When he endorsed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, then-Sen. JD Vance framed his support around a simple idea: Trump had started no wars in his first term.
Now serving as his vice president, Vance is being called on to make a more complicated case in defense of Trump’s decision Saturday to drop bombs on nuclear enrichment sites in Iran.
Vance was by Trump’s side in the White House Situation Room during the strikes, and at the televised address to announce them. And the next morning, he appeared on two Sunday news shows to answer for the United States’ direct plunge into a conflict between Israel and Iran.
The U.S., Vance asserted on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” was not at war with Iran, but rather with Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Diplomacy, Vance added, “was never given a real chance by the Iranians.” And on ABC’s “This Week,” Vance argued that Trump’s contention that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been “completely and totally obliterated” was not meaningfully different from a tamer characterization in The New York Times that the program had been “severely damaged.”
Vance’s salesmanship Sunday — amplified along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s by the White House’s rapid response team in a stream of clips posted on social media — was not out of line with some of his more hawkish statements on Iran. But his TV appearances were also meant to reassure others who, like Vance, have been broadly skeptical of or opposed to foreign intervention.
“I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,” Vance said on “Meet the Press.” “I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives.”
A clash with Iran, Vance added, “is not going to be some long, drawn-out thing. We’ve got in, we’ve done the job of setting their nuclear program back. We’re going to now work to permanently dismantle that nuclear program over the coming years, and that is what the president has set out to do. Simple principle: Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Vance “was selected to be VP in part for situations exactly like this,” said a person close to Trump’s team who was granted anonymity to share internal thinking.
“The president has total trust in his ability to effectively communicate the administration’s message, especially in hostile territory, in a manner that can bring his coalition together, instead of dividing it,” this person added.
A divided coalition has been a concern inside Trump world since Israel launched airstrikes against Iran last week, prompting retaliation from Iran — and fears that the U.S. would soon become more directly involved in the conflict.
Many influential figures in Trump’s MAGA movement, from former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to young right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, have strong isolationist or anti-intervention views and popular platforms from which to share them.
Vance himself has been a tip of the spear for such positions, which he articulated in the January 2023 guest column he wrote to endorse Trump in The Wall Street Journal. Several people in Trump’s orbit have cited that endorsement, which came at a low moment in Trump’s 2024 campaign, as a key building block in a relationship that blossomed into the vice presidency.
“In Mr. Trump’s four years in office, he started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own administration,” Vance wrote in the column, which appeared online under the headline “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”
“Not starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that’s a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump’s predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed,” Vance added.
That worldview, held by Vance and others, was at the time particularly potent given far-right opposition to U.S. intervention in Russia’s war against Ukraine. But those close to Vance note that over time he has applied a more nuanced thinking toward Iran.
Speaking last year on a show hosted by Morgan Ortagus, a foreign policy operative who has served Trump as a deputy special presidential envoy to the Middle East, Vance called for an “aggressive” approach to ensure that Iran does not develop or deploy a nuclear weapon.
“And if, God forbid, they get there, then I think you have to be willing to take some extreme steps — if they’re going to be effective — to ensure that they don’t have a broader nuclear capability, that they can’t launch nuclear missiles all over the Middle East or even all over the world,” Vance said in the interview. “I think we have to be aggressive with this, and I come at this from a position of some restraint in foreign policy. I think war often leads to unintended consequences, but preventing Iran from getting a bomb — really, really important.”
“A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran, but not these weak little bombing runs,” Vance told host Sean Hannity. “If you’re going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard. And that’s what he did when he took out Soleimani.”
More recently, at last month’s Munich Leaders Conference in Washington, Vance described Iran’s nuclear program as a tipping point.
“We really think that if the Iran domino falls, you’re going to see nuclear proliferation all over the Middle East,” Vance said. “That’s very bad for us. It’s very bad for our friends. And it’s something that we don’t think can happen.”
Last week, as anticipation of U.S. intervention grew, Vance used his personal X account to issue a 374-word pre-emptive defense of whatever Trump might decide to do with Iran.
The president, Vance wrote, “has earned some trust on this issue. And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.”
One of the NBA’s most accomplished scorers is on the move yet again.
The Phoenix Suns are trading forward Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets, according to multiple reports. The Suns will receive Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the 10th pick in Wednesday’s draft and a slew of future picks in exchange for Durant, according to ESPN and The Athletic.
A 15-time All-Star, Durant averaged 26.6 points, 6.0 rebounds and 4.2 assists a game for Phoenix last season. In his 18-year career, Durant has averaged 27.2 points per game, sixth-best in NBA history.
The Rockets finished 52-30 and earned the second seed in the Western Conference before getting ousted by the Warriors in the first round of the playoffs.
The Rockets will be the fifth franchise Durant has played for.
After one year in college at Texas, Durant was selected second overall in the 2007 NBA draft by the then-Seattle SuperSonics. In 2012, after the team had moved to Oklahoma City four years earlier, he led the Thunder to an NBA Finals appearance.
In 2016, Durant signed with the Golden State Warriors in free agency. He teamed up with Stephen Curry and won back-to-back championships in 2017 and 2018, both of which earned Durant Finals MVP honors.
