The Free Press
It’s Monday, February 3. 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: Canada pushes back against the Trump tariffs; two friends disagree about RFK Jr.—and stay friends; and Marco Rubio works some diplomatic magic.
But first: The tariffs are coming, the tariffs are coming!
On Saturday, President Trump hit America’s three largest trading partners with stiff new tariffs—a response, he said, to their failure to control the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigrants across the border. Starting tomorrow, imports from Mexico and Canada will be subject to a 25 percent tariff, while goods from China and Canadian energy products will face a 10 percent tariff.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau fired back with 25 percent tariffs on about $106 billion worth of U.S. goods, while China announced a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization plus unspecified “necessary countermeasures.” Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum announced on X that she had instructed her secretary of the economy to implement a mysterious “plan B” that includes “tariff and non-tariff measures in defense of Mexico’s interests.”
Bottom line: This could get ugly fast. Trump himself seemed to acknowledge that possibility, posting in all caps on Truth Social: “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!).”
Today in The Free Press, deputy editor Charles Lane says that Trump’s tariffs aren’t just painful, they’re unconstitutional. Or at least, they should have been. Charles explains how Congress has gradually ceded its own constitutional power to the executive branch, leaving Trump a “loaded gun” to wave around at longtime partners like Canada and Mexico.
Read Chuck’s column: “Why Did Trump Just Start a Trade War with Our Neighbors?”
North of the border, shock and awe at Trump’s tariff barrage are mutating into shock and anger. In her latest for The Free Press, Rupa Subramanya reports that hockey fans are booing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Ontario’s government-run liquor stores are pulling American booze off their shelves. Quietly, though, some tariff-challenged businesses are thinking, “If you can’t beat the Americans, why not join them?” Plan B for them is moving to the U.S.
Read Rupa’s report: “ ‘ I Don’t Think My Business Can Survive These Tariffs’.”
In the market for a goofy polyester hat? Cheap AirPods knockoffs? A bizarre ostrich sweater? You can have it all, if you’re willing to spend almost nothing and wait forever as these products are shipped directly from a sweatshop to you via cheap Chinese e-commerce sites Temu, Shein, and Wish. Their business model depends in part on what’s known as the “de minimis loophole” to U.S. import duties, which applies to individual U.S. purchases abroad worth $800 or less. In 2024, Americans received over 1.4 billion packages using this loophole. Now, Trump’s getting rid of it.
As well he should, says Melissa Chen, the managing director of Strategy Risks, a business intelligence firm that specializes in analyzing China risk. After all, why should companies like Gap and H&M pay higher tariffs than Temu and Shein? Today in The Free Press, Melissa argues that the de minimis exception puts American (and other) companies at a competitive disadvantage, and makes it easier to ship the chemical ingredients for killer drugs like fentanyl.
Read Melissa’s column: “This Is What Fairer Trade with China Looks Like.”
In case you missed it: Last month in The Free Press, Judge Glock, director of research at the Manhattan Institute, pointed out the glaring contradiction between Trump’s tariff plans and his campaign promise to take on the bureaucracy. “Tariffs,” he argued, “are managed by opaque bureaucracies and manipulated by high-priced lobbyists in order to extract funds from American consumers.” The deep state feeds on protectionism.
Read Judge’s piece: “Why the Deep State Loves Tariffs.”
Can Friends Argue About RFK Jr. and Stay Friends? Yes.
The Senate Finance Committee announced Sunday that it will vote tomorrow on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services. It’s the latest twist in a saga that began last August, when Kennedy suspended his independent presidential run to endorse Trump and kick-start the Make America Healthy Again movement. RFK-friendly moms have since turned into one of the most significant forces in American politics, as our intrepid reporter Olivia Reingold wrote last week.
They’re also deeply controversial. Here at The Free Press, we’ve published a wide range of voices on this issue—from Joshua Lachter, who wants to see RFK Jr. lead a “Great Reformulation,” to two doctors who say MAHA has unfairly demonized physicians and lifesaving drugs. At a Free Press Live event earlier this month, our head honcho Bari Weiss interviewed three of MAHA’s leading supporters, all out to radically change America’s relationship to medicine and food. We heard them out, and when Evan Barker said she felt like the panelists were out of touch with working-class Americans, we heard her out too.
Today, we’re bringing you two friends to air their MAHA-related disagreements: Erick Erickson and Congressman Chip Roy. Erick sticks up for the MAHA-maligned Big Pharma—whose innovative medicines saved his life. Congressman Roy counters that pharmaceutical innovation is one of the few good things about an otherwise “horribly broken” U.S. healthcare system, and that Kennedy is the man to fix it.
Read Erick Erickson’s “Big Pharma Saved My Life” and Congressman Chip Roy’s “Why I’m Backing RFK Jr.”
In case you missed it: RFK Jr. isn’t the only controversial Trump nominee whose fate remains uncertain in the Senate. Tulsi Gabbard, up for director of national intelligence, faced a grueling hearing last week, with pointed questions from senators about her previous support for whistleblower Edward Snowden. On Friday, Free Press columnist Eli Lake analyzed Tulsi’s confirmation with a bit of history in mind. As Eli points out, this isn’t the first time one of the intelligence community’s foes has been nominated to run an intel agency.
