Peter Thiel, receiving the Axel Springer Award on Thursday evening, asked why so much of the press had “degenerated into a sort of left-wing hate factory.”
The media landscape, he said, was “very, very one-sided” and “nowhere near as free as we would like it to be.”
He praised Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who also spoke at the ceremony, and Springer’s own journalists as “dissenting voices.”
Without people like them, he said, the situation would be “really very, very bad.”
He thanked them for their “courage.”
Döpfner presented Thiel as an entrepreneur who thinks against consensus and called him, in remarks to German news agency dpa, probably “the most impactful German of our times.”
Palantir chief executive Alex Karp, speaking by video, called Thiel “the last standing German.”
Thiel, born in Frankfurt and raised in the United States, answered in German that he had learned the language at home as a child. He also said he was “for democracy and elections.”
On the Left Party’s recent result in Berlin he said he could understand why people had voted for it, pointing towards the expensive housing prices.
However, he warned for their solutions, saying that rent control could even massively damage Berlin and “turn the city into a slum”.
The Axel Springer Award is not endowed.
Previous recipients include Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Tim Berners-Lee and Sam Altman.
Springer cited Thiel’s role at PayPal, his early stake in Facebook, Founders Fund and Palantir.
Several hundred people demonstrated outside the Axel Springer building under the slogan “Thiel shall not pass,” a play on Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, and staged a “queer Gandalf costume contest.”
During the ceremony a contractor walked on stage with a banner reading “They know that we know that they lie.”
A discussion featuring Thiel at the Vienna Festival was cancelled last month after protests.
Springer said it stood for open debate. Thiel and the group have long-standing business and personal ties.
In conversation with Döpfner, released with the award coverage, Thiel turned to Germany’s company-building record.
People in Germany, he said, always talk about a fear of failure and a “no risk” culture; there might also be a fear of success.
A firm that works is sold rather than scaled in the way Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg scaled theirs.
Few large new companies had been built in the country for decades.
Thiel noted that of the 50 wealthiest people in the United States, 12 were Generation X or younger, and nine of those 12 had made the money themselves.
In Germany 20 of the top 50 were of that age or younger, and all 20, he said, had inherited it.
“Not a single person did something new, made some new money, built a large, new scalable company.”
Violence is becoming more prevalent in the French camps |Screengrab youtube
A Sudanese migrant has been jailed after brutally attacking a charity volunteer who was collecting rubbish near a migrant camp in northern France.
The 40-year-old assaulted the worker from social support charity AUDASSE in an unprovoked attack while he was about to do a litter-picking round in Calais.
AUDASSE works with vulnerable people, including helping direct them towards accommodation.
The court heard that the defendant approached the open window of the vehicle where the worker was about to get out.
He insulted the volunteer and grabbed him by the collar.
When the volunteer got out of the vehicle to find out what the man wanted, he was kicked in the leg, before climbing back inside the vehicle, where the attacker punched him three times during the assault on September 15.
The two volunteers decided to leave the area and went to a nearby food distribution point.
The same attacker was also at the distribution site.
After spotting police officers who were overseeing the food distribution, the injured volunteer reported the assault and pointed out the man responsible.
He was arrested and found to be drunk, with a blood alcohol level of 1.60 grams per litre, with the volunteer being forced to take two days of sick leave as a result of his injuries.
Appearing in court, the Sudanese defendant gave a different account of what had happened.
He told the court: “They were badly parked. I was on my bicycle and I fell. I just asked them why they were badly parked and I received four punches.”
The court was unconvinced by his account and sentenced him to three months in prison, to be served immediately.
Violence among migrant camps in northern France is causing a constant headache for authorities and charities.
Footage released has shown wannabe small boat migrants attacking French police as they attempt to cross the English Channel.
Life jacket-clad migrants can be seen hurling projectiles at officers to try to keep them away from a large dinghy as it prepares to launch from a beach.
The video, released by the Home Office, shows police then deploying pepper spray to ward off the attackers.
Pushing them away, the officers then appear to slash the dinghy with a knife and put an end to that attempt to break into Britain.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told GB News that he had “seen with my own eyes and I’ve heard with my own ears that the French haven’t been doing anything.
He added: “Now, the fact that this particular unit appeared to be slashing the boat is different. Maybe that is a change of policy.
“If it is, it’s welcome. We did see this happen a year ago, once, just before a summit between Sir Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron. They did it once.”
