This article originally appeared on Gold Report with Dr. Simone Gold and was republished with permission.

“Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.”

Freedom has provoked the WNBA: define “woman”, or include him. There are now potentially 11 males who may announce for the WNBA draft: Freedom, Royce White, Larry Sanders, two other former NBA players, three G-League players, and three European-league players who are now considering entering the 2027 WNBA draft, typically held in April. There has been plenty of political and cultural argument over his challenge. But the question Freedom is asking is actually quite narrow.

I have spent my professional life in two fields that answer questions very differently: medicine and law. As a physician, I begin with biological reality. As an attorney, I ask what the rules are, what the words mean, and whether the rules are being applied consistently.

There are really two questions here: one biological and one legal. Medicine can answer the first. The WNBA must answer the second. Medicine describes biological reality. Law and private institutions create classifications and rules. A rule can change a person’s legal status, eligibility, rights, or obligations. It cannot change his biology.

A legislature could, for example, define “tall” to include everyone over five feet for purposes of a particular statute. That would make a five-foot-one person legally “tall” under that statute. It would not add an inch to his height. Likewise, an institution can define woman to include some males. That changes the institution’s definition. It does not change anyone’s sex.

From a medical standpoint, there is nothing to resolve about Freedom’s sex. He is male. A male who takes estrogen remains male. A male who undergoes surgery remains male. A male who sincerely believes himself to be a woman remains male, just as a male who makes the same declaration to test the WNBA’s eligibility rule remains male. Motives, beliefs, clothing, appearance, legal documents, and medical history do not determine human sex.

Human sex is established at fertilization and written into the chromosomes of the developing human from its first cell. XX directs female development; XY directs male development. Those chromosomes do not change with time, identity, belief, desire, or statute.

Their genetic signature remains in the nucleated cells of the body and can be detected long after death. Hormones can alter secondary sex characteristics, and surgery can remove or reconfigure anatomy. Neither rewrites chromosomes or reverses the developmental pathway established at fertilization. Neither transforms a male human body into a female one.

There is another biological reality hiding in plain sight: this problem runs in only one direction. If male and female were truly too difficult to distinguish for purposes of sport, we should see the same problem in both directions. We don’t. There are no women lining up to fight Mike Tyson.

WNBA players are not demanding roster spots in the NBA. Female tennis players are not clamoring to compete on the men’s tour. The controversy is at the boundary of women’s sports because crossing that boundary in one direction can confer an athletic advantage.

Male development produces advantages in strength, speed, power, size, and other physical characteristics that make the highest levels of male competition largely inaccessible to female athletes. Reverse the sexes and the same biology that puts women at a disadvantage puts men at an advantage.

Put roster spots, records, medals, championships, fame, and money on the other side of that sex line, and those advantages suddenly matter. In basketball or track, the stakes are opportunities and titles. In combat sports, where physical force is directed at another person’s body, they include physical safety.

Women’s sports are a human-created category built around a biological reality humans did not create. We can change the category. We cannot change the biology beneath it.

Changing a word does not change strength, speed, power, skeletal structure, or physiology. Biology does not yield to legal definitions.

We can name it or rename it, acknowledge it or deny it. Biology remains what it is. Words can be redefined and rules rewritten. Biology is not a party to the contracts we draft, and it is not bound by their terms.

So the medical question has an unequivocal answer. The legal question begins.

The WNBA is free to use words differently from physicians, just as legislatures routinely adopt specialized definitions for particular statutes.

But once the League elects to use the word woman as an eligibility classification that does not mean female, it must say what woman does mean.

The relevant question is not whether Freedom is actually a woman in the biological sense. He is not. The question is whether he satisfies whatever non-biological rule the WNBA has substituted for sex.

And this is the problem for the WNBA: the same framework that ordinarily treats “Are you really a woman?” as an illegitimate question suddenly depends upon accusing Freedom of not “really” being one. Yet by what standard? If woman means female, the answer is easy: Freedom is male and therefore ineligible.

But if woman does not mean female—if biological sex no longer determines eligibility—then biological sex cannot distinguish Freedom from someone else the League recognizes as a woman. There must be some other standard. What is it?

Freedom is not necessarily demanding that the WNBA adopt his definition of woman: biological sex. He is demanding that the WNBA disclose its own.

WNBA eligibility is not symbolic. A roster spot has real economic value. Under the League’s new compensation structure, salaries range from roughly $270,000 at the minimum to as much as $1.4 million at the maximum.

