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Brewers Playoff Hero Jake Bauers Makes Accidental Case for Medicare for All
"If even a professional athlete is saying this, maybe healthcare should just be universal and free."
Oct 16, 2026
First baseman Jake Bauers of the Milwaukee Brewers helped his team end a 44-year drought Thursday night as they won the National League Championship Series to place them in the World Series, but in the process he kicked off a discussion—whether intentionally or not—about the role of employer-based health insurance that undergirds the for-profit system in the US.
While generating headlines throughout the pennant race due to his outstanding hitting and field play, Bauers journey to the top of Major League Baseball has Cinderella elements. Just two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Bauers was ready to retire from the sport's highest level.
"He had been playing professional baseball since he was just 17, spending more than a decade bouncing across seven different organizations with little success," the paper reported. "After batting .199 for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2024, he was frustrated, burned out, and ready to move on.”
Life outside baseball intervened, but in a way familiar to millions of American families, not just pro athletes who can earn millions in lucrative contracts and endorsement deals.
“Bauers’ wife, Lauren, learned she was pregnant with the couple’s second child," the WSJ explained. "Suddenly, Jake’s plan to become a stay-at-home dad while Lauren returned to her teaching job no longer seemed viable. They needed health insurance—so Bauers begrudgingly decided to give his floundering athletic career one last chance."
After beating the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday and taking a 3-0 series lead that his team would ultimately clean-sweep the following night, Bauers brought up that decision about his second child and his family's healthcare needs in a post-game interview.
Hahaha! What an awesome country! https://t.co/IYJmu5ZP0y
— Darkwoke Duck (@DylanTweetin) October 15, 2026
While the group of sportscasters conducting the interview laughed at the explanation, others who witnessed it recognized something more profound in what he described.
"If even a professional athlete is saying this, maybe healthcare should just be universal and free," said Luke Savage, a columnist for the left-wing magazine Jacobin.
In a subsequent Substack post published Thursday, Savage expanded on his thoughts about Bauer's situation, writing:
This obviously doesn’t rank anywhere near the top when it comes to horror stories about America’s healthcare system, but I still can’t get over how completely insane it is to hear. This is an elite professional athlete talking! And it’s the guaranteed outcome of a system that links health insurance so tightly to employment. In this case, that meant that a young couple’s desire to start a family was conditional on [squints] the ability of one partner to secure a contract with a professional baseball team (and, to a lesser extent, be good enough at the sport to work his way back up from the minors).
There are only so many ways to repeat the obvious here, but tying health insurance to employment is a Dickensian horror show. It gives employers tremendous power over their workers and forces people to stay in jobs they hate or want to leave. The same is true of private health care in general. It devastates families, burdens them with crippling medical debt, and limits their ability to have children. It stops them from seeking treatment when they’re sick and makes going to the hospital an economic decision. Even among those who can afford insurance, it creates different tiers of care and inevitably means that rich people get it faster and at higher quality — which is just another way of saying the American healthcare system ascribes your life greater or lesser moral weight depending on your bank balance.
Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive turned whistleblower who now leads the nonprofit Center for Health & Democracy, agreed that Bauers, though his status as a professional athlete makes his situation seem exceptional, is incredibly normal within the nation's broken healthcare system.
"Sometimes it takes a high-profile sports figure or celebrity to help Americans understand how absurd and unfair our healthcare system is," Potter explained to Common Dreams. "If Jake Bauers did everything he could to stay in baseball primarily because he and his wife were terrified of losing health insurance that was tied to his job, imagine how many other Americans stay in jobs they would leave if it weren’t for their employer-sponsored coverage."
While Bauers may have been lucky to stay in the major leagues, said Potter, and even luckier to help his team make it to the World Series, the reality is that he—like millions of American workers—could have potentially been cut at any time, losing his job and his access to the health coverage he received through his employer.
"Millions of Americans are not so lucky. Many get laid off or have their jobs eliminated," Potter continued. "They lose not only their jobs but their family’s health insurance. No other developed country has a system that locks citizens into a job they’d like to leave or are scared to lose. I wish more prominent people in sports and entertainment would speak up as Bauer did about how vulnerable so many of us are to losing both our jobs and our health insurance."
"The reality," said Potter on Friday, "is that almost all Americans who are not covered by traditional Medicare are in danger of losing our health benefits and access to care because of a layoff or cuts to Medicaid that force millions into the ranks of the uninsured."
In 2019, a Business Insider poll showed that most Americans with employer-sponsored health coverage support switching to Medicare for All, undermining the often-repeated right-wing narrative that US workers are wedded to the for-profit insurance plans they receive.
As Common Dreams reported at the time, the survey found that 59% of respondents with employer-provided insurance “said they would support switching their employer-based health insurance to a government plan under Medicare for All” as long as coverage quality was maintained or improved.
In a post on his Health Care Un-Covered blog last month, Potter detailed how nearly 40% of Americans admit they’ve stayed in a job longer than they wanted because they or a family member needed the health coverage that came with it. The term for this dynamic is called "job lock," he notes. And nothing about this "is new to anyone who’s been paying attention," he writes. "What’s changed is how much sharper and more current the evidence has gotten" in recent years.
While Bauer's story about healthcare isn't political or partisan, the scale of the employer-based system in the US is deeply tied to the anxieties individuals and families experience. With Republicans actively undermining and attacking the floundering system that already exists, Savage in his column bemoans leaders from both parties who fail to embrace what has long been recognized by experts and progressives as the only viable solution to the crises: a universal, single-payer model best expressed by the Medicare for All legislation put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the US Senate and Rep. Pramila Jayapal and others in the US House.
Exasperated by a political system that has denied US workers and families better healthcare, Savage asks, "What does one even say at this point?"
