What Happened to Silicon Valley’s Most Infamous Thought Criminal?

Hi, all. Bari here.

We’re doing something a little different in today’s Front Page. Rather than the usual full slate of Free Press stories, we’re bringing you just one. That’s because we think it’s such an important story. A story that, in many ways, defines the past decade.

It’s the story of James Damore.

You might not recall his name, but you almost certainly remember his story.

Damore was the 28-year-old software engineer who, in August 2017, wrote a memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” in which he criticized his employer’s diversity policies, ideological homogeneity, and suppression of dissenting voices. The most controversial aspect of the memo was his explanation of the gender disparity among coders: He argued that it wasn’t merely bias that resulted in the underrepresentation of women in tech, but that men and women’s biological differences might play a role as well.

The memo went viral—and sparked a violent reaction among Damore’s Google colleagues. Said one: “You’re a misogynist and a terrible human. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. Fuck you.” Nearly every person in the country had an opinion on his memo.

Less than one month after Damore wrote it, he was fired. And, with the exception of a single, short-term stint at a start-up, he was banished from working in tech for eight years. “It became impossible to find a job,” he said. “Literally. I went to hundreds of places.”

Damore became one of the early victims of cancel culture, which reached its apotheosis in the summer of 2020 after the killing of George Floyd.

America today is a very different place.

The same Silicon Valley leaders who, only a few years ago, insisted on conformity, now preach the virtues of ideological diversity. Sundar Pichai—the Google CEO who accused Damore of “crossing the line” in 2017—was on the stage at Donald Trump’s inauguration this January. His company gave $1 million to the festivities.

But Damore didn’t know about any of that.

That’s what our reporter Johanna Berkman discovered when she traveled to a seventeenth-century cathedral in Luxembourg to meet up with Damore.

Johanna is the first journalist to talk to Damore in years. She encountered someone oblivious to so many of the changes that have rocked the United States.

That’s because the man at the center of one of the biggest cultural fights in the history of Silicon Valley has logged off. He doesn’t read the news. (“If something is important, then other people will tell me.”) His phone’s screen is set to grayscale. Notifications for everything other than calls from his wife are switched off.

We wanted to know: Does he think we’ve passed peak woke? What lessons did he learn from being canceled? Has anyone at Google apologized to him? Will he ever return to the U.S.? And, most importantly, will he ever feel vindicated?

He answers all these questions and many more in our exclusive profile of him from his Luxembourg hideout.

Read this important profile in full: “What Happened to Silicon Valley’s Most Infamous Thought Criminal?”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. (Win McNamee via Getty Images)

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is postponing his book tour amid backlash over his support for the GOP funding bill that helped avert a government shutdown last week. Progressive groups like Indivisible have called on Schumer to step down. Some congressional Democrats have privately called on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to primary Schumer in 2028. Schumer’s book is about rising antisemitism in America.

• On a somewhat related note, a new CNN poll, conducted March 6–9, found that the Democratic Party’s favorability has hit a record low. Fifty-four percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party, 29 percent have a favorable opinion, and 16 percent have no opinion. Fully one percent said they had “never heard of” the Democratic Party. We’d love to interview them.

• Yesterday on Truth Social, Trump claimed that preemptive clemency given to January 6 select committee members by President Biden are “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” because they were allegedly signed via autopen. Autopens—and related devices—have been used by presidents since Thomas Jefferson, according to Smithsonian magazine.

• On Monday, Trump attended the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to preside over a board meeting as the organization’s new chair. Trump got that position earlier this year after he named an all-new board that, in an unprecedented move, elected him the new board chair. Trump told reporters that the Kennedy Center, which hosts concerts and plays, had gotten too “woke,” and vowed to make changes going forward. Will Trump hand the nation’s most esteemed theater over to Kid Rock for an official residency?

• Trump and Putin will speak about the war in Ukraine today. Trump told reporters that conversations would revolve around “dividing up certain assets.” “We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” the president said.

• Columbia University is facing a new federal investigation over allegations from two janitors who said they were forced to scrub off spray-painted swastikas on campus before later being attacked and trapped by an anti-Israel mob that took over Hamilton Hall last spring. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is looking into complaints filed by the two, who say Columbia fostered a hostile work environment. The Free Press’s Frannie Block interviewed one of the janitors, Mario Torres, last year. Watch that interview here.