Controversial S#!T

The Tour de France had to be stopped for several minutes on Tuesday ... after multiple protesters parked themselves in the middle of the course and lit flares to block riders.

The men and women put their bodies in the roadway in what appeared to be an attempt to raise awareness for climate change.

Video from the race's broadcast showed the people quickly running onto the street and spreading out evenly across it -- forcing cyclists to stop and wait for them to be cleared.

Some of the protestors had chains around their necks, while others had shirts that read, "We have 989 days left." They stayed on the course until authorities physically removed them.

Once they were cleared -- event organizers made sure in the restart of the race that all of the previous gaps built before the pause were maintained after it.

File under "incredibly hot take."

Andre Iguodala believes Rasheed Wallace would be a top 5 player in the NBA if he played in today's game ... saying the 2004 champ would be better than 2-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Really.

The Golden State Warriors forward made the head-scratching comment on "The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz" this week ... saying Sheed had what it took to be one of the all-time greats, but chose to "do [his] thing" instead.

"Rasheed Wallace probably could have been a top-five player in the league for a 10-year stretch," Iguodala said on the show. "He was shooting half-court shots left-handed and right-handed."

"If Rasheed Wallace played in modern-day basketball, if he played in our league today, he’d be a top-five player. He’d be better than Giannis and I love Giannis."

Now, Sheed was a great player during his 16-year career ... averaging more than 14 points a game and playing a key role in the Detroit Pistons' title run in 2004.

His ability to shoot from range would certainly fit right in with today's game ... but better than Giannis?!? We're talking about the 2021 Finals MVP, 4-time first-team All-NBA selection, Defensive Player of the Year and 75th Anniversary team pick ... and the dude's just 27 years old.

Tiger Woods is teeing off on LIV Golf ... making it clear on Tuesday that he ain't a fan of the new org., or the golfers who have defected to it.

The 46-year-old railed against the new, Saudi-backed league for several minutes during a meeting with media members ahead of this week's The Open tourney ... explaining he just doesn't understand how guys have ditched the PGA Tour for it.

"I think that what they've done is they've turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position," Woods said of the LIV golfers.

Woods, who reportedly turned down a massive offer to play in LIV Golf earlier this year, explained he believes the Tour has given athletes the chance to "earn what we get" and establish a legacy -- something he clearly thinks is lacking in the new golf league.

In fact, Woods questioned how anyone taking the guaranteed payday from the new org. could find a desire to try to get better going forward.

"What these players are doing for guaranteed money, what is the incentive to practice?" the golf legend said. "What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt? You’re just getting paid a lot of money upfront and playing a few events and playing 54 holes. They’re playing blaring music and have all these atmospheres that are different."

Woods also said he agreed with The Open's decision to ban LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman from some of this week's most meaningful events.

"Greg has done some things that I don’t think is in the best interest of our game," Woods said, "and we’re coming back to probably the most historic and traditional place in our sport."

LIV Golf officially kicked off its first event last month in England. More than a dozen of the top players in the world -- including Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau -- have elected to play in it.

The PGA Tour, meanwhile, has suspended all of the defectors indefinitely, saying in a statement in June that anyone who follows suit will face similar punishments.

It's unclear yet what the four major championship events will do with the LIV golfers going forward -- though Tiger said even the slightest possibility of a ban from those tourneys would have turned him off to the idea immediately.

The pregnant woman using the overturn of Roe v. Wade to fight a traffic ticket in Texas says she's getting tons of backlash, and she worries the added stress could trigger an early birth.

Brandy Bottone tells TMZ ... she's catching tons of heat for using the SCOTUS decision to try to wiggle out of a ticket for driving solo in the HOV lane, with some folks even telling her to get an abortion, even though she's over 34 weeks pregnant.

For Brandy, she says the abortion hate mail is triggering, and as a result, she's stopped reading replies and responses to her viral story. That's probably for the best.