Every WNBA player signs a contract governing the terms of her employment, and the relationship between the League and its players is governed by an extensive collective bargaining agreement.

These are not handshake arrangements. When hundreds of thousands—or more than a million—dollars in compensation can turn on whether someone qualifies for a roster spot, the meaning of the eligibility category matters.

Defining terms is entirely ordinary in law. The WNBA does it routinely. Its agreements define Standard Player Contract, Unrestricted Free Agent, Restricted Free Agent, Reserved Player, Core Player, Qualifying Offer, and Right of First Refusal.

Those definitions determine who may negotiate with whom, who has exclusive rights to a player, what compensation may be offered, and under what conditions.

When contractual rights turn on a word, the meaning of that word matters. If woman means female, the League can say so. If woman includes some males but not others, it can say what distinguishes them. Self-identification? Legal status? Medical treatment?Duration? Hormonal criteria? Some combination? The WNBA knows how to define a term when it needs to.

The problem is not solved by dismissing Freedom’s declaration as strategic—or insincere. Of course it is strategic. But his motive explains why he invoked the rule; it does not determine whether he satisfies it.

Motive is not ordinarily an element of eligibility unless the rule makes it one. If sincerity is an eligibility requirement, the WNBA can say so. Then it has to explain what sincerity means and how it determines who is sincere.

Requiring sincerity creates another problem. The theory that removes sex from the definition of woman gives the individual the subjective authority to say who he is.

Biological sex, chromosomes, anatomy, reproductive function, and even medical transition no longer decide the question; internal identity does.

Yet when Freedom invokes that same authority, the WNBA claims the authority to say that his self-identification does not count.

The obvious question is: How does the League know?

There is no medical test for sincerity of gender identity. A physician cannot order a laboratory study, examine a chromosome, perform imaging, or conduct a physical examination that distinguishes a sincere male claimant from an insincere one.

The League can, of course, require evidence—legal documents, hormones, medical treatment, surgery, duration of identification, or something else. But then it must say what it requires and apply the same rule to everyone. A standard cannot be subjective until the answer is inconvenient and then suddenly become objective.

Perhaps duration matters. If so, how long? Perhaps consistency matters. If so, what demonstrates it? Perhaps medical treatment matters. If so, which treatment and how much?

Perhaps the League intends to decide whether the person actually believes what he says. If so, by what standard, and who decides whether another human being’s internal identity is genuine?

If self-identification establishes the category, Freedom invokes the same rule. If something more is required, the WNBA must say what that something is.

If the WNBA’s answer is that Freedom does not “really” identify as a woman, it has come full circle. It replaced biological sex with subjective self-identification, only to insert an objective gatekeeper back at the door. Now the gatekeeper’s job is to decide another person’s subjective belief is real.

That raises a larger question: Is this really an improvement over an objective standard? Biological sex does not require the WNBA to decide whether someone is sincere, whether an identity is deeply enough held, whether a declaration has lasted long enough, or whether appearance, behavior, medical choices, or life history prove that an internal belief is genuine. Once those questions matter, someone has to answer them.

Sports offer a useful comparison. No panel of judges decides whether a basketball went through the hoop or which runner crossed the finish line first. We can see what happened.

But in sports that depend on human judgment, such as gymnastics or figure skating, we expect disagreement and accusations of bias. That is why they have detailed scoring rules and multiple judges. The more discretion we give the person making the decision, the more we need rules that constrain it.

An objective standard does that. Everyone knows the rule in advance. The same rule can be applied to everyone, and a decision can be checked against something other than the opinion of the person making it.

Whatever one thinks the WNBA’s eligibility rule should be, replacing an objective standard with a subjective one does not eliminate gatekeeping. It replaces an objective gate with a human gatekeeper.

That is why Freedom’s declaration matters. He does not need to establish that he is female; he plainly is not. Nor does he need the WNBA to agree with his definition of woman. He is asking the WNBA to say what its definition is, what the rules are, and why he does not qualify.

Medicine answers the biological question: Freedom is male. The harder legal question is the one the WNBA has created for itself: if being male does not necessarily exclude a person from the WNBA’s category of “woman,” what does?

The post Enes Freedom Is Male. So Why Can’t He Play for the WNBA? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A previously deported illegal alien from Guatemala is dead after he fled an attempted ICE traffic stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and slammed into a tree at more than 100 miles per hour.

The vehicle burst into flames. Local officials pronounced him dead at the scene.

