Do you watch sports? What about betting? Because everyday (all day) it seems, millions of sports bets are placed in the United States—while games are still unfolding. With the click of a button or a tap on the phone, gamblers can wager not only on who wins, but on nearly every moment in between.

For most of American history, this kind of gambling was illegal in much of the country, driven by fears it would taint our sports. But that all changed in 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting. Almost immediately, addiction, debt, and harassment surged—as did gambling and game-rigging scandals worth millions.

Danny Funt of the Free Press says that legalized sports betting has “unleashed a wave of addiction, harassment, death threats against players and moral rot.” He wonders what betting has done (and will do) to sports as a whole. But the bigger question is does anyone even care? The New York Times points out that breaches of ethics in sports are almost as old as professional competitions.

They point out where and when the scandals have affected the business—and when they haven’t. For instance, when the podcaster Van Lathan heard about the sports-betting and poker indictments that ensnared two active NBA figures last fall, it didn’t make him want to stop watching the NBA … and he wasn’t alone. In the days after the arrests, professional basketball had its most-watched opening week since 2017. Viewership the night the FBI held its news conference was 60% higher than for the previous year. The league announced that the coach and player involved had been placed on leave, and then resumed promoting its new season.

Just last Thursday, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania unsealed indictments against 20 college basketball players at 17 schools, accusing the players as well as gamblers of engaging in point shaving during games. The NCAA doesn’t allow its athletes to bet on sports, nor does it allow sponsorships from gambling companies. But gambling is so pervasive in sports that those rules may not matter much anymore.

One might argue that modern threats to sports integrity go well beyond sports gambling. Cheating, doping, tanking and match fixing have all chipped away at the supposed sacredness of what happens on the field. For some people, the definition of integrity is simple. Players need to try as hard as they can to win. Others think it’s more complicated. “As the world of sport and the world of business have slowly been overlapping, there’s a big tension in the purpose,” a philosopher who has been studying the question of sports integrity told the Times. “Is it a human relentless pursuit of excellence? Or is it a means to an end?”

In other words, when moneymaking conflicts with sports purity, which goal wins?

Previously on whatever we’re calling this global soap opera … the American president was demanding to acquire a Danish territory after days of escalating threats and once-unthinkable worries about the most powerful member of NATO turning its weapons against one of its oldest allies. But on Wednesday, Donald Trumps said that he had reached the “framework” of a deal on Greenland, backing away from his earlier threats.

Trump also paused the idea of additional tariffs for European allies that had resisted his insistence on owning the island, and said he would not use force to assert American ownership. Of course, he gave no details, but the deal was likely to fall far short of the full sovereign possession that he previously demanded. He also gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in which he said that the U.S. needs to absorb Greenland for global security reasons, then called for immediate negotiations, after deriding Denmark as weak and NATO as ungrateful.

Financial markets spiked at the news that Trump was ditching the tariffs. For now, Trump seems intent on a negotiated resolution to the dispute. In his speech, he said he won’t use military force to acquire Greenland, though he left no doubt that he still wants the U.S. to play a dominant role in Greenland's future. So the drama will no doubt continue to unfold.

More winter storms are forecast to sweep the country this weekend, stretching from Central Texas up through the Northeast. The National Weather Service says the system will dump heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain from the Southern Plains to the Mid-South starting tomorrow. The NWS warned of “treacherous travel conditions, prolonged power outages, and tree damage,” across the Southeast U.S. Government officials in these areas are asking residents to avoid traveling and prepare for possible power outages.

Meteorologists said the conditions could rival the damage of a major hurricane and has some origins in an Arctic that is warming from climate change. They warn that the frigid weather is likely to stick around through the rest of January and into early February, meaning the snow and ice that accumulates will take a long time to melt.

Why? The origins of the system begin in the Arctic, where relatively warmer temperatures add energy to the polar vortex and help push its cold air south. As far back as October 2025, changes in the Arctic and low sea ice were setting up conditions for the kind of stretched polar vortex that brings severe winter weather to the U.S., said winter weather expert Judah Cohen, an MIT research scientist.