NBA Rattled as Coach, Player Arrested in Gambling Probe

And yes: At least a portion of it looks like games may well have been “thrown” for the benefit of the gambling wring. The coach at issue is Portland Trailblazer head coach Chauncey Billups. The player: Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier. Wall Street Journal: Federal prosecutors unveiled an indictment against more than two dozen defendants that outlined a nationwide scheme backed by organized crime families to run corrupt poker games and lure in victims by offering them a chance to play alongside figures including Billups, then a former player, and former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones. The revelations instantly ranked among the most damaging in the league’s history, throwing into question the integrity of its product just six years after the NBA opened its doors to the lucrative legalized gambling industry. What had been U.S. sports’ ultimate taboo quickly became part of the business model for major leagues and put an endless menu of bets at the fingertips of most Americans (Wall Street Journal). Fast Company: The indictments arose from two fraud-related investigations that included sports betting and underground poker games. In the first instance, it appears that insider information related to player injuries (including one involving an injury to LeBron James) was leaked to sports bettors, effectively giving those bettors an advantage—an injury to James, for instance, could impact his level of play and turn the outcome of a game (Fast Company). US Attorney for Eastern District of NY Joseph Nocella: US Attorney for Eastern District of NY Joseph Nocella: “My message to the defendants who have been rounded up today is this: Your winning streak has ended. Your luck has run out. Violating the law is a losing proposition, and you can bet on that” (PM).

On the NBA Gambling Sting: We Should Not Be Surprised

It’s very concerning. But we should not be surprised that the legalized and socially sanctioned marriage of sports and betting bears fruit in criminal abuse and the corruption of the games themselves. Hugh Hewitt: Everyone ought to be saying, what did we do with gambling? What did we unleash on the world? How much money is at stake? What other sports are going down? …. You can bet there will be hearings. You can bet there’s going to be an opinion from every legislator who’s able to reach a microphone today because it is an addiction problem. It is a domestic violence problem. It is a problem of organized crime. It is a problem of the young culture not understanding how endorphins work when the little machine goes off, when you’re laying down prop bets and it’s going to ruin sports. It’s already taken a toll, but it’s going to ruin sports more (Hewitt). Sports betting today is light years away from Pete Rose-type of betting. Zac Bissonnette in the Free Press: Gambling, Rose-Berman says, used to be man versus vice. Now it’s “man versus billions in technology.” Technological advances in gambling apps have turned a form of betting built around pregame point spreads into something much more like a slot machine: faster-paced, more random, and relentlessly engaging…. So much has been written about the epidemic of male loneliness. Young men have fewer friends than ever and hanging out is in structural decline. “Sports are good,” Rose-Berman said. “Socially, psychologically—watching sports is good for people.” But the rise of in-game betting is incompatible with the social role that sports have always played—and that they need to play right now, desperately, to help offset a crisis of isolation (Free Press).

Trump Administration Touts Progress on Crime, Cartels

Trump assembled his national security team to tout progress from the Homeland Security Task Force—the joint and integrated effort of all the national security agencies. Stephen Miller: President Trump’s Homeland Security Task Force — a total-government effort to destroy the foreign terrorist cartels and transnational crime — is the most extraordinary law enforcement endeavor in American History, now fully operational in all fifty states (Miller). Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem: I’m proud to report that the Homeland Security Task Force, created under @POTUS Trump, has already resulted in the arrests of THOUSANDS of foreign terrorists, cartel members, and drug smugglers. These arrests mean safer streets for our children, fewer families ripped apart by drugs, and putting the safety of American families FIRST. It’s an honor to co-lead this task force with @AGPamBondi, with the instrumental support of Deputy Chief of Staff @StephenM, to eradicate the threats killing the American people. We’re just getting started (Noem). Full video: (White House).

Stephen Miller: “Mr. President ... this country was going to die without you”

Trump’s Senior Political Advisor Stephen Miller summed up well the strategy and the significance of that strategy in light of our nation’s recent history: Let me just say, Mr. President, that this country was going to die without you. This country was going to actually die without you. That’s what we were facing in 2024. We’ve been invaded for four years. Our communities were sinking. Our public safety had gone to zero. Cartels were running entire communities. Sex trafficking, child trafficking, labor trafficking was out of control. Overdoses were out of control. The cartels were claiming more and more territory. City services were buckling. This was the country on the verge of dying, and you alone saved it. And when you stepped forward originally in 2016, you started the movement to make America great again. And that means make America great again in every way. And that means safety and prosperity and peace and freedom from cartels and crime and gangs. And your vision and your leadership in declaring war in the drug cartels is the single most successful public safety initiative in American history, and I need the media to understand what President Trump has done. People have been talking about drug cartels for longer than I’ve been alive, and everyone has just taken for granted that they can’t be touched or stopped. They’re too big, they’re too powerful, they’re too evil, they’re too murderous. They’re can operate with impunity. And in just nine months, president Trump is the only American leader, not just in our lifetimes, but ever to actually take the fight to the drug cartels (Daugherty).

