250

Many posts have discussed patriotism.

 Josephine Walker at Axios:

Dueling events for America's 250th birthday are creating confusion as celebrations ramp up across the U.S.

Why it matters: The disconnect made headlines last week when a group of performers withdrew from on the National Mall, prompting President Trump to step in.

Those concerts were organized by Freedom 250, a White House-established initiative. America 250, a separate, Congress-approved missive, has planned events nationwide in the run-up to Independence Day.

The intrigue: Several of the performers who canceled cited being misled about the event.Country singer Martina McBride said on Instagram that she "was assured this was a nonpartisan event that was meant to celebrate ALL 50 states. ...Yesterday things started changing and what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening."

...

Freedom 250 is planning events that reflect Trump's flair for spectacle.

That includes a UFC fight on the White House South Lawn, an IndyCar race through downtown Washington, D.C., a FIFA World Cup fan zone and the Great American State Fair — both to be held on the National Mall.

Jemar Tisby at The Bulwark:

The issue is not hosting a sporting event, it’s the one they chose and what it says.

If the White House wanted to host a sporting event commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary, they could have chosen “America’s Pastime”—baseball.

And they could have held it at a stadium dedicated to the purpose, not spent tens of millions constructing a temporary arena that may leave scars on the landscape for a long time to come.

Instead they chose cage fighting, the most visceral expression of violence for sport.

What does it mean to normalize blood sport at that address?

Whatever your personal opinion of MMA as a sport, this is a deliberate choice about what power looks like, what celebration looks like, and what America is supposed to mean.

Yet it’s not a departure from this regime’s ethos; it’s right in line with their performance of masculinity.

Universal Nation

Many posts have discussed immigration.

James Pethokoukis at AEI:

Abroad, the American way of life had become, in his phrase, “the pervasive, persuasive, universal model” worldwide, encompassing consumer capitalism, popular entertainment, and democratic institutions. (“Isn’t that what the number one nation is supposed to be about?,” he asked in his 1991 book, The First Universal Nation.) Unlike Rome or Britain, the United States didn’t rule by conquest. It persuaded, absorbed, and broadcast. (And this was before the internet.)

Three decades on, Wattenberg’s framework seems as valid as ever, even if public confidence in it has weakened.

Start with the 2026 Winter Olympics. Of roughly 230 athletes on Team USA, according to The Seattle Times, seven are foreign-born and another 31 are the children of immigrants. Just one story: Top men’s figure skater Ilia Malinin—the American-born son of two former Olympic figure skaters who competed for Uzbekistan. A George Mason University student, he helped push Team USA to gold in the Olympic team event over the weekend. But the medal count here is secondary. On a global stage designed to celebrate peaceful national competition, the US presents itself as a country whose identity is beneficially additive. A success sequence worth celebrating and not screwing up: Global talent enters American institutions and then successfully represents the country back to the world.

Then consider the Super Bowl halftime show headlined by rapper Bad Bunny. The most American of spectacles briefly became a Spanish-language celebration of Puerto Rican identity. Talk about a cultural flex. I doubt many other countries’ signature sporting event would hand its stage to a performer singing anything other than that country’s primary language. What audiences here and globally saw was a country roomy and confident enough to absorb and amplify an identity rather than suppress it. The NFL certainly sees Wattenberg’s universal nation as an asset to its global ambitions.

America today is unsure of itself in ways it likely wasn’t 30 years ago when it became the planet’s only superpower. And our journey toward universality is hardly a walk in the park. It never has been. (Wattenberg: “We are becoming a universal nation at home; we come from everywhere. We are a ‘wondrous race,’ although, Lord knows, it’s not always easy, and we self-inflict more than a few wounds. Still, as demonstrated, it’s worked, and it’s working.”)

Bad Bunny and America

Previous posts have discussed Puerto Rico:

At CNN, Alli Rosenbloom reports on Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show:

Bad Bunny — who introduced himself with his real full name, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — brought the iconography of Puerto Rican culture to his Super Bowl halftime show performance, a joyous and high-energy affair that celebrated the island where he was born and its place in the American story.

The artist did not shy away from overt political symbolism, ending the authentic and confident performance on a note of unity.

