Calls to Remove Kansas City Chiefs Kicker Explode After Grad Speech

Kansas City Chiefs Harrison Butker upset more than just a few women online with the misogynistic commencement speech he gave at Benedictine College over the weekend. As of Thursday, more than 120,000 people had signed an online petition calling on the NFL team to give the kicker the boot.

“We demand accountability from our sports figures who should be role models promoting respect for all people regardless of their race, gender identity or sexual orientation,” the petition reads. “We call upon the Kansas City Chiefs management to dismiss Harrison Butker immediately for his inappropriate conduct.”

In the span of just a few minutes, Butker managed to rail against abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, the LGBTQ community, and the “tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs. He also encouraged the women in the crowd at the private Catholic college to forget the “diabolical lies” sold to them and to return to the “vocation” of bearing children and cooking in the kitchen instead of beginning careers related to their degrees. The strangest part is that Butker holds these beliefs in spite of the fact that his own success is in part due to his mother’s career as a medical physicist at the Emory University Department of Radiation Oncology.

But the growing chorus of people calling for Butker to face consequences for the remarks hasn’t translated into action by the NFL. Instead, the football league issued a lukewarm response, scarcely acknowledging Butker’s disturbing views.

“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, told People. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Still, the chauvinistic messaging could stir up problems for another Chiefs player, team captain Travis Kelce, whose relationship with pop superstar—and self-described feminist—Taylor Swift has launched him and the football team into national celebrity status. Especially since Butker specifically called Swift out in his speech, quoting a line from her song “Bejeweled” that “familiarity breeds contempt.”

Some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress showed up at his hush-money trial on Thursday. They didn’t plan on being publicly embarrassed.

Representatives Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert were among those who made the trek to Manhattan, ostensibly to support the former president. They quickly found themselves the object of scorn from local New Yorkers.

The audience at the trainwreck press conference also heckled the members of Congress, even chanting “Beetlejuice” at Boebert, a reference to her inappropriate behavior at a live theatrical performance of Beetlejuice last fall. To make matters worse, the heckling came as she tried to get some microphone time as her colleagues quickly left her behind.

The MAGA politicians had other plans for their New York trip. Perhaps they wanted to get out of their actual legislative work, tease a second insurrection, make a cringey campaign ad with Trump, or help him skirt his gag order (which would be illegal). Maybe they think their support will help the presumptive Republican nominee for president’s self-esteem, as his trial is certainly not going well for him.

Trump is facing 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime by using  his former fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair before the 2016 election. Each day of the trial brings more damning testimony and evidence against Trump.

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday, ending a case that would have had wide-ranging implications for federal agencies.

In a shocking move, Justice Clarence Thomas took the lead on the 7–2 decision, in which the court decided that the funding mechanism for the financial sector regulator—which comes from a standing pool of funds issued by Congress outside of its typical appropriations bill process—was completely legitimate.

The case reached the Supreme Court after the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the method violated the appropriations clause and was thereby unconstitutional.

“Under the Appropriations Clause, an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes. The statute that provides the Bureau’s funding meets these requirements,” Thomas wrote in the majority opinion. “We therefore conclude that the Bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate the Appropriations Clause.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito argued that the current structure effectively allows the agency to “bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight.”

“There is apparently nothing wrong with a law that empowers the Executive to draw as much money as it wants from any identified source for any permissible purpose until the end of time,” Alito wrote.

But a conversation about constitutionality is not where the case originated. In 2018, the Community Financial Services Association of America and the Consumer Service Alliance of Texas, a trade association that represents payday lenders and credit-access businesses, sued the bureau in an attempt to plug a crackdown on payday loans.

“For years, lawbreaking companies and Wall Street lobbyists have been scheming to defund essential consumer protection enforcement,” a CFPB spokesperson said in a statement. “The Supreme Court has rejected their radical theory that would have devastated the American financial markets. The Court repudiated the arguments of the payday loan lobby and made it clear that the CFPB is here to stay.”

In another surprise move, Thomas hit back hard at Alito’s dissent, saying his usual far-right comrade in arms had failed to connect his argument to the actual case at hand.

