Culture
With the WNBA Draft nearing, what's next for Caitlin Clark?
Caitlin Clark’s college career ended Sunday with a loss to South Carolina in the national championship. But the Iowa star’s popularity won’t be going away.
“I know what’s next is soon,” she said.
Eight days, to be exact.
That’s when Clark will be in New York for the WNBA Draft, where she’s expected to be the No. 1 pick by the Indiana Fever. After rising to national prominence during her collegiate career, there are already signs that she will make an impact in the professional league.
Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox. Sign up
Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox. Sign up
Buy
What to know about the WNBA Draft
The draft will take place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York at 7:30 p.m. (ET) on April 15. ESPN will air the draft and it will also stream on Fubo.
Here’s the first-round order of the draft:
1. Indiana Fever
2. Los Angeles Sparks
3. Chicago Sky (via Phoenix)
4. Los Angeles Sparks (via Seattle)
5. Dallas Wings (via Chicago)
6. Washington Mystics
7. Minnesota Lynx
8. Chicago Sky (via Atlanta)
9. Dallas Wings
10. Connecticut Sun
11. New York Liberty
12. Atlanta Dream (via Las Vegas)
What kind of impact will Clark make in the WNBA?
Let’s start on the court. Clark will have to work harder for her shot, of course. (Don’t think these veterans aren’t licking their chops to shut her down.) But her seemingly limitless range and astounding accuracy will still make her tough to guard. Where she can make an immediate impact is her passing.
She’s already one of the best all-time passers in college, finishing her career with a Division I record of 1,144 assists. Clark’s Iowa teammates weren’t always adept down low at converting her passes. Now imagine what Aliyah Boston, the 2023 Rookie of the Year, will do with incoming keen passes from Clark.
In terms of marketing and star power, the WNBA better be prepared. The Fever are seeing spikes in ticket sales, and the Las Vegas Aces already announced moving to a bigger arena to accommodate more fans when she comes to town. Last season, the Fever had the second lowest attendance in the league, ahead of only Atlanta, which plays in a much larger arena and averaged 85 percent capacity. The Fever likely will be one of the most popular fan destinations.
Similar to her experience at Iowa, Fever road games should see record numbers, too. The Hawkeyes sold out all but two of their games this season — home, road or postseason. Her fans aren’t going anywhere.
Will she lose money by going to the WNBA?
This narrative has been shot down several times over, but it still persists by some who don’t factor in her endorsement power. Clark has the most high-profile endorsement deals of any college basketball player. (You’ve seen the State Farm ads, right?) Those aren’t going away, and expect a lucrative sneaker deal to be coming her way.
GO DEEPER
The Caitlin Clark business is booming. Here’s how her WNBA sponsorships are lining up
As the presumptive No. 1 selection, she would be guaranteed $76,535 in her first season. (She didn’t make a salary at Iowa.) She can also make up to $250,000 in a league marketing deal and up to $100,000 in a team marketing contract if she opts not to play abroad next WNBA offseason. If she does go abroad, she can expect a lucrative contract from a team in Europe or China.
But with her marketing power, she’s likely to be signed to even more endorsement deals.
Did Clark have to go pro?
No. Like other seniors, Clark was granted an extra season of eligibility by the NCAA because of the pandemic disruption. She announced on Feb. 29 that she would not be returning to Iowa City, raising the stakes to go out with a bang in the tournament.
Who else will be in the draft?
Look for The Athletic’s post-tournament mock draft coming in a few days. But other potential stars are expected to hear their names called.
South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso, Stanford’s Cameron Brink and Tennessee’s Rickea Jackson are expected to be early selections. LSU’s Angel Reese is expected to be picked around No. 8.
GO DEEPER
WNBA Mock Draft: Where will Angel Reese land? Who will be picked after Caitlin Clark?
Required reading
(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
Catherine and Heathcliff. Since 1847, when Emily Brontë published her only novel, “Wuthering Heights,” those ill-starred lovers have inflamed the imaginations of generations of readers.
Who are these two? Definitely not the people you meet on vacation. The DNA of “Wuthering Heights,” set in a wild and desolate corner of Northern England, runs through the dark, gothic, obsessive strains of literary romance. Heathcliff, a tormented soul with terrible manners and a worse temper, may be the English novel’s most problematic boyfriend — mad, bad and dangerous to know. What redeems him, at least in the reader’s eyes, is Catherine’s love.
