The Free Press

It feels like a lifetime ago that Elon Musk palled around with President Donald Trump and slept on the floor of an office just steps away from the White House. The world’s richest man was classified as a “special government employee” while leading the cost-cutting crusade known as DOGE.

In the latest sign that Musk is gone but not forgotten, some House Democrats will introduce legislation on Thursday aimed at closing what they claim are loopholes in federal law for special government employees (SGEs) like him.

The bill would ban many such employees and their companies from receiving over $1 million in funding per year from the agencies where they work, according to a copy of the bill’s text reviewed by The Free Press. The bill also would create a searchable database of SGEs. There now is no centralized tracking and disclosure system for such employees.

Sometimes in politics, you win not by changing the world but by changing the subject. That’s how the Democrats won this fall’s government shutdown.

It didn’t look like a win for them at first. Progressive activists and many Democratic members of Congress fumed at their leaders for failing to draw any substantive concessions from Republicans. But when the dust settled, the concrete results of the shutdown were three more months of Biden-era spending levels and a healthcare debate that would stretch toward the midterm elections.

Reigniting the healthcare debate was a triumph for Democrats, since healthcare is Republicans’ worst issue and greatest vulnerability. This has been true for two decades. Republicans have struggled to reach an internal consensus on health policy since George W. Bush’s second term, because the economics and politics of healthcare have never lined up well for them.

In medical school, I planned to be a primary care doctor. I started residency at a Harvard teaching hospital, caring for patients that included multigenerational Armenian and Irish families as well as students from nearby colleges. I quickly saw the reality of the primary care system: rushed, fragmented, impersonal, and often inaccessible. My patients arrived in the exam room frustrated after waiting over an hour, and their frustration was justified; I had to see so many people so quickly that I could barely keep track of their names.

For decades, insurance and health-system pressures have required doctors to see more patients in less time. Visits narrow to whatever symptom is in front of you, and the view of the whole person is forgotten. Physicians learn to signal that their time is scarce. Questions are hurried, at best. Patients, sensing or experiencing judgment or dismissal, grow quiet. Many end up avoiding anything but the most urgent medical visits altogether.

Primary care doctors are supposed to be medicine’s first line of defense. A doctor familiar with your medical history can understand the entire state of your health, not just the problem you came in with. That influences whether you get preventive screening, early disease detection, and a thoughtful approach for further treatment. Yet most people spend almost no time thinking critically about choosing a primary care provider; they open the insurance directory and pick whoever is available. Their experience of primary care is often so negative that they can’t see how it matters.

In the Coen brothers cult comedy The Big Lebowski, Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) says, “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, dude, but at least it’s an ethos.” His point is that when you have no identity, Nazism at least gives you a sense of who you are, and of purpose.

It’s a funny line, but now that a rising political influencer in America is an Adolf Hitler-loving, Holocaust-denying 27-year-old incel named Nick Fuentes, we ought to take Sobchak’s observation more seriously. Fuentes positions himself as the voice of a generation of lost white males, and though he comes off as a hysterical ranter—he praises both Hitler and Joseph Stalin—it’s a mistake to underestimate him. Say what you will about the tenets of Groyperism, dude, but at least it’s an ethos.

What is that ethos? Fuentes, now riding high on the boost Tucker Carlson gave him, laid out his core tenets in a couple of recent clips. In this one, he says he is “principally engaged in” trying to organize whites as a political group, to “raise the consciousness of an army.” Why is it, he asks, that Jews, Muslims, and racial minorities have political consciousness, but that is taboo for whites?

President Donald Trump’s greatest gift to America this year was to liberate people to be their worst selves. It’s okay to relish extrajudicial killings. Hey, it’s just some stranded Venezuelan drug mule clinging to the side of a bombed-out boat. (Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.”) Trump has made it unexceptional to see a terrified Guatemalan housepainter (or as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt put it in March, one of the “heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, kidnappers, sexual assaulters, predators who have no right to be in this country”) being bundled by masked agents into a car that will speed him to a supermax in oblivion. After a possibly PTSD-addled Afghan was charged with shooting two National Guard officers in Washington, D.C., and with killing one of them, Trump halted naturalization ceremonies for immigrants, who were poised to become U.S. citizens after years of waiting, from “high-risk” countries. This year has been a master class in the exercise of casual inhumanity.

