Joe Grause

A little politics, a little technology, and a lot of sports.

[Bobbito @Bobbito81]

@KnicksCentral I bought a finals Mikal jersey from Fanatics and wore it for the first time during Game 5 and the letters didn’t even make it to the end of the game. Hows this even possible @Fanatics ?!? 🤷🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️😔

[Robert Stock @RobertStock6]

Business owners maximize revenues regardless of expenses. What a team spends on a player doesn’t affect what they charge fans. Advocating players get paid less achieves nothing except for a desire that owners keep a larger portion of revenues.

[Sonny Bunch @SonnyBunch]

I'm sorry, this $1.8 billion Trump slush fund designed to reward people who broke the law on Trump's behalf that will be administered entirely by Trump is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY INSANE. There's really no other way to describe it. https://t.co/FbjzxHRkK9

[Rich Keefe @Keefe21]

Is this the first time the Bruins, Celtics and Red Sox have all been eliminated on the same weekend?

[Joe Grause @joegrause]

F this

[Reese Gorman @reesejgorman]

NEWS: East Potomac Golf is expected to shut down on Sunday after the last tee time as the Trump administration officially takes it over.

Renovations will start at a later date once compliance has been met. Tom Fazio expected to lead the renovation.

Additionally, the admin has offered the National Links Trust a renewed lease for Rock Creek Park Golf with a waiver for unpaid rent.

https://t.co/6Sk49VXdF1

[Joon Lee @joonlee]

The Red Sox didn’t lose their way overnight.

Their incentives shifted.

When private equity enters sports, the questions change — and so do the answers.

Inside the organization, some describe the culture as “toxic positivity.”

The story behind it: https://t.co/U0vk3vemvK

[Jim Bowden⚾️ @JimBowdenGM]

Stability & continuity will never be part of a John Henry owned team. GMs that have won WS for him including: Dave Dombrowski, Theo Epstein & Ben Cherington all departed as did the MGRs: Terry Francona, John Farrell and now Alex Cora. Most fired or driven out. Win & get fired #RedSox

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Warren Buffett, in his first sit-down since stepping down as Berkshire CEO, gave the cleanest indictment of legalized gambling in a decade. He called it a tax cut for the wealthy. The math proves him exactly right.

Americans wagered $165 billion at legal sportsbooks in 2025. They lost $16 billion of that. FanDuel pulled $6 billion of the losses. DraftKings pulled $5.3 billion. Every state with legal mobile sports betting collected a tax on the bettor side. New York alone took in over $1.2 billion in 2025 sports betting tax revenue.

Layer the lottery on top. State lotteries generate over $90 billion a year. The bottom half of income earners account for roughly 70% of total spend. The average lottery player makes $38,000. A household earning $20,000 spends three times more on tickets than one earning $30,000. The implicit tax rate, meaning whatever the state keeps after prizes, runs 30 to 50% depending on the game. No other revenue source in America has that base and that rate.

The structural design is the engine. A single straight sports bet carries a hold of 4 to 5%. A four-leg parlay carries a hold above 30%. FanDuel and DraftKings spent five years rebuilding their apps to make parlays the default product. FanDuel's blended hold rate hit 11.4% in 2025, up from roughly 7% in 2022. The product got worse for the customer and the customer wagered more anyway.

Now look at the substitution. Nine US states have no state income tax. Seven of those nine run state lotteries. Seven of those nine have legalized sports betting. The states most committed to never taxing wealth are the same states running the largest extraction machines on people who cannot afford to lose. Read it as policy.

Here is what Buffett is actually pointing at. The state needs revenue. It can raise income tax on the top decile, or it can run a lottery plus a sports betting tax. The second option raises the money from the people who can least afford it. The first option becomes politically optional. New York's $1.2 billion in 2025 sports betting tax is $1.2 billion the state did not have to ask of someone earning $5 million.

DraftKings and FanDuel sell a privatized collection mechanism for a regressive tax that the state never has to defend at the ballot box again. Voters approve legalization once. Collection runs forever. The state takes a cut. The wealthy get a quieter top bracket. The bettor's cut shrinks every quarter as the parlay menu gets pushed harder.

