Can you monitor a situation without monitors? The Polymarket sports bar tried | The VergeSkip to main contentThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.The VergeThe Verge logo.TechReviewsScienceEntertainmentAIPolicyHamburger Navigation ButtonThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.Hamburger Navigation ButtonNavigation DrawerThe VergeThe Verge logo.Login / Sign UpcloseCloseSearchTechExpandAmazonAppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoftSamsungBusinessSee all techReviewsExpandSmart Home ReviewsPhone ReviewsTablet ReviewsHeadphone ReviewsSee all reviewsScienceExpandSpaceEnergyEnvironmentHealthSee all scienceEntertainmentExpandTV ShowsMoviesAudioSee all entertainmentAIExpandOpenAIAnthropicSee all AIPolicyExpandAntitrustPoliticsLawSecuritySee all policyGadgetsExpandLaptopsPhonesTVsHeadphonesSpeakersWearablesSee all gadgetsVerge ShoppingExpandBuying GuidesDealsGift GuidesSee all shoppingGamingExpandXboxPlayStationNintendoSee all gamingStreamingExpandDisneyHBONetflixYouTubeCreatorsSee all streamingTransportationExpandElectric CarsAutonomous CarsRide-sharingScootersSee all transportationFeaturesVerge VideoExpandTikTokYouTubeInstagramPodcastsExpandDecoderThe VergecastVersion HistoryNewslettersArchivesStoreVerge Product UpdatesSubscribeFacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSThe VergeThe Verge logo.Can you monitor a situation without monitors? The Polymarket sports bar triedComments DrawerCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...ColumnCloseColumnPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ColumnAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AIPolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyCan you monitor a situation without monitors? The Polymarket sports bar triedPlus, a Project 2025 splinter group goes up against the AI industry — and a16z.Plus, a Project 2025 splinter group goes up against the AI industry — and a16z.by Tina NguyenCloseTina NguyenSenior Reporter, WashingtonPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tina NguyenMar 25, 2026, 6:19 PM UTCLinkShareGiftAttendees wait in line outside the Situation Room by Polymarket pop-up bar in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, March 20, 2026. Graeme Slona/Bloomberg via Getty Images.Tina NguyenCloseTina NguyenPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tina Nguyen is a Senior Reporter for The Verge and author of Regulator, covering the second Trump administration, political influencers, tech lobbying and Big Tech vs. Big Government.Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge readers who are political junkies, and Washington insiders hooked on technology. If this email has been forwarded to you but you’re not a subscriber, sign up here so you can get that pure, uncut Regulator every Wednesday, straight from the source (aka me). I was taking Friday off in Maine when two major pieces of tech news dropped: first, the White House released its framework for a comprehensive national AI bill with the intent of passing it through Congress. (Hayden Field, our AI reporter, has a thorough analysis of it here.) Second (and clearly more important), Polymarket opened the Situation Room, a pop-up bar in Mount Vernon Triangle that was supposed to be a room for “monitoring the situation” on, literally, a wall of television screens.According to a report from NBC Washington’s Gary Grumbach, it did not go well at all. Friday apparently got off to a poor start, closing at 9PM due the giant wall of situation-monitoring television screens —the very point of the bar — not working. (The screens were still on the fritz on Saturday afternoon, and according to Wired reporter Makena Kelly, Polymarket provided guests free Champagne as an apology.)A colleague of mine attended for a bit on Friday before everything shut down, and described it as full of young professionals still with their work badges and backpacks, “honestly not much different from any other kind of work mixer or happy hour.” Apart from a jazz band, a giant light-up globe and one working television screen — “a long table that looked like shuffleboard but was actually a screen that people looked down on” — my colleague spotted Josh Tucker, Polymarket’s head of growth, in the VIP area on an outdoor seating patio, though it was rather sparse. “It was also raining so [I don’t think] anyone wanted to be out there,” he suggested. The entire event, in his estimation, was “monumentally stupid.”(As someone who’s covered blockchain-based restaurants and utter shitshows, I deeply regret that I could not attend. But please send all tips for the next restaurant opening, or anything perhaps of greater political and societal consequence, to tina.nguyen+tips@theverge.com.)Red on red violence, AI editionFor months, I’ve written about the growing rift inside the MAGA coalition between the tech right that’s become deeply influential in Donald Trump’s White House, and the conservative movement, an activist coalition of influence groups driven more by family values and Christian ideology than simple loyalty to Trump. But what was once a simmering tension has now erupted into visibility and formality. On Monday, just days after the White House announced the AI legislative framework, a group of Republicans and conservative activists announced the launch of the Alliance for a Better Future (ABF), with the goal of taking a right-wing approach to fight the AI and tech industry’s growing political influence. The members are pretty high-powered in conservative circles: Michael Toscano from the Institute for Family Studies, Brad Littlejohn, the director of programs at American Compass, and tech founder and conservative policy advocate Tim Estes.But within hours, it