The Free Press
It’s Thursday, October 10. 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: The spy who lied to America; do the Menendez brothers deserve our sympathy?; Hurricane Milton makes landfall; Trey Yingst on Honestly; and more.
But before we get to all that, Olly Wiseman has another update on the drama at CBS News. According to an email leaked to The Free Press, journalists at the network are not allowed to say that Jerusalem is in Israel. Yes, really. Read the full story here.
The Spy Who Lied to Us
Is Donald Trump a Russian asset? That idea may seem very 2016. But it’s a liberal paranoia that’s been revived by several “experts” just in time for this year’s election.
Even though Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded in his 2019 report that his investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” a number of journalists and operatives in the past few months have claimed the ex-president remains cozy with the Kremlin.
Case in point: Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director who Trump fired in 2018, said in September he had “significant questions” about the former president’s approach to Russia. And this week, a new book by Bob Woodward cites an unnamed source saying Trump spoke with Russian president Vladimir Putin as many as a half-dozen times since leaving office. It also reports that, when he was president, Trump sent Covid-19 tests to Putin for personal use, which the Kremlin says is true. Though the thinly sourced claims set off feverish excitement in Washington, they are little more than rumors.
But chief among these Russian conspiracy theorists is the person who propagated the biggest lies of all: former British spy Christopher Steele.
It was Steele’s private intelligence reports, commissioned by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, that connected Russia’s hacking and social media meddling to the Trump campaign in 2016. When BuzzFeed published Steele’s dossier in early 2017, Washington went nuts, only to have its hopes dashed by Mueller’s independent report.
But seven years later, Steele isn’t having any of it. This week he released a new book, Unredacted, which promises to reveal “a searing new report on the threat Putin and Trump pose to democracy.”
Free Press columnist Eli Lake read the book and found many laughable claims.
For one, Steele writes that he was largely right and is the victim of the very institutions he was trying to help. What’s more, he says, he now has even better intelligence about the Kremlin, and he’s ready to share the goods.
When his dossier was published “it did have an unexpected upside,” Steele claims. “Since then I have had even better access to sources of information and intelligence on Russia that arguably give me a rather privileged view of what’s going on inside the Kremlin.”
And yet, Steele goes on to repeat the false claim that the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. (The FBI has since proved it is real.) And he complains that Special Counsel John Durham’s report, which debunked his dossier, turned much of the press against him and his company Orbis. “It was not just the trashy newspapers and the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal that fell into this trap,” Steele writes. “The coverage of Orbis and our work by normally respectable outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times also changed.”
Eli concludes that Steele is smarting because he lost his privileged perch. “For most of the Trump era, Steele was feted by the elite press,” Eli writes. “It was only when the narrative could no longer hold that the major media outlets belatedly began to write what a few of us had seen for some time. The Steele dossier was a steaming pile of disinformation.”
Read Eli’s full critique of the spy who lied to us.
DEI Is Corrupting Science, New Report Shows
A big theme in our reporting at The Free Press is the ideological capture of some of America’s most respected institutions. We’ve reported on the hijacking of law, medicine, higher education, psychology, Hollywood, the arts, and most recently, CBS News.
Meanwhile, Free Press reporter Rupa Subramanya sheds light on a new report by Republican senators, made exclusively available to The Free Press, about the National Science Foundation. The report shows how DEI is profoundly shaping who gets government-funded research grants from the NSF.
Some examples:
A Northwestern University project entitled “Reimagining Educator Learning Pathways Through Storywork for Racial Equity in STEM” was awarded over $1 million.
An assistant professor at Florida International University received over $320,000 to “transform engineering classrooms towards racial equity.”
The University of Georgia received over $640,000 to “identify systemic racism in mathematics teacher education.”
“This shift in emphasis of NSF grants is happening at the same time the American public says its faith in the scientific community is declining,” writes Rupa. “It’s not just the public’s trust that is at issue—it’s also the quality of the science that NSF grants produce.” Click to read Rupa’s full report, “DEI Is Transforming the National Science Foundation.”
