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Cruise missiles, yacht rock, and hot girls for capitalism: A night at The Free Press’ afterparty

October 10, 2025

Noam Galai/Stringer/Getty; Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI

The Free Press pegged its Wednesday night gathering in Washington, DC, as an exegesis on “the Future of American Power,” featuring Palmer Luckey, the conservative, firebrand founder of weapons manufacturer Anduril Industries. But it was also of a coronation of sorts for the once-scrappy publication’s cofounder and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.

Two days earlier, David Ellison anointed Weiss’ crusading, contrarian publication as new media’s cool kid when his Paramount acquired it for nearly $150 million and crowned Weiss, 41, editor-in-chief of CBS News. The evening with Luckey — which he called a stop on his “I told you so” tour — served as a dry run of the “fair, fearless, and factual” reporting that “holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny” that Weiss hopes to execute in her new role, according to a memo she sent to the CBS newsroom on Monday. A comparatively stilted after-party for The Free Press faithful followed.

In a nearly two-hour conversation with Weiss, the 33-year-old anime-loving defense tech founder charmed the crowd with quippy, candid pontifications on the current state of American affairs. “Our culture is being destroyed by a pro-litigation, pro-nanny state,” Luckey said. He confessed that he’s taken up drinking at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville since becoming a father — “Pour me a hurricane before I go insane” — and that he’s a diehard fan of “Survivor,” though his perennial application to be a contestant will never be accepted. If he were to compete, his fellow contestants would never let him win, he said, because he’s a billionaire.

Founded by Weiss in 2021 after she concluded that mainstream media had given up on objectivity, The Free Press unabashedly has a take on everything. “You won’t agree with everything we run,” its website reads. The publication has brought on columnists including Jed Rubenfeld, a constitutional law professor at Yale Law School, and Tyler Cowen, a libertarian economist and professor at George Mason University. This year, its mostly Gen Z staff writers have published stories ranging from a deep dive into New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mandami’s 16,000 tweets to an exultant review of their employer’s lit parties. Recently, Cowen penned a paean to his favorite actress, an AI-generated virgin.

Luckey and Weiss both know what it’s like to be on the outs and subsequently re-welcomed by the establishment. In 2017, Luckey — who worked at Facebook, now Meta, after selling it his virtual reality startup in 2014 — was reportedly ousted from the company for donating $10,000 to a pro-Donald Trump meme group. (Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have denied that Luckey left because of politics.) Earlier this year, Luckey and Zuckerberg, a recent Trump stan, buried the hatchet when Anduril announced it is working with Meta on an AI-powered headset. “I’m doing what’s best for my game,” he told Weiss when asked about the collab.

When I wear my Free Press T-shirt, I feel like I’m giving the mainstream media the finger. But now that Bari is CBS, I don’t know what that means.Debbie Bharucha, Free Press subscriber

Weiss, meanwhile, resigned from the New York Times in 2020, citing “bullying by colleagues.” Now the toast of the media world, she reveled in her moment. “I love DC,” she told the crowd, “not for the reasons that many of you might love DC; I’m not particularly adept at policy. In New York, I’m a 3, and in DC, I’m more like a 7.5.”

At the after-party, free thinkers abounded. Luckey aficionados, drinking-aged hillterns, and DMV moms mingled over fruity cash-bar cocktails dubbed The Free Press Fizz, the Get Luckey, and the Think for Yourself. There was a woman in a “Hot Girls for Capitalism” T-shirt (which, she told me, a Free Press writer had promoted on her Instagram), a man wearing an IDF hat, and a Modelo-crushing bro sporting a “Free Speech Makes People Free” tee. DJ Q (who told me he hadn’t heard of The Free Press before landing this gig) blasted a “yacht rock” playlist — which included “Love Train” and Vanessa Carlton’s millennial megahit “A Thousand Miles,” a ballad on Luckey’s public Spotify playlist — though few danced. Many sat on red-velour-clad Chiavari wedding chairs, regaling each other over their shared membership in the Cult of Bari.

“I follow her personality more than her journalism,” a lawyer who asked to be identified as “handsome, successful, and Jewish” said.

“I like that Bari wants her readership to be enraged by some pieces and reinforced by others,” said the woman in the “Hot Girls for Capitalism” T-shirt, a self-proclaimed libertarian who said she studied economics at George Mason University.

A woman who works on the finance side of a national research institution, which has recently experienced federal budget cuts, told me she subscribed to The Free Press because “you don’t find anything positive about Trump” in The New York Times.

Some, however, were uncertain about Weiss now running the very type of institution The Free Press has thrashed against. “When I wear my Free Press T-shirt, I feel like I’m giving the mainstream media the finger,” said subscriber Debbie Bharucha. “But now that Bari is CBS, I don’t know what that means.”

“I’m concerned that CBS will distract Bari from The Free Press, and The Free Press will cease to be as great as it is,” said an employee at a defense tech company who was an early subscriber.

While Weiss has been photographed holding court at her parties, no one I talked to had seen her all night. In her first meeting with the CBS newsroom on Monday, Semafor’s Max Tani reported, she told her reporters, “Let’s do the fucking news.” On Wednesday night, there may have been news to do.

Julia Hornstein covers venture capital and defense tech for Business Insider.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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