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      Doubts raised over US travel system during 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics

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      The United States is unprepared for the burdens placed on its air travel system when the country hosts the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, according to a report released on Wednesday.The US Travel Association, a non-profit that represents the travel industry, commissioned a report written by former government officials and industry experts. The report raises concerns about visas, creaking infrastructure and poor security technology.The report says that the World Cup, Olympics and Paralympics, 2025 Ryder Cup and celebrations for the US’s 250th birthday could draw in an estimated 40 million visitors to the country.“We’re not ready to host the upcoming mega decade of events that will draw millions of domestic and international travelers. This poses risks to our national security and hampers economic growth,” the report says.While the Trump administration has made significant cuts across the government, the US Travel Association said there needs to be investment in visa processing and airport security.“The president has been outspoken about making this the gold standard of World Cups, the best Olympics that has ever been held,” Geoff Freeman, the US Travel Association’s CEO, told ESPN. “To do those things, to achieve those goals, you’ve got to make some of these investments.”Freeman said he had met with White House officials in the last week. He highlighted visa wait times as a particular problem area, with approval times for some countries that may reach the World Cup – such as Colombia – currently running at nearly two years.“People want to come, but they’re not coming,” Freeman said. “It gets down to these visa wait times. It gets down to the customs inefficiencies. It gets down to a perception in instances that people aren’t welcome. We’re very concerned.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US will co-host the World Cup with Mexico and Canada, although most of the game will take place in the US. Concerns have also been raised about extreme temperatures players could face during the tournament. More

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      in Elections

      Eagles Fans Celebrate Super Bowl Win in New Orleans

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      Philadelphia’s loyal supporters made themselves at home, with joyous fans partying outside the Superdome and others making their way to Bourbon Street.As the clock ran out at the Super Bowl on Sunday night, and the Philadelphia Eagles ran onto the field in New Orleans, confetti filled the Superdome and the team’s fight song, “Fly Eagles Fly,” blared over the speakers.Chants of “E-A-G-L-E-S” came from all corners of the 83,000-seat stadium. But now, fans went into overdrive, dressed in beads and sequins, flapping their arms like birds, and hoisting one another onto their shoulders.There was plenty for those Eagles fans to cheer as Philadelphia beat Kansas City, 40-22, stopping the Chiefs from becoming the first team in N.F.L. history to win three consecutive Super Bowls.Lit with green lights, Eagles fans spilled out of the stadium whistling, high-fiving strangers and dancing to a drum band, as Chiefs fans walked by sadly and serenely.Throughout the game, the excitement had extended beyond the field.President Trump, who was a guest of Gayle Benson, the owner of the New Orleans Saints, watched some of the game from a suite alongside members of his family, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump. He was also joined by members of Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson. In another suite, the former first lady Jill Biden cheered on the Eagles with help from her grandson, Robert Hunter Biden, among others.Taylor Barber, left, Bria Bryant, center, and Jessie Ulmer, teachers from Texas, planned to party with the winning team. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      At the Super Bowl, Taylor Swift Was Dressing to Win

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      Sometimes game-day strategy extends to style.Well, that’s one way to be part of the team. For her Super Bowl LIX appearance, Taylor Swift, in New Orleans to support her boyfriend Travis Kelce, matched her game-day ’fit to the Chiefs’ game-day uniform.Dropping her usual Kansas City red, she opted for a double-breasted white Saint Laurent blazer over a pair of bedazzled Daisy Dukes and a white Alaïa bodysuit, with thigh-high white stiletto boots.All of that white immediately had some online speculating that Ms. Swift was having a bridal moment and preparing to get engaged (not to mention unexpectedly matching the all-white Akris outfit of Ivanka Trump, who accompanied her father to the game). A more likely explanation is that Ms. Swift was simply coordinating with the white away jerseys of the Chiefs, just like Britney Mahomes. Instead of a red number on her back, Ms. Swift carried a cherry-red Givenchy handbag and wore the ruby red Lorraine Schwartz “T” necklace she had draped around her thigh at the Grammys. (For Travis? For Taylor? Maybe both.)As a result, it was hard not to think that, in the game of fan fashion, she was dressing to win.The blazer and boots were fully in line with what increasingly seems like Ms. Swift’s uniform as chief Chiefs WAG. Over the last season she has become more and more comfortable turning game days into catwalks, matching the tunnel walk of Mr. Kelce with entrance-making looks of her own. As Mr. Kelce said during a recent pre-Super Bowl news conference, “Tay’s always gonna be dressed head-to-toe, looking the flyest.”Early on in their relationship, Ms. Taylor wore mostly fan gear, like the customized Chiefs jacket with Mr. Kelce’s number that was designed by her fellow WAG Kristin Juszczyk (wife of 49er Kyle). But this season Ms. Swift’s stylist, Joseph Cassell, who worked with her on the Eras Tour, has been involved in creating her game-day style. Which, not surprisingly, started to look pointedly similar to her late-stage Eras style (unlike, say, her early fairy princess style or her pandemic flowy folk style).Heavy on the corsets, shorts and boots, her football kit suggests that she decided to give up attempting to disguise herself as just any old fan, and doing so underscores the fact she is one half of a quasi-royal couple, who brings a power base all her own. Whether you like it or not, it’s clearly her on-show comfort zone.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Ready for the Super Bowl?

