by Jeff Slate | May 31, 2026 | culture, Opinion
To be fair, it was never going to be great.
The “Great American State Fair,” part of the 250th birthday party for the United States that will take over the National Mall for two weeks in Washington, D.C. this summer, began to unravel in spectacular fashion last week when the headlining musical acts – such as they were – began to bow out, one after another, barely hours after being announced.
On Saturday, a clearly enraged President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to mock the artists who canceled, musing that he should replace them with himself: the “number one attraction anywhere in the world.” Not long after a spokesperson for Freedom 250, the White House-backed group behind the fair, said Trump will “personally kick off this historic celebration” in an opening ceremony. Not exactly an inspiring start to the festivities, certainly, but it did offer a fairly revealing look at what has happened to the Trump brand over the past 16 months.
Not exactly an inspiring start to the festivities, certainly, but it did offer a fairly revealing look at what has happened to the Trump brand.
The chaos all began on Wednesday. In a since-deleted post, the Freedom 250 X account, promising America-first programming, “MAHA Mondays” and free admission, announced a musical lineup that originally included Martina McBride, Young MC, C+C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, the Commodores, Morris Day and The Time, Flo Rida, Bret Michaels “and many more.” The organizers seemed intent on entertaining visitors primarily by transporting them back in time to the 1980s and ‘90s.
To be fair, Vanilla Ice is already a Mar-A-Lago favorite, and both the
by Jason Page | May 31, 2026 | Opinion, Sports
Brian Flores was fired as head coach of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins in January 2022 after leading the team to back-to-back winning seasons, a feat the Dolphins haven’t accomplished since. Flores, now the defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings, interviewed for but didn’t receive another head coaching opportunity. In fact, thanks to a misdirected text message from then-Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, Flores, a Black man, has evidence that the New York Giants had picked its coach before it interviewed him.
That sham interview, he argued in a February 2022 lawsuit alleging racial discrimination, is an example of the way NFL teams have navigated around the “Rooney Rule,” which the league implemented to ensure minority candidates are interviewed for leadership positions.
The NFL appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the justices declined Tuesday to hear the appeal.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that Flores’ lawsuit alleging systemic racism in the NFL when it comes to hiring, promotion and termination practices can move forward. The appeals court rejected the NFL’s position that Flores should go through the NFL’s arbitration process. The NFL appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court but the justices declined Tuesday to hear the appeal.
More than four years later, Flores, and other Black coaches who have joined his lawsuit, will have their day in court. And when that day comes, their lawsuit threatens to unearth an ugliness the league and its owners would rather keep secret.
But that’s not the only lawsuit that should have the league worried. Former Raiders head coach Jon Gruden is also suing the league in response to racist,
by Zeeshan Aleem | May 31, 2026 | Opinion
The new horror film “Obsession” is the runaway hit of the season. Curry Barker, a 26-year old YouTuber, wrote and directed the movie with a mere $750,000 budget — and in less than two weeks it has earned over $68 million at the box office. The word-of-mouth buzz is roaring: the movie broke records with its “unheard of” second week improvement over its first. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie have a jump like this in weekend two,” Comscore’s head of marketplace trends, Paul Dergarabedian, told Variety. “It’s indicative of audiences embracing the film.”
Why are people obsessed with “Obsession”? Well, it’s fun as hell and genuinely unsettling. It’s also inventive: Mostly shunning jump scares, it instead relies on dark lighting, clever blocking, minimalistic visual effects and the atmospherics of unpredictability to build suspense and surprise. And it features solid acting, including a bravura performance by a smoothly shape-shifting Inde Navarrette, who will undoubtedly land more high-profile roles in the future.
Just as it avoids visual cliche, it also avoids well-worn horror tropes in the story it tells.
But to my mind, the film’s genius (and a lot of what’s driving social media commentary about it) lies in its ability to take a deceptively simple premise — “be careful what you wish for” — and wring a ton of meaning from it, sprinkled with some sly social commentary. The movie is about dysfunctional romance, and the monster of this movie is less a specific character or entity, and more about how acute desire can breed suffering and evolve into a pretext for exploitation.
