Rapping wrestler “Platinum” Max Caster has been fired after delivering a controversial freestyle ahead of his first and last match. Part of Caster’s persona is that he always comes out spitting bars before a match. He’s done it for years, and it was a staple of his time at AEW.

After exiting the company, he was picked up by TNA Wrestling. During his very first match at the promotion’s Bound For Glory pay-per-view on Oct. 11, 2026, Caster made some comments referencing attacks in Riyadh that killed and injured many people. Now, in a statement, TNA has denounced Caster’s comments and announced his firing.

Max Caster was fired from TNA wrestling for making comments about the fatal attack in Riyadh

“Making light of violent attacks is wrong,” they stated. “This should never have made it into the show, and that responsibility is ours. Our thoughts are with the victims, their families, and everyone affected. We sincerely apologize.”

TNA continued, “We have removed the segment from replays and our social channels, and are taking steps to ensure something like this never happens again. Max Caster will no longer be wrestling for TNA.”

Following his firing, Max Caster has spoken out and apologized

In the wake of being fired, Max Caster has spoken out. He apologized and stated that he understood why the TNA President had to make this decision.

“I wanna say thank you to Carlos Silva. I talked to him in person,” Caster said in a video posted on social media. “He was very generous, very professional, even after all this stuff happened. I understand why he did what he did. It’s his show. He’s gotta protect TNA, and I went too far for him. So, I wanna apologize to him and everybody else in the office. I want to apologize to anyone who vouched for me to get that spot. I feel like I let those people down.”

“I’m proud of that match, and I’m sorry for how things have ended up,” Caster continued. ‘And then, for anybody who’s offended, I just want everybody to know that when I do these raps, it’s never to offend people. It’s only to entertain. So, in my mind, it’s entertainment value first. And then if you’re offended by it, that’s your right. So I can’t apologize for anyone being offended, but just know that it’s not my intention to make people upset. If it gets a reaction, I think I did my job.”

“The consequences of everything, I’m accepting that. I can accept the facts of that. And then, to anybody who is asking if I’m good, I’m good. I’m just embarrassed how all this happened. You don’t want it to be one match, and then that’s it, you get fired. But again, that’s the reality of the situation. I’m accepting it, and that’s life.”

Re: TNA situation pic.twitter.com/cBxhTXiTC4

— ''Platinum'' Max Caster (@PlatinumMax) October 13, 2026

Photo by WWE via Getty Images

The post Rapper-Wrestler Loses His Job After Controversial Freestyle About Deadly Attacks appeared first on VICE.

WARSAW — European leaders are preparing to demand tougher sanctions on Russia at a summit on Thursday, putting them at odds with Donald Trump just days after the U.S. president struck a deal with Vladimir Putin to ease restrictions on Russian diesel exports.

The leaders plan to call for further sanctions and measures targeting Moscow’s oil revenues at the European Council, according to a recent draft joint statement obtained by POLITICO, as EU governments reject Trump’s claim to have secured an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

The disagreement exposes a widening divide over how to bring Moscow to the negotiating table. While Trump is seeking to bring down U.S. fuel prices by allowing more Russian diesel onto global markets, European leaders argue that restricting the Kremlin’s energy revenues remains essential to forcing Putin to end the war.

“Russia is not interested in deescalation, ceasing fire or peace,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a security conference in Warsaw on Monday. “That is why I will go to Brussels to ask my partners to consider seriously increasing sanctions against Russia.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also called for further restrictions, pointing to Moscow’s continued attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure despite Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire.

“Russia will only negotiate in good faith under pressure,” Merz said Monday. “Following Moscow’s reckless attacks on Ukraine’s civilian energy supply, we must even tighten [sanctions] further.”

The push comes after EU foreign ministers on Monday approved the bloc’s largest-ever addition to its Russia sanctions list, targeting more than 1,600 individuals and entities. The European Commission is also preparing a 23rd package of sectoral sanctions, which Kyiv expects to be circulated to EU governments by the end of the year, according to a senior Ukrainian official who was, like others in this article, granted anonymity to speak frankly on the sensitive negotiations.

Other European countries are taking a similar position. Britain and Norway have also pledged to increase pressure on Moscow.

“It’s important to sanction Russia not to finance the war,” Norwegian Defense Minister Tore O. Sandvik told POLITICO, calling for loopholes in existing restrictions to be closed.

Trump’s election calculation

Behind closed doors, many European diplomats see Trump’s abrupt shift toward easing restrictions on Russian energy as driven primarily by domestic political concerns ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections.

That is the “broadly held view” among EU officials, according to one senior official.

The president is under mounting pressure over fuel prices, which have surged since the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Having promised during his 2024 campaign to bring gasoline prices below $2 a gallon, Trump now faces an electorate paying more than twice that amount, with Republicans at risk of losing control of Congress.

His agreement with Putin is intended to release an additional 4.8 million tons of Russian diesel onto global markets over the coming months, easing pressure on fuel supplies and prices.

But European and Ukrainian officials question whether the additional supply will make a meaningful difference, saying that the total volume promised amounts to only around 10 days of U.S. demand. They feel the deal risks undermining efforts to deprive Moscow of the revenues funding its invasion.

“The reality” is that the additional fuel will have a “minimal” impact on U.S. prices, the senior EU official said.

“This is about the midterms,” a second EU official said. “He said he would bring down prices, but then he decided to go to war with Iran.”

The officials also question whether Putin intends to honor Trump’s purported energy ceasefire. Russia has continued striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure since the announcement, while Kyiv says it was not consulted on the arrangement.

For now, most European officials are reluctant to criticize Trump publicly, despite any doubts about the agreement. The EU and Ukraine should maintain their position over the coming weeks, when the administration’s longer-term intentions toward Kyiv may become clearer, one diplomat said, adding that Trump might even change course again if Putin fails to deliver the promised diesel.

Pressure on Washington

The dispute has also revived European calls for Washington to enforce its own sanctions against Moscow.

Tusk urged Europe and the United States to act together to show Russia they were prepared to impose tougher measures, while EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called on Washington to align its approach with Brussels.

Kallas pointed to sweeping Russia sanctions legislation championed by the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, which Trump signed into law last month but has yet to fully implement.

The legislation gives Washington additional tools to target Russia’s energy trade and those helping sustain its war effort. European officials want the administration to use them rather than loosen restrictions on Russian exports.

Some Republicans are also calling for tougher action.

“I think we need to be implementing the Russia sanctions bill,” Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw told the Warsaw conference.

The disagreement is raising wider questions in Europe about its dependence on Washington, particularly amid reports that U.S. officials have threatened to restrict Ukraine’s access to American weapons unless Kyiv stops attacking Russian oil refineries.

There is currently “no sign” Washington is following through on those threats, a NATO official told POLITICO, arguing that restricting sales would also hurt American weapons manufacturers.

“PURL is a good deal for the Americans,” the official said, referring to the NATO initiative under which European allies finance purchases of U.S. weapons for Ukraine.

European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, without directly addressing the reports, said Europe needed to take “primary responsibility” for its own defense more urgently as Washington reduces its military presence on the Continent.

The immediate test, however, comes on Thursday, when EU leaders will seek to maintain pressure on Moscow even as their most powerful ally moves in the opposite direction.

Victor Jack and Sebastian Starcevic contributed reporting from Brussels, James Angelos contributed reporting from Berlin, Esther Webber contributed reporting from London.

European governments rebuked U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to import hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel, and vowed to keep isolating Moscow and supporting Ukraine as it heads into a brutal wartime winter.

Trump said over the weekend he would import 300,000 tons of Russian diesel, weeks ahead of U.S. midterm elections in which the Republicans are polling badly and in which energy prices and cost-of-living concerns are expected to play a major role.

But his announcement — which included a claim that Russia and Ukraine had agreed an “energy ceasefire” and a call for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to step down — drew skepticism and scorn from European capitals and the EU.

“This deal doesn’t help neither the price of oil products nor the unity of the transatlantic community,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said at a gathering of the bloc’s foreign ministers on Monday morning, adding “it is not the European way.”

Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee called Trump’s announcement of a deal with Moscow “concerning,” while German Minister of State for Europe Gunther Krichbaum said every dollar spent on Russian energy funded the purchase of weapons used against Kyiv.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, reminded Washington that “Russia has started this war. We should not forget this.”

On Monday, Zelenskyy suggested that Washington had other motives for pursuing an energy agreement with Moscow, arguing that the Russian fuel involved would make little difference to global supplies.

Speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum, Zelenskyy said proposed Russian diesel deliveries were insignificant compared with global monthly consumption of roughly 120 million tons.

“I don’t think that this will have a tangible impact,” Zelenskyy said. “I believe that there are different rationales behind this decision.”

Zelenskyy also suggested Washington should consider an alternative arrangement with Kyiv. “Why doesn’t America then conclude a diesel deal with Ukraine?” he asked. “Let’s propose a diesel deal with Ukraine.”

He also revealed that Kyiv had not been informed beforehand of Trump’s announcement that he had secured an energy ceasefire. “No, we did not know about that,” Zelenskyy said. “We’ve learned that from the media as well.”

On their way into their meeting, the EU’s foreign ministers remained united in their insistence that increasing pressure on Moscow was the only way forward.

“Obviously our position has not changed — pressure on Russia, sanctions, support to Ukraine, Russia’s isolation is the way to peace,” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže said.

The British Foreign Office’s minister of state Stephen Doughty said London was “not planning to follow suit with” purchasing Russian energy and would ratchet up “economic pressure” on Moscow.

“Pressure, pressure, pressure on Russia,” Lithuania’s Budrys said.

What ceasefire?

Trump’s claim that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an “energy ceasefire” drew confusion from Kyiv and its allies over the weekend, with Zelenskyy saying the truce and its terms were “news” to him but that he would support it nonetheless — provided Moscow followed suit.

Just hours after Trump’s announcement, however, Russian bombs fell on Ukrainian power plants, causing widespread blackouts.

Kyiv is bracing for its fifth winter since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, which Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last month could prove “tragically critical” for Ukraine due to Russia’s near-constant strikes on infrastructure.

At the opening session of the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday, Tusk slammed “anyone who is trying to introduce any symmetries, who suggests it is Ukraine responsible for the war,” saying doing so “gives a valuable present, gift, to the aggressor, to Putin.”

Kallas said any ceasefire shouldn’t “only apply to the refineries, where Ukraine has one and Russia has plenty,” adding that would “definitely [be] in the benefit of the Russians.”

She also called on Washington to join Brussels and London in imposing harsh sanctions on Russia. “Of course the U.S. is our biggest ally,” she said, “but our message is clear: If we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is putting more pressure on Russia.”

Ukraine’s financial needs are set to come up at a meeting of European heads of state and government on Thursday in Brussels. The IMF estimated that Kyiv will face a financing gap of $30 billion to $35 billion next year.

“Ukraine will be front and center at this week’s European Council,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement Sunday night after a phone call with Zelenskyy, adding the war was entering a “new, grimmer phase.”

Zoya Sheftalovich contributed reporting from Brussels. Nick Vinocur contributed reporting from Warsaw.

BRUSSELS — Three of the European Parliament’s biggest political groups say they will fight an EU proposal to relax carbon pricing rules, opening a rift that could push conservative lawmakers to side with the far right to weaken the bloc’s climate ambition.

The center-left Socialists and Democrats, the centrist Renew Europe and the Greens all said in recent days that they would try to preserve an ambitious path to net zero under the Emissions Trading System, forcing heavy industry to cut planet-warming emissions faster than Brussels proposes.

That puts them at odds with the center-right European People’s Party, Parliament’s biggest group, which broadly supports the European Commission’s proposal.

For years, those four groups have worked together in Parliament to pass legislation that strikes a political middle ground, shunning collaboration with the far right. The sometimes uneasy alliance has ensured consistent, bipartisan support for the ETS, Europe’s most powerful tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But now, a reform of the landmark cap-and-trade scheme, unveiled by the EU executive in July, looks set to become a bellwether in an era when, increasingly, the center no longer holds.

The EPP is steering Parliament’s work on the proposed ETS revision through veteran German lawmaker Peter Liese, who wants to find a deal that satisfies everyone.

“I don’t want the Venezuelan majority. It’s against my convictions, but it is also not possible because nobody would see [Marine] Le Pen, the Austrian far-right FPÖ or the German extreme-far-right AfD voting for any ETS proposal,” he told POLITICO in September, using the informal term for a controversial alliance of center-right and far-right groups.

Instead, Liese, who maintains close ties with Dutch S&D lawmaker Mohammed Chahim, said he wanted “the broadest possible coalition,” including the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists as well as “the Greens, The Left, if they want.”

But new amendments filed last week by the S&D, the second-largest group in Parliament, as well as the Greens and Renew, point to major schisms over key aspects of the ETS reform. The biggest divide concerns the so-called linear reduction factor, the mechanism that determines how quickly the supply of pollution permits shrinks each year. 

Under the current trajectory, the total cap on carbon emissions for all sectors covered by the ETS falls slightly each year, and would reach zero around 2039 or 2040. At that point, ETS sectors — which include power generators, steelmakers and chemical manufacturers — would no longer be able to emit any carbon dioxide at all. 

Liese’s proposal would push that date into the 2040s, in line with the Commission’s original pitch in the summer. But the three other centrist or left-leaning groups oppose the plan and have tabled nearly identical amendments that would keep the rates high until the end of next decade and bring about quicker industrial decarbonization across Europe. 

Though the percentages between the warring groups appear tiny, they translate into millions of additional tons of CO₂ emissions and expose a growing political gulf. S&D, the Greens and Renew are fighting to preserve Europe’s climate ambitions, while the EPP is increasingly sympathetic to the concerns of the chemicals and metals industries, both of which have been vocally critical of the ETS. 

But just as the chances for a centrist compromise dim, Liese has another possible route.

Memories of fascism in the early twentieth century once discouraged mainstream political groups from working with the far right. That firewall appeared to erode when talks with centrist allies collapsed in 2025 over the first omnibus package governing certain environmental reporting rules. The EPP turned to the right-wing ECR and the far-right Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations to secure a deal, paving the way for similar alliances in the future.

On the ETS, there is a growing risk that it could happen all over again.

Czech lawmaker Alexandr Vondra of the ECR recently floated the possibility of working with Liese to secure a deal backed by his right-wing group during a parliamentary debate on the ETS.

“I would address here specifically EPP because it holds the key to the success of the reform of the ETS system,” he said, before laying out a list of industry-friendly demands that included a much looser trajectory to zero emissions. “If so, count me and my group in.”

Amendments tabled by Vondra this week and seen by POLITICO reflected a similar willingness to work with the EPP and limited regard for emissions reductions. If Liese does decide to shift his compromise to the right and cashes in on ECR votes, it could also quell problems within his own party.

The Polish, Spanish and Italian branches of the EPP are all unhappy with what they see as Liese’s overly climate-friendly proposal, according to three parliamentary insiders. Recent votes in Parliament on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the bloc’s carbon levy on imports that works in tandem with the ETS, exposed fractures within the group, with portions of the EPP supporting right-wing groups or abstaining on a key provision of the legislation.

But how willing far-right groups will be to play ball with the EPP remains to be seen. 

The Europe of Sovereign Nations group — whose members include Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland — is hostile to the ETS and wants it totally abolished. But the Patriots — whose members include France’s National Rally — might provide Liese with an opening: the group generally calls for the policy to be slowed to a halt, especially the upcoming ETS2, as it does all Green Deal legislation. French far-right lawmaker and rising political star Jordan Bardella said as much in a speech to Parliament in May.

“ETS: three letters, an acronym that reeks of detached bureaucracy, with one question that keeps coming up: who’s going to pay?” he said.

BRUSSELS — EU countries must “do their job” to prevent travelers from being stuck in airport queues over Christmas, Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner told POLITICO, as he singled out Brussels Airport for the way it has handled the new Entry/Exit System.

