Speaking to a crowd of supporters in central Florida in August, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds denounced his soon-to-be general election opponent for governor, Democrat David Jolly, as a “Trojan horse” for progressive politics in the reliably red state.
“David Jolly is somebody who thinks it’s still OK for boys to be in girls’ sports,” said Donalds, purposefully misgendering transgender girls. “Just pure insanity.” A day later, he secured the Republican nomination.
In a Facebook post earlier that week, the Republican Party of Florida had claimed “boys WILL be allowed to compete in girls’ sports” if Jolly, a former Republican congressman who has objected to sweeping state bans on trans student-athletes, is elected in November. The group shared a video of an AI-generated brawny, masculine figure in a women’s bathing suit smirking on a winner’s podium, strutting through a women’s locker room and ripping open a shower curtain.
“Will I have to race someone like that one day?” a young girl asks in the video. “David Jolly says we have to let them play,” her mother replies.
But Jolly, who secured the Democratic nomination for governor last month, would not have the authority to do so: Florida law has prohibited trans student-athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity for more than five years. Jolly has said he has “no plans” to change the current law.
The Merikins are the descendants of formerly enslaved African Americans who fought alongside the British during the War of 1812. At the war’s end, the British granted these fighters and their families land in Trinidad and Tobago as part of their freedom.
The third verse of the “Star-Spangled Banner” served as a threat to African Americans who sought liberation — particularly those fighting against the United States like the Merikins — from Francis Scott Key, an unabashed racist whose racism influenced his professional legacy.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color . . . There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview following his now-infamous kneel.
Following a lengthy and seemingly self-imposed silence, as others sought to narrate his protest and commitment to social justice, Kaepernick has reemerged in the public square on an impressive press run promoting his book, “The Perilous Fight,” to whoever will listen, including the platforms of Karen Hunter, Katie Couric, Van Lathan, Trevor Noah, and “The View.”
Following a lengthy and seemingly self-imposed silence, as others sought to narrate his protest and commitment to social justice, Kaepernick has reemerged in the public square on an impressive press run promoting his book, “The Perilous Fight”
Kaepernick’s book discusses his life up to this point, from his childhood and adolescence to his current justice activities and life with his wife, Nessa Diab, and daughter. He takes time to explain the multifaceted origins of his activism, from the challenges of being a Black boy raised by white parents, to his experiences as a Black athlete in a space predicated on controlling Black bodies, to his awakening through literature by Black scholars and activists.
But like many Black people who were awakened by the murders of Black people by the police, Kaepernick was alarmed by the December 2015 murder of Mario Woods by San Francisco police. For refusing to drop his knife, Woods was shot twenty times by police. Police justified the killing, saying they feared for their safety, but the body camera footage said otherwise.
Kaepernick watched the Mario Woods video at his parents’ home, as his mother questioned Woods’ role in his murder. Upon reflecting on his attempt to explain to her the gravity of the situation and her lack of response, Kaepernick gained clarity:
“. . . the encounter helped bring even more clarity to the last twenty-eight years of my life, and why I was always frustrated and unsatisfied during my childhood when issues concerning race arose,” Kaepernick writes. “It was obvious my parents loved me as their son, but accepting their son was Black and dealing with that reality was not of much concern. Hell, I had white boys call me ni**er and try to tie me to a tree, yet I never told my parents. Even my mother told me I looked like a thug when I wore cornrows.”
When it was time to take a stand for Black people, he didn’t ask for permission, because he was already empowered to do so. And a Black athlete empowered to stand for Black people is an athlete who should expect to be persecuted.
Woods’ murder, followed by the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the not-guilty judgment for the officer who murdered Freddie Gray, compelled Kaepernick into protest at the start of the 2016 NFL season. While Kaepernick’s protest garnered acknowledgment and some support, it also led to his banishment from the NFL and the hijacking and appropriation of his protest, along with critique and ridicule of perceived inaction.
(Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images) Colin Kaepernick discusses his new memoir during a SiriusXM Front Row event with host Karen Hunter in New York on Sept. 10, 2026.
But Kaepernick pursued racial justice work: from the Know Your Rights Camps (KYRC) to the KYRC Autopsy Initiative, both founded with his wife and partner, radio personality Nessa Diab:
“I was hearing criticisms accusing me of just being an angry Black man without a plan. I wanted to buttress my protests on the field with action on the ground, to build an infrastructure that could start effective change where it might make a difference . . . I didn’t want to look back on this time and agonize that I should have and could have done more.”
Equally fascinating was his pulling back the curtain, so to speak, on the culture of football, particularly the NFL, where the expectation for players is to follow orders and “shut up and play.” He explained this by detailing various interactions with teammates, coaches, team executives, and even sports agents.
“Football breeds a culture of obedience. On the field, these guys were major alpha males — the biggest, baddest, most dominant dudes on the planet. But once they stepped off the field, they were just employees waiting for the boss to tell them what to do.”
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But the culture of the league also forced him to examine the implicit racism as early as his participation in the NFL Combine, asking himself, “Do all of those A’s over sixteen years of schooling plus the 3rd highest grade on the Wonderlic not mean anything? Is their stated concern over my intelligence genuine, or is there something . . . having to do with racist stereotypes?”
While all his experiences up to 2016 were instructive, they couldn’t buffer the shock and disgust of the backlash to his protest. While he did receive support, he couldn’t anticipate Nate Boyer’s attempts to profit from the protest and steal credit from Kaepernick teammate Eric Reid for the idea to kneel. Kaepernick couldn’t anticipate the Islamophobia and misogyny aimed at his wife. Nor could he anticipate the president of the United States calling him and his colleagues “sons of bit*hes.”