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      Here’s a guide to tonight’s game. The Kansas City Chiefs meet the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX tonight, and it’s likely that more than 100 million people will tune in. For many, it will be the only football game they watch this year.If you’re among that group, good news: This is an ideal matchup for casual fans. For one, it’s a rematch. Philadelphia and Kansas City played each other in the Super Bowl just two years ago, and plenty of familiar characters will return. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce are back. Kelce’s girlfriend, Taylor Swift, will probably be there, too.And there’s history at stake. Kansas City is trying to win its third straight Super Bowl, which no team — not even Tom Brady’s New England Patriots dynasty — has ever done.In the rest of today’s newsletter, we’ve got a guide to the Super Bowl, with contributions from my colleagues around The Times.The teamsOne thing to know about Philadelphia: The Eagles have pioneered a play called the “tush push,” in which players line up behind the quarterback Jalen Hurts and shove him forward to gain a yard or two. When the Eagles ran the play this season, it worked more than 80 percent of the time, according to The Ringer. But that’s no guarantee it will work during the Super Bowl. As The Ringer notes, Kansas City shut down several tush pushes by the Buffalo Bills during the A.F.C. championship game.One thing to know about Kansas City: The team was 15-2 this season, but it won 11 of those victories, plus another in the playoffs, by a single score (meaning eight points or fewer). It won 17 straight one-score games, an N.F.L. record. The Athletic’s Mike Sando calculated that the odds of such a streak are about one-tenth of 1 percent. Is that a sign that Kansas City is lucky — or just great in clutch moments?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      In a gun-slinging, dick-swinging Trump vibe, it’s small wonder Die Hard appeals | Alison Phillips

