By The Free Press | Created at 2025-01-09 11:30:32 | Updated at 2025-01-09 21:26:57
10 hours ago
It’s Thursday, January 9. 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: Two women who dared to tell the world about England’s grooming gangs; the Indians who put “their blood and soul” into the U.S., but were locked out of the American Dream; and a defense of Jerry Springer.
But first: Angelenos flee the most destructive wildfires in the city’s history.
Southern California is burning. Thousands have been forced to evacuate as wildfires rip through the area. There are five so far and not enough firefighters to deal with them, L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said yesterday, telling reporters his department was “prepared for one or two major fires... This is not a normal red flag alert.”
So far, five people have been killed. Over 130,000 residents have been told to evacuate. Hundreds of schools have been closed, as tens of thousands of acres go up in smoke. Not even the rich and famous have been spared. Actor James Woods lost his home. The Malibu mansion of hotel heiress Paris Hilton went up in flames. Palisades Charter High School, among the most iconic public secondary schools in America and which educated J.J. Abrams, will.i.am, and Katey Sagal, has turned to ash.
Late yesterday morning, on Truth Social, our president-elect railed against California’s “Governor Gavin Newscum,” blaming him for the wildfires currently ravaging the state. According to Donald Trump, Newsom blocked a water restoration project because “he wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt,” and that’s why California is burning. It’s not entirely clear what Trump’s trying to claim here—and believe me, I spent some time trying to figure it out. But the basic elements seem to be fire=bad, water=good, fish=tangentially related and controversial.
So far, the fires have destroyed over 1,000 structures, including homes, businesses, and houses of worship. They even destroyed the synagogue that Free Press senior editor Peter Savodnik attends. Just hours after he and his family fled their home in Pasadena, Peter recounts his escape, mourns L.A., and explains what life looks like in a city engulfed by smoke. Read his piece, “You Can Taste the Fires in the Back of Your Throat.”
And click the video below to watch The Free Press’s Austyn Jeffs’s dispatch from the Eaton Fire fire line, where he spoke to residents who have lost everything.
The Women Who Told the World about Britain’s Grooming Gangs Before Elon Musk
Last week, we ran “The Biggest Peacetime Crime—and Cover-up—in British History.” Thousands of young girls, mostly children, were systematically groomed and raped by men of mostly Pakistani descent over a period of decades. Police turned the girls away. Detectives were discouraged from investigating. Politicians and prosecutors did their best to sweep it under the rug. Journalists skipped the biggest story of their lives.
Britain had avoided a proper reckoning—until Elon Musk started tweeting last week, making the story an international issue. But some people have been trying to get the word out for years. In the latest episode of Honestly, Bari speaks to two women who were among them: the British feminist and author Julie Bindel, who first broke the story in the national press, and Free Press contributor Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who helped amplify it. They explain how these rapes and murders were covered up in the name of preserving “social harmony,” why Elon Musk is suddenly posting about it, and how Britain’s ruling class is being forced to confront the scandal it had, until recently, successfully ignored.
You can click here for an edited transcript of the conversation, or listen to it here:
The Indians Locked Out of the American Dream
Over the past few weeks, a debate over H-1B visas has rocked the MAGA world, putting supporters of the program such as DOGE co-chairs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at odds with Trump’s immigration hard-liner base. We’ve written a lot about this debate, which quickly went off the rails. How off the rails? Well, let’s just say a debate over high-skilled immigration somehow led to Suzy Weiss defending sleepovers and yours truly attacking tiger moms like the world’s gayest poacher.
Cultural commentary aside, what is living on one of the controversial work visas actually like? Our intrepid reporter Rupa Subramanya has an idea: She’s spent the last several days talking to H-1B recipients, including one who says the program is so broken, he returned to his native country and is now living the “Indian dream.” Read Rupa’s new piece: “Meet the Indians Locked Out of the American Dream.”
Jerry Springer Was Trash. But He Was Honest.
On Tuesday, Netflix released Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, a two-part documentary about the life and slow death of America’s most reviled daytime talk show, which has been called “an appalling diversion” that “ruined American culture.” If Springer’s contemporary Oprah Winfrey was America’s mom, Jerry was America’s black sheep uncle who stacked porno mags on the back of his toilet and let you smoke weed on the couch. But both their shows gave America what it wanted: spectacle.
What made Springer different? Read my latest piece to find out.
Israel reported another hostage death yesterday after finding the remains of dairy farm worker Yosef AlZayadni, 53, in a Gazan tunnel. Hamas terrorists abducted AlZayadni from his house in Kibbutz Holit, along with three of his children, two of whom were freed in a November 2023 ceasefire deal. His 23-year-old son, Hamzah, is still one of 95 hostages remaining in Hamas’s custody and is feared dead based on evidence found in the tunnel alongside his father’s corpse.
Yesterday, Iran freed Cecilia Sala, an Italian journalist who was arrested on December 19 in Tehran while on a reporting trip for “violating the laws of the Islamic Republic.” Italian commentators had speculated that Sala was detained to ensure the release of Mohammad Abedini, who was arrested in Milan on a U.S. Justice Department warrant that accused him and a U.S.-Iranian national of supplying the drone technology to Iran that killed three Americans in an attack at a military outpost in Jordan last January. However, Abedini remains in detention in Italy and has recently asked a court to grant him house arrest pending his extradition hearing to the U.S.
Disgraced MAGA ally Matt Gaetz is considering a run for Florida governor in 2026. Gaetz resigned from Congress last year in advance of a House Ethics panel report alleging he “regularly” paid for sex and used drugs, which doomed his nomination as Trump’s attorney general. He’s not on OnlyFans yet, but he is on Cameo. For $250 a pop, the former congressman will wish your niece a happy bat mitzvah or—and maybe this is safer—send a nice New Year’s wish to your elderly uncle.
Speaking of MAGA allies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been accused of voter fraud by a—it must be said—left-wing watchdog called Accountable.US. Allegedly, the man threatening to make America healthy again voted from “a New York residence at which he does not legally reside.” It was the same address he used to try and get onto the presidential ballot, but last August a court found that he definitely didn’t live there. A suggestion for our crunchy king: If you’re going to risk prison to vote for Trump, at least do it in a swing state.
The sister of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has filed a lawsuit claiming he sexually abused her when they were children. Altman, who is openly gay, and his mom and two brothers have all denied it, in a statement that observes: “Caring for a family member who faces mental health challenges is incredibly difficult.” This is, I hate to say it, the kind of story Jerry Springer would pounce on.
The Supreme Court was due to sentence Donald Trump on Friday for falsifying business records to cover up paying Stormy Daniels—former porn star and current host of a bizarre dating show for gay guys—$130,000 in hush money. But yesterday, the president-elect’s lawyers demanded that the court hold off, in order to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government.” Prosecutors are expected to file a response this morning.
Finally, scientists think microplastics may be causing a rise in cancer and infertility in young people, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. These tiny particles are absorbed into the bloodstream via a variety of sources—from receipt paper to synthetic fabrics to airborne residue released from wear and tear on tires. Maybe progressive darling Taylor Lorenz was right when she said we shouldn’t be “raw dogging the air.” There, I said it, you can unblock me on Twitter now, TayTay.