Who could possibly be prepared for any of that? Then again, maybe Kaepernick should have been.
All skinfolk ain’t kinfolk, and if he wasn’t aware before the protest, he certainly is now.
His two near-death experiences made him fearless. Overcoming numerous challenges in his football career made him steadfast. Welcoming his wife into his life, and the growth that came with it, grounded him. His childhood experiences with whiteness shaped him. Therefore, when it was time to take a stand for Black people, he didn’t ask for permission, because he was already empowered to do so. And a Black athlete empowered to stand for Black people is an athlete who should expect to be persecuted, like Curt Flood, whom Kaepernick mentioned.
His protest didn’t make white people comfortable. There were no performative photo-ops with politicians or any ride-alongs with police. There was confrontation. I suspect he anticipated some of the whitelash. After all, Kaepernick didn’t appear shocked that his white family was embarrassed by his protest, with his mother calling it “disgraceful.” What he may not have anticipated was the extent of the cover Black players and notable Black folks gave the NFL.
I wonder if Kaepernick anticipated hearing a player tell him he needed “to go ask my owner if it’s okay to protest.” Did he anticipate Dr. Harry Edwards being co-opted by the 49ers, Ray Lewis by the Ravens, and the players’ coalition by team owners? Did he anticipate Michael Vick suggesting that he cut his hair to get a job in the NFL? Did he anticipate being sold out by Jay-Z for personal gain, followed by hit pieces and being dissed in a freestyle many years later?
The truth is that all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk, and if he wasn’t aware before the protest, he certainly is now.
But Kaepernick doesn’t leave readers feeling that his work was in vain, or that he is without hope. He shares that his family, his wife and daughter, provide him with a newfound motivation to make justice a reality for Black people and all other people of color. He closed his book saying, with a Clarion call of sorts to his readers:
“Our children can’t develop to their full potential if they are constantly worried about what awaits them outside the doors of their home, or if they are on edge because of the fear of ICE agents invading their schoolyard or playground . . . What are we doing to our nation’s children when we are constantly undeserving their needs and sending them into schools that feel like war zones? They can never reach their peak in such circumstances. We must consider these factors when we think about how we are policing our communities and educational environments. We all want the same things for our children.”
But it begs the question that we all must answer: We all want the same things for our children, but do we all want the same things for each other? Colin Kaepernick has decided to move forward in hope. He’s asking us to do the same.
Sports are not neutral. They are a political battlefield. This is especially true along the color line in America. These moments can consist of singular events: Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their black-gloved fists in defiance against American injustice at the 1968 Olympics, Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali mastering the sweet science of boxing and delivering devastating blows against Jim and Jane Crow white supremacy and its assumptions about the mental, intellectual and physical inferiority of black people.
Black women are central to this story as well. Althea Gibson was the first black woman to break the color barrier in professional tennis. Decades later Venus and Serena Williams are trailblazing pioneers for their skill and dominance in women’s professional tennis.
More recently, of course, there is former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other black athletes (along with a few white ones) who have taken a knee during the national anthem to protest oppression and social injustice in post civil rights America.
There has been blowback, of course: Donald Trump won a presidential election (if only by a fluke) and remains remarkably popular among Republican and other white right-wing voters. At least in part, this reflects his strategy of condemning and threatening black athletes who dare to stand up for the value of black lives.
The politics of sports are also revealed in systemic and institutional ways. In American professional sports the vast majority of teams are owned by rich, older white men. Black and brown bodies perform on the sports field, sacrificing their mental and physical health as the raw fuel for corporate and collegiate sports franchises worth millions if not billions of dollars. Girls and women do not have the same access to sports — and the profits and privileges and opportunities that come with them — as boys and men.
Professional sports teams receive enormous subsidies and protections from local communities and taxpayers, while many of those same communities are struggling to provide basic services. The U.S. military uses the NFL and other sports as a tool for recruiting young people into its ranks. The jet and helicopter flyovers, the American flags and the frequent appearance of uniformed troops on the field are a superficial form of patriotism whose primary function is to legitimate nationalism and militarism.
Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams will be a spectacular display of the many ways that sports are political, and not an ideologically neutral or safe space.
How and why has Donald Trump targeted black athletes in his “culture war” strategy? Why has Colin Kaepernick become so despised by many white sports fans (and some black and brown ones as well)? How do black athletes — and the public response to them — represent America’s long and problematic history along the color line? How does white privilege operate in how athletes such as Tim Tebow and Tom Brady are perceived and treated? Are black athletes held to a higher and more difficult standard of civic responsibility?
In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with David Leonard, a professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University. He is the author of several books on race and politics in sports, including “After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness” and the recently published “Playing While White: Privilege and Power On and Off the Field.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
How did this moment with Donald Trump, who is now entering his third year as president, come to be?
In many ways, we’ve always been here. We’ve just had different chapters, different manifestations of the same history of inequality, of racism and of misogyny. In the most immediate moment, Trump can be viewed as a backlash to the election of President Obama. You can see the backlash against demographic shifts. You can see it as a backlash against cultural change.
Trumpism is a continuation of hundreds of years of history. But now filtered through spectacle, consumerism and loneliness, where we go from one moment to the next without any grounding or context.
Why do sports matter in this moment? Why does Colin Kaepernick matter in particular?
Kaepernick matters because sports are political. The fact that there is so much anger directed at him demonstrates the investment in sports as a particular type of political project where nationalism and militarism and where black bodies are required to “shut up and play.”