He said the so-called "debate" over the healthcare system in the US "is nothing of the kind."
"The leadership of both major parties oppose healthcare that’s free, universal, and public because they’re as addicted to dead market dogmas as they are to donations from a powerful industry," he writes. "The dumbest people alive will tell you that healthcare is best delivered by the marketplace and that the ability to purchase it as a commodity like any other is, in fact, the essence of freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth."
In his column from last month, Potter notes that critics of the employer-based system have long existed on the ideological right and left and argues that as long as health coverage remains "tethered to a single employer, job lock isn’t a glitch in the system," but rather "the system working as designed."
"The fact that people across the political spectrum have recognized that for decades," he concludes, "is exactly why it’s worth pressing the case again now."
Go Brewers!
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Don't Let Trump Bleed College Athletes Dry at Corporate America's Behest
House Democrats shouldn't help Trump market limits on athletes' bargaining power as a win for the same people those limits hold back.
Oct 09, 2026
House Democrats can stand with college athletes, or they can help Donald Trump score a win at those athletes' expense. There isn't much middle ground here.
The Senate has passed the Protect College Sports Act, a bill that would make it harder for college athletes to set the terms of their own endorsement deals. Now the president wants Congress to put it on his desk.
Democrats should say no. Passing it hands him a win and gives powerful schools even more control over the young people whose labor keeps college sports running in the first place.
There's still time for Democrats to hold out for a better bill. They should keep the scholarship and health protections, protect women's and Olympic sports, and give athletes real bargaining rights and a way to fight unfair restrictions.
In its September 28 statement, the White House cast Trump as a champion of college athletes and pushed lawmakers to bring stability to the system. It's a tidy story. Democrats ought to ask the obvious follow-up, though. Stability for whom?
For decades, college sports ran on the idea of amateurism. The rivalries got the headlines, and players were told they were out there for the love of the game. Funny how that love never kept the schools from cashing in. By 1952, college football was already a TV property. That year, NBC paid the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) $1.14 million for the rights to broadcast one game a week.
Then came 1984, when individual schools and conferences won the right to cut their own TV deals, and the value went through the roof. That's a big part of how college sports grew into the multibillion-dollar business it is today. Schools and conferences fought each other for TV money, all while capping what the athletes bringing in that money could make. Nobody turned on the TV to watch an athletic director. They tuned in for the players.
A lot of the athletes shut out of that money came from families without much wealth to pass down. Black athletes, in particular, filled the rosters of the football and basketball programs that drew the biggest TV checks. Colleges and networks made money off every game, yet the players couldn't earn a dime from their own names or faces. Their work built wealth for just about everyone but them.
That began to change in 2021, when the Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Alston that the NCAA couldn't cap certain education-related benefits for athletes. Days later, state name, image, and likeness (NIL) laws took effect, and the NCAA set aside the rules that had kept athletes from profiting off their names, images, and likenesses. For the first time, a player could get paid for an endorsement or a video game appearance and still keep their eligibility.
To Democrats, this ought to read as a labor fight, plain and simple. Athletes finally got some room to negotiate what their names and talents are worth. Coaches, networks, and universities have been doing that forever. Yes, a scholarship is worth something. So is the work of the person who earns it. We can't champion workers' bargaining power in every other industry and then act like it's a problem once it shows up on a football field.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has spent years preaching about free markets, is now one of the people leading the charge to limit what athletes can earn. So I guess competition only becomes a crisis when the young people doing the work finally have some leverage over the schools paying them. Nick Saban insisted last month that player pay and coach pay are "totally different markets," but when the Senate had a chance to cap coaches' salaries, that amendment failed, so apparently the only market that needs a ceiling is the one where the players get paid.
Congress has no business giving schools more power over the terms of players' endorsement deals. Athletes deserve protections, and they shouldn't have to give up their leverage to get them.
Collective bargaining belongs at the center of this fight. Athletes need to be able to negotiate as a group over pay, working conditions, and medical care for injuries that can stick with them for years after their eligibility runs out. Giving them a seat on some committee doesn't come close. Democrats should insist on a bargaining framework with real teeth, not punt the question to some future commission.
For Black athletes, the stakes are even higher. An NIL deal might cover a family's bills, chip away at debt, or start a savings account. Cap what players can earn or where they can go, and you shrink those chances during a career that's short to begin with. The NAACP has opposed this legislation, warning that it puts institutional interests ahead of athletes' economic rights. Democrats would be smart to listen.
And now Trump wants his name on it. Why would Democrats help him market limits on athletes' bargaining power as a win for the same people those limits hold back? We tell voters we'll fight for workers and help Black families build wealth. We should remember that when rich universities and conferences show up asking for protection.
There's still time for Democrats to hold out for a better bill. They should keep the scholarship and health protections, protect women's and Olympic sports, and give athletes real bargaining rights and a way to fight unfair restrictions. What they shouldn't do is give Trump a win paid for with Black athletes' economic freedom. The people doing the work have earned a win of their own.
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Amnesty Slams UEFA for Allowing Israel in Nations League Despite 'Occupation, Apartheid, and Genocide'
"The beautiful game should bring people together, not rubber-stamp apartheid."
Sep 22, 2026
Human rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday slammed the Union of European Football Associations for allowing the Israel men's team to participate in upcoming Nations League matches despite the Israeli government's continued systemic human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s regional director for Europe, called Israel's participation in the UEFA games "unconscionable," citing "clear evidence that Israel’s football association continues to support illegal settlements."
Cockburn said that UEFA should have long ago suspended the Israel Football Association (IFA) over its "refusal to exclude clubs based in illegal settlements" in the occupied Palestinian territories.
"As the money keeps flowing from FIFA and UEFA to the IFA," Cockburn said, "they risk contributing to the sustainability of illegal settlements and of Israel’s unlawful occupation... and therefore Israel’s violations of Palestinians’ human rights."
