When Minnesota Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell introduced first-round pick Caleb Banks last Friday, he also took the time to introduce his new player’s family and there were a lot of them — his mom Mary, his brothers Trayvon and Jalen and his girlfriend Monique.

“It’s not only just about our players,” O’Connell noted, “but it’s about their support systems and their families feeling a part of the organization that our great ownership lets us get to be a part of every single day.”

Florida defensive lineman Caleb Banks sacks LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier during the second half of an NCAA college football game in Gainesville, Fla., on Nov. 16, 2024. (John Raoux/AP)

Well, apparently the Vikings are also welcoming of their players’ pets and that is important when it comes to Banks, because at some point he’s moving to the Twin Cities with his two pythons.

And his Cane Corso.

And a chameleon.

And some birds.

And maybe a tarantula he wants to add to the menagerie.

Bring ’em all, the Vikings encouraged Banks when they selected him in the first round last Thursday.

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“You ready to go?” Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores asked Banks on the phone. “Let’s get the dog, let’s get the snakes, let’s get the chameleon. Let’s get everybody packed up. Bring them all.

“I know you’re going to bring your best, too, so … We’re excited to get you here.”

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Banks, who multiple NFL evaluators have referred to as a “beast” because of his physical prowess, shared his affinity for animals when he met with the Vikings at the NFL combine.

That was interesting to them. One must think the fact Banks is 6-foot-6 and 330 pounds, capable of a 32-inch vertical leap coupled with tremendous power on the interior defensive line, was of greater interest to the team.

But the openness to the pets apparently made Banks feel more comfortable with the Vikings.

Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores looks on during the fourth quarter of a game against the Green Bay Packers at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minn., on Jan. 4, 2026. (Matt Blewett/Imagn Images)

“… It meant a lot to me because for you to say that on the phone,” Banks said of the Flores conversation, “it shows how deep you care and you actually listen. I was excited. You know, he told me to bring my animals. I’m like, ok, I’m going to bring my animals in.

“Let’s do it. Let’s do it!”

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If you haven’t gotten the drift by now, yes, Banks is a bit different. Just ask him.

“I’m different,” he confirmed. “I got a crazy personality. I’m very goofy. I don’t know if y’all can tell. I can just make a joke out of anything. I’m a great person. I love my animals. I got four of them. I’m probably going to have more.

“I used to skateboard. I do a lot of crazy things you probably wouldn’t think somebody with 330 pounds and 6’6 would do, you know what I mean? So, I’m different, man. I’m a jack of all trades. You never know what you might get out of me.”

So how did that personality translate to having an eclectic taste for exotic animals?

A general view of the draft tent is seen prior to Round One of the 2026 NFL Draft at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 23, 2026. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)

“It’s a long story, man,” Banks said. “When I was younger, somebody said, ‘I like a koala bear.’ Just making jokes. I didn’t know what it was. This girl was like, ‘Koala bears are cute.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, snap, all right, let me look into it.’ Started learning about koala bears a little bit, learning where they were from.

“Then I fell in love with animals, and then when I had to go to college, they said, you got to pick something, like pick a major. I’m like, ‘A major? Like, what’s that?’ So it’s like something you like to do. What do you like to do? And I’m like, ‘I love animals.’

Banks entertained the idea of studying zoology. And then he realized he’d better major in football first.

“I didn’t have the time,” he said. “It was a lot of work going to the zoo and being with animals, and you got football practice, and you got to be there. So that was hard.”

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Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell claps to the crowd before the game against the Houston Texans at U.S. Bank Stadium. (Brad Rempel/Imagn Images)

Banks says his pets will move with him “in due time.” And he might add to his collection.

“Probably some more snakes, a tarantula,” he said. “I want some frogs. Probably another dog. I don’t know, you never know what might happen. I’m going to surprise myself, honestly. I’m going to bring one to the facility, coach.”

That would truly test how welcoming of Banks’ pets the Vikings truly are.

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Trevor Bauer says even a no-hitter wasn’t enough to stop the media from trying to turn the story negative.