We have long been reporting here on TGP on the Donald J Trump initiative to remake the diplomatic and commercial ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and how the Euro-Globalists have been doing everything in their power to stop that from happening.
Regardless of the political heat from the treasonous MSM and the ‘allies’, Trump is determined to reintroduce Russia in the international community, to the absolute dismay of the Euro-Globalist ‘leaders.’
Marco Rubio on Russia:
We’ve invited President Putin to the G20. We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with Trump, but with other world leaders.
But of course, all across Europe, the Globalist forces are under pressure from the populist-right-wing parties that reject the Globalist policies emanating from Brussels, be it unchecked mass migration, ‘net zero’ nonsense, or anti-Russia hysteria.
An example of this different group of leaders is RN’s Marine Le Pen, the absolute favorite for next year’s presidential election in France.
Le Pen has made it clear that she welcomes Trump’s decision to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the December G20 summit to be held in Miami.
“’Any initiatives aimed at putting an end to this slaughter are welcome’, she said [of the Russia-Ukraine war] at POLITICO’s Paris Playbook live event Thursday, […] after criticizing French President Emmanuel Macron for what she said were insufficient efforts to bring Russia back to the negotiating table.
Le Pen made clear at the same event that if she won the 2027 presidential election, France would halt all financial aid to Ukraine, though she said she was willing to maintain some form of support, including military training.
‘Russia is currently attacking the means of transporting military equipment to Ukraine’, she said in reference to the failed drone attack at Germany’s Leipzig airport. ‘This presents a risk of escalation. This makes it more important than ever to put an end to the conflict’, she said.”
“Le Pen called for caution in relations with Moscow.
The politician advocated a cautious approach to France’s relations with Moscow. She disagreed with the assessment that Russian attacks in Europe had escalated from hybrid actions into direct conflict. Le Pen stressed that she did not want France to enter the war and urged people not to speak lightly of such a possibility.
Politico notes that Le Pen’s critics link her restrained support for Ukraine to pro-Kremlin sympathies among some members of her party. At the same time, the publication says, Le Pen herself does not display hostility toward Putin.”
An 18-year-old woman has been gang raped and beaten by up to ten different men, many of them with a Syrian background, in the Dutch city of Dordrecht. Although the rape occurred in May 2025, the suspects are only now being arrested. In response to the rape, political leader Geert Wilders wrote that the Netherlands also has Islamic grooming gangs and called for all the perpetrators to be removed from the country along with their families.
Six suspects have now been arrested, aged 20 to 23. During the incident, the girl, who lived in a residential group home, was driven to two different parking lots and raped by several men, some of whom filmed the assault and shared it on Snapchat. Police say the woman was humiliated and beaten.
“A bruise on the cheek, a tooth through the lip and a swelling on the knee,” described one source. “It is a very serious criminal offense where all boundaries have been crossed and the victim has been treated very disrespectfully. As if she were an object that everyone could use.”
The incident has already attracted attention from politicians in the Netherlands, including PVV leader Geert Wilders.
“Teen victim of gang rape by Syrians. Raped by ten boys at different parking lots. The Netherlands also has Islamic grooming gangs. The Netherlands needs an unprecedented cleanup. All that scum out. With their families. No mercy,” he wrote on X.
Tiener slachtoffer groepsverkrachting Syriërs. Verkracht door tien jongens op verschillende parkeerplaatsen.
Ook Nederland heeft islamitische grooming gangs. Nederland heeft een ongekend grote schoonmaak nodig. Al dat tuig eruit. Met hun familie.
The first introductory court hearing took place on Sept. 23, 2026. Only 23-year-old S.S., described by the prosecutor as having played a leading role, and identified in court reporting as Syrian-born, was required to appear. Of the other five suspects, two of them are S.S.’s brother and cousin, who were arrested that Wednesday morning.
The investigation by the Rotterdam police Sexual Offences Team is still open, and prosecutors believe as many as ten men were involved.
According to the prosecution, the young woman accepted a lift to a train station from three strangers but they never brought her there. She was taken first to one parking lot, where S.S. raped her, and then to a second parking lot where, prosecutors say other men also raped her.
The Public Prosecution Service also told the court that the suspects “discussed and coordinated their statements in detail.” Even so, the accounts given by S.S. diverge from those of the others. His lawyer said that was because he did not want to inform against his brother and cousin.
S.S. himself told the judges the girl got into the car of her own accord.
