1 — The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war, by signing this MOU, declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon and other provisions of this paragraph.
2 — The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.
3 — The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran commit to negotiating and achieving the final deal in maximum 60 days, expendable with mutual consent.
4 — Immediately upon the signing of this MOU, the United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and will fully end the naval blockade within 30 days. During this period, the traffic of vessels will be in proportion to the numbers of pre-war traffic being restored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final deal.
5 — Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.
6 — The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of a final deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers, and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.
7 — The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral U.S. sanctions—primary and secondary—in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned and expressed their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.
8 — The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpile enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule mentioned in paragraph seven, with the minimum methodology to be down blending on site under the supervision of the IAEA. The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal. The final deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran acknowledged the critical importance of the nuclear issues above mentioned and expressed their intention to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.
9 — Pending the final deal, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree to maintain the status quo. The Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program and the United States of America will not impose any new sanctions and will not deploy additional forces in the region.
10 — The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of this MOU and until the termination of sanctions, the U.S. Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.
11 — The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Upon the implementation of the MOU, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiations. Such funds, whether retained in the original account or transferred, shall be made fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designated by the central bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America undertakes to issue all the necessary licenses and authorizations accordingly.
12 — The United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran agree that an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this MOU and the future compliance of the final deal.
13 — After signing this MOU, and subject to the beginning of the implementation of paragraphs 1, 4, 5, 10, and 11 of this MOU, and the continuing implementation of these measures, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will start negotiations regarding the final deal exclusively on the other paragraphs.
14 — The final deal will be endorsed by a binding United Nations Security Council resolution.
June 19, 2021 marks the 156th anniversary of the last African American slaves being freed in Texas. This year, President Biden signed into law Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, S. 475, creating a federal holiday to commemorate Juneteenth. This is the first federal holiday approved since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.
On June 19, 1865, federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. This, however was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect January, 1863. This day, the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, has become a day for African Americans to celebrate not only their freedom, but their history, culture and achievements.
Although this was a day of celebration for the enslaved Blacks, Americans of all stripes celebrate the day. To have one man be enslaved by another is against the law of God.
HATE had no enemies in the two cities where massacres occurred.
In 2 U.S. cities haunted by race massacres, facing the past is painful and divisive
A dozen Black men were convictedof murderby all-white juries in connection with the 1919 massacre in Elaine, Ark. Above, defendants S.A. Jones, Ed Hicks, Frank Hicks, Frank Moore, J.C. Knox, Ed Coleman and Paul Hall with their attorney at the state penitentiary in Little Rock in 1925 after the Supreme Court overturned their convictions.
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System
Shortly after going to work for the Tulsa Historical Society in 2001, Michelle Place recalls historian Richard Warner hefting a large cardboard box atop her desk. “This is the most important collection that the Tulsa Historical Society has,” he told her. “Guard it with your life.”
Warner had co-authored the final report of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission, created by the Oklahoma Legislature to present a historical accounting of the infamous massacre that left upward of 300 African Americans dead and resulted in the destruction of “Black Wall Street,” in the city’s prosperous Greenwood enclave. The box contained all of the research the commission had collected.
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Place gravitated toward the photographs inside but couldn’t stomach what she saw. “It was so horrific,” she says. “Burned bodies and dead in the streets.”
Just a few weeks earlier, Place had known nothing about the death and destruction depicted in those black and white images. It was only after fielding a call from an overseas journalist wanting to speak with someone about “the Tulsa race riot” that a colleague clued her in. “‘You don’t know, do you?'” she remembers the co-worker asking.
In this 1921 image provided by the Library of Congress, smoke billows over Tulsa, Okla., following the killing of hundreds of people in “Black Wall Street” in the city’s prosperous Greenwood enclave.
Alvin C. Krupnick Co./Library of Congress/AP
Place, now the historical society’s executive director, moved to Tulsa in 1987 but grew up in Little Rock, a little more than 100 miles northwest of Elaine, a tiny Arkansas Delta town with a similarly troubled past.