Kaepernick also matters for those who care about justice, because he’s a reminder of the power and potential of sport as an instrument of change.
But we also have to be careful. Too many people have reduced the Revolt of the Black Athlete 2.0 down to him. There have been other moments of resistance, such as WNBA players protesting and college athletes protesting in recent years, and other resistant moments as well. We have a tendency to reduce a movement down to a single individual — in particular a male, charismatic figure who has a national spotlight on him.
Movements are bigger than single individuals. In the case of Kaepernick you have him kneeling about the persistent violence directed at the black community, about police violence, about systemic racism, about Flint. We all too often get stuck focusing on the act of protest and not on what is being protested.
How would you respond to people, especially white folks, who would say that politics should be kept out of sports?
How comforting. It must be a wonderful place of privilege to see sports as apolitical for that black athlete who deals with racial slurs coming from the stands or that young girl who wants to play sports but is denied access, who has to hear parents or coaches talk about how she “throws like a girl.”
When we look at the mistreatment athletes, those playing sports around the globe, those who work in stadiums and build stadiums, it must be nice to think of that all as an apolitical space. There are countless examples of how sports are political, such as the national anthem being played, or military planes flying overhead, or the fact that the coaches or general managers or athletic directors are overwhelmingly white men.
The discourse around sports and athletes is also very political. For example, when black athletes are talked about differently than white athletes. Black athletes are very often described as being “selfish.”
Ultimately, the history of racism and racial politics are embedded in sports culture. To those who object to black athletes taking a knee in the NFL or elsewhere I would say, “So you want protest to happen in a place that isn’t disruptive to your daily life. Where is that place?” When you tell me that place, my question would then be, “When a protest happens in that place, will you support it?”
You hear people who say, “I support the cause, but not the method or not the place.” My question is, how do you support the cause? What are those people doing? How are they demanding change? Because part of the reason, historically, that black athletes use the platform of sports is because other spaces have been closed off. This is a silencing of not only protest, but the voice of people saying that these are our lived realities.
If you don’t want sports to be used, then what other spaces would you prefer? Whether it be workplaces, place of worships, schools or other parts of the public sphere, there is a long history of white Americans saying, “Protest, but just not here. This isn’t the appropriate place. This isn’t the appropriate time.”
This policing of black athletes is also part of a broader tradition in America and the West about the control of nonwhite bodies and submission to white authority.
What sports remind us is that there is a secure place for black bodies when they are doing the “proper work.” When black bodies are doing the work that is profitable, that is desirable, that authenticates a story of American exceptionalism and of racial progress.
From the protests of WNBA players to Kaepernick and to high school athletes as well, these protests aren’t simply against persistent anti-blackness in American society, they are also a demand to be heard. They’re also saying, “No, I will not shut up and play. My existence isn’t predicated on touchdowns. My existence isn’t predicated on winning a championship.”
A comparison between how Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick are treated is a stark example of white privilege and white entitlement.
There are multiple levels of white privilege at work with Tim Tebow. Likewise, similar dynamics are operative with Tom Brady putting a red Trump hat in his locker, or any number of college football coaches coming out in support of Donald Trump or making statements about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Certain athletes and those connected with sports are empowered to be political. It is not that sports should not be political. Rather it is that it is OK if it is a certain kind of politics, being practiced and engaged in by certain people. Therefore, whiteness is the ability to engage in politics or not to engage in politics. Whiteness is the power to assert oneself by choice and at will.
Considering Tim Tebow as an example. The black athletic body at rest is seen as unproductive, worthless and not valuable. Whereas Tebow resting and praying is seen as not only OK but desirable. Why? Because it authenticates this notion of the white athlete bringing morality, civility and religiosity into the sporting world.
Tebow, who was kneeling — which puts a spotlight on himself — is somehow seen as focusing on something bigger before the world. He is supposedly putting his relationship with God first. And yet Kaepernick was putting justice, putting black lives, putting any number of men, women and children whose lives were taken needlessly and unjustly first and before his own immediate personal self-interest. Yet Kaepernick is somehow criticized as being selfish.
Tebow also exhibits the power of whiteness in terms of how a person is celebrated as a leader, a role model, such a winner that he was afforded multiple opportunities to have a career. Tebow hits a home run in Double A baseball and it becomes breaking news on sports radio and TV. This also reflects the longstanding investment in the white quarterback as a cultural figure. A quarterback is imagined as being the most intelligent player on the football field and also the team leader.
Those same qualities are also still seen in American culture as being the purview of white men. This same logic justifies and normalizes the hiring of white men as CEOs, as being president of the United States, as being the “rightful” and “normal” leaders in America. Such racial logic gives Tim Tebow a platform and denies one to Colin Kaepernick.
What do the videos of people burning Nike sneakers in response to the Kaepernick ad reveal about the politics of sports and society? Those videos are very evocative of spectacular lynchings and other types of violence against black bodies.
This is again an investment in a certain type of politics and sport. Kaepernick and other black and brown athletes who kneel in protest against racism and injustice are such an affront to a certain type of (usually) right-wing politics that he should be kicked out of the NFL and his whole life destroyed.
Burning the Nike sneakers also speaks to the level of anger and betrayal that his protest elicited. This shows us that there is a significant investment in sports as authenticating American exceptionalism.
The anger at Kaepernick and burning the Nike sneakers also shows how invested as a culture the American people are in brands. People define themselves through their phones, shoes and even their headphones. So you have people who believe that Nike defines their identity seeing an athlete associated with that brand fighting for racial justice. It is personal for them. They do not believe in the same things. It is almost like Nike betrayed them.
