The WNBA has spent a decade becoming the most instructive argument against progressive governance ever assembled in one place. You get a crystal-clear preview on August 8th.
During the Chicago Sky vs. Indiana Fever matchup, Sky guard DiJonai Carrington caught Fever guard Sophie Cunningham with a clothesline to the neck during a layup attempt. The hit earned an immediate Flagrant 2 foul and ejection.
Then Carrington, who is Black, got on X and posted two words: "WHITE PRIVILEGE." She tagged Cunningham's team, the Indiana Fever.
Let's walk through the sequence. A player physically assaults an opponent on camera. Gets ejected. Then from the locker room takes to social media to frame herself as the victim. This is the progressive playbook in three acts: commit the act, deny accountability, claim oppression. It runs the same way in cities governed by the same ideology. In Waukesha, Wisconsin, a man with a violent criminal record was out on $1,000 bail set by a progressive DA. Days later, he drove his SUV through a Christmas parade and killed six people. The DA's own office admitted afterward that the bail had been "inappropriately low." The DA kept his job. President Biden never visited the families.
This is the same DiJonai Carrington who allegedly poked Caitlin Clark in the eye in 2024. Clark, for those who don't follow the WNBA, is the reason the league has any cultural relevance right now. She is the most popular player in the league's history — she drove viewership numbers the WNBA had never seen, sold out arenas, and brought in millions of fans who had never watched a game before. She has also been elbowed, tripped, targeted, and fouled throughout her career. In a league run by progressive identity politics, excellence combined with the wrong skin color makes you a target. Call it what it is: a policy.
Fever head coach Stephanie White — coach of the player who just got clotheslined — responded with praise for the woman who threw the hit. "One of the things about her is that she's going to play her butt off, man," White said. "She's going to compete." Her own player took a forearm to the throat, and the coach complimented the attacker's hustle.
This is the progressive governance model running in real time. In San Francisco, a progressive DA refused to prosecute retail theft until Walgreens, CVS, and Target started closing stores by the dozen. In Portland, the city decriminalized hard narcotics and got open drug use and tent cities in return. In Chicago, violent offenders cycle through a revolving-door jail system and are back on the street before the police report is filed. The leader identifies with the aggressor, issues a statement about "root causes," and calls anyone who objects divisive.
Dave Portnoy put it plainly: "This isn't politics; your player got assaulted. She acts like she's the coach of the other team." Fever president Kelly Krauskopf then issued a statement backing White anyway: "Coach White has done a tremendous job leading the Fever. She has the full support of leadership." Full support. For the coach who praised the woman who clotheslined her own player and posted racial accusations on social media an hour later.
The aggressor gets defended. The victim gets ignored. Anyone who points it out gets called divisive.
Cunningham — the player who actually got hit — had been catching heat all summer for a different reason. In an ESPN interview, she stated that young girls "shouldn't have to go against biological men" in sports. A position that supermajorities of Americans agree with across party lines. In this league, under this ideology, saying what most of the country believes makes you a target. The WNBA union denounced her. Her own teammate Clark and Coach White both declined to defend her.
When asked her view on transgender athletes in women's sports, Coach White said she's "not educated enough" to comment. Every politician who has ever said "the border is complex" while Americans got killed by illegal aliens just nodded in recognition. A professional women's basketball coach just told you she has no opinion on the defining issue of her sport. Hostage video.
Former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White have both declared for the 2027 WNBA draft specifically to challenge the league's transgender eligibility standards — forcing an institution that has spent years pretending the question doesn't exist to finally answer it.
The WNBA runs on tens of millions in annual NBA subsidies just to stay open. A league that generates losses, demands support from a profitable enterprise, and uses that support to fund an ideological agenda. California posted a $45 billion budget deficit in 2024. The DEI offices stayed funded. Illinois carries the worst-funded pension system in America while the state hemorrhages residents every year. The model is always the same: spend beyond your means, blame the productive class for the shortfall, and protect the ideology no matter what the results say.
Straight white players who speak plain biological truth get denounced by the league. The most productive player in WNBA history gets targeted on the court. The aggressor gets praised for her competitive spirit. The institution loses money and demands more subsidies.
The WNBA is being run by the same ideology that turned San Francisco into an open-air drug market, drove businesses out of Portland, and has kept Chicago's murder rate among the highest in America for decades. They want to run your schools, your hospitals, and your country the same way.
The WNBA is a warning.