The Left did not wait for the facts. Michigan Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib immediately blamed ICE and demanded the agency be abolished.

The crash happened around 7:10 a.m. Sunday, September 20, near Century Avenue SW and McKendrick Street SW in Grand Rapids, The Detroit News reported.

The Department of Homeland Security says ICE officers were conducting a targeted enforcement operation. They attempted to stop a vehicle registered to a known criminal illegal alien with multiple alcohol-related driving offenses who is also wanted in Guatemala on a drunk-and-disorderly charge. Officers were trying to confirm who was behind the wheel. The driver took off at a high rate of speed.

DHS says agents immediately broke off the stop “in the interest of public safety.” A short time later they spotted smoke nearly half a mile away.

The car had crashed into a tree and caught fire. Officers tried to put out the flames and render aid until Grand Rapids police and firefighters arrived.

Officials estimated the vehicle was traveling well over 100 miles per hour when it hit the tree.

The dead driver was not the man ICE had been looking for.

DHS identified him as Mario David Coronado-Juarez, an illegal alien from Guatemala who was previously removed by U.S. Border Patrol in 2021.

He later snuck back into the United States, a federal felony, at an unknown date and location. He was driving a car registered to someone else.

“Resisting officers and evading arrest is dangerous for our officers, illegal aliens, and the public,” DHS said. The agency posted the account on X.

That is not the story Democrats and activists are selling.

Squad member Tlaib posted Thursday: “ICE killed another man. His name is Mario David Coronado Juarez. Mario lived and worked in Michigan for 7 years as a construction worker, sending money home to his kids in Guatemala. ICE pursued him in an unmarked car, causing a fatal car crash. These killings have to stop. #AbolishICE.”

DHS’s account directly contradicts her claim that agents “pursued him” until he died. Federal officers say they discontinued the stop and found the wreck almost half a mile from where they tried to pull the car over.

On September 20, ICE officers attempted a stop of a vehicle registered to a known criminal illegal alien with multiple alcohol related driving offenses who is also wanted in Guatemala for a drunk and disorderly charge, during a targeted enforcement operation in Grand Rapids,… https://t.co/l0GJ30X477

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 24, 2026

Grand Rapids Mayor David LaGrand, a Democrat, called the dead man “a valued member of our community” and blamed “a national effort to create fear among our immigrant neighbors.”

Far-left Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered the Michigan State Police to review the incident after Grand Rapids Police Chief Joseph Trigg asked for state help because local cops have limited ability to obtain information from federal agents.

Democrat Rep. Hillary Scholten sent ICE a letter demanding answers and claiming publicly available reports showed ICE “initiated a pursuit that led to this crash.”

Family members and activist groups such as Movimiento Cosecha say Coronado-Juarez was a construction worker in his mid-30s who sent money home to a wife and three children in Guatemala.

NBC News reported the Guatemalan consul general in Chicago identified him and said he was originally from Comitancillo in San Marcos.

Those biographical details do not change the legal facts DHS laid out: he had already been removed once, he re-entered illegally, and he fled a lawful attempted stop in a car tied to another criminal illegal alien.

The post Previously Deported Illegal Alien Dies After Fleeing ICE Stop, Slams Into Tree at Over 100 MPH — Rashida Tlaib Immediately Claims “ICE Killed Another Man” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

(Note: The information provided here or in any related communications is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice. We do not provide personalized investment, financial, or legal advice. Gateway Pundit benefits from purchases made through our sponsors. We appreciate your support!)

The dot-com bust in 2000… the financial crisis in 2008… the Covid crash of 2020… every one of them caught Washington flat-footed.

Jim Rickards says the next shock will be different. And he should know. He spent 40 years advising four U.S. Presidents, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

“This isn’t a financial accident,” he told us. “It’s a calculated move by the most powerful man on Earth.”

Rickards believes President Trump is preparing a series of legal and political bombshells, timed to detonate between now and Election Day.

And here’s the unsettling part. Rickards says Trump is doing this for strategic reasons… to clear the way for the crowning achievement of his presidency.

Most Americans have no idea any of this is coming.

When it hits, the panic won’t stay inside the Beltway. It could reach your 401(k), your brokerage account, even the money in your bank — all in the weeks ahead.

Rickards explains what he sees coming — and what he’s doing about it — in a free presentation. Watch it at the link below.

