It’s Tuesday, January 28. 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: Why Oscar voters, and only Oscar voters, are obsessed with a musical about a transgender Mexican drug lord. What does MAHA actually mean? And the most significant policy change of this century.
But first: A Chinese AI start-up just flipped the American economy on its head. What do we do now?
Yesterday, the stock market lost $1 trillion in value. Why? Because a small Chinese AI start-up called DeepSeek rolled out a new app on the U.S. market, which leapfrogged over U.S. competitor ChatGPT on all the app store charts. Some think it might be better than ChatGPT, but DeepSeek’s quality is not the only problem for American firms. It’s much cheaper, too—developed for an estimated measly $6 million, a small fraction of the billions U.S. tech firms are investing in AI technology. Hardest hit in the stock sell-off was Nvidia, which makes chips often used by American AI companies. It lost nearly $600 billion in market capitalization on Monday, the largest rout in market history.
The Free Press asked Geoffrey Cain—author of The Perfect Police State, about China’s high-tech surveillance—to sort through the wreckage. He argues that America’s public and private sector leaders were too dismissive of China’s copycat approach to innovation. American companies shared too much high tech with China while doing business there, and the U.S. government failed to prevent it. Silicon Valley got too comfortable and complacent. And now, a Sputnik moment with China is here, and they can’t ignore it any longer.
Read Geoffrey’s new essay: “DeepSeek Is a Wake-Up Call. Is America Listening?”
Trump’s New Civil Rights Regime
Last week, Trump signed three executive orders repealing a massive web of DEI programs and affirmative action policies that have governed our federal agencies for decades. Some going as far back as the Johnson administration have now been overturned.
There’s no overstating how radical this is, says Christopher Caldwell, the guy who wrote the critique of affirmative action, 2020’s The Age of Entitlement. In his piece for The Free Press, he calls Trump’s move “more significant than the Affordable Care Act of 2010 or anything done about Covid. Yet major news outlets treat Trump’s bold move as a detail of personnel management: ‘Distress and Fury as Trump Upends Federal Jobs,’ headlined The New York Times. How can people be talking about anything else?”
Here’s how. “Somewhere along the line, the Trump administration came to understand in a sophisticated way how the enforcement of civil rights actually works. Not many Americans do—and it’s worth reviewing.”
Read Christopher’s piece, “The Biggest Policy Change of the Century.”
MAHA: The Crunchy, Hippie, Right-Wing Movement Changing America’s Health
A new coalition is on the march: yoga moms, mushroom-munching shamans, Instagram wellness influencers. They only buy organic food and they think Diet Coke will kill you. Ten years ago, these people might have been described as crunchy L.A. progressives. Not anymore.
This is MAHA, the RFK Jr.–led movement that aims to Make America Healthy Again. In a conversation presented by Uber and X, Bari sat down with three of the MAHA movement’s most prominent figures: Calley Means, CEO of Truemed and author of Good Energy; Jillian Michaels, the personal trainer who’s whipped contestants into shape on TV’s The Biggest Loser; and “Food Babe” Vani Hari.
So what exactly does the MAHA movement want? And will it be able to achieve it? Read the transcript of Bari’s Live MAHA event here, or listen to the audio below:
Even Mexicans Hate Emilia Pérez, So Why Does the Academy Love It?
Emilia Pérez, a 2024 French-produced, Spanish-language musical about a transgender Mexican drug lord, bombed at the box office and was so disliked by Mexican audiences that a government agency is now investigating whether disappointed moviegoers are entitled to a refund. But last week, it was nominated for 13 Oscars, more than any other film.
To help you understand how this could happen, I’ve written a comprehensive guide to Oscar bait. These are the sort of movies designed to impress voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—instead of actual film fans. Discover the cinematic recipe that Academy voters can’t resist—alcoholism, racial tension, intellectual disability, the French language, latent homosexuality, and more.
Read my new essay: “ ‘Emilia Pérez’ and the Curse of Oscar Bait.”
Mail Time!
