Who Will Buy TikTok From China? Plus. . .

It’s Tuesday, January 14. 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: Could Elon—or Trump—buy TikTok? Is Taylor Swift a threat to free speech? Your letters to the editor about the Los Angeles fire. And much more.

But first: Today, a female inmate is taking Biden’s transgender prison policy to court.

In America today, there are nearly 1,500 biological men incarcerated in federal women’s prisons. Nearly half of them are sex offenders, according to the Bureau of Prison’s own data—almost four times the rate of the general prison population. Across the country, female inmates have been harassed, raped, and even impregnated by male prisoners they’ve been forced to house with.

Today, Free Press reporter Madeleine Kearns speaks to one of the women fighting back: 58-year-old Rhonda Fleming, who is serving a 27-year sentence for Medicare fraud. Fleming says she’s had to share facilities, including showers and restrooms, with at least 10 male felons simply because they identify as transgender. Today, a judge in Tallahassee will hear arguments that the conditions of her confinement violate her constitutional right to bodily privacy.

“When you’re most vulnerable, you’re naked in a shower,” Fleming told The Free Press. “There’s no officer monitoring the showers unless some kind of emergency happens, and so at any time, anything can happen to you.”

Fleming’s experience is not a one-off. All 29 federal female prisons in the U.S. allow male criminals who identify as women to be incarcerated—a practice that began in the early 2010s under the Obama administration. Trump mostly walked it back; Biden reinstated it.

What would a victory for Rhonda Fleming mean for incarcerated women across the country?

Read Madeleine’s investigation: “Biden’s Transgender Prison Policy Goes to Trial.”

Could MAGA Buy TikTok?

The clock is ticking on TikTok.

Last April, President Biden signed a law ordering Chinese tech company ByteDance to either sell or shut down the social media platform it owns by January 19, 2025—this coming Sunday. The government’s concern is that the Chinese government is using the addictive app to spy on American users.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments from TikTok, which claims a forced sale violates its First Amendment rights. A full ruling is expected by Friday, but the court has already signaled it will likely side with the U.S. government.

And so it is almost certain that come Sunday, TikTok will be removed from app stores, and the platform will go dark.

Not so fast, says Free Press columnist Joe Nocera.

“Donald Trump will be sworn in as president the following day,” Joe writes. “Though he helped start the anti-TikTok movement in 2020 during his first term, he has since reversed course and now says he supports a compromise to save TikTok. And as we’ve all learned, Trump has a way of getting what he wants.”

In his new piece, Joe breaks down Trump’s options. Could he dangle a loosening of his expected tariffs to convince China to allow ByteDance to sell the company to potential buyers like Shark Tank judge Kevin O’Leary? Could Trump’s close ally Elon Musk buy the company? It’s a possibility, one which Bloomberg reports “Chinese officials are evaluating.” Or maybe, just maybe, could Trump buy TikTok himself?

Read Joe’s piece on how Trump or Elon could buy the social media platform.

“I Haven’t Slept More Than Three Hours”

Tens of thousands of Angelenos have fled their homes since the wildfires began ripping through Los Angeles last week. Many were forced to leave with little more than the clothes on their backs. The city is scrambling to fill in the gaps, providing shelter, food, healthcare, and other emergency services to countless displaced people and pets—dogs, cats, birds, and even goats.

Today, Free Press videographer Austyn Jeffs checks in with three shelters providing support, documenting the struggles, resilience, and remarkable positivity of volunteers helping their neighbors in the face of unspeakable devastation.

WATCH: “We Are Operating on Adrenaline, Caffeine, and Donuts.”

Letters to the Editor About the Los Angeles Wildfires

If you read The Free Press regularly, we can guarantee you won’t agree with everything we run. We can also promise we’ll listen hard to your perspective when you disagree.

On Sunday, we published a piece about the Los Angeles wildfires written by Leighton Woodhouse that drew a strong reaction from readers. Leighton argued that although we should hold city authorities accountable for their failures amid the disaster, the fact is L.A. was constructed on grasslands that routinely dry out—making the entire place susceptible to wildfire.

Some readers strongly—and articulately—disagreed.

