Expert’s eerie drone prediction as Trump vows answers to mystery in the sky
An influx of unexplained drone sightings in parts of the United States began to make headlines in November, and although authorities have said there is no evidence that the drones are a threat to national security or public safety, experts explain the mystery behind the uptick in sightings.
Fox News’ Peter Doocy questioned President Donald Trump about the drones on Monday, asking, “Anything with these drones — is it anything to be worried about?”
“I would like to find out what it is and tell the people. In fact, I’d like to do that,” Trump responded. He then redirected to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. “Could we find out what that was, Susie? Why don’t we find out immediately?”
“I can’t imagine it’s an enemy, or there would have been, you know, people would have gotten blown up, all of them. Maybe they were testing things. I don’t know why. They wouldn’t have said what it was,” Trump said. “They had a lot of them flying over Bedminster, which is interesting,” referring to his club in New Jersey.
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The drone sightings in November and December originally raised public concerns and even attracted the attention of the FBI.
“The FBI Newark, NJ State Police, and NJ Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness are asking for the public to report any information related to the recent sightings of possible drones flying in several areas along the Raritan River,” a Dec. 3 FBI statement noted.
The Federal Aviation Administration even issued temporary flight restrictions after the large number of sightings, prohibiting drone flights over parts of New Jersey.
“It clearly had taken a dark turn where people had gotten really anxious about what might be in the sky above their houses or above their heads,” Dr. Will Austin, a national drone expert and the president of Warren County Community College, told Fox News Digital.
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However, an FBI official later said that of the roughly 5,000 tips they received related to reported drone sightings, “less than 100 leads have been generated and deemed worthy of further investigative activity.”
In mid-December, a DHS official said they’re “confident that many of the reported drone sightings are, in fact, manned aircraft being misidentified as drones,” ABC News reported.
An analysis by the White House, in coordination with the FBI and state and local officials, concluded that “lawful, legal, commercial hobbyist and even law enforcement aircraft activity” was responsible for the sightings, former White House national security communications adviser John Kirby previously told Fox News.
“A lot of people have kind of learned in the last few months . . . that there are a lot of things in the airspace that can be mistaken for drones,” Tom Adams, a retired FBI special agent and the director of public safety for DroneShield, a global provider of counter-drone defense solutions, told Fox News Digital.
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When the word of drone sightings quickly spread throughout social media and across major news outlets, Adams said he witnessed some “confirmation bias” taking place in relation to the large number of sightings.
“Some of my friends and relatives that are really into the UAP phenomena . . . the unknown aerial phenomena . . . they really wanted it to be drones or aliens, because it fit their narrative,” he said.
Adams believes one of the main reasons why so many mistaken sightings were made could be as simple as a lack of knowledge.
“I think that some people were just looking up to see what’s in the airspace for the first time,” he said. “Drones are still new to a lot of people, and so the rules and regulations for drone use in the United States are also unfamiliar to a lot of people, because they haven’t had a need to learn that or experience that.”
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Adams explained that, especially at night, it’s easy to mistake another aircraft in the sky for a drone.
“Many drones have white, red and green lights . . . aircrafts at night have white, red and green lights…other things in the sky, whether it’s a celestial body or a low-Earth orbit satellite, they also have white lights,” he said. “During the daytime, when you look up at an aircraft in the sky . . . you can also see other features that help you to understand the depth or the distance is away from you . . . you don’t have that depth perception at night.”
Austin attributed the misidentifying of drones in the dark sky to the “parallax effect,” explaining, “It is extraordinarily tricky at night . . . to identify aircraft, especially when you’re untrained. The reason people have a hard time is there’s really nothing against the night sky to give you perspective.”
Both Adams and Austin said they believe that further public education about drones is needed and may help in reducing the number of erroneous sightings.
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As the government, according to President Trump, continues to investigate the first inundation of drone sightings, Austin believes that the public is about to see another major influx of sightings due to a change in the firmware of a major drone manufacturer.
“There has been a significant development,” Austin said, adding that DJI, a Chinese-based manufacturer for many of the drones registered in the United States, changed its firmware this month to remove its built-in geofencing feature, which blocked flight in restricted areas.
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“If you were flying a DJI drone . . . and you came to an airport . . . the manufacturer had put a kind of an invisible barrier around the border at the airports. Your drone would stop flying. That all ended on Jan. 13. Now it’s up to the individual user or each pilot to be in control,” Austin explained.
“I’m predicting you’re going to see a lot of drone incursions . . . that’smy biggest fear now.”
DJI told Fox News Digital that it “remains committed to promoting safe and responsible flying practices. The recent GEO update aligns with the principle advanced by aviation regulators around the globe – including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) – that operators are responsible for complying with rules.”
Drone operators will now see official FAA airspace data on where they can and can’t fly, DJI added, and will receive in-app warnings if they are flying near FAA-designated controlled airspace.
The company also said that it voluntarily implemented geofencing in 2013, and noted that the FAA now has Remote ID requirements that serve as the equivalent of a “license plate” for drones.
The FAA told Fox News Digital that its role is to ensure that drones operate safely within the broader National Airspace System, and that it does not require geofencing from drone manufacturers.
The agency noted that it is generally legal to fly a drone in most locations, as long as it’s flown under 400 feet, but there are rules — including obtaining property airspace authorization, safety tests, keeping the drone in sight, avoiding all other aircraft, not causing a hazard to any people or property and avoiding restricted airspace.
RFK Jr reveals his plan to treat one of the nation’s foremost health crises
While President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been scrutinized over his views on vaccines, farming, abortion and more, his perspective on treating one of the nation’s foremost health crises has received far less attention.
Before joining Trump’s team, Kennedy campaigned for president on a plan to treat addiction by creating “wellness farms” funded by tax revenues from federally legalized marijuana sales. “I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go and get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also legal drugs,” Kennedy said at a virtual event during his campaign, billed as a “Latino Town Hall.”