The former Cy Young Award winner joined “Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich” on Tuesday and ripped what he described as a long-running media effort to paint him as a bad teammate, arguing that the same narrative popped up again even after one of the best outings of his comeback.

As Fox News Digital’s Scott Thompson reported, Bauer threw a seven-inning no-hitter for the Atlantic League’s Long Island Ducks in a 13-0 win over the Lancaster Stormers on Sunday at Penn Medicine Park. It was just Bauer’s second start in the United States since 2021, and he walked one and struck out seven in a scheduled seven-inning game, as part of a doubleheader, against the Stormers.

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But Bauer told Dakich the coverage around him rarely stays about baseball for very long.

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” Bauer said. “It is going to be twisted negatively in some way and if they can’t twist it negatively, they’re just not going to talk about it or report it.”

Bauer said that has been true for years, especially when it comes to how his relationships with teammates are discussed.

“I have this rep for being a bad teammate because of a story that came out in 2011 that wasn’t even true,” Bauer said. “And so that’s followed me my entire career.”

Bauer did not specify which 2011 story he was referring to. But the “bad teammate” theme has surfaced in prior coverage, including 2013 reporting that cited criticism from then-Arizona catcher Miguel Montero about working with Bauer during their time in the organization.

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Trevor Bauer and catcher Miguel Montero talk during a game against the San Diego Padres on July 3, 2012. (Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports)

According to Bauer, that same theme showed up again after his no-hitter on Sunday.

“So much so that when I threw the no-hitter, my infielders celebrated with each other,” Bauer said. “The story that some people are trying to push is that they didn’t even want to celebrate with me, that I’m such a bad teammate that they don’t want to celebrate with me, despite all the evidence.”

Bauer then pointed to what happened next as proof that the full story looked very different.

“My teammates circled around me and dunked me with a Gatorade shower,” Bauer said. “They all went and signed a ball from the no-hitter, which is really cool of them. Everyone on the team signed it.”

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To that point, USA Today posted a story about the no-hitter with the headline, “Trevor Bauer’s Ducks teammates were hilariously unimpressed with no-hitter.”

Yahoo Sports has an article on its website titled, “Trevor Bauer’s extremely fake no-hitter won’t have MLB teams knocking on his door.”

That was part of a broader frustration Bauer expressed with how he believes stories about him are covered in general.

“There’s very few articles that ever get everything right,” Bauer said. “I would say the majority of the time, a lot of it is omission too. They know something to be true and they just omit certain facts.”

Long Island Ducks pitcher Trevor Bauer and catcher Gavin Collins high-five after finishing an inning during Bauer’s no-hitter on Sunday April 26, 2026. (Jordan McGregor)

Bauer argued that some of the most important context is regularly left out.

“One of the worst ones is like, ‘Oh, he settled with his accuser out of court,’ and they leave it there,” Bauer said. “Never mentioning that I never paid her a cent and she owes me hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like that puts a different context on settling something out of court.”

He added, “They also never mention that I was never charged or never arrested.”

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From Bauer’s point of view, that is not accidental.

“I think a lot of the articles are intended to be slanted a certain way,” Bauer said. “They’re purposely inflammatory from a headline perspective to try to get clicks and then they don’t really reflect the situation accurately on purpose.”

Trevor Bauer hasn’t pitched in Major League Baseball since the 2021 season with the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

Bauer also acknowledged to Dakich that he has long been a polarizing figure, and he did not pretend that all of that happened by accident.

“I’m just polarizing in some ways,” Bauer said. “A lot of it’s been intentional to try to draw attention to the sport of baseball and to try to market it and get more eyeballs on it.”

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He added that part of generating attention is understanding what kind of personality gets people talking.

“I think for something to be interesting, you really need to have like a villain in a lot of ways,” Bauer said. “And I have no problem playing that role.”

Still, Bauer made clear there is a difference between being polarizing and being falsely framed. And after throwing a no-hitter, he clearly believes the attention should have stayed on the performance itself instead of immediately circling back to a narrative he says has followed him for at least 15 years.

Even when the result is undeniable, he says the story around him is already being written.