After playing some of his biggest hits, Bad Bunny stared down the camera and spoke in English for the only time during the performance to say, “God Bless America.”

He followed with a list of more than 20 nations in North, Central and South America while dancers trailed him displaying the flags of many of those nations, with the US and Puerto Rican flags most visible directly behind him.

While the US often uses the word “America” to identify itself as a single, distinct country, many of its neighbors use it to refer to a greater unified continent, a point that Bad Bunny hammered home when he spiked a football that read “Together we are America,” before launching into his nostalgic anthem “DtMF.”

Jenn Hatfield and Jeffrey S. Passel at Pew:

Puerto Rico – officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico – is one of five U.S. territories with a permanent population, along with American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It’s located about 1,000 miles southeast of the Florida coast.

Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony for centuries before it was ceded to the U.S. in 1898 following the Spanish-American War. A 1917 act of Congress established that people born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens.

The island has had its own constitution since 1952 but is also subject to federal law, like U.S. states. Unlike people living in the states, Puerto Ricans living on the island can’t vote in federal elections and don’t pay federal taxes on income earned there.

Puerto Rico has some representation in Congress, but not as much as the states do. Its sole delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrat Pablo José Hernández Rivera, has limited voting privileges. The territory does not have any senators.

Since 1967, there have been seven votes on the island over whether Puerto Rico should change its political status, most recently in 2024. However, the results of these votes were nonbinding, and efforts to give Puerto Ricans a binding vote on statehood have stalled in recent Congresses.

The World Boos the US Government

Many.posts have dealt with international views of the United States.  They have taken a negative turn.

Jon Henley at The Guardian:

Western Europeans prize Europe’s autonomy and values over transatlantic ties and will not give them up to placate Donald Trump, according to a poll suggesting opinions of the US have plunged to their lowest since YouGov began tracking them a decade ago.

The US president’s attempted Greenland grab has succeeded in turning Europeans solidly against his country, the pollster’s latest survey found. Large majorities in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Great Britain all declared an unfavourable opinion.

The figures, ranging from 62% in France to 84% in Denmark – of which Greenland is a self-governing territory – mark a further steep rise in negative perceptions of the US even since November, when the range was between 49% and 70%.

 

DANIELLA MATAR and COLLEEN BARRY AT AP

American athletes received an enthusiastic welcome at the opening ceremony for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, but the mood shifted when cameras briefly turned to Vice President JD Vance.

Led by speedskater and flag bearer Erin Jackson, Team USA was among the last delegations to enter Milan’s San Siro stadium in the parade of nations on Friday.

The crowd cheered for the Americans but jeers and whistles could be heard as Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, were shown on the stadium screens, waving American flags from the tribune.

Support for the U.S. among its allies has been eroding as the Trump administration has taken an aggressive posture on foreign policy, including punishing tariffs, military action in Venezuela and threats to invade Greenland.

Football Lobbying

Previous posts have described lobbying and political activity by sports organizations.

Kelly Kauffman at Open Secrets:

As the National Football League prepares for its final game of the season this Sunday with the Philadelphia Eagles taking on the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Ariz., year-end lobbying disclosures reveal that the NFL spent over $1.3 million on federal lobbying in 2022.

The NFL’s federal lobbying expenditures are a slight increase from its $1.2 million in 2021 spending, according to an OpenSecrets’ analysis of year-end lobbying disclosures.

While the 2022 lobbying spending didn’t reach the league’s high of $1.6 million in 2018, the NFL led the recreation and live entertainment industry in terms of federal lobbying spending last year. Major League Baseball followed close behind, spending over $1.2 million.

A majority of the NFL’s lobbyists went through the “revolving door” with 22 out of 29 NFL lobbyists in 2022 having previously held jobs in the government.

Not only is the NFL active in the lobbying space, the league also donated $402,000 to federal candidates through its PAC in 2022. This included $10,000 each to Reps. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). Additionally, the PAC contributed $10,000 each to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.).

China's Troll Mob

 Ben Cohen, Georgia Wells and Tom McGinty at WSJ:

LeBron James wasn’t the only Twitter user who thought Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong’s protesters was misinformed. There was a whole army of pro-China troll accounts that happened to agree.

