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It’s Tuesday, October 21. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: How Substack’s top writer amassed 2.7 million subscribers with revisionist history. A look inside the progressive nonprofits that fear Trump’s wrath. And how the Muslim Brotherhood built a propaganda machine for the digital age.
But first: What’s wrong with the right?
Life moves pretty fast, especially on the political right. Lately, it feels like the American right is on a supersonic flight to somewhere pretty strange.
Once-taboo topics are being embraced by some of the most influential figures in MAGA. Tucker Carlson wants to know what really happened on 9/11. If you think this is fringe, or confined to the online sewers, consider that Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, wrote in a GOP group chat that MLK Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has “a Nazi streak,” according to messages leaked to Politico yesterday. Meanwhile, in other GOP group chats, young Republicans are talking about their love of Hitler. (Read River Page on that worrying development here.) In short: It’s getting weird out there.
Perhaps the clearest sign of how weird is the rising profile of Nick Fuentes. A racist troll who came to prominence in the strange online far right during Trump’s first term, Fuentes was kept out of the mainstream right for years. But that is changing of late. The stigma has melted away, and Fuentes is, in the words of Red Scare’s Dasha Nekrasova, on a “generational run”—all while sticking to his shocking rhetoric.
How did this happen? And what does it say about the state of the right today? Those are the questions at the heart of Eli Lake’s report for The Free Press today on how Nick Fuentes went mainstream.
Just pointing out this kind of weirdness—as we have done time and again at The Free Press—can get you in a whole lot of trouble.
That’s what Seth Dillon, the CEO of satirical news site The Babylon Bee, has learned since he raised the alarm about the bad ideas metastasizing on the right in recent weeks. Seth is a rock-ribbed conservative in the business of ridiculing dumb thinking wherever he and his colleagues find it. But for pointing out the obvious—that there are bad ideas on the right—Seth has faced a “mob” accusing him of “treachery and betrayal.”
In his essay for The Free Press today, Seth implores fellow conservatives to avoid tribalism and call out foolish and dangerous thinking wherever they find it. Read his piece on why “no enemies to the right” isn’t a strategy for defeating the left. It’s suicide.
—Oliver Wiseman
LIVE in New York City: Jonathan Haidt and Bari WeissWe are nearly sold out for Reclaiming Childhood in an Online World, a live conversation with Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss on October 22 in New York City about how we raise kids in 2025—and how we might be getting it all backward. Get your tickets today.
Get Tickets Now
Drink Yourself Sober with Katie HerzogWhat if you could shut off alcohol cravings—for good? On this episode of Honestly, Blocked and Reported co-host Katie Herzog opens up to Bari about her decades-long addiction, which inspired Katie’s new book, Drink Yourself Sober. Come for wild stories and a spirited debate about whether or not Alcoholics Anonymous actually works—and stay for a peek into the science-based method that extinguished Herzog’s cravings and left her three years alcohol-free.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon’s cloud platform that lets businesses rent computing power, storage, and other IT services over the internet instead of running their own servers. (Leonie Asendorpf/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)An Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage wiped out many big-name websites, including Duolingo, Roblox, and Coinbase early Monday morning. In a statement, the company claimed that the issue has since been “fully mitigated” but that some “requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution.” AWS is the world’s largest cloud computing provider.
New data show that peanut allergies in children have fallen dramatically in the past decade. The drastic shift comes after a 2015 change in allergy guidelines, which advised introducing infants to the allergen at as early as 4 months old.
Trump can continue his deployment of the National Guard to quell violent anti-ICE protests in Portland, Oregon, an appeals court ruled yesterday. On Sunday, President Trump threatened to send the National Guard into San Francisco in his latest effort to clean up crime in bright-blue cities. “San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world, and then 15 years ago it went wrong, it went woke,” Trump told Fox News over the weekend. “But we’re gonna go to San Francisco and we’re gonna make it great.”
As the government shutdown drags on, multiple states have warned that November’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits—also known as food stamps—could be in jeopardy. As of Monday, there are still no signs of lawmakers signing a deal.
Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called for a hearing to challenge the legality of U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean. “President Trump and his administration continue to fail to answer pressing questions regarding the president’s orders to carry out lethal U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea,” Rep. Smith said in a statement. “They have failed to demonstrate the legality of these strikes, provide transparency on the process used, or even a list of cartels that have been designated as terrorist organizations.”
The United States and Australia signed an agreement to fortify their supply of critical minerals on Monday. The deal includes $8.5 billion worth of shared projects, and will help the nations combat China’s dominance in the global rare earths supply chain.
We have a packed season of conversations, debates, and live events. Here’s what’s coming up:
Reclaiming Childhood in an Online World with Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss
New York, NY • October 22, 7 p.m. • 🎟️ Tickets on sale hereWould America Be Safer Without the Second Amendment? Featuring Alan Dershowitz, Dana Loesch, and Bari Weiss
Chicago • November 5, 7 p.m. • 🎟️ Tickets on sale here
Full Schedule
The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.