In the summer of 2019, after tearing his achilles during the Finals, Durant once again entered free agency and chose to play for the Brooklyn Nets. Durant missed the entire 2019-20 season, but then led the Nets to two straight playoff appearances in 2021 (a second-round loss) and 2022 (a first-round sweep).
In February 2023, after a tumultuous tenure in Brooklyn, Durant requested a trade and was dealt to the Suns. Though his individual numbers remained steady, Durant’s Phoenix teams also failed to live up to expectations. The Suns lost in the second round of the postseason in ’23, were swept in the first round in 2024, and missed the playoffs altogether this year.
In his three seasons in Phoenix, Durant played for three different head coaches.
Durant will be 37 in September. He will be in the final year of a contract that will pay him $54.7 million next season.
On July 6, Durant will be eligible to sign a contract extension for two years worth up to $122 million.
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SAN FRANCISCO — For Rafael Devers, his first home run for San Francisco felt similar to the 215 he hit for Boston — even if this one came against the Red Sox just six days after his surprising trade to the Giants.
Devers delighted his new fans in San Francisco when he connected for a two-run homer against his former team on Saturday to help fuel a 3-2 win for the Giants.
“Nothing more special than any other home run that I hit,” he said through an interpreter. “I’m just here and happy that I was able to contribute for the team’s win.”
“That’s kind of typical him too, just let it travel and catch it late and block it out to left field,” manager Bob Melvin said. “He’s done it so many times in Boston. This park kind of plays that way to lefties as well. I think to get that one off his back, feels good about that, obviously being incredibly impactful in the outcome of the game. Now he can settle in and do his thing.”
Devers got loud cheers from the Oracle Park crowd of 39,027 as he rounded the bases for his 216th career home run that just happened to be caught by a fan in a Red Sox T-shirt.
“As soon as he hit it, you kind of feel almost a little weight fell off his shoulders when he hit that ball,” Giants starter Landen Roupp said. “You could just see it. We expect many more from him in that area. Really excited to have him on the team and he will be a huge help.”
Devers became the 10th player to homer for and against the same team in a span of seven days or fewer, according to Sportradar. The last player to do it was Abraham Toro, who homered for Houston against Seattle on July 26, 2021, and then for the Mariners against the Astros the next day.
This is the third time it happened with a player traded by the Red Sox. Don Lenhardt and Walt Dropo both did it in 1952, with their homers for Detroit against Boston coming in the same game on June 6 that season, three days after they were traded together in an eight-player deal.
Devers also joined Willie Mays, Jimmie Foxx and four other players who hit their first 200 career homers with one team and then had their first homer on their new team come against their former team.
Devers was traded by Boston less than two years into a 10-year, $313.5 million contract extension that he signed in 2023.
Devers’ relationship with the Red Sox began to deteriorate when the team signed Gold Glove third baseman Alex Bregman during spring training and asked Devers to move to DH; he balked before agreeing to the switch. When first baseman Triston Casas sustained a season-ending knee injury, the Red Sox approached Devers about playing the field and he declined, saying the front office “should do their jobs” and look for another player.
A day after Devers’ comments to the media about playing first, Red Sox owner John Henry, team president Sam Kennedy and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow flew to Kansas City to meet with Devers and manager Alex Cora.
Devers’ stance didn’t change and he was eventually traded to San Francisco where he is practicing at first base to play there later this season. Devers said Friday that he wouldn’t have done anything differently in his time in Boston, adding that he was as happy as he has been in years after joining the Giants.
The United States, the Middle East and world oil markets are bracing for Iran’s response after President Donald Trump launched punishing strikes on Iranian nuclear energy sites overnight, plunging the region into an unprecedented new phase of a decades-old conflict.
The U.S. struck Iranian nuclear facilities, including the key Fordo site, with 14 GBU-57s, 30,000-pound “bunker buster bombs,” according to the U.S. military. It was the first time the United States has directly bombed the Islamic Republic.
The next 48 hours are of particular concern, according to two defense officials and a senior White House official. It’s unclear whether any retaliation would target overseas or domestic locations, or both, the officials said.
U.S. bases and assets have been at their highest state of alert for months, but after Israel began warring with Iran on June 13, the officials, who spoke earlier in the week, said concerns were heightened even more about the potential for attacks on U.S. assets from Iran or its proxies in the region.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, warned of “everlasting consequences.”
Iran has already shown its capacity to inflict damage on its enemies.
Since Israel’s initial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iranian missiles have pierced the country’s vaunted missile-defense system, the Iron Dome, reduced apartment blocks to rubble, and killed at least 24 people. After the U.S. attacks, the nation launched a missile barrage into Israel on Sunday morning, causing damage and injuries in Tel Aviv.
“Iran will try to redouble its efforts against Israel in order to show its determination to inflict damage on its arch enemy,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. “We are likely to witness major escalation between Iran and Israel in the next few days.”
However, Gerges added, Iran will try and avoid “being dragged into an all-out war with the United States.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guardargues that the sheer number and spread of U.S. bases in the region, where it has some 40,000 troops, are not a strength, but a “point of vulnerability.”