A review of nearly 170,000 tweets, plus analysis from expert information warfare researchers, shows that Morey was the target of what appears to be a coordinated harassment campaign after his tweet on Oct. 4 set off an international furor and threatened the NBA’s future in the world’s most populous country.

In the 12 hours immediately after Morey’s tweet, the Houston Rockets general manager’s account was flooded with comments from pro-Chinese-government accounts that mentioned him more than 16,000 times, according to an analysis by Ben Nimmo, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

“It looks like there were humans at the keyboard for many of these posts,” Nimmo said. “This wasn’t primarily a bot swarm. It was a troll mob. Which is a lot harder to deal with.”

 The Wall Street Journal’s analysis was based on 168,907 tweets at Morey between Oct. 4 and Oct. 10 captured by Clemson University researchers Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren.

It shows that 22% came from accounts with 0 followers at some point last week and 50% were from accounts with fewer than 13 followers. There were 4,855 total users in all who had never tweeted until they replied to Morey, and 3,677 accounts didn’t exist until his tweet.

“I’m not saying this is a state-affiliated operation,” Linvill said. “But I’ve only seen so many brand-new accounts used at one time when it was a state-affiliated operation."

Muhammad Ali and the Supreme Court

Muhammad Ali, perhaps the greatest boxer ever, has died.  He was the central figure in a 1971 Supreme Court case, Clay v. United States. (His birth name was Cassius Clay, which he changed when he converted to Islam).  The syllabus:

Petitioner appealed his local draft board's rejection of his application for conscientious objector classification. The Justice Department, in response to the State Appeal Board's referral for an advisory recommendation, concluded, contrary to a hearing officer's recommendation, that petitioner's claim should be denied, and wrote that board that petitioner did not meet any of the three basic tests for conscientious objector status. The Appeal Board then denied petitioner's claim, but without stating its reasons. Petitioner refused to report for induction, for which he was thereafter tried and convicted. The Court of Appeals affirmed. In this Court, the Government has rightly conceded the invalidity of two of the grounds for denial of petitioner's claim given in its letter to the Appeal Board, but argues that there was factual support for the third ground.

Held: Since the Appeal Board gave no reason for the denial of a conscientious objector exemption to petitioner, and it is impossible to determine on which of the three grounds offered in the Justice Department's letter that board relied, petitioner's conviction must be reversed. Sicurella v. United States, 348 U. S. 385.

At Yahoo several years ago, Scott Bomboy wrote:

In the book The Brethern: Inside The Supreme Court, Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) and Scott Armstrong detailed how the eight justices hearing Ali’s case about his draft stratus changed the verdict after their initial conference. (Thurgood Marshall recused himself from the case due to his prior role as Solicitor General.)
...
Initially, Woodward and Armstrong said the Supreme Court justices ruled 5-3 against Ali during a conference.
Then the justice assigned to write the majority decision, John M. Harlan, changed his vote after a clerk gave him a book to read that made Ali’s religious convictions clear.

The book was reportedly The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, and Harlan realized Ali had deep-seated religious convictions that made him a true conscientious objector.

But that left the court divided at 4-4, and since Ali had lost his lower court appeal, he would lose the Supreme Court case. And the court’s rules would also leave Ali without an explanation for the court’s decision.

....

Woodward and Armstrong said it was Justice Potter Stewart who looked at the case and convinced the other justices that the lower courts never explained why they turned down Ali’s appeals.

NCAA Lobbying

Previous posts have described lobbying and political activity by sports organizations.  At Open Secrets, Lalita Clozel writes:

Facing an onslaught of challenges to its long-held rules enforcing student amateurism, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is going pro in the lobbying arena. After hiring an outside firm, the NCAA has been doling out record amounts on K Street this year.

The association is responding to a string of cases that have placed student athlete compensation back on the table. On Monday, the association said it would appeal its latest defeat in a suit brought by retired professional basketball player and former college hoops star Ed O’Bannon. A federal court in Oakland ruled Friday that the NCAA couldn’t bar certain student athletes from receiving compensation for the promotional use of their names and images. In March, the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago inflicted the first major blow to the NCAA by ruling that Northwestern University football players had the right to unionize.