In an interview, Brunner defended the bloc’s digital border system and blamed its problems on national authorities and airports.

“Member states had enough time to prepare themselves for this system. They agreed on the system,” Brunner said. “It’s a security issue. It has to work … it’s up to the member states to do their job.”

EU countries began rolling out the Entry/Exit System, which records the fingerprints and facial images of non-EU visitors to the Schengen area, a year ago. It has been fully operational at all external Schengen border crossings since April.

But it has led to long waits at many airports — particularly over the summer, when some countries switched it off during peak periods. Delays persist at some airports, including at Brussels Zaventem, where travelers were forced to wait in lines for up to five hours last month.

“Some member states are a bit behind,” Brunner acknowledged. “We have some challenges, like Zaventem for instance, in Belgium, but also in other member states. And they have to do their job. They agreed on the new system, and now it’s up to the member states to do their job.” 

Brunner also said the Commission had offered support from border agency Frontex and funding to help countries implement the system, adding that he was “very confident” the problems would be ironed out before the next holiday rush.

Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin pushed back at Brunner’s criticism, with a spokesperson saying his responsibility was to ensure there were enough police officers to staff the infrastructure provided by Brussels Airport Company.

The police have “been fully staffing the 12 positions at arrivals,” the spokesperson said, but the airport can process only 500 to 600 non-Schengen passengers an hour, compared with nearly 3,500 who may arrive between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. on busy days. The airport’s infrastructure “cannot cope” with that demand, the spokesperson said, and the company must “make significant changes.”

Brussels Airport did not directly address the criticism from Brunner or Quintin, instead saying in a statement that “all parties involved” were working to fix the delays, including testing new e-gates and pre-registration kiosks, and training more police. “The need for additional infrastructure is also being assessed,” the statement said.

The Entry/Exit System has logged almost 230 million entries and exits across roughly 1,500 border points, Brunner said. Authorities have refused entry to about 80,000 people, including 2,000 considered security threats because of links to activity such as terrorism or organized crime.

“So you see, it actually works. And it pays off,” the Austrian commissioner said.

“This is the most modern border management system in the world,” he added. “We have the comparison to the U.S., to Canada, to others, and they’re all jealous.”

Ceuta stress test

As the EU’s migration commissioner, Brunner also faced another major test over the summer, when tens of thousands of people crossed from Morocco into Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta.

The crisis remains an ongoing challenge for Spain and the EU.

Madrid initially said almost all those who crossed from Morocco had returned within days. But thousands remained in Ceuta. More than 3,000 people were living at Trampolín beach when authorities cleared an encampment last week; more than 1,200 then chose to return voluntarily to Morocco rather than go through the asylum-screening process, according to local authorities.

Images of thousands of people swimming toward Ceuta and overwhelming the area quickly became political ammunition, with far-right politicians campaigning for tougher migration policies — turning the crisis into a potent election issue and putting pressure on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Brunner described Ceuta as a warning that the EU needs to be better prepared for sudden arrivals. He recently proposed a plan for cooperation with partner countries, stronger external borders, early-warning systems, and action against smuggling networks. Migration will be a key topic of conversation at this week’s EU leaders’ summit in Brussels.

Among the Commission’s plans to tackle migration is a proposal to strengthen Frontex that would see it have a reinforced standing corps of officers able to be deployed more quickly, a bigger role in returning people to non-EU countries, closer cooperation with partner countries and more capacity to monitor the EU’s borders. The Commission has also proposed giving the agency a role in monitoring social media to help spot emerging migration movements.

Brunner said the reforms would not mean countries would be forced to host Frontex operations if they did not want them. The plan envisages EU support during border emergencies, but member countries remain responsible for their own external borders.

Greece and other countries want the EU to be able to suspend asylum applications during a large influx and Brunner said he is “definitely going ahead” with an emergency response framework, as requested by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. EU leaders will discuss “concrete steps” at this week’s leaders’ summit.

The goal is to make the EU “more flexible” and “more agile” if events like Ceuta occur, where “mass movements are actually engineered and weaponized” against the bloc, he said.

Brussels also wants to help partner countries protect their borders to reduce irregular arrivals into Europe. To that end, Brunner on Monday begins a trip to Bangladesh and Pakistan, seeking to strengthen cooperation on migration with the two countries, he said.

“We want to help them to protect their borders,” Brunner stated, adding that the EU could support Bangladesh “via Frontex, for instance.”

This story has been updated with statements from Interior Minister Bernard Quintin’s office and Brussels Airport.

KYIV — Russia’s Vladimir Putin is preparing for a broader confrontation with Europe amid an uptick in the Kremlin’s hybrid attacks on the continent, Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has warned.

In an interview with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, Kuleba, who was Ukraine’s foreign policy chief from 2020 to 2024, said that Russia’s continued war preparations and anti-European propaganda are signs that Putin is planning attacks on other European countries.

“Anti-European hysteria is being fueled in Russia, which I interpret as the preparation for a broader conflict with the rest of Europe,” said Kuleba, before adding: “We [Ukrainians] don’t have to drag you — Putin will drag you into the war.”

European officials say Moscow has upped its hybrid campaign across the continent in recent months, using cyberattacks, sabotage and disinformation to disrupt critical infrastructure and weaken support for Ukraine.

Kuleba said the failed drone attack on the Leipzig airport in Germany in August was a sign of “growing preparation” for an offensive on the continent. “They see how your intelligence operates. They see how your security forces operate. They see how you react and they draw conclusions,” he added.

In the aftermath of the incident, the German government concluded that Moscow was responsible for the attack, and ordered a review of security around sensitive locations.

However, Kuleba, who stood down as Ukraine’s foreign policy chief in September 2024, does not think Russia is preparing a full-scale offensive beyond Ukraine. In his view, Moscow is more likely to launch an attack on NATO countries involving drones targeting key infrastructure that would test the alliance’s unity and preparedness.

“The truth is that Russia does not need 400,000 more people to wage that war. It needs five drones,” he said, adding that in the event of an attack, “[Europeans] can call for NATO consultations… can call for restraint. But this will only encourage Putin to make the next step … He will always have enough drone and missile capabilities.”

Kuleba no longer believes Putin can be persuaded to end the war through negotiations. “He’s not looking for a solution, for a pause, and there will be no moment when he will start looking for it,” he said, concluding: “Putin is a guarantee of war: anyone after Putin is a chance for peace.”

According to Kuleba, any attempts at negotiating with Putin, or pushing for peace, are a waste of time. “The sooner we come to terms with reality, the better policies we can develop to address it,” he said.

He noted that while Europe’s political culture is based on “a win-win approach” in which both sides can benefit, Putin’s outlook is very different: “For him, a solution that benefits both sides is not the best option. For him, the world works on the principle of victory and defeat. One side has to win and the other has to lose,” said Kuleba.

The former foreign minister also warned that Ukraine would face its worst ever winter as Moscow ups its attacks against civilians in a bid to break their spirit.

In recent months, Russian strikes have hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and transport links, including bridges over the Dnipro river, as well as homes and civilian sites such as bus stops, schools, postal depots and internet providers. The attacks have disrupted power, transport and daily life as winter approaches.

On Thursday, at least 33 people were killed in a Russian attack on two buses in Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Kuleba explained why he believed Moscow has now sharply escalated its airstrikes: “The bombing of cities is a direct consequence of Russia’s failure to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield.” He continued: “The main target of Russian drones and missiles is the Ukrainians’ will to resist — but also the will of Ukraine’s friends abroad to keep supporting it.”

He added:“They don’t just want to turn out the lights in Ukraine. They want to paralyze the country.”

Kuleba described the worst-case scenario in Ukraine as “the collapse of the systems that make life in a big city possible,” such as electricity, water and drainage services.

Could Russia succeed? “I believe Ukraine is too large, too mobile and too adaptable. That’s why I think we’ll get through this winter,” said Kuleba.

“The price will be much higher than last year’s.”

The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, The Telegraph, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms: online, print, TV and audio. 

