It’s Monday, February 2. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: from pro-MAGA to anti-ICE. Jason Furman on Trump’s pick for Fed chair. Tyler Cowen and Coleman Hughes on our brave new world. Jed Rubenfeld on the arrest of Don Lemon. And much more.
But first: The detransitioner who sued her doctor.
At the age of 15, Fox Varian began questioning her gender during sessions with a psychologist. At 16, she underwent surgery to remove her breasts. Three years later, she bitterly regretted the surgery and went back to identifying as female.
Then Varian sued her doctor. Hers is the first medical malpractice case by a detransitioner to ever go before a jury. I was the only reporter to attend all three weeks of a heart-wrenching and historic trial in White Plains, New York, that ended Friday. “No amount of reconstruction,” said Varian, “is ever going to bring back what I lost.”
The gender transition field is in precipitous decline. More than half of all U.S. states have banned gender-transition interventions for minors. The Supreme Court ruled last year that states can restrict the ability of minors to get transition treatment. Varian’s trial was closely watched as a harbinger of a long-overdue legal reckoning.
Varian’s lawyer characterized her psychologist as heedless, sloppy, and out of his depth given the teenager’s complex constellation of gender dysphoria and serious psychological problems. And the plastic surgeon who did the mastectomy was inattentive to critical red flags, the lawyer argued.
Read my piece to learn about the verdict reached by the jury on Friday and what it means for the future of so-called “gender-affirming” medical care for minors.
—Benjamin Ryan
Last week, something unnerving happened: Hundreds of autonomous AI agents started a forum and started talking to one another. They argued, philosophized—and plotted against humanity. How worried should we be? That’s the question Tyler Cowen answers in his look at the strange new world of bot culture.
In 2024, Nivriti Agaram voted for Donald Trump. This weekend, she flew to Minneapolis to protest against ICE. She’s one of the voters Maya Sulkin spoke to for her latest piece on how the administration’s deportation strategy is turning off voters and risks cracking up his coalition.
Donald Trump’s ongoing clash with the Federal Reserve means the president’s announcement of his pick to succeed Jerome Powell as chair will be more closely scrutinized than ever. On Friday, Trump unveiled Kevin Warsh as his choice. Is he a good candidate? And will he be able to maintain the central bank’s independence? We asked Jason Furman, who was Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, for his view.
CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon was arrested on Friday for his alleged role in a protest that obstructed a church service in Minneapolis. The move was met with condemnation as an attack on press freedom. Jed Rubenfeld dives into the legal rights and wrongs of the case. “There is no such thing as journalistic immunity in criminal law,” he argues.
Catherine O’Hara was always on top of her game. That’s what made her great, writes John Podhoretz in his tribute to the great comedienne who died at 71 last week. Read his tribute to the once-in-a-generation talent who had us laughing from SCTV to Schitt’s Creek.
Conversations with Coleman: Designer Babies and AI Jobs Are No Longer Sci-Fi
In the aftermath of Covid, one lesson was obvious to Coleman Hughes: Our ability to generate powerful technologies has far outpaced our ability to talk honestly about their risks. That gap between capability and judgment is why he wanted to sit down with Jamie Metzl, a former National Security Council official turned biotech futurist, and one of the earliest public figures to argue that Covid most likely emerged from a lab accident rather than a wet market. They talk about everything about our brave new world, from genetic selection to AI, and discuss whether we are ready for the ethical and social consequences. Catch their conversation wherever you get your podcasts, or at the link below:
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President Trump announced that the Kennedy Center will close July 4 for two years of renovations to bring it “to the highest level of success, beauty, and grandeur.” The move is subject to approval by the center’s board of trustees, which Trump leads, and comes after audience numbers plummeted in the wake of his decision to add his name to the building in December.
A Democrat flipped a seat in a Texas state senate district that Trump won by 17 percentage points in 2024. Taylor Rehmet’s win over the incumbent Republican by 14 points is “a wake-up call for Republicans across Texas,” said Republican Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick.
The 5-year-old boy who was surrounded by immigration agents in a Minneapolis suburb while wearing a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack was released with his father from a detention facility in Texas. A federal judge’s order Saturday to release them referred to two lines from the Bible, including “Jesus wept.”
The frigid blast across the eastern United States will persist well into February, according to meteorologists. They predict a polar vortex in the second week of the month, while much of the West Coast will likely have above-normal temperatures.
SpaceX wants to launch as many as one million solar-powered satellites and establish an AI data center in space. The plan was detailed in a request to the Federal Communications Commission and described as “the most efficient way to meet the accelerating demand for AI computing power.” An estimated 15,000 satellites are now orbiting the earth.
Four days before Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly invested $500 million in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, according to The Wall Street Journal. Two months later, the United Arab Emirates won access to high-powered AI chips that had been blocked by the Joe Biden administration.
Carlos Alcaraz beat Novak Djokovic to win the Australian Open—and became the youngest man to win tennis’s four Grand Slam titles. Alcaraz is just 22, and the record had stood for 87 years. Elena Rybakina stunned Aryna Sabalenka to win her first Australian Open women’s singles title.
At last night’s Grammys, Kendrick Lamar became the most-awarded rapper in the show’s history, Olivia Dean won best new artist, and Bad Bunny took album of the year—the first Spanish-language album ever to do so. The ceremony also turned political, with Bad Bunny and others calling for “ICE out.”
From the AP article: "The government says Arias entered the U.S. illegally from Ecuador in December 2024. The family’s lawyer says he has a pending asylum claim that allows him to remain in the country."
There is no reason to seek asylum from Ecuador. They are not at war and they are not being ruled by a dictator. And even if they were, he could've stopped at any of several safe countries between Ecuador and the US, which means he wasn't fleeing for his safety, he was fleeing to enjoy the fruits of my ancestors' labor because that is easier than putting in the work to fix his own country. Application denied. Get out.
May the malpractice lawsuits against therapeutic psychologists begin!! This should be a goldmine for malpractice lawyers and a social good for the rest of us. The amount of psychotherapeutic malpractice out there is astronomical. Think of all the families destroyed by incompetent psychotherapists! Psychotherapists have been legally shielded by statutes of limitations and their not-quite medicine but sort of medical status. Those days are over. Therapists who subtly coerce suffering patients to behave according to the therapists own political agenda should suffer malpractice lawsuits.