The two Southern cities, however, could hardly be more different in the way they have dealt with their history. The Tulsa commission, after researching the events of May 31-June 1, 1921, offered recommendations that have served as a blueprint for how to move toward acknowledgment, healing and even restitution. Although some of its recommendations remain controversial and unresolved, such as payments to survivors and descendants, others — including scholarships for descendants of those who lost businesses and property in the massacre — have moved forward, albeit haltingly.
Soldiers of the 57th Infantry of the 3rd Division from Camp Pike in Little Rock carry rifles as they enter a guardhouse and hospital after being dispatched to Elaine in 1919.
Library of Congress
In Elaine, the reckoning has come much more slowly. Most historical accounts of the massacre there, including contemporaneous reporting by the prominent African American journalist Ida B. Wells, relate that Black sharecroppers were meeting at a church in a place called Hoop Spur on the town’s outskirts. The farmers were organizing for a larger portion of the profits from their cotton.
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Late on the night of Sept. 30, 1919, a group of local white men surrounded the church. Although it isn’t clear who fired first, a shot from within the church claimed the first victim — a white man.
The following day, a rampage ensued, with whites targeting Black farmers and their families. The governor dispatched soldiers to put down the violence, which was characterized by white landowners as an “insurrection.”
Arkansas Gov. Charles Brough addresses a crowd in front of Elaine Mercantile in Elaine, Ark., after the Elaine massacre, circa 1919.
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System
Along with Tulsa, it is regarded as one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. But while the Tulsa massacre has become well known in recent years, the events of 1919 in Arkansas have received little attention.
To be sure, Tulsa is a growing city of more than 400,000 people. Elaine’s population has been falling since the 1970s and it is struggling to hold on to its 500 or so residents. Like other cities haunted by long-ignored racial violence, Elaine, unlike Tulsa, is still far off a path to reconciliation or to resolving thorny questions of how to properly atone for the sins of the past and do right by the descendants of victims.
At a time of renewed national focus on racial justice, experts say these conversations are more important than ever.
The rocky path to reconciliation
The first step is acknowledgment, and simply admitting that horrible events took place moves in the right direction, says Marcus Anthony Hunter, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“What happens a lot in terms of the history of violence against Black communities is that people treat it like it’s false,” Hunter says. “It creates a condition where Black people are led to believe that they’re making up stuff.”
But getting to acknowledgment, let alone reconciliation, is not an easy task. It is frequently time-consuming, painful and divisive. Tulsa is considered a model by some for how to do it.
In addition to the commission and scholarships, Oklahoma has mandated that its schools teach the massacre. The Tulsa Historical Society’s Place is proudest that thousands of documents, photos and other resources about the massacre have been made available online. Not only does it preserve and protect the artifacts, but anyone wanting to do research can access them, she says.
Still, she admits it took years before the Tulsa commission’s recommendations were acted on. “By 2012, certainly there were Tulsans, both Black and white, who recognized that the 100th anniversary [was] quickly approaching,” she says. “Many of us felt that the first thing that we had to do was to educate our community about what had happened and [about] this injustice,” she says.
Even so, a lawsuit against Tulsa by survivors of the massacre — all more than 100 years old now — is ongoing. Among other things, it seeks financial restitution and the redistribution of land to the families of Greenwood’s original landowners, a move that the commission called for more than 20 years ago.
Elaine remains split over what happened
Elaine’s efforts to deal with its past have been complicated by a historical narrative that remains unsettled — with the town at odds over how the massacre started and who was involved. The one thing that both sides agree on is that a decades-long conspiracy of silence reinforced by fear kept perpetrators and survivors from talking.
Poet, essayist and translator J. Chester Johnson says to some, the destruction of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” is just a more compelling narrative than Elaine’s “dirt poor sharecroppers along the Mississippi River Delta.”
“There are TV programs on Tulsa. There have been movies,” he says. “There’s a difference in terms of attention. And I hate that.”