Soon after that, the association enlisted an all-star team to step up its advocacy efforts in Congress. In April, it hired outside lobbyists for the first time since 1998, recruiting Elizabeth Gore, Marc Lampkin and five other mainstays at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

Some data: 

 

Dual Citizenship and the Olympics

An earlier post dealt with citizenship and Olympic competition. The National Post reports:

A Canadian has become America’s biggest hope to lead the nation’s swim team at the London Olympics.

On Monday, Missy Franklin, 17, a high school senior in Centennial, Colo., with dual citizenship, won the gold medal for the United States in the 100-metre backstroke.

The performance set a U.S. record of 58.33 seconds and bested Emily Seebohm of Australia (58.68 seconds) and Japan’s Aya Terakawa (58.83 seconds).
...


Both Ms. Franklin’s parents were born in Canada. Her mother, D.A., is a physician from Halifax, and her father, Richard, a director at a clean-technology organization, is from St. Catharines, Ont.

Although the teenager, nicknamed Missy the Missile, chose to swim for the States, she said her “favourite place in the entire world” is Pictou, N.S., where she digs for clam and grills oysters while vacationing with her parents. Her first international meet was in Vancouver when she was 13.

Citizenship and the Olympics

The Washington Post reports on Olympic basketball player Becky Hammon:

Hammon is playing in her second Olympics for Russia. She became a Russian naturalized citizen before the Beijing Games. Because she hadn’t played for the United States in any major FIBA-sanctioned international events, she is allowed to compete for Russia in the Olympics.

Her patriotism was questioned in 2008 when she played with Russia, which won the bronze medal. Hammon’s second Olympics isn’t drawing as much attention.

She said there’s not “so much hoopla around me and everyone’s kind of settled in. Other girls are playing for other teams, so it’s not so much focused on me.”

A previous post mentioned Olympian Lopez Lomong. At The New York Times, he writes:

As a “Lost Boy” of Sudan, having spent 10 years of my life in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to America at the age of 16, I felt lost without a country. I never identified with any flag; instead, I was an outcast from a country at war.

In 2000, while a refugee, I saw Michael Johnson run the 400 meters in the Olympics. My world was shaken when he shed a tear during the playing of the national anthem. I realized that he didn’t run for himself or his own glory, but rather represented a country that he was proud of.

The Olympics is the ultimate show of national pride and identity. For me, competing in the Olympic games has been an opportunity to thank a country that opened its arms to me 11 years ago, showing me that I mattered.

The issue of athletes swapping countries to achieve an Olympic berth is a complicated one. In cases like Guor Marial’s, the liberal use of the Olympic flag to allow a qualified athlete to compete when their country doesn’t have an Olympic delegation is justified.

However, when athletes compete solely for personal glory, the purpose of the Games is undermined. After receiving my American citizenship in 2007, despite the odds against me and the challenges I faced, it was not an option to run under another flag. I had been accepted into a country that I was proud of and, for the first time in my life, I had an identity. In 2008, as the team flag bearer, I realized the importance of the Olympic spirit -- to unite the world’s athletes and proudly represent their countries in peace.

Basketball and Politics: A Slam Dunk

As previous posts have indicated, professional sports is an interest group that plays campaign finance and lobbying.  The Center for Responsive Politics reports:

The NBA’s All-Star weekend got off to an early start on Thursday with a $30,000-a-plate fundraiser for President Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee at the home of Dallas Mavericks guard Vince Carter.

Among those seated at the dinner on Carter's personal full-size basketball court were Steve Smith of the Atlanta Hawks, the L.A. Clippers' Chris Paul, NBA Commissioner David Stern and retired luminaries Alonzo Mourning and Earvin "Magic" Johnson. Miami Heat stars LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade sent checks, though they couldn't make the event due to a work conflict (they were busy shutting down the New York Knicks, 102-88).

Clearly, the NBA knows how to play politics.

In all, the league's players, owners and executives have contributed $2.6 million to federal candidates and political committees since the start of 2009, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. The NBA has shown a strong preference for Democrats over those years. About $1.6 million, or 61 percent, of the donations linked to the NBA since 2009 have gone to Dems.