The European Union and China reached an agreement on Friday that will curb China’s booming hybrid car exports, delivering a breakthrough in negotiations aimed at rebalancing their trade relationship.

The announcement came as Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič wrapped up two days of talks in Beijing, the culmination of a push launched in June to narrow the bloc’s €1 billion-a-day trade deficit with China. 

The deal marks a win for the EU executive, which has been under pressure to secure concessions from Beijing. Going into the talks, France and Germany strengthened Šefčovič’s hand by calling for the EU to take tough action on trade if China failed to curb a growing export glut.

Speaking in Beijing, the commissioner said the two sides had reached an agreement that would help to shield European automakers from low-price Chinese competition. He declined to enter into specifics before EU leaders officially mandate the EU executive to move forward. 

“We have reached a shared understanding to moderate China’s export of hybrids and plug-in hybrids to the European Union. This opens the prospect of cutting China’s exports by more than a half,” Šefčovič told reporters. 

The estimate was based on projections of how Chinese exports would grow over the next four years without the agreement. In practical terms, it would mean that “several millions of car exports from China to the European Union” would be prevented, he explained.

China’s Commerce Ministry highlighted the understanding on hybrids in a parallel 16-point statement, but offered no details on how exports would be restrained. It said the two sides “will continue to strengthen communication and cooperation under the trade monitoring mechanism and further leverage dialogue mechanisms to enhance mutual understanding.” 

Šefčovič declined to elaborate when asked whether the deal would allow the EU to impose safeguards — a mixture of import quotas and tariffs — a step that Brussels has been considering. He said the arrangement would comply with the rules of the World Trade Organization.

First step

Šefčovič said that Beijing had also agreed to lower duties on European goods worth €4 billion, ranging from olive oil to footwear, a move that would save exporters €225 million. 

“It is a crucial first step,” he said. “But only a first step in the process of rebalancing.” 

The Slovak commissioner said he would report back to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, along with EU leaders, when they meet for a summit in Brussels next Thursday.

He had focused on cars as a key deliverable going into meetings in Beijing with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and Vice Prime Minister He Lifeng.

Chinese auto exports to Europe have been booming, accounting in August for one in eight cars sold in the bloc — mainly driven by sales of hybrids. Europe’s own automotive industry is feeling the pressure, with Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz recently announcing job cuts and plant closures.

Aside from the deal on hybrids, Beijing said in its statement that it was “willing to continue” fast-tracking licenses to export rare earth elements to the EU. Automakers had been forced to shut down assembly lines after China temporarily restricted exports in response to U.S. tariffs last year. China dominates the production and processing of rare earths.

“We have reached a shared understanding to further facilitate China’s export licensing for rare earths and permanent magnets,” Šefčovič said. 

Road ahead

Brussels sees the agreement on hybrid electric vehicles as a blueprint that could be replicated to shield further EU sectors currently under strain, such as chemicals or machinery. The two sides plan to meet again in March 2027, and will hold a video call in January. 

The agreement on one of the EU’s top negotiating targets significantly reduces the risk of an escalation in trade tensions that could have led to a tit-for-tat round of retaliation. It remains to be seen whether the EU will act swiftly on the Franco-German call to empower Brussels to shut out exports from countries that destabilize its single market.

“Public opinion and the leaders clearly expect very fast action from our side. I am glad to say that the Chinese partners appreciated this very strong political argument, and therefore, we can proceed through the negotiated solution,” said Šefčovič.

Other areas of agreement include exploring easier market access for European medical devices, as well as promises by Beijing to scale back sweeping disease-control measures that have restricted European meat and livestock exports. 

While the deal will cool the most immediate tensions, a wider resolution to the economic imbalances that fueled the conflict remains distant. The EU’s trade deficit with China totaled nearly €360 billion in 2025, and is already up 12 percent so far this year.  

China’s automotive exports to the EU, which totaled €15.1 billion last year, are only a fraction of that.

This article has been updated.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission announced a new list of 46 projects Friday in a bid to diversify away from China’s grip on raw materials and establish its own mineral sovereignty.

The projects span extraction, processing, recycling, and substitution for raw materials to supply the EU’s defense, automotive, clean tech and technology industries.

Many of the projects are designed to support electrification and the battery value chain. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite — the five key battery metals used in electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries — dominate the list. Copper and aluminum, conductors that are used in anything involving electricity, also figure prominently.

Through these projects, Brussels wants to meet its targets under the Critical Raw Materials Act, which, by 2030, the bloc aims to mine at least 10%, process 40% and recycle 25% of its own needs, while sourcing no more than 65% of any one material at any processing stage from a single non-EU country.

The list covers 15 of the 17 “strategic minerals” under the act, which the bloc needs to deliver these targets on each one.

Friday’s announcement is the second batch of strategic projects listed under the act, after the EU rolled out its first list in March 2025, featuring 47 projects and 13 non-EU country projects. The majority of those projects are behind schedule however, highlighting the complexity of getting critical mineral projects up and running.

“With the projects selected in 2025 and 2026, we could now fully meet our European extraction target for lithium, nickel, rare earths, magnesium and tungsten,” said the bloc’s industry chief, Stéphane Séjourné. “We could also meet our processing target for lithium and rare earths. And our recycling target for lithium, cobalt and rare earths.”

With over 170 applications received, the 46 projects span 16 EU member countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Romania and Sweden.

“Exactly one year ago, we experienced firsthand why this matters. On Oct. 9, 2025, China announced new export restrictions on rare earths,” said Séjourné. Those export controls are due to expire in January.

The “strategic project” label is meant to provide faster permitting and help secure public and private finance, with permitting deadlines of 27 months for mines and 15 months for processing and recycling projects.

The Commission will also announce strategic projects in non-EU countries later this year.

BRUSSELS — The EU is facing a winter gas shortage that could leave it scrambling to replace lost energy supplies equivalent to the power used by 12 million homes, according to new reports shared with POLITICO.

The shortfall raises the prospect of a winter of soaring power bills and forced energy saving measures if the bloc fails to find adequate supplies elsewhere.

As the war in Iran continues to disrupt global energy supplies, the EU faces an overall shortfall this winter of up to 14 billion cubic meters of natural gas — around 7% of the bloc’s demand and enough to power between 10 and 12 million European households, according to a report by the Institution for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a U.S.-based energy think tank.

Those conclusions are echoed in a key report by a top European body of gas network operators that was presented to national energy officials on Thursday.

Natural gas is used widely to heat Europe’s buildings, power its industry and generate its electricity. But the EU’s gas reserves have fallen to their lowest level for the time of year since records began in 2011, at just above 70%, after high prices made it more attractive for traders to sell gas in the summer rather than store it for later use in the winter.

With gas prices at near-four-year highs and supply constrained due to the U.S.-Israeli war in the Middle East, Europe has limited supply options if the coming winter proves as cold as the last, IEEFA found.

While that doesn’t necessarily mean the bloc will run out of gas, it does mean there could be 7 billion fewer cubic meters of stored gas to draw upon. That could force countries to buy gas at high prices on increasingly volatile global markets, or even require consumers to cut demand if fresh supplies are unavailable.

The EU’s record-low reserves leave the bloc “with less of a buffer” against global supply disruptions, leaving it “vulnerable to price spikes,” Ana Jaller-Makarewicz, IEEFA’s lead European energy analyst, said in a statement. If countries are forced to exhaust stocks this year, that would also leave them with more to refill next year, continuing the feedback loop of low reserves and higher prices, she added.

The same risks were outlined in a 2026-2027 winter supply outlook published Thursday by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSO-G), an association of gas operators. The report warns that if imports of liquefied natural gas are limited or even “optimal” in the context of a cold winter, storage levels could fall as low as 11%, a baseline needed for strategic reserves that can’t be easily tapped into.

If countries hope to restore their reserves to 30% by the end of winter — or else face increased exposure to future cold spells — volumes equivalent to 7% of the demand will either have to be curtailed or simply withheld from consumers, ENTSO-G warns.

