A San Francisco lawmaker criticized Giants players for writing Bible verses on their cap during the organization’s Pride Night as MLB warned the team about the messages on Monday.
Matt Dorsey, a Democrat who represents District 6 and sits on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, wrote on social media the event was “disappointing in several respects.” He authored a lengthy thread on X about the ordeal.
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“First, as a sports fan, it struck me as problematically undisciplined,” he began. “When you’re a highly paid professional athlete, your uniform isn’t a canvas for individual self-expression — especially about politics — and it has been my observation over the years that championship-caliber teams never tolerate distractions like this.
“Second, as a person of faith, I’ll be the first to defend Bible verses and prayer as sources of inspiration and strength for many athletes — I have no problem with that. But I am bothered to see Biblical cherry-picking used to score political points, on a single occasion, and it’s hard to argue this was anything other than that.”
Dorsey added that, as a gay man, he was “disappointed” that a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community was still seen as “controversial.”
“Major cities with major-league sports teams are inherently diverse, and if you’re uncomfortable celebrating the wide array of heritage and pride nights for communities that make up the city on your uniform, maybe the major leagues aren’t for you.”
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Still, Dorsey didn’t think the players who wrote the Bible verses on their Pride Night cap were “bigoted.”
“All that being said, I refuse to call what these athletes did bigoted or hateful — and I would urge all those offended or hurt by this episode to show them grace. The LGBTQ+ equality movement succeeds when we commit to winning hearts and minds, rather than shaming them,” he added.
MLB warned Giants players about the Bible verses.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” MLB’s chief communications officer Pat Courtney said in a statement, via The Athletic.
San Francisco pitcher Landen Roupp wrote “Gen 9:12-16” on his cap over the weekend and was asked about the decision.
“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us that, you know, his faithfulness and his mercy,” Roupp said to reporters. “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want … and express what we want.
“There’s no hate at all. It’s just what I stand for, and what I stand in. I believe in God.”
Giants manager Tony Vitello also seemed to brush off the issue.
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“Not really. I mean, just kind of a general knowledge of the individuals have the freedom to do what they think is best,” Vitello said. “But I do think it’s been apparent from day one, actually, even some of the exhibition games, it’s pretty impressive how the Giants, as an organization, try and embrace the entire community.”

LOS ANGELES — Fans snuck them into the stadium. Demonstrators waved them outside the security gates. And at watch parties around the city, they appeared whenever the “home” team scored.
The lion-and-sun flag, associated with Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, was seemingly everywhere across “Tehrangeles” on Monday as Iran opened its World Cup campaign against New Zealand.
But its meaning varied depending on who carried it.
Some told NBC News the flag symbolized solidarity with the Iranian people, who many feel have been isolated by conflict and political turmoil. Others said it represented opposition to Team Melli, Iran’s national soccer team, which they view as an extension of the clerical regime governing the Islamic Republic.
The competing interpretations reflect a question that has long weighed on the Iranian diaspora: Can pride in their country coexist with opposition to its government?
“I think at the moment people are so confused, people are so angry … and they don’t know whether they support our team or not,” said Helen Kohandel, who draped one of the flags over her shoulders as she prepared to enter the stadium on Monday, defying a ban on the flag from FIFA.
“Because after all, we know that they need to be supported by the regime, otherwise they can’t play.”
The thrill of the World Cup for this soccer-mad country and its diaspora comes at a hugely fraught time for Iranians both inside and outside of the country.
Thousands were killed during a brutal government crackdown earlier this year on anti-government unrest that had been sparked in part by soaring inflation.
Then, in late February, the U.S. and Israel launched a war that consumed the Middle East and was felt from Tehran to ‘Tehrangeles’ and beyond. On Sunday, not long before Team Melli landed on U.S. soil, President Donald Trump announced the two sides had agreed a deal to end fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The news, however, came too late to benefit the team, which had already navigated several hurdles including visa issues and a last-minute move of its training camp from the U.S. to Tijuana, Mexico.
By gametime, Iran had been met with both jeers — as the national anthem played — and thunderous cheers — when Team Melli scored in the 2-2 tie.
“There were many Iranians here,” Coach Amir Ghalenoei told reporters after the match. “They believed in different political affiliations, different beliefs, but they all wholeheartedly encouraged us and I think that’s a victory for all of us.”
Some demonstrators said they wished Team Melli would do more to stand up against the regime, with several protesters outside the stadium calling on FIFA to expel the team entirely.
“All of us are here for a protest against Islamic Republic,” said Kourosh Salman, as a 15-foot lion-and-sun flag flew over his head. “Let us challenge them.”
But others said it’s unrealistic to expect political action from the players, as they are at risk of being punished if they defy the government.