That makes professional basketball more liberal than pro football, dollarwise. During the same time frame, individuals associated with the NFL, plus its political action committee (the NBA doesn't have one of those), have given almost the same amount as those connected to the NBA -- $2.8 million -- but they've sent 58 percent of it to Republicans. OpenSecrets Blog previously reported on that league's political efforts here.

...The NBA's political plays don't stop with campaign contributions. Since 2009, the league has spent $310,000 lobbying the federal government. One of its primary issues: how NBA content, such as game footage, can be used by others, said Philip Hochburg, a longtime lobbyist for the NBA, in an interview with OpenSecrets Blog.
Other prominent concerns include protecting the league’s collectively bargained drug testing program and determining royalty payments from cable and satellite broadcasts.

Meeting the President

In times of political conflict, personal meetings with the president can be fraught with controversy. Jeremy Gordon writes at The Wall Street Journal:

When the Boston Bruins visited the White House Monday to celebrate their 2011 Stanley Cup victory, they were without perhaps their most important player of their inspired championship run: goaltender Tim Thomas, who elected to stay at home rather than get an official commendation from President Barack Obama

 ... 

He isn’t the first athlete to snub Washington D.C., or even the first within the last year. In September, a handful of NASCAR stars like Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards wereunable to attend a White House ceremony in their honor, citing scheduling contacts. Last fall, Hall of Famer Dan Hampton declined to go after his 1985 Chicago Bears championship team was invited for a long-due celebration, saying “I’m not a fan of the guy in the White House.” And Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen went on vacation instead of visiting the White House of George W. Bush after his team won in 2005, though he never made any explicit political statement about it.

Thomas is, however, the most high-profile athlete to take such action.  He explained himself in a statement:

"I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic. TT"

Meanwhile, another meeting with the president proved difficult. AP reports: 

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer came to greet President Barack Obama upon his arrival outside Phoenix Wednesday. What she got was a critique of how he is depicted in her book. The two leaders could be seen engaged in an intense conversation.

Football and Politics

Even football plays politics. Politico reports:

The National Football League may be sitting on the sidelines thanks to a four-month long lockout, but it made plays for dozens of members of Congress during the latest fundraising quarter.

The league’s political action committee — the Gridiron PAC — doled out $110,000 to House and Senate incumbents during the last quarter, according to recently filed Federal Election Commission reports.

Recipients include All Pro names like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who chairs the Democratic National Committee. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also scored a campaign contribution.

Meanwhile, the NFL spent $440,000 on federal lobbying efforts during the year’s second quarter, federal records show. That’s up from the $400,000 it spent during the year’s first quarter and more than it spent during any quarter in 2010. Last year, the league spent more on federal lobbying – nearly $1.5 million – than it has in any other full year.

The National Football League Players Association, meanwhile, spent $60,000 in both the first and second quarters of this year.

Beyond labor matters, issues the NFL reported lobbying on include Internet gambling, concussions, the NFL Network, performance-enhancing drugs and “aviation issues related to the FAA reauthorization” during the year’s second quarter.

Here is a summary of PAC data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Here is a summary of NFL lobbying data.

Here is an example of NFL lobbying, from a June article in The Hill:

The National Football League filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission this week urging the agency not to end blackouts of local sports games.

NFL games are often blacked out locally when they fail to sell out 72 hours in advance in order to compel fans to buy tickets. The FCC's sports blackout rules prevent cable or satellite providers from carrying a game locally when the free broadcast has been blacked out under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.

Last month the Sports Fan Coalition wrote to the FCC asking the agency to prevent games from being blacked out due to retransmission disputes between broadcasters and pay-TV providers, such as the recent standoff between Cablevision and Fox that caused millions of New York-area residents to miss the first two games of the 2010 World Series.

The NFL argued in response that the sports blackout rule serves the public interest and has been repeatedly approved by Congress. The League contends that waiving the rule during retrans disputes would encourage brinkmanship by pay-TV providers.

"The SFC’s proposal would not help fans, but instead would work to the advantage of only one interest: pay-TV providers," the NFL said