The post Former Pentagon Advisor: Trump Will Shake the System to Its Foundations — On Purpose appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered some off-the-cuff remarks to questioners at the United Nations this week and made the Trump administration’s official position on globalism quite clear.

Rubio spoke about the recent seeming breakdown of international order and reminded people that leaders owe the people they serve to put their country’s interest first and said that this is what the Trump administration will always do.

This is something that the left never seems to understand, here in America or abroad.

The National News has details:

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Mr Rubio said countries had been unable to work in unison to tackle crises around the world, including a war between Thailand and Cambodia, Sudan’s civil war and the conflict with Iran.

“There’s unanimity and consensus here in this gathering, and broadly, that the international system is broken,” he said. “It’s broken because it broke itself. It needs to be brought back to its proper focus and its proper role.”

He added that it was “failing because it has grown beyond its mandate”.

The US was a primary architect of an international system that was supposed to encourage co-operation between countries to manage crises. Instead, the UN and other bodies have struggled to take meaningful action in averting or ending wars, refugee crises and other international issues.

Mr Rubio said the US would continue to operate unilaterally if need be, if it is in its own interests.

“At least as long as President [Donald] Trump is in office, we will always act in the national interest of our country, not in the interest of the international order,” he said. “We will never put the international order above the interest of the United States.”

Watch the video below:

SECRETARY RUBIO: The United States will always act, as long as President Trump is in office, in the national interest of our country, not in the interest of the international order. pic.twitter.com/bUX78UIrtr

— Department of State (@StateDept) September 23, 2026

It is amazing how Rubio has flourished in his role at the State Department.

He just excels in this position.

The post Marco Rubio Schools Globalists at UN: ‘We Will Never Put the International Order Above the Interest of the United States’ (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act has been in effect for a little over a month, and the state still will not say how many people used it.

However, Columbia bioethicist David Hoffman, who works with hospitals and groups implementing the statute, told the New York Sun that he estimates about 20 prescriptions for life-ending drugs have already gone out.

That figure comes from conversations with doctors, not an official Health Department count.

Physicians must report when they write a prescription, but they do not have to say whether the patient took it.

“The state will have the data on a rolling basis. It’s an after-the-fact analysis,” Hoffman told the paper.

The law took effect August 5, after Governor Kathy Hochul signed it in February.

New York is now the 14th U.S. jurisdiction with legalized assisted suicide.

To receive the lethal medication, patients must be 18, state residents, judged to have six months or less to live, and able to decide and take the drugs themselves. Two physicians sign off, and a psychiatric evaluation is required.

There is only a five-day wait between writing the prescription and filling it.

Death certificates list the underlying illness, not suicide.

Assemblyman Andrew Molitor, a Republican, told The Sun that keeping the public “in the dark about how many people have requested and utilized assisted suicide” is bad policy.

Molitor wants socioeconomic status, private insurance versus Medicaid, the diagnosis, when the script was filled, and where it was taken to all be made public.

“The public should be told, at a minimum, what the person’s socio-economic status is, whether they have private health insurance or Medicaid, what was the terminal condition they were diagnosed with, when the prescription was filled and where it was administered,” Molitor said.

In Canada, medical assistance in dying started with people near death, widened to some disabled patients who were not dying, and is scheduled to add mental illness as a sole qualifier in 2027.

By 2024, Canada counted 16,499 MAiD deaths, which amounts to about one in 20 deaths nationwide.

In July 2021, the Psychiatric Times published an article in opposition to assisted suicide and noted that “preliminary reports suggest increased rates of suicide in the general population of states that have legalized PAS (physician-assisted suicide). Specifically, ‘legalizing PAS has been associated with an increased rate of total suicides relative to other [non-PAS] states, and no decrease in non-assisted suicides.’ Similarly, suicide rates in the Netherlands (where medical euthanasia is legal) have accelerated, compared to neighboring countries that have not legalized medical euthanasia.”

They report that physician and ethicist Leon Kass, MD, has pointedly cautioned: “We must care for the dying, not make them dead.”

The American College of Physicians has said, “Physician-assisted suicide is neither a therapy nor a solution to difficult questions raised at the end of life. On the basis of substantive ethics, clinical practice, policy, and other concerns, the ACP does not support the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. … However, through high-quality care, effective communication, compassionate support, and the right resources, physicians can help patients control many aspects of how they live out life’s last chapter.”

The post American MAID: New York Issued About 20 Lethal Prescriptions in Just the First Month of Its Assisted-Suicide Law appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.