"Sport should never be used as a public relations spectacle for states committing atrocities," Cockburn added. "As the Israel team travels to Europe, Palestinian families are being displaced and dispossessed, their land stolen, their olive trees uprooted, and their histories erased by settlers with the support of the Israeli military. The beautiful game should bring people together, not rubber-stamp apartheid."
As explained in a Tuesday report from BBC, Israeli's inclusion in the Nations League has been a source of controversy for months.
Delegates for the Football Association of Ireland (FAI), which faced signifiant public pressure to boycott matches between Ireland and Israel, recently voted in favor of playing the matches, although roughly 30% of delegates voted in favor of a boycott.
Regardless, more than 160 Irish athletes on Monday signed an open letter organized by Irish Sport for Palestine urging FAI to reconsider its vote in favor of the matches.
Heimer Hallgrimsson, manager of the Irish men's team, tried to justify the matches by arguing that Ireland was playing against Israel, which meant it was really playing "against genocide."
The IFA shot back at Hallgrimsson, accusing him of "ignorance, hypocrisy, and stupidity."
The BBC also noted that the two scheduled matches between Israel and Ireland will be played on neutral cites in Hungary and Serbia "against a backdrop of ongoing and increasingly volatile disagreement between the two countries about Israel's military offensive in Gaza."
Cockburn praised efforts by sports fans to keep pressure on the UEFA to "demand accountability, justice and, fair play."
"When rules are broken, when occupation, apartheid, and genocide are ongoing," he emphasized, "we cannot look the other way.”
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A FIFA World Cup and a Village's Stolen Dream
While the world celebrated football at its highest level during the World Cup, one small village has been left without the field that connected generations to the game.
Aug 02, 2026
In the middle of the global celebration of football, when stadiums are full, screens are glowing, and millions are watching the World Cup, a small Palestinian village near Bethlehem experienced something very different.
Battir lost its only football field.
For most of the world, football is entertainment. In Battir, it is something else entirely—it is space, identity, and a rare place where young people can breathe beyond the pressures of daily life.
The field was not a stadium. It had no grandstands, no giant screens, and no professional facilities. It was a simple community pitch. Yet for generations of children and young people in Battir, it meant everything. It was where they played after school, where friendships were built, where confidence grew, and where dreams quietly took shape.
Football, in its global form, is about glory, competition, and spectacle. But in places like Battir, it is about something more basic: the right to play, the right to gather, and the right to feel normal for a moment.
The field itself was not new. It had existed since the early 1980s and had served the village for more than four decades.
I grew up playing there.
One of my earliest memories is returning home covered in mud after a rainy afternoon match, exhausted but happy. Like many children around the world, I fell in love with football while watching my first FIFA World Cup in 1982, when Spain hosted the tournament. The game became part of my childhood, and the field became part of my life.
Football accompanied me through school, university, and adulthood. Between 2009 and 2016, while serving as secretary of Battir Sports Club, I helped organize annual Ramadan football tournaments on the same field. These competitions brought together local teams and became cherished community events. The field also welcomed visitors from abroad and served as a meeting point where sport connected people across cultures and backgrounds.
For many years, residents hoped to improve the field. In 2022, Battir Sports Club, Battir Municipality, and members of the local community launched a project to rehabilitate the existing facility. The goal was not to build a completely new football ground, but to upgrade a long-standing community space with artificial turf, lighting, changing rooms, and basic infrastructure. The vision was simple: to provide a safe and dignified place where both boys and girls could participate in sport.
For a village that had waited decades to improve its only football field, the project represented hope.
That hope came to an abrupt end on June 30, 2026, when Israeli authorities demolished the field following orders that halted rehabilitation works. What disappeared that day was not merely a construction project. It was a community space that had shaped the lives of generations.
Battir Football Field is demolished. (Photo by Mahmoud Al-Butmeh)
The demolition did not make international headlines. There were no cameras, no commentary panels, and no countdown clocks. But for the children and young people who used the field, the loss was immediate and deeply felt. A place once filled with movement, laughter, and possibility became empty ground.
In a place like Battir, there are few alternatives. There are no nearby facilities waiting to replace what was lost. When one space disappears, it is not easily replaced. It simply vanishes from everyday life.
The timing is difficult to ignore. While the world celebrated football at its highest level during the World Cup, one small village has been left without the field that connected generations to the game.
Football, in its global form, is about glory, competition, and spectacle. But in places like Battir, it is about something more basic: the right to play, the right to gather, and the right to feel normal for a moment.
What remains now is not only an empty field, but also a question that lingers in the community: Where do the children go next?
This is not just a story about a football field. It is a story about how everyday spaces shape childhood, how communities invest hope in shared places, and how quickly those places can disappear.
And it is a reminder that while the World Cup shows us football at its peak, there are places where the game survives only in memory—and in the hope that one day it might return.
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A Question I'd Ask Jalen Brunson About the Patch on His Jersey
If I had the good fortune of meeting Jalen Brunson, I would urge him to learn about what the UAE is doing in Sudan, to educate others about it, and to ask the Knicks owner, James Dolan, to end the UAE deal.
Jul 21, 2026
A funny thing happened on the way to the NBA Championship Finals this season. Despite being die-hard Celtics fans, my six-year-old son and I fell in love with Jalen Brunson of the rival New York Knicks. We’ve risked excommunication from Celtics Nation for this sacrilege.
But let me state our case. First, and obviously, Brunson is one of the most fearless basketball players to have ever played the game. Driving the lane repeatedly in the face of Victor Wembanyama, the 7’4” consensus NBA defensive player of the year, was a wonder to behold. The guy has ice in his veins.