The U.S. has bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries. Last week, it moved some aircraft and ships that may be vulnerable to a potential attack, and has limited access to its al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
It’s unclear whether Iran could retaliate with missile attacks on U.S. or allied forces in the Gulf. Israel has managed to intercept many of the ballistic missiles and drones that Iran has fired over the past week.
And it’s also uncertain whether any retaliation will come directly from Tehran or one of its proxies in the region.
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Last winter, a study startled the running world when a team of researchers concluded that, under the right circumstances, Kenyan superstar Faith Kipyegon could break a barrier long thought impossible — becoming the first woman to run 1 mile in less than four minutes.
In the coming days, under a worldwide spotlight, that theory will be put to the test.
Kipyegon on Thursday will line up in Paris in a Nike-sponsored race called Breaking4, just four laps — and 1,609 meters, to be exact — from history.
If there were ever a runner to make such an attempt, it would be the 31-year-old Kipyegon. A three-time Olympic gold medalist in the 1,500 meters, who holds the world record in the 1,500 meters and formerly held the record at 5,000 meters, as well, she has come closer to the four-minute barrier than anyone. In 2023, racing in Monaco, Kipyegon smashed the previous world record for the mile by running 4:07.64.
“She’s really stretching your imagination and acceptance of how women can excel in sport,” said Rodger Kram, an associate professor emeritus at the University of Colorado who co-authored the study published in February in the Royal Society of Open Science.
Yet speed alone won’t make up the 7.64-second difference between her personal best and a barrier-breaking achievement — a lifetime in a race as short as the mile. The big variable is how exactly Kipyegon will “draft” off pace-setters around her, thus reducing her aerodynamic drag. How many pacers Nike will use, and what formation they will employ, remains a mystery.
Kipyegon told The Associated Press that “breaking four will really cement my legacy.” Yet breaking four minutes could lead to a wider effect. Half-marathons and marathons have enjoyed a post-pandemic participation boom, but Kram wonders whether Kipyegon’s example could inspire more women to run middle distances.
“To see that, one, we actually want to go after a female record, that’s exciting,” said Shalaya Kipp, a former Olympic distance runner and NCAA champion who co-authored the study. “It’s going to not only draw more females to the sport, but it’s also going to help draw more attention to female physiology and get more research done on females too.
“That’s not the runner in me, but that’s the scientist in me that gets really excited if we have this. Scientists are going to start working with more female athletes, and that is a big gap we have right now,” Kipp added.
As experts in physiology and kinesiology, Kram, Kipp and their study’s co-authors, Edson Soares da Silva and Wouter Hoogkamer, were already fans of running. But their pursuit of whether a female sub-four mile was possible began in earnest in 2023 while watching Kipyegon run her 4:07 world record while using pacers for only half the race.
“It really stood out to us that this was a very fast race — a world record, of course — but she had terrible drafting,” said Kipp, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Mayo Clinic. “We’re track nerds, and we watched that, and we’re like, ‘Well, what if? What if?’ And then we were like, ‘We actually could do that math.’”
The researchers’ sub-four findings were modeled on a scenario in which Kipyegon would draft off a team of all-female pacers, in part for the gender-breaking symbolism it would represent, Kipp said. In that scenario, the study found that if Kipyegon could stay within about 40 inches behind a pacer in front of her, and 40 inches in front of another behind her — with a new pacing team swapping in halfway through — it would create an aerodynamic “pocket” in which she would face the least wind resistance.
Under those conditions, Kipyegon could run 3:59.37, the paper concluded — the exact time run by Roger Bannister in 1954 when he, using pacers for more than 80% of the race, became the first person to ever break the sub-four barrier.
Less remembered is that also in 1954, Diane Leather became the first woman to break the five-minute barrier in the mile. It took more than half a century for the idea of a woman running a sub-four mile to enter the realm of possibility, however, as training, times and technology all improved.
An inflection point arrived in 2016.
That year, Nike became the first shoe company to combine an exceptionally bouncy new foam with rigid “plates” in its shoes and spikes. Studies have determined such “supershoes” require less effort to run at a given pace by absorbing the impact from each foot strike, allowing runners to rebound more quickly. The breakthrough led Nike to design a different moon shot race, dubbed “Breaking2,” in which Kenyan superstar Eliud Kipchoge attempted to become the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours. He came up 25 seconds short during his first try, in 2017. In his second attempt, three years later, Kipchoge ran 1:59.40. The times do not count as an official world record because the carefully tailored attempt did not meet the standards of the sport’s global governing body, but it represented a seismic shift in what was possible all the same.
It was also a sign of things to come.
“We opened the 2016 floodgates,” Kipp said, “and we saw these times dropping.”
Of the 50 fastest miles run by women all time, 33 have been run since 2016, including 10 of the top 11. The world record of 4:12.56 had stood since 1996 until Sifan Hassan ran 0.23 seconds faster in 2019. Four years later, Kipyegon shattered Hassan’s world record by a stunning 4.69 seconds in Monaco.