View all episodes
By Bari WeissIt’s Tuesday, October 21. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: How Substack’s top writer amassed 2.7 million subscribers with revisionist history. A look inside the progressive nonprofits that fear Trump’s wrath. And how the Muslim Brotherhood built a propaganda machine for the digital age.
But first: What’s wrong with the right?
Life moves pretty fast, especially on the political right. Lately, it feels like the American right is on a supersonic flight to somewhere pretty strange.
Once-taboo topics are being embraced by some of the most influential figures in MAGA. Tucker Carlson wants to know what really happened on 9/11. If you think this is fringe, or confined to the online sewers, consider that Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, wrote in a GOP group chat that MLK Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has “a Nazi streak,” according to messages leaked to Politico yesterday. Meanwhile, in other GOP group chats, young Republicans are talking about their love of Hitler. (Read River Page on that worrying development here.) In short: It’s getting weird out there.
Perhaps the clearest sign of how weird is the rising profile of Nick Fuentes. A racist troll who came to prominence in the strange online far right during Trump’s first term, Fuentes was kept out of the mainstream right for years. But that is changing of late. The stigma has melted away, and Fuentes is, in the words of Red Scare’s Dasha Nekrasova, on a “generational run”—all while sticking to his shocking rhetoric.
How did this happen? And what does it say about the state of the right today? Those are the questions at the heart of Eli Lake’s report for The Free Press today on how Nick Fuentes went mainstream.
Just pointing out this kind of weirdness—as we have done time and again at The Free Press—can get you in a whole lot of trouble.
That’s what Seth Dillon, the CEO of satirical news site The Babylon Bee, has learned since he raised the alarm about the bad ideas metastasizing on the right in recent weeks. Seth is a rock-ribbed conservative in the business of ridiculing dumb thinking wherever he and his colleagues find it. But for pointing out the obvious—that there are bad ideas on the right—Seth has faced a “mob” accusing him of “treachery and betrayal.”
In his essay for The Free Press today, Seth implores fellow conservatives to avoid tribalism and call out foolish and dangerous thinking wherever they find it. Read his piece on why “no enemies to the right” isn’t a strategy for defeating the left. It’s suicide.
—Oliver Wiseman
LIVE in New York City: Jonathan Haidt and Bari WeissWe are nearly sold out for Reclaiming Childhood in an Online World, a live conversation with Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss on October 22 in New York City about how we raise kids in 2025—and how we might be getting it all backward. Get your tickets today.
Get Tickets Now
Drink Yourself Sober with Katie HerzogWhat if you could shut off alcohol cravings—for good? On this episode of Honestly, Blocked and Reported co-host Katie Herzog opens up to Bari about her decades-long addiction, which inspired Katie’s new book, Drink Yourself Sober. Come for wild stories and a spirited debate about whether or not Alcoholics Anonymous actually works—and stay for a peek into the science-based method that extinguished Herzog’s cravings and left her three years alcohol-free.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon’s cloud platform that lets businesses rent computing power, storage, and other IT services over the internet instead of running their own servers. (Leonie Asendorpf/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)An Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage wiped out many big-name websites, including Duolingo, Roblox, and Coinbase early Monday morning. In a statement, the company claimed that the issue has since been “fully mitigated” but that some “requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution.” AWS is the world’s largest cloud computing provider.
New data show that peanut allergies in children have fallen dramatically in the past decade. The drastic shift comes after a 2015 change in allergy guidelines, which advised introducing infants to the allergen at as early as 4 months old.
Trump can continue his deployment of the National Guard to quell violent anti-ICE protests in Portland, Oregon, an appeals court ruled yesterday. On Sunday, President Trump threatened to send the National Guard into San Francisco in his latest effort to clean up crime in bright-blue cities. “San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world, and then 15 years ago it went wrong, it went woke,” Trump told Fox News over the weekend. “But we’re gonna go to San Francisco and we’re gonna make it great.”
As the government shutdown drags on, multiple states have warned that November’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits—also known as food stamps—could be in jeopardy. As of Monday, there are still no signs of lawmakers signing a deal.
Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called for a hearing to challenge the legality of U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean. “President Trump and his administration continue to fail to answer pressing questions regarding the president’s orders to carry out lethal U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea,” Rep. Smith said in a statement. “They have failed to demonstrate the legality of these strikes, provide transparency on the process used, or even a list of cartels that have been designated as terrorist organizations.”
The United States and Australia signed an agreement to fortify their supply of critical minerals on Monday. The deal includes $8.5 billion worth of shared projects, and will help the nations combat China’s dominance in the global rare earths supply chain.
We have a packed season of conversations, debates, and live events. Here’s what’s coming up:
Reclaiming Childhood in an Online World with Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss
New York, NY • October 22, 7 p.m. • 🎟️ Tickets on sale hereWould America Be Safer Without the Second Amendment? Featuring Alan Dershowitz, Dana Loesch, and Bari Weiss
Chicago • November 5, 7 p.m. • 🎟️ Tickets on sale here
Full Schedule
The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.