Second, we love the kind of humble teammate Brunson is: deflecting praise, not spending his time on social media battling critics like a certain ex-Celtic, being forever encouraging of his teammates, and living out his faith in God.
Third, perhaps strangely, we love Brunson’s dietary habits. My son is a carb and treat monster (wonder where he got that from?), but when we learned about Brunson’s incredibly healthy meals, we both got on board. Even Celtics like John Havlicek and Paul Silas couldn’t do that for me as a kid.
Fourth, since I’m always drilling my son to share his toys and be generous with those less fortunate, we were inspired to learn that Brunson took a pay cut so that there would be more money to—wait for it—win a championship.
Fifth and relatedly, Brunson has used his wealth to better the lives of others through his Second Round Foundation. He received an NBA Cares award for his community work, something we have prioritized with our son from a very early age.
Sixth, as on-and-off New York residents ourselves, Brunson is quintessential New York City. The comebacks, the underdog, the grit, the discounted. For all those who are doubted and dismissed, he is the patron saint.
Seventh, by every account, Brunson is an amazing father to his daughter Jordyn, a devoted husband to his wife Ali, and a loving son to his mom Sandra and dad Rick.
I could go on. The guy is the real deal, the kind of role model the sports world—and frankly, this country—needs right now for so many reasons.
But there is one problem, one outlier in this litany of goodness. It isn’t his fault by any stretch, but just maybe he could do something about it.
If I ever met Brunson, after telling him how much my son and I have admired and been inspired by him, I would raise this one uncomfortable truth with him: Right above his heart on his and his teammates’ Knicks jerseys is a patch with the words “Experience Abu Dhabi.” The New York Knicks have a marketing deal worth $30 million with Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. It is one of the most expensive uniform patches in the NBA.
Seems innocuous enough. There are lots of these kinds of ads all over uniforms and arenas throughout the sporting world globally. But this ad carries enormous baggage, and it’s unlikely that Brunson and most people even know why. Through this marketing deal, the Knicks are connected to the people of Sudan. But the Sudanese are not experiencing Abu Dhabi in the same way the tourists the UAE is wooing might be. The people of Sudan are experiencing Abu Dhabi through the killer drones the UAE government has been delivering to a deadly militia amid one of the most destructive wars globally this century. The United Nations and the US government have said the militia that the UAE supports is committing genocide, which is the deliberate killing of people on the basis of their identity, in this case, racial and ethnic.
If I had the good fortune of meeting Jalen Brunson, I would urge him to learn about what the UAE is doing in Sudan, to educate others about it, and to ask the Knicks owner, James Dolan, to end the UAE deal. The Knicks and Brunson have been the good news story of the sports world this year. Imagine the good news and hope the team could bring to the suffering people of Sudan if the team cut its connection to such horrific violence.
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Genocide in Gaza Means Empty Seats at the 2026 World Cup
Will there be any tributes for the 567 Palestinian footballers reportedly killed in Gaza since October 2023?
Jul 18, 2026
The world has united for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Stadiums have been filled with songs, flags, and the shared joy that football uniquely creates. Millions celebrate the beauty of a sport that claims to unite humanity across borders, languages, and politics.
But with the final game approaching, a question hangs heavily over the tournament: Will there be any tributes for the 567 Palestinian footballers reportedly killed in Gaza since October 2023?
The latest name on that list is Saleem Al-Ashqar, a Palestinian goalkeeper from Al-Qarara, near Khan Younis. He was 32 years old. According to reports, he was not on a battlefield. He was riding a motorcycle, searching for cooking gas. He had married only months earlier, in January 2026, and was waiting for the birth of his first child. Israeli forces shot and killed him.
In February 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, FIFA acted with remarkable speed. Within days, Russia was suspended from international competition and excluded from World Cup qualification. The decision came from widespread recognition that sport could not be separated from a major violation of international law and human suffering. FIFA described it as necessary to protect the integrity of football and to stand against violence.
When the final whistle blows at the 2026 World Cup, millions of people will celebrate the beauty of the game. They should also remember those who were denied the chance to keep playing it.
But if that principle applied to Russia, why does it not apply consistently elsewhere?
For nearly three years, international organizations, human rights groups, United Nations experts, and legal bodies have documented immense civilian suffering in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Homes, schools, hospitals, universities, and cultural institutions have been destroyed. The sporting sector has not been spared. Football fields have become rubble, sports facilities have been damaged and destroyed. Coaches, referees, administrators, and players have lost their lives. Despite all of this, the Israel Football Association remains a full FIFA member.
The consequences of this selectivity are devastating for Palestinian footballers. Their deaths rarely make international headlines. Their names are seldom known beyond their communities. The destruction of Gaza's sporting infrastructure receives little attention compared with transfer rumors, sponsorship deals, and tournament news.
Imagine a World Cup qualifying group in which half the players were dead. Imagine a national league where stadiums no longer exist. Imagine trying to explain to a child why their favorite goalkeeper will never play again because he was killed while searching for fuel to cook a meal.
Football is built on memory. Every World Cup honors the past as we remember legends who lifted trophies decades ago. Stadiums regularly hold moments of silence for victims of disasters, terrorism, and war. We place black armbands on captains’ sleeves because the sport understands that you cannot simply ignore loss.
Now that 567 footballers are gone, will we have a moment of silence? Will giant screens display their names? Will commentators mention that an entire generation of Palestinian players was cut down before it had the chance to compete? Or will the tournament proceed as though those lives never existed?
Tributes matter because they acknowledge humanity. They tell grieving families that the world saw their loved ones and that their deaths are not being erased.
If FIFA is unwilling to suspend the Israel Football Association, it should at the very least publicly recognize the Palestinian footballers who have been killed and commit to rebuilding the sporting infrastructure that has been destroyed. Their silence is a choice, and it speaks volumes.
