Trump: Free the Hostages or ‘All Hell Will Break Out.’ Plus...

It’s Tuesday, February 11. 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: Kanye West and the case for conservatorships, Kat Rosenfield on what comes after cancel culture, and the lessons from a phony frenzy over the government’s Politico subscriptions.

But first: Trump’s ultimatum to Hamas—and British historian Andrew Roberts on the precedents for the president’s Gaza proposal.

How much longer will the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas hold? To listen to Donald Trump, the answer is no later than Saturday—unless all of the remaining hostages are released. Trump issued his ultimatum while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon.

“If they’re not returned—all of them, not in drips and drabs. . . Saturday at 12 o’clock,” said Trump. “After that, I would say all hell is going to break out.”

Earlier Monday, Hamas announced it was suspending the release of more hostages and accused Israel of breaking the ceasefire deal. Israel’s defense minister called the move an “outright violation of the ceasefire,” and said he had ordered the IDF to “prepare at the highest level of alert for any possible scenario in Gaza.” In other words, the ceasefire was already looking shaky before Trump opened his mouth. Then he upped the ante.

It’s the second time in a week that Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks on the conflict have grabbed headlines. Last Tuesday, it was his plan to take over Gaza and rebuild it. Over the weekend, Trump revisited the controversial idea, saying that Gazans would not have the right to return to the Strip once it has been rebuilt.

The response to this plan hasn’t exactly been positive. Everyone from the MAGA base to Israel’s Arab neighbors have derided it.

British historian and Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts sees it a little differently. Trump, he argues, is suggesting only the historical norm. As he puts it: “Again and again in the past, peoples who unleash unprovoked aggressive wars against their neighbors and are then defeated lose either their government or their sovereignty, or both.”

Read Andrew Roberts: “The Historical Case for Trump’s Gaza Plan.”

Cancel Culture Is Over. What’s Next?

Last week, Marko Elez, a DOGE staffer, resigned after The Wall Street Journal revealed that the 25-year-old had made a series of racist comments under a pseudonym on X, including “Normalize Indian hate,” and “I was racist before it was cool.” He also called on the United States to implement “eugenic immigration policy.”

Then Musk posted a poll on—where else?—X, asking if he should rehire Elez. When the online masses said yes—and J.D. Vance backed Elez’s return—Elon did just that. It’s the latest sign that cancel culture is over. But what is replacing it? That’s the subject of today’s column by Kat Rosenfield, who explains how we have lurched from one extreme to another. That’s fine, writes Kat, “if you want to live in a world where the discourse is permanently dominated by shrieking authoritarians on one side and smirking edgelords on the other.”

But what if you don’t?

Read Kat’s piece, “DOGE and the Backlash to the Backlash.”

Beware the Internet Mob—on USAID and Everything Else

Last week, a scandal broke—“the biggest in media history,” according to popular conservative activist Benny Johnson. DOGE had opened the books on USAID and cut off aid to Politico, the popular D.C. news site. Now that their ill-gotten taxpayer gains were gone, the news site couldn’t meet payroll. Conservative media, Elon Musk, and even Trump jumped on the story, with the president repeating the “biggest scandal” line.

But, as reporter Isaac Saul writes today in The Free Press, it wasn’t a scandal at all. Various government employees had purchased a product called Politico Pro and expensed it to their respective agencies. Someone was wrong on the internet? What’s new? Well, Isaac says the story is a cautionary tale that epitomizes everything that is wrong with our current media environment. Read why here.

Speaking of the media, yesterday, just hours after we asked PBS about an alleged plan to hide its DEI staffers from Trump’s executive order, the network scrapped its DEI division. Read Josh Code’s exclusive report here.

Kanye Needs a Conservatorship

Just a week after trotting his clearly uncomfortable wife onto the Grammy’s red carpet in a completely see-through dress, rapper Kanye West went on an unhinged antisemitic online posting spree. How bad? He started by declaring himself a Nazi and posting a series of inflammatory messages about Jews and women (as well as a few hardcore porn videos). A few lowlights: “Hitler was sooooo fresh,” and “JEWS WERE BETTER AS SLAVES YOU HAVE TO PUT YOUR JEWS IN THEIR PLACE AND MAKE THEM INTO YOUR SLAVES.”

It wasn’t the first time this has happened: In 2022, West went on several similar rampages. He vowed to go “death con [sic] 3 on Jewish people,” and implied that fellow rapper Diddy (currently in jail awaiting trial on racketeering and sex trafficking charges) is controlled by a Jewish cabal. Lest we forget, he also made a bizarre appearance on Infowars where he proclaimed his admiration for Hitler and performed a skit with a butterfly net called “Netanyahu” that was so unhinged even Alex Jones was visibly uncomfortable.

Kanye’s latest tirade ended with the deactivation of his X account—it’s not clear whether he deactivated the account himself or was booted off the platform. But even in his absence, he’s still trolling: During the Super Bowl he ran a bizarre ad, filmed at his dentist’s office, encouraging viewers to visit his website Yeezy.com. Sunday, there were numerous products on the site, including shoes and CDs, but today, there is only one: A $20 swastika T-shirt. Given that—and everything else—it’s hard to have sympathy for Kanye. But we should. Take away the fame and money and what you have is a crazy person lashing out on a bus. America’s rambling bus stop schizos deserve help, and that includes Kanye. It’s time for a conservatorship.