In Paris this week, Kipyegon will wear custom-made Nike supershoe spikes as well as a speed suit and custom bra designed to reduce drag. Kipyegon is unique in that her stride appears effortless, as if floating, Kipp said. Yet what matters most, Kram and Kipp said, is whether Kipyegon has improved at staying tucked in behind her pacers.
Nike did not consult with Kram, Kipp or their research team on the technical details of Kipyegon’s attempt. How the sportswear giant will handle the number and gender of the pacers has led to significant intrigue. Stadiums hosting professional meets feature a metal “rail” on the inside of the first lane, separating the track from the infield. Because Paris’ Stade Charlety has little rubberized track surface inside of the rail, it’s unlikely it will have the space needed to use the type of “full arrowhead” formation it employed in its attempt to help Kipchoge break two hours in the marathon. Kram wonders if Nike will employ a “half arrowhead” or perhaps even the model the researchers studied, with one in front and one behind.
He and Kipp will also be watching for how Kipyegon and her pacers line up at the start; how relaxed she appears while pushing an unprecedented pace; and, nearing the finish, when the pacers will peel away to allow Kipyegon to finish alone.
“I’m going to be watching to make sure that she’s in the pocket, and that the pacers don’t get too excited,” Kram said. “In the first 200 [meters] you can ruin your chances for the mile. If she goes out and runs 27 [seconds], she’s cooked. She’s got to go out in 29, 29-high.
“If she comes through 1,200 in three minutes, I think she’s going to get it. Other people are saying, ‘Oh, that’s when she’s going to die.’ But I believe in our numbers and our calculations.”
Kipchoge and his training partners wore T-shirts featuring “Breaking4” and Kipyegon’s image during training recently.
“It’s been an honor for us to support [Kipyegon] as she prepares to achieve the unthinkable and to break down the barriers of human performance,” Kipchoge wrote on Instagram. “Faith is a true inspiration for our world. If there’s one person to do it, it is you. Go for it!”
The race also comes at a significant moment for Nike itself. The company’s roots are in running — it was founded by a middle-distance runner, Phil Knight, and his collegiate track coach — and more runners finished distance races in 2024 wearing the brand than any other, according to an industry group survey. In recent years, however, Nike’s shelf space and market share among running shoes has been challenged by newcomers such as Hoka and On. Kipyegon’s sub-four attempt will come on the same day that Nike is scheduled to host a quarterly earnings call.
In the days before Kipyegon’s race, Kram acknowledged having nerves over how the study’s findings would fare in a real-life test. Many of his previous studies had received scant attention from the wider public, he said. February’s sub-four paper, by comparison, had drawn global attention.
“Even if we don’t go below four, how exciting is it just to have this attempt?” Kipp said. “Is it really going to be a failure if she runs, you know, 4:01, 4:02? It’s still going to be a big deal.”
“That’s how Eliud Kipchoge’s first sub-two [marathon] attempt was. It wasn’t perfect, but it lowered the standard, and it made us realize if we can get closer, we can do it.”
In Indianapolis, Than Hre, the Burmese-born owner of Chin Brothers Restaurant & Grocery, stands behind his counter tallying receipts that tell the story of a business under pressure.
Over the past year, he says, the profit margin for his restaurant and grocery business has dropped from around 35% to about 10% as tariffs and shipping costs have driven up the price of rice and Burmese staples by as much as 40%.
The same is true for numerous other businesses in Indianapolis, the city with the largest Burmese community in the United States, at 30,000 people, according to the Burmese American Community Institute.
Tariffs on importing Myanmar goods have risen to 45%, driving up the cost of staples like rice and spices and creating significant challenges for Burmese businesses across the United States.
“It’s hard because we cannot increase the prices, yet if we do, we’re going to lose customers,” said Hre, 48.
Than Hre owns a Burmese restaurant and grocery store. He works with his wife and three kids. Courtesy Than Hre
On top of the tariff toll, it has been a struggle for Burmese in the United States as the travel ban blocks nearly all travel and immigration from Myanmar, halting family reunifications and student visas as the country faces civil war and forced conscription.
The emotional toll is compounded by the civil war in Myanmar, which has made communication with relatives nearly impossible because of frequent Wi-Fi blackouts and government crackdowns, according to Tha Zi, owner of Mommy Thai, an Asian restaurant serving Burmese, Chinese and Thai food in a a small, family-run spot on the Southside of Indianapolis.
“Sometimes the Wi-Fi is cut off for days,” Zi said, making it nearly impossible to check whether her relatives are safe. She said that her cousin was supposed to come to the United States for college but that the new travel ban means her visa was denied and she’s now stuck in Myanmar. Stories like theirs echo across the community as families worry about loved ones facing forced military conscription, bombings and the uncertainty of war — all while trying to keep their businesses afloat in Indiana.
To help recover profits, Hre has cut back on inventory, and he orders product conservatively — by box now, instead of pallet. He doesn’t need to cut back on staff as he relies on his three sons and wife to keep the family business afloat, joking that he can pay them in more Burmese food.
