Published April 23, 2025
In March, President Trump issued an Executive Order “Establishing the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026.” With the largest sporting event in history just around the corner, there is plenty of logistical preparation to take care of in the coming months.
But there is another way in which Trump must get our house in order before the tournament comes to the USA, Canada, and Mexico next July. Since at least 2017, American sports teams have been weaponized by the woke Left, with symbols and messages of activist causes proudly displayed on Team USA uniforms and gear worn in international matches. These include images of LGBT+ rainbows, BLM messages, and advocacy symbols for gun control.
President Trump must end this practice and restore our nation’s flag and colors to pride of place on the uniforms and gear of sports teams representing our nation.
For much of the world, a nation’s athletes represent the embodiment of its national values, and their performance is an indication of the national character. This is why the Olympic Games, for instance, were so highly prioritized by both the USA and the USSR throughout the Cold War. This is one reason the woke Left has worked so hard to gain control over American sports at every level. The center and Right, however, largely neglected the oversight of American sports, blithely and naively assuming the Cold War spirit of American greatness would continue. It has not.
Today, through the Left’s control over Team USA sports, the image of America presented to the world is petty wokeness, not the spirit of a great nation. In addition, by prioritizing political and cultural causes over patriotism, this activism fosters internal divisions instead of a unified quest for victory. What is more, its centering of the DEI ethos at the heart of wokeness calls into question the commitment to individual excellence and merit that are at the heart of both athletic competition and the American way of life.
What’s Been Happening
Many Americans may be unaware of just how extreme and frequent the woke activism waged by various American national sports teams is.
Among American national sports governing bodies, U.S. Soccer has been the most flagrant promoter of wokeness. With the 2026 World Cup in mind, getting a handle on the woke weaponization of U.S. Soccer is especially urgent.
- In June 2017, against Venezuela, and in June 2018, against Ireland and France, the U.S. National Men’s Team placed the LGBT+ rainbow on the USA jersey.
- In June 2017, against Sweden and Norway and twice in June 2018 against China, the U.S. National Women’s Team placed the LGBT+ rainbow on the USA jersey.
- At a 2020 match against El Salvador, the men’s team placed the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter-inspired slogan “Be the Change” on the front side of their pre-game anthem jackets. Individual players wore slogans on the back side, such as “Black Lives Matter,” “World Peace,” “Equality,” and “Anti-Racism.”
- In June 2022, the men’s team wore orange armbands in a match against Uruguay to oppose gun violence. This was another part of U.S. Soccer’s participation in the “Be the Change” movement. In this explicitly political effort, the men’s team “implored the members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to vote yes on stricter gun legislation.”
- During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, U.S. Soccer redesigned its USA crest for Team USA uniforms and signage at the training center from red, white, and blue to the colors of the “Progress Pride Flag” to “bring awareness to these issues” and, as Outsports not so subtly admitted, as a way of “giving a big middle finger to FIFA and Qatar by using a USA logo adorned with the LGBT Pride flag colors at the team’s training center in Ar-Rayyan, Qatar.” They did this as part of U.S. Soccer’s participation in the Black Lives Matter-inspired “Be the Change” movement.
- The “Official US Soccer Store” sells LGBT+ rainbow pride-themed gear, including some with no connection to soccer, such as t-shirts with the slogan “Love is love” in rainbow colors. Part of the proceeds go to You Can Play, a non-profit in the U.S. and Canada that promotes programs “so LGBTQ+ athletes have the ability to play as their authentic self.”
- In 2024, U.S. Soccer auctioned off pride-themed Team USA jerseys to “celebrate and support [the] LGBT+ community.”
Though less prominent than U.S. Soccer, other national sports teams have been equally eager to advance wokeness in the name of the United States.
- In 2024, USA Field Hockey announced they would “celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month…highlighting resources for how to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion within your team all year long.”
- The USA Field Hockey website features articles from players about topics of identity politics such as “queerness,” and the organization is now officially sponsored by a company that sells rainbow-themed wraps for hockey stick grips.
- The USA Hockey website features an article about a 14-year-old using LGBTQ+ rainbow wrap tape on hockey sticks.
- The USA Ultimate [Frisbee] website boasts its “support of the transgender community” and features a picture of the transgender flag.
- The DEI goals promoted by USA Ultimate include “increasing participation of…LGBTQIA+ ultimate athletes”.
- The U.S. Ski and Snowboard website announced they would be “celebrating the…[LGBTQ] community in honor of National Coming Out Day.”
- In 2020, an article about a training camp hosted by the U.S. Alpine Ski Team quoted a former Olympian teaching at the camp: “We were having daily discussions about Black Lives Matter, policing, and legislation. I’ve talked about continuity and consistency in my skiing for a while and the same applies to social change. Let’s put the work in. Vote.”
- The Team USA Shop sells a “Pride Collection” that combines “Team USA” and variations on the LGBT+ rainbow. This includes shirts with the slogan “Team USA is love,” a play on the “love is love” slogan of the same-sex movement.
And the activist messages on national Team USA uniforms and gear is only the tip of the iceberg. Some of the national governing bodies for individual sports also leverage their high profile to promote identity politics and DEI on their websites and social media.
With the eyes of the world on American athletics during the 2026 World Cup — in the very month that we celebrate a quarter-millennium since our nation’s founding—it is critical that Team USA projects a commitment to the American way of life, not the commitment to destroying it that is clear in so much of their recent messaging.
What Must Be Done
In 2020, after the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) failed to ensure protection of athletes from sexual abuse, Congress passed legislation to establish stronger processes for the oversight of sporting institutions. As a result, there are two key mechanisms available:
- The USOPC “may enforce a corrective measure through any means available to the corporation, including by withholding funds from a national governing body [NGB], limiting the participation of the national governing body in corporation events, and decertifying a national governing body.”
- “Congress can dissolve the Board of Directors of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and decertify national governing bodies.”
The majority-Republican Congress can apply these mechanisms to compel national governing bodies (NGBs) for sports to end their activism. The USOPC can and should punish NGBs that resist the push for reform. If the USOPC fails to fulfill its oversight obligations, Congress could decertify an NGB itself or even dissolve the USOPC Board of Directors.
This approach, using the mechanisms of the 2020 legislation, may also be valuable to add to the proposed legislation, H.R. 7187, to keep males out of female sports. Congress could require the USOPC to punish or decertify NGBs that allow males to compete in female sports. If the USOPC fails in this regard, Congress could disband and reconstitute the Board of Directors.
This is important because part of the push for males in female sports is coming from the international governing bodies of individual sports. Some NGBs may claim they are required to follow the rules set by the international governing body of the sport. But just as Congress can assert its authority over the unelected domestic authorities pushing wokeness now, America can assert its sovereignty against any future drive for wokeness at the international level.
In addition to these forward-looking reforms, Congress should investigate the USOPC’s failure to keep the NGBs under its oversight focused on their core mission. Why are our national sports authorities using their power and resources to promote DEI, LGBT radicalism, and other left-wing causes instead of athletic excellence and national pride? That effort will be strengthened if private sector specialists in researching the tentacles of institutional DEI and those who are savvy at tracing funding would join the fight.
When Team USA is used to promote the causes of the radical Left, when players are forced to endorse these causes as a pre-condition to compete, what we present to the world is a weak nation fractured and controlled by woke activism. But there is an alternative: national sports teams that project a clear vision of American excellence and American patriotism. President Trump and his allies in Congress have the power to make that alternative a reality.
Jennifer Bryson, Ph.D., is a Fellow in EPPC’s Catholic Women’s Forum. Currently, she is translating the works of Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) from German to English. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.