Don’t Be Fooled by the New Menendez Brothers Documentary
In 1989, two wealthy young men, Lyle and Erik Menendez, brutally murdered their parents at their family home in Beverly Hills. The pair are now in their 50s and serving life sentences. But a new Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, casts them in a sympathetic light. In it, Erik spoke of the “horrible pain of not wanting to be alive” after the murders, while Lyle said “I would much rather lose the murder trial than talk about our past, and what had happened.” Extended family members called the boys’ father a “monster,” and the doc emphasizes Erik’s testimony that his father had sexually abused him from the age of six until the summer of the murders. This has led many armchair critics to question whether the traumatized Menendez brothers should still be in prison, or even if they should have been convicted in the first place.
Nonsense, writes Alan Abrahamson, who covered the first Menendez trial in 1993 for the L.A. Times and has studied the actual evidence. The Menendez brothers are “stone-cold murderers,” he writes for The Free Press. “They belong in a state prison. For life.”
“There Is No Peace Here”: Reporting on War with Trey Yingst
Few American journalists have reported on the last year of conflict in Israel and Gaza as relentlessly as Fox correspondent Trey Yingst. On the morning of October 7, he was in Israel’s south. He saw bodies dragged into vehicles, mothers trying to save their children, and horrific bloodshed in the kibbutzim. Since he started reporting these stories live on Fox—in many instances while rockets rained down on him and his crew—he has barely stopped, showing how the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians have been turned upside down by the conflict.
Somehow, Trey has also found the time to write a book about the last year. It’s called Black Saturday: An Unfiltered Account of the October 7th Attack on Israel and the War in Gaza. On the latest episode of Honestly, Trey spoke to Bari about his book, his reporting, the war, and his unwavering commitment to old-school journalism that tells stories of human beings in times of battle, whatever side of the border they fall on.
Click play below to listen to their conversation, or catch it wherever you get your podcasts.
Hurricane Milton made landfall last night at 8:30 p.m. ET, just south of Florida’s Tampa Bay. Having ripped the roof off the stadium that houses the Tampa Bay Rays, it tracked across the peninsula, leaving residents of St Petersburg without drinking water. As of 4 a.m., almost three million Floridians were without power. Earlier in the day, tornadoes swept across the state, taking out electrical pylons; they are believed to have killed two people in St Lucie County. The good news is, Milton is weakening. Just after 1 a.m. ET, the storm was downgraded from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 1. It has almost reached the Atlantic Coast, but in Orlando, Disney World will remain closed.
An Afghan man living in Oklahoma and his underaged brother-in-law have been charged with plotting to kill Americans on Election Day on behalf of the Islamic State. According to documents unsealed Tuesday, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, who entered the U.S. on a special immigrant visa in 2021, and his unnamed accomplice planned to buy AK-47s, magazines, and 500 rounds of ammunition and were prepared to die as “martyrs” while carrying out a terror attack at a large gathering on November 5. The pair were foiled by undercover FBI agents.
When Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar took full control of the organization this summer, he sent a directive to a senior operative: Time to revive suicide bombings. It’s the latest illustration of Sinwar’s hard-line fanaticism. According to The Wall Street Journal, even other members of the terror group think Sinwar is a “megalomaniac.” And yet. . . the reason why Israel and Hamas haven’t reached a peace deal remains a total mystery.
Donald Trump has long complained that China is stealing American jobs. But that didn’t stop him outsourcing the printing of at least 120,000 copies of his “God Bless the USA” Bible to China. The foreign-made Bibles cost less than $3 each and are sold in the States for a minimum price of $59.99, leading to a sales revenue of about $7 million. “The Bible is a reminder that the biggest thing we have to bring back in America, and to make America great again, is our religion,” Trump said in a video urging people to buy his good book.