Part of that pressure comes from a looming EU-wide ban on long-term supply contracts for Russian LNG, due to take effect in January, which will reduce European gas imports by an additional 7 billion cubic meters, according to the IEEFA report. Russian gas has been historically used to offset “swings in demand” over the winter, it said. “Now Europe depends on storage to get through winter.”

To make matters worse, the IEEFA report argues, gas demand over winter has crept up in the past two years, while imports to the bloc have flatlined. That’s left the EU leaning harder on its reserves over the winter period, with net drawdowns rising to 22.6 billion cubic meters in January this year, up from 18.8 billion cubic meters in January 2025 and 17.8 billion cubic meters in January 2024.

The alternative would be to import fresh LNG, a seaborne fuel that the EU increasingly sources from the U.S. But at current prices, importing the lost volumes would cost Europeans an additional €3 billion, a 12% rise over what the same volume would have cost last year, on top of already sky-high prices, according to the report. U.S. LNG production is also near full capacity, meaning those additional imports would further squeeze supply, Jaller-Makarewicz told POLITICO.

To some, a rise in prices is more likely. While ENTSO-G’s tight market scenario assumes a “global deficit” that sees available LNG imports into Europe reduced by 20%, Laurent Ruseckas, a senior gas market analyst at S&P Global Energy, argues that reserves can only ever fall so low, “since a rapid drawdown early in winter will drive up prices,” drawing cargoes to Europe from Asia.

“There is not much demand to destroy in Europe,” he added, pointing out that the war in Ukraine already destroyed 20% of the bloc’s industrial demand. “And it didn’t come back.”

BRUSSELS — It was meant to be Europe’s escape from the web of Chinese critical mineral supremacy.

But two years after it took effect, the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act is not on schedule. Just one in four critical mineral projects granted special status under the law is on track to be ready on time, according to new analysis shared with POLITICO.

On Friday, EU industry chief Stéphane Séjourné will unveil a new list of critical mineral projects that will receive privileged access to funding, accelerated permitting and help from Brussels to find buyers.

The idea is to make Europe a major producer of materials essential to clean energy, tech, and defense manufacturing. It’s currently a heavy importer.

But progress on the first round of 47 projects, announced early last year, offers little hope for the bloc’s ambitions.

“At least one in three mining and processing strategic projects is either late, stalled, at risk, or no longer exists, and only about a quarter are clearly on track,” said Diego Marin, policy officer for raw materials at the European Environmental Bureau, citing publicly available sources. The findings will be published in a report later this month.

Financial, regulatory, and political hurdles are blocking European mining projects, the industry says, despite the Critical Raw Materials Act’s aim to speed up the time it takes to get the shovels in the ground.

The EEB’s findings were echoed in an industry call in August, where 23 projects named in the first round claimed some were facing “immediate jeopardy,” in a letter sent to the Commission and obtained by POLITICO.

Those same companies also believe that announcing more strategic projects will create more problems. However, a Commission official dismissed that claim, saying that some of those projects had received direct funding from the Commission, and claiming the companies believe new projects would “dilute their status.”

The EU unveiled 47 projects in March 2025, covering 14 of the bloc’s 17 designated strategic raw materials—from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite for electric vehicle batteries and rare earths for magnets used in wind turbines, to tungsten for military equipment and gallium for semiconductors. It also includes 13 projects from outside the bloc.

These were designed to deliver the EU’s raw materials targets: by 2030, the bloc aims to mine at least 10 percent, process 40 percent and recycle 25 percent of its own needs, while sourcing no more than 65 percent of any one material at any processing stage from a single non-EU country.

Breaking Europe’s dependence on China for key metals is at the heart of the policy, a goal European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted in her State of the Union speech last month. “We are more than 80% dependent on China for many critical raw materials [and] 90% for some rare earths,” she lamented. 

A Commission official said that if all goes to plan, the EU will meet its 2030 goals for lithium, cobalt and rare earths, but results for other materials are mixed, with shortfalls in nickel processing and recycling and across the manganese supply chain. They did not give hard figures, though.

Industry skeptical

“Unless something happens that is absolutely not foreseen today, we will be far, far away from reaching the targets, even if they are quite low,” said Jan Moström, former CEO of Swedish mining giant LKAB and outgoing president of Euromines. He said better access to financing and faster permitting was key.

The EU is under additional time pressure as a pause on China’s export controls on rare earth minerals is due to expire in January.

Global think tank ODI found in June that “out of 60 projects, 14 are unlikely to contribute by 2030 because their estimated start of production falls between 2029 and 2031,” and that “three out of four are either behind their expected schedule or impossible to verify using up-to-date public evidence” — backing up the EEB’s numbers. 

A European Court of Auditors report this year also revealed that “many projects will struggle to secure supply for the EU by 2030” and that there was “no proper tracking of results.” 

The European Commission questioned the current validity of the ECA’s findings, saying it “audited a period of policy that does not cover everything we’ve done since this mandate. So the Court of Auditors had very relevant points that we took into account in our policy, but should absolutely not be seen as a fair assessment of the work we’ve done with the von der Leyen Commission number two,” said a Commission official. 

Desperate times

Since adopting the Critical Raw Materials Act in 2024, Brussels has rolled out a flurry of initiatives to get projects moving. They include a proposed critical raw materials center, for which Parliament is seeking €2 billion; the “RESourceEU” plan that’s mobilized more than €2 billion; a mechanism to identify suppliers; and plans to revise water rules and speed up environmental impact assessments. 

But industry leaders say the EU is moving too slowly. 

“I’m still to be convinced that it makes any difference,” Michael Staffas, CEO of Swedish miner Boliden, told POLITICO when asked about the benefits of being designated as a strategic project. Boliden’s subsidiary Somincor was granted strategic status for a copper and zinc mine in Portugal. 

The “strategic project” label promised faster permitting and help securing public and private finance, with permitting deadlines of 27 months for mines and 15 months for processing and recycling projects.

“In Sweden you have different authorities that can basically object to a permit process and that in itself creates way longer time than 27 months, just the legislation,” said LKAB CEO Johan Menckel, whose company currently has three strategic projects.

One is the Per Geijer deposit, home to Europe’s largest rare-earth deposits, which the local indigenous Sámi community opposes, arguing it would harm their reindeer-herding tradition. 

The local administration recently recommended that the State Mining Authority grant the concession on the condition that the Swedish company “minimize the impact on the reindeer industry,” but that will be subject to appeal from the Sámi.

Karin K Niia, a Sámi reindeer herder, said in comments that the EU will be complicit in cultural genocide if the project goes ahead. 

Europe’s lithium hope

Europe’s biggest bet to escape China’s foothold in battery metal supply chains is the Barroso lithium mine in Portugal, run by UK-based mining company Savannah Resources. The company says the mine could supply enough lithium for around half a million electric-vehicle batteries a year.

“I don’t think the strategic project stamp and the [Critical Raw Materials Act] have been absolutely essential, but it wasn’t also supposed to be. It was supposed to, in my understanding, be important to set a framework under which Europe can do the right thing faster, better, and for the better benefit of the next generation of Europe,” Savannah’s CEO Emanuel Proença said, calling it just another piece of a very big puzzle. 

Europe’s lithium-refining ambitions are also faltering: France’s Viridian Lithium went bankrupt after failing to secure funding, while Portugal’s José de Mello Group was unable to finance its planned €492 million refinery — despite both projects winning strategic status in the EU’s first round.

Viridian Lithium spokesperson Luc Pez said the strategic project label was a ‘curse.’ 

Rio Tinto’s Jadar project in Serbia, one of the non-EU projects to gain strategic-project status, was meant to provide double Barroso’s lithium capacity and cater to up to 25 percent of Europe’s demand. That, however, was suspended because of permitting issues and became a widely protested project amid allegations of corruption and environmental concerns. 

That reflected the simple fact that people don’t like mines in their backyard — an obstacle for mining projects worldwide, but especially in Europe, which is densely populated and has strong civil society.