“We didn’t force her to do anything,” he told police.
He is requesting to be released while his court trial is pending.
“I don’t want to ruin my future. If I stay stuck, all I’m going to be in debt,” he said.
The court refused. Judges said the images, the statements, and conversations overheard by police were enough to keep him in custody for now. He is due back for another introductory hearing in early December.
Remarkably, there was already a case in 2025 involving gang rape in the Netherlands involving ten suspects and a 15-year-old girl, mostly Syrians. Geert Wilders had also called attention to the case, writing: “50 percent of all suspects of sexual offenses are of foreign origin. Only the PVV will throw that criminal scum out of the country and immediately implement an asylum stop.”
On today’s show, host Rafe Heydel-Mankoo is joined by NCF Senior Fellow Dr. Philip Kiszely and The Free Speech Union’s Connie Shaw to discuss:
Major new poll shows Labour and the Tories ahead of Reform UK. A split right seems certain to enable a Labour win at the next election, even if only with a hung parliament.
The attempt to deny the English their own ethnic identity. Senior politicians say anyone can be English.
Migrant families claim £12 billion on universal credit.
A left-wing mural celebrating the murder of Quentin in Paris. Photo: Riposte Laique
Eight further people were arrested on Thursday in the investigation into the death of Quentin Deranque, the 23-year-old student beaten to death by a group in Lyon in February, Agence France-Presse reported.
The detentions were carried out under warrants issued by examining magistrates.
Nine far-left militants are already under formal investigation for murder, participation in a criminal association and aggravated violence.
The new arrests sit inside that judicial inquiry.
The eight new people arrested on Tuesday are “suspected of having participated in the brawls, in the various acts of violence of the day, but not of having delivered the fatal blows”, according to a source close to the investigation quoted by AFP.
Deranque, a mathematics student, was attacked on February 12 near Sciences Po Lyon after a clash between supporters of the identitarian women’s group Collectif Némésis, whom he had come to protect, and antifascist militants.
He was isolated with two companions on Rue Victor-Lagrange, knocked to the ground and brutally kicked against the head by several masked assailants.
He died two days later of catastrophic brain injury.
Prosecutor Thierry Dran said at least six people took part in the beating.Prosecutor Thierry Dran said at least six people took part in the beating.
Video broadcast by TF1 showed a group striking people on the pavement.
Investigators have described both a brawl between two organised groups and a subsequent assault on a man already on the ground.
Most of those first arrested were described by police sources as members or close associates of Jeune Garde Antifasciste, the Lyon antifascist group co-founded by La France Insoumise deputy Raphaël Arnault and dissolved by the government in 2025.
Among the nine already under investigation are Jacques-Élie Favrot, then Arnault’s parliamentary assistant, charged with complicity in voluntary homicide, and Adrian Besseyre, a former intern in the same office, charged with voluntary homicide.
A third collaborator, Robin Chalendard, was investigated for helping a suspect evade police.
Arnault said he had begun to end Favrot’s contract before the arrest.
Favrot’s lawyer has said his client admitted being present and using violence but denied delivering the blows that killed Deranque.
Some of the accused are on the security-service S-list, with people listed as a threat to the security of the state.
LFI and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have rejected any party responsibility.
The case became a national political argument within days, with ministers pointing at the dissolved group and LFI, and Mélenchon accusing his opponents of slander.
Thirteen of Deranque’s companions presented themselves to police as victims of a one-sided attack.
The examining magistrates are still identifying further participants. Thursday’s eight arrests suggest that work is not finished.
Whilst Berlin is set to see its first clearly anti-Semitic state government, led by the Left Party – whose relentless agitation against Israel even secured its election victory – hatred of Jews continues to rage with increasing brutality across the rest of the country. In Düsseldorf, a 35-year-old man wearing a kippah and a jumper bearing the emblem of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), who was out for a walk with his girlfriend along the banks of the Rhine, was initially subjected to anti-Israel abuse by two women, before two men joined in and began punching and kicking him. He sustained minor injuries as a result. Three witnesses attempted to intervene, one of whom was struck and suffered minor injuries.
The four perpetrators managed to escape unidentified; the State Security Service is investigating on suspicion of a politically motivated offence. According to the police, the two attackers were believed to be around 20 years old and – like one of the women – of “North African appearance”. The Jewish Community of Düsseldorf called for a “thorough and complete investigation” into the incident. Those responsible must be prosecuted. Furthermore, “an unequivocal response from society as a whole to this incident” is needed.
