Politics
College sports sees pivotal moment as Senate looks to move legislation on NIL, transfers across goal line
Senate stepping in to regulate college sports
The Senate is actively preparing to debate a bipartisan bill that could significantly alter the landscape of intercollegiate sports. Lawmakers aim to create national standards for Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) money and curb roster chaos from transfers. Senators Cruz, Cantwell, Baldwin, and Booker discuss the necessity of federal intervention due to perceived failures of the NCAA.
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Congress could determine the future of college sports.
Thursday was a seminal day as to whether Congress can either salvage – or potentially ruin – intercollegiate athletics. It’s a congressional Hail Mary as senators address name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for athletes, compensation packages and transfers between schools.
“College sports is in crisis,” declared Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
“There’s a sense of urgency in that room you can feel it, right? You’ve got to do something rapidly,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.
TED CRUZ, MARIA CANTWELL UNVEIL BIPARTISAN COLLEGE ATHLETICS BILL AMID NIL CHAOS, LAWSUITS, ‘LANE KIFFIN RULE’
Senate lawmakers advanced a bipartisan college sports bill that would create national NIL standards and limit athlete transfers. The measure now heads toward a full Senate debate. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
The Commerce Committee approved a bipartisan gameplan to fundamentally alter college sports. The full Senate plans to debate the bill in July.
“We have put something on the table that’s going to bring more certainty and predictability to the system,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the panel.
Establishing a nationwide payout framework is a key aspect of the deal. Lawmakers know that inaction could mean that monied, major programs will simply outbid smaller schools. Perhaps even for a future NFL MVP.
“I’m worried that we’ll never see a Josh Allen again at the University of Wyoming,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., referring to the Buffalo Bills standout quarterback. “It leaves those of us who don’t really have a donor base [to struggle to] pay for players of that caliber.”
The bill also restricts athletes to one transfer between schools during a five-year period without a penalty.
“Now we have this unbelievable number of players that get in the (transfer) portal every year and we have nothing to control the agents,” said former Alabama head football coach Nick Saban to a Senate panel earlier this month.
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Lawmakers believe this plan will curb the constant roster chaos.
Advocates of the legislation believe it protects student-athletes.
“It definitely makes sure that predatory contracting done by agents or universities or conferences or shill organizations, don’t get students stuck in binding arbitration,” said Cantwell.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is the only former Division I college athlete in the Senate. He played tight end for Stanford’s football team. Booker opposes the bill.
SENS MARSHA BLACKBURN, MARIA CANTWELL HUSTLING TO PROTECT COLLEGE ATHLETES’ FINANCES IN MURKY NIL WORLD
Congress is weighing major changes to college athletics, including athlete compensation, transfers and NIL regulations amid growing concerns about competitive imbalance. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
“I’ve seen decade after decade, how the NCAA has screwed athletes. And so we need to make sure there’s firm athletic protections and not trust the NCAA to do it,” said Booker.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is the only former Division I football head coach in the Senate. He led programs at Auburn, Ole Miss, Texas Tech and Cincinnati. He joins Booker in condemning the legislation.
“They’re trying to turn college sports into the same situation we got in with Obamacare,” said Tuberville on Fox News Radio. “We can’t get the federal government involved in college sports.”
During a floor speech, Tuberville argued that “Congress should not decide how much money student athletes can earn.”
Yet Tuberville conceded that “college sports is facing a five-alarm fire. It’s getting ready to be over with as we know it.”
That’s why Cruz believes Congress should intervene.
“If the alternative is do nothing and allow chaos to continue in college sports to be destroyed, I think that alternative is unacceptable,” said Cruz.
Congress struggles to do lots of things right. That’s why some observers doubt that Congress is a good substitute for the NCAA.
Matt Mackowiak is a former GOP Senate aide who’s written about Brendan Sorsby, his gambling scandal and the saga involving Texas Tech megabooster Cody Campbell. Big money lured Sorsby to the school for a hot minute. Mackowiak says the Cruz/Cantwell bill fails to prevent another Sorsby situation. But Mackowiak’s biggest concern is congressional willingness to undercut the NCAA.
“I don’t know why you need to create some new system and make it overly complicated. You have a governing body. They haven’t had a lot of teeth in their enforcement in recent years.”
Some of that is because super conferences like the Big Ten and SEC wield more power than the NCAA. Notably, neither of those conferences endorsed the Senate bill. But it was the NCAA which demanded congressional intervention. The NCAA has told lawmakers it can’t address NIL on its own and pushed for a national standard set by Capitol Hill.
But Booker isn’t enamored with the NCAA.
“The NCAA, which can’t be trusted, has shown decade after decade, (of) failing college athletes,” he said.
There’s concern the bill could undercut current sports broadcasters by diversifying the number of streamers and outlets carrying games. That could complicate viewing. Additional options aren’t necessarily good for fans if they struggle to find their games.
“Then the fans get hurt because all the content is behind a paywall,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
“I suspect everyone in this room has heard about frustrations from their constituents in trying to watch their favorite professional sports teams play. They are met with blackouts and paywalls,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
The House of Representatives stumbled in two previous efforts to regulate college sports. The House Republican leadership had to yank completely different college sports regulation bills off the floor in December and this spring because they lacked the votes. So, now it’s the Senate’s turn to try.
