Major League Baseball didn’t punish or fine any of the four Giants players who protested Pride Night earlier this month, according to a letter written by league commissioner Rob Manfred. The news of the San Francisco scandal over Pride Night spread like wildfire throughout the country. Four Giants pitchers protested the team’s annual celebration of...
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) demanded answers after San Francisco Giants players were reportedly given warnings over Pride Night hats. The lawmaker penned a sternly worded letter to […]
Major League Baseball says it was wrong to issue warnings to San Francisco Giants players who wrote Bible verses on their caps.Specifically, Giants pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker were threatened with discipline after writing different forms of Genesis 9:12-16 on team caps that support transgenderism and other sexualities, with the league citing violations of its uniform policy.'The players were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be.'Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) had sent a letter to the MLB on June 16 calling out the league for promoting Black Lives Matter in 2020 and becoming a "billboard" for political messaging, yet still issuing a warning to the Giants pitchers last week.MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred responded to Hawley on Monday, who posted the letter online for all to see. In the text, Manfred revealed that the Giants' communication with players was "inadequate and not clear" regarding their option to wear Pride hats. He claimed that some players did not understand they had the option to wear the normal Giants cap instead.The commissioner's office said "unfortunately" it issued a "routine oral warning" before it became aware of the Giants' "lapse in communication."Players "should not be compelled to participate in a celebratory event ... if such participation would violate their sincere religious beliefs or values," Manfred told Hawley.The MLB boss later confirmed, "The players were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be."RELATED: SF Giants commentator compares gays to black people as 'oppressed' minority following Christian protest In the same letter, Manfred revealed that only two teams are permitted to wear special gay-themed hats in games: the Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers.Despite the league saying in 2023 that it would not permit clubs to utilize unauthorized hats, the clubs submitted special requests to have their Pride hats grandfathered in, and their requests were granted.These "Pride Night" hats were justified by Manfred, who claimed it was because the cities have "some of the largest LGBTQ communities in the United States."However, players are not required to wear them, as he previously stated.RELATED: 'He's my idol': Texas Rangers Father's Day celebration will bring you to tears Andy Kuno/San Francisco Giants/Getty Images The commissioner cited other "faith/religious-related games" and nights that "celebrate different ethnicities or nationalities" at MLB ballparks and said that the league "does not regulate these events, but also does not permit Clubs or players to utilize special uniforms/equipment for such games, or alter the uniform or equipment."However, for 12 league-wide events, MLB teams are mandated by the head office to alter their uniforms. Those days are:Mother's Day, Father's Day, Armed Forces Weekend, Play Ball Weekend, Memorial Day, Lou Gehrig Day, Independence Day, Hall of Fame Weekend, Childhood Cancer Awareness Day, September 11th, Jackie Robinson Day, and Roberto Clemente Day.Manfred said the league has had "no significant complaints from fans or players for those days."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Trump said vandals cut a long slit in it and possibly dumped fertiliser in the water, and later threatened to sue over reporting on the pool.
Trump said vandals cut a long slit in it and possibly dumped fertiliser in the water, and later threatened to sue over reporting on the pool.
President Donald Trump says vandals caused the algae blooms and peeling paint at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. He speaks with reporters in the Oval Office. (Source: Bloomberg)
Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, charged in Reflecting Pool vandalism, has ties to ActBlue and donated to Barack Obama's campaigns, records show.
A long-time expert in swimming pools knows the culprit behind the Reflecting Pool "vandalism" that caused an ongoing algae bloom. For the past several weeks, CNN has welcomed on "Swimming Pool Steve," a second-generation pool builder who has a YouTube channel dedicated to explaining aspects of swimming pools and hot tubs. Speaking to host Boris Sanchez on Monday, Steve Goodale said there would always be an algae problem in the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool. "Let's start with the algae leak theory," Sanchez began. "What is more likely: that someone planted this algae or that it occurred and spread naturally?" "Well, somebody definitely planted the algae and it was the very first bird that landed in the water," said Goodale. "You know, in an open-air environment like this, there's no stopping the algae from coming. It's going to be in the water. It's just how are you going to deal with it knowing that it will be expected."The way to fix it, he explained, is a multi-pronged solution: the pool must be drained and the immediate remediation would likely follow. The algae problem is likely to be back-burnered, he said, while they figure out the problem with the liner. Monday morning a baby duck was found dead in the pool's water, prompting Sanchez to question whether the new chemicals put in the pool could be the culprit. "It would really come down to a matter of concentration," said Goodale. "And again, we're talking about, you know, 6.5 million gallons of water or more. So, it would take an awful lot of product to get to dangerous levels of contamination here. It's why hydrogen peroxide would be commonly used for an open-air, clear water environment like this, because it is kind of the safer of the options. It's why we don't use something like chlorine, which wouldn't be as safe for the wildlife."He also passed along his sympathies for the tragic death of the baby duck. Sanchez then asked about Trump's claims of vandalism and the "300-foot gash" that was carved into the liner. Goodale explained that the material used is one that would require considerable equipment to produce the gash Trump described. "You know, in my experience, and, you know, when I heard that it had been vandalized as well, my reaction was surprise as I really tried to understand the mechanism of damage that would cause this kind of vandalism," he said. Goodale said it would be noticeable and require advanced equipment like power tools."This is a robust, strong puncture-proof material," Goodale said of the lining installed by Virginia-based contractor Atlantic Industrial Coatings. "That's why it was likely chosen for this application. It's why it's used in commercial and industrial applications. So it would take, absolutely, a concerted effort. I don't know exactly — what it would take, but it would take a concerted effort to cause significant damage like that."In an earlier conversation, CNN reporter Manu Raju called on the White House to release footage of the vandalism that caused the gash.