On Thursday evening, the Jewish Community called for a vigil on the Mannesmannufer. It is typical of these communities that they do not understand, or refuse to acknowledge, that anti-Semitism has long since become so deeply ingrained in society – due to the mass migration of millions of Muslims, the anti-Israel rhetoric of the Left and the CDU’s usual failure to act – that no counter-reaction can be expected. The number of participants at the vigil will also remain more than modest. Even many who would actually like to take part no longer dare to do so, because one must always and everywhere expect such attacks from people with a ‘North African phenotype’.
The irony is shocking: Bibi was forced to enter the United States almost in secret, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian walked around unchallenged (apart from protests by the Iranian diaspora).
The Netanyahu’s land in the USA. No credit
by Giulio Meotti
I watched Benjamin Netanyahu’s entire speech at the UN live.
Those who spoke before him-a European bureaucrat and a couple of African officials-were at ease in that absurd palace where the Israeli prime minister spoke next.
The Israeli opposition’s accusations that Netanyahu is using these moments for his own political ends are ridiculous: they themselves would sell their own mothers in the marketplace for power. That’s politics, period.
No one in the world is as capable as Netanyahu of owning that stage and lining up so many truths.
A phrase of Saul Bellow’s came back to me: “In their concern for the decay of civilization and in their pride, the Israelis have something to teach the world.”
While numerous UN delegates walked out of the hall at the start of Netanyahu’s speech, the Israeli prime minister said: “If there are any other cowards who haven’t left the chamber, do it now.”
Bibi spoke about Iran: “If we had not destroyed the Iranian nuclear facilities, we would be dead, and we also defended many countries whose delegates left this hall. Many later thanked us in private. Hypocrites”.
He evoked his brother Yonatan and the Entebbe raid. He spoke of October 7 (“for a country of ten million it is like 40,000 Americans killed in less than 24 hours”) to justify Israel’s wars: “What other country the size of New Jersey would have fought on seven fronts against these barbarians?”.
Netanyahu was alone and defiant.
I’m sure he would not agree with my definition of solitude, but that is the reality: Israel has been left isolated, even though many of its apparent allies condemn it in the morning and thank it behind the scenes in the evening.
Netanyahu has always used the General Assembly to shake public opinion.
In 2009, just after returning to power, the day after Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech, Netanyahu shouted “shame” while displaying maps of Auschwitz.
In 2012 he drew the “red line” on Iran’s nuclear program with a drawing of a bomb and a lit fuse.
In 2015, Netanyahu observed forty seconds of silence against the UN’s inertia in the face of Tehran’s intentions.
In 2017, Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people in Persian: “You are not our enemies”.
In 2023, on the eve of a peace with Saudi Arabia that would never materialize, Netanyahu uttered the word “peace” forty times. Then came October 7. Last year, Netanyahu spoke in a hall of empty seats and said: “Giving the Palestinians a state one kilometer from Jerusalem after October 7 is like giving al-Qaeda a state one kilometer from New York after 9/11.”
In the long shadow of October 7, Netanyahu has just made the shortest visit since he first spoke at the UN in 1998.
He spent six hours in New York-just enough time to speak and leave-without meeting Donald Trump. The brevity of the visit was due, besides the imminent holiday of Sukkot which begins on this Shabbat, to security concerns and to the protests called by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Even Netanyahu’s flight path reflected the unusual visit.
First his fleet avoided Ireland, one of the most anti-Israeli countries in Europe, to avoid being arrested (Greece and Italy allowed him to pass). Then Netanyahu’s plane landed not at JFK but at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, a hundred kilometers from New York.
No welcome for the prime minister of the only country that fought alongside the United States against Iran.
Bibi was forced to enter the United States almost in secret, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian walked around unchallenged (apart from protests by the Iranian diaspora).
The day before Netanyahu, anyone who spoke at the UN felt obliged to point the finger at Israel. Emmanuel Macron even denied, ludicrously, that Hamas is in Judea and Samaria.
António Guterres, said he had “never seen killings and destruction like those in Gaza in all my years as secretary-general,” even though during his tenure more than 600,000 people were massacred or died of starvation in Ethiopia, 377,000 in Yemen, 150,000 in Sudan and tens of thousands more in Ukraine. (Perhaps he should have an eye checkup.)
No Jews no news.