Chin Brothers Restaurant & Grocery in Indianapolis has been hit hard by tariffs, the family owners said.Courtesy Than Hre
Most Burmese families arrived in the United States as refugees, fleeing harsh military rule, ethnic persecution and ongoing civil war in Myanmar. The first wave came after the 1962 military coup and continued through the 1980s and the 1990s, but the largest influx began in the mid-2000s as the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program prioritized those escaping religious and ethnic violence, especially among the Chin, Karen and Rohingya minorities.
Affordable housing, job opportunities like factory work and a strong network of Christian churches made Indianapolis especially attractive for Chin and other ethnic minorities. As more Burmese settled in the city, secondary migration followed — new arrivals and even refugees initially placed in other states moved to Indianapolis to join family and friends and benefit from the established community and support systems.
At Mommy Thai, Zi, the owner, describes how rising costs for meat and authentic noodles have made it difficult to keep the doors open, even though most of her ingredients are sourced domestically. “The price of meat is really high, and the noodles that we use for authentic dishes, the price has gone up a lot because of tariffs and shipping,” she said.
Mommy Thai is a small, family-run spot serving various Asian cuisines on the Southside of IndianapolisCourtesy Mommy Thai and Tha Zi
Zi tries not to raise prices too much, knowing her customer base is mostly families and students, but it’s getting hard to keep up, she said. She has had to cut back on specialty menu items and watch as regulars visit less frequently, a trend echoed across the industry as a projected 7% dip in consumer restaurant spending hits small businesses especially hard.
Siam Square, a mom-and-pop Thai restaurant in Indianapolis, is also feeling the strain of the tariffs and the travel ban.
While the travel ban doesn’t directly target Thailand, owner Ed Rudisell said it still has a major impact on his business. About 70% of his staff are Burmese — primarily Chin refugees. The ban means people don’t “have any hope of seeing family from Burma,” Rudisell said, and it creates fear and tension among staff members about their families back home.
Rudisell has watched the cost of essential ingredients like garlic nearly double — from $56 to $93 a case — forcing him to raise menu prices twice since January.
“Food costs have gone through the roof,” Rudisell said. But he’d rather raise prices than reduce portion sizes or compromise on quality, as customers expect consistency, he said.
Often, importers raise their ingredient prices before the tariffs are officially active, Rudisell said.
“The damage is done,” he said. “By that point, we’ve already paid the increased bills.”
Zi said the travel ban and the tariffs, meant to address security and trade concerns, instead deepen the challenges facing Burmese-Chin families fleeing violence, instability and economic hardship.
The ban suspends both immigrant and nonimmigrant visas for Myanmar nationals, squandering hope for reunification or educational opportunities, Zi said.
“My cousin was supposed to come here for college, but now with the travel ban, her visa was denied and she’s stuck in Burma,” she said.
Rudisell added, “To lock it down and say nobody else is allowed to come in is absolutely inhumane.”
Anti-pornography crusaders are on a winning streak.
On almost every front, those who argue that pornography is a scourge on society are racking up wins. States are implementing online age verification laws, and some politicians are pursuing aggressive bans on explicit content. Culturally, the viewpoint that porn is not only harmful to women but increasingly men and the sexual development of young people has made significant inroads.
As porn has become more mainstream, so has the discussion around it.
“Porn is bulls—. It is dangerous, not real, and a performance,” pop star Gracie Abrams said in a February interview with Cosmopolitan. “It’s really dangerous for young people for that to be their introduction to sex.”
Once viewed as a fringe moral crusade, the war against porn has ballooned into a multipronged, mainstream force over the past decade that now counts feminists, religious crusaders, alpha male influencers and a growing number of politicians among its ranks. And after several key social and legislative wins, the movement faces its biggest test. A Supreme Court ruling this summer is set to determine whether a Texas law, which mirrors legislation in over a dozen states and requires porn websites to confirm a visitor’s age or face financial penalties in the name of protecting minors from explicit content, infringes on the First Amendment rights of adults.
And it’s not just about age verification. Last month, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act bill to alter the definition of obscenity under the Communications Act of 1934 and criminalize the transmission across state lines of content deemed obscene. Although the bill has a long, challenging path toward becoming a law, it seeks to label content obscene if it simply focuses on nudity or sex in a way intended to arouse or lacks “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“It certainly raises alarm bells because this is about more than porn,” Mike Stabile, the public policy director for the Free Speech Coalition, a trade and advocacy organization for the adult entertainment industry, said about the anti-porn legislative momentum. “These are backdoor censorship bills. Porn is the Trojan horse here.”
Many in the adult content world are not entirely against age verification. And while the actual adverse effects of porn remain the subject of intense debate — and growing academic study — it is undeniable that a once fringe and taboo world has become part of the mainstream. One 2023 study found that more people visited the top three porn sites monthly than TikTok, Zoom, Amazon, OpenAI or Netflix. Meanwhile, the rise of OnlyFans has redistributed the money and power of adult content.
But just how “bad” is porn? That, too, remains a heated subject. Rigorous academic and scientific work has done little to turn up definite harms. Still, porn industry leaders have acknowledged their ongoing battle with deepfakes, underage content and revenge porn, including Pornhub, which removed millions of unverified videos from its website in 2020 following allegations that the site showed problematic content.
It’s against that backdrop that many anti-porn crusaders see their movement thriving, in large part as a backlash to just how much porn has evolved from the back rooms of video stores, adult magazines and pay-per-minute phone services.