When the final whistle blows at the 2026 World Cup, millions of people will celebrate the beauty of the game. They should also remember those who were denied the chance to keep playing it. The empty seats belong to them.
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By Upholding State Bans on Transgender Athletes, the Supreme Court Bowed to Bigotry
The decision codifies transphobic language and opens the potential for the sex testing of youth athletes.
Jul 03, 2026
In one of its final decisions of the 2025-26 term, the Supreme Court of the United States solidified its place in the onslaught of eradicating trans rights, in a ruling that revolved largely around whether state bans of transgender athletes violated Title IX and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
In response to the question placed before the court of whether states could implement bans on transgender athlete participation in girls’ and women’s sports, 6 of the 9 justices said, “Yes.”
Outside of patchy citations and contradicting interpretations of legal precedents, the rationale behind the majority opinion of the court, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, echoed three key premises in the “sports context.” First, female bodies are inherently physiologically different from male bodies, which map onto sex-based athletic advantages for males. Second, regardless of these differences, girls and women should have equal opportunities to boys and men. And third, because of these differences and because of equal guarantees between the sexes, “competitive fairness” and “safety” look different for the female category as compared with the male category. Consequently, the only way to ensure equal sporting opportunities for girls and women is to keep transgender girls and women, or “biological males,” out of the female category.
Anti-transgender advocates in the broader “save women’s sports” movement frequently draw from these rationales, but also ignore the underlying deeply problematic and troubling considerations. On an ethical level, this approach undermines inclusive efforts and further stigmatizes transgender individuals. On a public health level, this reasoning deprives an exceptionally vulnerable population from enjoying the social, mental, and physical benefits from physical activity that should be enjoyed by all. And on a pragmatic level, these declarations overlook the minimal number of out transgender youth, of which even fewer participate in high school level sports.
Notably, of all the documented issues in and across women’s sports, there is no evidence demonstrating that transgender athletes, in any way, contribute to these inequalities.
Beyond parroting this tired transphobic logic, the majority opinion also points to other sports governing bodies, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, who have “drawn a biological line” to ensure safe and fair competition by banning transgender athletes. What Justice Kavanaugh omits, however, is that both organizations abruptly changed their policies following President Donald Trump’s Executive Order No. 14201, rather than in response to any scientific evidence or domination of transgender athletes (in response to a Senate hearing question about how many transgender athletes compete in the NCAA, NCAA President Charlie Baker infamously responded that of the more than 500,000 athletes competing, he knew of “only 10”).
While this ruling itself does not necessarily come as a surprise to those who have followed along with the US’ steady rollback of transgender rights, perhaps the most shocking element of the SCOTUS’ majority opinion is the brazen use of transphobic and misogynistic language in their ruling. “Biological males” and “biological females,” which are used 64 and 31 times respectively in Justice Kavanaugh’s 29-page majority opinion, are not rooted in medical terminology. Instead, these are terms that have become popularized and mobilized by anti-transgender advocates to reinforce a binary model of sex difference. This type of sex segregation is premised on patriarchal beliefs of male athletic superiority and female athletic inferiority, and has historically led to harmful body policing, racial discrimination, and erasure of intersex persons.
There is also reference to an “ongoing medical and scientific debate” surrounding whether transgender athletes maintain athletic and performative advantages after transitioning. What is absent from this brief discussion of science, however, is the concrete evidence that has shown the abundant health disparities experienced by the transgender community, particularly transgender youth. In 2024, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, compared with their cisgender counterparts, transgender youth are more likely to report violence, victimization, unstable housing, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Similarly, a 2024 study in Nature Human Behavior found that anti-transgender state laws, including transgender sport participation bans, directly increased incidents of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth by as much as 72%.
The (mis)direction of attention to abstract ideas of “competitive fairness” and unsettled science also disregards the rampant incompliance of institutions with Title IX. In 2023, Florida State University (FSU) agreed to add women’s lacrosse as a varsity sport after threats of a sexual discrimination lawsuit from its women’s club lacrosse team. The threat came on the heels of an 18-month USA TODAY investigation, which revealed that the university was egregiously out of Title IX compliance. FSU was far from the exception, however, as the investigation exposed how hundreds of colleges and universities manipulated their roster numbers for women’s sports to create a mirage of compliance. These Title IX transgressions emerged under the backdrop of several systemic issues in women’s sports, such as the decline in the number of women coaches for women’s sports, consistent underfunding, disproportionate rates of harassment and abuse experienced by girls and women, and media underrepresentation. Notably, of all the documented issues in and across women’s sports, there is no evidence demonstrating that transgender athletes, in any way, contribute to these inequalities.
Despite these relevant considerations, and as Justice Sonia Sotomayer wrote in her dissent, “to the Court, the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious.”
In addition to the immediate impact on transgender athletes, this decision prompts questions around how girls’ and women’s sports will now be policed to “catch” athletes who do not fit within normative assumptions or understandings of female bodies. International sports governing organizations, such as World Athletics and the International Olympic Committee, have recently paired bans on transgender athlete participation with implementations of sex testing via chromosome tests, which has long been established as a fraught, unethical, and discriminatory practice.
The impacts on youth and high school sports are, and will be, more pronounced. Organizations at these levels lack the same resources and financial capacities, meaning that, for high school athletic associations, sex testing would most likely involve some type of genital or physical examination. While these might be conducted by medical personnel (though the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal is evidence that this does not guarantee safeguarding minors), depending on access or finances, these could also be conducted by coaches, other parents, or officials, which prompts further questions and justified concerns surrounding training, confidentiality, consent, and protections of minors. These practices not only impact transgender athletes, but all athletes, regardless of gender identity or, to borrow from Justice Kavanaugh, “biological sex.”
