The Free Press
It’s Thursday, January 23. 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 Australia’s Jews don’t feel safe. What ‘Severance’ says about the daily grind. Is San Francisco finally getting its act together? What the heck is $TRUMP? Plus: Episode one of Eli Lake’s new podcast ‘Breaking History,’ and much more.
But first: The end of DEI.
Shortly after Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, the CIA announced a “digital facelift” to increase diversity among its ranks. The rebrand included a new minimalist logo and this recruitment video, which features a female Hispanic CIA agent staring intensely into a camera.
“I am a woman of color,” said the spook. “I am a mom; I am a cisgender millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise.”
What an era. And now it’s over.
On Tuesday, President Trump signed Executive Order 14171, a sweeping document that aims to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in government. The work has already begun. Yesterday, the White House ordered that all federal employees working in DEI will be placed on paid administrative leave, effective immediately, as the Trump administration begins dismantling DEI-related offices and initiatives. The executive order also repeals a Johnson-era executive order that forces federal contractors to implement affirmative action policies.
Many in the media are framing Trump’s move as a blow to racial equality and an undoing of the progress we made in the civil rights era. But in our lead story today, Coleman Hughes argues they have it back to front.
As Coleman sees it, Trump’s dismantling of the federal government’s DEI apparatus “gets closer to the original intent of the civil rights movement than today’s DEI policies.” Coleman advocates for a color-blind America, including in a book published last year. He says that we will now see what federal enforcement of that approach looks like—and he suspects the country will be better for it.
Read Coleman’s full article: “The End of DEI.”
Is San Francisco Ready to Govern Again?
For years, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors (its equivalent of a city council) rightfully earned a reputation for being an example of progressivism at its worst, a place where radical, internet-y ideas like defunding the police and providing reparations for slavery were taken seriously. And all while the city was falling apart, with the local government failing in its most basic tasks. But are times changing in the City by the Bay?
For his latest video dispatch, The Free Press’s Ben Kawaller talks to Rafael Mandelman, San Francisco’s new board president. Mandelman has promised a more pragmatic, less ideological approach. He tells Ben that if progressives want to be taken seriously, they have to demonstrate that “a very blue city can be effectively governed.”
Watch Ben’s full interview below, and read his accompanying dispatch here.
What Is $TRUMP?
The Friday before his inauguration Trump was hard at work—not packing his ties or mulling over paint swatches for the Lincoln Bedroom, but launching a meme coin called $TRUMP. For those out of the loop, a meme coin is like Bitcoin but even more volatile in price, and it usually revolves around a famous person or some weird internet thing. In any case, moments after its launch on Friday $TRUMP spiked to $14 billion, and is down to $7.7 billion today—a nearly 50 percent loss in less than a week. The First Lady launched her own meme coin, $MELANIA, shortly after; its current market cap is $700 million.
In less than a week, the First Couple have added billions to their net worth, at least on paper, raising questions like: Is this a scam? Are people going to lose millions? How is this legal?
For some clarity on all things $TRUMP, we asked Max Raskin, who has taught a cryptocurrency course at NYU Law School for almost a decade, and crypto-skeptic Joe Nocera, to duke it out. They debate whether meme coins are just the digital version of gold-plated commemorative coins, or a corrupt Ponzi scheme.
Read Joe and Max’s conversation here: “Is $Trump a Scam?”
Jews Don’t Feel Safe Down Under
Last Friday, Alex Ryvchin—a prominent advocate for Australian Jews—was shaken awake by his wife in the early hours of the morning. Two thugs had gone to their former home—presumably thinking Alex and his family still lived there—and set fire to two cars, one on the curb and one in the driveway. They also vandalized their elderly Jewish neighbors’ car with the messages “Fuck Jews” and “Fuck Israel.”
You’d think the news would be a huge shock. Writing for The Free Press, Alex explains why he wasn’t surprised. Since October 7, antisemitism has become horrifically commonplace down under. Jewish businesses have been vandalized, a synagogue and a Jewish day care were set on fire, and a Jewish MP had the windows of his office smashed. As head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Alex is often the first to hear about these incidents. And as the son of Soviet refuseniks, the constant abuse is taking a toll.
“For my family, Australia was our salvation,” he writes. “But the Jews I speak to today don’t recognize our country anymore.”
Read Alex’s full essay, “In Australia, Jew-Hate Is Out of Control.”