“These projects had strategic status, EU money and fast-track permits, and it still wasn’t enough,” said EEB’s Marin. “If the supply push can’t deliver even under those conditions, the EU has to take demand reduction and sufficiency seriously. We can’t permit our way out of a market problem.”

Frida Preuß contributed to this report.

LONDON — Germany wants the U.K. to raise tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for protection from Made in Europe rules, according to a person familiar with Berlin’s position.

Friedrich Merz’s government believes the move would show reciprocity on trade and counter accusations from other EU member states that Britain is trying to “cherry pick” the benefits of EU membership, said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks.

It comes as Prime Minister Andy Burnham met with the German chancellor on his first official visit to the country this week.

Burnham and Merz were due to talk about possibilities for Britain’s future relationship with the EU — after the British prime minister put rejoining the bloc back on the table of U.K. politics for the first time in a decade.

Berlin’s position on EV tariffs is significant as Germany has broadly backed a tolerant policy towards the U.K. on trade matters since Brexit — in contrast to more hard-line positions taken by countries like France.

The EU is in the process of drawing up new Made in Europe rules that would favor European producers over those outside the bloc — in response to trade practices by competitors like China and the United States.

The U.K. is worried that the measures will hit British business — especially automakers — and wants assurances from Brussels that it will get an opt out. If Berlin gets its way, those assurances could be dependent on emulating EU trade policy with regard to Chinese EVs.

Predatory strategy

Germany’s vaunted car industry, arguably the jewel in the country’s economic crown, has faced stiff competition from Chinese imports in recent years.

EU countries have accused China of dumping low-cost, state-subsidized electric vehicles into the European market and in December 2024 imposed countervailing duties as high as 35.3. percent on some manufacturers.

Industry Commissioner Stephane Séjourné accused China of pursuing a deliberate “predatory strategy” with state subsidies to the tune of €10,000 per vehicle.

The U.K.’s Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told POLITICO last month that the government was keeping tariffs “under review, to be frank, more closely than lots of other issues” and that “different parts of our own sector want different things from” the government’s policy.

Hamish Falconer, the U.K.’s minister for European relations, told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook Podcast this week that he was “surprised” at reports tariffs might be a condition of Made in Europe opt-outs, adding: “That’s not the kind of conversation that I’m having with my European counterparts.”

Going ahead with higher tariffs risks alienating Beijing, which has expressed serious concerns about the policy. It would also raise the price of electric vehicles on the market, potentially making it harder for the government to meet its decarbonization targets.

BRUSSELS — European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič opened two days of talks in Beijing on Thursday aimed at rebalancing a gaping trade deficit, with failure to reach a deal likely to test Brussels’ resolve to impose tougher trade restrictions.

The meeting marks the final round of an effort launched in June to reset the lopsided trading relationship, and will hinge on whether China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao is prepared to make substantial concessions.

If no agreement can be reached to narrow the EU’s €1 billion-a-day goods trade deficit, Brussels and Beijing could find themselves on a collision course. EU leaders will review the outcome of the talks at a summit in Brussels next Thursday, where they will consider next steps.

Arriving in China, Šefčovič said his goal was to balance what he called an unsustainable trade deficit. Heading into a meeting with Wang, he said it was crucial that the talks deliver “tangible outcomes.”

The discussions have zeroed in on cars, with Chinese exports increasingly eating into the market share of European automakers. In August, one in eight cars bought in the bloc was Chinese, thanks largely to a boom in sales of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

European negotiators have been pushing China to commit to some form of export restraint — in particular for hybrids. Unlike Chinese-made battery-electric vehicles, which were hit with extra countervailing duties in 2024, plug-in hybrids are not subject to such measures.

Without meaningful commitments from Beijing, the Commission has warned it will resort to unilateral trade restrictions. For cars, it is considering safeguard measures that would mix import quotas and tariffs to protect European automakers.

Chemicals are next. Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné said Thursday that the Commission plans to introduce targeted safeguards on plastics and composite materials, subject to a request from EU governments that Brussels do so.

Wind in his sails 

Šefčovič flew to Beijing with the backing of the leaders of Europe’s two biggest economies — France and Germany — to take a tougher approach to trade.

In a joint appeal on Monday, President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the Commission should be given a freer hand to shut off access to the EU for goods from countries that distort the bloc’s single market.

While the two leaders did not mention China in their letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, there was no mistaking the target of their proposed trade “kill switch,” which could be blocked only by a qualified majority of EU countries.

The EU already has a powerful trade weapon in its Anti-Coercion Instrument, designed to counter economic bullying by foreign powers. 

But Brussels has yet to muster broad support from member countries to deploy it, most recently in January when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to seize Greenland, a Danish territory.

The EU’s difficulty in responding swiftly to trade threats has heightened concerns about a surge in Chinese exports that European officials say benefit from unfair government subsidies. With Trump hiking U.S. tariffs, ever more Chinese exports are heading to Europe — increasing pressure on industries that are already being forced to retrench.

Europe’s heavy dependence on China for processed rare earths and other critical raw materials also leaves it vulnerable to retaliation should relations deteriorate.

“If we aren’t willing to fix the way our model works, then we’ll be destroyed,” said one EU diplomat, summing up the concerns flooding Brussels.

“What’s the point of having [more tools] if the Chinese can shut down our strategic production in a matter of days?”

Low expectations

Although Šefčovič entered the talks strengthened by the Franco-German letter, a second diplomat said they didn’t foresee a deal with Beijing this week.

“He knows that a lot of member states are behind the Franco-German push,” the diplomat said, adding that this “has been seen in China.” 

But Beijing has little room to compromise, given its reliance on exports to sustain growth amid weak domestic demand and a prolonged property slump.

“The Chinese side is starting to recognize that there is a problem. But I don’t think they are ready to enter into a substantial deal,” said Gunnar Wiegand, a former head of the EU diplomatic service’s Asia-Pacific department.

Wiegand, now a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said Šefčovič had earned a reputation as a dealmaker in talks on Britain’s exit from the EU and in last year’s trade deal with Trump. This time, however, “both sides are bound by their own circumstances,” he said.

Europe is desperate to halt the erosion of its industrial base, while China remains heavily dependent on exports to sustain economic growth. 

“The Chinese are going to object to being singled out. Even if a deal with the EU would be the most rational solution, other important markets for Chinese exports, such as ASEAN countries, will start asking the same. It will undercut their global market,” he said. 

BRUSSELS — The EU will only conduct further releases of oil and diesel reserves after the International Energy Agency has made it clear such a move would not be damaging to the bloc’s energy security, three diplomats familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

The Group of Seven — which includes Italy, Japan, Germany the U.K., France and the U.S. — agreed on Friday to release 100 million barrels of oil and diesel after U.S. officials threatened to ban diesel exports if they didn’t tap stockpiles.

However, the IEA appeared to confirm Wednesday that that release would draw from stocks pledged under an agreement in March and not include additional supplies. In other words, it would not amount to a new release at all, but would simply fulfil prior promises.

In a meeting Wednesday afternoon, EU officials endorsed the position, pledging to defer any future drawdowns “pending a clearer IEA assessment of market conditions and security-of-supply risks,” said one of the diplomats. Countries need to know “how low we can go,” said another.

While diesel prices are high as a result of airstrikes on energy infrastructure in Russia and the Middle East, some EU countries warned that releasing stocks now could leave them vulnerable in the event of a supply crisis.

There remain enough untapped stocks among IEA members to satisfy the pledge to release 100 million barrels.

Of the 400 million barrels pledged in March, 325 million have been released, with some countries releasing “greater volumes than they initially pledged,” the IEA said in a statement following an emergency ministerial meeting. That leaves around 100 million left that countries can still release under that agreement, it added.

It said the fresh commitment would represent a “completion” of that March agreement. The IEA’s 32 members include wealthy European, North American and East Asian countries.

POLITICO reported earlier Wednesday that France and Germany — which hold some of Europe’s most significant stockpiles — had signalled they would release no or minimal supplies on top of those already pledged.

It remains unclear what share of the releases non-EU members of the IEA will accept, after Japan, another member, ruled out any further releases.