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      Donald Trump’s appointments to his top team continue, as Rishi Sunak would have said, “at pace”. There’s a vaccine sceptic in at health, a misogynist as attorney general, a possible Russia sympathiser as director of national intelligence and first choice for defence is a Fox News anchorman. Oh, and the new US ambassador to Israel believes there’s no such thing as the West Bank.Yet what they may lack in intellectual rigour, moral rectitude and empathy, they more than compensate for in fake tans, chiselled jaws and mistresses. Where once Gordon Brown worked to build a “goat” (government of all talents), Trump is opting for a government of old goats. We could discuss the social, economic and cultural failings over two centuries of US history that have brought it to this place. But I’ve only got 400 words, so let’s talk Die Hard instead. (Die Hard 1, 2 and 3 obviously. Everyone lost interest by the last two.)Anyway, Pete Hegseth, the Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who has worked as a Guantánamo Bay guard and New Year’s Eve countdown host for Fox News and is poised to be defence secretary if a previous sex assault allegation doesn’t scupper it, is a big Die Hard fan. His recent bestselling book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, is a deeply troubling rant about elites, where he condenses the world’s ills into that fateful Christmas Eve when something incredible was born. He writes: “Our ‘elites’ are like the feckless drug-addled businessmen at Nakatomi Plaza, looking down on Bruce Willis’s John McClane in Die Hard.“But there will come a day when they realize they need John McClane – their ability to live in peace and prosperity has always depended on guys like him being honorable, powerful and deadly.” It’s easy for the left to snigger at the testosterone-fuelled, gun-slinging, dick-swinging vibe of this new Trump administration. But more than half the US population voted for it. Meanwhile, Die Hard remains one of the most re-watched movies ever. It’s time the left acknowledged the need for heroes. And time it reclaimed John McClane, the brave public servant from an immigrant family fighting the evil of global greed. More importantly, it needs to answer once and for all: is it really a Christmas movie?Score drawView image in fullscreenI’m slightly bemused by the outrage over Premier League referee David Coote. First, audio was revealed of Coote swearing about Liverpool FC and Jürgen Klopp. Then there was video of him snorting a “white powder”.It was a great exclusive for the Sun. Clearly Coote has been done up like a kipper and is in big trouble. But, but, but… Klopp, Liverpool fans and football fans more broadly have sworn at referees with just such language week in, week out – to their faces. And anyone who’s been near a Premier League stadium in recent years will know how much of fans’ excitement is being fuelled by an epidemic of “white powder”. A study in 2021 revealed one-third of fans had seen other supporters taking cocaine at matches. I’d say Coote was just making it a score draw.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTime to ex-X View image in fullscreenToday I am mainly going to be spending the day signing up to Bluesky. It’s time to become ex-X. It was an admirable step by the Guardian to quit Elon Musk’s X in the wake of the social media platform’s increasing ugliness. This will come at a cost in terms of traffic numbers – and potentially revenue – but is unquestionably the right thing to do. Even Stephen King has quit, calling the site “too toxic”. And he’s a man comfortable with horror.Recent months on X have felt like being locked in a King film. Or maybe a morgue staffed by creeps and ghouls. All that’s missing is the rubber shoes. But Musk is about to discover that in the media there is something worse than the wokery he despises, and that’s irrelevance. And it’s coming X’s way very soon. More

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      in Elections

      Ex-N.F.L. Linebacker Hit and Pushed Police During Jan. 6 Riot, U.S. Says

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      Antwione Williams, who played a season with the Detroit Lions, is charged with assaulting officers at the U.S. Capitol.A former N.F.L. linebacker was arrested in Georgia on Thursday on charges that he hit and pushed law enforcement officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, one of the first insurrection-related arrests since President-elect Donald J. Trump won re-election, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said.The former player, Leander Antwione Williams, 31, of Savannah, Ga., who played one season for the Detroit Lions, was among the first rioters to breach a police barricade that had been set up on the northwest side of the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, according to a complaint and arrest warrant prepared by Brad Fisk, a special agent with the F.B.I.In addition to a felony count of assaulting officers and obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder, Mr. Williams faces several misdemeanors relating to disruptive conduct at the Capitol.Footage from the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, showed Mr. Williams near the front of a crowd a short distance from the U.S. Capitol.The crowd’s efforts to approach the Capitol were temporarily stymied by a line of police barricades and several law enforcement officers, according to photos included in Mr. Fisk’s report. Then, just after 1 p.m., Mr. Williams was seen again near the front of the crowd, pushing through metal barricades as law enforcement officers retreated.As he and the crowd continued to push toward the Capitol, Mr. Williams “grabbed and pushed two officers,” Mr. Fisk wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      What kind of host will Donald Trump be for the World Cup and Olympics?