At the UN, Netanyahu did not have Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter beside him; Leiter had flown back to Israel after an Arab terrorist nearly killed his son, who was on military duty at a strategic checkpoint.
“Dear UN, do you know what a ballistic missile would do to this building?” Netanyahu told the General Assembly. “They have launched more than a thousand of them against us. The days when Jews march toward death are over.”
No country-not even the son of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, in power since 1979, who spoke before Netanyahu-has ever felt more isolated at the UN, although his speech was viewed around the world.
And this is truly the greatest shame of a West that has lost itself and its moral bearings.
Masked men shouted “Allahu Akbar” and “f**k the UK” as they ripped down and burned a pub’s Union Flags, a court has heard.
Zaid Sami, 21, and Nour Sami, 20, both from Feltham, and 21-year-old Omar Sukkar from Isleworth, are accused of racially-aggravated criminal damage to the flags outside The Fox pub in Twickenham.
All three men deny the charge and are standing trial at Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court.
Prosecutors have described the alleged attack at the pub as an “attack on the British people”, arguing that made it a racially-aggravated offense, the Mail reported.
The men allegedly tore down the flags outside the pub on October 23, 2023, two weeks after the October 7 attacks, when Hamas killed over 1,000 civilians in Israel.
Prosecutor Mark Mullins told the court: “This case is about the ripping down and burning of two Union Flags, which the prosecution asserts is an attack on the British people and their way of life and is therefore racially aggravated.
“Just after 6pm in the evening, four young men ripped down two Union Jacks from The Fox public house and set fire to them.
“While they were burning the flags they were heard shouting: ‘Allahu Akbar’; ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Stop bombing children’.”
Mr Mullins said CCTV evidence showed Mr Sukkar clambering up a noticeboard to remove a flag, while Zaid Sami removed another flag, damaging poles and fixings in the process.
Witnesses then noticed a “strong acrid smell” as the flags were burned, the prosecutor added.
Mr Mullins also suggested then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s speech was a motivating factor for the attack.
“Then UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave a speech on October 19 that Israel had a right to defend itself and on October 23 he made a similar speech to the House of Commons,” he told the court.
Pub landlord Paul Brace told the court the flags were a source of pride as part of the street.
He said: “I had two Union Jack flags on poles. It is a very British street and we also have flags up during the rugby, the Six Nations via the Church Street Association.
“I felt it brightened the street up to have the national flags, even when there isn’t an event on.
“It is a symbol of our country, what we stand for, our values and is a recognisable symbol around the world, very distinctive.”
He was in a flat above his pub when his deputy manager phoned him in a “state of distress and shock”, he said.
Mr Brace told the court he followed the men after they ripped the flags off the poles and saw them attempting to light the flags on fire, but they were “struggling to get it going”.
He said: “I had two Union Jack flags on poles. It is a very British street and we also have flags up during the rugby, the Six Nations via the Church Street Association.
“I felt it brightened the street up to have the national flags, even when there isn’t an event on.
“It is a symbol of our country, what we stand for, our values and is a recognisable symbol around the world, very distinctive.”
He was in a flat above his pub when his deputy manager phoned him in a “state of distress and shock”, he said.
Mr Brace told the court he followed the men after they ripped the flags off the poles and saw them attempting to light the flags on fire, but they were “struggling to get it going”.
A trans-identified male who was convicted of multiple horrific sexual crimes against children was allowed to play in an American women’s Australian Rules football league due to its “inclusive” policies. A former champion player says a culture of “compliance” contributed to Joseph Hamilton being allowed to play the full-contact sport with women.
Hamilton, a former US Marine who now goes by “Lily,” joined the Golden Gate Australian Football League’s women’s side, the Iron Maidens, during the 2023 season. Female players were unaware that the male athlete tackling them on the field and joining them in private social settings was a registered sex offender.
According to a Quillette investigation published in August, a US military court found Hamilton guilty after he admitted to repeatedly raping a child under 12 between September 2003 and April 2004. Hamilton was also convicted of forcibly sodomizing two children under 12, with the offenses taking place in North Carolina between May 2003 and September 2003.
A court-martial order obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows Hamilton was sentenced on 7th September 2005 to 41 years’ confinement and a dishonourable discharge. Under a pre-trial agreement, the portion of the sentence exceeding 25 years was suspended.
Hamilton’s mugshot in the National Sex Offender Database.