There are lots of questions about whether the Senate, like the House, can command the votes for this bill. Moreover, what bandwidth does the Senate even have for serious legislating in July? The Senate is trying to figure out what’s next about the nomination of Jay Clayton to serve as director of national intelligence. The future of FISA Section 702 – the nation’s top program to fight terrorism – is up in the air after authorization expired a few weeks ago. And some Republicans are optimistic the Senate can advance a third “reconciliation package” to pay for the war in Iran, cut taxes and reduce fraud.
It would seem that those priorities might outweigh something on college sports.
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A Senate panel approved legislation supporters say would bring stability to college sports as critics warn it expands federal involvement. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
But as Cruz and Tuberville both say, the situation in college sports is dire. There’s worry that the SEC and/or Big Ten might form a mega conference. Or develop their own broadcast platforms for games. And there may be a lot more Brendan Sorsbys as gaming becomes more ubiquitous.
None of this is going to get any better.
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The future of college sports is on the line.
So, to fix it, the Senate might just give it the old college try.
Politics
Biden special counsel’s ‘runaway train’ scooped up sensitive lawmaker info: ‘Abuse of power’
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Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump swept up text messages from nearly 50 members of Congress, bypassing a required review process in what one victim alleged is a direct constitutional violation.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the situation is more proof Smith’s probe was a “runaway train” of abuses of power, and the elder statesman and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., jointly released their filings Tuesday evening.
Grassley and Johnson’s findings were from a full-scale probe of Operation Arctic Frost, the code name for Smith’s endeavor to investigate Trump for alleged corruption and election malfeasance, an operation top Senate Republicans call “worse than Watergate.”
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Jack Smith, former U.S. special counsel, arrives for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, 2025. (Getty Images)
Forty-four members of Congress had the contents of their text messages obtained and reviewed by Smith’s team in a way that bypassed protocol. A “filter team” was tasked with reviewing millions of documents in the case and should have had first crack at determining whether such messages were relevant or potentially violated statute or ethics.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., one of the lawmakers whose texts were swept up in this way, said Tuesday such reviews amounted to clear violations of the Constitution’s speech and debate clause that protects lawmakers from being questioned in “any other place” than the Capitol for legislative acts.
Internal communications have been historically included in that clause in the courts as technology has advanced.
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Stefanik said in a statement that the new records prove Smith’s team “unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.”
She said she long suspected there had been “unconstitutional spy[ing] on members of Congress.”
The records were provided by the Trump Justice Department to Grassley and Johnson, which the chairmen said indicated Smith’s team had “circumvented its own filter review process.” The process is additionally meant to protect attorney-client privilege, they said in a statement.
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Former special counsel Jack Smith says the Pledge of Allegiance before he prepares to testify during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
The news also complicated some of Smith’s prior depositions under oath, including an excerpt in which he answered “no” to a question from a congressional counsel whether records he requested from congresspeople included text messages.
Johnson called the situation a “grotesque example” of Biden-era “weaponization” of the executive branch.
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley added Tuesday.
“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”
Grassley added that he hopes Democrats caught up in the otherwise bipartisan text tranche will finally discard their partisanship and recognize the severity of the alleged violations by Smith.
He also indicated he planned to recall Smith before Congress to “hold him accountable.”
Of the 44 members swept up in the text reviews, several were Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.
Grassley, Johnson and Stefanik were also swept up in the situation, along with top figures like senators Mike Lee, R-Utah; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky., former Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and the late Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
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Former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was one of the victims, along with current House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as House Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of New York, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins of Georgi, and prominent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
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Several lawmakers sounded off on the news soon after Grassley announced his findings, including Hawley, who called for “everyone involved [to] be prosecuted.”
“Joe Biden’s DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they illegally obtained my texts with members of President Trump’s administration,” the Missourian fumed.
Paul called the allegations a “blatant abuse of power and exactly what our Founders warned about,” while citing Smith’s past denial under oath.
Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Smith for comment.
Politics
After lawsuit, ICE pauses construction of Bay Area detention facility
The federal government agreed to temporarily hold off on construction of a planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Northern California.
The voluntary pause until Sept. 9 comes after the California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County officials sued the Trump administration last month to block the facility from being developed near Gilroy. The lawsuit remains ongoing.
“This pause in the construction, demolition, and development at the site of the challenged ICE facility is a significant step towards protecting our people, our communities, and our environment while the case remains ongoing,” Bonta said in a statement Monday night.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
State and local officials believe the facility will be used for short-term detention of up to 150 people at a time, though ICE denied that it would be a detention center.
Community members and advocates for immigrants swiftly opposed the project. ICE has consistently looked to increase its detention capacity in California, where eight detention centers can now hold a combined 9,000 people, though the state has long been a thorn in the agency’s side.
The halt is part of a compromise between both sides involved in the legal action. After the state and county submitted a request for the court to temporarily halt the project, a hearing was set for Oct. 7.
Now, state and federal officials jointly requested that the court move up the hearing by at least a month. The agreement also extends how much time the federal government has to respond.
A federal judge signed off on the agreement Monday night.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San José, alleges that the leased land is zoned exclusively for agricultural use and that the federal government violated laws requiring state and county notification, as well as procedural steps before beginning construction.
Politics
Why Supreme Court Justices Are Asking for More Security
Supreme Court justices are asking lawmakers on Capitol Hill to increase their 2027 budget, with most of the additional funding earmarked for security. Ann E. Marimow, a New York Times reporter, explains why the justices say these measures are necessary to protect them from rising threats.
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