Gail Dines, a key figure in the anti-porn movement for over 30 years, said the goal isn’t necessarily to ban porn. But if that happens, porn only has itself to blame.
“The porn industry sowed the seeds of its own destruction,” Dines said.
Pre-internet and the porn ‘public health issue’
Pornography has quite a history, by some measures dating back thousands of years. And though the anti-pornography movement doesn’t have quite the same track record, its presence in the U.S. has been well documented for decades.
Marty Klein, a certified sex therapist and the author of “America’s War on Sex,” said that the pushback on porn can be traced back to at least the 1950s, when it was primarily coming from religious circles. However, the scope of the issue remained relatively small: Playboy magazine, dirty books and the odd film.
Porn as it might be thought of today took its first steps into the mainstream in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as some adult films saw wider releases. That coincided with the anti-porn movement’s first legal win, when the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that states were allowed to restrict obscene content based on “community standards.” The ruling came just months after Roe v. Wade was decided.
Demonstrators protest against pornography in Times Square in New York City in 1979.Leif Skoogfors / Getty Images file
“Roe v. Wade energized the right … and looked to control the idea of sexuality,” Klein said.
The idea of control, he said, pivoted the fight against porn from a moral issue to a public health one, a move that dovetailed with some feminist critiques. But the work by these feminists, like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, to create anti-porn legislation (which focused on civil legal remedies for those impacted by the industry and labeling adult entertainment as a women’s civil rights violation) never stuck.
Dines explained that by the 1990s, the third wave of neoliberal feminism took hold, reconceptualizing the movement in the name of empowerment and sexual freedom.
“Instead of it being about exploitation, it became about empowerment and liberation, empowerment and agency, and that this is how women display their sexuality,” Dines said. “This was mainly written by women who were academics who had not had any contact in the porn industry.”
By the early 2000s, the war against porn was most publicly helmed by Focus on the Family and Morality in Media, which launched campaigns to ban adult magazines and prosecute obscenity violations. Those efforts, however, rarely succeeded in court and didn’t make more traction socially as Americans began to see pornography as a private, personal freedom.
The rise of the internet, however, had already begun to make the fight against printed adult content seem quaint. Pornography was suddenly going to be easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
The internet, OnlyFans and the new anti-porn wave
Those on both sides of the porn debate agree that the internet changed everything for the adult entertainment industry.
“Pornhub and other free porn sites soon became the wallpaper of boys’ and men’s lives,” Dines said. “It was affordable, accessible and anonymous. You could watch it in your own home.”
Studies about the consumption of pornography vary in their claims, and many have come from interested groups, but it is generally accepted that porn is incredibly common. The digital footprint of porn only grew with the rise of smartphones, laptops and social media. A 2023 Pew Research study found that nearly half of teenagers ages 13 to 17 say they are online “almost constantly,” at a rate that has almost doubled since 2014.
Dines was among the scholars on the front lines against porn, arguing that porn trains young men to dehumanize women and normalizes sexual aggression. This framing was further boosted by campaigns like Fight the New Drug, a nonreligious nonprofit that argues porn is analogous to a drug.
The age-restriction warning screen of the website Pornhub.Leon Neal / Getty Images file
Those ideas have percolated in some corners of the internet for years. With the growing ubiquity of online porn, no-porn subcultures also began to emerge in the name of helping men and confronting the impacts of “centerfold syndrome,” a term coined in the 1990s to explain a fixation on hypersexualized images of women that can lead to a fear of personal inadequacy and difficulty having sexual relationships. Among the loudest advocates against porn in the name of men’s health was Gary Wilson, the author of “Your Brain on Porn” and the founder of a website with the same name.
Wilson, a former teacher who died in 2021, blended neuroscience and anecdotal evidence to argue that porn rewires the brain like a drug. Though criticized by many in the academic community, Wilson’s now-infamous TED talk “The Great Porn Experience” is often cited as laying the groundwork for pro-abstinence, anti-porn internet subcultures.
“With internet porn, a guy can see more hot babes in 10 minutes than his ancestors could see in several lifetimes. The problem is that he has a hunter-gatherer brain. A heavy user’s brain rewires itself to this genetic bonanza,” Wilson said in the TEDx Talk, which has been viewed on YouTube 17 million times.
As technology made finding explicit content as easy as making a phone call and social media allowed sex workers to easily promote their work, anti-porn advocates went on the offensive.
This idea — that porn is now hurting men at a significant scale — has been embraced by a variety of right-leaning and anti-woke influencers who have helped push the anti-porn movement beyond conservative circles. Andrew Huberman and Jordan Peterson are among the most high-profile internet personalities who have argued that porn has adverse effects on men.
Jordan Peterson at the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, in 2018.Chris Williamson / Getty Images file
Questions about the effects of porn on men’s sexual health have also been a hot topic, with some pushing the idea that porn-related masturbation was making men less virile. A 2022 International Journal of Impotence Research study by a group of urologists who studied social media found that “semen retention” and its related hashtags were TikTok’s and Instagram’s most popular men’s health topics. “No Nut” November is now hailed in some circlesas an annual holiday challenge.