As we reported ... Brandy says she was 34 weeks pregnant when she got pulled over in Dallas County and a cop issued the $275 ticket. She plans to fight it in court though, arguing her fetus is a person -- and therefore a passenger -- under Texas law.

Brandy tells us she's pregnant with her first girl, and she's concerned about going into early labor with all the stress -- something she says happened when she was pregnant with her 2 sons.

LeBron James is NOT the NBA's G.O.A.T ... so says the King's former teammate, Ray Allen, who completely shut down the declaration from a beloved LBJ fan in a recent argument that was all caught on video.

Tyriek Weeks -- a basketball player from Commonwealth Academy in Rhode Island -- shared the clip to his TikTok page this weekend ... showing him and Allen getting into it over the James vs. Michael Jordan debate.

“He can score and pass it,” Weeks said, advocating for why he believed James was #1.

“Is he a great free throw shooter?" James' ex-Miami Heat teammate fired back. "Is he a great 3-point shooter? Is he a great dribbler?"

After Weeks answered "no" to all three questions ... Allen said, "So, you're saying he's the GOAT, but he ain’t even the greatest in all them categories."

Allen then went on to say Jordan actually is.

The argument from Allen is a surprising one -- considering the 46-year-old won the 2013 NBA title with LBJ, and the guys appeared to be super close during their time together in South Beach.

Ja Morant says if he were born a few decades earlier ... he would've given Michael Jordan hell on the basketball court -- saying he straight up would've "cooked" His Airness in his prime.

Morant made the eyebrow-raising comments while speaking with Bleacher Report's Taylor Rooks this week ... after the reporter had asked a line of questions about MJ.

In their conversation, Morant praised Jordan for everything he did for the game of basketball ... and then said he would have loved to have taken the floor against the NBA's GOAT while he was starring for the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s.

"I heard he was like -- just how he go about the game, just that mindset that he had, I would like to play against him," Morant said.

"I would have cooked him, too."

Morant didn't expound on how he would've taken down Jordan 1-on-1 ... but he did say he's just that sure of his own abilities.

"Nobody got more confidence than 12," Morant said. "I'm definitely not going to go and say somebody is going to beat me in 1-on-1 on any day."

The 22-year-old Memphis Grizzlies star added he'd be that confident in himself if he were asked to go 1-on-1 in a soccer match against a guy like Lionel Messi!

Lil Rel Howery thinks race is coming into play all too often when cops are on duty, and there's been way too much visual evidence of it lately across the country -- but he adds there are ways to reduce the carnage.

We got Lil Rel at The Ivy, where he talked about Black people getting gunned down for minor offenses, if any ... while white suspects like Robert Crimo III get taken into custody, as Crimo did after opening fire on the Highland Park 4th of July parade, leaving 7 people dead.

The Chicago native says the death of Jayland Walker was nothing short of brutal ... and he doesn't get why the unarmed kid was shot 60 times, while mass shooters at churches and protests get taken alive -- seemingly referring to Dylann Roof and Kyle Rittenhouse.

He says a big part of the problem is how easy it is to get a gun nowadays, and if it's gonna get better ... gun laws gotta get stricter.

The newest 'Thor' movie crushed it at the box office this weekend -- but as far as how people actually feel about it ... well, it seems much of the internet thought it was trash.

The numbers are in, and per estimates ... "Thor: Love and Thunder" raked in a whopping $143 million domestically, landing as one of the highest-grossing openings in the MCU. That's all fine and good for Disney, we're sure, but general reactions to the film aren't great.

For starters, critics gave it a relatively low score -- just 68% on RT -- which is a drastic drop  compared to other Marvel movies, historically ... most have held up much better over the years under professional scrutiny, but that's not the case with 'L&T.'

Not only were the pros unimpressed ... it sounds like "Film Twitter," as it were, also found the movie to be absurdly bad -- especially compared to other 'Thor' entries. Sooo, what's their beef exactly??? It ain't hard to tell ... people seem to have found it to be juvenile.

