Happy Friday!🙋🏼♀️ I’m Nicole Fallert. Poppy the axolotl found a new home.
Quick look at Friday’s news:WNBA sex toy incidents started by Crypto meme coin group
Cryptocurrency meme coin creators say they are responsible for the sex toys being thrown at multiple WNBA games, and they are planning more “pranks.”
You read that correct: From Atlanta to Los Angeles, no arena has been safe from neon green objects whizzing from the stands, through the air and onto WNBA courts.
“We didn’t do this because like we dislike women’s sports”: A spokesman for the cryptocurrency group spoke to USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue. He said the acts are a protest against the “toxic” environment in the crypto world and not meant to disrespect women athletes.
These don’t feel like pranks, writes USA TODAY Sports Columnist Nancy Armor: “This is a coordinated campaign of harassment designed to remind WNBA players and their fans that, for all the progress women’s sports have made in the last few years, the playing field will never be level if they have anything to say about it.”
What to know about Trump’s proposed census
President Donald Trump announced his intention to “immediately begin work on a new” census, raising questions about whether the plan would be constitutional and how it would affect the partisan makeup of Congress. His announcement came amid Texas Republicans’ efforts to perform an unusual mid-decade redrawing of congressional maps, which are normally drawn after the census determines the number of seats in each state’s delegation at the beginning of each new decade. Political experts told USA TODAY Republicans want to draw new congressional districts, so they might be able to mitigate the number of seats they lose.
As Trump calls for new census, the Florida House just moved to create a special redistricting panel.
More news to know now
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IndyCar dragged into controversy with Trump administration’s ICE car, ‘Speedway Slammer’
About 70 miles north of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indianapolis 500, a new immigration detention center got a noteworthy and controversial name: “The Speedway Slammer.” In a social media post, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem published an image of an Indy car driving past a prison emblazoned with the letters ICE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and No. 5, which belongs to NTT IndyCar Series driver Pato O’Ward, the only Mexican in the Indy 500 and the series this year. Penske Entertainment, which owns Indianapolis Speedway and the NTT IndyCar Series, provided a statement to The Indianapolis Star, part of the USA TODAY Network, in which it said it was unaware of plans to incorporate its imagery as part of the announcement.
One man’s journey to reclaim family land in the American South
Heirs’ property is usually defined as land handed down without clear, official documentation. Over the course of the 20th century, Black Americans lost roughly 80% of the property they owned at the peak of ownership a few decades after the Civil War because of theft and systemic injustices. How hard could it be to “not lose” several dozen acres of land? In a nation where the scars of slavery and racialized violence still loom, pretty hard, as it turns out. Researchers estimate that between 1865 and 1910, Black Americans acquired 15 million acres of land. But by 2001, an estimated 80% of it had been lost. Read Georgia man Saul Blair’s story, the first in a two-part USA TODAY series, “The Heir’s Property.”
Today’s talkersDon’t want Insta followers seeing your location?
Instagram’s new feature shows users’ current locations, prompting some to worry their location will suddenly be shared on the platform. While location services already existed on the app through the tagging option on posts and stories, some social media users raised concerns about Meta’s new map feature that shows a user’s last active location. A user’s location is updated whenever they open the app or return to the app if it’s been running in the background, per Meta. Here’s how to turn Instagram map location sharing on and off.
Photo of the day: Calling all pommel horse fans
Missing last summer’s Olympics? Get your gymnastics fix this weekend as the U.S. gymnastics championships kick off in New Orleans. Is Simone Biles competing?
Jackson Rendon of the University of Oklahoma performs Thursday on the pommel horse.
Nicole Fallert is a newsletter writer at USA TODAY, sign up for the email here. Want to send Nicole a note? Shoot her an email at NFallert@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: WNBA sex toys, Trump, census, Texas redistricting, ICE, immigration, Instagram, ChatGPT: Daily Briefing