Kennedy himself struggled with addiction when he was younger, including to cocaine and heroin, which he has spoken about publicly. He has heralded his faith and commitment to Alcoholic’s Anonymous’s 12 Step-program as his saving grace. Kennedy is a strong proponent of clean living as well, and said that the addiction treatment wellness farms he imagines would also treat people who are trying to get off anti-depressants, or other medications like those for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
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Wellness farms are not an entirely novel idea. They are based on a framework known as a “therapeutic community” model, which relies heavily on peer-to-peer support and behavioral solutions for addiction, as compared to medication-based treatment strategies like methadone or buprenorphine therapy, which work to cut out the intense cravings from opioids, to which addicts often attribute relapses. Many in the medical community, including researchers at the National Institutes of Health, consider such medication-assisted treatment to be the gold standard in addiction treatment.
AA also warns against the use of medications like buprenorphine to treat addiction.
Kennedy actually visited two places that align with this framework for a documentary he created about the crisis of addiction while he was running for president, titled “Recovering America – A Film About Healing Our Addiction Crisis.” Their addiction treatment framework, like Kennedy’s wellness farms, includes a focus on peer-to-peer recovery through giving addicts jobs and re-teaching them how to live in society without drugs. Kennedy has said that at his rehabilitation farms, addicts would grow organic crops, receive training in trade skills, and learn other ways to live in society without using illicit drugs.
One of the programs that Kennedy visited in his documentary about treating addiction was also a farm, where men learn how to tend to livestock, operate tractors and repair barns. Their days also consist of meditation, 12-step meetings and yoga, but addicts must go off-site to receive therapy and are not allowed to take any medications, like anti-depressants or buprenorphine.
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The program, called Simple Promise Farms, is located in rural Texas. Simple Promise does not staff licensed therapists or medical providers on site, according to The New York Times, which spoke with the program’s founder, Brandon Guinn.
Guinn told The New York Times that it is these peer-to-peer conversations where “the important work is being done . . . not with your therapist or your sponsor or your mentor, but from the shared experience of people that are struggling with addiction.”
Keith Humphreys, a psychologist and drug policy expert at Stanford University, said that while there is nothing wrong with “therapeutic community” models, he questioned the exclusion of evidence-based treatments that have been proven to help people get off harmful, addictive drugs like heroin.
“Given how much is known, more than what’s being described is almost like [an] 18th-century kind of retreat. Given how much has been learned about the nature of the condition, about the things you can do with psychotherapy, the things you can do with medicine, why not have that? Why would you not want that?” Humphries asked.
“It’s not that it wouldn’t benefit anybody,” Humphries added. He noted that the complex nature of addiction is challenging to address without modern treatment advancements and suggested that city dwellers may lack the desire or resources to relocate to distant farms for treatment.
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Humphries said that programs that refuse patients who take anti-depressants or other medications are actually quite common in the U.S. He pointed to a program that the federal government set up in the 1930s in Lexington, Kentucky, that followed this model, but also pointed out that its success rates were low.
“George Vaillant did a study of 400 consecutive admissions [to the Lexington program], and 400 of them relapsed afterwards,” Humphries pointed out. “So that, of course, we know a lot more than we did then. So, why not take advantage of that?”
Humphries also posited that Kennedy’s plan to fund the program through revenues from legal marijuana would be such a bureaucratic hurdle that it would be a difficult and long process to get these programs off the ground. “There’s like 500 practical steps and barriers in between all that, that I just don’t think this is going to happen,” Humphries said.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Kennedy’s representatives for comment, in particular on his view about medically assisted treatment therapies, but did not receive a response by press time.
One of Trump’s early fulfilled promises already saved $420 million in taxpayer funds
FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump’s executive order terminating all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs has already sidelined 395 government bureaucrats, a senior administration official told Fox News Digital.
Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed up by Elon Musk, wrote on X Friday that approximately $420 million in current/impending contracts, mainly focused on DEI initiatives, had also been canceled.
After Trump signed the order on the day of his inauguration, the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) notified heads of agencies and departments that they must begin taking steps to close all DEI offices by the end of the day Wednesday, and place government workers in those offices on paid leave. It is not yet clear when or if they will be terminated.
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Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management Charles Ezell sent a memo to heads and acting heads of departments and agencies on Tuesday evening directing them that by the end of business on Jan. 22, they were to inform all agency employees of the DEI shutdown. In addition, they were instructed to tell workers directly involved in DEI they were being placed on paid leave immediately, take down all DEI-related websites and social media accounts, cancel any related contracts or training, and ask employees to report any efforts to disguise DEI programs by using coded or imprecise language.
The memo also directed the heads of agencies and departments that by noon on Jan. 23, they were to provide OPM with lists of all DEI offices, employees, and related contracts in effect as of Nov. 5, 2024.
By Friday, Jan. 24, at 5 p.m., agency heads were required to submit to OPM a written plan for executing a reduction-in-force action regarding DEI employees and a list of all contract descriptions or personnel position descriptions that were changed since Nov. 5, 2024, to obscure their connection to DEI programs.
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The executive order was among dozens Trump signed on his first day in office, including the government only recognizing two genders and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.
He also issued two other executive actions on Tuesday targeting DEI – an executive order to end discrimination in the workplace and higher education through race and sex-based preferences under the guise of DEI and a memo to eliminate a Biden administration policy that prioritized DEI hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration.
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Trump’s Monday executive order rescinded President Joe Biden’s one on promoting diversity initiatives, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” which he signed on his first day in office.
New CIA chief resurfaces old report, torches liberals’ talking point
The CIA has changed its assessment on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, now favoring the lab leak theory. Under its new director, John Ratcliffe, the agency released an assessment on the origins of COVID-19.
