by Sam Eagan | Jun 15, 2026 | Opinion
If you’re like most Americans with a pulse, you may have asked yourself two questions in recent days: Why was Ultimate Fighting Championship putting on a fight card at the White House, and who, in fact, were these fights for?
They weren’t for the fighters, certainly. In December, UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland rebuked the idea of fighting at the president’s home. “To go hang out with the f–––ing Epstein list? I’m good, dog,” he told far-right streamer Adin Ross. At a press conference earlier this month, bantamweight fighter (and Holocaust denier) Bryce Mitchell argued that “the government is supposed to protect us, not entertain us.” Other fighters, including Brandon Royval, former UFC flyweight champion Brandon Moreno and even former megastar Ronda Rousey have all criticized the event.
Eighty thousand fans were stuck watching on a screen from the White House Ellipse, and the rest of the country had to pay for a subscription to Paramount Plus.
The fighters on Sunday’s card, which included the multiple championship-winning fighters Alex Pereira and Ilia Topuria, were conspicuously absent from the press campaign leading up to the fights. Instead, UFC CEO Dana White has been front and center: on the cover of Rolling Stone and TIME, and in interviews with The New Yorker, NPR and many other outlets.
Even Joe Rogan, influential podcaster and longtime UFC color commentator, expressed his doubts about holding fights outdoors. “I just don’t think that you should compete in a world championship fight in a noncontrolled environment,” he said on his podcast in late May.
The event certainly wasn’t for the fans, either. When Sunday’s slate of fights was announced, many criticized it
by Zeeshan Aleem | Jun 15, 2026 | Opinion
A federal judge indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s proposed nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund on Friday and demanded that the administration provide a sworn statement within a week that it will not try to go ahead with creating it in the future.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s decision demonstrates a more punitive attitude toward the fund than Senate Republicans, who have made a fuss about the effort but proven unwilling to take binding action to block it.
Brinkema is right to be suspicious and demand a clear disavowal.
Of course, that the fund is even a possibility is astonishing. It would use the pretext of compensating people treated unfairly by the federal government to effectively act as a slush fund for Trump’s political allies and potentially be used to pay out violent Jan. 6 rioters who seek compensation for being penalized by the government.
Senate Republicans recognized it as so obviously politically toxic that in May they revolted en masse through public objections and an acrimonious two-hour meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, described it as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.”
The Trump administration temporarily retreated, but declined to decisively rule out reviving the fund in the future. Blanche said, “We’re not moving forward with the fund. Period.” But he refused to commit to the promise in writing when asked to do so by Democratic lawmakers. And Trump continued to praise the idea of the payout fund as “beautiful” and “important.”
Play
‘Don’t play possum with this court’: Trump pressed over mixed messages on $1.776B fund
June 12, 2026 / 08:46
Senate Republicans had an
by Hayes Brown | Jun 14, 2026 | Opinion
On the White House South Lawn, rising high above the Executive Mansion, a battlefield awaits. The temporary coliseum erected for Sunday night’s Ultimate Fighting Championship matches promises a spectacle unlike any ever held on a president’s doorstep. The Trump administration insists the event is part of the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, unironically linking the country’s founding with an evening of violence on an altar to hypermasculinity.
But the timing of the event, taking place on President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday, is no mere coincidence. As with last year’s military parade, ostensibly in honor of the U.S. Army’s 200th birthday, the president has seized on the opportunity to disguise a taxpayer-funded gift to himself as a present to the nation. While the administration attempts to link these fights to the revolutionaries who rebelled against a monarch, Sunday’s event more closely resembles a king and his court attending a tournament in the late Middle Ages. The federal government has spent an embarrassingly large sum in the hopes of providing a diversion for America’s would-be king as the country’s greatest ills go untreated.
The federal government has spent an embarrassingly large sum in the hopes of providing a diversion for America’s would-be king as the country’s greatest ills go untreated.
Presidents enjoying a bit of rough-and-tumble is nothing new. Abraham Lincoln was known for being a wrestler in his youth, while Theodore Roosevelt’s love of boxing followed him to the White House. Trump is neither. He is a man who has late in life gravitated towards mixed martial arts and in particular its blend of pro-wrestling’s dramatic characters and the bare-knuckled beatings its practitioners administer.
by Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons | Jun 14, 2026 | Opinion
The Southern Baptist Convention dug deeper into its hole of misogyny Wednesday when, after only a brief debate, the denomination voted to advance a formal ban on women pastors. The amendment, approved with a roughly 3-to-1 vote, says that Southern Baptist churches may not act “to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.”