Further details on the breakdown of the G7 release will be discussed at a meeting of the IEA’s governing board next week, the second diplomat said.

The biggest scandal in the modern history of professional sports broke wide open across the Atlantic this past week. How much that reflects larger social, cultural and economic pathologies and whether it affects regular people’s lives in any meaningful way is a complicated question. At the very least, I would suggest that the Manchester City scandal, which has driven the already-overheated British media to new heights of hysteria, isn’t really about soccer or sports. 

Man City (often simply called “City”) is by far the most successful team in the English Premier League over the last 15 years and one of the four or five biggest soccer franchises in the world. Last week an independent legal panel delivered a long-anticipated verdict, finding the club guilty on 114 counts of systematic financial fraud, amounting to more than a billion dollars in fake revenues and sham commercial sponsorships. This scathing judgment only covers the years from 2009 to 2018, but no one thinks the actual or alleged fraud suddenly stopped after that.

Effectively, the verdict amounts to a finding that City cheated their way to the top of world football through a dizzying but blatant series of scams and shell games, allowing the team’s petro-state owners to illegally outspend competitors and pump hundreds of millions into inflated salaries for star players like Norwegian thirst-trap Erling Haaland (he of the formerly golden locks), Kevin De Bruyne and Sergio Agüero, and illustrious coaches, first and foremost among them the Catalan genius Pep Guardiola. 

Along with winning numerous championships and tournaments, Man City changed the nature of the world’s favorite sport and transformed the EPL from a medium-size U.K.-based enterprise plagued by hooliganism, erratic attendance and crumbling stadiums into a global merchandising and marketing empire whose broadcasts, “kits” and online fan clubs extend from Indonesia to Arkansas. 

If you belong to the large proportion of humanity inclined to a shrug-emoji reaction — billionaire oligarchs, overpaid athletes, incalculable sums of dirty money; who cares? — the first thing to say is that you’re absolutely right and that’s the only healthy response. But the salient fact that pushes the Man City narrative beyond a sports-business scandal and toward more cultural, political and even philosophical terrain is that virtually everyone who followed soccer and the EPL understood what was happening all along. That sort of willful blindness or collective cynicism is by no means limited to sports or celebrity culture — and it has become a widespread corrosive force in our society.

At any rate, everyone who was paying attention rapidly perceived the pattern after 2008, when Manchester City — a historically mediocre team with a modest fan base, sad-sack local rivals to Manchester United, who dominated the sport in the 1990s — was acquired by the Abu Dhabi United Group, a private equity firm closely aligned, shall we say, with the royal family of a Persian Gulf autocratic state. (Exactly how closely, and whether ADUG can be considered a separate entity from the Abu Dhabi government, is one of the issues at stake in the byzantine Man City case, now heading into an appeal process that could take years.)

It’s worth noting here that City Football Group, the ADUG subsidiary that has poured all that money into Man City, also owns or operates football/soccer clubs and related real estate projects around the world, including New York City FC in Major League Soccer, which at this moment is constructing an expensive new stadium in Queens, to be named — like everything else in the CFG universe — for Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi’s state-owned carrier. 

Here lies the central conundrum of the Man City scandal, which is, like so much else about this story, a dirty secret that is no secret at all. Abu Dhabi’s petrodollars are deeply embedded in the economies of many Western nations, and any serious effort to punish or exile ADUG’s prize sporting property could have far-reaching ripple effects. That goes a long way toward explaining why U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who has struck such a forceful posture toward Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, has issued only vague blandishments about this explosive case on his own home turf, and clearly hopes the whole thing will simply go away.

In his excellent summary of the City scandal, Alex Shephard of the New Republic observes that the “massive accounting sham” behind the team’s spectacular rise under the Abu Dhabi ownership was concealed only in threadbare fashion, and was widely tolerated for a range of interlocking reasons: 

Manchester City committed fraud on a massive scale primarily as a soft power project for an authoritarian nation because it was allowed to do so. The Premier League chose to look away. The team was good and the money was flowing. Questions about its finances — let alone about its ownership — were swept under the rug. As Manchester City became the best team in the Premier League, the Premier League became the most powerful league in Europe and, by extension, the world.

It isn’t easy to translate this tangled affair into American terms, and in any case I’m here to argue that the real significance of the Man City story is not about big-money skulduggery in professional sports. But let’s imagine that the Los Angeles Dodgers or the New York Knicks were found to have broken the rules of their respective leagues to such an extraordinary degree that observers seriously suggested that their recent championships should be stricken from the record books and that the teams themselves should be banished from Major League Baseball and the NBA for years to come, if not forever. (Such outcomes are on the table in the City case; so is a slap on the wrist and a large payoff, or a negotiated compromise somewhere in between.)

Let’s further imagine that we had collectively decided that the Dodgers or Knicks were so entertaining to watch that we’d pretend not to notice that they were owned by Kim Jong-un’s first cousin or Vladimir Putin’s niece. (Which if anything is understating the case: ADUG’s proprietor, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, is the brother of Abu Dhabi’s absolute ruler and his regime’s vice president.) Then we’d pretend we were surprised to learn that their entire operation was shamelessly corrupt, when the only genuinely surprising part was that the leagues involved had decided to risk their own survival by exposing the financial misdeeds after all those years of looking the other way.

My point here is that while I’m surprised to find myself writing yet another article in 2026 about soccer — if you presume that betrays some personal interest, you would be correct — this one isn’t really about soccer at all. Whatever ultimate judgment befalls Manchester City after years of legal wrangling is beside the point, although there’s some grim amusement to be found in comments sections on The Athletic, as fans try to “well, actually” or DYOR a verdict that will certainly tarnish the team’s reputation in perpetuity.

This is partly a story, as Shephard says, about sportswashing and the immense soft-power reach of authoritarian regimes like the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, all of which are heavily invested in professional soccer and other global sporting ventures. (Paris Saint-Germain, the biggest team in France and current European champions, was once owned by its fans but is now a property of the Qatari state.) Beyond that, it’s a story about questions almost too large to describe clearly.

It’s a story about a world that pretends to value democracy but is increasingly defined by massive inequality, oligarchy and, for that matter, monarchy. It’s about a world where the billionaire ex-president of the United States had to run for re-election in order to stay out of prison — and it worked. A world where the two most respected organizations in American broadcast journalism, CNN and CBS News, could come under the control of one man, who transparently aims to turn them into propaganda outlets supporting one faction of one political party. 

It’s a story, in other words, about how much we will put up with. Or rather about how much we have convinced ourselves we must accept, given the unimaginable imbalance between the tech billionaires and fossil-fuel despots on one side and the other 99.9% of us on the other, whose only feasible role is to be their servants, their worker drones or their captive audience, or else to be deemed expendable. 

It would be ridiculous to cast the English Premier League as a hero in that larger narrative, as if its current stance had anything to do with standing up against autocratic sportswashing or defending democracy and the rule of law. Man City may even have a point, on the level of libertarian economic theory, that the EPL’s financial rules were unfairly structured to prevent upstart teams from competing with long-established franchises like Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United, and that owners should be allowed to spend as much as they want to put a competitive team on the field. (That is, in fact, exactly how Major League Baseball operates, although its moment of reckoning is right around the corner.)

But there may also be a crude lesson under this dunderheaded clash of the titans that pertains to democracy, and can be seen reflected in the verdict on the Trump regime that we all see coming in this year’s American midterm elections, or in the surge of popular opposition to data centers and to the unrestricted development of AI. To paraphrase the maxim falsely attributed to Lincoln, you can fool a whole bunch of the people for a hell of a long time, but you can’t fool all of them forever. 

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Ultimately, the Premier League must have concluded that the reputational and economic damage of prosecuting its most successful team for obvious financial crimes — which is likely to be considerable — was preferable to the damage of not doing so. EPL leadership stuck a finger in the wind of public opinion, so to speak, and decided their best chance of not killing the golden goose lay in manning up for the principles they had visibly abandoned, or at least pretending to.