There’s other reading of Nike’s ad campaign with Kaepernick. How “resistant” or “oppositional” is it really for him to be allied with a multibillion-dollar global corporation that exploits children in sweatshops.
We can’t have it both ways. We can’t simply talk about profit-driving fostering injustice and then make an exception when there is a cause or leader we agree with involved with a corporate actor.
Part of people’s response to Nike’s campaign with Kaepernick feels like more of a celebration of him getting paid after losing out to the NFL. There needs to be a discussion of Nike and other global corporations and the context of capital, racism and the exploitation of children — especially children of color around the globe — working in the apparel industry.
Is Nike supporting Kaepernick’s politics and struggle? I have yet to see Nike support the movement for black lives. Even the inclusion of Kaepernick in the ads does not make reference to the protests. There is also no reference to the larger movement.
There is a dimension here where these critical questions are not being asked, because people are reasoning that if Donald Trump is critiquing Nike then I am by definition on the other side opposing him and what he stands for.
The relationship between Nike and Kaepernick — and of these corporations and social-change work in general — does minimize the actual struggle for racial justice and the courage involved. Taking on a sport you didn’t think you could do might be a type of courage. But that type of courage and standing up against the state and oppression are very different.
The hyper-individual neoliberal mantra “Just do it” is a theme going back to Nike’s advertising campaigns with Michael Jordan.
What happens when you “just do it” and the state comes down on you? What happens when you “just do it” and the powerful take everything away from you?
How should we think about generational differences regarding the politics of the black athlete? NFL legend Jim Brown is very conservative in terms of economic policy — going back to Nixon and “black economic empowerment” — and has been critical of Kaepernick. He also supports Donald Trump.
Your point is one that really has not been highlighted enough. Jim Brown has said that Kaepernick has the right to protest and take a knee, but that would not be his approach. It should not be shocking that Brown supports Trump. If you look at the history of black economic nationalism, something that Jim Brown embraced, one of its major ideas is self-determination simply through capital.
But that becomes a convenient way of diminishing black youth, whether it be black youth shutting down freeways or Kaepernick kneeling or high school and college students protesting. Invoking previous generations of black athletes can be used in a very conservative and reactionary way to marginalize and undercut protest movements at work today.
Therefore you will see a narrative where it goes something like, “Look, Jim Brown, one of the foremost athletes who ever protested, he even tells you you’re out of line.” This is the same playbook that was used in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s against the black freedom struggle. These generational tensions within the black freedom struggle and other human rights movements are really nothing new.
I have heard the following argument made at my local barbershop, and I will admit in some ways I agree with it. Why wouldn’t Kaepernick just be quiet for now, play, get all the money he can, and work behind the scenes to do his political work? Then when he retires and has all that money saved he can say and do anything he wants, and do so with even more resources at his command.
What do we know about the history of African-American and other athletes, in terms of how those calculations are made? The fact that black athletes have to make such a calculation and that white athletes generally do not tells us everything we need to know. The fact is that white athletes can decide whether to be political or not. Whereas for black athletes there is a backlash no matter what.
For those who focus on the sport and do things behind the scenes, they are then criticized for not using their platform to create change. This happened with LeBron James.
Yet when James does speak out he’s told to shut up and play. It is very easy for white Americans to tell black athletes, “Why didn’t you do this?” Or “Why didn’t you take this approach?” or “Why didn’t you just give money?”
Yet there isn’t the demand placed on white athletes to engage in social and political change work. White athletes get a pass. Whether it be the pass that they get from the media of not being asked to take a position or the lack of expectation that they give back to their communities and the public or groups in crisis.
Why is there an expectation that LeBron James give back to Cleveland? What about other white athletes from Cleveland and Ohio?
It’s a lose-lose, right? If a black athlete speaks truth to power then he or she is a troublemaker because they are not living up to white expectations about black obedience. But if black athletes do not become involved politically or in other types of social-change work it becomes a narrative about black folks not being civically engaged, of them being bad citizens.
There are many examples of how the black athletes who speak up and engage politically are attacked as somehow betraying the traditions of Bill Russell and Tommie Smith. There is this flat understanding of the past which is used to demonize black athletes in the present.
It is as if Bill Russell or Tommie Smith or Althea Gibson were celebrated for protesting. No, they were demonized. They were punished, they were criminalized, they were treated as ungrateful, they were stripped of medals, among other things. So, it is a no-win scenario. White athletes, and white folks more generally, do not have that burden of expectation and confronting such a lose-lose scenario.
When, for example, white athletes do engage in any form of protest it is treated as “breaking news” and something to celebrate. See all the attention when Tom Brady liked the Instagram photo of the Kaepernick Nike ad. Should Brady get a medal? So what? He liked a Nike ad? There are white athletes, very few but still noteworthy, who have done so much more.
There is a deep convergence between right-wing talk radio and other media and sports talk radio and media. This is very apparent in the animus against Colin Kaepernick, Venus and Serena Williams and other black athletes.
I do think there is a shared history there. Beyond questions of media consolidation and ownership, those are both spaces that reinforce white male power and a particular understanding of the role of sports in society as a whole. Right-wing talk radio and sports talk radio also leverage a particular type of white anxiety about demographic change in America as well.
Do you think Trump’s animus towards black athletes as part of the right-wing culture war strategy will be enough for his voters to overlook his many failings and to reelect him in 2020?
It is an element. Trump’s use of culture-war narratives against nonwhites and other marginalized groups is part of the glue that will hold his electoral coalition together. In all, this reveals a great deal about the power of sports and the investment in sports as a racial political project.