Rubio Arrives in Israel

The Secretary of State is continuing the administration’s full-court press to support the implementation of Trump’s 20-point plan. Hamas has shown its true colors—as a terror organization that can’t be trusted. But Hamas also is also largely encircled and has—under pressure from the current US administration—seen its sources of funding and support dry up. Rubio: Arrived in Israel to reaffirm America’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security and engage with partners to implement President Trump’s historic peace plan and build on the momentum towards durable peace and integration in the Middle East (Rubio). More from Rubio: “We have more work ahead of us, but we feel very positive about it,” Rubio said after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He called the truce “a very important achievement” but stressed, “there’s more work to be done and bigger achievements that lie ahead” (FDD).

Ted Cruz Issues Warning on Anti-Semitism From the Right

The Texas Senator was speaking at the 45^th annual Night to Honor Israel at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. Cruz: The danger that I want to highlight to you tonight is not antisemitism on the left. It is antisemitism on the right. And I’m here to tell you, in the last six months, I have seen antisemitism rising on the right. In a way, I have never seen it in my entire life. Listen, CUFI [Christians United for Israel] is extraordinary. The work that CUFI does is desperately, desperately needed. But I’m here to tell you, the church is asleep right now. If I pick up my phone and send out a tweet, if I say good morning within minutes, I will have hundreds of blatantly antisemitic responses…. I am telling you this is real. It is organic. These are real human beings and it is spreading. In the last year, we had three prominent voices on the right, publicly muse, gosh, maybe Hitler wasn’t that bad a guy after all, yes, he was, was the embodiment of evil…. But when I said that tonight was the most important of the 45 Knights to honor Israel, this was the reason more than anything, not the grief and not the victories, but the danger…. And I’ll close the way I opened by saying, God bless Israel. God bless Texas, and God bless the United States of America. Thank you (Cruz).

Eli Lake on Nick Fuentes: “The failure to cancel Fuentes has helped move the Overton window”

The Overton Window is range of ideas that are considered acceptable or at least worthy of consideration in any given period of history. The ideas of Nick Fuentes are, to be clear, not worthy of consideration. How is it that he’s come out of obscurity? Lake: There are a few reasons why Fuentes did not fall into obscurity like Richard Spencer, who was the leading MAGA racist of 2017. To start, Fuentes has incandescent talent as a broadcaster. He can be legitimately funny. And like earlier generations of AM talk radio hosts, he knows how and when to switch trolling and rage on and off. But Fuentes can also be menacing. His diatribes against Jewish conservatives like Mark Levin and Josh Hammer pulse with venom. He yells into the camera and says: “You’re the filth. You are traitors. You are scum. You do not belong here. You are not American. You’re not home.” …  trying to make Fuentes go away by depriving him of access to mainstream social media clearly hasn’t worked. He built a movement on the edges of the internet…. But acknowledging the limits of digital censorship is not the same thing as pretending Fuentes should be part of the mainstream American right (Free Press). He should not be.

“Until Oct. 7, 2023, hating Israel and linking ‘those Jews’ to kooky conspiracies was strictly a leftwing phenomenon”

That’s a line from Scott Pinsker at PJ Media. More from Pinsker: Until Oct. 7, 2023, hating Israel and linking “those Jews” to kooky conspiracies was strictly a leftwing phenomenon. Conservatives didn’t traffic in that trope. Not so anymore. And I’m not just talking about fringe voices — like Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m talking about one of the biggest, most influential, most widely-followed conservatives in the country: Tucker Carlson. He’s done more to mainstream antisemitism in the Republican Party than anyone alive. Carlson operates under the façade of “just asking questions,” which sounds innocuous enough: How could you possibly fault a guy for being so gosh-darn intellectually curious, hmm? Unless… (gasp) you’re HIDING something dastardly! But it’s NOT intellectual curiosity. He’s NOT an investigative reporter, doggedly following the facts wherever they lead him, damning the consequences along the way. He’s a professional propagandist who profits from peddling lies, conspiracies, and bigotry. He’s not “just asking questions” because he’s curious; he’s doing it because it’s profitable. This is how he makes money (Pinsker).

German Columnist Has Home Raided Over Two-Year-Old Post on X

As we watch the erosion of free expression in Europe. Beege Welborn at Hot Air: Welcome to the dungeon. German media theorist and commentator Norbert Bolz is something of a revered institution in that country. A kind of VDH philosopher giant…. Even though retired from teaching, Prof Bolz, whose political views are described as conservative, has remained in the public eye through his lectures, articles, social media posts, and association with the columns he writes for the German-language publication WELT. It was one of those social media posts and a reaction nearly two years after the fact that has rocked Germany this morning. In January of 2024, during a sarcastic response on X to an article by the Left-wing German newspaper Die Tageszeitung (taz), Bolz quoted taz’s Xweet as his reply, and broke a sacred ‘no Nazi nothing’ rule. The Polizei were banging on his door at 9 o’clock this morning. THOUGHT CRIME RAID TIME (Hot Air).

US Ought to Designate Nigeria “Country of Particular Concern”

That’s the effort of Rep. Riley Moore (R-VA) and other Republicans as they seek to elevate the profile of what’s happening to Christians as Islamist terrorists seek to extend their reign of terror in Africa. Moore: It’s a systematic campaign of persecution by radical Islamic terrorist organization (Moore). Newseek: More than 7,000 Christians had been killed in Nigeria during the first 220 days of 2025, a civil-society watchdog said. This is an average of 35 killings a day, according to the recent report published by the Nigeria-based human-rights NGO International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) (Newsweek).