If you’ve been following the Southern Baptists, then you know the convention already has a statement of faith opposing women in ministry and has expelled individual churches, including the one founded by Rev. Rick Warren, that ordain women. The convention’s seeming obsession with subjugating women and arguing their inherent unfitness for leadership may help explain a May report from Lifeway Research that 2025 marked the denomination’s “19th consecutive year of membership decline.” According to that Lifeway report, the denomination’s membership is consistent with “levels last seen in 1973.”
The convention’s obsession with subjugating women may help explain a May report that 2025 marked the denomination’s “19th consecutive year of membership decline.”
But the stronger argument against the Southern Baptists’ even louder declaration against churches with women pastors is that they’ve rejected the Baptist value of individual church autonomy and soul liberty. Baptists don’t have creeds. It is a cruel distortion of Baptist belief, then, to have a top-down process that targets individual churches and limits the pastors they may call.
Consider the response by the Progressive National Baptist Convention, which is predominantly Black and has 2.5-million members. “The Progressive National Baptist Convention affirms that God calls whom God calls,” Rev. Dr. David R. Peoples, the PNBC president,
by Haris Tarin | Jun 14, 2026 | Opinion, Politics, Sports
FIFA referee Omar Artan flew into Miami on Saturday for the assignment of his career: He was about to become the first Somali to referee in a World Cup. But Artan never made it out of the airport. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reportedly interrogated him for 11 hours then held him in a cell before putting him on a flight back to Istanbul, from where he had caught his connecting flight to the U.S. By Monday, FIFA had dropped Artan from the tournament.
I spent nearly a decade at the Department of Homeland Security working in counterterrorism and civil rights, and I can say with confidence that Artan being denied entry for so-called vetting concerns and being sent away had nothing to do with national security and everything to do with his being born in Somalia. The government is dressing up its religious and ethnic discrimination in seemingly innocuous bureaucratic clothing.
We don’t have to shut out whole countries to keep our country safe.
The U.S. already operates the world’s most exacting traveler-vetting system — officials look at fingerprints, facial scans, multiple watchlists and conduct checks via the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. That system is applied every time someone tries to enter the U.S., and it makes crude nationality bans unnecessary. We don’t have to shut out whole countries to keep our country safe. We have the tools to single out threats and let everyone else through.
But during this second Trump administration, the government is restricting visits from nationals of 39 countries. Four World Cup teams — Haiti, Iran, Senegal and Ivory Coast — are on that list, and the administration has only given the tournament a narrow carve-out. Players
by Anthony L. Fisher | Jun 14, 2026 | culture, Opinion
When the New York Knicks qualified for the NBA playoffs in 2021, after an eight-year drought, the New York Post reported on that team’s sole postseason victory with the headline, “Wild crowd of Knicks fans take over streets after playoff win.”
A friend of mine visiting the city at the time picked up on the palpable Knicks fever, though he was a bit flummoxed at the level of giddiness for a team that won just one game before being bounced from the tournament by the Atlanta Hawks. “This is a basketball town,” I said, “If the Knicks ever actually make a real run at the title, this place will go absolutely insane.”
Now the New York Knickerbockers are NBA champions for the first time since 1973, having defeated the San Antonio Spurs in a five-game series that featured the greatest comeback in NBA finals history. And New York fans are indeed back in the streets, this time in even greater abundance, exploding with joy.
Now the New York Knickerbockers are NBA champions for the first time since 1973, having defeated the San Antonio Spurs in a five-game series that featured the greatest comeback in NBA finals history.
Will Leitch aptly explained why Game 4, when the Knicks rallied from a 29-point deficit at Madison Square Garden, was a microcosm for this squad’s improbable, inspiring, record-breaking playoff run: “For whatever reason, the Knicks spent most of this season toggling themselves on and off, like a circuit breaker. They just toggled themselves off and back on again. But this wasn’t a toggle: This was the smashing of a plunger that blew the roof off an