drew fire from another high-powered Republican: Nathan Leamer, an alumnus of the GOP-aligned digital agency Targeted Victory, a former policy adviser to FCC chairman Ajit Pai, and the executive director of Build American AI, an advocacy group connected to the pro-AI industry super PAC Leading the Future. (Major donors to the $100 million committee include Andreessen-Horowitz, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale.) He specifically took issue with the fact that Max Tegmark, a prominent AI safety advocate and the founder of the influential Future of Life Institute (FLI), had retweeted ABF’s announcement and positioned the group as a counter to the equally-influential Andreessen Horowitz crowd.Screenshot via @NathanLeamerDC/X.Let’s set aside the issue of who’s funding what for now and talk about the Alliance for a Better Future itself. I used to cover right-wing politics at a pretty in-depth level, and I can definitively say that the backgrounds of members of this AI skeptical think tank are a big deal:Most readers will recognize staffers from groups like the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank whose influence dates back to the Reagan era. More recently, they were the driving force behind Project 2025, a massive collaboration with other influence groups to write an ideologically consistent policy agenda that could be implemented by the next Republican president.Many of the staffers are also from groups that participated in Project 2025 — American Compass, the American Principles Project, and American Moment. Others are from the actual GOP party apparatus, such as the Republican Governors Association, and from the MAGAworld influence groups like America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank.Given their backgrounds working for Republican elected officials, free market and religious think tanks, and going to conservative-aligned colleges, it’s safe to say that anyone who’s a staffer at this organization is deeply enmeshed in the conservative network. (The conservative movement, it should be said, predates the Trump-centric MAGA movement by decades, and there are still pretty significant ideological rifts between the two tribes.)That said, when I reached out to Leamer for comment, he pointed out a significant distinction: The foundation was composed of staffers from these organizations, but the institutions themselves were not officially endorsing ABF. “The Heritage Foundation is not running ads against the president’s White House AI framework,” said Leamer, citing the organization’s longstanding “one voice” policy: when Heritage endorses something, that means all its employees endorse it. And after his tweet, two of ABF’s board members, Jon Schweppe and Joel Thayer, went out of their way to say that they were working in their personal capacity, and that their views did not represent those of their employers.After Regulator was published, I received this response to Leamer’s allegations from ABF’s CEO Janet Kelly, flatly denying that FLI was funding them. “We are supported by people who can’t be bought by Big Tech billionaires,” she told The Verge in a statement. “But we know tech’s little keyboard warriors are desperate to spread lies because they don’t have the guts to look parents in the eye about how their benefactors are leaving children exposed.”Is it a full-blown right-wing civil war yet? Not exactly, but with the establishment of this splinter group, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got there. I don’t doubt for a second that Leamer and the White House have, indeed, worked with these groups (and perhaps some of these individuals) in the past about AI issues. But whenever conservatives begin accusing each other publicly of taking dark money, whether the money’s from FLI or a16z or the Kochs or Mercers or Club for Growth or literally any number of groups, I can imagine Ronald Reagan sobbing over the death of the Eleventh Commandment (“Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican”). These days, there’s really no such thing as friendly collaboration among right-wing interest groups, and barring extraordinary circumstances (or the Democrats controlling the White House), it’s difficult enough to get them united behind a singular policy goal. It’s even harder when the rift is over longstanding conservative issues like child safety and family values, and front-of-mind populist issues like job security.What I’m readingClarity for Clarity: The crypto markets were absolutely rocked this week when the White House released compromise language for the Clarity Act, the crypto market structure bill currently stalled in Congress following Coinbase withdrawing its support earlier this year. The key issue: the new bill strictly curtails stablecoin yields and bans stablecoin rewards programs, a huge win for traditional banks worried about consumer flight. Now it’s back to Congress for even more markup shenanigans, probably in April.Influencer wars: FBI Director (and influencer) Kash Patel’s girlfriend, country singer and influencer Alexis Wilkins, had previously been accused of being a Mossad agent. This week, she laid out a 13-post X thread where she claimed that she was the target of a foreign influence disinformation campaign. Which country was attacking her? She didn’t say, but she did claim that Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, and Candace Owens were being paid off to smear her.Glass cliff watch: Status reported Tuesday that last quarter, under Bari Weiss’s leadership, CBS Evening News hit its lowest ratings ever in both total audience and in the 25–54 key demographic. (This would be a good time to resurface my colleague Liz Lopatto’s column from October that spells out exactly what happens to female executives appointed by tech investors to manage dying assets.)And now, Recess.Never in a million years would I have ever placed “will Laura Loomer meet the Dalai Lama” as a bet on Polymarket, but apparently I should have:Image via @LauraLoomer/X.See you next week.Update, March 25: Added comment from ABF’s CEO.Correction, March 25th: An earlier version of this article misstated the titles of Tim Estes and Brad Littlejohn. Estes is a tech founder and conservative policy advocate for child and tech safety. Littlejohn is the Director of Programs at American Compass, not the president of programming.