Earlier today, the Norwegian Nobel Institute held a ceremony in Oslo to award the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. Machado has been in hiding since July 2024, after authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro claimed victory in fraudulent presidential elections. She is widely considered the figure keeping the opposition alive against Maduro’s violent regime.

Machado was unable to attend the event in person, with the Institute describing the “extreme danger” of smuggling her out of Venezuela. Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, delivered the speech on her behalf.

In the speech, Ana made an announcement: Her mother had made it out of the country after all—and would be arriving in Oslo within hours. Meanwhile, on Wednesday afternoon U.S. forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, a move that comes after weeks of intensified pressure from Washington on Maduro’s regime.

It’s a dramatic moment in the ongoing struggle over Venezuela’s future. Today, we’re honored to bring you Machado’s speech in full, beginning with an introduction from Ana. —The Editors

Good afternoon,

First, I want to express our infinite gratitude—from my family and from an entire country—to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Thanks to you, the struggle of an entire people for truth, freedom, democracy, and peace is today recognized around the world.

As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’re introducing a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. We can’t all squeeze into the same car for a sightseeing tour of two and a half centuries of history, but at least we can share the same guide. That’s what we hope this newsletter can be.

Jonathan is the perfect man to have behind the wheel of our capacious station wagon—a historian who has shown himself comfortable in all the centuries of our nation’s history. His latest book, “The Fate of the Generals,” tells the amazing story of the doomed stand that General Jonathan Wainwright and his men made in the Philippines in 1942 and the great courage he showed afterward as the highest-ranking American prisoner of World War II. Even more relevant for our divided times, though, is his immensely compelling account of George Washington’s final years, showing the twilight of the father of our country and his battles against its new (and violently divisive) politics.

Jonathan begins his inaugural newsletter with the 300th birthday of the “forgotten” founder who planted the seeds for the Bill of Rights and was a major inspiration for parts of the Declaration of Independence, too. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here.

—The Editors

In 1825, the year before the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, an elderly Thomas Jefferson received what must have been a most unwelcome letter. Henry “Black-Horse Harry” Lee, best remembered today for being the half brother of Robert E. Lee but known back then for his scandalous marital indiscretions, wrote to insinuate that the credit Jefferson had received for the Declaration more properly belonged to a fellow Virginian, George Mason. Mason wasn’t among the Declaration’s signers, but with this week marking his 300th birthday, it’s time to acknowledge his great influence.

Born on December 11, 1725, Mason was widely admired by his fellow founders. Jefferson called him “one of our really great men and of the first order of greatness.” Though George Washington himself may never have called Mason a mentor, historians have often viewed their relationship that way. When the master of Mount Vernon sought advice on political developments in the run-up to the revolution, it was only natural to look a few plantations down the Potomac to Gunston Hall, where the erudite older Mason lived.

It’s Wednesday, December 10. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: An incredibly potent drug sold on the streets of Philadelphia is turning people into zombies. Is Trump going to accidentally start a war with Venezuela? Have the Ayatollah’s henchmen fled to Canada? Is climate change a thing of the past up north? And much more.

But first: Is the techlash a social mania? Tyler Cowen thinks so.

“It’s the phones.” For a lot of people, this three-word phrase explains almost everything about the modern world—or at least so much of what is wrong with it.

Like any good slogan, it sort of explains itself. In case it’s not clear, it’s the idea that those small, shiny things that put the world in our pockets two decades ago are to blame for all manner of problems: learning loss, teen depression, dwindling attention spans, the loneliness epidemic, and more.

A lot of you probably subscribe to some version of this view. I know I do. And so do a lot of our contributors. People like Jonathan Haidt, who last month wrote an unsettling essay for us about “The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation.” Or August Lamm, who has sworn off modern tech and written about it in our pages. Or Jared Cooney Horvath, who last week wrote convincingly about how the digitization of our classrooms has been a disaster.

And this camp is winning the argument: There are phone bans in American schools, the flip phone renaissance, the rise of low-tech parenting, and Australia’s ban on social media for everyone under 16, which came into effect this week. In my view, almost all of this is all good news—and long overdue.