Scroll through some of the "Thor" trends and you'll see -- it's either folks crapping on the movie, or a bunch of others piling on those same people while trying to defend 'Love and Thunder,' with their argument being ... it's a freaking comedy, turn off your brains and enjoy!

That might be true, but it looks like a good majority aren't thrilled with the direction 'Thor' is going under the watch of Taika Waititi -- who helmed the last beloved installment, "Ragnarok," and who apparently did more of the same in this new one ... perhaps too much.

Many say 'Love and Thunder' relies too heavily on gags and punchlines rather than savor in the heavy stuff -- and some feel like the character/franchise has jumped the shark.

There's also people saying Christian Bale's bad guy character, Gorr, doesn't get enough screen time -- nor does Natalie Portman, it seems, based on some of these recaps. In short, there's a good handful of viewers who felt the movie was all over the place and uneven.

The Rotten Tomatoes audience score is at just 81%, which might sound okay for a regular movie -- but for Marvel, that's fairly awful. To be honest, we haven't seen it yet ... so it's difficult to say if there's any validity to all this criticism -- or if it's overblown/exaggerated.

San Francisco has a new District Attorney that's promising to clean up the city in terms of drug use and drug crimes -- a problem crystalized with a new viral video that's unsettling.

Check out this clip that was shot and posted this week by an SF resident named Ricci Wynne ... who filmed himself getting off at a bus stop near downtown SF -- around Mission St. and 8th St. -- while a ton of school kids were also disembarking at the same time.

The reason many found this disturbing ... a massive crowd had formed at this particular stop, a majority of whom have been labeled as alleged drug users or homeless. Wynne took in the scene ... and it's not pretty. You can see some of the children wading through what some might characterize as a dangerous area. And yet, they act like it's normal.

Wynne, meanwhile, is sending the kids off with good luck messages ... telling them to be safe, using a juxtaposition to show what sort of environment they're forced to navigate.

He later did an interview with a local CBS news station to explain why he recorded this ... saying he felt anger that the local leaders there have allowed things to get this bad.

Speaking of those leaders, the recently-recalled DA Chesa Boudin has now been replaced by a woman named Brooke Jenkins ... who's touted herself as tough on crime, and who vowed during her introduction ceremony last week to end open-air drug markets with ferocity.

During her speech, she appeared to address this exact incident, saying the city's kids shouldn't have to endure this out in the open. So, a new philosophy change, it seems.

Florence Pugh is firing back at people who opined on what they thought of her body -- specifically, her breasts -- when she bared it all in a see-through dress this weekend.

The actress was in Rome Friday for a Valentino Haute Couture fashion show, where she donned a pink getup on the red carpet that was about as sheer as it gets ... especially upstairs. Indeed, her chest was on full display -- and FP decided to go braless for the night.

It turned heads in the moment, no doubt, but it also apparently got a major reaction online ... especially from men, who Florence is now putting on blast for what she says were chauvinistic and disgusting comments -- some of which sound like frat boy talk.

Florence took to IG Sunday with three BTS photos of herself in the gown, and added a lengthy caption. She says she knew what she was doing and that the dress would get a reaction of some sort -- but that she didn't care, and wasn't nervous about it at all.

Then, she adds ... "What's been interesting to watch and witness is just how easy it is for men to totally destroy a woman's body, publicly, proudly, for everyone to see. You even do it with your job titles and work emails in your bio?"

FP continues, "It isn't the first time and certainly won't be the last time a woman will hear what's wrong with her body by a crowd of strangers, what's worrying is just how vulgar some of you men can be. Thankfully, I've come to terms with the intricacies of my body that make me, me. I'm happy with all of the 'flaws' that I couldn't bear to look at when I was 14."

Some of the vulgar words used, apparently, had to do with guys telling her/rhetorically asking her if she was embarrassed by her "tiny t***" or by the fact she was so "flat-chested."