“Separating politics from sports has gotten increasingly difficult because I think sports has gotten political, and politicians have come for sports,” actor and activist Nazanin Nour said in a phone interview ahead of the game.
In March, the Iranian women’s soccer team were branded “traitors” on state television after they didn’t sing the national anthem ahead of a match in Australia. The country granted six of the players humanitarian visas, but five quickly withdrew their claims for asylum and the women then sang the anthem at their following games.
Key striker Sardar Azmoun was omitted from the men’s World Cup roster after Iranian media reported ​that he had been expelled from the national team for what was described as an act of disloyalty to the government.
Ahead of the tournament, taking place across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, FIFA outlawed the lion-and-sun flag at matches, saying it violated the organization’s code of conduct prohibiting “banners, flags, fliers, apparel and other paraphernalia that are of a political, offensive and/or discriminatory nature.”
Many Iranians at the match, eager to express their views publicly, ignored the policy. Nour was among them, proudly posing with a lion-and-sun flag from the stands.
“The regime has taken away so much from Iranians,” Nour said. “But I don’t believe that me going to the game to show my pride in being Iranian means I support every player, or everything they stand for … Our love of being Iranian surpasses everything else.”
Nour said she understands why members of the diaspora struggle with whether to support Team Melli. “Everyone’s decisions are informed by their pain and trauma,” she said.
Ultimately, however, she decided the regime doesn’t “own our culture or our joy. We do.”
The roars each time Iran surged forward suggested she was far from alone. And across town, the mood was jubilant at Meymuni Cafe, where owner Shaheen Ferdowsi had organized a watch party centered around the community.
As patrons sipped on lavashak (traditional Persian fruit leather) smoothies and dug into Persian nachos, they erupted in applause and screams during Iran’s best moments of the game. For attendees, the focus was on soccer — and spending time with one another.
“I want to celebrate the people of Iran,” said Parvin, who requested that her last name be withheld due to concerns about potential political repercussions in her home country for speaking publicly on the issue. “The next generation, I just want them to be happy as they watch from home.”
Her sister, Parvaneh, who also requested her last name be withheld for the same reason, said she was watching the game out of “curiosity” — not excitement.
“I get chills seeing the flag,” she said, pointing to the official Islamic Republic of Iran flag on the TV screen as the game was kicking off.
“It’s not ours.”

In the same post, Trump wrote, “I don’t know Derek Dooley, and neither does anyone else,” before once again pushing the lie that his presidential campaign won the state in 2020. Despite sharing admiration for Trump, Dooley responded to the endorsement by countering on social media that “a vote for Mike Collins is a vote for Jon Ossoff.”
Even before Trump’s runoff endorsement, Collins appeared well positioned to make it to November despite an Office of Congressional Conduct probe into his office’s potential misuse of resources that the Republican has referred to as a “nothing burger.” His social media tone, which includes severely downplaying the U.S. Capitol attack where pro-Trump rioters injured law enforcement, gives credence to the president’s view of him as a “a true Friend, Fighter, and WARRIOR.” It also spotlights a few of the ample vulnerabilities for a statewide candidate coming from a reliably red congressional district.
The worries are compounded by the bigger picture: Democrats now have a plausible route to retake the Senate in November, even though they will need the races to go almost perfectly to reclaim the majority. That once seemed far-fetched, but a clearer path has emerged in recent months as competitive races have opened up across presidential battlegrounds and more right-leaning states scattered around the country. Holding Georgia would be practically essential to any such scenario — and Ossoff’s standing gives him a significant early advantage in making that case.
Ossoff’s own political rise has been unlikely. He lost a close 2017 special election for a House seat, then ran for Senate in 2020, trailing Republican incumbent David Perdue when the votes were counted in November. But because neither candidate crossed the majority threshold, the race went to a runoff — and Ossoff won.
American politics, especially in the Trump era, can change quickly, however, and there is still plenty of time for momentum to shift before November, especially in a place with vast national influence like Georgia.
This race, like so many others over the past decade, has many forces in the mix. But no matter who is on the ballot, it all ties back to the man in the White House. For the Republicans in Georgia, Trump is the presence they covet and concern themselves with. And for the Democrats, he is the throughline for what they see as ailing the nation.
That was true six years ago, and it remains true now. And it may be what matters again — more than anything else — come November.
“He’s a failed president and a national disgrace,” Ossoff said at a recent rally.
Nnamdi Egwuonwu contributed reporting to this article

News of a potential reopening of the strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas pass, sent stock markets higher and oil prices lower on Monday morning. Iran had closed the waterway to most shipping in the early days of the war mounted against it by the US and Israel.
The secretariat of Iran’s supreme national security council said war and military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, would end permanently from Monday night. The precise terms of the peace deal remain unclear and Julian Borger writes that in reopening the strait, on a basis yet to be fully explained, Donald Trump achieves little more than fixing a problem that he caused himself. “Even that is not in the bag yet. It is still a long way to Friday and a planned signing ceremony in Geneva, in view of all the fudges that have been packed into this compromise deal.”