This week on the popular theme park podcast Disney Dish with Len Testa and Jim Hill, Disney historian Jim Hill tells the story of The Walt Disney Transportation Company and its one achievement: installing a PeopleMover in what was then called The Houston Intercontinental Airport (now The George Bush Intercontinental Airport). — Read the rest
Israel and the Republic of Ireland are engaged in an overheated war of words that has transformed a relatively minor sporting event into an ugly international incident, not to mention a symbol of rising tensions around Israel’s relationship with the rest of the world. Two soccer matches between those countries will apparently take place over the next three weeks, but under increasingly bizarre circumstances. It’s fair to say that most people in both nations wish they weren’t happening at all.
The coach of Ireland’s national soccer team, Heimir Hallgrímsson — who is Icelandic, just to make matters more confusing — has said that none of his players want to participate in the upcoming matches with Israel, which he called “playing against genocide.” The Israel Football Association responded with an angry social media post accusing Hallgrímsson of “stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy.”
This teapot-level dispute actually reached the United Nations on Tuesday, when Irish Taoiseach (or prime minister) Micheál Martin addressed the General Assembly. In a much shorter speech than the one delivered by Donald Trump, Martin broadly endorsed Secretary General António Guterres’ view that the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank raises “the specter of ethnic cleansing” and endangers a hypothetical two-state solution. But he also found a moment to go local, calling on Israeli authorities to withdraw their “unacceptable remarks” about Hallgrímsson. We may reliably assume that further vituperation will follow.
All of this was predictable, and to some degree avoidable, as soon as Ireland and Israel were drawn to play each other in the opening round of the UEFA Nations League, a European international tournament a few levels below the World Cup. (No, Israel is not a European country. But for international sporting purposes it is considered one on TV, having been expelled from the Asian Football Confederation in the 1970s.)
That was never going to end well. Irish public opinion has been strongly pro-Palestinian for decades, partly from a sense of historical identification and deeply ingrained anti-colonial or anti-imperialist attitudes. That sentiment has redoubled since the Gaza war began, leading to increasingly tense diplomatic relations. Ireland was among several smaller European nations to recognize a Palestinian state in 2024, but Israel’s foreign minister singled out the Irish for retribution, closing the Israeli embassy in Dublin and accusing then-Taoiseach Simon Harris of embracing and spreading antisemitic rhetoric. Since then, the tit-for-tat has continued: Various cultural exchange programs have been dumped, and Ireland has become a leading force in the widening anti-Israel boycott of the Eurovision song contest.
From the Irish perspective, a certain historical irony is at work in these allegations of antisemitism. Consider the most famous Irish person of Jewish heritage, who despite being fictional can be said to have changed the world.
No nation anywhere is free of racism or antisemitism, but from the Irish perspective a certain historical irony is at work here. Even in the overwhelmingly Catholic ambiance of 20th-century Ireland (greatly diluted today), the country’s tiny Jewish community never faced outright persecution. In fact, Ireland became the first European nation to guarantee religious freedom to Jewish people in 1937, when the continental current was, shall we say, running in a different direction. Robert Briscoe, who was both a celebrated Irish revolutionary and an Orthodox Jew, became lord mayor of Dublin in the 1950s. Future Israeli president Chaim Herzog was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin. And then there’s the most famous Irish person of Jewish heritage, who despite being a fictional character can be said to have changed the world: Leopold Bloom, the ambiguous protagonist of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
Joyce reportedly preferred rugby to soccer, but he might have enjoyed the absurdity of the current Nations League fracas, which will apparently reach its denouement with two matches no one actually cares about happening in virtually empty stadiums. Despite widespread protests by Irish fans and a general consensus that the national team should refuse to play these games, the Football Association of Ireland voted to proceed, but after considerable dithering concluded that hosting a match in Dublin’s cavernous Aviva Stadium under these volatile circumstances was a dreadful idea.
So Israel’s “home game” on Sept. 27 will be played in Hungary, and Ireland’s on Oct. 4 will take place behind closed doors in what appears to be the local sports complex of a small town in Serbia. No fans at all will be permitted at the latter event, and only a few hundred Israelis at the former. Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, is contractually obligated to broadcast the games but will do so in bare-bones fashion, with no commentary, punditry or advertising. (Admittedly, that sounds fascinating.) It doesn’t matter who wins. Everybody has already lost.
Some families are paying thousands of dollars to keep their kid in a sport that they love. | John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
In the last decade, the cost of youth sports has skyrocketed. Cheaper, more local rec leagues have lost out premium travel leagues funded by private equity. The Covid-19 pandemic made things worse. As a result, some families are now paying thousands of dollars to keep their kid in a sport that they love.
Caitlin Moscatello wrote about the phenomenon last month for New York magazine. She says the shift started during the pandemic when park and rec budgets were slashed and the premium leagues became the only game in town. Private money saw the opportunity and seized it. Now, participating in youth sports means you’re caught in a pay-to-play model.
In return, elementary-aged children are being railroaded into a professionalized environment before they’re ready. More children are suffering from overuse injuries and are getting locked into a sport before they even have time to decide if they love it.
Moscatello joined Today, Explained co-host Noel King to break down what happened to youth sports, the impact on children, and whether it’s possible to reverse this trend.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Private money in youth sports doesn’t seem to make a ton of sense. Who’s going to make money off of an 8-year-old playing soccer? And yet what you found is there’s a lot going on here. Give me a broad sense of what’s been happening.