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      Very soon after the outcome of the US presidential election was clear, Fifa’s president issued an old photograph of himself shaking hands with a beaming, football-clasping, Donald Trump.“Congratulations Mr President! We will have a great Fifa World Cup and a great Fifa Club World Cup in the United States of America!” Gianni Infantino wrote on social media. It was the latest example of Infantino’s oleaginous flattery of Trump, whom in 2018 Infantino called “part of the Fifa team”. And vice versa, it seems.In January 2020, during Trump’s first impeachment trial, Infantino introduced him at a dinner for CEOs in Davos and said Trump had the same “fibre” as world-class footballers. “He is a competitor,” Infantino said. “He says actually what many think, but more importantly, he does, then, what he says.” Trump called Infantino “my great friend”.The US will be the centre of the sporting world during Trump’s second term as hosts of the 2025 Club World Cup, the 2026 men’s World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games. The expanded 48-team tournament in 2026 is a joint effort with Mexico and Canada but most matches will take place in the US. “Football Unites The World!” Infantino added in his victory message to Trump.The next American president’s power to set tone and policy may be problematic, though, given his status as a confrontational figurehead who uses sports as a tool for sowing division and scoring points against rivals, and as a politician whose nativist conservative beliefs run contrary to the progressive internationalist values espoused by many leagues and governing bodies.The competitions are money-making operations for Fifa and the International Olympic Committee and public relations opportunities for the hosts. “Every time countries host the Olympics and the World Cup they’re trying to get their message out to the world, trying to use it as an opportunity to show off. That’s kind of what hosting these mega-events are about,” says Adrien Bouchet, director of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. “His idea of what the United States is these days – it’ll be interesting to see what it entails.”Trump is a leader with authoritarian instincts who swept to power with a dark and violent vision of “a nation that is dying”, calling the US “like a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people that they don’t want”. His political platform could spark tension between the culturally open and cosmopolitan cities that will stage events and a national government stoking insularity and intolerance.If his anti-democracy aspirations are realised, the American showpieces are at risk of becoming the latest in a lengthening line of mega-events in illiberal countries. Since 2008, the Olympics have been held in Russia and twice in China; there have also been World Cups in Russia and Qatar, with tournaments in Morocco and Saudi Arabia on the horizon.The 2026 World Cup is the first “to incorporate human rights in its bidding process, which requires the US government to adhere to the highest human rights standards,” says Andrea Florence, director of the Sport & Rights Alliance, a coalition of advocacy groups. “Trump’s previous disregard to international human rights obligations could have far-reaching consequences, not only jeopardising protections in the US but potentially setting a troubling precedent for future global sporting events.“Trump’s track record of exploiting workers and weaponising trans women and girls in sport, potential plans for mass deportation of immigrants and turning military forces against citizens, and general racist, misogynistic and transphobic rhetoric are areas of particular concern – all of which can and will exacerbate human rights violations at mega sporting events.”Like Trump, Infantino spends much of his time in Florida: Fifa’s legal and ethics divisions are newly based in Miami. Fifa promises it is “committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights and shall strive to promote the protection of these rights.”But rights groups have already sounded the alarm over Fifa’s handling of Saudi Arabia’s uncontested bid. “Fifa’s failure to implement its own human rights policies in relation to Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the 2034 World Cup make it all the more important that national, state and local officials in the US, Canada and Mexico move forward to implement the 2026 human rights framework,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch.With stadiums already built, the 2026 World Cup presents less risk to construction workers than Qatar 2022, Saudi Arabia or the 2030 edition that will largely be held in Morocco, Portugal and Spain. But Trump’s agenda contradicts some of the pledges outlined in Fifa’s 2026 Human Rights Framework, which says the organisation aims to make the World Cup “one of the most diverse and inclusive celebrations of all time”.The framework highlights a commitment to support potentially at-risk groups, including women, ethnic minorities, disabled people, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, migrant workers, LGBTQ+ people and journalists. These are all sections of society that Trump has attacked, whether through rhetoric, policy, or both.Many American sports bodies, including all the major leagues and the US Soccer Federation, have incorporated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives into their corporate cultures and hiring practices in an attempt to boost support for, and representation of, minority groups.View image in fullscreenThese types of initiatives are certain to be targets for the Trump administration, and perhaps the conservative-dominated