You definitely shouldn’t care what becomes of the EPL or Manchester City; I’d be better off if I didn’t either. Erling Haaland and his teammates will be fine, as will the Abu Dhabi royals, although whatever remains of the club’s pre-2008 Mancunian fanbase is likely to suffer bitterly. But you might care about finding the outer limits of the corrosive social and cultural corruption and cynicism to which we have all been subjected — and in which we have all been complicit — and then finding the courage and resolution to resist.

Will I watch Manchester City’s first post-verdict match on Oct. 11, against their archrivals Liverpool? Um, yeah. It’s a news event! I’m doing my job, or that’s what I’ll tell myself. But I won’t pretend my hands are clean.

The post Manchester City’s cheating scandal isn’t really about soccer appeared first on Salon.com.

New U.S. passports are coming, and first-time applicants can apply online. Digital selfies will also be allowed, making the process easier than ever. Passports are currently mailed in paper envelopes. New ones will come in a white box with the golden seal. — Read the rest

The post First-time U.S. passport applicants will soon be able to apply online appeared first on Boing Boing.

Few things are more difficult to get down in immutable ink than the history of professional wrestling.

Born on the carnival circuit, the pseudo-sport maintained a here today-gone tomorrow feeling until relatively recently. Promoters scraped out regional fiefdoms where transient performers would fight for a spell before jumping ship in search of better deals. Sometimes they took their name with them; other times they molded themselves to whatever gimmick their new promoter needed on the roster. It makes a mess of any timeline, and that’s before you get to the kayfabe — the illusion — of it all, the fact that all these real men and women are deadly serious about keeping up their fake characters. 

Grasping for concrete facts can leave you with two immutable bits of data: when a wrestler was born and when they died, with everything in between being a show on some level. Get enough of those dates together, and it’s hard not to notice a pattern: These sideshow athletes don’t live very long. 

Gorgeous George, one of the most famous faces of wrestling’s Golden Age, didn’t make it to his 50th birthday. “Macho Man” Randy Savage and his ex-wife/manager Miss Elizabeth both died before reaching Social Security eligibility. High-flying technical wrestler Eddie Guerrero died at 38. Windham Rotunda, who freaked out the WWE for years as a swamp-dwelling cultist named Bray Wyatt, passed away at the age of 36. And earlier this week, All Elite Wrestling star Pac died in the parking lot of an Illinois chain restaurant, just a day after his most recent match. HIs cause of death is still unknown. 

Born Benjamin Satterley in a blue-collar community in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, he first came to national attention stateside in the WWE, where he wrestled under the decidedly English name Neville. He took the cruiserweight title twice before jumping for AEW in 2018. His star rose exponentially as a regular heel for the young promotion. At the time of his passing, he was only 40 years old.

Playing a fake brute who’s willing to take a folding chair to the face to settle a disagreement is hell on a body. Learning how to fall and pretending you have superpowers can’t cancel out physics. If a 240-pound man turns you upside down and drives your head into a padded floor, you’re going to feel it the next day (and probably several days after). The wear and tear is cumulative, adding up over time like it does for all contact sports. Just take a boxer’s blown-out ears and a running back’s trick knee and expand it to account for the fact that, in wrestling, shots to the back of the skull are frequently necessary to move the story along. Recruiting almost exclusively among the huge and jacked — it’s easier to appear larger-than-life on camera if you’re real-world large — makes the list of heart conditions start to pile up. It’s all a recipe for a brief career, and a correspondingly short life.

The situation is exacerbated by wrestling’s employer-employee relationship. Staying true to its seasonal carny roots, almost all professional wrestlers are gig workers. The average star of WWE or AEW signs on as an independent contractor, meaning they are responsible for their own health insurance and are subject to being fired for nearly any cause. The situation has been even worse for wrestling’s women, who spent decades subject to the whims of Mary Lillian Ellison, better known as The Fabulous Moolah, a wrestler-promoter-extortionist who controlled virtually all of women’s wrestling, loaning out talent to regional promotions and taking cuts of stars’ pay.

Unlike the four major professional sports in the U.S., wrestlers have no pension and no retiree health benefits. If you wrestle for a living, you’re faced with significant pressure to perform for as long as you can, through as many injuries as you can. Unsurprisingly, the list of premature wrestler deaths is heavy on accidental painkiller overdoses and acute toxicity from mixing medications with alcohol. 

The central role of the promoter — and the lack of genuine athletic competition in matches — puts wrestlers and management on remarkably unequal footing. It’s hard to cause trouble for a boss who can simply write rabble-rousers out of the scripted action. Attempts to unionize the talent were mounted in the 1980s, first by hoo-rah heel Sgt. Slaughter, and then by wrestler-turned-governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura. The latter seemingly bought into some of the era’s storylines and ringside magic, believing that a rousing speech to the wrestlers in the locker room would convince them to strike. But he was ratted on by company star Hulk Hogan, and promoter Vince McMahon quickly summoned Ventura to let him know that any future outbursts of class consciousness would come with walking papers. 

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“Vince . . .  basically threatened to fire me if I ever brought it up again and read me the riot act,” Ventura explained on The Steve Austin Show. ”I then did WrestleMania 2 and immediately left and did ‘Predator’ and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild now, my union that I get retirement from now, healthcare from, all of that from.”

The situation only got worse as WWE muscled out nearly all regional promotions. McMahon’s anti-union behemoth spent decades as the only game in town for professional wrestlers who wanted the reach of a televised promotion. In recent years, AEW has pitched itself as an antidote to the WWE, but its roster is also almost entirely composed of independent contractors. Stars like CM Punk and Ray Fenix have complained loudly about the way the promotion handles wrestler health.

Pac is the second wrestler who performed in an AEW ring to have died just this month. Andy Williams, the former guitarist for metal-core act Every Time I Die who wrestled under the name “The Butcher,” died after collapsing during a match with an independent, regional promotion on Sept. 5 at 48. (His contact with AEW expired in April, after which he became a free agent.) Williams’ official cause of death is pending, awaiting final autopsy results.

Wrestling’s treatment of its employees is a bit too abstract to be listed on either man’s autopsy report. Coroners are in the business of endings, putting a neat period on decades of damage with phrases like “cardiac arrest.” Still, anyone who has followed wrestling for years can see the way it hobbles its heels and heroes alike. In a sport that heavily encourages everyone watching to follow the narrative, it’s hard not to notice a pattern.

The post AEW wrestler Pac’s death exposes pro wrestling’s labor problem appeared first on Salon.com.

Horse racing can be an unusually dangerous profession for both the jockey and the horse: Riding a half-ton animal at nearly 40 miles per hour means your fate depends on the health and performance of both athletes. And the horse can be at risk of catastrophic injury if the jockey doesn’t have the required physical fitness to maintain proper technique and lightning-quick reflexes. 

But new wearable technology and advances in sports medicine are enabling everyone involved in the sport of horse racing to identify risks earlier and prevent injuries to horses and jockeys alike.

In order to find out more about both of these athletes, I took a trip to Belmont Park, to watch competitive horses train and to speak with Dr. Sara Langsam, an equine veterinarian and chair of the American Association of Equine Practitioners Racing Committee. And to learn about the jockey side of the equation, I talked to Michaela Keener, a jockey health researcher at University of Kentucky, and ReyLu Gutiérrez, a jockey who has started in over 6,000 races.

Read more about horse racing safety and health:

• Article about wearable biometric sensors as a horse injury detection system
• “Physiological Demands and Muscle Activity of Jockeys in Trial and Race Riding”
• New York Racing Authority’s page on equine safety
• Horseracing Wrongs, a nonprofit committed to ending the horse-racing industry for reasons of animal welfare
• Information about the new Belmont Park racetrack, including details on its new, technologically advanced surfaces

This video is presented by Colgate. Colgate doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this one possible.

This story was originally reported by Brooke Migdon of The 19th. Meet Brooke and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

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.

After years of playing it at sporting events out of choice or paid patriotism, Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for it:

“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.”

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.”

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. 

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.

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.

The post Colin Kaepernick knows what kneeling cost — and he’d do it again appeared first on Salon.com.

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.

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