The review was ordered by former President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan toward the end of Biden’s time in office.
Analysts made the assessment with “low confidence” despite former CIA director Bill Burns, who remained agnostic on the origins, telling the agency it needed to look at the existing evidence again and come down on one side or the other.
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The agency has maintained for years it did not have enough intelligence to conclude whether COVID originated in a lab or a wet market in Wuhan, China. Despite the new assessment favoring a lab leak, there was no indication of new evidence.
“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting. CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” a CIA spokesperson told Fox News.
“We have low confidence in this judgment and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s assessment.”
Ratcliffe, who was confirmed Thursday, has long been a proponent of the lab leak theory. In an interview with Breitbart, Ratcliffe framed the assessment of COVID’s origins as part of a broader strategy “addressing the threat from China.”
He also said he wants the CIA to “get off the sidelines” and take a stand.
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In a March 2023 Fox News piece co-written with Cliff Sims, Ratcliffe accused the Biden administration of trying to keep a growing consensus around the lab leak theory quiet by suppressing “what can clearly be assessed from the intelligence they possess.”
He also cast doubt on the notion that the CIA did not have enough evidence to come to a conclusion about the virus’ origins.
“The CIA is the world’s premier spy agency. Its reach is unmatched, its ability to acquire information unrivaled. And yet here we are three-and-a-half years later and there is ample public reporting that the CIA just doesn’t have enough information to make an assessment. This is utter nonsense,” the March 2023 piece says.
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In the same piece, Ratcliffe and Sims dismissed the idea that the virus emerged naturally, claiming there was “a complete absence of intelligence or scientific evidence” pointing to that conclusion.
When he testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in April 2023, Ratcliffe said the lab leak theory was “the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense.”
In 1995, 1996, and 1997, highly rated University of Tennessee football teams quarterbacked by Peyton Manning lost to the highly ranked Florida Gator football teams of Steve Spurrier in three consecutive seasons. Manning’s Volunteers crushed most SEC competition in those three years — Manning would go 39-6 as a starter at Tennessee — but the narrative was set for Manning’s career, he couldn’t win “the big game.” While Manning would go on to win the SEC title in 1997 and become the overall number one pick in the 1998 NFL Draft, none of that mattered as he began his NFL career, the narrative was set — he couldn’t win the big game.
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Entering the NFL, Manning took his Colts to the playoffs in year two, but the Colts lost in the post-season every year before the Super Bowl, often to Tom Brady’s New England Patriots. It wasn’t until his ninth NFL season that Manning’s Colts finally got past Tom Brady’s New England Patriots, and he won his first Super Bowl. For those of us who remember this era, I don’t believe any quarterback has ever been criticized more for failing to win the “big game” than Peyton Manning was from his tenure at Tennessee until he won a Super Bowl with the Colts in the 2006 season.
It was a decade of constant, unrelenting criticism that rained down on Peyton Manning.
But Manning wasn’t the first quarterback to get lambasted for failing to win the big game. It’s a constant refrain in football.
Indeed, Manning took over the mantle of most criticized NFL quarterback from Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway, who was ripped to the high heavens for his own failure to win “the big game” until he ended his Hall of Fame career with two straight Super Bowl titles in 1997 and 1998, just in time for Manning to enter the league.
Since that time, the “big game” mantra has been foisted on a bevy of quarterbacks, Aaron Rodgers and Cam Newton among them. Sometimes guys win, like Rodgers, and remove the attacks. Other times they never do: Cam Newton. And the failure remains an albatross on their shoulders in the post-career ranking of their accomplishments.
In fact, to this day, if you ask most NFL fans who is the greatest quarterback to have never won a Super Bowl title, most would answer former Miami Dolphins Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino.
That’s why I would argue the three most criticized quarterbacks of my life, in order, are Peyton Manning, John Elway, and Dan Marino.
MIAMI GARDENS, FLORIDA – DECEMBER 30: Former Quarterback Peyton Manning looks on prior to the Capital One Orange Bowl between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Clemson Tigers at Hard Rock Stadium on December 30, 2022 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
I begin this column with this historical background because I think it’s very important to consider recent, past history in light of present history. Top quarterbacks, for my entire life as a sports fan, have always been held to a high standard: win Super Bowls or endure unrelenting criticism.
That’s how we measure greatness in the NFL.
That’s why Tom Brady, with his seven Super Bowls, is almost universally considered the greatest quarterback of all-time, and it’s why Patrick Mahomes, with three Super Bowls at present, is almost universally considered the greatest quarterback playing today.
Now you can argue that’s an unfair standard, but the ultimate test of NFL quarterback greatness is Super Bowl victories.
Lamar Jackson Is Not Discriminated Against.
Presently, the four best quarterbacks in the NFL are: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow. You can argue someone else is one of the four best quarterbacks in the NFL, but I believe you’d be incorrect. These are the modern day top four in most football fan opinions, including my own. Of these four quarterbacks, Patrick Mahomes has two MVPs and Lamar Jackson has two MVPs. No other quarterback playing today has won an NFL MVP except for Aaron Rodgers, who has three MVPs, and one Super Bowl win.
I write all of this as a prelude to my primary argument, because I think it’s important to contextualize the modern history of the NFL and rebut narratives that have been allowed to take root and be accepted as truths: foremost among them that black quarterbacks in the NFL are still discriminated against, particularly Lamar Jackson.
It’s just flat out untrue, and it unnecessarily divides sports fans to argue this.
In fact, I think this argument is 100% a manufactured race baiting tactic that has been deployed on social media by racially divisive sports media figures in order to advance their own careers and divide sports fans into identity politics categories.
I have a radical idea. The best possible thing we should do is hold every athlete, regardless of race, to the exact same standards of criticism and analysis.