US supreme court. This year a right-wing legal group founded by Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s anti-immigration policies, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the NFL arguing that its Rooney Rule, which obliges teams to interview minority candidates for senior posts, is illegal.The Olympics and World Cup were awarded to the US during Trump’s first term and he clearly feels a sense of ownership: as the Paris Games closed, Trump credited himself with securing the Olympics. Though Trump is a friend of Fifa, relations are considerably cooler between the president-elect and the IOC, which has not commented on his victory.After some Christians criticised segments of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony as blasphemous, Trump labelled the show “a disgrace” and promised to prevent any sacrilegious content appearing in 2028.Friction between Democrat-run cities and Republican state and national leaders is a feature of American politics and it is not hard to imagine a war of words breaking out between LA 2028 organisers and the White House given the $900m in federal infrastructure funds committed ahead of the Games and since California is a liberal state Trump has routinely assailed as a hellscape. In 2020, Karen Bass, now the mayor of Los Angeles, called Trump a racist who “essentially [gives] license to racists”.Environmental goals are now routine for sporting events – LA wants to be “no car” – but it is hard to imagine a Republican administration will push organisers to keep their promises given that Trump has called climate change “a hoax” and intends to scupper clean energy projects.Trump is also expected to roll back federal protections for gay and transgender people. He targeted two female boxing Olympic gold medallists in his election campaign, claiming they are men as a justification for his plan to revoke anti-discrimination measures issued by the Biden administration. “We will of course keep men out of women’s sports,” he said – a stance that seems sure to put him at loggerheads with the IOC and other governing bodies who set gender eligibility criteria.Hurling sports deeper into the culture wars also brings risks for sponsors. In September the IOC lost one of its key supporters, Toyota, with the automaker’s chairman complaining that the Games are “increasingly political”.But Trump has sought to blur the lines between sport and politics, looking for confrontations with the NFL, NBA and the US women’s soccer team over national anthem protests against civil rights abuses. Using sports as a patriotic purity test, he has termed players with opposing political stances as un-American and said the US team were eliminated from the 2023 Women’s World Cup because players were too woke and “openly hostile to America”.He can again be expected to strain the structural tensions in American professional leagues, exploiting and widening schisms between owners, players and fans. A Guardian analysis found that nearly 95% of total political contributions to federal elections since 2020 from owners of major-league North American sports teams went to Republican causes. But many players are Democrats. Basketball’s biggest star, LeBron James, endorsed Kamala Harris, while the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, donated to the Harris campaign.“He uses sports to divide people because so many people pay attention to sports,” Bouchet says. “There’s always going to be social tensions as it relates to politics. Unfortunately I think the next four years are probably going to be a rocky road.”Trump has cultivated friendships with sports personalities and spent election night in the company of the NHL legend Wayne Gretzky, Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and the 2024 US Open golf champion Bryson DeChambeau. As well as using sports to burnish his celebrity status and seek political advantage, the president-elect has a direct financial stake through his golf courses, three of which hosted tournaments last year on the Saudi-financed LIV Golf tour, with another stop in 2024.Rory McIlroy expressed optimism this month that Trump can act as a peace broker between LIV and the PGA Tour. “Trump has a great relationship with Saudi Arabia. He’s got a great relationship with golf. He’s a lover of golf. So, maybe. Who knows?” McIlroy said. If Trump were to pressure Ukraine into a ceasefire in the war with Russia, Vladimir Putin may see an opening, perhaps with Trump’s help, to push for Russia’s reintegration into Fifa, Uefa and Olympic competitions.He may be less conciliatory towards Iran, who are likely to qualify for 2026: the country was allegedly behind a plot to kill him. Stadiums should be packed in a diverse nation of more than 335 million people. But Trump has vowed to reinstate and expand his first-term “Muslim travel ban”, which affected countries including Iran and Nigeria.Citizens of only 42 countries are allowed visa-free entry to the US and in some places it may already be too late for foreign fans to apply for a tourist visa to attend the finals. Last week the wait for an appointment in Bogota was 710 days; in Istanbul it was 692 days. Given Trump’s intention to devote resources to mass deportations and curtailing legal immigration, reducing Biden-era backlogs for visitors is unlikely to be a priority.Even if restrictions are temporarily eased for the tournaments, upheaval at the border, combined with an abrasive and isolationist foreign policy and economic stresses from Trump’s proposed trade tariffs, may strain relations with allies, dissuade visitors and tarnish the US’s image abroad; hardly conducive to a festive atmosphere for international sports’ biggest parties. More

