by Mike Wise | Aug 12, 2026 | Opinion, Politics, Sports
Culture war dopamine, that euphoric feeling that follows making an outrageous statement on the controversy du jour, is clearly a dangerous drug. Addicts are known to swap logic and reason for Fox News appearances. They become nonsensical, lend credence to the absurd and eventually stage full-blown clown shows.
Take Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, two 30-something former NBA players who recently declared themselves eligible for the 2027 Women’s National Basketball Association draft.
Citing the current WNBA guidelines, which state “Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA” (and don’t explicitly exclude transgender women players in their collective bargaining agreement), Freedom and White have capitalized on the recent anti-trans comments made by Indiana Fever role player-provocateur Sophie Cunningham. Her anti-trans statements, which she claims are motivated by her desire to “protect young girls,” have led to small protests on both sides of the issue.
Freedom and White have capitalized on the recent anti-trans comments made by Indiana Fever role player-provocateur Sophie Cunningham.
These aren’t merely political stunts mocking the league and the women who play in it, but malicious attempts to demean a marginalized population in the apparent hope that a NewsNation or Fox News producer will call for an interview so these budding hot-takers can be given some attention on what is a non-issue.
For the record, no openly transgender athlete has ever competed in the WNBA or any of the nation’s other women’s professional sports leagues. State bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports have been held up by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Olympics now clearly forbids transgender athletes in female events. And the number of trans
by Ja'han Jones | Aug 12, 2026 | Business, Opinion, Science
Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and technology.
Zuckerbot’s populist manifesto
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg yet again appears desperate for a populist rebrand.
After years of sidling up to the MAGA movement, Zuckerberg just unleashed a 6,500-word manifesto outlining his vision for artificial intelligence titled “The Future Is for Everyone.” And it reads like an AI chatbot’s poor attempt to relate to humans.
Zuckerberg criticizes people who predict AI “doom,” while arguing for the industry to adopt Meta’s open-source model strategy — that is, rather than the proprietary models offered by Meta’s competitors at OpenAI and Anthropic. Put another way: What’s best for the AI industry is what serves Zuck’s company best. Otherwise, he says, AI labs other than his own will control access to “superintelligence.”
If you’re thinking Zuckerberg may not be the best messenger for this kind of populist rhetoric, you’re not alone. Over at Tech Crunch, Russell Brandom rebuked the Meta CEO’s dismissive tone, explaining that distrust toward Meta and social media more broadly makes him difficult to take seriously on this matter. Brandom also argued against the sunny portrayal of AI tools, saying: “Even as Zuckerberg tries to paint a picture of the wonderful future abundant superintelligence will bring, he keeps reminding us of all the ways it’s likely to go wrong.”
Read more at Tech Crunch.
Truth Social special access
Donald Trump’s media company said more than 10 customers have agreed to pay $60,000 to $100,000 monthly for the brazenly corrupt feature on Truth Social that allows Wall Street to obtain early access to the president’s social media posts.
Read more
by Ja'han Jones | Aug 11, 2026 | Opinion, Sports, White House
Donald Trump is 80 years old, and his poll numbers, especially among young people, are as low as they have ever been. So his Patriot Games, an athletic competition that the administration and its MAGA allies have been promoting recently, is a bit of multipurpose propaganda: a ploy by America’s widely disliked president to appear aligned with the youth and invested in their vigor.
One might have thought it wise for Trump to steer clear of teenage competitions given the controversy surrounding his conduct at the teenage beauty pageant he once owned. But more recently the president has been eager to use young people as political props, as he did in July with his civics competition (which has faced allegations of being rigged).
The president is scheduled to be on-hand in Geneva, Ohio, on Tuesday for the final day of his Hunger Games knockoff, to award cash prizes to the competition’s winners. How’s that for a scene? America’s wannabe king descending into middle America to reward a couple of kids after they’ve sweat it out for cash in his corrupt, war-torn economy.
The competition — brought to you by Freedom 250, the corporate-backed organization created by Trump allies to hijack the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration — seems to be largely a vehicle for political propaganda. A Washington Post dispatch on the competition spotlighted children chanting Trump’s political slogans, donning clothes marketing his political movement, and parroting his rhetoric.