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the constitutionality of a Texas law that requires porn sites to verify the ages of their users. In response, I wrote a piece arguing that age-verification laws are largely unenforceable—and a lot of you had thoughts about it. We air some of those letters to the editor today in The Free Press. Also in our mail bag: responses to our dear leader Bari’s sweeping indictment of Justin Trudeau’s Canadian premiership.
Last but not least, friend of The Free Press Eli Steele reminds Congressman Ritchie Torres that there’s nothing new about disaffection from the Democratic Party among the multiracial working class; it’s been building for years in response to the Democrats’ own misguided policies.
Read our readers’ responses here: “Letters to the Editor: Is Porn Really Inevitable?”
Dr. Phil embedded with ICE agents as they conducted deportation raids in Chicago on Sunday, traveling alongside Trump’s border czar Tom Homan. The TV shrink interviewed Homan on the ride-along, and grilled an accused Thai pedophile that ICE apprehended in a raid. Is this the To Catch a Predator reboot we’ve been waiting for?
Southern California can’t catch a break. Fires ripped through Malibu earlier this month, burning thousands of acres and razing iconic beachfront homes. Now as the wildfires smolder, the area is at risk of mudslides after rain hit the area late Sunday. Mudflows have already prompted the closure of some roads in Topanga Canyon and on parts of the Pacific Coast Highway. Showers slowed on Monday, but meteorologists warned that rain could persist throughout today.
On Monday, Israel allowed more than 300,000 Palestinians to return to what remains of the northern Gaza Strip, after Hamas agreed to release six hostages; three on Thursday, and three on Saturday. Among the six is Arbel Yehud, the last (living) female civilian hostage, who was supposed to be released last weekend but who Hamas retained without explanation. Seven living hostages have been returned since January 19, when the ceasefire deal went into effect.
Yesterday, world leaders gathered at Auschwitz-Birkenau to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp. The dignitaries included Britain’s King Charles III, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French president Emmanuel Macron. But notably absent was Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Polish leaders did not invite, and who has not traveled to Europe since the International Criminal Court charged him with war crimes and crimes against humanity over the war in Gaza. ICYMI: Read Natan Sharansky’s piece for The Free Press, “Why Can’t Israel’s Leader Visit Auschwitz?”
Swedish, Latvian, and NATO authorities are investigating a likely “sabotage” of an undersea fiber optic cable between the two countries on Sunday. The suspected ship is now in Swedish custody and is thought to have departed the Russian port of Ust-Luga several days before. NATO has been tracking similar incidents of cable-cutting in the Baltic Sea. “A lot of the ships that we found are acting strangely originate in a Russian port or (are) going to a Russian port,” Commodore Arjen S. Warnaar, a NATO official, told CNN.
And speaking of maritime news. . . . The Royal Navy has been accused of renaming a submarine “to avoid annoying the French.” The underwater boat, HMS Agincourt, was originally christened for a 1415 battle in which Henry V defeated France. But late on Sunday night, a new moniker was announced: HMS Achilles. Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a former NATO commander, lashed out to Times Radio at what he termed “craven political correctness and ideology gone mad.” He continued, “I don’t see the French renaming Gare d’Austerlitz to avoid upsetting the Germans.”
President Donald Trump, formerly of The Apprentice, loves saying, “You’re fired!” And this week was no exception. The new Justice Department has laid off more than a dozen key officials who worked with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team in prosecuting Trump under the Biden administration. “In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda,” a DOJ official told Fox News. Getting rid of them, the DOJ said, “is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government.”
As a Registered Professional Nurse of 51 years who still practices in a hospital setting, I am all for the MAHA movement. I understand the benefits of traditional medicine because we do save lives HOWEVER we definitely need to explore new directions in wellness, nutrition, exercise and very importantly our obsession with pushing medications and excessive vaccinations. Our big agricultural food supply is problematic including our fast food obsession. The obesity epidemic is real. 80% of Americans are overweight including children. If we don’t take care of these problems, “healthcare” will continue to be ever more expensive and we can’t fix everyone if they don’t take care of themselves.
where is the link to "Last but not least, friend of The Free Press Eli Steele reminds Congressman Ritchie Torres that there’s nothing new about disaffection from the Democratic Party among the multiracial working class; it’s been building for years in response to the Democrats’ own misguided policies."?