Hounded” over Pro-Israel Views
Unlike many of her colleagues, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Wairimu Nderitu refused to label Israel’s war on Hamas a genocide. Last November, she lost her job for it.
Nderitu stayed silent. But after attending the 80th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland last week, she’s decided to speak out. Air Mail’s Johanna Berkman got the exclusive. In the interview, which we’re republishing in The Free Press today, Nderitu describes the price she paid for refusing to go along with a lie. She was threatened, petitioned, called a “Zionist rat,” and “hounded day in and day out.” And all for her belief that Israel’s war against Hamas was just that—a war.
Read more about Alice Wairimu Nderitu: “She Stood Up for the Truth. Then the UN Fired Her.”
After a Plane Crash
Last week, an American Eagle jet en route to D.C. from Wichita collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River, killing everyone on board each flight. The victims include top figure skaters from the U.S. and Russia, an attorney traveling home for her birthday, pilots, flight attendants, a professor, and others. Their families are demanding answers.
Peter Richmond knows how those families feel. His father died in a plane collision in 1960, when Peter was just seven years old.
“You have to figure that after the helicopter crashed into it last Wednesday, American Eagle flight 5342’s passengers had maybe two seconds of knowing what was happening before the plane hit the water and broke into pieces,” writes Peter. “To my mind, they were lucky. It took 90 seconds for my dad’s plane to fall to earth. An excruciating minute and a half.”
Read Peter on “American Eagle 5342 and the Worst Club There Is.”
“People Are Panicking. They’re Not Coming Out of Their Homes.”
In its first few days in power, the Trump administration launched a series of raids targeting illegal immigrants. The raids—many of which were made for TV, with one, inexplicably, featuring Dr. Phil—were designed to send a clear message. As Ben Kawaller finds in his latest video report, that message was heard loud and clear in the heavily Latino New York neighborhood of Spanish Harlem. “A lot of people are afraid to go to work,” said one local. Another told Ben people were afraid to leave their homes, while Trump voters explained why they now regret their vote.
Watch Ben’s full video dispatch below.
The Free Press’s Austyn Jeffs found similar anxiety in the agricultural hub of Bakersfield, California. Watch his dispatch below.
It Was Never Just About the Canal
For the last few months, Trump has been fixated on the Panama Canal. In his inauguration speech he complained that it is controlled by China, and threatened to take it back—by any means necessary. Over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the Panama Canal and convinced Panamanian president José Raúl Mulino to exit China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
It’s not the first time the canal has been at the center of American politics, reports James Kirchick. Today in The Free Press, he recounts how America’s decision to forfeit the canal to angry Panamanians powered the rise of Ronald Reagan and the modern conservative movement. What elites didn’t understand half a century ago—and what Trump understands today—is that the debate over who controls the Panama Canal was really a debate about how Americans feel about their place in the world.
Read James on “Why Trump Is Obsessed with the Panama Canal.”
BOOK NOW: Does the West Need a Religious Revival?
This year, The Free Press is partnering with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) to present The Freedom Debates, four live debates in cities across the country inspired by FDR’s four freedoms. Up first, in Austin, Texas: freedom of worship.
On February 27 at the Paramount Theatre, panelists will duke it out over the question: Does the West Need a Religious Revival?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ross Douthat say yes. Adam Carolla and Michael Shermer say no. God will be watching—and you can be too, but only if you’re quick. VIP tickets have already sold out, and less than 100 seats remain!
Get your tickets to join the Free Press crew in Austin here.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum Speedy Gonzales’d her way to a deal with Trump yesterday, promising to deploy 10,000 Mexican troops to the border to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs. In return, Trump agreed to pause his 25 percent tariff on goods coming from south of the border. Soon after, he struck a seemingly identical deal with Justin Trudeau, who said he’d appoint a “fentanyl czar” and promised to send 10,000 Canadian troops to the northern border. Who knew they even had that many?! Tariffs will still be levied against Chinese goods starting today, but Trump says he plans to talk with President Xi Jinping as soon as this week.
Will the EU be next? Yesterday, Trump told the BBC that tariffs on EU goods could happen “pretty soon,” adding: “They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products, they take almost nothing and we take everything from them. Millions of cars, tremendous amounts of food and farm products.” Fair enough, but we only grow like six olives in California every year. Where are the MAHA folks going to get their organic extra virgin olive oil?
Elon Musk says the Trump administration is on the verge of shutting down the United States Agency for International Development. Elon’s DOGE task force, which has reportedly employed a boy army of 18- to 24-year-old engineering types—including Luke Farritor, who was profiled by The Free Press last year—has been at war with the agency since this weekend. Two top security officials at USAID were fired for refusing DOGE employees access to classified areas for which the DOGE employees lacked security clearances, and another resigned. There were protests outside the department’s offices in Washington on Monday. Unnamed government officials told CBS yesterday that USAID will be merged with the State Department.
Trump’s Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has announced that on Wednesday, she will end Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans—about half of the 600,000 who have TPS today. TPS shields foreign nationals from deportation to home countries that are deemed unsafe by the executive branch. The move hasn’t been welcomed by everyone in Trump’s party. On Friday, Florida congressman Carlos Gimenez urged the administration to find a “solution” for TPS holders from Venezuela, who he called law-abiding migrants “seeking freedom.”
But how many more illegal immigrants can ICE possibly arrest right now? Trump may have ended Biden’s “catch and release” policy at the southern border, but a new report says that significant space constraints in ICE facilities are forcing the agency to release some detainees back onto American streets.
Trump has ordered the creation of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund—possibly funded by “tariffs and other intelligent things,” according to the president—and says it could potentially be used to buy TikTok. Common in the Middle East and Asia, sovereign wealth funds are used by countries to invest in the private sector. State capitalism, huh? Well, I guess if you can’t beat the Chinese, you might as well join them.
The public feud between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni moved to the courtroom yesterday, as their lawyers sparred over allegations that Baldoni harassed Lively on the set of their film It Ends with Us and then began a smear campaign against her. It’s still not clear who is telling the truth here, but in case you missed it, Free Press columnist Kat Rosenfield wrote last month that it doesn’t matter—at least not for the people watching online.
May be ask why Gov Adams and Gov DeSatan sent busloads of immigrants to NYC and SF and other 'blue' cities, and now appears like ICE is doing something amazing, but what they are doing is just cleaning up what these Gov's did in the first place.
Illegals don’t have green cards. Yes Biden admin provided some special,permits but they are a small percentage of the illegals. I doubt there is much regret among citizens and legal immigrant and migrant workers.