But does this movement have any scientific backing?
“We realize this is a bold assertion, and there are some out there who will disagree with us,” then-Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said when he signed the 2016 resolution that called for increased “education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level” to combat pornography. “We’re here to say it is, in fact, the full-fledged truth.”
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signs a state resolution declaring pornography a public health crisis on April 19, 2016. Rick Bowmer / AP
For many, the harms of porn are obvious.
Feminists have primarily argued that porn normalizes sexual violence, contributes to the objectification of women and erodes childhood sexual development. Writing in The New York Times, Christine Emba, whose work has focused on gender, sexuality and youth norms, recently pointed to changing sexual habits among young people.
“There are consequences for members of Gen Z, in particular, the first to grow up alongside unlimited and always accessible porn and have their first experiences of sex shaped and mediated by it,” she wrote. “It’s hard not to see a connection between porn-trained behaviors — the choking, slapping and spitting that have become the norm even in early sexual encounters — and young women’s distrust in young men.”
For men, the issue focuses primarily on the idea of an addiction that can ruin their lives, though that also extends to women as well. Chris Rock and Terry Crews have opened up about self-described porn addictions that they say impacted their familial relationships. Billie Eilish called porn a “disgrace” after revealing in a 2021 Howard Stern interview that watching explicit videos when she was 11 “destroyed” her brain and gave her nightmares.
In some parts of the internet, porn’s destructive tendencies are accepted as fact, and the need for rehabilitation obvious. There are all manner of porn addiction recovery resources and online communities dedicated to the issue.
The science, however, remains lacking.
Emily Rothman, a Boston University professor who specializes in public health pornography research, says that while underage youth should not be seeing adult content as easily as they can on today’s internet, false narratives about the impacts of porn have gained traction.
“Evidence supports the contention that pornography — specifically free, online, mainstream pornography — poses a risk to underage youth. But it’s also true that banning pornography altogether has the potential for harm,” Rothman said. “Access to information about sex, sexuality and sexual health is vital for a healthy society, and the power to declare certain media off-limits to everyone in society should be deployed extremely carefully.”
Klein notes that the science behind porn’s alleged harm is not settled, especially because “porn use is generally not separated from internet use or social media use, both of which have harmful effects of their own.”
“Since porn use is almost universal among men and is consumed by at least a third of women, you can find whatever effects you want, and they’ll be statistically significant because of the huge sample size,” Klein added.
Others have pushed back even more aggressively.
David Ley, a clinical psychologist and the author of “The Myth of Sex Addiction,” explained that there is “not a single study that shows causal changes to the brain from porn,” only a few correlational studies that do not distinguish between existing predispositions and distinct brain differences. According to an NPR article on the online anti-masturbation movement, psychological associations do not recognize a link between erectile dysfunction and masturbation, as these movements claim.
“I call this Valley girl science … the argument by analogy. ‘Porn is like cocaine’ does not mean anything; it doesn’t tell us very much about what is actually going on here,” Ley said.
He noted that while the manosphere is not religious, it is “extremely religious adjacent,” especially when members are talking about how men should perceive themselves and their role in society.
“So when we see Andrew Tate telling young guys that, you know, they’re unmanly, or they’re gay for touching their penis, that creates these insecurities, it creates these values conflicts and this anxiety that then feeds on itself,” Ley added.
“The problem I have with all the anti-porn kind of movements is that they are what I call ‘sexy shiny objects,’ where people get distracted by the sex and the porn, and they try to put a lot of things on that rather than addressing some of the much more significant kinds of issues.”
Whatever one thinks of the debate over porn, the success of the anti-porn movement is clear.
Since 2023, at least 19 Republican states have passed laws requiring websites to confirm a user’s age, either by scanning their face or checking a government-issued ID, before allowing them access to explicit material.
Despite their wins, those leading the anti-porn movement aren’t exactly unified on what victory looks like.
“I think Pornhub has realized the time is coming for regulation, and they’re fighting it tooth and nail,” Dines said, adding the success for her is a porn industry so restricted by regulation that it fades from public view.
For porn companies, the fear isn’t reform — but what reform looks like for the loudest voices against the adult entertainment industry. Alex Kekesi, the head of community and brand at Pornhub, said while her company agrees with the spirit of the laws that children should not have access to sexually explicit content, they worry the privacy-invasion laws will only push people toward unsafe, unregulated corners of the internet.
“Having to show your government ID to access something online would make anyone uncomfortable,” Kekesi said. “There are real concerns when it comes to privacy.”
Dines, however, is not too worried about the privacy issue, noting that if users were concerned about privacy, they would not be visiting Pornhub and other adult sites in the first place. For now, though, as the porn industry awaits the Supreme Court decision, its adversaries realize there is a line of sight to winning the war on porn.
“I want to see a shift where pornography isn’t seen as cool,” she said.
Few political operatives have it easier than opposition researchers in New York City this year.
