Chris Pirrone

The Big Lead has always been my daily read for trending sports, media and entertainment updates. I loved working with @jasonrmcintyre and @TheBigLead staff when I managed TBL from 2012-2019. I am excited to rebuild an essential sports media brand! 🚀

🚨BREAKING: Newly obtained documents show a clear paper trail of Trump administration officials planning to share sensitive voter data with an outside political group trying to overturn elections, as part of a secret agreement. democracydocket.com/news-alerts/ex…

Hobby Education: What Smart Buyers Look for Before Buying Cards (Part 1) @SCN_Pod #collectibles si.com/collectibles/h…

Donald Trump has fired the entire National Science Board, all 24 members, all at once. The board was responsible for deciding which scientific projects America should pursue and helping to direct the nation's technological future.

Ashley St. Clair confirmed the WH runs group chats telling these accounts what to post. Within minutes of shots fired tonight, before there was any news of casualties and before the President said this exact talking point, this was the chat in real time.

Five undervalued #nfldraft players, not because of what they cannot do, but because what they do so well lacks the kind of sizzle that drives what goes up on draft boards. Safe is not sexy. It does win games, though. thebiglead.com/stop-overlooki…

JOSH ALLEN WITH THE GREATEST DRUM OF ALL TIME‼️ #LetsGoBuffalo | @BuffaloBills

The Bills have plenty of needs entering the NFL Draft, with many lying on the defensive side of the ball. BUF should focus on these four positions on draft day si.com/nfl/bills/onsi…

I’m not sure it has broken through to the general public that the president is a megalomaniac crazy person. Hopefully posts like this help.

You know what would be amazing if Vance and his team can negotiate an agreement where Iran doesn't enrich above 3.67% (far below weapons grade); gets rid of 98% of its stockpile of enriched uranium; has weekly inspections by the IAEA; keeps the straits open without charging anyone; and commits to all of this for at least ten years. Oh, yeah, that was the Obama Iran deal.

Los Angeles Olympics tickets include a 24% service fee, compared to 1.5% charged for Paris 2024. LA28 told FOS that it accounts for processing and delivering tickets in a manner that will “align with standard industry practices for ticketing live events in the U.S.”

It's a busy day for Wisconsin Badgers news, but Wisconsin football had spring practice No. 5 this morning. - Up-and-down offense - Colton Joseph is going to be fun to watch - A couple of defenders were everywhere Here are my observations and takeaways: si.com/college/wiscon…

This is what I'm talkin' about! This was UCLA John Wooden-style basketball. It makes perfect sense, because John Wooden was UCLA coach Cori Close's mentor. Every other Tuesday for 15 years, Close met with John Wooden.

Fucking outrageous. And highly illegal. "Trump has grifted his entire life. Now he’s just taking it. The State Department transferred $1.25 billion in foreign aid to Trump’s Board of Peace, pulling $1 billion from international disaster assistance, $200 million from peacekeeping operations, and $50 million from international organizations. Money that Congress authorized for hurricanes and refugees, moved without a congressional vote, into a fund that Trump created by executive order and controls personally. When reporters asked the State Department about it, a spokesperson said they had nothing to announce at this time. The Board of Peace has one defining characteristic. Trump controls it forever. He named himself chairman for life. No audits. No transparency requirements. No conflict of interest rules. Countries pay $1 billion into a fund he runs to get a seat at the table. It has transferred nothing to Gaza, disclosed nothing about its spending, and received $1.25 billion of your disaster relief money without a word of explanation. When he leaves the White House he keeps the fund. That is not a loophole. That is the design." He’s Not Grifting Anymore. He’s Just Taking It. open.substack.com/pub/meidastouc…

The US job market just sent a signal it has only sent twice before in modern history. Both times, the economy was already in crisis. The Federal Reserve admitted something last month that almost no one is talking about. After adjusting for statistical overcounting, Jerome Powell said the real number of new private sector jobs being created is effectively zero. The official headlines show hundreds of thousands of jobs added each month. But Powell's own staff says those numbers are inflated by a systematic overcounting error. Strip that out, and the last six months of private sector job creation is a flatline. Now look at what the raw data confirms. The hiring rate fell to 3.1% in February, matching the exact low hit during the COVID pandemic collapse in April 2020. That number has only been lower one other time in modern history in 2008, during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, when it bottomed at 2.8%. We are currently 0.3 percentage points away from a 2008-level hiring collapse. When hiring was last this weak in 2010, the unemployment rate stood at 9.7%. Today it sits at 4.4%. That means the job market is deteriorating in slow motion without the usual warning lights flashing on the dashboard. The traditional indicators are actively masking how serious the breakdown already is. The quits rate just dropped to 1.9%, the lowest level since the pandemic. When workers stop voluntarily leaving their jobs, it means one thing, they are afraid there is nowhere else to go. People do not walk away from jobs in a market where no one is actively hiring. The private sector hiring rate specifically fell to 3.3%, the lowest reading since February 2010. Employers have stopped bringing new people in the door. The economy is not firing workers en masse, but it is quietly refusing to replace them or add new ones. Powell himself described it as a "zero employment growth equilibrium," then added that it "carries a sense of downside risk and lacks a sense of comfort." That is central banker language for, we are genuinely worried and we do not have a clean answer.