It was a little over a decade ago that you really started to see this influx of big money coming into the youth sports sector. And what you see right before and then certainly after Covid is investors using what’s called a roll-up strategy — where they own, or have a financial stake in, different touch points that families would have in the sport that their child’s playing.
For instance, they might have a stake in the league itself, but also the apparel company where families are required to buy the uniforms, and the software or the app that families need to go on to look at the team’s schedule, and in some cases look at updated stats and standings. There can be a hotel partner, so even though there’s a less expensive hotel down the street, they’re required to stay at this specific hotel.
There’s also money to be made on what’s being called the media side of all this. Parents described to me not being able to record video at their child’s game, but then being sold a package of photos and videos, which, again, is just another financial touchpoint.
How much are parents spending on sports?
But ultimately, in their quest to do something good for their kids, the way that the sports ecosystem has changed and is continuing to change can potentially set them up for long-term harm.
The average spend is a little over $1,000 a year, but many of the families that I spoke with, especially in this travel private club sector, can spend anywhere from $3,000 a season. It can be $5,000 or $10,000 a season depending on the sport, where you are, the level of play. I spoke with numerous families who were spending $25,000 a year.
There was one mother that I spoke with. She’s a single mom. She was pet-sitting on the side in addition to her full-time job to help offset the cost of her son’s $25,000-a-year hockey program. I also came across a lot of GoFundMes for families who are trying to get their 6-year-old or their 7-year-old or their 8-year-old who made the travel fill-in-the-blank soccer, baseball team. And they’re fundraising to try to make that happen.
And for your $25,000 or more a year, what are you getting?
It’s a loaded question. Part of what’s drawing families to this in some areas is that they really feel like they have no other choice. Rec programs are sparse. They also don’t extend as long as they used to.
I’m an elder millennial, I guess I would say, and back in the ’90s, it was still very much that you could play a rec sport through eighth grade and then if you chose to, go on and play in high school. What’s happening is that rec programs now are ending much earlier. In some places it can be difficult to find a rec program after maybe third or fourth grade. And these programs are also getting diluted because the private leagues are incentivized to attract families earlier and earlier.
Now you start to see travel teams and even tryouts for kindergartners, first-graders, second-graders. And what I was hearing from parents over and over again was that there was this fear of missing out: “This isn’t something I would necessarily choose for my kid, but if we don’t get in on the ground floor, the elevator’s going to go up without us and we’re never going to catch up and my kid won’t be able to play and everyone around me seems to be doing this now, so we’re going to do it too.”
What this does to the rec programs is that it dilutes them really early in a couple of ways. One, it just brings the level of play down when kids start leaving in the first and second grade, by third grade. Also, there just aren’t as many kids.
And then the other factor is that kids and parents both notice that these other leagues exist. And so another thing that I kept hearing was, “Well, the rec programs sort of felt second-rate and we’re looking across the field.” There was this one father, he’s a lacrosse coach and he has two children who now play travel lacrosse. And he’s like, “It’s kind of hard when you look across the field and you see the kids with their shiny helmets and their fancy uniforms and their professional coach.”
What did you find all of this money in youth sports is doing to the youths playing the sports?
The benefits of sports have been really well established. Kids who play sports have everything from higher levels of academic achievement to higher self-esteem, better long-term health outcomes.
But ultimately, in their quest to do something good for their kids, the way that the sports ecosystem has changed and is continuing to change can potentially set them up for long-term harm. It can be psychological. So they’re seeing stress and anxiety, burnout, but also physical [harm].
There’s a surge of overuse injuries now in young athletes, especially because the private programs are incentivized again to get kids playing as much as possible. And so what’s happening now is that you have young children playing in this hyper-competitive year-round environment.
Medical advice has said that kids should play all different sports, use different muscles, learn different skills. And that’s what’s appropriate for young developing bodies, not playing one sport 10 to 12 months a year, tournaments on the weekends, six games, practices three or four times a week where then you see these overuse injuries, because kids are just doing that same motion over and over again.
Is there any movement among parents to stop this, to say, “This has gone too far, let’s not do it anymore.”
This is a collective action problem. If more parents stayed in the rec programs, then we would have a more robust rec system: more kids play, it’s more accessible, it’s more affordable. It’s also local and fun.
I don’t want to be so naive and think, “Oh, things could go back to the way they were in the ’90s.” I think you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube entirely. But the good news is that we do have a model for a pathway forward.
Minnesota Ice Hockey is a nonprofit youth sports program, the core of which is 250 public rinks. The cost to play is about $200 to $400. Coaches are volunteers, but they are trained through USA Hockey. And these kids play more in that rec model where they play with other kids from their community.
This is showing real results. You look at this program and there’s 60,000 kids who play Minnesota ice hockey and Minnesota produces more D1 men’s and women’s ice hockey players than any other state in the country.
And really what this comes down to is it’s accessible to everyone. And so it’s more of a meritocracy, right? Everyone gets to play, and everyone gets to have fun. And then the kids who really do eventually show a high level of ability, they still get to play at that really competitive level because it’s not diluted. That has shown that it can produce really amazing hockey players while giving all these kids a good experience.
Members of the Conquer Chargers, the official girls flag football club of the Los Angeles Chargers prior to an NFL preseason game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Chargers on August 27, 2026, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. | Greg Fiore/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Republicans have been turning transgender athletes into a wedge issue since Idaho passed the first state ban in 2020. This year, it’s already playing a major role in midterm ads, with Democrats in competitive races almost always on the defensive. At this point, the fight doesn’t even need a trans athlete: The WNBA spent the summer at the center of a culture war over a hypothetical conflict, after two ex-NBA players declared themselves eligible for the women’s draft as a stunt. There have been no known trans women on any team, and the league confirmed it had “no immediate eligibility matters” on its hands.