The Trump Department of Justice going after people who make the president mad or even sad is nothing new, in this dangerous age when the presidency is increasingly about placating the desires of the old man in the Oval Office.
Leticia James, James Comey, Adam Schiff. Most recently, E. Jean Carroll, who sued President Trump personally and won a huge settlement on her claim that he sexually assaulted her. Now, the Department of Justice is investigating her for potential perjury.
It would be easy to think of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Monday that the U.S. Department of Justice is now targeting his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, as just another addition to that list.
But this attack on Siebel Newsom (alleged attack, anyway — the Department of Justice has not confirmed she is a target) is something much darker in our slide into authoritarianism. While the details of what is being investigated are murky and the president hasn’t chimed in yet, it has all the appearances of the Trump administration seeking to stop a political rival who has a real shot at knocking MAGA out of the top office.
“It’s not just random or accidental that the wife of a major presidential candidate is being investigated,” Steven Levitsky, a professor of politics at Harvard University, told me Monday. “That’s the nature of selective prosecution and that is a pillar of authoritarian rule.”
Levitsky is an expert on authoritarian regimes, and how they take and keep power. His point that Newsom is a viable challenger may seem obvious — Newsom himself is already fundraising off of it. But this particular alleged investigation bears a moment of pause because it is not the regular decline of justice we have been witnessing to this moment.
“This is different,” he said. “This is forward-looking persecution.”
Until now, Levistky points out, Trump has screamed and hollered for the prosecution of those who have wronged him in the past, sometimes even the distant past. Yes, he’s disgraced the Department of Justice with the demand it function as his own personal hammer of retribution, even putting his own personal attorney, Todd Blanche, in charge when Pam Bondi wasn’t accommodating or successful enough at stomping perceived enemies and quashing the Epstein files.
But those prosecutions have largely been grievance-based, not aimed at keeping power.
Going after Siebel Newsom seems more like a forward-looking, preemptive strike targeting Newsom ahead of the 2028 election through every decent man’s Achilles’ heel, his family.
In fact, the right-wing media — which is closely tied to the whims of the White House — has been targeting Siebel Newsom for months.
In particular, Siebel Newsom has been attacked for her work as a documentary filmmaker who focuses on female empowerment and parsing how and why we have the gender norms that we do when it comes to masculinity and femininity. I’ll let you figure out how popular that is in MAGA world, where real women make sandwiches.
Conservative commentator Sean Hannity has gone after Siebel Newsom for saying she sometimes changes the gender of a book’s character from “he” to “she” when she’s reading to her children. Fox News has attacked her for daring to give her boys dolls to play with, leading some MAGA influencers to label her “psychotic” or “abusive.” Right-wing icon Megyn Kelly called her a “nutcase” for sharing the tragic story of her sister’s death when Siebel Newsom was 6.
And other media have focused on the fact that some of the films she has been involved with have been approved for use in California schools, leading to conspiracies that Newsom used his influence to force his wife’s “woke” agenda on kids, by which we are apparently talking about the liberal plagues of decency and inclusion.
Newsom’s office said that in recent weeks, relatives, friends and business associates of the family have been contacted by investigators from the FBI and IRS. Siebel Newsom also does work around online safety for children, but it seems likely that any attention would focus on these films, and related nonprofits, and the perennially popular MAGA boogeyman of schools forcing ideologies on kids. Throw in Siebel Newsom’s company making even a dollar, and the way the IRS can find problems with any tax return, and you’ve got about 10,000 hours of right-wing propaganda.
So whether the pressure to target Siebel Newsom came from the White House or not, Newsom’s announcement raises the troubling specter that this administration is getting more serious about remaining in control by kneecapping potential replacements before they grow too strong.
In his Monday video, Newsom urged Trump with mano a mano bravado to come after him as much as he wanted, but to leave his wife and family out of it. But I would not underestimate Siebel Newsom, who showed her strength when she testified against disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, laying out publicly a private, painful tale.
Siebel Newsom’s office told me she’s fine being part of any fight against Trump.
“There are clearly no boundaries to what Donald Trump will do to get his way or to challenge those who get in his way,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement.
The “governor and I will continue to speak truth to power because the American people deserve so much more.”
By coming out in advance of any official announcement of an investigation by the Department of Justice, Siebel Newsom and her husband may be able to take control of the narrative, something Trump detests.
That pushback, Levitsky said, is critical, not just for them, but more importantly for all of us. After last year, when so many institutions and individuals crumbled in the face of Trump’s power, the strength of our democracy increasingly depends on those with political capital standing up to him.
Coming out punching first does just that.