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Tina NguyenCloseTina NguyenSenior Reporter, WashingtonPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tina NguyenAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AIColumnCloseColumnPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ColumnPolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyPoliticsClosePoliticsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PoliticsRegulatorCloseRegulatorPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All RegulatorMost PopularMost PopularNvidia CEO Jensen Huang says ‘I think we’ve achieved AGI’Welp, I bought an iPhone againOpenAI just gave up on Sora and its billion-dollar Disney dealSony and Honda ain’t feelin’ the Afeela anymoreDonut Lab’s solid-state battery could barely hold a charge after getting damagedThe Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Advertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native adMore in ColumnTopical Dancer is propulsive, playful, and politicalOnline age checks came first — a VPN crackdown could be nextMuch ado about proteinPaid streaming for cheapskates is having a momentDavid Sacks’ big Iran warning gets big time ignoredSotomayor’s Wabi Sabi is the funnest record of 2026Topical Dancer is propulsive, playful, and politicalTerrence O'BrienMar 22Online age checks came first — a VPN crackdown could be nextEmma RothMar 22Much ado about proteinVictoria SongMar 20Paid streaming for cheapskates is having a momentJanko RoettgersMar 19David Sacks’ big Iran warning gets big time ignoredTina NguyenMar 18Sotomayor’s Wabi Sabi is the funnest record of 2026Terrence O'BrienMar 15Advertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native adTop Stories6:15 PM UTCThe United States router ban, explained6:08 PM UTCMeta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction caseTwo hours agoDisney’s big bets on the metaverse and AI slop aren’t going so well5:13 PM UTCThe TSA is broken — is privatization next?3:22 PM UTCLive-service games are such a mess even Fortnite is struggling13 minutes agoThe Sonos Ace are a hefty 25 percent for Amazon’s Big Spring SaleThe VergeThe Verge logo.FacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSContactTip UsCommunity GuidelinesArchivesAboutEthics StatementHow We Rate and Review ProductsCookie SettingsTerms of UsePrivacy NoticeCookie PolicyLicensing FAQAccessibilityPlatform Status© 2026 Vox Media, LLC. 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The Polymarket sports bar’s attempt to “monitor the situation” proved a significant, and ultimately unsuccessful, venture, as detailed by Tina Nguyen’s report for The Verge. The core concept—a pop-up bar equipped with a wall of television screens displaying various streams of information—was intended as a novel space for observing and analyzing potentially impactful events. However, a critical failure with the screens immediately undermined the entire operation, leading to its premature closure at 9 PM on Friday and ongoing technical issues throughout the weekend. The event itself was characterized by attendees, many of whom were young professionals with work badges, as strikingly similar to a standard work mixer or happy hour, lacking a truly distinct or insightful atmosphere. The presence of a jazz band and a light-up globe added a veneer of sophistication, but the operational malfunction—specifically the non-functioning screen—served as the dominant feature, as described by a colleague who attended briefly before leaving due to the ongoing problems. Josh Tucker, the head of growth for Polymarket, observed the event from the VIP patio and deemed it “monumentally stupid.” The situation highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of “monitoring” and the importance of reliable infrastructure when attempting to achieve it. The event’s failure also underscores a broader tension within the conservative movement, as evidenced by the emergence of a splinter group – the Alliance for a Better Future (ABF) – which directly confronts the growing influence of the tech industry and, particularly, the AI sector. This group, comprised of figures from organizations like the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, represents a concerted effort to challenge the prevailing narrative around AI development and regulation. Critically, this effort is fueled by a perception of conflict—a “red on red” battle within the conservative ecosystem—which is starkly illustrated by the immediate responses to the ABF’s formation, including criticism from figures like Nathan Leamer, who operates through a network of affiliated organizations and advocacy groups. Leamer’s actions serve as a microcosm of the broader struggle for influence and control within the conservative movement, demonstrating the deeply entrenched divisions and the willingness to engage in strategic antagonism. Nguyen’s reporting effectively captures this dynamic, positioning the Polymarket debacle not just as a technical failure, but as a symptom of underlying ideological battles playing out within the American political landscape.