I suspect some people will be angry with me for suggesting this. Most Americans who know the word conservatorship were probably introduced to it via the “Free Britney” campaign. That’s Britney as in Britney Spears, the 2000s pop star behind early aughts classics like “. . . Baby One More Time” and “Toxic.” Her story goes something like this: Britney was a sweet Southern girl who was plunged into the spotlight by her domineering stage parents and broken by paparazzi. In 2007, as her painful divorce played out in the tabloids, Britney lost it and shaved her head before attacking a paparazzo with an umbrella. A year later, she was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship that gave her father and lawyer control over her financial and personal affairs. The arrangement was extreme: Britney would later compare her situation to slavery. She claims she was forced to work, forcibly medicated, and had no control over her personal life, including her finances.

After a drawn-out court battle, she was “freed” in November 2021. But since then her behavior has repeatedly worried her fans. After her short-lived marriage to a significantly younger man, a fitness instructor–slash-actor-slash-model named Sam Asghari, Britney began a turbulent relationship with her ex-con handyman, which ended in a violent altercation that saw police and paramedics involved. Online, Britney has posted numerous bizarre rants—including one where she doesn’t appear to know her own age—and videos where she dances with knives, and she has repeatedly posted nude photos of herself, something that reportedly strained her relationship with her two teenage sons, who live with their father.

Clearly, her mental break in 2007 wasn’t a one-time thing. Combined with her recent activity, it raises the question: Shouldn’t someone watch out for her? And would Kanye benefit from the same oversight?

Sure, conservators’ power should be limited, and there should be greater oversight in place to ensure that people aren’t being exploited. Britney’s story was terrible, but as is often the case with mental health—see mass deinstitutionalization, which has ballooned the prison population—the response has been to decry conservatorship as an institution instead of taking the steps needed to reform it. Because like it or not, some people are too mentally ill to be left in complete control of their own lives.

That would appear to include Kanye. He’s completely wrecked his own public image by becoming the most famous antisemite in America, and his behavior toward his wife Bianca Censori certainly seems abusive: Kanye repeatedly trots her out naked in public in what appears to be some kind of bizarre psychosexual humiliation ritual. This is not a sane person. At a certain point, the mentally ill have already lost their autonomy to whatever disease ails them. Allowing that to continue spinning out, unmitigated, is crueler than placing someone under a conservatorship, particularly if our leaders finally stand up and deliver the reforms the system so desperately needs.

Kanye needs help. He needs supervision. Kanye needs to be protected from Kanye.

New York City mayor Eric Adams at a press conference at City Hall on December 12, 2024, in New York. (Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images)

• A group of investors led by Elon Musk submitted an unsolicited offer of $97.4 billion to buy OpenAI, Sam Altman’s AI venture that produced ChatGPT. The move complicated both Altman’s plans to turn OpenAI into a for-profit company (it was first founded as a charity) and his ongoing legal battles with Musk. In a statement reminiscent of his takeover of Twitter, Musk said, “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. We will make sure that happens.” Altman responded on X, saying “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

• Trump signed an order imposing 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports on Monday. The move came just one week after the president promised to suspend tariffs on Mexico and Canada—yet Canada is the largest supplier of steel and a major supplier of aluminum to the U.S., and will face the brunt of Trump’s order. Trump has also started to threaten additional countries with reciprocal tariffs, saying, “Very simply, if they charge us, we charge them.” The man just loves tariffs. No wonder, as this Wall Street Journal headline reports, “For CEOs and Bankers, the Trump Euphoria Is Fading Fast.”
  

• A federal judge blocked Trump’s attempts to reduce health research grant funding Monday. It is the latest fight in the battle brewing between the administration and the courts. J.D. Vance retorted that “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” and Musk retweeted a post on X that stated “Either the Supreme Court comes in and reigns [sic] these judges in or we don’t actually have real elections.” Separation of powers, kiddos.
  

• Yesterday, the Justice Department told federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of accepting illegal gifts from Turkish nationals and at least one Turkish government official. The gifts allegedly bought the Turks fast-track approval for a new consulate in Manhattan, despite safety concerns, as well as Adams’ silence on the Armenian genocide. The charges seem to have been dropped after Adams’ monthslong charm offensive with Trump. Whether or not the mayor broke the law, he sure knows how to network!
  

• Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, took an HIV test at 10 Downing Street in order to encourage others to do the same. Starmer said he was “surprised” to discover that he is “the first prime minister to have done this.” HIV is mostly transmitted through unsafe sex, with gay and bisexual men at greatest risk, or by sharing needles while injecting drugs. Presumably Starmer, who has been married to the same woman since 2007, has had next to no exposure to the disease, but who knows? Maybe the secret lives of stodgy British politicians are more exciting than we think.

• Indian police shut down Grammy Award–winning singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran’s street performance in Bengaluru on Sunday. “Even global stars must follow local rules—no permit, no performance!” said a local MP who was concerned about traffic congestion. Finally, someone has put a stop to him. We’ve dealt with the hokey nonsense long enough!
  

• Can someone please explain why they still call it The City of Brotherly Love? After the Philadelphia Eagles crushed the Kansas City Chiefs 40–22 in Sunday’s Super Bowl, Philly fans made like BLM protesters in 2020. Nearly 50 revelers were arrested, four sanitation trucks were vandalized (sanitation trucks?), and a bonfire was lit at a downtown intersection. “The Super Bowl victory celebrations will continue on Friday, when the city hosts the parade,” said ABC News. A word to our Philly readers: Youse guys stay safe out der, go birds.