The Harris campaign has styled Doug Emhoff, the vice president’s husband, as the perfect wife guy. This despite a stream of bombshell revelations—including allegations that he hit an ex-girlfriend (something he denies) and that during his first marriage he had an affair with a teacher at his children’s school (something he has ’fessed up to). The latest allegation comes via the Daily Mail, which reports that former colleagues at Emhoff’s L.A. law firm allege he was “inappropriate” and “misogynistic,” penalizing women who didn’t flirt with him and hiring “unqualified” women based on looks. How’s that for “reshaping masculinity”?
A bipartisan group of fourteen attorneys general filed suit against TikTok (used by 69 percent of Americans aged 12 to 17) for harming young people’s mental health. Arguing that TikTok attempts to “keep minors on the platform as long as possible. . . despite the dangers of compulsive use,” the AGs single out late-night notifications and the “addictive” algorithm as detrimental to young users’ health. The lawsuit is the latest against the Chinese-owned social media platform which, according to a law passed in April, must be shut down or sold to a non-Chinese owner by January 19.
Donald Trump and other Republican candidates have launched a run of ads focused on Democrats’ transgender policies, such as allowing males in women’s sports and supporting taxpayer-funded gender transitions. According to The New York Times, Republicans have spent more than $65 million in television ads on the issue. Says one Trump advertisement: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Readers may remember last week’s fat bear murder mystery. The “Fat Bear Week” contest at Alaska’s Katmai National Park turned cutthroat when a large male, Bear 469, killed a smaller female, Bear 402. Well, it turns out that 469 isn’t the only killer on the loose. After a bear called Chunk was caught on livestream slaughtering a young cub, a kind of justice has been served. The dead baby bear’s mother, Grazer, triumphed, beating out Chunk to be crowned this year’s champion of Fat Bear Week. Congratulations, Grazer.
And Finally: A Note on Our Fellowship Program from Maya Sulkin
Last month, we launched The Free Press Fellowship, a two-year program designed to train the next generation of independent-minded journalists. And we couldn’t be more excited about our first class of fellows, each of whom embodies The Free Press’s values—including honesty, curiosity, respect, hard work, independence, common sense, and a belief in the American project.
But many of you noted that every member of our inaugural group attends the most elite colleges in the country: Brown, Columbia, Stanford, and Princeton. In other words, the very establishments we have exposed for illiberal censorship, with every one of these institutions ranking “below average” or “abysmal” for free expression.
Why, readers asked, was The Free Press accepting students from schools that our reporting has shown to be rotten to the core?
It’s a good point.
And we have an answer. Our coverage of the rot at elite institutions has made us a magnet for freethinking students at those places. Before we even launched our program, each of our fellows came to us via cold emails or Twitter DMs, telling us they were sick of what they were seeing firsthand. They said they desperately wanted out, and we were thrilled to give these talented freethinkers the opportunity to join our ranks.
And yet, the real reason we have formalized The Free Press Fellows program is to reach young people across the country who can bring diversity to our pages—whether that be ideological, geographical, or socioeconomic.
In the days since our announcement, we’ve been flooded with applications from young people all over the country—including students from Alma College in Michigan and Denison University in Ohio, adventure trip leaders in New Mexico, and candidates from Brazil, Germany, and the UK. We’re already combing through this group of applicants, many of whom we will be excited to welcome to our next class of fellows in 2025.
So if you’re a young person seeking a career in independent journalism, we hope to hear from you no matter where you attend college—and even if you’ve decided not to attend college at all. To become a Free Press Fellow, drop us a line, and help us build a free press for free people.
Madeleine Kearns is an associate editor for The Free Press. Follow her on X @madeleinekearns.
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Just read the transcript of Ezra Klein's interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates in the NYT. Regarding his new book "The Message", Coates was asked whether he thought it might be a good idea to hear any other opinions besides that of the Palestinians he traveled with in Israel during his 'research' pilgrimage. Mr. Coates' response: "There are things in this world that I see that I just don’t want to hear the justification for." In other words, it's not complicated, that's a lie. There are good guys (Palestinians) and bad guys (Israelis, and any Jew who disagrees with him). Simple.
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