Johnson, 78, grew up in southeast Arkansas but now lives in New York. His grandfather, who was a Ku Klux Klan member, participated in the 1919 massacre, and the family’s disquieting ties to the events prompted him to write Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre and A Story of Reconciliation, published in 2020.
As he was researching the book, he says, some acquaintances wondered aloud why he wanted to write it. A close friend summed it up, telling him “the more you scratch an event like Elaine, the more the scab of racism bleeds.”
The older generation in town always knew what happened, but few were willing to relinquish the secret, says James White, a descendant of one of the massacre victims.
“White people knew. Black people knew about it, too,” says White, director of the Elaine Legacy Center, which has collected oral histories related to the events of 1919.
But the generation that went through those events wasn’t always eager to pass that knowledge along. Lisa Hicks-Gilbert, 54, grew up in Elaine and was unaware of the massacre until around 2008, when she encountered one of the few books on the subject, Blood in their Eyes, by Grif Stockley.
“Over the years, I started talking with my grandmother and I asked her first and she confirmed that it indeed had happened,” she says.
Hicks-Gilbert later discovered that she is related to brothers Frank and Ed Hicks, two of a dozen Black men known as the “Elaine Twelve,” who were swiftly convictedof murderby all-white juries and sentenced to death in connection with the massacre. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark 1923 case Moore v. Dempsey, overturned what the justices said were verdicts tainted by “mob domination” that deprived the men of due process.
The 12 Elaine defendants in Helena, Ark., circa 1919.
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System
In all, 122 African American men were convicted and jailed in connection with the violence. No whites ever faced justice.
Despite their shared legacy, White and Hicks-Gilbert represent competing camps among descendants.
Hicks-Gilbert believes the generally accepted view that the massacre involved Black sharecroppers trying to organize, but White thinks his own family’s story, along with the oral histories the Elaine Legacy Center has helped collect, support a different version of events — mainly that most of the Black farmers were landowners themselves, not just sharecroppers. The disagreement cuts to the heart of reparations, the most controversial issue for both Elaine and Tulsa.
The disagreement among descendants in Elaine helped tank a dialogue with Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s office about how to mark the 2019 centenary, according to Kwami Abdul-Bey, a legal advocate who is drafting legislation for Arkansas that draws on Oklahoma’s approach to the Tulsa massacre.
“No bodies have been found”
In early 2019, as the centenary of the Elaine massacre approached, Abdul-Bey led a group that arranged a sit-down with Hutchinson. They wanted to discuss legislation to clear a path for posthumous exonerations for the Elaine Twelve and scores of other Black men arrested and jailed on lesser charges connected to the massacre. Among other things, the bill would also have set up a Tulsa-style commission and mandated a K-12 curriculum on the history of the massacre.
That first meeting showed promise, Abdul-Bey says, but a subsequent one fell apart when the question of restitution came up. Some of those who attended the second meeting dispute that characterization of events.
After that, he says, emails to Hutchinson’s office on the subject went unanswered. “We’ve communicated with the governor’s office on other topics, but they will not discuss anything dealing with Elaine.”
On the 100th anniversary, a memorial was dedicated in Helena, a town of 10,000 people located 30 minutes north of Elaine. Organizers thought the larger town would attract more visitors. The site of the memorial, too, proved a point of contention, with White and others adamant that it should have been located in Elaine.
The governor was out of the country for the dedication ceremony and his office did not send a representative, locals say. Hutchinson’s office did not respond to NPR’s multiple emails for comment.
Abdul-Bey is now busy honing a narrower version of the bill, focused solely on exonerations, in the hope that Gov.-elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders will turn the page and reengage on Elaine.
A construction crew works on the monument honoring victims of the Elaine massacre in Helena, Ark., on June 15, 2019.
Noreen Nasir/AP
Aside from the memorial in nearby Helena, there are a few other signs of progress in Elaine, where a museum dedicated to the massacre is scheduled to open soon. Meanwhile, Hicks-Gilbert this past week won a runoff to become the next mayor of Elaine — she will be the first African American and the first female in the town’s history to hold the top job.
