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Fans at the Minnesota Frost PWHL game this past weekend were prevented from bringing in signs condemning ICE following last week’s shooting death of Renee Good at the hands of ICE agents in Minneapolis. This continues a trend of stadiums censoring “political” signs, which both the NWSL and WNBA have done in recent years.

In Putin’s Homophobic Russia, Watching Heated Rivalry Is an Act of Rebellion and Hope: “I know that thousands of gay men in Russia watched Heated Rivalry—on pirate sites, of course, because they have no legal way to watch the series. The Russian authorities would undoubtedly ban the show as LGBTQ+ propaganda, but most Western platforms don’t function in Russia either. As a result, Russian queer people have to break every possible law simply to live in the same world as members of their own community… Many gay Russians I have spoken to are skeptical about the season finale’s happy ending. They simply do not believe it—that the kind of courage shown by François Arnaud’s Scott Hunter, who becomes the first openly gay player in the show’s fictional universe, or even the emotional openness of Ilya, is possible. This is the psychology of a hostage. Such a happy scenario does not exist even in their boldest fantasies; many believe achieving such a thing is not worth trying, even though almost all of them would love to leave today’s Russia.”

In news that will surprise exactly zero subscribers of this newsletter, actor Hudson Williams reveals that he has received messages from closeted male professional athletes after his portrayal of Shane in Heated Rivalry. “Sometimes they’re just reaching out privately through Instagram,” he said on Andy Cohen Live last week, “and those are the ones that really just kind of hit you and go, ‘Oh, so this is a fun show, and it’s celebratory, but also, sometimes it’s just hitting people right in the nerves.’”