The Washington Post's news coverage may still be trash, but the Editorial Board really has shifted dramatically toward the center as Jeff Bezos promised it would.
More specifically, it hasn't just changed ideologically; it has changed focus to promoting free markets, just as Jeff Bezos has said it would nearly a year ago.
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) February 26, 2025
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too…
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.
Jeff
It was the beginning point for a radical shift at the Post, and one that is still going on today, beyond the Editorial Page. Those changes have created nearly unlimited outrage among the intelligentsia, who firmly believe that democracy at the Post is dying in darkness now that Jeff Bezos is not fulfilling his duty to tear down America and replace it with the socialist utopia they all aim to create.
You can read countless stories and Xweets decrying the destruction of the Post. I wrote about Peggy Noonan's lament yesterday because it was so extraordinarily obtuse. She actually believes that the Post was a neutral arbiter of facts. That's as delusional as believing that Joe Biden was sentient as president and that the border was secure under his watch.
I don't know whether the Post will survive—under the old regime, it was losing $100 million a year, and apparently, the cultural and political elite believes it was Bezos' contribution to the cause or something, and that he is failing America because he won't sustain the losses for the sake of transgender illegal alien sexual predators or something.
Bezos, though, has left that idiocy behind, and there is no better proof than the Editorial it published today.
Washington Post Editorial Board comes out in FAVOR of rescinding the climate change Endangerment Finding.
— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) February 11, 2026
Did not see that coming! https://t.co/C6Dapfp9zI pic.twitter.com/WYJZ50KC1r
The Editorial praises Lee Zeldin's repeal, after the long regulatory review process, the Obama administration's bizarre "Endangerment Finding" that classified greenhouse gases as pollutants with the same status as sulfur dioxide or toxic gases, and hence made them subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
It was clear regulatory overreach, and a successful strategy to get around the fact that Congress wouldn't regulate carbon emissions. It was the "pen and a phone" strategy in a nutshell.
The Post, shockingly, endorsed Zeldin's move and trashed the whole idea of the Finding.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Thursday is expected to announce what he describes as the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. It’s about time.
Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1963 to regulate local pollution around the country, and regulators did that for decades. Then, in 2009, the EPA decided it would treat greenhouse gases like other pollutants, despite their damage being global rather than local.
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That declaration, called the “endangerment finding,” has been used by bureaucrats ever since to dramatically expand the federal government’s power over cars. Now, the EPA will rescind it.
What's as shocking as the endorsement is that the Post didn't trash the policy, but also the process Obama used. It has been a long time since liberals have cared about following the law and the Constitution, and it is refreshing to read someone who admits that even in pursuing a "good" cause, the law should be followed and that facts matter.
Climate change is a real problem facing humanity, and reasonable people could support government regulation to push down greenhouse gas emissions. There may come a time when the people elected to enact laws decide the modest benefits of regulating greenhouse gases outweigh the considerable economic costs. For now, free-market-driven innovation has done more to combat climate change than regulatory power grabs like the “endangerment finding” ever did.
The U.S. share of global greenhouse gas emissions has been trending downward since the end of World War II, and the 2009 policy change didn’t meaningfully alter its trajectory. The recent decline has been driven by the embrace of natural gas and renewables, which lower electricity prices when adopted for economic reasons rather than because of government mandates. Despite the obsession with gas-powered vehicles, light and medium-duty cars and trucks combined to generate just 1.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2022.
And that economic costs should be included in deciding what to regulate and how much to do so. And, best of all, the recognition that free markets are usually a better way to get to desirable outcomes!
It's refreshing. It's unusual. It's almost unheard of.
Keep in mind that this was not an Op/Ed from an outside author. Even liberal newspapers will publish dissenting opinions from time to time. This was from the Editorial Board, meaning that it is the official voice of the paper.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that bureaucrats couldn’t make new rules of “vast economic and political significance” without Congress directly giving away its power. More than 20 years ago, the EPA admitted that the Clean Air Act did not directly give them this power, and the estimated $1 trillion regulatory cost is undeniably significant. In 2024, the justices also decided that courts didn’t need to defer to regulators if they were giving themselves more power through vaguely written laws. No doubt the Supreme Court will eventually rule on this week’s move, as well, ostensibly in favor.
Doing the hard work of passing laws always leads to more sustainable outcomes than leaning into executive power. Obama made capping emissions a top legislative priority, but he couldn’t get the Senate to pass his cap-and-trade plan despite a near filibusterproof majority. Now he’s seeing his climate legacy dismantled. President Joe Biden’s administration created rules so strict on tailpipe emissions that they could serve as a de facto ban on gasoline-powered cars, but Trump is on a path to repealing that move.
Of course, it is vastly easier for a publisher to clean out an editorial board than a newsroom. Reporters are represented by aggressive unions and are much harder to deal with. This is why we still see such horrific coverage. Editorials are a tiny part of the content produced by a newspaper. Getting control of the sprawling newsroom is an order of magnitude more difficult.
Still, the howls of outrage we hear from the left at the changes at the Post are music to my ears.
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