by Sydney Carruth | Sep 29, 2026 | culture, News, Sports
The Senate on Monday voted to pass the Protect College Sports Act, marking a milestone in the joint effort between Congress and the NCAA to address chaos and uncertainty in the industry with new federal regulations on athlete payments, transfers and eligibility requirements. In a closely watched 77-22 vote, the Senate approved the legislation along wide bipartisan margins. It’s now headed to the House for debate.
The act aims to impose some order on college athletics in what supporters of the bill have called an “era of chaos” defined by record-high athlete payments, nearly unrestricted transfers between schools and a patchwork of lawsuits over athlete eligibility. The bill would create a national set of rules to govern name, image and likeness payments to college athletes and would designate the NCAA as the primary enforcer of those new standards. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican sponsor of the PCSA, and Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, the Democratic sponsor, have pitched the legislation as a means of securing federal protections for student athletes, reining in runaway spending on athletic programs and athletes and an attempt to even the playing field between major athletic conferences and their less-wealthy counterparts.
“We’re not going to let the most powerful and richest conferences dictate to the rest of America what’s going to happen to 500,000 athletes,” Cantwell said following a June hearing on the bill.
The new bill would allow schools to establish caps on how much they can pay athletes and would limit players’ eligibility to five years, beginning the year they turn 19 or the year they graduate from high school, thereby preventing athletes from competing in collegiate
by Charles F. Coleman Jr. | Sep 25, 2026 | culture, Opinion, Politics
The first episodes of Netflix’s reboot of “A Different Word” feel like they were ripped from recent headlines. The fictional Hillman College, which we were first introduced to almost 40 years ago on NBC, is struggling with federal budget cuts to historically Black colleges and universities, with what’s called enrollment management and dilapidated facilities. There are also nods to the current geopolitical consciousness of today’s students, who are protesting and demonstrating in keeping with the radical tradition of HBCU students of past years. We see them complaining about the same crumbling dormitories their parents occupied decades earlier and dealing with “purge day,” when those who can’t pay their tuition are unenrolled.
There’s also the star athlete whose father — a prominent character in the original series — worries that his son is forsaking better opportunities by playing for Hillman and would have access to better facilities and NIL money if he played at a predominantly white school. In this way, the series lays bare the realities that many HBCUs and the students themselves are grappling with.
When I was at Howard University at the turn of the millennium, I had classmates who decided to attend an HBCU because they’d watched “A Different World” every week as kids.
When I was at Howard University at the turn of the millennium, I had classmates who decided to attend an HBCU because they’d watched “A Different World,” a spinoff of “The Cosby Show,” every week as kids. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s UATL, “From 1986, the year before ‘A Different World’ premiered, to 1994, the year after it ended, HBCU enrollment rose from about 223,000 to
by Sydney Carruth | Sep 24, 2026 | culture, News
New York state sued Polymarket’s domestic arm on Thursday, alleging the platform’s sports-based event contracts amount to little more than an illegal gambling operation that violates state law and endangers New Yorkers.
The lawsuit, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in a state court in Manhattan, is a high-profile escalation in the fight over whether prediction market platforms should be forced to abide by the gambling laws of the states in which they operate. “Our gambling laws exist to protect New Yorkers, prevent the potential harms of problem gambling, and ensure funding for educational and public benefit programs,” James said in a statement Thursday. “By skirting New York’s laws, Polymarket is targeting the most vulnerable and depriving New York families of critical services and support.”
In New York, where Polymarket and its largest competitor Kalshi are based, James has been vocal about the need to regulate the rapidly expanding industry under state, rather than federal, law. James filed a similar lawsuit against Kalshi in July and has taken legal actions against smaller platforms Coinbase and Gemini. (In response to the suit, Kalshi accused state leadership of “political theater.”)
“By running an unlicensed gambling operation, Polymarket has done more than just knowingly violate state law, they have put New Yorkers at risk, especially those underage who are most vulnerable to problem gaming,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement.
