It’s Thursday, July 30. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Eli Lake on Anthony Fauci’s trip to Capitol Hill. Will Rahn on why the kids can’t stop “Nixonmaxxing.” Jed Rubenfeld asks: Could Bibi sue Mamdani? And should he? All that and much more.
But first: Is a home for the canceled incentivizing hate?
Gabe Einhorn, a tech entrepreneur, took to X last month to share his dismay after an Ivy League student refused to interview with him, citing a single reason: The student was “not interested in working for a Jew.”
At the time, Einhorn blurred out the applicant’s name; but internet sleuths quickly discovered that he was a 19-year-old Cornell University student named Austin Franco, and circulated his bio across the platform.
In the old days, that might’ve spurred a cancellation campaign; instead, it’s made Franco a minor celebrity. This week he was interviewed on Piers Morgan’s talk show, where he doubled down on his bigotry in front of countless live viewers. Now, online fans have raised over $25,000 dollars to fight his “unlawful doxxing”—and they did it through a platform called GiveSendGo, which has emerged as a more permissive crowdfunding alternative to GoFundMe.
GiveSendGo has helped the likes of Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny raise funds to clear their names after they were banned from other platforms. But it has also become a place for the likes of Einhorn to raise money off of their offensive views. In our lead feature today, Novi Zhukovsky talks to the founders of GiveSendGo and investigates whether this home for the cancelled is also incentivizing hate.
Last year, River Page reported on another GiveSendGo case: that of Shiloh Hendrix, the white woman who, after screaming racial slurs at an autistic 8-year-old on a playground, received over half a million dollars in donations. At the time, he marked it as a dark sign of a rising “woke right.” Last week, Hendrix was found guilty of disorderly conduct for the incident. But all that conviction has done, River writes in his latest piece, is turn Hendrix into a First Amendment martyr.
—The Editors
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Pleading the Fifth Won’t Spare Fauci from the Truth |
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Anthony Fauci sat before a Senate committee Wednesday to face tough questions about his alleged mismanagement of the Covid pandemic. But while critics believe the reckoning was overdue, some on the left settled into a different narrative: This was a partisan witch hunt, in which Fauci could do no wrong. “It’s a nice story,” writes Eli Lake, “but the camera doesn’t lie.” Read Eli’s report on the real story of this testimony—and why so many of Fauci’s defenders still can’t shake their Covid-era illusions. | |
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Netanyahu Can Sue Mamdani for His Smears |
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New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s speech last week accusing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a war criminal lit the culture war ablaze. Today, Jed Rubenfeld argues that Mamdani’s comments could leave him vulnerable to a lawsuit, should Netanyahu choose to pursue it. The mayor’s accusations—genocide, maiming children—may have crossed a line from criticism into libel. | |
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‘Nixonmaxxing’ Is More than a Meme |
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Today’s young conservatives have a new hero, and it’s not who you might think. Improbable though it may sound, disgraced 37th president Richard Nixon is the subject of memes and hype videos. If you’ve seen a video of Nixon with a Drake soundtrack online (yes, really) and you’ve wondered what is going on, Will Rahn is here to help. He argues that all this “Nixonmaxxing” is a proxy battle for the future of the right. Read his dive into the world of the 21st-century Nixon fanboys to find out why.
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