- Losing My Perspicacity
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- Losing My Perspicacity, June 27, 2025
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Good morning and Happy Free Friday! Thanks for stopping by this morning.
As my daily subscribers know, I sort of phoned it in yesterday, as I was so mentally exhausted by the constant stream of bad news that I’ve had a headache for three days and a stomach ache I can’t get rid of.
It got me thinking about how detrimental the Trump Administration is to all of us. Or at least, to those Americans who are decent human beings who just want to live their lives without intentionally hurting anyone. It’s not just bad news, it’s this administration’s aim to be as cruel as possible — day in, day out — to the most vulnerable groups in our society: trans kids, undocumented immigrants, pregnant women, the poor. It doesn’t compare to being in Project 2025’s direct line of fire, but it’s sickening nonetheless.
So this is my plea to you: Please take care of yourself. Turn off the news- you can still resist and not be on top of the breaking news cycle every single day. Take walks. Love your pets. Drink plenty of water and make sure to stretch. Go to all your doctor’s checkups. Wear sunscreen and your seatbelt. Have the second margarita with your friends. Remember, there’s a reason airlines instruct you to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others.
I’ve always found this, from I May Destroy You star Michaela Coel, to be very profound:
Now then.
Ever since I began writing about sports, I’ve been insisting that sports are, and have always been, political. To paraphrase my entire book (now on sale at Bookshop!), MLB integrated before much of America did. Billie Jean King taught us about gender pay equity. Muhammad Ali made people think more critically about the Vietnam War. In 2020, the WNBA flipped the United States Senate. Hell, the NFL opens every season with a giant US flag the size of the entire field, and then forces us all to ooh and ahh over the military-industrial complex with a fighter jet flyover. Sports have always been political.
I mention this because there’s been a bit of a debate about sports & politics on social media lately — mostly since the Dodgers went to the White House two weeks after the Department of Defense tried to erase Jackie Robinson from their website and, more recently, refused to allow ICE to use the Dodger Stadium parking lot as a staging area.
I understand that sports are a safe space for many, many people. They used to be for me, too. However, 10 years of working in sports media showed me how the sausage is made and convinced me more than ever that fans need to hold teams accountable for their politics and behavior.
This brings us to a disturbing story about the NFL that I would like to discuss. No, it’s not about former Ravens’ kicker Justin Tucker being suspended for 10 weeks for being a sex pest. If you can believe it, it’s worse. (Though the allegations against Tucker are bad enough.)
Remember the Super Bowl halftime performer who held up a Sudanese and Palestinian flag during Kendrick Lamar’s set? He’s been arrested, six months later, for “disturbing the peace.”
CNN — A performer at Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance in February has been arrested after holding up a Sudanese flag with the message “Sudan and Free Gaza,” Louisiana State Police announced Thursday.
The performer, Zul-Qarnain Kwame Nantambu, 41, of New Orleans, surrendered to authorities after an arrest warrant was obtained, state police said. He was booked into the Orleans Parish Justice Center on charges of resisting an officer and disturbing the peace by interruption of a lawful assembly.
Here’s how one New Orleans law firm describes how “disturbing the peace” has been interpreted in Louisiana.
In the eyes of Louisiana law, “disturbing the peace” is a charge that covers a variety of offenses – public intoxication, lewd or obscene behavior, foul language, fighting – essentially anything that causes a disruption or poses a hazard to the public. In a city like New Orleans, where visitors come from all over the world to cut loose, this puts immense pressure on police to create a stable and safe environment.
Do any of us feel that unfurling a flag in the middle of a half-time performance qualifies as a “hazard to the public?” Oh, and they tacked the “resisting an officer” charge on there because Nantambu ran across the field with police officers chasing him during the performance. Come on, man.
Protests that take place at an appointed time and place and in a circumscribed manner rarely have the impact organizers hope for. The most consequential protests are the ones that grab your attention in a time or place when you didn’t expect it. Think John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s infamous Black Power salute during the 1968 Olympics, Colin Kaepernick taking a knee in a stand against police violence, or the 2020 Los Angeles Sparks refusing to be on the floor for the national anthem during the WNBA Finals. Those are the protests we remember.
If there’s a perfect example of finding a way to get into “good trouble,” as the late John Lewis urged us all to do, this is it. And surely, the NFL, a league composed of 53 percent Black men, would be on board with such a political stand, especially by a Black man, right?
Wrong:
The NFL on Thursday said it commends the Louisiana State Police for “its diligence and professionalism.”
“We take any attempt to disrupt any part of an NFL game, including the halftime show, very seriously and are pleased this individual will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” the NFL said. “In addition to the ongoing criminal case, the NFL banned the individual from attending any NFL games or events.”