Hamilton ultimately served approximately 15 years in prison. Quillette reported that he was released in 2021 or 2022, but Hamilton told CapRadio in 2024 that he emerged from prison in time to see the extensive protests that had shaken America in the summer of 2020.
Australian Rules football is not a low-contact recreational activity. The official league website describes USAFL club competition as “full contact” and the highest level of the sport in the United States, distinguishing it from a separate non-contact recreational version. Players sprint, collide, contest the ball in the air and tackle opponents to stop their movement or force a disposal, meaning female players were required to absorb contact from a male sex offender in a sport whose rules expressly contemplate forceful tackles and players being driven to the ground.
Hamilton was not merely permitted to appear on the fringes of the team. A now-deleted November 2023 club post named “L. Hamilton” as the recipient of its “Maidens Maiden Award,” alongside photographs of Hamilton playing and attending a club event. The same post celebrated the Iron Maidens winning their seventh national title.
Reduxx understands that women affiliated with the club were not informed about Hamilton’s sex-offender status during the season.
The allegations surrounding what happened after the discovery are almost as disturbing. Quillette obtained a complaint sent to USAFL president April Munn stating that then-GGAFL president Jules Hatfield quietly removed Hamilton after the 2023 season, but that club and Iron Maidens leaders did not formally tell all players why.
The complainant said women had shared hotel rooms, alcohol-fueled nights and family events involving children with Hamilton, yet were not given the opportunity to say whether he had made them uncomfortable or placed them at risk.
“Every woman has a right to know if she is sharing vulnerable space with a registered sex offender,” the complaint stated.
In a response dated September 3 of 2025, Munn reportedly said USAFL did not control clubs’ internal recruitment, roster decisions or removal procedures. She pledged a bylaw barring people convicted of sexually abusing children from league leadership positions, but not from playing or otherwise participating. Over one year later, and it is unknown if that bylaw has been put into place.
The league has also left the underlying sex-based safeguarding problem intact. Its current 2026 Nationals rules expressly prohibit women from playing in men’s games and provide a separate women’s competition. However, there are no published rules preventing males who identify as women from entering the women’s category.
Speaking to Reduxx, former professional soccer player and champion Australian Rules Football player Carly Smolak says it was around 2018 or 2019 when she first noticed biological males beginning to openly participate on United States Australian Rules Football League (USAFL) women’s teams. She says the decision to include men was “sprung on everyone,” and a culture of silence and compliance quickly settled in.
“When it comes to politics in general, you don’t see very many female athletes sticking their necks out in team settings because nobody wants to deal with the hysterics and bullying of the activist types,” Smolak says, recounting a time she “misgendered” a trans-identified male and was quickly chastised by one of her teammates. “Of course I just rolled my eyes, but that’s the type of response you can expect if you don’t just ‘sit there and take it like a good girl.’ It’s so disheartening to think how easily we as women are being controlled right now. What’s even more disheartening is that it is primarily women self-policing ”wrong think’ like a bunch of obedient foot soldiers.”
Smolak says she only interacted with Hamilton a handful of times and found his behavior off-putting. At a club party, Smolak says she observed Hamilton wearing “a very large hunting knife on his belt.” During another interaction, Hamilton entered a dark bedroom where Smolak’s partner was sleeping.
“He entered the room where my girlfriend, now-wife, was asleep and presumably alone while the rest of the team was downstairs. I heard him say ‘oh, who’s in here?’ I happened to be standing in the shadows and quickly emerged. Furious,” Smolak recounts.
“The one time he introduced himself to me, he was basically friendly. But it was at our trophy parade, where the team barhops throughout the Mission District in San Francisco. We fill the trophy up with beer, and everyone rotates around and drinks from it. Even though he had been on the team for less than a year, he took it upon himself to be the one pouring beer into everyone’s mouth. One of my teammates asked me why I wasn’t drinking from the trophy, and I think I ended up having to leave the bar and take a lap around the block because I was so upset that all of my teammates, some of the most badass women I know, would be ok with this,” Smolak says.
“But remember, we are all there for the love of the game. We are there to play sports, not to get in political debates. So in one sense, I really don’t blame anyone for not wanting to get involved in these arguments. That’s really not why we play sports. But on the other hand, I still cannot believe that women are being so compliant. It’s just mind boggling to me.”
Hamilton is not the only trans-identified male known to have played women’s Australian Rules football in the United States.