Today, in our Letters to the Editor section, we hear from three of them, including L.A. native Deb Malamud, who makes the case against “defeatism” and introduces us (or at least me) to the term nature faker.

Read: “Letters to the Editor: The Fires Weren’t Inevitable.”

Elon Musk (L) talks with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in the State Dining Room at the White House on February 3, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images)

• Yesterday, Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin postponed the debut launch of its new 320-foot rocket due to unspecified last-minute technical issues. Called “New Glenn” after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, the rocket is the first in Blue Origin’s lineup capable of sending satellites into space. Obviously the Amazon CEO is jealous of SpaceX, which has been doing this for years, but go easy on yourself, Jeff—Elon’s never delivered me Q-tips in under 24 hours!

• But yesterday wasn’t all bad news for Bezos. Resistance columnist Jennifer Rubin left The Washington Post, leaving that paper with one fewer person to fire. Rubin trashed the Amazon boss on her way out, accusing him of kowtowing to Trump. “We need an alternative, truly independent outlet, unwilling to equivocate or bend the knee,” she wrote. In the immortal words of Marianne Williamson, “Girlfriend, you are so on,” and Jennifer, you can subscribe to The Free Press by clicking right here!

• The FBI has warned of potential “copycat or retaliatory” attacks following the devastating ISIS-related attack in New Orleans, where more than a dozen people were killed on New Year’s Day after a 42-year-old U.S. military veteran rammed a truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street. The statement doesn’t offer much in the way of specifics—particular events or cities that may be threatened, for instance—but it does, helpfully, ask that “the public remain vigilant regarding possible copycat or retaliatory attacks.”

• As a possible TikTok ban looms, American users are flocking to RedNote, a similar Chinese app which, unlike TikTok, is actually available in China. Also known as Xiaohongshu, which translates to “little red book”—as in, Mao’s—it has skyrocketed to the top spot in the U.S. Apple app store. Basically, TikTokers are so mad about losing their app they are popularizing a more explicitly Chinese look-alike as a middle finger to the government. Congress has vastly underestimated the power of spite.

• Trump confidant Steve Bannon has gone after Elon Musk, vowing to “take down” his fellow Trump adviser, calling him a “truly evil guy, a very bad guy.” The feud is a continuation of the debate over H-1B visas, which has put immigration hard-liners like Bannon at odds with other MAGA lords like Musk, who’s said he’ll go to “war” to defend the visas. Imagine telling someone in 2014 that the fight over immigration would come down to a feud between Grimes’ babydaddy and a guy who makes money off Seinfeld reruns.

• Meghan Markle has decided to postpone the launch of her Netflix lifestyle series, which had been set to air on Wednesday, on account of the Los Angeles wildfires. “I’m thankful to my partners at Netflix for supporting me in delaying the launch, as we focus on the needs of those impacted by the wildfires in my home state of California,” stated Markle. Yesterday, she headed down to a Pasadena evacuation center to give people who lost their homes a hug, but she and her husband were immediately accused of “disaster tourism.”

• British columnist Rod Liddle has revealed that Taylor Swift’s lawyers sent him a cease and desist for referring to her music as “banal and life-sapping sub-Kardashian electropop drivel.” Luckily, we have the First Amendment in this country, so no one, not even Taylor Swift, can stop me from saying her album Evermore is just reheated Lana Del Rey produced for people openly weeping in a Michael’s craft store.

• It was announced yesterday that Grammy Award–winning country singer Carrie Underwood will perform “America the Beautiful” at Trump’s inauguration. Total vibe shift. The Trump team struggled to book artists for his first inauguration—the situation was so dire, they had to settle for the rock band 3 Doors Down. Now, Jesus Takes the Wheel.

And finally. . . Suzy Weiss pays tribute to her friend Max.

Max was obsessed with carrots, so much so that they stained his hands. He played poker. He traveled the world, seeking out elephants and good bike rides. He was both technical and spiritual, rational and ridiculous. He loved tier systems, spreadsheets, tennis, and art. And Suzy loved him.

In a deeply moving new piece for The Free Press, Suzy recounts the life and death of her friend Max, who died last week at 39 after contracting a rare form of malaria. Read her eulogy to a man who once took a picture of every page of the menu at The Cheesecake Factory.