But legal experts were quick to qualify that the high court’s rational decision wasn’t a sign of its moderation, but rather a symptom of how unhinged the Fifth Circuit has become.

“We’re going to come back to this a lot over the next six weeks, but *please* don’t confuse ‘#SCOTUS slaps down a wackadoodle Fifth Circuit decision’ with ‘#SCOTUS is more moderate than its critics claim,’” wrote University of Texas at Austin law professor Steven Vladeck. “‘Not as radical as the Fifth Circuit’ is not the same as ‘moderate.’”

The court will hear more high-profile challenges to the authority of federal agencies in the coming weeks, with two cases focusing on guns and abortion rights.

On Thursday morning, before his hush-money trial resumed, Donald Trump ranted and raved outside of court and, in the process, likely violated his gag order by attacking one of the prosecutors.

“A lead person from the DOJ is running the trial, so Biden’s office is running this trial. This trial is a scam, and it shouldn’t happen,” Trump said.

Trump was referring to Matthew Colangelo, the lead prosecutor on the case and a former attorney for the Department of Justice. Earlier this month, the New York Post reported that Colangelo was a political consultant to the Democratic National Committee. Trump’s gag order prohibits him from attacking court staff, jurors, the prosecution, witnesses, and their families. He has already violated the order 10 times, resulting in being fined $10,000, and Merchan has warned that any further violations would result in jail time.

Complaining that he wasn’t allowed to respond to damaging testimony from his former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, as well as adult film actress Stormy Daniels, Trump had his legal team appeal to have the gag order tossed out—only to be denied by a New York appeals court on Tuesday. That didn’t stop Trump from trying other methods to get around the gag order Wednesday, having his political allies criticize the people off-limits to him.

Trump is accused of paying off Daniels in order to keep their affair under wraps before the 2016 presidential election with the help of Cohen, and faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. If found guilty, he would likely serve prison time. With these repeated gag order violations, though, Trump might see the inside of a jail very soon.

Representative Lauren Boebert admitted exactly why she and her conservative coterie appeared at Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday for Donald Trump’s hush-money trial: to help him circumvent his gag order.

The firebrand representative of Beetlejuice fame immediately took to X (formerly Twitter) to denigrate lead witness Michael Cohen and Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter on Trump’s behalf.

Boebert seemed to acknowledge that she was acting as a surrogate to violate Trump’s gag order, writing on X, “They may have gagged President Trump. They didn’t gag me. They didn’t gag the rest of us.”

“I wonder if I’ll run into Judge Merchan’s daughter here in court today,” Boebert wrote, accusing her of “being paid millions and millions of dollars by Democrat campaigns all across the country.”

Boebert also threw some barbs at key witness Michael Cohen, asking, “Why is that fraud Michael Cohen allowed on TikTok with a shirt of Trump behind bars but Trump can’t speak out?”

Conservative attacks against Merchan’s daughter—an attorney who operates a progressive political consulting firm—have raged on for weeks, spearheaded by Trump in an effort to remove Merchan from overseeing the case. Trump’s attacks have led to threats against family members of prosecutors overseeing the case. Merchan criticized the behavior as an effort to impede the rule of law.

Merchan’s gag order prohibits Trump from speaking about people participating in his hush-money trial, save for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Merchan himself. The order also bars Trump from speaking about the judge’s and prosecution’s family members. Trump is similarly prohibited from tapping surrogates to speak on his behalf.

While none have yet explicitly acknowledged they’re acting as surrogates for Trump, multiple conservative politicians have criticized the gag order while making denigrating statements in line with Trump’s against those Trump is prohibited from speaking about. Earlier this week, Senator Tommy Tuberville admitted he went to the trial to help Trump “overcome his gag order.”

When asked on Tuesday if Trump was using people to speak on his behalf, Trump declared, “I do have many surrogates, and they’re all speaking very beautifully.”

Merchan previously noted that, as Trump has violated his gag order 10 times, he may have to consider jail time should he violate it again. For Merchan to take action on surrogates, there would need to be proof that Trump directed them to speak. With these blabbermouths, direct admission seems to be just a matter of time.