The New York Magpies have fielded two male players over six feet tall, Cricket Temple, an Estée Lauder product scientist, and Matthew Baker “Emma” Moss, a diagnostic radiologist at Mount Sinai. A 2025 team write-up described both as “star” players.
According to one USAFL player who spoke to Reduxx under the condition of anonymity, Temple was known for stripping his uniform between games and walking around the field in a “slip dress,” something the player described as “not something I’ve ever seen any of the female players do at a tournament either before or since.”
Temple has since moved to Toronto, Ontario, is currently playing for the Canadian Women’s National AFL Team.
Smolak says she is unaware of just how many trans-identified males may be playing for USAFL women’s teams.
“I personally know of at least four trans-identified males that have competed on women’s teams in the league, but I think there may be more. I am unsure of how many are playing in total, but what I do know is that anybody that I know that takes issue with males on the women’s teams will only discuss it behind closed doors, and otherwise stay pretty quiet about it,” she says.
“Even in the discussions that I have had where players expressed discomfort, it seemed to me they didn’t know if they were ‘allowed’ to feel uncomfortable. It’s like they felt bad for thinking these guys were creepy or shouldn’t be on the women’s teams. All of the messaging out there is that you’re a complete bigot if your instinct is that something is off.”
She continues: “There are a lot of loud activist types in the league that are pushing policy at the highest levels, asking people to sign petitions to advocate for the rights of trans-identified males, and even designing team uniforms to include the ‘progress flag.’ Frankly, I don’t know what the consensus is of the female players; in fact nobody does, because nobody has actually surveyed the players. All you see is a loud activist minority, and we really don’t know what percentage of the players fall into the quietly dissenting category.”
Hamilton had previously promoted himself as a consultant to people preparing for federal prison and their families. In a 2022 podcast, he discussed working to reintegrate offenders into families in which relatives may have “negative feelings” about the offender’s conduct, while the programme introduced him only as a former prisoner, Marine and advocate for “queer rights.” His convictions for raping and forcibly sodomising children were not disclosed.
Hamilton also appeared in a 2023 Buddhist talk produced by the Boundless Freedom Project, speaking of confronting “the harm I had caused” without specifying that the harm involved the sexual abuse of children.
California’s public Megan’s Law registry nevertheless lists Hamilton as a registered sex offender. The registry includes identifying physical details and statutory references to his sex offenses—information that was publicly available while women were sharing a changing room, field, accommodation and social environment with him.
Notably, Hamilton is listed as a “female” offender in the registry.
Speaking to Reduxx, a representative from the Independent Council On Women’s Sports (ICONS) condemned USAFL policy for allowing men like Hamilton to both compete with women and avoid scrutiny.
“Female athletes are being gaslit on a mass scale. They are being told they can’t trust their instincts, shouldn’t expect privacy in their intimate spaces, and aren’t entitled to fairness in their own sports,” she said. “This isn’t even the first instance we’ve recorded of a sex offender beginning to ‘identify’ as a woman and slipping into women’s sports completely unobstructed.”
The ICONS representative references an earlier Reduxx investigation into Cary Sutton, a repeat child sex offender and tennis coach who began going by “Cari” and entered women’s competitions after transitioning.
Sutton had previously served more than two years in prison after being arrested in the late 1990s on two counts of statutory rape. After his release, he secured work coaching tennis at Laurel Park in Georgia, where a contractor had failed to conduct a background check. Sutton then sexually exploited a 12-year-old girl, providing her with a secret mobile phone used to send lewd messages. He was convicted of felony child molestation in 2009 and required to register as a sex offender.
After beginning to identify as a woman around 2020 or 2021, Sutton altered his first name from “Cary” to “Cari” and entered three women’s tennis events in 2022.
He competed in six more women’s events in 2023, including a match against a 14-year-old girl. The US Tennis Association suspended Sutton in June 2023 and the US Center for SafeSport added him to its disciplinary database that October, although the USTA did not designate him permanently ineligible.
“The culture of silence and compliance witnessed by Carly Smolak at USAFL is a problem across so many sports, but when these ‘inclusive policies’ are allowing even male convicted sex offenders to enter women’s sports and spaces, there can be no question about the danger they pose to women and girls,” the ICONS representative says. “USAFL needs to protect its female athletes. All sporting bodies need to make it their priority to offer a safe and fair space for women and girls to participate instead of worrying about satisfying an increasingly unstable minority of vocal activists.”