Key takeaways
Twenty-seven Republican-controlled states have imposed measures to restrict trans athletes from playing in girls’ and women’s sports since 2020, but this year is the first time voters will have a chance to weigh in on the question directly.
Washington state’s proposed measure to verify sex assigned at birth would apply to all girls seeking to play sports, not just players whose eligibility has been challenged.
Democrats are split on how loudly to fight it. Washington’s congressional and legislative leaders oppose the measure, while the governor and both US senators have stayed quiet.
It became such a political priority in part because it polls well: Surveys show most Americans, including many otherwise Democratic-leaning voters, favor barring trans women from sports leagues. This November, though, marks the first time voters will confront the issue directly at the ballot box themselves.
Most notably, in Washington state, the public will decide whether to go further than any red-state legislature has even managed. A ballot initiative, I-638, would require every girl who wants to play school sports to first prove their sex assigned at birth, via an inspection of their reproductive anatomy or a test of their sex chromosomes or hormone levels. Competing campaigns in the state are mobilizing voters for and against the measure, which will deliver the clearest test yet of how liberal and moderate voters feel about this issue.
Twenty-seven other states have already imposed measures to restrict trans athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports in recent years, and the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer that such bans are constitutional. Yet nearly all of those bans passed through Republican-controlled legislatures, mostly in states Donald Trump won three times, and none went directly before voters. That changes this fall, not only in Washington but also with Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska voters weighing in.
The blue-state ballot battle comes at a time when the Democratic Party is still struggling to figure out how it wants to talk about transgender athletes. Democrats have broadly supported anti-discrimination protections for trans people, but on the specific questions that have dominated the political debate — namely whether trans women and girls should play on sports teams matching their gender identity, and whether minors should have access to gender-related medical treatment — most Democrats have been reluctant to adopt clear positions, while some swing-state candidates have actively distanced themselves from the party.
But the Washington state referendum is forcing its opponents, and allied Democratic politicians, to tackle the issue head-on. And they think they may have found a way to win — by convincing even voters who agree with the ban’s goals that enforcing it will create more problems than it solves.
What’s different about the Washington sports ban
The measure in Washington state is more far-reaching than other state bans in one key way, as it would require verification from every student seeking to join a girls’ sports team, not just those whose eligibility has been challenged. According to the text for I-638, athletes would need to document their sex assigned at birth based “only on one or more of the following: the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
Opponents, organizing under the banner of No Hate in WA State, are seeking to defeat the measure by framing it as the most extreme proposal of its kind. On paper, they face an uphill battle: 73 percent of Americans told Pew last year they were uncomfortable with transgender athletes playing on teams that don’t match their assigned birth sex. Opponents are also being massively outspent by Let’s Go Washington, the PAC campaigning for the measure, which is bankrolled by the conservative hedge fund manager Brian Heywood.
But No Hate in WA State hopes the ballot text will help them show that the proposed ban on transgender athletes would be a nightmare to implement. Even if Let’s Go Washington didn’t intend the outcome, they argue, no defensible reading of I-638 could avoid the conclusion that thousands of children will face either invasive new genital exams or the loss of a spot on a girls’ team altogether because their families can’t afford the genetic or testosterone testing the initiative offers as alternatives.
“Brian Heywood’s Initiative Wants To Inspect Your Daughter’s Body” reads a typical post from the No Hate in WA State campaign account, warning the initiative would yield “medically unnecessary” and “potentially traumatizing” genital or pelvic exams.
Let’s Go Washington disputes this, saying documentation of a genital exam from any routine past checkup, including the physical performed at birth, would suffice. But more than 150,000 school-age girls in Washington lack a regular family doctor with the medical records the campaign says would already be on file, and many schools conduct sports physicals publicly in group settings, where examining a student’s reproductive anatomy would be unthinkable.
Let’s Go Washington could not connect me with an attorney willing to defend its interpretation of the legislative text on the record, though campaign spokespeople Darren Littell and Hallie Herzberg said they consulted lawyers while crafting the ballot language. “I agree with you that it should have been explicit to say, ‘Here’s all the ways in the universe that you could verify a child’s sex’ and we didn’t do that, and that’s where we are now,” Herzberg told me.
Critics of the initiative warn the campaign will stir up more anti-trans sentiment and put vulnerable students in danger. The lead supporters say I-638 is necessary to protect the “integrity and fairness” of girls’ sports, and has nothing to do with targeting trans children. “This is not being motivated because we don’t like trans kids,” Littell said. “I’ve got family members who are trans, and I still love them and care about them.”
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association is aware of about 10 transgender middle and high schoolers who play sports, out of more than 200,000 student-athletes statewide. Since 2007, the organization has allowed trans students to play on teams that align with their gender identity, with their handbook stating once a student-athlete is granted eligibility, they do not need to seek to renew eligibility every season or school year.
“School sports is a place where kids can belong, a place of inclusion, where they can learn to work as a team and learn dedication,” Kelsey Gellner, a pediatric nurse based in Seattle, told me. “Tens of thousands of girls will be impacted by this to purposely exclude 10 children. That’s insane.”
Some opponents doubt the measure is really about protecting competition in female sports at all. Earlier this summer, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank closely aligned with the Trump administration, released a report attacking Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in federally funded schools and programs. The report argues for “unwinding our current regime” and blames the law for imposing a male model of competition on women, encouraging girls toward dominance and aggression, and pulling them away from femininity and motherhood.
