CHICAGO (AP) — Caitlin Clark was in awe after meeting former President Barack Obama after he surprised the WNBA All-Stars on Friday at his Presidential Center.
Clark called her conversation with Obama “a moment I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life.”
“It was obviously super cool. He just complimented me for the way that I handle everything, obviously with everything that’s been going on,” the Indiana Fever star said Friday after meeting Obama. “He’s somebody that has been in front of the media quite a bit and he reminded me, ‘When I got famous in my 40s, I didn’t have to do it in my 20s.’"
Obama spoke to the players for a few minutes on the basketball court at the center which opened last month.
“Some of you I’m meeting for the first time. All of you are extraordinary and I could not be bigger fans,” Obama said. “The way the game has been growing lately, the way it’s been picking up and people paying attention to your excellence, I think it’s been something for basketball fans, generally, a sight to see. It’s been making me happy.”
He spoke to the players for a few minutes before taking a group photo. Obama then spent about 10 minutes shaking hands with the players and taking photos with them, including Clark.
“I know many of you are involved in some wonderful ventures off the court, looking out for other young people and inspiring them. I just wanted to say thanks,” Obama said.
The former president gave a shout out to A’ja Wilson in his talk to the players and then went over and chatted with her as well.
After the photo-ops were done, Obama stepped on the court and talked with New York Liberty star Jonquel Jones, getting down in a defensive stance for a few seconds on her.
“I feel like as a hooper, you know when someone’s challenging you. So I was just like, let me go over there with the basketball, you know, do a little cross, bump him a little bit," Jones said. “And I knew that I would get him activated a little because he’s a hooper, too.”
Jones said she had met Obama once before.
“He’s a role model for me and it was nice to be able to have that moment,” Jones said. “Someone that I look up to, someone that has paved the way for a lot of people to be here and see him continuing, his family continuing to give back to the community when they’ve already done so much is just so inspirational.”
That was the extent of his time on the court. He told the players that he didn’t play 5-on-5 anymore to protect his Achilles. He did say that he broke in the court with a game of “horse.”
Obama was the first sitting U.S. President to attend a WNBA game when he and his daughter, Sasha, sat courtside in 2010 for a Washington Mystics game. He also has hosted many of them at the White House after they either won WNBA championships or NCAA titles.
Obama was gifted with a No. 44 WNBA All-Star jersey that the players were going to autograph later.
This was the first professional sport to use the basketball court at the center, which opened in June. Obama went to the NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles in February. Obama said he unfortunately wasn’t going to be able to make the All-Star Game on Saturday because of a previous engagement with his wife, Michelle.
“It’s fitting for our 30th anniversary that we’re here as the first sports league to play in the Obama Presidential Center,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said. “Someone who has inspired hundreds of millions of people to dream big and accomplish things like President Obama has and his tie to basketball is amazing, too. I think there’s no more fitting person to be meeting with the players.”
After talking to the players, Obama went across the center to talk to a group of investors in the league and nearly 100 high school girls to talk.
AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
Former President Barack Obama surprises a group of high school freshman girls during the WNBA Changemaker Day at the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on the South Side, Friday, July 24, 2026. (Candace Dane Chambers/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
Former President Barack Obama surprises a group of high school freshman girls during the WNBA Changemaker Day at the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on the South Side, Friday, July 24, 2026. (Candace Dane Chambers/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — Diplomats began voting Friday on the fate of the embattled chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court during a special meeting in New York, the end of a nearly two-year saga that has left the already beleaguered institution even more bruised.
British barrister Karim Khan has been accused of sexual misconduct with a female aide, as outlined by The Associated Press in a series of stories, allegations which he has steadfastly denied.
The lengthy and complicated process has pitted human rights advocates, staff and member states against one another at a time when the court is already facing daunting challenges, including a campaign by the United States to “ dismantle ” the ICC, which was established to prosecute people responsible for humanity’s worst crimes.
The 56-year-old Khan was formally removed from his duties at the ICC in June after a report by the executive committee of the court’s oversight body found he had committed “serious misconduct.” According to documents seen by The Associated Press, Khan engaged in a sexual relationship with the woman and tried to prevent her from pursuing her allegations. Khan disputes those findings.
Now his future lies in the hands of the 125 nations who make up the court’s oversight body, the Assembly of States Parties. They are holding a special session in New York that will culminate in a vote where a majority would need to support a resolution to oust him.
Early in the session, a motion brought by Sierre Leone that would have made it harder to oust Khan failed and diplomats quickly moved forward to a vote on removal, several hours ahead of schedule, according to three diplomatic sources who were familiar with the proceedings.
The outcome of the vote, which is secret, is unclear. The court’s host state of the Netherlands will vote for his removal, as will France and Norway, the only countries so far to have made their decision public.
“We believe it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that his conduct constituted sexual harassment and abuse of power," Norway's deputy foreign minister, Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik, said in a statement to the AP.
In a letter to Parliament last week, Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen indicated that there was sufficient support to remove Khan. “Although the balance of power within the ASP is still evolving, the position of most contracting parties also appears to be in line with the recommendation of the ASP Office,” he said.
Päivi Kaukoranta, president of the Assembly of State Parties, said at the public opening of the meeting that the vote would be in private to “address a complex and sensitive disciplinary matter as part of this governance and oversight role of the International Criminal Court.”
“There has been splintering over how the court has handled this,” Lucy Gaynor, a historian of international criminal tribunals at the University of Amsterdam, told The Associated Press.
Groups that support the court’s work have taken diverging positions. Last week, a group of Palestinian organizations issued a public letter, accusing the executive committee of “unwarranted political interference” and said it lacks “the independence, impartiality or legal expertise to make assessments.”
In June, the International Federation for Human Rights, Redress and Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice with others said that the victim has been “publicly questioned, instrumentalized, and too readily dismissed as part of a political agenda.”
Staff members are also wary of the future. A group within the prosecutor’s office sent a letter to the oversight body expressing serious concerns about Khan’s potential return, writing that his “leadership has been materially diminished.”
Prominent international figures have also been voicing their views. In an opinion piece in Project Syndicate, former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the allegations are a plot against the court. “Khan’s enemies have managed to start a debate about his potential removal, with allegations of sexual misconduct serving as the tip of the spear,” the Spanish diplomat wrote.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, has taken an entirely different stance, writing on social media that Khan “clearly does not” have “the moral authority and credibility to continue serving as prosecutor.”
Khan himself has given a series of interviews denying the allegations and arguing they are part of a conspiracy against him for his investigation into Israeli officials. In an interview with CNN last week, the female staffer strenuously denied this. A United Nations investigation report seen by the AP said that “multiple credible witnesses dismissed the notion that she was a spy.”
Whatever its member states decide, the court is facing more turbulent times ahead. The Trump administration, which has already sanctioned key ICC staff including Khan, seeks to further destabilize the 24-year-old tribunal that it claims is a challenge to US sovereignty.
Regardless of the outcome, “the court is going to walk away bruised and battered and wounded and less able to face the greater threats ” Iva Vukusic, a researcher at Utrecht University who has been following the process, told the AP.
FILE - Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan talks before convening the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, Pool, File)
FILE - Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, looks up prior to a press conference in The Hague, Netherlands, July 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)
FILE - The International Criminal Court (ICC) is seen on Dec. 9, 2025, in The Hague, Netherlands. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, Pool, File)