Speaking of the attorney general’s office, Polymarket Chief Legal Officer Neal Kumar told MS NOW in a statement, “We chose to engage with them directly on the substance and address their concerns.” He added that “any time the AG’s office wants to
by Clarissa-Jan Lim | Sep 23, 2026 | culture, News
“Freedom Fest,” a pro-Trump event in Kentucky featuring Kid Rock that was scheduled to take place this weekend, has been canceled after low VIP ticket sales, according to its organizer, Eric Deters, a failed House candidate and Trump supporter.
In a now-deleted video posted to his Facebook page late on Monday, Deters said he had to cancel the event, “Patriot State Freedom Fest,” which was free to the public but cost $1,000 for the “VIP experience.”
Deters said only six VIP passes had been purchased as of Monday, which was not enough to offset the cost of the event for him, Newsweek reported.
“When I put together Patriot State Freedom Fest, I put it together with the game plan and the idea that I could pay for it with the VIP sales of $1,000 from these hundred people that I interact with on a regular basis that have money,” Deters said in the video.
“Out of all these people that have money that I interact with, who I do favors for all day long, they ask me for something, I never say no. I never said no to these people,” Deters went on, railing against his acquaintances for their lack of support.
“I am never ever, ever, ever, ever doing this event again,” he added.
Deter did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Deters, who lost a Kentucky Republican primary for a U.S. House seat in 2024, has organized Freedom Fest for years, with high-profile MAGA figures like Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Candace Owens making appearances. Deters also canceled the event in 2023 after announcing that then-candidate Donald Trump, whom Deters said
by Zeeshan Aleem | Sep 22, 2026 | Business, culture, Opinion, World
In the wake of spooky incidents of artificial intelligence agents defying their creators’ commands and rules, the great fear of the day is the prospect of rogue superintelligence that turns on humankind — and extinguishes it. But a recent incident in which the United States reportedly almost sparked a war with China based on false intelligence generated by AI reveals that there is a far more immediate threat to worry about: the fallibility of humans.
CNN, citing four sources familiar with the episode, reported that this spring a special operations command analyst put together an urgent intelligence report claiming that “a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.” The implications of the report pushed the U.S. to serious action — members of the U.S. military were “preparing to board the ship” and “military planes were in the air.” But at the last minute officials dug a little further into the report and found that a chatbot the analyst had used had “inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying.” (U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific and the Pentagon did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.)
The U.S. was astonishingly close to a military confrontation with the world’s second most powerful country based on what appears to have been an AI hallucination. That we got so close to accidentally triggering a global war should drive home the point that the imminent threat surrounding AI isn’t some runaway malevolent superintelligent entity like Skynet from the “Terminator” franchise. It’s humans misusing AI.
CNN reported that “across the U.S. military and the intelligence community, officials are pushing to weave AI
by Rebecca Ritzel | Sep 20, 2026 | culture, Opinion, White House
It was a tumultuous week on the marble arts center beat. Last Tuesday, a federal judge ruled against the Kennedy Center’s latest bid to put President Donald Trump’s name on the building. Judge Christopher Cooper’s determination did not require parsing arcane legalese; as 1983 federal legislation states, “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
Congress could also, the judge noted, change the law.
Trump responded to Cooper’s ruling with a social media diatribe, asserting without evidence that the Washington cultural center was “losing hundreds of millions of dollars” and “destined to doom.” He pledged to withhold a $257 million congressional appropriation intended for deferred Kennedy Center maintenance, particularly to repair HVAC issues. If the courts do not allow his name to go up on the building, the president wrote on social media, “the Reconstruction and Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”
Because it’s a nonprofit chartered by Congress, its bankruptcy would look much different than any the president has experienced — and he does have plenty of bankruptcy experience.
More ominously, on Wednesday, a Getty photographer zoomed in on Trump looking at a large photograph appearing to be emblazoned with the heading “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
The all-caps proposition prompted lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Ohio Democrat who serves as an ex officio Kennedy Center trustee, to sprint back to Cooper. Late Thursday, the judge granted discovery rights into the alleged planned demolition, and warned that any changes to the Kennedy Center’s current plan for a face-lift must come before