The racial makeup of the participants was apparently noteworthy, too:
In an email, a Freedom 250 spokesperson didn’t address questions regarding the selection criteria, stating the organization looked for “America’s next generation of leaders, competitors and champions.” What
by Miranda Yaver | Aug 11, 2026 | Congress, Opinion, Science
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s announcement that she is freezing her eggs has set off speculation about her future political decisions. It has also shined a light on the need to normalize and broaden access to this opportunity.
Ocasio-Cortez, who has historically been guarded about her private life, has been notably transparent in chronicling her fertility journey. She has shared reflections on the need to combat negative messaging directed at women who postpone having children in order to prioritize career and financial security and has even administered her injections on camera as part of the egg-freezing protocol.
Ocasio-Cortez has also been explicit about the exorbitant cost of this undertaking, with her insurance plan excluding coverage altogether.
Ocasio-Cortez has also been explicit about the exorbitant cost of this undertaking, with her insurance plan excluding coverage altogether, leaving her with what she estimated to be between $8,000 and $9,000 in egg-freezing expenses (not including the cost of their storage) that do not count toward her deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.
With health insurance plans usually excluding this type of care except in certain narrow circumstances (such as prior to cancer treatments), most women find this a prohibitive price to take control of their lives. While 21 states mandate some type of coverage for fertility treatments, there is wide variation in the breadth of these requirements, and the majority of employer-sponsored health insurance plans are exempt from these requirements due to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act’s preemption provision.
American women are having babies later in life, such that 21% of births in 2023 were to people ages 35 or older. Not only does older age put one at risk of
by Zeeshan Aleem | Aug 11, 2026 | Congress, elections, Opinion
As of 4 p.m. on Monday, Ohio Rep. Max Miller officially passed the deadline for being replaced by party leaders on the ballot following domestic abuse allegations and calls from a handful of Republican senators to step down from office as he seeks re-election. (He has denied the allegations.)
And so the GOP is stuck with him in November.
But there are few signs that the Republican Party as a whole is all that broken up about it. Despite the severity of the allegations against Miller — which include claims that Miller threw hot water on his ex-wife, held a gun to her head, and may have broken their young daughter’s collarbone — the party did not pile on to the longtime Trump devotee. (An investigation into claims of child abuse found there was not enough evidence to bring charge.)
The foremost example of how accusations of violence against women are tolerable on the right is Trump himself.
In the days leading up to the deadline, President Donald Trump praised Miller as a “good person” and said he wanted “to let the families figure that out.” House Speaker Mike Johnson said he preferred a House ethics committee investigation play out (which can be a slow and drawn-out process), while Senate Majority Leader John Thune called it a “House matter” and a “family issue.” While some GOP senators did express concerns about the allegations, their numbers did not come close to achieving a majority view within their caucus.
The objections to Miller in Washington were so restrained that right-wing pundit Erick Erickson wondered last week on X why Miller wasn’t getting “the Graham Platner treatment,” a
by Hayes Brown | Aug 10, 2026 | Opinion, White House
Elon Musk’s five-month tenure in the Trump administration provided the country a funhouse mirror version of technocratic governing. Here was a supposed expert in efficiency, a genius brought into to make the fixes politicians couldn’t. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency that he may or may not have led promised to slash $2 trillion in wasteful spending from the United States budget. According to its own “Wall of Receipts” website, it cut at most $215 billion, or about 11% of that initial projection.
DOGE’s failure at its task is about all we know about it. A new report from the Government Accountability Office explains that the quasi-agency vastly exaggerated the savings it produced. Some of the claimed cuts are impossible to verify. Despite promising transparency and a data-driven mindset, DOGE was a jumbled mess, and we’re left with little understanding of what it did or didn’t do. Indeed, a month after it officially shuttered, we’re still struggling to figure out exactly how much harm was caused by Musk and his similarly unqualified wrecking crew.
Despite promising transparency and a data-driven mindset, DOGE was a jumbled mess, and we’re left with little understanding of what it did or didn’t do.
We’ve known for months there were major issues with the numbers DOGE released. GAO’s report homed in on roughly $110 billion of the savings DOGE claimed in canceled contracts, grants and leases, but investigators couldn’t assess how much money was actually saved.
As the GAO noted, 108 of the 264 leases posted on DOGE’s website were “were already in process for termination when DOGE was established.” Missing data prevented the GAO from identifying roughly one