“Preventing girls from playing sports is the whole point,” Megan Rapinoe, a two-time World Cup champion and Olympic gold medalist, wrote in a recent op-ed lambasting the ballot measure in Washington. “Spaces that leave girls and women feeling empowered are the spaces they want to constrict — and then eliminate.”
Bringing adult restrictions down to children
The initiative’s proponents point to alternative means of verifying sex at birth, rather than genital exams. But hormone and genetic testing, the less invasive alternatives on offer, are very unusual for minors, and typically have only been required for certain elite adult athletes.
Earlier this summer, for example, the Women’s Tennis Association announced it would require all players to undergo genetic sex testing in order to compete on the WTA Tour, a move that came on the heels of World Athletics requiring the same for participation in the female category for world ranking competitions. The goal would be to provide blood, saliva, or a cheek swab to test for any presence of the gene associated with the Y chromosome.
These tests are expensive, though, and require specialized training that public school staff virtually never have.
“The language in the [Washington state] measure is quite alarming because it quite literally would codify sex testing for youth athletes into law,” Anna Posbergh, a professor at the University of Illinois Department of Recreation, Sport, and Tourism, told The Cut.
I-638 doesn’t specify how these tests would work in practice or who would pay for them. The ballot measure is also silent on intersex students, whose anatomy, chromosomes, and hormones may not point to the same answer. Littell says they would leave these questions “up to the doctors and patients, and at the end of the day this is common sense.”
I asked the Washington State Medical Association what share of primary care and family medicine practices in the state could even run genetic or hormone testing in-house, and what referrals would look like for a rural practice.
“We don’t have that level of data, unfortunately,” Graham Short, a spokesperson for WSMA, told me. He added that his association does not yet have a formal position on the ballot measure, though their policymaking delegation convenes in September and may formulate a stance then.
The Washington State Nurses Association has come out against the proposal. Gellner, who sits on its board, said it’s been disturbing to watch the idea of sports physicals shift from checking whether a student is healthy to play — i.e., checking their muscles, joints, blood pressure, and signs of asthma — to determining “whether the child themselves is a risk.”
The state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has not taken a formal position, asked Let’s Go Washington to stop invoking the national group in the state’s official voter pamphlet, where the campaign cites AAP guidelines on routine childhood checkups. (The campaign refused.) Dr. Erica Li, a Spokane-based pediatrician who has been Let’s Go Washington’s most vocal physician in support of the measure, insisted to me that the process outlined in I-638 just “does not pose any barriers to any female” looking to participate in school sports.
Yet other states have backed away from language like this. A 2021 Florida law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis originally had language saying that students would have to undergo a genital exam or get hormone or genetic testing if there were ever disputes over a student’s eligibility. That language sparked major controversy and was ultimately stripped from the final bill. House Republicans in Ohio also passed a bill in 2022 that would have required any student athlete whose sex was disputed to prove their sex assigned at birth through those same three options. After backlash, lawmakers removed the language from the Senate version, and put in a birth certificate requirement instead.
A time of Democratic hesitance
Democrats have broadly supported anti-discrimination protections for trans people, but on sports specifically, the party has struggled to find agreement.
The Biden administration proposed a Title IX rule in 2023 that would have rejected blanket bans but allowed schools to restrict trans athletes’ participation in some cases, but the president never spoke about this nuanced rule publicly. Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign didn’t raise trans rights either, even as Republicans made them a centerpiece of their attacks against her.
Democratic strategists have urged candidates to address transgender-related attacks more directly this time, but that hasn’t translated to a policy consensus. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger spent millions on ads acknowledging concerns about fairness and safety in school sports, for example, although even Spanberger’s actual position on the subject remains vague.
Nationally, as the New York Times recently reported, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts appears to be the only high-profile Democrat “eagerly campaigning as a supporter of transgender rights” this cycle.
In Washington state, some prominent Democrats have come out against I-638, including five Democratic members of Congress, such as Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The state’s top two legislative leaders, Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen and House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, have also come out against it. Gov. Bob Ferguson and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, though, have not publicly joined them.
Polling thus far is unclear. A September 2025 poll of Washingtonians found 69 percent statewide support for the school-sports initiative, although the survey used language highly favorable to the measure, describing it as protecting “integrity and fairness” and did not explicitly say it would bar transgender girls from girls’ teams.
No Hate in WA State referred me to May polling conducted by the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive group that tracks state ballot measures. Their survey rated I-638 a toss-up, finding voters sharply divided, with 43 percent strongly in favor, 21 percent strongly opposed, 17 percent fully undecided, and another 11 to 14 percent not firmly committed. BISC said they did not have more recent polling to share.
The measure, however it ultimately goes at the ballot box, will be a verdict on how the issue is playing out beyond red states, and directly with voters. For the handful of trans students the WIAA knows about, and for every other girl who wants to play sports, November will decide something more immediate. Voter pamphlets go out in October.
Olympic weightlifting is defined by only two moves: the snatch and the clean and jerk. But behind what seems like a simple contest to see who can lift the most is a sport built on technique, speed, strategy, and psychology.
We speak to Matthew Tung, a competitive weightlifter who represents Hong Kong internationally, to break down how the lifts work, the strategy behind athletes changing their declared weights mid-competition, and how a lifter can miss four of their six attempts and still bring home gold.
In this video, we explore what it really takes to compete in Olympic weightlifting and what the rest of us can learn from athletes who have pushed strength training to the extreme.
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