Good morning. Here is the latest news:
More news is below. But first, a look at the president’s sports fandom, and what it reveals about his worldview.
Spectator in chief
If you follow the president on social media, you’re probably familiar with his partisan rants and Beltway musings. That’s Donald Trump, the politician. But there’s another, lesser-known Trump on the sidelines. This Trump is just as opinionated as the one you know, but he cares less about “the Democrat party” and more about “the GOAT.” This Trump argues not why politicians deserve indictments, but why athletes deserve hall-of-fame inductions. This is Donald Trump, the sports fan. He showed up this year to the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, the U.S. Open and a Yankees game. But his social media account is where his true fandom shows. His posts — copious and unfiltered, spanning more than a decade — reveal his lasting allegiances and philosophies. I read through thousands of those posts this week. There are a few overarching themes. He flaunts his friendsTrump considers himself a sportsman. He’s a good golfer — even if he fudges the rules — and he used to play baseball, football and soccer. He also enjoys having, and showcasing, friends from the sporting world. Tom Brady was spotted as early as 2015 with one of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats in his locker. The president has posted about Brady dozens of times, calling him the best quarterback of all time. Tom Brady would have won if he was throwing a soccer ball. He is my friend and a total winner! @Patriots (Twitter, May 8, 2015) Bryson DeChambeau, a pro golfer who plays in the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, reps the Trump Golf brand. He and Trump often hit the links together, too. He is a truly tough competitor, even a nasty one, but he also happens to be a great guy. (Truth Social, June 16, 2024) He cares about greatness — and disrespectTrump is keenly attuned to status and recognition. (Recently, he has been gunning for the Nobel Peace Prize.) He lavishes his favorite athletes with praise and complains when he feels they’ve been snubbed. Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hits leader, was banned from the sport in 1989 for gambling on his team. Since 2013, Trump has posted more than a dozen times that Rose — whom he calls “one of the most magnificent players ever” — should be inducted into the sport’s Hall of Fame. Most Americans agree, recent polling shows. Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame! (Truth Social, Feb. 28, 2025) Deion Sanders, the legendary cornerback, is Trump’s friend. The president spoke out when Sanders’s son Shedeur wasn’t selected in the early rounds of the N.F.L. draft. (Shedeur is now on the Cleveland Browns.) What is wrong with NFL owners, are they STUPID? (Truth Social, April 25, 2025) He is obsessed with toughnessTrump believes the field is a place for men to physically prove themselves. This is especially true for football, and he has long complained that officiating neuters the game’s essential brutality. I’m not going to be watching much NFL football anymore. Too time consuming, too boring, too many flags and too soft. (Twitter, Oct. 5, 2014) He has also taken aim at rules, like the league’s new kickoff format, meant to reduce head injuries. Kickoff plays are four times as likely to cause concussions as running and passing, league data shows, and the changes slow those plays down. The ball is moving, and the players are not, the exact opposite of what football is all about. “Sissy” football is bad for America, and bad for the NFL! (Truth Social, Sept. 15, 2025) Last season, when the new kickoff rules debuted, concussions dropped 17 percent. He brings it back to politics
Trump the sports fan is not completely distinct from Trump the politician. Fields and courts can be venues for activism, and Trump doesn’t like that — at least when it swings left. In his first term, Trump denounced Colin Kaepernick and other athletes who knelt during the national anthem to protest police violence against Black people. After the N.B.A. stars LeBron James and Stephen Curry said they wouldn’t visit the White House because of Trump’s politics, Trump revoked Curry’s invitation and disparaged James’s intelligence. Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team. Stephen Curry is hesitating, therefore invitation is withdrawn! (Twitter, Sept. 23, 2017) Trump has more recently called on sports teams to use their old, politically incorrect names. He threatened to block a new stadium deal if the Washington Commanders didn’t restore their name to a slur, and he pressed the Cleveland Guardians to call themselves the Indians again: Indians are being treated very unfairly. MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN (MIGA)! (Truth Social, July 20, 2025) He has also blamed progressive politics for athletic failures. When the U.S. women’s soccer team lost to Sweden in 2023, Trump faulted “Crooked Joe Biden” and accused the players of being hostile to America. (“WOKE EQUALS FAILURE,” he wrote.) In this way, Trump sees sports as he sees politics: a contest where the winners are strong and the losers are weak — and where toughness, loyalty and patriotism are interchangeable virtues.