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      in US Politics

      Alexi Lalas keeps tweeting Maga propaganda. Does it matter?

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      As the US men’s national team prepared to kick off against Panama earlier this month, Soccer Twitter warmed up for the first game of the Mauricio Pochettino era.Amid his routine match analysis, America’s most prominent soccer pundit retweeted old footage of Barack Obama discussing immigration policy that surfaced in an attempt to make the former president appear hypocritical and discredit Kamala Harris by association.The jarring mix of sports and politics is normal for Alexi Lalas, who stands out among soccer broadcasters for his open engagement with the imminent American presidential election and for his party affiliation.Lalas gave an interview on the Fox Business channel in July from the Republican National Convention which careened from how the event is “a cool place to be” to a discussion of the Barcelona prodigy Lamine Yamal. Speaking on Fox News radio from the convention, Lalas said he wants to challenge “the stereotype that exists when it comes to Republicans and certainly the right side of the political spectrum … I live in California, I work in soccer, I’m like a unicorn when it comes to politics out there and yet there are a lot of things that can unite us.”To judge by the volume of online abuse he attracts and airs on X – and to which he often responds with wit and generosity – his political output is having the opposite effect. That’s not surprising when his feed amplifies right-wing talking points, such as Lalas’ recent rehashing of video of a publicity stunt in which Donald Trump served fries to fawning supporters at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s in a specious attempt to taunt Harris.The ginger-bearded face of American soccer in the 1990s, a defender and rock musician who played in Serie A and won 96 caps for the USMNT, Lalas played every minute of the host nation’s four matches at the 1994 World Cup and became, wrote The Los Angeles Times, “the cult figure of America’s high summer”. After retirement he worked as an MLS executive, including for the Los Angeles Galaxy when they signed David Beckham.The mellow, mumbling kid who let David Letterman trim his pumpkin-hued goatee after USA ’94 is now a 54-year-old greying purveyor of indignant tirades for Fox Sports, proudly repping a segment of society who equate the profundity of their patriotism with the prominence of their Stars and Stripes flags and the decibel level of their bellowing about American greatness.With viral clips often attracting more views than live broadcasts on traditional TV channels, there is clear value in being the blowtorch of hot-take merchants. Given the sonic vanilla that is the corporate agenda-driven coverage of MLS on Apple TV, there may be a market for a celebrated American personality who provides and provokes trenchant opinions. But does that hold true when the talk moves from Pochettino’s right-wing to that of the GOP?“When you’re in the entertainment sector, going political tends to have very little upside because this country seems to be perpetually split, 49 to 48, and just in general it’s not going to make one side love you more because they’re just looking at what you’re doing on the field and in the announcer booth. But it will set off the other side,” says Mike Lewis, professor of marketing at Emory University and author of Fandom Analytics, a data-driven analysis of sports supporters.Lalas, a Ron DeSantis fan whose soccer podcast is called State of the Union in a nod to the president’s annual address, has more than 400,000 followers on X. “It’s my channel. I program it with what I like and what I find interesting. If it offends your sensibilities, there are millions of other channels for you to choose from. Go in peace,” Lalas wrote this month to a reader baffled by his divisive posts, which are typically retweets without additional commentary – an unusually coy style for him.That’s true for social media. But given his centrality to Fox’s coverage and the exclusivity of their rights, viewers will find it harder to swerve Lalas if they want to watch some of the biggest matches in the sport. And given how polarised and piqued the nation is and how intertwined party affiliation has become with personal identity, if viewers are aware of his political leanings, can they divorce that from his on-screen presence, even when he’s purely talking soccer? Do liberals want to hear a verdict on Christian Pulisic from Lalas any more than they want to buy a Tesla from the Trump super-booster Elon Musk?View image in fullscreen“It’s almost like a reflexive thing,” Lewis says, “that that’s an enemy now, and I don’t want to listen to an enemy while I watch the US men’s soccer team.” The risk of alienating roughly half your consumer base may be partially offset by the appeal of being perceived as bucking the liberal consensus as an unafraid and unfiltered Republican ambassador from deep blue Los Angeles in a progressive-leaning sport historically disparaged by conservatives.Like Trump, Lalas suggested the US were too woke after they went out of last year’s Women’s World Cup, and did not deviate from Republican orthodoxy in 2020 with a critical tweet when NWSL players took the knee for the national anthem. The Republican Party’s widespread antipathy towards diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives conflicts with the mission statement of the US Soccer Federation, which declares, “we integrate DEIB into everything we do”.There is a balancing act in