I’m writing this today because I think it’s important to actually slam the door once and for all on this narrative and demonstrate how untrue it really is.
I hope every football fan reading this today, regardless of your racial background, will read this with an open mind.
So here we go.
As a prelude, I’m not arguing that racism against black quarterbacks hasn’t existed at some point in time in football, in the pre-Civil Rights era it certainly did, and in the 1970s and 1980s, it was still a factor when it came to opportunities, but for those of you around my own age or younger, that was born around 1980 and later, it absolutely, positively has not existed.
What’s more, claiming it has existed actually ignores an incredible fact. Football has actually helped lead the charge to triumph over racism.
(Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
A bit of biography here before I continue further. The first quarterback I ever remember cheering for of any race was Tony Robinson, the University of Tennessee’s starting quarterback in the 1985 SEC championship season. Robinson happened to be black, but I thought nothing of it. The color I cared about the most was orange, the bright orange on his Tennessee jersey. In 1988, Doug Williams, playing in one of the first Super Bowls I remember watching on TV in its entirety, won a title for the Washington Redskins, beating John Elway and the Denver Broncos. Throughout my young life as a football fan, black quarterbacks played everywhere in college football, and in 1998, Tee Martin won a national title for my favorite college team, the Tennessee Volunteers, and in 1999, Steve McNair took my favorite NFL team to the Super Bowl, the Tennessee Titans.
I don’t remember ever hearing a debate about black quarterbacks or their ability to win at the highest level throughout my entire life.
I understand that people who are a generation older than me had a different experience, but I never even saw or heard this argument emerge until social media took root around 2014 and the race baiters dragged us all back into the past, ignoring all the progress that had actually happened to football.
I’m going to return to the social media era in a moment, but first let me hit you with this stat.
Since 1999, There Have Been 28 Black Quarterbacks Drafted In The First Round.
28!
That’s a ton of first round black quarterbacks.
In fact, let me return to that 1999 draft, when this trend really took root, for a moment. I think it’s one of the most significant moments in NFL history and I haven’t heard anyone really talk about it very much.
The 1999 draft happened a long time ago now — even though, to be fair, 1999 seems like recent history to me.
But it’s been a full quarter-century since that draft, 26 years, a long time, certainly, in the world of sports.
Why do I point to 1999 as an important line of demarcation? Because that’s when three black quarterbacks were drafted in the first 11 picks: Donovan McNabb was the second overall pick, Akili Smith was the third pick, and Daunte Culpepper was the 11th pick.
That year was very significant because in 1999, a full 26 years ago, the same number of black quarterbacks went in the first round that year than had ever been drafted in the first round in the history of the NFL to that point. (Doug Williams was a first round draft pick in 1978, Andre Ware in 1990, and Steve McNair in 1995.)
So 26 years ago, NFL teams decided to invest its most important draft capital — first round picks and the commensurate money, fame and attention that comes with that — on black quarterbacks.
And they haven’t looked back for an instant since.
The glass ceiling for quarterbacks, for all intents and purposes, was shattered on that day in 1999.
26 years ago!
Yet how many of you even knew that 1999 stat, that in that draft alone the same number of first round black quarterbacks were drafted as in the entire history of the NFL?
I would argue you don’t know, because in 1999 most people were focused on something other than race, we mostly, as a society, believed race relations were good and getting better and that everyone’s opportunities for success in the country were growing.
In 2001, Mike Vick became the first black quarterback to be drafted number one overall, and since then Vince Young, the first quarterback taken, third pick overall, in 2006, JaMarcus Russell the first pick in 2007, Cam Newton, the first pick in 2011, Jameis Winston first pick in 2015, Kyler Murray first pick in 2019 and in 2023 black quarterbacks went first, Bryce Young, second, CJ Stroud, and fourth, Anthony Richardson. Finally, in 2024, Caleb Williams went first overall and Jayden Daniels went second overall.
It’s not just that black quarterbacks have been highly drafted and highly paid, it’s that it has become so commonplace that most sports fans don’t even think about race when it comes to quarterbacks at all.
Far from being a huge cultural moment for black quarterbacks, as many sports media argued in 2023, in reality, the 2023 draft, which featured three highly ranked first round quarterbacks, was actually a mirror image of the 1999 draft, which also featured three black quarterbacks in the first 11 picks, nearly a quarter-century before.
Oct 27, 2024; Houston, Texas, USA; Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson (5) reacts after the game against the Houston Texans at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-Imagn Images
Yet you heard sports media extolling that 2023 draft as historic.
Historic?!
NFL history was actually made in 1999 when three black quarterbacks were drafted in the top 11 picks.
That was when the NFL turned a page and made a dramatic leap into the future, when the seeds of Doug Williams, Randall Cunningham and Warren Moon’s successes were fully realized.
And it’s not just the draft. Right now, the highest paid quarterbacks in the NFL are mostly black too.
Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, Deshaun Watson, Kyler Murray and Patrick Mahomes are all making in the neighborhood of $50 million a year to play football.
Good for them, that’s how the meritocracy in American sports works. Those with the most talent make the most money.
Even, sometimes, way more money than their talent would actually suggest they should make.
Witness Deshaun Watson. Fresh off over 30 sexual assault allegations, he signed a contract with the Cleveland Browns a few years ago that guaranteed him $230 million, the most any player at that time had ever received guaranteed to ever play football. Sure, the Cleveland Browns and their fans regret the decision now, but only because Watson has been a bust. Far from being discriminated against, black quarterbacks in the NFL are being paid more than anyone has ever received to play the game of football.
Quarterbacks Rule The NFL, Regardless Of Race.
Indeed, if you really want to criticize NFL fans and teams, the argument isn’t that the league is racist, it’s that if you’re good at playing quarterback, you can get away with almost anything off the field.