A conservative commentator argued that President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, instead of seeming all-powerful, are instead appearing to the world as “impotent.”“The state of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is a sort of moron-populist version of Chernobyl,” wrote The Dispatch's Nick Catoggio on Monday, referencing the Soviet Union’s infamous mishandling of a nuclear power plant leak in Ukraine in 1986. “In both cases, the government’s incompetence and corruption created a vexing ecological problem. And in both cases, the government undertook to cover up its culpability in the matter.”After adding that the nuclear meltdown in 1986 was more consequential than the Reflecting Pool’s algae growth in 2026, Catoggio noted that the Reflecting Pool crisis occurred because the White House valued cronyism over competence.“Instead it awarded a no-bid contract for a quick fix to a firm owned by a Trump donor—except that the quick fix, applying sealant to the pool’s bottom, didn’t solve the issue of water leaking between the concrete slabs,” Catoggio wrote. “Days after the renovation was finished, the pool had more algae in it than at any point in June over the last five years.”Despite using hydrogen peroxide and “advanced nanobubbler technology” without killing the algae, Catoggio argued that Trump made himself look worse by blaming saboteurs without basis instead of his own ineptitude for the blue sealants cracking and being ripped off in chunks.“Former Fox News talking head turned U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro dutifully vowed zero tolerance for pool-peelers,” Catoggio continued. “And she meant it: One man arrested by Park Police on Friday claims he did nothing more than touch a piece of floating debris before the cuffs were slapped on. At last check, armed members of the National Guard had been hastily deployed to stand watch over a basin that’s now almost as green as the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day.”Yet Catoggio concluded that the fundamental problem facing Trump is his own inability to get things done, whether in cleaning up the Reflecting Pool or winning the war he waged against Iran.“Between the war on algae and the war abroad, Trump has never looked more pitifully impotent than he does right now,” Catoggio wrote. “The perfect metaphor for his first year back in office came when, without warning, he demolished the East Wing to make way for his precious ballroom. That episode captured the political zeitgeist of 2025: Americans had elected a caudillo who cared not a bit about the country’s civic traditions and would bulldoze them—literally—to get what he wanted, whether the other branches liked it or not.”He added, “The reflecting-pool idiocy is the perfect metaphor for his presidency in 2026, coinciding as it does with our national humiliation in Iran. Postliberalism promises effective problem-solving through energetic authoritarianism, but as things stand, not only can’t the authoritarian in chief forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz, he can’t even successfully clean a public pool in D.C. The zeitgeist has flipped.”This is not Catoggio’s first harsh critique of Trump and his administration. Earlier this month he noted that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, despite being ostensibly as right-wing as Trump, refused to kowtow to him — and that this further reflects his waning power.“After 10 years of degrading bootlicking obeisance by the president’s many courtiers, it was startling to see someone who needs a relationship with Trump assert her dignity against his insults,” Catoggio said regarding Meloni’s harsh reply to Trump’s insistence that she “begged” him to “take a picture with him.”When Meloni rebuked Trump by saying that neither she nor Italy begs for anything, Catoggio commented that “casually demeaning someone because he bears them a grudge is as instinctive to Donald Trump as applying bronzer or bloviating about ‘strength.’”He continued, “But those who need to stay on his good side — like, say, every Republican official in the country — are doomed to follow the Ted Cruz career arc between 2016 and 2021, broadly speaking. That is, if Trump insults your wife, you find a way to let it slide and salute when he asks you to help him stage a coup.”Meloni refused to play along, though.“And so the prudent, if pathetic, thing to do when an imperious postliberal goblin insulted you was to bite your tongue,” Catoggio wrote. “Not Meloni, though. She’s had enough.”