The ruling closes with a half-hearted remark that “no student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified.” What the SCOTUS fails to recognize, however, is that their ruling is predicated on the misguided vilification of transgender athletes, with impacts that will continue to ostracize transgender people in sports and broader society.
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The Paradoxical Utopia of the World Cup
No other event, short perhaps of a nuclear war or a comet strike, could bring the entire planet together.
Jun 17, 2026
Simon Kuper is 56 now. His first memory of a World Cup, if not his first-ever vivid memory—for many of us who grew up outside the United States, the two are often the same—was the 1978 final between the Netherlands and Argentina. “I recall that night as vividly as almost anything else in my childhood,” he writes in World Cup Fever. “A World Cup is like Proust’s Madeleine. Each new World Cup reminds you of past World Cups, and the people you watched them with.” The book is a history of the World Cup through a few dozen madeleines.
For Americans, it’s as good a guide as any to a tournament of paradoxes, this too-big-to-fail quadrennial festival of corruption, cheating, profiteering, nationalist chauvinism, and mostly crappy soccer that nevertheless can hypnotize and transport to a utopia of competition as idealized and convincing as Pelé’s deification of the sport as “the beautiful game.” I think we watch not so much for the thrill—you have to admit that most games at this watered-down level are snoozfests (“such a party off the field but so dull on it,” as Kuper writes) but for the nostalgia of a game that never existed, but that we reimagine with every match.
“So much of a modern World Cup is repetition, especially as you grow older,” Kuper writes. “After decades of tournaments shown live on TV, each new France-Brazil or England-Argentina or Holland-Germany is just a repeat of earlier versions. Each victory or red card or controversy is a quotation of past ones. A match can never mean as much as it did the first time around. Win or lose this one, you know it isn’t the end of the story: At some point in the next few decades, there’ll be a replay. Repetition turns down the emotional dial of World Cups.”
He’s right, with a caveat: The World Cup is like Jorge Luis Borges’s idea that we rewrite every story every time we read one. The very same game will be remembered a billion different times in a way that the World Series or the Super Bowl or cricket’s World Cup never could be, because no other sport has the World Cup’s reach. No other event, short perhaps of a nuclear war or a comet strike, could bring the entire planet together.
It exists to transform illusion into reality. The illusion is that we are one world playing the same game, speaking the same language, respecting the same rules, existing on a level playing field regardless of origin, race, religion, even fifa ranking.
So just as the tournament is a paradox of beauty and foulness, we all have paradoxical relationships with it, even those of us who don’t follow it. Our refusal to follow it is itself a statement, like the citizen who snubs the ballot box on election day. They, too, are making a statement. Like it or not, the World Cup reminds us that we are on the same planet, that we all share the same blood that kicks a ball the same way, but with a billion splendid variations.
No two soccer fans will see the same game the same way or ever agree about anything soccer, just as I had my differences with Kuper’s book and some of his interpretations: “And once your country has won the World Cup once or twice, it’s generally enough. The more you win, the less it matters.” Tell that to the winners. But he’s better placed than most to guide us. His lineage reads like a demographic World Cup. He was born in Uganda to South African parents, spent his early years in England as a British citizen, moved to the Netherlands when he was 7, studied in England and the United States (Oxford, Harvard), was naturalized a French citizen, now living in Paris with his French wife and raising French children who identified as French, and spent most of his career covering soccer for the London-based Financial Times.
The 1978 World Cup was the first of his innumerable crushing disappointments, as World Cups always must be for 95% of fans. Every four years there’s only one winner out of 195 nations. That one stung Kuper more because the Dutch lost the final for the second time in a row, having lost to Germany in 1974. This time they were playing in Argentina, whose team had blatantly cheated its way to the final. It wasn’t unusual for a tournament stitched in fraud and corruption since its first edition in 1930. It still is, fawning to authoritarian regimes, from Benito Mussolini’s Italy to the junta’s Argentina, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, dictatorial emirs’ Qatar the last time around, and now Donald Trump’s diminished America. Thankfully Canada and Mexico are here to redeem this World Cup, which they also share.
The murderous military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla showcased the 1978 World Cup the way Adolf Hitler showcased the 1936 Olympics, as a distraction masked in bogus legitimacy. Videla had the “disappearance” of some 30,000 dissidents to his name by the time he was done, and that night watched the final alongside Henry Kissinger, a fellow criminal against humanity, who had also helped Videla rig a match to ensure Argentina’s appearance in the final.
I remember that final too. It was my second. My first was Germany-Holland in 1974, my one and only memory of watching with my dad, who died two years later. We watched Argentina-Holland live, my mother, my grandmother, our Dutch Catholic priest, and me on our black-and-white TV in the dining room of our house in Hamlaya, a tiny village in the mountains of Lebanon where we thought we’d escaped the war and where the signal from Cyprus was always clear. Father Niederer didn’t have a TV. He spent the evening with us and his high hopes, especially after the Dutch managed to hold Argentina to a tie through the first 90 minutes. In the 90th minute a Dutch striker had almost won it, hitting the goal post instead. Extra time briefly ended Father Niederer’s faith as Argentina scored once, then again to take the title in a 3-1 match. The junta won. All those masses for nothing. Kuper had also watched with his grandparents when he was 8 in Leiden, the smaller town between Amsterdam and The Hague. For Kuper, the next two decades were all TV watching, then as an in-person spectator until he started reporting about the World Cup for the Financial Times in 1994, the first the United States hosted (with Kissinger’s help). This year will be his ninth. He now proposes to tell you A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments, as goes the book’s subtitle, by synthesizing four decades of his reporter’s notebooks. (The English edition calls it A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments: Snobs would have you believe that calling it anything but football is a misnomer. I don’t play that game and use the terms interchangeably.)
