It’s Wednesday, February 11. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Kat Rosenfield on the Olympian who Trump called a loser. Patrick McGee on the marvelous, myriad uses of drones. Tanya Lukyanova watches the Epstein tapes. Seth Pinsky, CEO of the 92nd Street Y, asks: Can Jews gather safely in New York City? All that and much more.
But first: The Afrikaners who came to America—and the Ukrainians being forced to leave.
Who gets to come to America? And who gets to stay? Those are among the most contentious questions of the second Trump administration. Today, a pair of stories that address those questions in relation to refugees.
Last October, the Trump administration lowered the maximum number of refugees allowed into America in 2026 to 7,500. Under Biden, the annual figure had been 125,000. One group of refugees Trump has welcomed are the Afrikaners.
The decision to welcome these white South Africans, but not others, led to much opprobrium and charges of racism from Democrats. But now that the Afrikaners are here—and the political conversation has moved on—how are they doing, and how have they been treated? The answer, according to Madeleine Rowley’s investigation, is not well. She talks to some of the Afrikaners Trump invited to America and hears tales of languishing in cockroach-infested apartments, walking miles to the grocery store for food, eating just one meal a day to save money—and very well-paid nonprofit executives. Read her full investigation:
From the South Africans Trump welcomed to the Ukrainians being forced out of the U.S. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration launched the Uniting for Ukraine program to offer safety for Ukrainians fleeing the war. When Trump returned to office, he paused the program. That left Ukrainians here in America in legal limbo, with some forced to leave the country because of nothing more than a bureaucratic backlog. Frannie Block talks to the Ukrainians dealing with this uncertainty, and to those who got a taste of the land of opportunity before having to leave.
—The Editors
WATCH: The Epstein Tapes
On January 30, the Department of Justice released more than three million files related to Jeffrey Epstein, including roughly 2,000 unpublished videos. While the videos are indeed public, they are stored in a way that makes them very hard to find or browse: You can download hundreds of gigabytes of data—or click through hundreds of web pages, one by one.
The Free Press’s Tanya Lukyanova did both.
These are videos seized from Epstein’s devices: footage he recorded himself, received from others, or downloaded from the internet. They paint the most vivid picture yet of Epstein’s dark world. She watched them, and you can too:
Drones are having a moment, and their emerging applications are friendlier than we may have expected: pizza deliveries, disaster relief, and even catching car thieves. The possibilities are endless and fairly low-cost, writes Patrick McGee, and the future looks bright. Welcome to the Drone Age.
President Trump had some choice words for an Olympic skier who said he had “mixed emotions” about representing the U.S. Trump said that Hunter Hess is a “real loser” who “shouldn’t have tried out for the team, and it’s too bad he’s on it.” If there’s anything we can learn from this presidential insult, writes Kat Rosenfield, it’s this: For all the ink spilled over our nation’s purported descent into fascism, we should be grateful to live in a country where you can criticize the president, and he can criticize you, and then you can get on with your life.
Foreign policy is more than dictator kidnappings and drone strikes, argues Joshua Muravchik. It is a form of “soft power” that wins wars: the ways by which one country wields influence without using force. Read Joshua’s piece on why he thinks Trump’s unsubtle foreign policy has wrecked American soft power abroad, whether there is a way back, and exactly what happened to the maxim of “peace through strength.”
When Bret Stephens gave a talk on the challenges facing American Jews at the 92nd Street Y in New York City last week, protesters harassed and assaulted attendees. While some progressive leaders respond to such harassment by saying that antisemitic protesters do not “intend” violence, writes 92 Street Y CEO Seth Pinsky, “when lies and double standards go unchecked, the consequences are not rhetorical. They are physical.”
Requiring proof of citizenship to vote is a no-brainer with voters, writes Rachel Bovard. So why is it so controversial? As a nationwide voter ID law moves toward a Senate vote, Republicans’ task is simple: Break the filibuster by compelling opponents to publicly explain why they object to voter ID.
MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS
THE NEWS
The Trump administration is poised to reverse a 2009 scientific finding that provides the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas reduction policy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Repealing the guidance, which claims that greenhouse gases pose a threat to humanity, “amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin told the Journal.
Bay Area Rapid Transit’s new fare gates may be a lifeline to the dying California transportation system, which is facing a $400 million annual deficit after years of rampant fare evasion. The new technology is expected to save the system $10 million annually and has already drastically reduced maintenance costs, the agency announced.
Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who has drawn criticism from Trump for her frequent breaks from the party line, announced a campaign for reelection yesterday. Collins is seen as one of the most vulnerable GOP incumbents, a linchpin in Democrats’ plans to retake the Senate by flipping four seats.
The White House deleted a post from Vice President J.D. Vance’s X account commemorating the anniversary of the Armenian genocide, with one aide claiming the message was posted in error. Though Congress and former president Joe Biden have both acknowledged the 1915 massacres were a genocide, Trump omitted that language in his comments on the killings last year.
The FBI released the first photos of a suspect in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, showing a masked man approaching Guthrie’s porch with what appeared to be a handgun holster. “We believe she is still alive,” Nancy’s daughter and Today show host Savannah Guthrie said on social media.
A Norwegian Olympian made a desperate appeal to win back his girlfriend by admitting his infidelity in an emotional interview after he earned a bronze medal in the men’s 20-kilometer biathlon. “I regret it with all my heart,” he said. “Maybe I’m dumb as a rock. I’m a member of Mensa, but I still do stupid stuff.”
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney is seeking to resolve tension with President Trump, who complained of “virtually no U.S. content” in the construction of a new bridge between Michigan and Ontario and threatened to block its opening. “This is a great example of cooperation between our countries,” Carney told reporters. “I look forward to its opening.”
An annual gathering of the nation’s governors is in flux after reports that President Trump invited only Republican governors. Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican and chair of the National Governors Association, confirmed in a letter to his fellow governors that the White House intended to invite only Republicans to the association’s meeting.
Pale Afrikaners welcomed into the USA and pale Ukrainians asked to leave, and this is proof of racism???? This reminds me of the hysteria and accusations of Islamophobia slung around when Trump 1.0 banned refugees from certain Muslim countries to prevent the entry of terrorists yet didn't ban citizens of the largest Muslim-majority country, Indonesia. Make it make sense.
"An annual gathering of the nation’s governors is in flux after reports that President Trump invited only Republican governors."
Reading about this reminded me of when Boston mayor Michelle Wu held a Christmas party for city leaders in 2022 and invited only "electeds of color".