Applebaum's piece is worth reading slowly because the specific details are doing work that the summary can't. Danish military commanders - inside a NATO alliance the United States founded - had to sit in a room and war-game whether their forces would shoot down American planes and kill American soldiers. Some of them still haven't fully recovered from running that exercise. The most popular app in Denmark during Applebaum's visit was one that identifies American products so users know not to buy them. NATO has invoked Article 5 exactly once in its history. On behalf of the United States. After September 11th. Allied troops went to Afghanistan and some of them died there. Trump told reporters those allies "stayed a little back, a little off the front lines." The families of soldiers who didn't come back heard that. Now Trump is in the middle of a war in the Persian Gulf with the Strait of Hormuz locked, oil prices spiking, and he's telling NATO allies - the same ones he insulted and tariffed and threatened - that he's "demanding" they come help solve a problem his own decisions helped create. Applebaum's conclusion is precise: he doesn't connect what he does on one day to what happens weeks later. Allied leaders have drawn their conclusions. The rupture, as Mark Carney called it, isn't coming. It already happened.

Trump is seeking to pay for his new $1.5 trillion military budget by cutting the following: $510 million - Grants for farmers and agricultural research $82 million - Loans for rural small businesses (Fully eliminated) $61 million - Support for farmers and food markets (Fully eliminated) $240 million - School meals and food education for children abroad (Fully eliminated) $659 million - Community building grants $47 million - Support for minority-owned businesses (Fully eliminated) $449 million - Economic development grants for communities $1.6 billion - Weather forecasting, fisheries, and coastal protection (NOAA) $993 million - Scientific research and technology standards $150 million - Support for American exports and trade $2.2 billion - Broadband and internet access programs $8.5 billion - Funding for public schools $1.5 billion - Vocational training and adult education (Fully eliminated) $2.7 billion - College access and higher education support $15.2 billion - Roads, bridges, and infrastructure projects $1.1 billion - Home energy efficiency and clean energy programs (Fully eliminated) $1.1 billion - Scientific research funding $386 million - Environmental cleanup programs $150 million - Cutting-edge clean energy research $4 billion - Help paying home heating and cooling bills for low-income families (Fully eliminated) $768 million - Refugee resettlement assistance $819 million - Care and shelter for migrant children $775 million - Local anti-poverty programs (Fully eliminated) $5 billion - Public health programs, mental health services, and disease prevention $5 billion - Medical research (NIH) $129 million - Healthcare quality and safety research $356 million - Emergency preparedness and disaster response $1.3 billion - FEMA community disaster preparedness grants $707 million - Cybersecurity protection for critical infrastructure $52 million - Airport and transportation security $40 million - Protection against chemical and biological weapons threats $53 million - Funding for homeland security operations $3.3 billion - Community development block grants for local neighborhoods (Fully eliminated) $1.3 billion - Affordable housing construction grants (Fully eliminated) $393 million - Programs to reduce homelessness $529 million - Housing assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS (Fully eliminated) $489 million - Housing and services for Native American communities $50 million - Grants to help communities build more housing (Fully eliminated) $60 million - Enforcement of fair housing and anti-discrimination laws $58 million - Homebuyer and renter counseling services (Fully eliminated) $45 million - Renewable energy development programs (Fully eliminated) $1.7 billion - Grants for local law enforcement and public safety $20 million - Civil rights mediation and legal access programs (Fully eliminated) $1.6 billion - Job training for at-risk youth (Fully eliminated) $395 million - Jobs program for low-income seniors (Fully eliminated) $234 million - Worker safety and labor protection programs $101 million - Enforcement of equal pay and workplace anti-discrimination laws $46 million - Programs to combat child labor and forced labor abroad $2 billion - International humanitarian aid $1.2 billion - Food aid for hungry families abroad (Fully eliminated) $4.3 billion - Global health and disease prevention programs $2.7 billion - Funding for the United Nations and international partnerships $642 million - International economic and treasury programs $315 million - Democracy and anti-corruption programs abroad $486 million - Grants for public transit projects $4.2 billion - Electric vehicle charging infrastructure $372 million - Airline service for rural and small communities $145 million - Grants for sustainable and equitable infrastructure $204 million - Loans and investment for underserved communities $1.4 billion - IRS taxpayer services and enforcement $100 million - Air pollution monitoring and reduction programs (Fully eliminated) $1 billion - EPA grants to states for environmental protection $2.5 billion - Clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure funds $90 million - Grants to reduce diesel pollution (Fully eliminated) $3.4 billion - NASA space and earth science research $297 million - NASA technology innovation programs $1.1 billion - International Space Station operations $143 million - STEM education programs $309 million - Small business development and entrepreneurship programs $170 million - Small Business Administration operations $158 million - Loans for small businesses

Tim Dillon on MAGA: “It’s the greatest con in history, truly. To run as America First and you’re gonna take care of America and then turn around and go all of these things daycare, Medicare, we have nothing to do with that, we’re fighting wars. It is the greatest scam in history”

Insider wallet on Polymarket that bet 500k predicting the exact time we first struck Iran just bet 800k on ground invasion of Iran.