I’m not sure how many people will answer honestly, but if you told your average NFL fan that his team’s star quarterback would be accused of domestic violence, but also play in the Super Bowl the same season, I think most NFL fans would sign up for that trade off.
And, guess what, as black quarterbacks have become some of the best in the league, TV ratings have skyrocketed.
It turns out the vast majority of sports fans just want to watch the best players, they don’t care about race at all.
Given all these actual facts laid out above, how is it that so many have become convinced that the NFL is racist, that the NFL is discriminating against black quarterbacks?
I’ll tell you, it’s all a false narrative that many are afraid to attack, especially white guys in sports media, of whom there are many. (Here’s the truth, if you’re a white guy fortunate enough to make a living writing or talking about sports, do you really want to risk your job by arguing about anything race related with someone black? Probably not. So false narratives become accepted truth. No one is willing to put themselves out there and rebut these arguments.)
But the false NFL is racist against black quarterbacks narrative really took flight with the rise of social media, often populated by very young people without much historical knowledge, and a cabal of race baiters, often black, who seized on one story as evidence of their accusation: Lamar Jackson was being racially discriminated against because he was a black quarterback.
This all began at the NFL combine when some scouts doubted Lamar’s ability to play quarterback at the NFL level.
In particular, at least one scout said Lamar’s accuracy at quarterback was so bad that he should consider playing another position, wide receiver.
The race baiters in sports media leaped to attention — THIS WAS DOGWHISTLIING RACISM they all argued in unison. HOW DARE ANYONE SUGGEST LAMAR JACKSON WASN’T A QUARTERBACK? HE WON THE HEISMAN TROPHY! RACISM! RACISM! RACISM! RACISM!
This, of course, also happened at the height of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee for the national anthem and the Black Lives Matter cultural ascendancy, which made combating the argument in public career suicide, especially for white media members, but was it really racist for (some) scouts to suggest another position for a Heisman trophy winning quarterback? Was Lamar Jackson really being treated that differently?
Of course not.
How do we know this?
Because two other Heisman trophy winning WHITE quarterbacks had received the same criticisms when they showed up for the NFL combine: Eric Crouch and Tim Tebow.
In fact, let’s talk about former Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch, who most sports fans don’t even remember at this point. Crouch, the Heisman trophy winning quarterback, WAS ACTUALLY DRAFTED AS A WIDE RECEIVER IN 2002!
Crouch wanted to play quarterback, but was seen as being too small and not having ideal arm strength. But he was so athletic that teams were willing to consider him at other positions. As a result, Crouch was taken number 95 overall as a wide receiver. Crouch never played quarterback in the NFL, and even switched positions from wide receiver to safety in an effort to make it in the NFL.
YES, NFL TEAMS PUT A HEISMAN TROPHY QUARTERBACK ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BALL.
A Heisman Trophy Winner At Safety In The NFL!
Nearly twenty years before Lamar Jackson got to the NFL combine!
Again, many of you don’t know this story at all, but was this racism against Eric Crouch? Or did scouts just not believe his talents transferred to the NFL game?
But it’s not just Crouch.
Nearly a decade later Tim Tebow, another running quarterback, left the Florida Gators, having also won the Heisman trophy, and many teams didn’t see him as a quarterback and wanted him to play tight end in the NFL instead.
Tebow insisted he was a quarterback and was drafted late in the first round, 25th overall, by the Denver Broncos in 2010.
But no one treated Tebow being asked to play another position as a racial indignity.
And Tebow, like Crouch, didn’t make it in the NFL as a starting quarterback.
Fast-forward eight years from Tebow’s draft class, Lamar Jackson, having just won the Heisman trophy as an athletic running quarterback, enters the NFL combine. Some scouts question whether he can play the position, just as they had questioned Eric Crouch and Tim Tebow as well, both Heisman trophy winners with athletic running backgrounds as quarterbacks in college football.
Suddenly, it was a racist question according to almost everyone in sports media.
But why?
The race baiters ascended on social media and many young people online, quite simply, have the sports memories of goldfish. Michael Vick might as well have been Kenny Stabler to them. And, honestly, I don’t blame these young sports fans because, if you’re being honest, you were the same way when you were young. Any athlete that pre-dated your memory was ancient history. But I do blame the adults, the people who knew better, the sports fans of my generation knew this was all absurd.
Yet almost no one would combat the narrative on social media that the NFL was racist against black quarterbacks.
It didn’t matter that NFL teams had drafted black quarterbacks number one overall in four recent drafts, it didn’t matter that as far back as 1999, three different black NFL quarterbacks had gone in the top 11, questioning whether Lamar Jackson was an NFL quarterback was a racist dog whistle.
Soon this idea was trending everywhere.
And many came to believe it was true.
The NFL being racist against black quarterbacks suddenly became the number one story of the 2018 NFL draft. As Lamar Jackson waited for his name to be called, the narrative was that every team that passed on him was racist. It didn’t matter that Aaron Rodgers had waited forever to hear his name called too, EVERYONE WAS RACIST IN THE NFL BECAUSE LAMAR WASN’T DRAFTED YET.
News flash, AT LEAST ONE SCOUT DOESN’T BELIEVE IN EVERY NFL QUARTERBACK EVERY YEAR.
We all know this.
This has always been the case, it will always be the case. Picking quarterbacks is hard, forecasting quarterback greatness is difficult. No one, not even the most brilliant NFL prognosticators alive, are good at it.
Race Has Nothing To Do With It.
Indeed, if every NFL team was racist, guess what? Simply by being the un-racist NFL team you’d win way more. The best thing that could happen to your favorite team is for everyone else to be racist and your team not to be. Because racism would lead to black players being undervalued, your team could draft them, and you’d win more often.
But this is rational, and how people who understand basic market economics think.