Read Eli’s column: “Can a Critic of the Deep State Run the Deep State?”
The Online Right Can Make Horny Calendars. But Can They Make Art?
Move over Kennedy, there’s a new MAHA in town. Sorry, I mean MAHHA. That’s “Make America Hot & Healthy Again,” the tagline to a new calendar from the conservative beer company Ultra Right, featuring 12 bikini-clad MAGA babes. When Ultra Right released its first calendar in late 2023, The New York Times did not approve: “The Raunchy Christians Are Here,” its headline read. On the right, Nate Hochman at The American Conservative and our own Maddy Kearns, then writing for National Review, also gave it a thumbs-down. But this time, the reaction has been remarkably muted. “Where last year’s calendar was a prophetic forerunner of the impending vibe shift marked by Trump’s reelection,” writes Kat Rosenfield, “this year’s just feels like a lackluster victory dance.”
More to the point, Kat writes, the pix are ugly, sexless, and bad. Today in The Free Press, Kat explores the online right’s relationship with aesthetics. Can a movement ever create beautiful art if it’s more focused on owning the libs than charming its friends?
Read Kat’s latest column, “The Raunchy Right Has Triumphed.”
On Friday Margaret Carpenter, a New York doctor, was indicted in Louisiana for sending abortion pills to a patient in the Pelican State. This comes nearly two months after Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued Carpenter for sending abortion pills to a woman in his state. Dr. Carpenter was operating under New York’s telemedicine “shield law,” which protects providers who ship abortion pills across state lines. It’s still an open question whether or not states can apply criminal laws to people acting outside their borders—one that will likely be decided by federal courts in the coming months.
Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is the latest casualty in Trump’s purge of Biden appointees. Designed by current Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB is the bête noir of Republicans, bankers, and others who say it has too much unchecked power. As for Chopra’s replacement, remember this: In his first term, Trump nominated former congressman Mick Mulvaney to head the CFPB, despite—or maybe because of—Mulvaney’s stated belief that the agency shouldn’t exist.
The president of Panama José Raúl Mulino says that his country won’t renew its deal with China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative after meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the weekend. Last month, Trump threatened to take back the U.S.-built Panama Canal, using military force if necessary, citing fears of growing Chinese influence over the strategically important waterway.
For about a year, Venezuela has blocked deportation flights from the U.S., but on Saturday Trump announced that the country has agreed to take illegal immigrants nabbed in the U.S., including members of the Tren de Aragua gang who have wreaked havoc in cities like New York. The news comes after a meeting between Trump envoy Richard Grenell and Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro Friday, after which Venezuela released six unlawfully detained Americans. The White House says they’ve made no concessions to Caracas and that Grenell’s visit does not signal U.S. recognition of Maduro’s rule.
On Saturday, school shooting survivor and former progressive pillow pusher David Hogg was elected as one of three new Democratic National Committees vice chairs. The 24-year-old gun control activist gained national fame in 2018 after a gunman killed 17 of his classmates at a Parkland, Florida high school. Since then, he has often courted controversy online, most notably in 2021 when he was called a “grifter” by a fellow Parkland survivor for attempting to start a liberal MyPillow competitor. Hogg’s right-wing detractors, including Donald Trump Jr. and Andrew Pollack, a conservative activist who lost his daughter in the Parkland shooting, reacted like trolls to the news this weekend, sarcastically endorsing Hogg for his new gig at the DNC.
On Saturday night, the two top security officials at the United States Agency for International Development were placed on leave after refusing to give representatives of Elon Musk’s DOGE advisory board access to internal systems. Recently, Trump signed an executive order giving DOGE employees unfettered access to government agencies, but it’s unclear whether or not Elon’s representatives have the proper security clearances they’d theoretically need to access the classified material they demanded to see. USAID website and social media profiles also disappeared over the weekend, and in recent days, Musk has posted a barrage of angry statements on X, calling USAID a “criminal organization” and saying it “needed to die.” The kids call this “chimping out.”
Sports shocker: Basketball fans—including most NBA insiders—awoke Sunday morning to the startling news that one of the biggest stars in the league, Luka Dončić, had been traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis. Davis, though a future Hall of Famer, is 31 and often injured. Dončić, at 25, is just entering his prime. (He has been sidelined with a calf injury since Christmas.) As wags questioned the sanity of Mavs management, sources told ESPN that they were frustrated with Dončić’s lousy diet and lack of conditioning. But ESPN also noted that Lakers star LeBron James, 40, is not getting any younger and the Lakers franchise needs a next-gen superstar. Now it has one—as it always seems to, just in time.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this Front Page had an incorrect caption and photo credit. The caption had said the shipping containers were at Long Beach Port in Los Angeles, and the photo was taken in 2019 by Mark Ralston via Getty Images. In fact, the photo was taken at the Port of Montreal in Canada on February 2, 2025 by Andrej Ivanov/AFP via Getty Images. The Free Press regrets the error.
I'd like an article that tells us what the US Dept of International Development even does? (Or did?)
Wait! What? In Canada the government owns liquor stores?