To that, Florence asks ... why are you so afraid/bothered by breasts??? She goes on to describe that she grew up in a household of women who owned every curve of their bodies, and that she feels the same now ... taking pride in flaunting conventional beauty standards.

The documentary about Donald Trump that Congress subpoenaed has finally aired -- but there doesn't seem to be too much hard-hitting evidence that wasn't already known.

Filmmaker Alex Holder's 3-part movie, "Unprecedented," debuted publicly on Discovery+ Sunday ... but from the reviews recapping what was actually shown as it relates to Jan. 6 -- it sounds like no smoking gun exists in the footage, or at least in what Holder put out.

Congress seized 11 hours worth of film -- and also had AH testify behind closed doors as well -- but ya gotta figure anything truly damning would've been included in the final cut ... and so far, it doesn't seem like Trump said or did anything we haven't heard before.

Several outlets which have watched the doc have done thorough recaps, and as far as Jan. 6 is concerned -- it appears Holder only got Trump/his family on camera after the fact.

None of his kids opted to discuss it, but DT himself reportedly said this in the movie ... "Well it was a sad day, but it was a day where there was great anger in our country."

He adds, "People went to Washington primarily because they were angry with an election that they think was rigged. A very small portion, as you know, went down to the Capitol, and then a very small portion of them went in. But I will tell you they were angry from the standpoint of what happened in the election because they're smart and they see and they saw what happened. And I believe that that was a big part of what happened on Jan. 6th."

Aside from that, there doesn't appear to be much else about Trump's mindset during the actual day itself ... but frankly, everyone has seen what he said publicly that day -- and there's also been testimony during these hearings that have shed some damaging light.

What Holder did make good on was his promise to us that his doc would expose that Trump's campaign laid the groundwork for this whole mess right on election night ... when they started rolling out an insidious strategy to try and keep Trump in office, at any cost.

Not sure the Supreme Court saw this one coming -- Brandy Bottone, who is pregnant, is using the controversial overturn of Roe v. Wade to fight a traffic ticket in Texas ... and her case could set precedent.

Brandy says she was 34 weeks pregnant when she got pulled over in Dallas County for driving solo in the HOV lane. She says she told the cop her unborn fetus was her passenger -- and she cited the SCOTUS decision as she stated her case.

Brandy says, "I pointed to my stomach and said, 'My baby girl is right here. She is a person.'"

She told the cop she didn't want to get political, but the Supreme Court decision -- which leaves it up to states to establish abortion laws -- means that in Texas, her fetus is a person.

The cop didn't buy it, and wrote her a $275 ticket, but Brandy says she plans to fight this one in court. She says Texas law deems "an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization to birth" to be an individual.

Brandy says the cop told her the HOV rules refer to "2 persons outside of the body."

We'll find out when she goes to court July 20. She says, "This has my blood boiling. How could this be fair? According to the new law, this is a life. I know this may fall on deaf ears, but as a woman, this was shocking."

Johnny Depp's got a lot more to say about Amber Heard, and this time he's doing it in his music ... or so it seems based on some lyrics on his new record with Jeff Beck.

In a clear case of striking while the iron's hot, Johnny and Jeff recorded a full album, "18," and Depp reportedly wrote 2 of the songs on the 13-track collection. It comes out on Friday, but some leaked lyrics include Johnny singing, "I think you've said enough for one motherf***ing night" ... according to The Sunday Times of London.

While Johnny's said little about his ex-wife since defeating her in their defamation trial ... it seems like he's dropping a few references to her on the record. One of the tracks he penned is "Sad Motherf***ing Parade" and in one line he sings, "You're sitting there like a dog with a seven-year itch." Another not-so-subtle lyric ... "If I had a dime, it wouldn't reach your hand."

Doesn't take a genius ... but, it's worth noting Johnny doesn't mention Amber by name in any of the songs, at least according to the report.