The function of a government, Buffett said, is not to play its people for suckers.

Thirty-nine state governments now do.

[Joon Lee @joonlee]

The Red Sox fired Alex Cora.

Inside the team, some describe the culture as “toxic positivity"

When I asked Sam Kennedy about that, he said:
“If the accusation is that I’m… overly positive, guilty as charged.”

Inside the Red Sox’s credibility crisis: https://t.co/Ip7ZIi5ElJ

[Ron Yurko @Stat_Ron]

Many thanks to @realfrankbrank for getting this started! @CMU_StatDS #CMSAC is excited to work with @FTNFantasy data with multiple student #sportsanalytics project already underway!

[Daractenus @Daractenus]

For the record, the president of the United States is now simultaneously claiming that he has won the war, is currently winning the war, needs help to win the war, and needs no help to win the war. All to destroy the nuclear program he claims to have already destroyed last year.

[Stephen Miller @StephenM]

If young men don’t want to be drafted to fight in Kamala’s and Cheney’s 3rd World War they better get out and vote for Trump.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Tim Miller is identifying something that deserves more traction than it is getting inside the larger Iran coverage.

Kash Patel removed Iranian counter-intelligence specialists. The stated basis was their connection to the Trump classified documents case. Some of those classified documents detailed Iranian war plans. The removal happened immediately before a military escalation against Iran.

Follow that chain slowly.

The professionals fired for knowing about the files are among the professionals with the deepest operational knowledge of the adversary those files described. The loyalty test that produced their removal created an intelligence gap in the specific domain where the gap is most dangerous. And it happened on a timeline that suggests the score-settling did not pause to account for the war that was coming - or worse, that it did not need to.

Non-partisan intelligence professionals are not a political convenience. They are the institutional memory that keeps decision-makers from operating blind inside an active conflict. Purging them for involvement in a legal process that touched documents about the current enemy is not personnel management. It is the definition of placing personal protection above collective defense.

A republic does not get to call itself strong while punching holes in its own intelligence shield. The people flying the missions over Iran right now deserved better than the vendettas that preceded them.

[Joon Lee @joonlee]

More teams across sports should do this. It's too expensive to be a fan these days, and this is a step in the right direction.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

After 9/11, we went into Afghanistan with a clear attack on our soil, broad public backing, and votes in Congress.

Iraq was bitterly contested, but it was at least debated and authorized. Members had to put their names on the line before anyone’s kid put boots on the ground.

Tonight’s Iran strikes are different. Major combat operations, regime change rhetoric, and joint action with another state, announced by video without a single roll call vote. One man at a podium, not a constitutional process in the well of the House.

If even one American service member comes home under a flag because of this, their family will be left staring at the kitchen table wondering who, exactly, signed off. They will not find their representative’s name on that decision. That should haunt all of us.

[JD Vance @JDVance]

Twenty years ago we invaded Iraq. The war killed many innocent Iraqis and Americans. It destroyed the oldest Christian populations in the world. It cost over $1 trillion, and turned Iraq into a satellite of Iran. It was an unforced disaster, and I pray that we learn its lessons.

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.

[Pedro L. Gonzalez @emeriticus]

The little smile after "For what," relishing the opportunity to seem cold-blooded, and from someone who pretends to be a pious Catholic toward a man whose death was mourned by the Catholic Church. Vance is an awkward dork who just decided to don the mask of the King of the Online Right. Before that, he was Thoughtful Christian Populist. Before that, he was a "Trump is literally Hitler" guy. What Vance really is at heart is a hollow shell of a man who defends the murderers of American citizens more vigorously than he has ever defended his own family from the bigots he's trying to court for 2028. There has never been such a pathetic figure in public life.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

Basic gist

A bunch of the most powerful men in the world knew Jeffrey Epstein was a world class deviant and actively sought to be with him anyways.

A good number of those same men knew they had done just that and insisted there was a great Epstein cabal/cover up for years and that they weren't part of it.

Several of those same men are now pretending like they did nothing wrong.