New York’s 2025 municipal races feature a scandal-laden cast of characters whose alleged or proven misdeeds have made front-page headlines for years. They include the front-runner heading into Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has spent much of his bid to become New York’s next mayor cleaning skeletons out of his closet, whether he’s wanted to or not. The scion of a storied political family, Cuomo resigned in disgrace from the governorship in 2021 after an investigation led by state Attorney General Letitia James found that he had harassed 11 women and subjected some of them to unwanted touching and groping. A formal agreement between the state executive chamber and the U.S. Justice Department, released in 2024, found Cuomo had subjected at least 13 female employees to a “sexually hostile work environment.”
But Cuomo isn’t the only candidate seeking political redemption in New York City this month. Should he win Tuesday’s Democratic primary, he’ll take on incumbent Eric Adams, a Democrat running for re-election as an independent. Adams was indicted in September on federal corruption charges, which were dropped this year when the Justice Department argued, among other things, that the case distracted from Adams’ ability to enact President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
New York Mayor Eric Adams speaks to the media at City Hall on Jan. 21.Alejandra Villa Loarca / Newsday via Getty Images file
And then there’s Anthony Weiner.
Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 after accidentally tweeting a sexually explicit photo of himself. More sexually explicit messages came out in 2013 when he ran for mayor in a first political comeback attempt. In 2016, the FBI launched an investigation after Weiner he was accused of sending sexual messages to a 15-year-old girl. Upon seizing Weiner’s computer, investigators discovered Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, had used the same laptop to send emails to her boss: then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Weiner is now out of prison, and his political animal can’t be caged. He is vying for a spot on the New York City Council — part of an unofficial slate testing what voters will forgive and what they won’t in 2025.
In an interview this month, Weiner argued that the way he’s handled his controversies can’t be compared to the ways Cuomo and Adams have handled theirs.
“I’m not denying. I’m not pointing fingers. I’m not asking for a pardon,” said Weiner, running for a district encompassing the Lower East Side and East Village neighborhoods of Manhattan.
“I’ve served my time. I accepted responsibility. Now I’m moving forward,” Weiner said.
In the first Democratic mayoral debate, when the moderators asked Cuomo to share a regret from his years in politics, he did not share a personal failing; instead, he said he regretted “that the Democratic Party got to a point that we allowed Mr. Trump to be elected.”
Cuomo’s rivals aren’t letting him forget the accusations he’s faced.
Asked a seemingly innocuous question at that debate about improving public safety on New York City’s subway system, underdog candidate Michael Blake jumped in: “The people who don’t feel safe are young women, mothers and grandmothers around Andrew Cuomo. That’s the greatest threat to public safety in New York City.”
One week later, during the next debate, Cuomo’s main rival, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, unleashed a new slew of attacks. After Cuomo had lambasted Mamdani over his experience, Mamdani pounced.
“I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo,” Mamdani said in a monologue that went viral.
The allegations that led to his resignation — which Cuomo has repeatedly denied, though he also said upon resigning that there had been “generational and cultural shifts” that he “didn’t fully appreciate” — have come up in the campaign alongside other controversies from his governorship. Another 2021 report from the state attorney general accused him of undercounting nursing home deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic. On Juneteenth, City Council member Chi Ossé, who endorsed Mamdani, posted on X to resurface a 2019 interview in which Cuomo said the N-word while quoting a New York Times op-ed.
Adams, too, has denied wrongdoing and claimed vindication since the federal charges he faced were dropped.
Weiner says his experience has shaped the way he perceives Cuomo’s and Adams’ situations.
“Going through the maelstrom of public outcry, outcry and scandal, I do read the papers differently than I used to,” said Weiner, 60. “I have what they say in Yiddish or Hebrew ‘rachmones.’ I have feeling for people in difficult circumstances.”
Despite the empathy, he said comparing his checkered to Cuomo’s and Adams’ is “apples and oranges.”
“They’re denying they did anything wrong. They’re suing their detractors and their accusers. I’m accepting responsibility. I paid my debt to society,” he said.
“I have this notion that everything I have done up to now has led me to this exact spot.”
For New Yorkers heading to the ballot this cycle, forgiveness is not one-size-fits-all.
Carmen Perez, 55, from West Harlem, is willing to give Cuomo another chance but isn’t crazy about the other embattled candidates.
“I’ve seen what Cuomo can do,” said Perez, who runs a program for senior citizens. “During the pandemic, he literally just took over and said, ‘This is how we’re going to do this and this is how we’re going to get through this.’”
“That’s what you want to hear from a leader during a crisis.”
When it comes to Adams, Perez is less enthusiastic. “I would hope that most people would take this opportunity and really examine why people are running and what’s the real purpose behind their running,” she said of Adams, implying the controversies around him are stickier than the ones around Cuomo.
In the case of Esther Yang, a yoga teacher from the city, none of the beleaguered candidates deserves her vote. “I think their parents did not raise them well enough,” she said.
“I’m a yoga teacher, so I believe that how you do anything is how you do everything,” Yang said, before turning specifically to Cuomo and Adams: “I believe that if you can’t get your act together for your personal life, then I don’t think you should be a mayor for your professional life.”
Weiner’s candidacy is also a nonstarter for Yang.
“I like to see how somebody’s going to be a good husband, a good father, and how they conduct their personal life,” Yang said.
