It’s Wednesday, 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. Today: The bloodiest massacre in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Patrick McGee on the race between China’s robots and America’s chatbots. Will the Supreme Court let states bar trans athletes from public-school teams? Plus: Sanjana Friedman asks: Why is San Francisco doing reparations? And much more.
But first: Olivia Reingold joins ICE watch.
When the news broke last week that an ICE agent had shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old “ICE observer” in Minneapolis, one question soon came to the fore: What exactly is an “ICE observer”?
For the past 72 hours, I’ve been getting to the bottom of that as a member of their secret world. And by “world,” I mean a series of clandestine Signal chats, in which Minneapolis activists go by usernames like “Pissed Off Old Lady” and discuss things like whether ICE agents can hack their AirPods. I even gained access to a meticulously maintained database of license plates they claim are “confirmed ICE” vehicles.
The few that would speak to me told me that they are undeterred by the death of Good, and that they’re more determined than ever to monitor and interrupt ICE. As the Trump administration continues the largest immigration enforcement operation in ICE’s history, read my dispatch on the groups determined to resist it.
—Olivia Reingold
A Bloodbath in Iran
On Tuesday morning, a shocking figure was presented to the world: 12,000. That’s the number of protesters who have been killed by the Iranian regime in recent days, according to reporting by London-based Iran International. This number isn’t a guess, says Iran International executive editor Mehdi Parpanchi. It is a leaked figure from inside the regime. “This is a full massacre,” Parpanchi tells Tanya Lukyanova. Watch her harrowing report on the Iranian regime’s bloody crackdown.
Iranian journalist Roya Hakakian reaches a similar conclusion to Parpanchi, and estimates the regime has murdered at least four times as many people as were killed during the 1979 Islamic revolution. Roya explains that this brutal strategy is the regime’s tactic of last resort—and argues that the Iranian people need urgent help from overseas. Read her piece:
Skeptics of foreign involvement in Iran point to the past as an argument against U.S. or Israeli action in the coming days. In particular, they cite America’s role in the fall of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh as a cautionary tale for the present. But the story is a little more complicated than that, writes Eli Lake. He dissects the half-truths and fake history distorting our debate on how to respond to the violent crackdown:
The push to ban biological males to compete in women’s and girls’ sports now enjoys broad support from Democrats and Republicans. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the cases of two states that passed laws barring biological boys from competing on girls’ sports teams. What does the Constitution say? It’s not as clear-cut as you might think, writes Jed Rubenfeld.
The race between the U.S. and China for AI supremacy may be the defining contest of our age. So why do the two superpowers have completely different ideas of what victory looks like? That’s the question on the mind of Patrick McGee, The Free Press’s newest contributing writer. Read his debut column on how the U.S. could spend a trillion dollars on data centers and still lose the real AI war.
Daniel Lurie was elected, and has mostly governed, as a moderate mayor of San Francisco focused on turning the city around after it embraced the worst excesses of progressivism. So why has he endorsed a plan to give $5 million in reparations to every black resident affected by discrimination? Sanjana Friedman reports on wild spending habits of the city’s “DEI-industrial complex” and whether or not it’s too late to nix the idea.
Jean Marie Davis was sex trafficked. Pregnant, scared, and alone, her case was deemed “too severe” for multiple women’s shelters. The only place that would house her was a pregnancy center. But pregnancy centers are now facing attacks from the New Jersey state legislature, which may force them to reveal all donor information, putting pro-life donors at risk of harassment. The Supreme Court is now weighing whether to uphold the law. In this deeply personal essay, Davis outlines what’s at stake when these centers can no longer protect women like her from violence and sexual abuse.
The Trump administration is ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for several thousand Somalian refugees living in the U.S. in the wake of a $9 billion fraud operation allegedly perpetrated by Somalis in Minnesota. Somali migrants with TPS must leave the country by March 17, Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News yesterday.
Six Minnesota prosecutors have resigned following a Department of Justice push for a criminal investigation into the widow of Renee Nicole Good, who was killed last week by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. Among them is Joseph Thompson, who oversaw the sprawling fraud investigation in Minneapolis.
President Trump and Zohran Mamdani have become unlikely text buddies, Axios reported yesterday. According to two sources familiar with their conversations, the two men who once lobbed accusations of “fascist” and “communist” at one another have privately communicated often since they exchanged phone numbers during their November meeting.
Bill and Hillary Clinton may be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify in a House Epstein probe, according to James Comer, the Kentucky Republican leading the investigation. “We have tried to give you the little information we have,” the Clintons wrote in a letter to Comer. “No one’s accusing Bill Clinton of anything, any wrongdoing,” Comer told reporters yesterday. “We just have questions.”
Gen Z is leading the charge to “unplug” from smartphones daily, a new survey found. Data from Talker Research found that more than half of Gen Z and 43 percent of millennials now carve out dedicated screen-free time in their day, compared with 33 percent of Gen X and 22 percent of Baby Boomers.
Uganda’s government has shut down internet access across the country in advance of a national election where President Yoweri Museveni is up for a seventh term after four decades in office. The Uganda Communications Commission told service providers to turn off public internet in an effort to tamp down on “misinformation, disinformation, electoral fraud, and related risks,” Reuters reported yesterday.
Mike Tomlin stepped down as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday after 19 seasons with the team. He is the longest-tenured head coach in any major American professional sports team to date.
I am no fan of federal overreach, and this ICE situation with the “ICE watch warriors” is a recipe for disaster, as we already know.
But, some of the “members of the community” that people like Renee Good wanted to protect were not productive citizens and caused much harm, and any law abiding tax payer should want them out of our country: https://lizlasorte.substack.com/p/who-are-the-illegal-immigrant-criminals
Since I’m done so much work on false flags and media narratives, I see anything mainstream as false flag or psyop.
That being said, I’ve paid no attention to the ICE, Renee Good story.
However, I find it extremely interesting that her last name is “Good.”
For example, this phrase struck me as weird and interesting:
“undeterred by the death of Good.”
The Death of Good.
Intentional or not, that resonates heavily on esoteric levels.