But other issues remain a sticking point. Tulsa has pursued identification of victims, exhuming bodies for DNA testing with the aim of determining whether they are linked to the massacre. In Elaine, only the bodies of the five white people who died in the massacre were ever recovered. The hundreds of African Americans who were killed are thought to have been buried in mass graves or simply dumped in swamps, or in the river. None have ever been recovered.
Our understanding of the deal which has not been signed yet is that the U.S. has given away store and got nothing in return. The word on the street is both mystifying and annoying. Mystifying in the sense that we have no idea what we gave away, Annoying to the fact that from the preliminary leaks, we were the victim of a sham which will evolve into a scam. The IRGC is still alive, how can this be allowed ?
See below, did Vance succumb to Allah? How can he defend this agreement. The U.S. spend billions of dollars to find out that the bulk of the funds have actually been wasted.
Trump personally signs Iran deal at Versailles in major diplomatic breakthrough
President Donald Trump personally signed the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding during a dinner at the Palace of Versailles. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also signed the agreement.
In our view Trump caved. Why? Members of his own party were afraid of getting beat. They put pressure on him to make a deal.
One thing that constituents look at are GAS prices, they were through the roof. Inflation was not tamed, but on the rise, this was do to constraints in the food chain, this had nothing to do with the war with Iran.
For instance, floods, droughts caused the meat supply to shrink. Cattle farmers culled their heards because they couldn’t feed them any more.. Fertilizer was in short supply due to the war in Ukraine which Trump is trying his best to get Putin to come to the table.
Dumacrats have caught Biden’s amnesia.
As we said numerous times before “VERIFY THEN TRUST” there is no other way as we go forward with a 60 Day MOU. In the days ahead we will find out what is in it. That’s our take.
To quote ex-Speaker of the House,Nancy Pelosi,“We have to pass the bill,” she said, “so that you can find out what is in it.” The same goes true for the deal we just made with the Iranian Devil. Who is signing the MOU? Who will monitor Iran’s compliance. Have they survived the onslaught of American might? Was Israel tossed to the wind? What happens in Lebanon? Are their neighbors safe? Will we get the Dust? What happens if the Houtis bomb Israel and can Israel reciprocate? What happens if Iran breaks the deal? What transpires after the election? These are all relevant questions that only time will tell.
Did Trump Cave because the November election is paramount? Did Trump bow to the Republican majority?1
This was a slugfest, NY players were savagely beaten up by the San Antonio Spurs, but they didn’t waiver under pressure. Wemby, the dirtiest player in the league, will not live the defeat down.He was a blowhard.
Blowing leads of 16 and 29 are not something a true top-knotch caliber team does. The Knicks on the other hand pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. Congratulations to the players and coaches for providing us with entertainment, your steadfastness under pressure and your victory.
By now you heard the verdict, “GUILTY OF FIRST DEGREE MURDER.” Black killed White by plunging a shiv into his back. But this cannot stand says the Black community – the jury of 12 was all white. Metcalf’s father, “This was never about race,” Metcalf said. “It is about right and wrong. The public’s response sickens me … The moral decay is frightening.”
The Killer:
“I respect everyone until they disrespect me,” Jeff Metcalf says in the video, which was circulating on social media. “I’ve been disrespected by so many people, so many times while I’ve had to sit here and take it.”
Jeff Metcalf went on to name multiple people, including Anthony’s father, saying he’s a coward who raised a coward. He also calls out Anthony’s mother, describing her as a “drunk b*tch” and asked her what she did to her son to “make him stab somebody.”
Below is the refrain from Dr. Stacey Patton of Howard University. According to him Black Boys are not to be reckoned with. Because they are from the hood, you never know when the Blade will cause a deadly incision in a White Boy. He forgets the fact that Anthony was told 15 times to vacate the tent.
Karmelo Anthony was asked to leave opposing team’s tent ‘15 times’ before fatal stabbing, witness says
MCKINNEY, Texas — High school track star Karmelo Anthony was asked 15 times to leave the tent for an opposing team but “refused” to — allegedly sparking the deadly stabbing of fellow teen Austin Metcalf last year, a witness testified Friday.