As children growing up in the same highly dysfunctional household, the two form a bond more passionate than siblinghood and purer than lust. (I don’t think a 179-year-old book can be spoiled, but some plot details will be revealed in what follows.) They go on to marry other people, living as neighbors and frenemies without benefits until tragedy inevitably strikes. In the meantime, they roil and seethe — it’s no accident that “wuthering” is a synonym for “stormy” — occasionally erupting into ardent eloquence.
Take this soliloquy delivered by Catherine to Nelly Dean, a patient and observant maidservant who narrates much of the novel:
This all-consuming love, thwarted in the book by circumstances, has flourished beyond its pages. Thanks to Catherine and Heathcliff — and also to the harsh, windswept beauty of the Yorkshire setting — “Wuthering Heights,” a touchstone of Victorian literature, has become a fixture of popular culture.
Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon played Heathcliff and Catherine in William Wyler’s 1939 multi-Oscar-nominated film adaptation.
Since then, the volatile Heathcliff has been embodied by a succession of British brooders: Richard Burton, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy. At least for Gen X, the definitive Catherine will always be Kate Bush, dancing across the English countryside in a bright red dress in an indelible pre-MTV music video.
Now, just in time for Valentine’s Day, we’ll have Emerald Fennell’s new R-rated movie version, with Margot Robbie (recently Barbie) as Catherine and Jacob Elordi (recently Frankenstein’s monster) as Heathcliff.
Is theirs the greatest love story of all time, as the movie’s trailer insists? It might be. For the characters, the love itself overwhelms every other consideration of feeling. For Brontë, the most accomplished poet in a family of formidable novelists, that love is above all a matter of words. The immensity of Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion is measured by the intensity of their language, which of course is also Brontë’s.
Here is Heathcliff, in his hyperbolic fashion, belittling Catherine’s marriage to the pathetic Linton:
Which is what romance lives to do. It’s a genre often proudly unconstrained by what is possible, rational or sane, unafraid to favor sensation over sense or to pose unanswerable questions about the human heart. How could Catherine love a man like Heathcliff? How could he know himself to be worthy of her love?
We’ll never really have the answers, which is why we’ll never stop reading. And why no picture will ever quite match the book’s thousands of feverish, hungry, astonishing words.
Culture
Annotating the Judge’s Decision in the Case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE
One of the many unsettling images to emerge from the recent ICE surge in Minneapolis was that of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in his blue bunny hat, standing in the January cold with the hand of a federal officer gripping his Spider-Man backpack.
Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador, were taken from Minnesota to Texas and held at a detention facility outside San Antonio. Lawyers working on their behalf filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, an ancient judicial principle forbidding the government from holding anyone in custody without providing a legally tenable reason for doing so. On Saturday, Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas’ Western District, granted their petition, freeing them.
That’s the boilerplate. But Judge Biery’s decision — which has gotten a lot of attention in legal circles and beyond — is much more than a dry specimen of judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite and at times mischievous piece of prose.
That may not have surprised some Texas court watchers. Judge Biery, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994, is known for his wit and writerly flair. His judicial order in a 2013 case involving San Antonio strip clubs is famous for its literary allusions (“to bare, or not to bare”) and its cheeky double entendres. A 2023 profile in San Antonio Lawyer magazine called him “a judge with a little extra to say.”
The extra in this case transforms what might have been a routine decision into a thorough scourging of the Trump administration’s approach to governance. This text isn’t much longer than one of Mr. Trump’s Truth Social posts. In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency.
It’s worth looking at how he does it.
OPINION AND ORDER OF THE COURT
Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.
He starts by juxtaposing the grandeur of habeas corpus with the modesty of the father and son’s claims, implying that what makes the writ “Great” is precisely its ability to protect the basic right of ordinary people not to be locked up arbitrarily. It does this by requiring that the government either provide reasons for holding them in custody or else let them go.
Judge Biery’s footnote directing readers to Blackstone’s commentaries and Magna Carta may be intended to give a remedial lesson to members of the administration. His larger point, though, is that to flout the guarantee of habeas corpus — as he insists the current deportation policy has done — is to threaten the integrity of the American constitutional order itself.
The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.
He calls attention to the grandiosity and sloppiness of the administration’s position while suggesting that its overreach reflects a more sinister intention.
Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:
1. “He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.”
2. “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”
3. “For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”
4. “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.”
As the 250th birthday of American independence approaches, the president is being cast as King George III. The federal government’s indifference to habeas claims places it on the wrong side of the historical divide between individual liberty and unchecked state power, and thus at odds with the founding documents of the Republic.
“We the people” are hearing echos of that history.
And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.
U.S. CONST. amend. IV.
Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster.
In constitutional terms, the judge finds that the administration has defied the Fourth Amendment and disregarded the separation of powers.
That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.
A barnyard metaphor puts the matter in plainer language: Because executive authority has the potential to be predatory, it needs to be checked by the judiciary branch. Judge Biery might also be sending a sly message to his colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court, who have looked favorably on many of Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of executive branch power.
Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.
The language in which the judge renders his decision also sends a message, in this case to the president himself. Capitalization is a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s style, as it is of American legalese. The paragraph granting the petition bristles with uppercase nouns, which makes it all the more striking that the president’s name, otherwise absent from the ruling, is rendered in lowercase, as a card-table verb.
This may be a subtextual swipe at the president’s ego, but it’s consistent with the decision’s fundamental argument, which is that the president — any president — is ultimately smaller than the law.
Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.
For Judge Biery, the case involves procedure, and morality too. When he allows himself to express his disapproval — to write judgmentally, rather than judicially — he is in effect arguing that these principles can’t be separated. Due process and human decency are two sides of the same coin.
Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.
Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: “Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?” “A republic, if you can keep it.”
With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,
It is so ORDERED.
Benjamin Franklin famously (and perhaps apocryphally) pointed out the fragility of orderly self-government, while the Dutch boy immortalized in the 19th-century novel “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates” did what he could to protect his neighbors from the fury of the unchecked sea.
That Judge Biery puts himself in their company suggests that he sees this decision less as a final judgment than as a warning.
SIGNED this 31st day of January, 2026.
FRED BIERY
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Credit: Bystander
After his cautionary conclusion, the judge still has something extra to say, something that shifts the focus away from the rational, secular domain of jurisprudence.
Below his signature, he attaches the widely seen photograph of Liam. Underneath that — after an eloquently anonymous photo credit — are references to two verses from the New Testament. The judge doesn’t quote them, but they speak for him all the same.
Matthew 19:14
The Matthew verse — “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: For of such is the kingdom of heaven” — is a well-known statement of compassion and care.
John 11:35
So, in its way, is John 11:35, the shortest verse in the English Bible. It is often quoted when things are so terrible that all other words fail:
“Jesus wept.”
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights thriller and mystery novels set in towns around the United States. (Even if you don’t know the book, each question offers a clue about the state.) To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Republicans pan Democrats’ demands for ICE reform in DHS funding, with little time to reach deal
Exclusive: Illegal immigrant released under Biden ‘catch and release’ allegedly kills driver in police chase
Feds shift to targeted immigration enforcement in Minneapolis under Homan
Republican ‘wake-up call’: Special election shocker highlights GOP turnout and midterm risks
As Minneapolis fractures, Mobile shows how work, law and God still unite
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Republicans pan Democrats’ demands for ICE reform in DHS funding, with little time to reach deal
LIVE: White House press briefing
The Long Goodbye: A California Couple Self-Deports to Mexico
Republican who said Sen Cassidy ‘sucks,’ gets Trump endorsement after ditching Senate bid for House run
Man charged with ‘terrorism’ for bomb at Indigenous protest in Australia
-
Indiana4 days ago13-year-old rider dies following incident at northwest Indiana BMX park
-
Massachusetts5 days agoTV star fisherman, crew all presumed dead after boat sinks off Massachusetts coast
-
Tennessee5 days agoUPDATE: Ohio woman charged in shooting death of West TN deputy
-
Movie Reviews1 week agoVikram Prabhu’s Sirai Telugu Dubbed OTT Movie Review and Rating
-
Indiana3 days ago13-year-old boy dies in BMX accident, officials, Steel Wheels BMX says
-
Politics7 days agoVirginia Democrats seek dozens of new tax hikes, including on dog walking and dry cleaning
-
Austin, TX6 days ago
TEA is on board with almost all of Austin ISD’s turnaround plans
-
Texas5 days agoLive results: Texas state Senate runoff