Wisely, Kuper is not interested in recounting matches. Football matches are like military battles and soap operas. “There’s nothing deader, for a writer, than a dead football match. I’m sorry, but you really had to be there,” he writes. Kuper is interested in the unexpected insights into national character that an improvised dance party might reveal; in the endemic corruption of a tournament that turns us all into addicts every four years; in the failed promise of economic booms that leaves the poor in host countries like Brazil, South Africa, Qatar, and Mexico as exploited as in colonial times. The colonist is fifa, the dictatorial soccer federation expecting to reap $14 billion from this year’s tournament.
Kuper describes the exploitation in South Africa, Brazil, and Qatar, the regressive, repressive American ally that spent more than $200 billion preparing for a 2022 tournament built on the graveyards of imported labor working in near-slave conditions and without rights. “Under Qatar’s traditional ‘kafala’ system, migrant workers were practically the property of their employers,” Kuper writes. “A boss could deport an employee for no reason, or hold their passport and keep them in Qatar against their will.” Qatar had promised to reform the kafala system. The moment Argentina hoisted the 2022 trophy at Lusail Stadium, all promises vanished. Now Saudi Arabia, an even more regressive, undemocratic country with its own kafala system, is set to host in 2034.
The book at first felt disheveled, jumping from one scant segment to another like so many rapid passes in a game, as if Kuper was eager to throw in every anecdote he could find in his notebooks. Kuper’s interview with Diego Maradona, one of the game’s greatest players and one of its most distasteful characters, is pointless other than to show Kuper scored the five-minute encounter.
European journalists have no problem buying access, either, or accepting lavish gifts: “I flew to the Chelsea-Manchester United Champions League final in Moscow as a guest of UEFA, the European football authority. I had a fabulous room in the five-star Marriott Grand Hotel. (Did UEFA corrupt me? I don’t think so.)” He never makes the connection between that sort of payola and the buying of referees and game-fixing he documents so well.
Some of his insights are no more penetrating than comparing Germany’s emerging prosperity on and off the pitch in 1990 to a bus driver’s “villa with a veranda in a spotless village,” or telling us that “A World Cup can’t change a country. But it can divert an individual’s life path,” as if there were anything comparable between France’s decline into riots, fading power, and economic stagnation after the 1998 World Cup with his decision to quit the Financial Times and become a French citizen. As all World Cup books must, this one pays homage to cheaters like Maradona, biters like Uruguay’s Luis Suárez, criers like Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, and charisma-challenged virtuosos like Messi, now hobbling through his last show.
Soon you get used to the Kuper style. It has the verve of 1970s Dutch football—total football, as they called it—placing every element of the game in service of the story without letting judgments necessarily mar the exuberance. Yes, the game is corrupt—there’s a hint that even Nelson Mandela had a part in the $10 million bribe disguised as a cultural gift that bought the World Cup for South Africa—but there was that priceless moment when the Japanese let loose on their own soil at the Japan-Belgium match in 2002 and showed the world a joy we’d rarely seen. There may have been hooliganism in the past, but in pubs and on trains fans from opposing teams typically drink and dance together. Kuper unfortunately doesn’t venture into calculating the demographics of World Cup-conceived babies every four years. I suspect the cross-fertilization is as rich as during the Crusades. But he documents an alarming incidence of heart attacks during every tournament.
Another paradox: World Cup play is inferior to anything you’ll see in club football in top leagues in England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France: Any of those countries’ top clubs could beat all but the four or five highest ranked national teams at the World Cup, if not even them. Any league match is technically more proficient and cohesive than a World Cup match. Any league match lacks those ridiculous disparities we’re going to see when, say, Spain plays Cape Verde or Germany plays Curaçao, that Caribbean Dutch protectorate with the population of Flagler County (think Ronald Reagan’s Marines invading Grenada).
Just 16 countries traveled to Germany when I watched my first World Cup in 1974. The format went to 24 in 1982, then 32 in 1998, and now 48 countries—a quarter of the planet’s nations. There’s really nothing wrong with that. Elitism is over. We can’t democratize the world. We can democratize the World Cup, though there’s no doubt fifa expanded the thing to shake down more cash even as it dilutes and cheapens play. The federation’s mercantilism handed Mexico and Canada only 13 games each, compared to 78 in the United States, an imbalance as insulting as our president’s attempts to destroy both countries’ economies while ridiculing one and reducing the other to a mass of criminals, and getting a fifa “prize” for it.
Still, we look past the absurd. “Most football fans took it for granted that FIFA was corrupt,” Kuper writes, needlessly capitalizing the federation’s acronym the way some media still capitalize “covid.” Diseases should not so blithely be respected. “They’d heard the stories of officials stashing bribes in secret bank accounts. However, fans care more about what happens on the field. Once we start to doubt that the matches we are seeing are real, the emotion we invest in World Cups becomes pointless.” In the spirit of magic realism, why not give Curaçao and Cape Verde a chance on the same stage as the greats? It’s not as if the American team belongs there, either, if it’s quality we’re looking for. But there they are.
We’re mostly missing the point if we watch the World Cup for quality. Like the Olympics but without the frazzle of a zillion sports scattered like so many pixels on our screens, it’s our quadrennial dreamland on these simple, perfectly groomed fields where cubism and leaves of grass meet so the world’s teams kick around a planet-shaped sphere as luck and fate outscores the best of them.
“The World Cup exists to transform reality into illusion,” the Mexican novelist Juan Villoro wrote in an article for The New York Times this week. I think of it more in reverse: It exists to transform illusion into reality. The illusion is that we are one world playing the same game, speaking the same language, respecting the same rules, existing on a level playing field regardless of origin, race, religion, even fifa ranking. The reality is that for those five weeks, away from the dingbattery of dignitaries and fifa’s sycophantry, away from the tensions between Canada, Mexico, and the United States—on the pitch, in pubs, in living rooms, in street parties, in the palmed stadiums of our smartphoned hands and maybe even in our hearts, despairing as we are the rest of the time—that illusion may well be true.