The witness, a 17-year-old Frisco Memorial High School student, explained that he and at least six others were under their school’s team tent when he saw Anthony in their area wearing the opposing Frisco Centennial High School gear.
Memorial students started telling Anthony, “You probably shouldn’t be here, you need to leave our tent,” recounted the witness — whose name was ordered to be withheld because of his age.
Karmelo Anthony was asked to leave Austin Metcalf’s team tent 15 times leading up to the moment he allegedly stabbed Anthony, a 17-year-old witness testified.FOX 4 NEWS
Several teammates asked Anthony, then 17, to leave around 15 times, including Metcalf. Several teammates asked Anthony, then 17, to leave around 15 times, including Metcalf
MCKINNEY, Texas — High school track star Karmelo Anthony was asked 15 times to leave the tent for an opposing team but “refused” to — allegedly sparking the deadly stabbing of fellow teen Austin Metcalf last year, a witness testified Friday.
The witness, a 17-year-old Frisco Memorial High School student, explained that he and at least six others were under their school’s team tent when he saw Anthony in their area wearing the opposing Frisco Centennial High School gear.
Memorial students started telling Anthony, “You probably shouldn’t be here, you need to leave our tent,” recounted the witness — whose name was ordered to be withheld because of his age.
Leading up to the fatal moment, Anthony had his hand in his open backpack on his lap but the students all thought he was bluffing, the witness said.
Anthony ditched the knife and bolted down the stands and onto the track.
Metcalf fell on his back, stood back up and lifted his shirt as he leaned on the railing — with a scared look on his face as he saw his bleeding chest, the teen claimed.
“Touch me and find out,” Anthony responded at the Kuykendall Stadium.
During the roughly two-minute tiff, Metcalf, 17, gave Anthony a “minor pushing” and Antho
Dr. Stacey Patton, a professor at Howard University’s School of Communications, penned an opinion piece titled “Dear Jeff Metcalf: Your Son Is Dead Because You Failed to Teach Him That Black Boys Have Boundaries” to Substack on Wednesday on Substack, where she insinuated Anthony was acting out of self-defense.
“YOU failed to teach your boy that Black children have boundaries,” Patton wrote. “YOU failed teach humility, restraint, or the sacred fact that another person’s body is not your jurisdiction. YOU failed to teach him that another child’s space is not a challenge to be conquered. YOU failed to teach him that “community” does not mean white boys get to decide who belongs and who does not.”
Typically, we don’t write about sports, but with that said, we must highlight, not in a good way, the play of Victor Wembanyama. As you will see below this guy with a 8 foot wingspan belongs in the Iron Bar or worse yet, a ditch filled with shit, because that is what he is, a POS.
With all the stuff (quoting George Carlin ) going around in the world we must pay tribute to the 3rd seed NY Knicks who are on the verge of victory over the mighty spurs. The Knicks star, Jalen Brunson, has brought fire to the team. On the other hand we have a 7’3″ Victor Wembanyama. But don’t let his height fool you because this guy is the dirtiest player in the NBA.
At just 22 years old, Victor Wembanyama entered the NBA Finals on Wednesday with an opportunity to establish himself as the face of the league for the next decade.
Known simply as “Wemby,” he has the look, personality and seemingly unearthly style of play to become the NBA’s next one-name superstar, joining the ranks of Michael, Kobe and LeBron.
Unfortunately, his Finals debut fell short.
The Spurs blew a 14-point second-half lead in a Game 1 loss to the Knicks. Wembanyama finished with 26 points, but he shot just 6-for-21 from the field and struggled to impose his will down the stretch.
Yet by Thursday morning, much of the discussion surrounding Wembanyama had little to do with basketball.
Before the game, cameras caught Wembanyama standing with his arms crossed during the U.S. national anthem. Fans noticed immediately.
It’s unclear why Wembanyama chose to stand that way. He has done it before, though it drew little attention given the difference in scale between the Finals and the rest of the NBA season.