Bear, played by Michael Johnston, is hopelessly in
by John Pfaff | May 31, 2026 | Opinion
The FBI released a preliminary “First Look” at 2025 crime data this month, which showed significant drops over the year before. Compared to 2024, in 2025, homicides fell close to 20%, total violent crime fell almost 10% and property crime fell over 10%. These results are unequivocally good news, and they make clear that the steady decline in violent crime that began in late 2021 and early 2022 has continued — even into 2026. By and large, the increase in violence that came in the wake of Covid-19 has been more than eliminated, and many cities have seen some of the lowest rates of violence, particularly homicide, in generations.
And the news is actually better than that. The Major Cities Chiefs Association (whose data on big cities tends to track the national trends pretty closely) just released year-to-date data comparing Q1 of 2025 to Q1 of 2026, which showed more big drops. Homicides were down almost 20%, and robberies were down over 20%. Jeff Asher, who runs the Real Time Crime Index, predicted that in 2026, we could see the lowest recorded homicide rates ever, certainly the lowest in recent memory.
Many cities have seen some of the lowest rates of violence, particularly homicide, in generations.
The FBI under President Donald Trump, however, could not let the crime data stand on its own. The bureau found it necessary to include the overwrought self-aggrandizing commentary that characterizes announcements from this administration. The FBI’s news release quotes beleaguered FBI Director Kash Patel, who said, “Over the last 14 months we made major transformations at the FBI, and these results show those changes are working. This FBI will continue to stack these
by Anthony Coley | May 30, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
Former U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi demonstrated Friday that she would rather the public believe the controversy surrounding the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files belongs to someone else now — perhaps acting Attorney General Todd Blanche or FBI Director Kash Patel.
It doesn’t.
Bondi owns every decision she made as attorney general. And before she was ousted by Trump in April, she ran a department that refused to meet with Epstein survivors, stalled disclosure demands and fought transparency even after Congress overwhelmingly ordered it.
Survivors can’t get a meeting but a GOP member of Congress gets the Situation Room. That tells us everything about the Justice Department’s priorities under Bondi’s leadership.
But the decision to refuse meetings with Epstein survivors and their attorneys stands out. Those survivors are women, many of whom were victimized as children, and they have spent years fighting a legal system and a political system that protected their abusers. They asked for a meeting. Bondi said no. She refused to even acknowledge their presence at her last congressional hearing.
Something else that stands out is a meeting Bondi’s Justice Department did make time for. Last November, Rep. Lauren Boebert was summoned to the White House Situation Room, a space usually reserved for matters of national security, where she was pressured not to support a discharge petition that would force a floor vote on disclosing the Epstein files. Think about that. Survivors can’t get a meeting but a GOP member of Congress gets the Situation Room.
That tells us everything about the Justice Department’s priorities under Bondi’s leadership.
Bondi once made accountability her brand. As Florida’s attorney general, she worked to clear a backlog
by Anthony L. Fisher | May 30, 2026 | Opinion
In addition to threatening to bomb U.S. ally Oman and declaring that he doesn’t “care about the midterms,” President Donald Trump made a very different sort of surprise announcement at his Cabinet meeting Wednesday: “I think I’ll be going to one of the [NBA Finals] games.”
Specifically, the president said he had been invited by “numerous people,” including New York Knicks owner James Dolan, to attend the team’s first finals home game since 1999, the same year Dolan took majority ownership over the franchise.
Although presidents have sporadically attended MLB’s World Series since the early 20th century, no president has appeared at the NBA finals — not even Barack Obama, who famously added a basketball court to the tennis grounds on the White House South Lawn. Trump would be the first to do so, just as he was the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl in 2025.
The news has, unsurprisingly, provoked strong reactions — most of them missing the point.
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‘We will not be threatened’: Mamdani rejects Trump admin’s anti-immigrant tough talk
May 28, 2026 / 09:45
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stepped on a metaphorical rake when she implied to reporters Thursday that Trump probably couldn’t name “the starting lineup of the 1993 Championship team” (the last Knicks title was in 1973). MAGA commentariat quickly seized the opportunity, mocking Hochul and amplifying a clip of Trump attending the Knicks’ Game 3 loss in the 1994 NBA Finals. Indeed, New York magazine found Trump has appeared in the “celebrity row” at Madison Square Garden numerous times over the decades, in keeping with his lifelong efforts at social climbing among the city’s elites.
But that’s
