‘We have to be one’: In reaction to LSU head football coach Lane Kiffin’s controversial comments about Ole Miss, LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry on Thursday told ESPN that he has spoken with his coaches about the importance of unity within the SEC. “In the SEC, we have to be one,” Ausberry said. “Every other organization from NASCAR, to the NFL, NBA, they’re one. We fight each other on the fields: Saturday nights, basketball games, baseball weekends, track and field, that’s when we compete. After that, this is one. When you start breaking up and doing our own things, that hurts our conference.” In a four-hour interview with Vanity Fair, Kiffin suggested he had difficulty luring top recruits to Ole Miss because of the university’s troubled history with race. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has declined to say if any fines or sanctions are headed Kiffin’s way. ESPN has the full story.
Prediction market: U.S. prosecutors slapped insider trading charges against a Google employee this week, alleging the software engineer used confidential company information to pocket more than $1.2 million from prediction market platform Polymarket with bets on search trends. In a complaint unsealed in New York, authorities identified the employee as 36-year-old Michele Spagnuolo—an Italian citizen residing in Switzerland who has worked for Google since 2014. Under the online name “AlphaRaccoon,” they alleged, Spagnuolo used the company’s 2025 “Year in Search” data before it was published to enter Polymarket wagers about the most trending Googled people of last year. The Associated Press has the full story.
Falling short: President Donald Trump’s baby boom goal is seeing few signs of progress. More than one year into the second term of Trump, who once declared he would be the “fertilization president,” experts say becoming a parent hasn’t become easier and the number of people who want children has only continued to go down. “The rhetoric of honoring mothers and giving birth is hard to square with the reality of the massive cuts to Medicaid and healthcare and caregiving in general,” says Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA. The Hill has the full story.
The Kiffin drama