Middle East
Trump Administration
Other Big Stories
Does the military need stricter standards for grooming and fitness, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week? No. Trump and Hegseth want superficial improvements regarding fitness and grooming standards, instead of operations and training. “President Donald Trump has a long record of prioritizing appearance and eager complicity over experience and competence,” The Washington Post’s Theodore Johnson writes. Yes. The best way to deter war is for everything in the U.S. military to appear to be at the highest standard, USA Today’s Nicole Russell writes.
Lebanese people have acclimated to their country’s backlogged courts and crumbling infrastructure. It shouldn’t be seen as resilience, but resignation, Nada Bakri writes. The N.F.L. picked Bad Bunny to headline the Super Bowl halftime show because woke is good for business, Molly Jong-Fast writes. Here are columns by Ross Douthat on progressives’ authoritarian tendencies and Maureen Dowd on an A.I. actress. New: The Times family subscription is here. One rate. Four individual logins. Savings for all. Now you and three others can enjoy unlimited access to The Times, while personalizing your own experience. Learn more.
Lifestyle managers: For $50,000 a year, a private concierge can make impossible dinner reservations and arrange your travel. They’re becoming a common luxury. Celebrities for justice: Amal and George Clooney hosted a star-studded award ceremony in London. Vows: Early in their relationship, she told him she battled bipolar disorder. He was undeterred. A respected figure: Belva Davis, the first Black woman hired as a television reporter on the West Coast, died at 92. Having overcome poverty and prejudice, she became a popular news anchor for three Bay Area TV stations for nearly 50 years.
N.F.L.: Mark Sanchez, a former N.F.L. quarterback and a Fox Sports commentator, was charged with battery after being injured in a stabbing in Indianapolis, the police said. He was in stable condition. M.L.B.: The Blue Jays thrashed the Yankees 10-1 in the A.L.D.S. to earn Toronto’s first postseason win in nine years. College football: The Texas quarterback Arch Manning’s misery tour continued in a 29-21 loss to Florida. The Gators’ defense wreaked havoc on Manning and the Longhorns’ offensive line.
“Shadow Ticket,” by Thomas Pynchon: The 88-year-old darling of the black turtleneck/literary magazine/graduate school crowd is back with his first novel in a dozen years, an old-fashioned noir involving a missing cheese heiress and a disaster-prone private eye. Our critic Dwight Garner writes, “If the director Paul Thomas Anderson — who adapted Pynchon’s ‘Inherent Vice’ (2009) for the screen and based much of his dazzling new movie, ‘One Battle After Another,’ on ‘Vineland’ (1990) — is ever inclined to make a film version of ‘Shadow Ticket,’ it would most likely be a musical.” In what might be described as “Western literature’s Great Cheese Novel,” he goes on, “Pynchon finds in the industrial production of curds and whey enough paranoia, satirical and otherwise, to power a midsize city.” More on books
This week’s subject for The Interview is Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, who in June was pushed to the ground and handcuffed at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference about immigration in Los Angeles. I talked to Padilla about the Trump administration’s immigration actions since, California’s outsize role in our national debates and his considerations around a possible run for governor next year. But first, we spoke about that experience at Noem’s event. The secretary and you talked afterward. What was that conversation like? Did she apologize? No apology, but honestly, not surprised, given how this administration tends to carry itself. I wish I could say it was more substantive or more constructive. She finally did say: Well, I understand you’re asking for more information. What’s your question? We kept hearing story after story of people with no violent criminal history being rounded up. And so I wanted to get some statistics. I wanted to ask the secretary, you put three, four, five names up on a slide show during a press conference, but who are the dozens and dozens of others that have been detained, that have been arrested? You were very emotional afterward. You spoke very passionately about what had happened. We also saw Vice President JD Vance, when referring to you and that incident, use the wrong name. He called you “Jose Padilla.” How did you understand that misnaming? Sadly, not surprised because this is how petty this administration is. And I knew what he was trying to do. To call a Latino man Jose flippantly, that’s their way of trying to ridicule us. For Vice President Vance in particular, let’s remember who Jesus’ parents were. They were Jose and Maria. Joseph and Mary. Look, I know a lot of Joses. A lot of Joses are hard workers. So if that’s what you’re going to call me, then I’m going to wear it as a point of pride. But back to the press conference and what happened. It was clear to me that if that’s how this administration would respond to a senator with a question, imagine not just how they could treat so many other people, but how they are treating so many other people when the cameras are not on. This should be a wake-up call. And it started in Los Angeles. We’ve seen National Guard troops now roving the streets of Washington, D.C. Threats to now be sent into Portland or Memphis or San Francisco, New York. This is a very, very heady time for our country. Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube.
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