The reality is, the NFL is hyper-competitive and everyone copies everyone who wins in an effort to win themselves.
Regardless, back to the 2018 draft.
After all this racism, do you know where Lamar Jackson ended up being drafted?
IN THE FIRST ROUND BY THE BALTIMORE RAVENS!
The first round!
Sure it was the very last pick in the first round, but it was still the freaking first round. After all the racism accusations against the NFL, Lamar Jackson was drafted in the first round at quarterback.
Do you know where Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback in the history of the game, was drafted?
The sixth round!
Were NFL teams racist against Tom Brady or did they just project him poorly?
I think you know the answer.
After all this narrative, Lamar Jackson was a first round pick.
And he’s been a great pick for the Baltimore Ravens.
He’s won two MVPs, he’s gone to the playoffs as a high seed a ton. But, guess what? He’s been a disappointment in the playoffs, only winning three total games while losing five games in seven seasons as a starting quarterback. Yet Lamar Jackson, potentially next week, may have as many NFL MVP awards, three, as he does playoff wins.
Plus, Lamar’s making over fifty million a year playing football.
As I mentioned above, he’s one of the four best quarterbacks in the league, but he’s not being discriminated against based on his race at all.
Not remotely.
If anything, he’s the most overpraised quarterback relative to playoff success in the NFL today.
No other quarterback in NFL history has ever won multiple MVPs without winning a single Super Bowl.
ORCHARD PARK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 19: Lamar Jackson #8 of the Baltimore Ravens carries the ball during the first half of an NFL football divisional playoff game against the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium on January 19, 2025 in Orchard Park, New York. (Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images)
Given these circumstances, you would expect that Lamar Jackson would be ripped to high heaven for not winning the big game, just like Peyton Manning was early in his career.
Yet I would argue that, so far, Lamar Jackson has gotten nowhere near the criticism that Peyton Manning did.
Why?
Because far from discriminating against him, many are afraid to criticize Jackson aggressively because they think they’ll be called racist.
But, guess what, it’s not racist to want to hold Lamar Jackson to the same standards as Peyton Manning, John Elway or Dan Marino, it’s actually what we should be doing. With great talent comes great responsibility (to win).
Ask Spider-Man.
Now I hope Lamar Jackson gets to a Super Bowl and wins it one year, because personally, I’d rather have multiple teams winning Super Bowls than all of them go to the Brady’s and Mahomes’s of the world.
But any criticism of Lamar Jackson isn’t racist, it’s just what comes with high salaries and high talent.
Hell, and it’s not just the NFL either.
Does anyone remember how savage the critics were against LeBron for not winning a title? Lamar Jackson hasn’t gotten a pinprick of the criticism LeBron did before his first title. And do you know who else used to get ripped to the high heavens for not winning titles and flaming out in the post-season?
MICHAEL JORDAN!
People used to say Jordan was great in the regular season, but that he’d never win a title because he couldn’t win the big games.
Go back and watch the great Bulls documentary, “The Last Dance,” the criticism really got to Jordan, it drove him to greatness. He was still bitter about it decades later.
And it’s not just team sports either. Does anybody remember how ripped to shreds Phil Mickelson used to get for his failure to win majors?
Pressure is a privilege. So is criticism. You don’t criticize people who don’t matter, you don’t put pressure on people who never play in big games.
Don’t Miss The Message Within The Sport.
Okay, so some of you might be asking yourselves, why does all of this matter, why did I feel compelled to write this article?
Because sports are the ultimate meritocracy. The best man or the best woman wins. (Not the best man pretending to be a woman). It doesn’t matter if your mom and dad are rich or poor, if your school is big or small, the scoreboard starts at 0-0, everyone is equal between the lines.
America would be a far better place if it was more like sports and less like politics.
What I saw happen in the last decade was the race baiters in sports media working to divide us all. They ignored the excellent history of the NFL in expanding opportunity to all regardless of background, and tried to argue the league was racist, that it was something it wasn’t. They ignored the progress and the history.
They pretended the 1999 draft never happened.
They believed that sports should be defined not by merit and excellence, but by the color of our skin, that all wasn’t actually equal, that identity politics should take over sports like it took over the country.
And they used Lamar Jackson’s draft criticism to do it, to drag us all from a meritocratic present to a racist past.
And I also love that Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen, two quarterbacks that many in the sports media recently tried to pit against each other based on their race, seem to be genuine fans of one another. As they should be. They are two of the best at doing something that almost no one can do well.
Now I don’t know Lamar Jackson at all.
I really like to watch him play though.
Why?
Because he’s a fabulous talent on the field.
But also because I know he busts his ass off the field and I respect that immensely.
In fact, Lamar embodies a work ethic I try to instill in my own three boys. See, Lamar often trains in a t-shirt with a fabulous message on it: “Nobody cares, work harder.”
Man, I love that message.
As soon I saw the video of him working out in that t-shirt, I showed it to my kids. I wanted them to learn from his example.
Because the truth is this, in this social media world we all live in, every single one of us has doubters, every single one of us has haters, all of us have critics.
Just look at the comments on any post.
But what if we all just took Lamar’s advice: “Nobody cares, work harder,” and applied it to our own lives?
Wouldn’t the nation be way better off?
Look, playing quarterback is the hardest position in all of sports.
Almost no one does it very well on a consistent basis.
And every sports fan, black, white, Asian and Hispanic, should be celebrating those who do it well no matter what their backgrounds might be.
In the meantime, I just spent $45,000 on four PSL’s for a brand new Tennessee Titans stadium.
I just hope my own team can find a decent quarterback again so I want to go watch the games and not feel like I’m getting robbed with what the tickets cost for my family.
Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, all I care about is winning.
If there’s a trans midget out there who can win my Titans a Super Bowl, I will be ecstatic.