You would think a league that loves to wrap itself in the flag the way the NFL does would spare a thought for what the flag is supposed to stand for — freedom of expression, freedom from political persecution, and individual liberty. But the NFL doesn’t care about those things if, in their eyes, it makes them look bad on TV. Even after unfurling the biggest American flag you’ve ever seen during every pre-game ceremony.
It’s worth remembering that the NFL has been kowtowing to the right for years. Kaepernick and Eric Reid sued the league for collusion, alleging that “team owners blackballed them because they had protested racial injustice and police brutality by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before games.” That suit was settled in 2019. Many NFL owners, including Woody Johnson (Eagles), Amy Adams Strunk (Titans), David Tepper (Panthers), and Rob Walton (Broncos), have donated substantial amounts of money to Republican candidates and PACs over the years.
NFL Network, owned by the NFL, fired reporter Jim Trotter, one of the very few reporters who regularly challenged the league on issues of racial and social justice in 2023. And after Donald Trump took office in 2025 and announced his anti-DEI movement, the league spiked its “coaching accelerator program,” which was created to bolster diversity among the NFL’s coaching ranks. And, of course, those “End Racism” messages have been unceremoniously removed from the endzone in favor of the far more vanilla “Choose Love."
None of this is surprising to anyone who has followed the NFL for any length of time. If you care about social or racial justice in any way, by now you’re well-used to being continually let down by Roger Goodell & Company over and over again. But there’s something about cheering on law enforcement while they arrest a man who took his moment in the spotlight and used it to shine a light on injustice and genocide that feels so much worse than it has before.
This is Nantambu talking about how and why he decided to stage a protest on the world’s biggest stage.
May we continually strive to be the country we claim to be.
The above was more than I usually write for the big story, but I’ll quickly hit some other stories we should all be talking about.
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Canadian dies in ICE custody
Let the lawsuits begin! On Wednesday, I wrote that the ICE facilities are desperately overcrowded and the conditions are going downhill quickly.
Then word came that a Canadian man, who was in the US lawfully, died in ICE custody:
Canadian consular officials are pressing for more information from the United States government after a Canadian citizen died while in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a Florida detention center this week.
Johnny Noviello, a 49-year-old lawful permanent resident of the US, was being detained at the Federal Detention Center in Miami while facing deportation over a 2023 conviction for racketeering and drug trafficking, according to ICE.
He was found unresponsive and pronounced dead by the Miami Fire Rescue Department Monday afternoon, according to ICE. The cause of his death is still under investigation, the agency said.
To those who will no doubt say “good riddance,” I’ll remind you that the penalty for whatever crimes Noviello committed was not death.
SCOTUS screws over women, part 38,972
The war on women’s health continues, as the Supreme Court yesterday ruled that states can block Medicaid recipients from seeking health care at Planned Parenthood.
WASHINGTON (AP) — States can block the country’s biggest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid money for health services such as contraception and cancer screenings, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
The 6-3 opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by the rest of the court’s conservatives was not directly about abortion, but it comes as Republicans back a wider push across the country to defund the organization. It closes off Planned Parenthood’s primary court path to keeping Medicaid funding in place: patient lawsuits.
While the GOP has an unhealthy obsession with Planned Parenthood, the vast majority of women who use their services do so for non-abortive reasons, like annual exams, cancer screenings, and access to birth control (you know, so we don’t have to get abortions). When I was in law school and off my parents’ insurance, Planned Parenthood was the only place I was able to go for reproductive health care. After I was sexually assaulted, it was the first place I went to get tested for a sexually transmitted infection. I will always stand with Planned Parenthood.
The constant assault on women’s healthcare is ignorant and cruel and will undoubtedly lead to infertility and death in more women. If you can spare a few dollars, Planned Parenthood is a great place to direct them.
And gird your loins, because today we should get the SCOTUS ruling on birthright citizenship.
Rays’ Wander Franco guilty of sexual abuse
This story has been horrific from start to finish.
Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Wander Franco was found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor in the Dominican Republic and received a suspended two-year prison sentence Thursday after he had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl when he was 21.
Though prosecutors sought a five-year sentence, Judge Jakayra Veras said Franco would not serve further prison time unless he ran afoul of certain conditions, including not contacting minors with sexual intentions.
Very excited for the men who will argue that he should be allowed back in the league.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
We lost legendary journalist Bill Moyers yesterday, at age 91. We will not see his like again. Here he is predicting where we are today 11 years ago:
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids, no matter how SCOTUS defines “American.” Don’t let the bastards get you down.
Have a great weekend.
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