Was he making a political statement? Was it simply a natural posture? As a native of France, does the gesture carry a different meaning altogether?
OutKick contacted representatives of the NBA, the Spurs and Wembanyama seeking clarification. As of publication, none had responded. We will update this story if they do.
Still, fans who interpreted the gesture as a statement about America are not doing so in a vacuum. In January, Wembanyama accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of “murdering” civilians.
“Yeah, PR has tried, but I’m not going to sit here and give some politically correct answer,” Wembanyama told reporters who asked him about unrest following the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
“Every day I wake up and see the news, and I’m horrified. I think it’s crazy that some people might make it seem like or make it sound like the murder of civilians is acceptable.”
For the record, “murder” is a legal term. The agents involved in the shootings were never charged with murder. Nonetheless, Wembanyama used the term, echoing rhetoric from others in sports, including NBA coach Doc Rivers.
New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson drives past San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama during the first half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals in San Antonio on June 3, 2026. (David J. Phillip/AP)
LeBron James is one of the greatest basketball players in history, yet his decision to become deeply involved in politics alienated a significant portion of the public. That is one of the clearest differences between LeBron and Michael Jordan — that and the rings.
Jordan largely avoided political discourse during his playing career. He never fractured his fan base along ideological lines. LeBron did.
For the record, the NBA reached its peak of mainstream popularity during Jordan’s reign as the league’s face. By contrast, the NBA’s ratings fell sharply around 2020 and 2021, when James and other players became heavily associated with political and social causes, including BLM activism, DEI initiatives and Democratic political campaigns.
Even the NFL, America’s true pastime, experienced similar pushback in 2016 and 2017. Television viewership declined by double digits during the height of the Colin Kaepernick anthem protests.
Further, a YouGov/Yahoo News poll found that “nearly half of Americans” changed their sports-viewing habits between 2016 and 2020 because of “political and social messaging.”
San Antonio Spurs C Victor Wembanyama goes up for a dunk against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. (Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
Fans at large do not want politics mixed into sports. They generally don’t care what athletes do on their own time. That’s the difference between Jaxson Dart introducing the sitting president in the offseason and the NBA painting “Black Lives Matter,” as in the Marxian organization, on the court.
Regardless of Wembanyama’s intent during the national anthem, the moment is now a story.
Videos of him standing with his arms crossed were among the most widely circulated sports clips on social media Thursday morning. Media outlets in New York are discussing the gesture. The conversation has spread beyond basketball.
That’s the last thing the NBA needs right now.
For the first time in nearly a decade, the NBA is experiencing positive momentum. The viewership — albeit misleading — is no longer declining. The New York Knicks are back in the Finals for the first time since 1999. The president plans to attend Game 3 in New York City. After years of struggling to develop new mainstream attractions, the NBA appears to have found one in Wembanyama.
Taken together, those storylines should make this one of the league’s most compelling Finals in recent memory. For casual sports fans, it may be the most intriguing championship matchup since Cavaliers-Warriors in 2016.
Yet instead of talking about the basketball, many fans are debating Wembanyama’s posture during the national anthem. Casual fans likely did not know about his remarks regarding ICE. They do now.
For fans who just started to watch the NBA again, and there are many, that’s a disheartening development. It’s a reason to support something else, something more unifying instead.
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama dribbles during Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on May 30, 2026. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
At a minimum, Wembanyama previously spread harmful political propaganda by claiming that ICE agents were “murdering” civilians. Depending on his intent Wednesday night, some Americans will now view his anthem gesture as disrespectful to the flag.
To those fans, the fact that Wembanyama is French is beside the point. He is building a soon-to-be hundred-million-dollar brand in the United States, playing in an American sports league in front of an American audience.
On the court, Wembanyama has a chance to become better than both Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Keyword: chance.
At 7-foot-4, he possesses a combination of ball-handling, shooting, passing and defensive ability that the sport has never seen. He is already one of the NBA’s most dominant defenders. His ceiling is impossible to quantify.
