Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent ! Be better than this loser this week—stay true to your roots and don't root for your girlfriend's team.
I had a great newsletter for this week planned, but after playing 102 holes of golf in one day my travel back home hit a snag and I wasn't able to write. Fortunately, two Reason staffers helped cover the major collisions of sports and politics this week, so I still have plenty of content to share with you. Thank you, colleagues!
Don't miss sports coverage from Jason Russell and Reason .
Locker Room Links
Pride Night controversies are back because some San Francisco Giants players who were forced to wear a rainbow hat wrote Bible verses on them .
Brendan Sorsby caused a mess for the NCAA, but now he's jumping ship for the NFL —if they'll let him.
Congratulations to the Knicks (begrudgingly) on their incredible, statistically unlikely , championship.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are mad about the cost of NFL Sunday Ticket .
What might LIV Golf 2.0 look like?
Elsewhere in Reason : " Your Uber Driver May Soon Be Unionized. At What Cost? "
A bunch of Democratic attorneys general sent a letter to Formula 1 and its sanctioning body, the FIA, telling them to ban nicotine pouch sponsorships (like with Zyn).
Speaking of nicotine, this is incredibly silly, yet perhaps not the worst form of tobacco prohibition in the state of Massachusetts .
Amazing news coming out of Massachusetts this week, I've been riveted to this incredibly stupid drama. A few seniors on the Ipswitch lacrosse team were photographed holding cigars at their graduation (they were 18yo seniors), which was a violation of the no tobacco policy for the…
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) June 12, 2026
Friend or Foe?
Are global soccer fans and players terrorists, or people who should be welcomed because they'll come to love America?
Last week, our links section covered the immigration troubles of a few major figures in the World Cup (two players, one referee). But regular fans ( and players' moms ) have also had trouble getting to America to partake in the fun. "For the first time ever , Senegal was unable to bring an official fan delegation to the World Cup due to the U.S. immigration restrictions," as Reason 's Matthew Petti writes . "The Ivory Coast also had to cancel its fan delegation." Both are on the long list of 39 countries that are fully or partially banned under President Donald Trump's travel ban (previously known as the "Muslim ban"). So are Haiti and Iran.
Other countries have struggled to get to the U.S., too, which could make for lonely rooting sections. As Petti writes: "When 150 Ghanaian fans applied to travel as a group, only three received visas. Abu Kass, the head of the Jordanian fans' association, told the BBC that only one Jordanian fan received a visa . He himself was rejected."
All that combined may just be a small fraction of those trying to travel here for the World Cup. Regardless, aside from the Trump administration, Americans seem to be welcoming World Cup visitors with open arms. This is a beautiful sight:
🗣️ "I want to say thank you to Algeria for choosing Lawrence, Kansas." 🇺🇸
The locals in USA are all getting behind Algeria. 🇩🇿 pic.twitter.com/e2kejLtxjb
— Dean Ammi (@AlgerianFooty) June 8, 2026
Then there's Freddy, some German guy who everyone has seen on their X feed since he landed in America and became famous for getting excited about normal American things, like Taco Bell and Buc-ee's.
We can see visitors to America as a threat, or as an opportunity. The Trump administration sees many potential visitors as the former and turns them away—which is only going to make them feel animosity toward America. As Petti writes, "It's strange behavior to throw a party and turn away guests at the door." Regular Americans, it seems, see soccer tourists as an opportunity to welcome visitors with open arms and share our great hospitality. One of these is better at spreading American values than the other.
Outsiders in the Cage
I was actually looking forward to watching the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House on TV. Would it be weird? Cringe? Cool? At the very least, I was hoping for a good introduction to a sport that's much more popular than you'd think but I know all too little about.
Unfortunately, I got trapped in an airport for most of the event and have nothing interesting to say about it. Thankfully, Reason 's Billy Binion attended the media preview and published a great piece about it Sunday morning . "A series of cage matches is an unusual choice to celebrate the history of the Founding," he wrote. "But it is arguably the perfect event to capture this moment in history."
Mixed Martial Arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship were once outsiders, in multiple senses of the word. In the sporting sense, they were newcomers trying to battle the historic establishment of combat sports: boxing. In the political sense, t…
Read the full article at Reason →
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