bubba atkinson

Good news for Langston and Rock Creek. Both courses were in limbo; the administration didn't seem to have any interest in them, and no other viable operators were stepping forward. But the effort to transform East Potomac into a high-end major championship venue will continue to be a battle. That vision for the facility would just be so hard to execute — logistically, legally, financially.

News: NLT and the Trump Administration agree on a major deal on DC’s golf courses. NLT will retain control of Rock Creek Park Golf, as NOTUS first reported last week, and Langston. The admin will take over East Potomac and renovate it

Homelessness emerged as one of the sharpest points of disagreement during Wednesday night’s Los Angeles mayoral debate, as Mayor Karen Bass and challengers Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman clashed over how to address the city’s crisis. Pratt, the former reality TV star from The Hills, delivered the debate’s most hardline message, arguing Los Angeles leaders have failed to aggressively confront drug addiction and mental illness on the streets. At one point, Pratt attacked Raman’s homelessness proposals, saying: “I’ll go below the freeway tomorrow with her to find some of these people she’s going to ‘offer treatment’ for. She’s going to get stabbed in the neck. These people don’t want a bed — they want fentanyl.” Bass defended her “Inside Safe” initiative — a city program aimed at moving homeless residents from encampments into temporary housing and services — pointing to declining homelessness numbers and expanded housing production as signs of progress. Raman argued the city’s response remains expensive and poorly coordinated despite massive spending. The exchanges grew increasingly heated, with Raman accusing Bass and Pratt of teaming up because “they want to run against each other” in the general election. Pratt pushed back, saying Bass and he were “definitely not working together” and adding that if he wanted to run against anyone, “it would be the council member who is terrible,” referring to Raman. Under California’s election system, the top two vote-getters during the June primary advance regardless of party, raising the possibility of either a Democrat-versus-Republican or Democrat-versus-Democrat runoff in November.

My speech on the Tennessee House Floor today as our state voted to eliminate Memphis's only majority Black congressional district.

The Free Press still seems to be totally bombing on YouTube. Impressive for a $150 million company.

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.