2026-03-06 04:22:49
President Donald Trump did not fire multiply radioactive Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday, a day after members of Congress grilled her over agents of her department murdering American citizens, her having viciously slandered those murdered Americans, obvious graft and corruption in the awarding of federal contracts by her department, and her (and her department's) inappropriate relationship with Trumpworld creature Corey Lewandowski. She has been replaced as DHS head by Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin—but she has not been fired! Do not put in the newspaper that Kristi Noem has been fired by Donald Trump!
No indeed, in a post to his busted social network Trump says that Noem is being reassigned to the—to, ah... to... hm, let me see here...
The current secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at "Homeland."
2026-03-06 03:02:25
You think about difficult things when you're stranded: dark thoughts of vanishing horizons, daunting ifs and thens, promises made to yourself on sleepless nights. And so it was for me last week, when a blizzard delayed our return home from a vacation long enough for me to miss recording the podcast. "If I ever make it home to my podcasting setup again," I swore to myself from the extremely comfortable hotel room that my wife and I wound up staying in for two delightful nights longer than expected, "I pledge that we'll have Spencer Hall on the podcast."
These are the sorts of promises you make when you don't know if you're good for it, at moments when you don't know what a promise is worth. But look:
2026-03-06 01:41:32
A tenant in a Brooklyn building owned by Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo has not had heat in his apartment since Feb. 23, when a blizzard dropped over 19 inches of snow on New York City. Between the months of October through May, when the outside temperature drops below 55 degrees, building owners in the city are required by law to heat apartments to at least 68 degrees during the day, and 62 degrees at night.
In this case, those standards are not being met. This tenant, a longtime Bucks fan, has sent Instagram direct messages to the two-time MVP, hoping to get his attention. (We are protecting the tenant's identity because he has been subjected to threats as a result of his profession, and this interview effectively reveals his address.) Here's what it's like to have a top-three NBA player as your landlord while having no heat. The following interview, conducted on March 4, has been condensed and edited for clarity.
When reached by Defector Thursday morning, a Bucks spokesperson declined to comment. Defector also called and emailed the property management company and Alex Saratsis, Antetokounmpo's agent, but has not received a response; we will update if that changes.
2026-03-06 01:23:50
We may be witnessing the final days of Antoine Griezmann at Atlético Madrid. French by birth, Spanish by formation, and Uruguayan by choice, the culturally omnivorous superstar is apparently on the cusp of a long-gestating move to America, where he will be able to indulge another one of his international obsessions by immersing himself even more deeply in the NFL, while spending his down time playing in MLS. Thankfully, there are still important matches to play before his coming semi-retirement, and if the recent, spectacular performances of Griezmann's enduring talents have stood for anything, it's that his cleats probably aren't quite ready to follow where his pockets want to lead them.
That Griezmann could be convinced to call an end to the European leg of his career is no great surprise. The man is set to turn 35 in a couple weeks, and with his advancing age has come a diminished role with his team. Only six of his 26 La Liga appearances this season have been starts. After providing the Colchoneros their spring for the greater part of the past decade (excepting a brief, ill-fated interregnum), Griezmann is no longer the one relied on to get the crowd jumping in Madrid. It's this lost prominence that, as recently as a week ago, reportedly had the Frenchman with one foot out of the door ahead of a move that would see him leave Atleti with immediate effect to join MLS's Orlando City.
But if the past month has been something like a last dance, Griezmann's moves have been so good that they have basically obliged him to stick around and boogie the rest of the season away. This is primarily because of his exploits in the Copa del Rey. Things started in Atlético's quarterfinal match against Real Betis last month, which doubled as the debut of Ademola Lookman, the January signing who has breathed new life into what had been a ho-hum Rojiblanco season. Away in Seville, Atlético romped to a 5-0 win, the team's best performance since its surprise 5-2 beatdown of Real Madrid back in September. Lookman rightfully got the headlines thanks to his goal and assist in his first game in Spain, but as has so often been the case on the striped side of Madrid, it was Griezmann who pulled all the strings.
2026-03-06 01:04:57
Three days before the first race of the Formula 1 season, it is impossible to overstate just how badly the Aston Martin team, newly headed by racecar guru Adrian Newey, have managed to botch it. Any attempt to summarize from an outsider's perspective will mostly boil down to an incoherent, expletive-laden babble—"Oh my god, they fucked it, it is unbelievable just how much they fucked it," etc.—but it's more effective to hear the facts directly from the sources themselves.
Here are a few sentences Newey uttered in a 15-minute press conference (reportedly and fittingly plagued by microphone issues) prior to the Australian Grand Prix:
2026-03-06 00:35:28
Before I went to Melbourne in January to cover the Australian Open for Defector and a couple other publications, I spent some time in New Zealand with my family. We lived there for five years when I was a child, and ever since we moved back to the United States, where I was born, it’s remained an idyllic place to return to. New Zealand also functions as a nice haven these days from winter in the United States both seasonally (it lasts about four months where I live) and politically (14 months and counting). Headlines about tariffs or Trump falling asleep in meetings land a little more softly from an ocean away. The distance can't cushion every blow, though. The news that the U.S. had ordered a military strike on Venezuela, killing more than 80 innocent people in the process, wouldn’t leave my head. When I read that the ICE agent Jonathan Ross had murdered Renee Nicole Good a few days later, I sat on my bed staring aimlessly at the wall for an hour, stewing in dread. I felt deeply embarrassed to go out to a cafe and order food with my American accent, like I needed to wear a sign reading I am from the United States, but I deeply hate what is going on there to assure baristas or cashiers that they weren't serving a cheerleader of this fucked-up regime.
Few journalists were asking American players about the state of their country at the Australian Open, which felt strange given the avalanche of awful news from it, before and during the tournament. The modern tennis professional, on average, weighs in on politics about as often and as deeply as a fourth grader. Still, when something is happening in the world, players tend to face questions about it. The WTA Finals have taken place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the last two years and will again at the end of this season; the country's Public Investment Fund also gets a namedrop in both the ATP and WTA rankings. Though resistance to jumping in bed with a petrostate liberal in its censorship, sexism, and executions has largely faded, participants in the WTA Finals did talk about weighing the financial gain of the move against the moral pitfalls in 2024. Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian players have answered questions aplenty about Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, some Ukrainian players' decision not to shake hands with Russian and Belarusian players, the latter group's ban from Wimbledon in 2022, and the blank flag that's been put next to their names on scoreboards ever since.
After some encouragement from another journalist, I pitched a piece on how American players were feeling about their country to an editor for The Athletic, for whom I'd been doing some work during the tournament. I began asking players questions, and phrased them nervously and vaguely—it felt like a spined creature was clawing its way into my throat from my stomach as I asked them. My regret from the reporting is that I wasn't more direct. Still, I got a variety of responses from eight players that ranged from thoughtful, to specific, to uninterested, to nothing at all. I felt they were interesting for what they were, but also for what they weren't—I could see the outlines of an agent's helping hand in some answers, the fear of antagonizing a strain of fans in some others.