The Tragedy of the Cubicle
Are you reading this newsletter in your sad little cubicle at work as fluorescent lights flicker overhead like a metaphor for your time-bomb heart: each beat one closer to the final thump? Ever wish you could skip this part, at least in your own head, and go home for the weekend blissfully unaware of what happened in the cubicle or what awaits you in it Monday morning? This is the basic premise of Severance, Apple TV+’s hit series, now in its second season after a three-year hiatus. In the show, employees consent to an operation that gives them a split personality—one for work, the other for life.
Many commenters have held up Severance as a Marxist rumination on the alienation of workers from the means of production. But Free Press culture writer Kat Rosenfield has a different read: “The draw of the series, and the strange temptations of a severed life, don’t come from what Severance has to say about politics; they come from what it says about people.”
Read Kat’s new essay on “Severance and the Trauma of the Bullshit Job.”
Trump has moved to fast-track deportations of any illegal immigrants who cannot prove they have lived in the United States for two years or more. Previously, this was allowed only if the immigrants were within 100 miles of the border and had been present in the U.S. for fewer than two weeks. Mexico is preparing for expected mass deportations by building temporary shelters.
Seventy-one-year-old convicted Capitol rioter Pamela Hemphill, a.k.a. “MAGA Granny,” has turned down Trump’s mass pardon of January 6 participants, saying: “We were wrong that day, we broke the law—there should be no pardons. . . . Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation.”
The Oregon Department of Justice has overseen a “Bias Response Hotline” since January 2020, reports The Washington Free Beacon. “Trauma-informed operators” manage thousands of calls a year and record “non-criminal hostile expression.” These “bias incidents” may be motivated “in part or whole by another’s person’s actual or perceived protected class,” and include “hateful symbols of flags,” “racist images/drawings,” and “telling or sharing offensive ‘jokes’ about someone’s identity.” To learn more, a reporter from The Washington Free Beacon called the hotline posing as a Muslim man whose neighbor put an Israeli flag on his door after a conversation about the “genocide” in Gaza. The operator advised him to put up cameras and record conversations as evidence he could later use in court against his neighbor.
As the crypto exchange platform Coinbase fights for the Supreme Court to rule that trades on its platform are not subject to SEC regulation, the company is seeking a new senior communications manager. In the job listing, they note “Experience in killing stories is just as important as driving headlines.” If you know which stories Coinbase is interested in killing, send us a note at tips@thefp.com!
One student is dead and another is wounded in Nashville after a 17-year-old student opened fire at Antioch High School before committing suicide yesterday morning. Police said that it was unclear whether the shooter had targeted specific victims. The tragedy comes just two years after another school shooting in the city that killed three 9-year-olds and three adults.
On Monday, Axel Rudakubana admitted to fatally stabbing three girls under the age of 10 at a Taylor Swift dance party last summer in Southport, England, triggering riots. The 18-year-old, in whose house police found ricin—a lethal toxin—and a PDF titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual” also pleaded guilty to 10 counts of attempted murder, producing a deadly chemical, and “possessing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.” It turns out that Rudakubana had been referred to the UK government’s counterterrorism program three times, but officials failed to act. As Douglas Murray pointed out in a Free Press op-ed, the police were far quicker to arrest Brits who “had ‘speculated’ on social media about the attacker or spread ‘false news’ implying the attacker may be Muslim.” Read Douglas on “What the British Government Wouldn’t Say.”
Oscar nominations will be announced later today. Who will make the cut? Will it be The Substance, which made Paula Froelich call her shrink? Will it be A Real Pain, which made Tanya Gold question the “Holocaust tourism” industry? What about A Complete Unknown, which Michael Moynihan says got Bob Dylan completely wrong? My hunch, which feels like a backache, is that Conclave will take the slate. Hermaphrodite Pope? Fine. Traditionalist Italian cardinal vaping in the Sistine Chapel? Sure. I’m a Protestant, none of that bothers me, but I won’t tolerate a slog!
Listen Now: Episode One of Breaking History
Donald Trump, just sworn in as the 47th president, was reelected to be a wrecking ball to the Beltway elites. And while this populist moment feels unprecedented, host of our new show Breaking History, Eli Lake, says it’s not—the rebuke of the ruling class is encoded in our nation’s DNA. Listen to the first episode below or wherever you get your podcasts.