As we've reported, Depp and guitar great Beck have been touring around Europe even before the verdict came in the trial. Remember, Johnny wasn't in court when the jury came back because he was playing live shows in the U.K.

Their new album isn't all shots at Amber, in fact, it's mostly cover songs -- including a Velvet Underground track and Brian Wilson's "Caroline, No."

Depp's focused mainly on his music career since the trial, and recently announced his Hollywood Vampires band -- with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry -- would be going back out on tour.

Polo G's lawyer thinks cops in Miami did the rapper dirty by only releasing parts of his 2021 arrest that make him look like the bad guy ... but Miami PD is denying it released the bodycam footage.

Polo's attorney Bradford Cohen tells TMZ this is something he's never experienced in his decades of work ... law enforcement releasing what he calls "heavily redacted" body cam footage, and only "the parts that disparage the defendant."

Cohen says there are crucial moments in his arrest that were left out of the released video -- "They didn't show him getting slammed to the ground or the reason why was pulled over. Of course, they wouldn't show that."

The video does show Polo verbally berating one of the arresting officers, but Cohen says that is "part of being a police officer out in public, people are going to say things you are not going to like."

He thinks Miami PD was embarrassed because it had no probable cause to stop him or arrest him last June, and the case has been largely dismissed after Polo completed anger management classes.

Here's the wild card, though -- we asked Miami PD why it only released portions of the arrest, and a spokesman told us the department did NOT release the footage ... which first popped up Thursday on Twitter.

Rhode Island State Senator Tiara Mack is standing by the viral TikTok of her twerking on a beach as a way to garner votes ... saying it's all about being an authentic version of herself.

Senator Mack tells TMZ ... her supporters know exactly what kind of politician she is -- one who's never going to become a fake politician, so she doesn't think an apology is in order for something that is authentically her.

She says she's never shied away from labeling herself as a "queer, Black woman," and hopes she can show the younger generation it's ok to be yourself and stay happy while making a difference in the community.

Senator Mack's comment section has been flooded with hate since posting the clip, and she says it has more to do with her as a Black woman than her as a politician -- seeing racial slurs thrown her way.

Twitter is yet again proving it's the worst for bulk bad takes -- this time, debating whether Anne Frank, who was hunted and killed by Nazis, had white privilege while alive. 🥴

You might've noticed the late Holocaust victim was trending Saturday, but finding out why is disheartening ... some, it seems, have floated an argument that Frank benefited from white privilege in Nazi Germany -- an argument that is rightly being shot down left and right.

Unclear how this toxic discourse first started, but it seems to stem from a warped notion that Jews had the benefit of their skin color to go unnoticed in public, if only temporarily, during that bleak time in history ... while POC, historically, haven't been able to do so.

The theory is so twisted, and yet ... it's being defended by a select few on the bird app ... despite a vast majority of folks swooping in to bat down the rhetoric by noting that Jews were, in fact, seen and treated as an inferior race in an ethnic sense ... and that Anne Frank was murdered specifically because she was Jewish. Plus, she was in hiding!

As someone wisely put it, "Anne Frank didn’t have white privilege…you wanna know why? Jewish people aren’t included when white nationalists define the perfect Aryan race. If you think she did, tell that to all the other innocent jewish people forced into concentration camps for not being white enough."

In other words, Jews were not considered one and the same as Nazis at the time, by said Nazis, even pigmentation-wise -- evidenced in their literal extermination by the millions.

This harkens back to another weird debate from a few years ago, when folks were going after Hellen Keller -- who was both blind and deaf -- for only have achieved such notoriety and success in her day due to her own "white privilege." That was bad, this is much worse.

This also seems to be in the same vein as what Whoopi Goldberg put forth on 'The View' this year ... when she likened the Holocaust to one group of white people against another, and not wanting to conflate that with the plight experienced by African-Americans.

She was suspended, and ultimately apologized. As some have noted, convos like these devolve into a contest of suffering -- with this new trend just being the latest iteration.