A Pennsylvania hearing on transgender sports legislation erupted in chaos Monday, as Republicans accused Democrats of trying to sidestep votes on two related bills.

Pennsylvania became a focal point of the transgender sports debate in 2022, as UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas competed against female athletes including the University of Kentucky’s Riley Gaines. Since then, conservatives have sought to codify the separation of biological sexes in scholastic sports and public restrooms nationwide.

The top Republican on the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee told Fox News Digital that the scene captured on official video showed the Democratic chairman trying to “re-refer” two bills to the House Health Committee without fully explaining which bills he was citing.

Ranking member Rep. Rob Kauffman, R-Chambersburg, said that Republicans ultimately determined the two bills focused on separating scholastic athletes by biological sex and that Democrats resisted any debate before sending them to another committee to restart the process.

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Protesters gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 13, 2026, to oppose transgender athletes competing in women’s sports as the court reviews related bans in a landmark case. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)

“It’s fascinating. But the key is, in the legislative process, whether it be on the House floor or in any committee meeting, they’ll say the number of the bill and then they’ll give a title or brief description of the bill before anyone votes on it. You don’t just call up a bill by number,” Kauffman told Fox News Digital in a Tuesday interview.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Timothy Briggs was doing just that in a Monday hearing, Kauffman said.

Briggs, D-King of Prussia, sought to move two bills out of the committee quickly, announcing that all Democrats would vote to re-refer them while identifying the measures only by bill number.

Republicans said they were unaware of the bills’ contents because their titles were not read as Briggs tried to re-refer them to the House Health Committee.

Briggs asked the clerk to call the roll for the “sole purpose of referring [them] to the Health Committee” and added that “all Democrats will be voting ‘Yes’.”

“Could we kinda know what the bills are?” interjected Kauffman, before someone in the gallery called out that they were related to transgender athletes in children’s sports.

HB 158 is the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act from Rep. Barb Gleim, R-Mechanicsburg, and HB 1849 is the related Dads Defending Daughters Act by Rep. Clint Owlett, R-Tioga.

Briggs sighed and began to speak before Kauffman continued.

“We can’t vote on a re-referral when we don’t even know what the title of the bill is. Obviously, you don’t want us to know what the title of the bill is,” he said, chuckling as Briggs cut in that the committee is “running out of time.”

Kauffman quipped that if he ever pulled such a move as chairman, Briggs’ caucus would have “lost your mind.”

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After another pointed exchange between Briggs and Kauffman, the Democrat ordered the clerk to call the roll on the bills and then claimed aloud that some Republicans were refusing to vote.

One of those named, Rep. Stephanie Borowicz of Lock Haven, objected after learning the bills’ true identities:

“Now you’re deciding how we’re voting?” said Borowicz, who co-sponsored Gleim’s bill.

“We might as well be better off in the Russian Duma at this point,” Kauffman added as Briggs plowed through their objections and tried to move past the two bills.

The blow-up showed that Democrats are “petrified of this issue [so much] that they broke legislative protocol, parliamentary norms and everything I’ve learned in this legislature in 20 years,” Kauffman told Fox News Digital.

He said that if the bills were moved to another committee without first being voted out of his own, the parliamentary “clock” would restart and Democrats could continue moving the measures through committee without taking a direct vote on the underlying transgender sports issue.

Kauffman said the kerfuffle was indicative of the national debate over transgender sports, calling it an “80-90%” issue in favor of separating youth athletes by sex.

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Kauffman added that Democrats will eventually have to confront the issue because the state Senate is advancing its own transgender sports bill, which will be taken up by the House.

“It’s a mom and dad issue. It’s a biological fact issue. So we’re going to keep at it,” he said, adding that critics are “cater[ing] to the far-progressive fringe” of their party and “generally don’t care what the people want.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to Briggs for a response to the situation.

A representative for the King of Prussia Democrat said he was “regrettably unavailable” for comment.

The clash came just weeks after a Republican lawmaker’s attempt to define “woman” in a Women’s Month resolution led Democrats to pull the commemoration.

Fox News Digital’s Kiera McDonald contributed to this report.

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