But in the meantime, I feel like sports fans have been cheated out of all embracing Lamar Jackson because we let him be defined by race baiting sports media buffoons who want to drag us all back into the past instead of letting us all advance together into a meritocratic future.
In the end, most of us are fans of sports because we want to believe in excellence, and we want to celebrate it. And if you’re a dad like me, you know that most of our kids are not going to play sports for a living, most of us will never live to hear the roar of what it feels like to run out onto the field or court of a big game.
But all of us, hopefully, can learn to apply the lessons of sports to our life’s pursuit in other endeavors.
And I’ll tell you this, I’m not sure if there’s a better lesson for kids in America today than, “Nobody cares, work harder.”
Thanks for that, Lamar, and good luck to you going forward playing against everyone except for my awful, pathetic, very sad Tennessee Titans.
I’m long past ready for the next Steve McNair to lead my own favorite team to the Super Bowl again.
NFL great on why fans believe games are ‘rigged’ after Patrick Mahomes controversy
NFL legend Champ Bailey was among those glued to the television when he saw the controversial penalties called on the Houston Texans during their playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Patrick Mahomes drew two penalties that had the entire NFL world talking on Saturday and nearly drew a third as he was accused of flopping out of bounds on the sidelines as the Chiefs drove down the field.
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Bailey, a former Denver Broncos and then-Washington Redskins star cornerback, was upset with the penalty flags on the two plays, particularly the one in which Mahomes tried to slide at the last minute before he was met by two Texans defenders. Houston linebacker Henry To’oTo’o was called for unnecessary roughness on the play.
“It’s like everything else. They review everything,” he said. “So, when they’re able to go back and look at these type of plays, like the play I think you’re referring to on [Saturday] when he drops to the ground and then the guys go over him, don’t even hit him, but they appear to. You should be able to review that [on] some level and say, well, that wasn’t as egregious as we thought in real time, because those things change the trajectory of the game. You really change the outcome now.
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“Defenders are hesitant to hit him, but here he is. He’s dancing around, toying around with the guys and making it seem like he’s the runner and then drops down, and now he’s protected like a quarterback. Once you’re outside of the pocket, man, it’s fair game. I don’t know why he’s protected when he’s outside of the pocket the way he was, because if he was the running back and did the same thing, do you think they throw the flag? No, they don’t.”
Bailey, who spoke to Fox News Digital on behalf of his partnership with cannabis company Trulieve, said he’s started to empathize with fans who think NFL games are supposedly “rigged” or favor Mahomes in some way.
All he’s asking for is some consistency.
“So, let’s be consistent in that way, and when you get it wrong, try to get it right,” Bailey said. “I think the more they can get calls right in real time, the integrity increases in the game and people start to believe that the games aren’t fixed.
“I don’t feel like the games are fixed because I was in it, but when I’m sitting here every year – I’m out of the league – the more and more I start believing what the fans are saying about the games being ‘fixed,’ because you see things like this happen over and over, so they just got to figure out a way to get the calls right and live with it.”
Mahomes said Wednesday he didn’t believe officials favored the Chiefs.
“I just try to play football at the end of the day. The referees are doing their best to call the game as fair and proper as best they can,” Mahomes said. “For me, it’s go out there, play hard, try to do whatever I can to win the football game and then live with the results based on my effort and how I play the game, and that’s what we preach here in Kansas City.”
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Kansas City meets the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship on Sunday.
Daughter joins friend’s family on vacation — but the bill lands in unexpected hands
A mom writing on Reddit shared an unusual experience. She said her daughter was invited to join a friend on a family vacation to Costa Rica — but when her daughter returned, the mom was presented with a bill for the travel expenses from the other family.
The confused mother turned to social media to find out whether her shock over the situation was warranted.
On the social media platform, the mother wrote, “OK, so my daughter (16) went to Costa Rica with a friend and her parents & grandparents. I assumed they would only charge us for her food and activities like ziplining. Nope. They are asking for a portion of her accommodations and car rental as well.”
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Bewildered, the mother wondered on Reddit whether being invited meant that the basic costs of the trip were going to be covered by the parents of her friend.
The mom wrote, “Why on earth did I assume she was tagging along?”
She went on to share that she’s hosted other people’s children in a similar way — and thought that was the protocol.
“That’s what we did for my other daughter’s friend two years ago,” the mother continued.
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The mom appeared surprised by the hefty bill of charges she was presented with from the other family.
“I would never dream of charging so much when I was going [on a trip] anyway!”
Rather than cause a stir, the mother said she’s likely going to pay the tab to smooth things over and be done with it.
“We have the money, so this [isn’t going to] break me,” she wrote.
She said she wanted to handle the matter peacefully with the parents of her daughter’s friend.
“I just want to have a conversation,” added the diplomatic mom.
The Reddit community sounded off about her quandary.
“Lesson learned to talk about stuff ahead of time.”
A commenter named “Illustrious-Award-55” said it was not usual to be presented with a bill, but agreed with the mother’s decision to step up.
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“I think it’s weird to do that after the fact,” the person wrote.
“Lesson learned to talk about stuff ahead of time. The parent should just pay the bill and move on.”
Other commenters shared the philosophy of thanking the family for taking the child and paying back any expenses the family is seeking.
And the next time her daughter is “invited” on a family trip — people said she should turn down the invite.
“Pay it,” user “Consistent_Pay_74” wrote on the woman’s post.
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“Repeat your thanks for taking her and never allow her to do such a trip with ‘not family’ again,” this person wrote.
“Stay gracious but know that they’ve shown you who they are — and you should believe them. Tacky!”
Fox News Digital reached out to an etiquette expert about the issue.
To ensure that there’s clarity about money matters — and because there will be costs associated with a family taking another child along — the best course of action is to speak up about expectations, an expert said.