playing a high-profile role in a mainstream channel – Fox, after all, has the rights to the 2026 World Cup – then sliding into the right-wing media ecosystem, where many conservatives have found audiences by stoking grievances and trolling the libs. One recent Lalas repost reads: “I check X for two reasons. Elon’s latest meme and seeing who Alexi ticked off today”.Fox Sports and Lalas declined to comment for this article. Like Fox News, Fox Sports is part of the Fox Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and family. So is the conservative-leaning sports news site, Outkick, which vows to question “the consensus and [expose] the destructive nature of ‘woke’ activism” and often cites Lalas.Politics and soccer are far from strangers. Two of the UK’s leading soccer broadcasters, Gary Lineker and Gary Neville, drew ire from British right-wingers for their criticism of the last Conservative government, with Lineker briefly removed from the BBC’s flagship football programme in 2023 for tweets about asylum policy that the broadcaster said breached impartiality rules.The American landscape, however, has changed since Jemele Hill was suspended by ESPN in 2017 for calling Trump a “white supremacist” on X and the network introduced a social media policy discouraging employees from openly taking sides and offering commentary beyond sports. Sticking to sports now seems blinkered. The ESPN star, Stephen A Smith, frequently opines on politics on other platforms and recently sparred with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd also talks politics, as does Dan LeBatard, who started his own podcast after criticisms of Trump contributed to his departure from ESPN.“There’s a price to pay for it. That’s why it is so hard to figure out the right policy, it’s very challenging to sort through what is a restriction on someone’s free speech” versus protecting the employer’s brand and reputation, says Patrick Crakes, a media consultant and former Fox Sports executive.“One of the reasons a lot of major sports personalities don’t [talk politics] is because you are a very general market, and do you really want to have to take 50% of the people that see you and fight them, or alienate them or make them uncomfortable with you? Sports, traditionally, I feel it was neutral ground. That’s increasingly changed.”Though political talk remains rare during game broadcasts and few commentators have overtly revealed political stances, perceptions of partisanship have become ingrained. “Republican-identifying sports media consumers find NBC Sports to be the most biased sports media outlet; Democratic-identifying sports media consumers find Fox Sports to be the most biased sports media outlet,” according to a survey for the University of Texas’ annual Politics in Sports Media report. “This suggests that the sports networks are reputationally connected to their parent news organizations.” The poll also found that 80% of Republicans do not want athletes to share their political beliefs compared with only 42% of Democrats.The line has also blurred between voters and spectators. “In the Trump era, we’ve started to see these political rallies that look like sporting events where you can have guys essentially face-painted up, they’ve got the red hats, the matching uniforms,” Lewis says. “I think there’s really powerful similarities between sports and politics in the way fandom works, particularly in the way fandom is so closely related to people’s identities.”The subordination of issues to identity and policies to personality means affiliations are ossified and compromise impossible, with Democrats no more likely to switch to supporting Republicans than would a Liverpool fan change allegiance to Manchester United. “If I’m teaching a class on sports marketing and I’m talking about fandom and I ask someone a question, ‘who are you a fan of,’ if they start to tell me two teams, there’s almost a reaction: ‘well, you’re not really a fan. You can’t like the Yankees and the Mets!’” Lewis says.“I think of it all as culture at this point. There’s almost this seamless connection across all these categories, entertainment to sports to politics,” he adds. “They are the culture, they are all happening simultaneously and all affecting each other.” Strangely, when everything is linked it feels like everything is fractured.Last year, Lalas wrote of the USWNT: “Politics, causes, stances, & behavior have made this team unlikeable to a portion of America.” Well, they could respond: right back at ya. And left-leaning observers might doubt the analytical prowess of a professional critic who, to apply a football metaphor to the politics on his X feed, focuses on one team’s shirt-pulling while ignoring the two-footed tackles flying in from the other side, and hails the “authenticity” of a serial liar and flip-flopper.More broadly, though, in a climate where it’s standard that politicians speak out on sports and countless celebrities issue political opinions and endorsements, why shouldn’t sports personalities enjoy the same freedom of expression? If we feel Lalas should keep quiet, shouldn’t we also feel that way about Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift?One difference: other forms of artistic expression, such as music, drama and writing, are often conceived and performed as explicit political statements while sports have been treated as a break from reality, not a reflection of it. That’s no longer sustainable as social media entangles news and opinion, the public and the personal. Wisely or not, Lalas isn’t only opposing a liberal consensus, he’s contributing to the erasure of a naive illusion. More