Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

It’s good to be back! It’s my first time writing since I turned 30 a couple of weeks ago. I’m still waiting for the inevitable aches and pains but it was wonderful to celebrate with friends and family in the last few weeks.

I’m thankful for love, support and all of the communities I have. I’ve had the time to reflect a bit on life and feel like I’ve landed in a wonderful spot. I get to do some extraordinary work at my job, I have a loving home around me and I have carved out room for my passions and even nurtured new ones.

With that, a reminder: everything I write here is my own, and doesn’t reflect the views of any employers, coworkers, or anyone like that. Also, this is entirely free and non-monetized. I have no funders or sponsors other than myself and as long as I can afford to do it this way or am allowed to do it this way, I will.

All right, let’s get to it! I can’t think of a single most curious thing this week and I’ve done a lot of reporting work in the last few weeks, so let’s jump right in.

But first, here’s Peach!

My Reporting

NWSL

Sometimes in life, there are people who have their stories written in the stars. These people are often destined for success, even in the face of great adversity. Often, we see their stories unfold in the public eye, since many of them experience 15 minutes of fame. Their lows are low, but their highs are incredibly high.

In the world of soccer, few players embody this quite like Trinity Rodman.

The 23-year-old Washington Spirit and U.S. national team star has long ago stepped out of the shadow of her estranged, NBA legend father Dennis Rodman and has been on the fast track to becoming the face of American soccer.

And after months away from both of her teams to treat a lingering and disruptive back injury, she came back to action on Sunday in Washington. And in just over 15 minutes on the pitch, she wrote a story with enough drama to satisfy the 16,000-plus fans in the seats at Audi Field.

Rodman entered a tense 1-1 affair in the 75^th minute. Nearly an hour earlier, Washington scored one early as striker Gift Monday rushed the Portland net and bumped a ball past Thorns keeper Mackenzie Arnold.

And despite Washington’s constant pressure, they had failed to net a second one before Portland midfielder Olivia Moultrie capitalized on a turnover to blast a shot past Spirit keeper Aubrey Kingsbury late in the first half.

But with the clock ticking, fans began to roar even before an announcement, seeing Rodman jog along the sideline from her warmups in the corner with her fellow substitutes over to head coach Adrián González for final instructions before entering the game.

By the time the announcement came out over the public address system, the Washington crowd had already reached a fever pitch, combining for a deafening roar to greet their returning star.

Just over 15 minutes after entering the game, in the second minute of stoppage time, the Spirit capitalized on an opportunity. Washington midfielder Courtney Brown won battle for the ball on the left sideline and launched it over the middle and into the 18-yard box. Her fellow midfielder Croix Bethune reached her foot out high into the air with her back to the net and tipped it to her left, over to a wide-open Trinity Rodman.

Rodman reared back and smashed it full-speed into an open part of the net, scoring what proved to be the game-winner in a 2-1 Spirit win.

@nwslsoccer

TRINITY RODMAN WITH THE GAME WINNER ON HER RETURN 😤 #NWSL

“I was not gonna miss it,” Rodman told reporters postgame. “I was gonna hit it through the net before anything.”

And it was clearly emotional for her to be playing again.

“I’ve been crying,” she said. “It was a big moment, it was a lot of tears, going through the injury, and then a lot of unknowns.” 

I asked her if this matched the version of this moment that she thought of while working her way back.

She said she didn’t have all that much time to imagine it while focusing on recovery but shared that she joked with her teammate Ouleye Sarr on the ride in that it would be cool to score a goal in her first game back.

She said Sarr told her, “You don’t say, ‘It’s really cool.’ You say, ‘I do and I do.’”

Rodman followed that up with a smile.

“And I did.”

Over on the Portland side of things, the Thorns were left to make the long trip home with a point slipping through their fingers.

“We did still have chances in a performance that I think we would all agree is not our best,” Thorns midfielder Olivia Moultrie told me. “And we still had an opportunity to tie and maybe even win the game. So I think it’s just like, ‘can we really capitalize on those moments we’re getting?’ Especially if we’re finding ourselves not having a lot of possession.”

Thorns coach Rob Gale saw a strong second half performance.

“Organized, compact. Best chances fell to us,” Gale said, referring to multiple near-misses. “We felt comfortable.”

But Gale picked his words carefully as he expressed frustration with officials’ handling of the sequence leading up to Rodman’s game-winning goal. Spirit attacker Gift Monday had been down on the ground. It was not a head injury, which would force a stoppage, and she picked herself back up and then rejoined play.

Gale felt the Spirit exploited the moment.

“There’s a player that’s laid on the floor to, which they did all game long, to try to get [Video Assisted Replay] decisions and delay restarts. That player is then being called on at the opportune moment for them to create an overload in the attack. That’s just—it shouldn’t be allowed.”

Portland heads back home for its Cascadia rivalry matchup on Sunday against Seattle Reign.

Washington, meanwhile, heads up to New Jersey to face NJ / NY Gotham FC on Saturday in a rematch of last year’s legendary semifinal matchup.

And one fun note, I was able to bring a DSLR camera and a new lens with me to Sunday’s game. It provided me with an upgrade over my usual iPhone camera and here are a couple of additional shots, on top of the ones you see above.

MSNBC

It has been particularly interesting to have several Democratic members of Congress on in recent days. To me, the conversations we have with them answer the question of how much Democrats are fighting back against President Donald Trump.

You can certainly criticize Democrats as a whole for their approach. (Many people have! Often for good reason!) But hearing different members focus on different parts of the response has helped paint a picture of the many different ways they fight back.

On Thursday, we spoke to two members of Congress from Wisconsin—Representatives Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore. Both Pocan and Moore have been venturing into neighboring Republican districts where the elected members have not had many in-person events. They are trying to fill the gap by holding town halls.