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“If there are going to be costs, the host should make it clear up front,” said Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert and owner of the Protocol School of Texas in San Antonio.
She said an invitation is different than a vacation.
“Regarding the mother’s conundrum, some proactive discussions would have been a better route,” said Gottsman.
“Assumptions are dangerous,” she also said. “This girl’s parent or guardian would have been better served to ask what expenses [she] would be responsible for covering.”
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But she also said the host family should have been more forthcoming about their intentions as well.
“They could ask for airfare in advance and help with accommodations and food, but a car rental is a stretch,” said Gottsman.
She said the most effective and polite way to address an invite from a friend’s family is to say, “Thank you for the invitation. What costs would we need to cover?”
The truth behind why parents allow their children to invite a friend on a trip isn’t a secret, said Gottsman.
“Usually, parents bring along a kid’s friend to make the trip more pleasurable for their own child. And, paying for some or all the expenses is not unusual,” she said.
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And while the issue of asking a friend’s parents to cover some of the costs is OK — timing matters.
“Budgets are different, but a host does not ask after the fact for money unless it was clearly communicated in advance,” Gottsman told Fox News Digital.
“The moral of the story is never assume anything when expenses are involved.”
Another important matter: Parents of the invited child should give their children a sum of money for any extras.
“When you send your child off with another family, even if the other family has offered to cover most of the costs, it’s important to send enough spending money with your children so they can offer to pay their own way for particular activities, buy a treat or dessert for themselves and the other family members, or have spending money for souvenirs,” Gottsman said.
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“You want to make sure your child feels comfortable and has some spending money in their wallet for an unexpected emergency.”
Feeling extra tired? Virus at center of COVID pandemic may be the culprit, study suggests
People who have had COVID-19 are more likely to develop chronic fatigue syndrome, officially known as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
That’s according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine earlier this month, which found that 4.5% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, developed chronic fatigue.
In comparison, only 0.6% of study participants who did not have COVID developed the second condition.
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The researchers determined that cases of ME/CFS were 15 times higher than pre-pandemic levels.
“As a researcher dedicated to understanding how viral infections lead to chronic illness, I suspected from the beginning of the pandemic that SARS-CoV2 could trigger ME/CFS, so these results are not surprising,” said lead study author Suzanne D. Vernon, PhD, from the Bateman Horne Center in Salt Lake City.
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The study was part of the National Institute of Health’s RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) program, which aims to better understand, prevent and treat long COVID, according to an NIH press release.
The study included 11,785 participants. At least six months after they were infected with COVID, researchers assessed whether they had developed chronic fatigue. They then compared those results to 1,439 people who did not have COVID.
“There are no specific tests or biomarkers, so ME/CFS is diagnosed when someone has a constellation of specific symptoms,” Vernon told Fox News Digital.
“This study asked participants questions to determine what symptoms they were experiencing, which can be viewed as a limitation but is currently the approach used to diagnose ME/CFS.”
“It’s well-known that chronic fatigue syndrome can occur in the setting of viral infections.”
Dr. Kenneth J. Perry, a physician based in South Carolina, wasn’t surprised by the incidence of chronic fatigue after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
“It’s well-known that chronic fatigue syndrome can occur in the setting of viral infections,” Perry, who was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital.
“Given the fact that SARS-CoV-2 was a novel virus at the time of the pandemic, the incidence and prevalence of such post-infection syndromes was difficult to predict.”
The study does have some limitations when attempting to compare between different viruses, the doctor noted.
“Patients were required to self-report their symptoms,” he said. “This makes the ability to compare symptoms across viruses difficult, as the spotlight on COVID will increase the possibility of selection bias.”
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It’s difficult to specifically determine how chronic fatigue happens in the setting of a viral infection, according to Perry.
“More studies would have to be done to determine the actual underlying pathophysiology of the disease,” he said. “Given that lack of complete understanding, it is difficult to determine how to adequately prevent the syndrome.”
What to know about chronic fatigue
ME/CFS is a “complex, serious and chronic condition that often occurs following an infection,” the NIH wrote.
The condition is marked by “new-onset fatigue” that lasts for at least six months and impairs the person’s ability to engage in ordinary activities.
“There are both physical and psychological components to the syndrome.”
Another symptom is “post-exertional malaise,” in which the person feels extreme fatigue after physical or mental activity, the study stated.
People with ME/CFS may also experience “unrefreshing sleep,” as well as cognitive impairment or dizziness when standing.
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Many of these symptoms are also associated with long COVID, the researchers wrote.
“Chronic fatigue syndrome can be very problematic for patients,” Perry told Fox News Digital. “There are both physical and psychological components of the syndrome.”
Perry reiterated that patients can experience direct fatigue and a decreased ability to do normal activities — and this can also lead to anxiety and depression due to these changes.
“It is very difficult to adequately understand the difference between chronic fatigue syndrome and … underlying psychiatric/psychological health changes,” he said. “This makes it a very difficult disease to explain for patients.”
‘Urgent call to action’
Those experiencing symptoms of chronic fatigue should contact their primary care doctor, Perry advised.
“Having a relationship with a physician who knows your baseline activity level is going to ensure an appropriate evaluation and intervention if there are any changes,” he said.
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“For example, a triathlete who can no longer even stay awake through the entirety of a workday would absolutely be concerning to a physician who knows that patient well. This relationship would also allow for appropriate medications and therapies to be initiated earlier in the process.”
This research underscores an “urgent call to action,” Vernon said — “especially to healthcare providers.”
“The dramatic increase in ME/CFS cases post-COVID-19 means that providers will encounter this condition far more frequently,” she predicted.
The researcher called for early recognition and proper management of ME/CFS, which she said can be “life-changing” for patients.
“We hope this study helps everyone understand that ME/CFS is a real and diagnosable condition that demands attention, especially in the wake of a global pandemic.”