But here’s the thing: One of the thinkers I trust the most takes a radically different view. I’m talking about Free Press columnist Tyler Cowen. Tyler is a techno-optimist, and not only does he disagree with Australia’s social media ban, he calls it the “zenith” of a “hysteria” over the harm smartphones do to kids.

Now, Tyler doesn’t deny that smartphones need to be used thoughtfully. He says he wouldn’t want students to use them during school hours if he were running a school, for example. But he thinks the harms are grossly overstated, and he warns that the “techlash” brings risks of its own—not least for free expression.

Like any good opinion writing, this essay from Tyler is guaranteed to make you think—and his argument is worth grappling with even if, like me, you think it’s the phones.

—Oliver Wiseman

Did you know the soundtrack of Americans’ Christmas was written largely by. . . Jews? In a replay of this Breaking History episode, Eli Lake digs into how a generation of Jewish immigrants ended up shaping the very sound of America’s most beloved holiday.

• Two men were arrested for allegedly running a scheme to smuggle Nvidia’s H100 and H200 AI chips to China, part of a DOJ operation that seized over $50 million in restricted GPUs. The charges landed even as President Trump moved to ease export limits on some of Nvidia’s most advanced chips, underscoring the intensifying fight over control of advanced AI technology.

• Trump is heading to a swing district in Pennsylvania to pitch his economic message as Republicans worry voters no longer trust the GOP on affordability. Polls show widespread frustration with high costs, while Trump resists acknowledging voters’ financial strain and has dismissed affordability concerns as a “hoax.”

• Miami’s mayoral runoff pits Republican Emilio Gonzalez against Democrat Eileen Higgins in a race that could break the GOP’s nearly 30-year hold on the office. With affordability and immigration dominating the campaign—and Trump’s future presidential library hanging in the balance—a Higgins win would give Democrats fresh momentum heading into 2026, and cause the president to find another location for his library.

• Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky flatly rejected any plan that requires Ukraine to give up territory to Russia, rebuffing a key element of Trump’s proposed peace deal and signaling that Kyiv won’t bow to pressure from Washington or Moscow. While some provisions of the U.S.-backed plan have softened, Zelensky and European leaders insist that Putin cannot be allowed to redraw borders by force—a stance that could doom the proposal entirely.

• Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a progressive Democrat, has launched a Texas Senate bid, pitting her against state representative James Talarico, a rising star in the party, and jolting the Democratic primary. Both Republican candidates, Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, blasted her entry in the race, with Cornyn describing her as “radical, theatrical, and ineffective.” A Democrat has not won a statewide race in Texas in over three decades.

• Police in Goodyear, Arizona, have begun replacing hand-drawn suspect sketches with AI-generated images, aiming for more lifelike depictions that will attract public attention. Experts warn the practice could worsen misidentification risks and face legal challenges, but the department’s forensic artist says AI tools are already becoming a powerful part of police work.

• Nearly a year after the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, California, residents are restoring a cherished tradition. This holiday season, the community has brought back “Christmas Tree Lane,” lining Santa Rosa Avenue with over 130 trees illuminated with thousands of lights—and offering a hopeful reminder of renewal after the devastation.

It was easy to miss something Benjamin Netanyahu said a day after approving the strike against Iran’s nuclear program in June. “We have indications that senior leaders in Iran are already packing their bags. They sense what’s coming,” the Israeli prime minister said.

Videos on social media showed vehicles speeding across a tarmac and passenger planes leaving Tehran’s main airport—signs that Netanyahu’s intelligence was likely correct.

If anyone did make a run for it, though, where did they go?

You are being sold a bill of goods. A social panic has set in over how smartphones and social media are destroying us and ruining our children. In Australia this week, the hysteria reached its zenith, with a ban on all social media for kids under the age of 16.

These claims are especially difficult to defuse, because there are some pretty clear costs to these technologies. The thing is, after much rigorous investigation, the harms are relatively small. Yet in headlines they are reported as major negative effects.

Let’s consider one recent study of video watching. This study did show some costs, as the core result was that for each daily hour of video watching, a child experiences (on average) a reduction of non-cognitive skills of 0.091 standard deviations on average.