Pocan contrasted his work with Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden. 

Van Orden, he says, “in two-and-a-half years has never done an open, public town hall. This is my fifth in his district, because I feel like people in Western Wisconsin have a right to be heard.”

Moore mentioned that the town hall she held was in Racine, where she was born. And she singled out one big policy change in President Trump’s major spending bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“I know these people,” she said. “And they are very upset, they’re very nervous, they’re very scared about Medicaid in particular.”

Two Democratic members of Congress stopped by our show last week, each from a different chamber and each with a different effort to force the Department of Justice to release all files related to the case of notorious sex offender and money manager Jeffrey Epstein.

Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan, led a group of Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee who invoked the “Rule of Five,” a rarely-used law that allows any five members of their committee to ask federal agencies for information.

“If five members sign a letter from the committee requesting documents from the administration, by law they need to provide it to those members,” Peters said.

“We know those documents exist. We know the Attorney General said that they were sitting on her desk, so it should not be a big effort to actually put those all together and send them to us.”

In recent weeks, Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein have come under fire from both Democrats and Republicans. Reporting from outlets including The Wall Street Journal indicates that Trump and Epstein had a close friendship for many years and that the Justice Department has told the president that his name is mentioned in the agency’s files about Epstein. 

Over on the House side, Congressman Robert Garcia of California is leading a second effort to get the Epstein files. A bipartisan panel on the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena the Justice Department for the files but the committee’s chairman, Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, has not signed off on it yet.

Garcia told us Friday that a sign-off should be imminent.

“We actually expect it, if he keeps his word and the committee keeps their word, we expect that subpoena to actually be out the door in the next couple of days,” Garcia said.

Other Sports Takes and Things of Note

Bubba Wins the Brickyard: Thanks to the way this past weekend’s results shook out, Bubba Wallace has clinched a spot in NASCAR’s playoffs this year. But it was last week where Wallace made history.

In a race that featured a rain delay, two overtimes and several gambles on avoiding running out of fuel before the finish, Bubba Wallace won the Brickyard 400. It was the third win of Wallace’s career and one where Wallace made history at a track that has hosted racing for over a century. 

@nascar

THE BUBBA BURNOUT 🔥🔥🔥 #NASCAR #Brickyard400

While the Indianapolis 500 has occurred since 1911 with Indy cars, NASCAR took until 1994 to make its first visit to the track. While the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has hosted the IndyCar Series, NASCAR, and more, a Black driver had never won on Indy’s iconic 2.5-mile oval before Wallace took the checkered flag. Lewis Hamilton won an F1 race there in 2007, but the series raced on a road course that only included part of the original track. 

Wallace has talked openly about issues facing Black Americans since debuting at NASCAR’s top level in 2017. In 2020, Wallace pushed NASCAR to officially ban the Confederate flag from being flown at races and competed in one race with a special all-black paint scheme on the car that honored the Black Lives Matter cause.

Wallace’s win at the Brickyard also comes at a key time for Wallace’s team, 23XI Racing. The team’s owners, NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin and basketball legend Michael Jordan, are involved in a lawsuit against NASCAR, alleging its system for team charters violates federal antitrust law.

WNBA Trade Deadline: Thursday will mark the trade deadline in a WNBA season that is nearing the three-quarters mark. So far, it has been a fairly quiet deadline, at least until Sunday, when the Minnesota Lynx traded for the reigning Most Improved Player, guard DiJonai Carrington, from the Dallas Wings.

It’s a move set to bolster the Lynx, who have the best record in the league this season. The 27-year-old Carrington has taken a bit of a step back from her breakout 2024, but is averaging 10.4 points and 5.1 rebounds per game this season. The Lynx will likely need Carrington to contribute quickly, as ESPN has reported that their star forward Napheesa Collier will be out for at least two weeks with an ankle sprain.

Dallas, meanwhile, gets at least one player who can help their rebuild. The Wings acquired 2023 2^nd -overall pick Diamond Miller, who has struggled to find playing time with the Lynx in the last two seasons, as well as veteran shooter Karlie Samuelson and a future second-round pick.

Teams near the bottom of the standings may still move a few more star-caliber players. Dallas may trade their 28-year-old star combo guard Arike Ogunbowale, who is set to be a free agent after this season, while Connecticut may move their slumping shooting guard Marina Mabrey. The Manasquan, NJ native (Monmouth County represent!) is averaging 14.2 points per game but shooting just 27% from 3-point range this season, well below her career average of over 35%.

Something Good I Ate

For my birthday dinner, my fiancée and I headed into DC to Tail Up Goat, a Michelin-starred restaurant with elevated American-style dishes with a bit of Caribbean influence.

We selected their “We Cook for You” option, a prix fixe dinner where the kitchen provides you with an array of dishes tied to what they like and what is in season.

Some highlights included a white miso dip that brought otherwise simple crudité to life and a delicious capunti pasta with ‘nduja sausage, bread crumbs and sungold tomatoes, the latter of which made a few appearances in dishes over the course of the evening. 

I’m not usually a fan of lamb but I loved their shawarma-spiced lamb ribs, served with an eggplant tahini, sumac onions and a red wine onion jam. It was incredibly tender, fall-off-the-bone good meat and it had a smoky barbecue flavor. The onion jam also provided a sweet complement to the rich, savory lamb.

Sadly for you, there are no pictures because we decided to focus entirely on the experience and the meal. And in another stroke of bad news, the restaurant has announced that it will close at the end of the year due to a combination of rising costs and wanting to close before having to sacrifice quality.

The good news is you have a few more months to get there and that I’m happy to make up for a lack of pictures with a tempting description!