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Trump's America Hosts the World Cup, But the World Is Not Welcome
Preventing fans and players from freely entering the United States, and forcing them to bear the personal cost of policies directed at their governments, produces no discernable security benefit but does produce a steady stream of international criticism.
Jun 16, 2026
The 2026 FIFA World Cup has begun on American soil, the first time the United States has hosted the tournament in 32 years. When it concludes, the country will begin preparing for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In exchange for the privilege of hosting the world’s two largest sporting events, and the enormous revenue they generate, a host nation should ease its visa policy to the fullest extent consistent with ordinary security interests.
Previous World Cup host nations made this the norm. South Africa in 2010 created a dedicated events visa and waived normal fees entirely for ticket holders. Brazil in 2014 created a fee-waived visa category tied directly to match tickets. Russia in 2018 abolished visa requirements entirely for Fan ID holders. Most recently, Qatar in 2022 created a universal entry document for all fans and loosened its terms further mid-tournament.
Instead, the United States has adopted the widest nationality-based exclusion policy since the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Nationals from 39 countries currently face US entry restrictions, ranging from partial limitations to outright bans. Among those 39 are 4 countries whose national teams qualified for the tournament. Haiti and Iran face complete entry bans; Ivory Coast and Senegal face partial restrictions. Although players are exempt from the presidential ban, fans have no pathway to acquire tourist visas to support their teams, player families cannot watch their loved ones play in the biggest match in the world, and local media cannot obtain visas to cover the games stateside.
President Trump has also barred the Iranian national team from sleeping on American soil, requiring the players to overnight in Tijuana and cross the border only to compete.
At the same time, the United States created a system called FIFA PASS, which gives World Cup ticket holders the ability to schedule a prioritized consular interview. So, while some are fully banned, those who are not can expedite their visa appointment. This pattern recurs throughout this administration’s approach: Those fully excluded receive nothing, while those who are not excluded receive an expedited benefit unavailable to the general public.
One might wonder how these bans are allowed in the first place. The legal vehicle is INA section 212(f), a provision historically invoked with restraint and for targeted purposes. Before Donald Trump, presidents used it for specific suspensions tied to specific conduct: Haitians intercepted at sea under Ronald Reagan, maritime interdiction extended under George W. Bush, senior Haitian government officials (affiliated with the 1994 coup) under Bill Clinton, and persons responsible for grave human rights abuses by the Iranian and Syrian governments under Barack Obama. Despite leading a country built by immigrants, Trump has used the same authority to ban ordinary people from large portions of the world. This is unlike anything seen among fellow Five Eyes countries.
Although nationality-based exclusion has historical precedent, the current bans appear to function as instruments of punishment rather than legitimate security measures. The justification typically rests on elevated visa overstay rates or insufficient governmental cooperation, meaning that individual nationals are effectively penalized for the conduct of others. This year’s World Cup will reflect that reality in diminished diversity, and the consequences extend beyond mere attendance. President Trump has also barred the Iranian national team from sleeping on American soil, requiring the players to overnight in Tijuana and cross the border only to compete.
No story captures this more sharply than that of Omar Artan. Named Africa’s best male referee in 2025 and selected by FIFA for the tournament, Artan was set to become the first Somali referee ever to officiate at a World Cup. He cleared the visa process, boarded his flight, and landed in Miami. US Customs and Border Protection denied him entry over unspecified “vetting concerns,” and FIFA removed him from the tournament. He returned home to a hero’s welcome in Mogadishu, received by thousands at the stadium and by Somalia’s prime minister, who wrote that Artan had “already won the hearts of millions.”
As in the first Trump administration, serious questions remain about whether these bans serve any genuine security purpose. Instead, they appear to function as diplomatic punishment aimed at governments this administration dislikes. Preventing fans and players from freely entering the United States, and forcing them to bear the personal cost of policies directed at their governments, produces no discernable security benefit. What it does produce is a steady stream of international criticism. On the opening day of a World Cup the United States is hosting, Omar Artan’s story is the image America has projected to the world.
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What the Knicks Can Teach Us About Surviving Unprecedented Times
On Wednesday night, the Knicks embodied hope as remaining present. Hope as remaining committed. Hope as continuing to work when you are 29 points down and the other side is telling you they're in your head.
Jun 13, 2026
I was one of millions of people who died multiple times during Wednesday night's NBA Finals game. And I was among the millions who were reborn, multiple times, during that same game.
Much has been written about the power of sports, and I may not be adding anything new to the conversation. That's all right. Sometimes it is enough to join the chorus in effervescent awe. But like millions of others, I cannot help finding deep metaphor in being part of the Knicks family during these times of horror.
Wednesday's game broke records, first in the wrong direction. Shockingly early in the night, the Knicks fell behind by 29 points, on their way to the largest deficit ever overcome in NBA Finals history. They were down 27 at halftime; until this series, no team had rallied from more than 24 points in a Finals game, a mark set by the 2008 Celtics against the Lakers. The Spurs were shooting the lights out of Madison Square Garden, and their superstar seemed unstoppable. At one point, after absorbing a hard foul, he rose from the floor, pointed to his temple, and taunted: I'm in your head.
In my head, I felt nothing but devastation.
Fromm was right that art captures human experience better than abstraction ever could, and the art of basketball, through the brilliance of these Knicks, captures hope better than any essay I could write, including this one.
There is so much to be devastated about in this world. President Donald Trump is making a mockery of our dream of a democracy and of our collective efforts to build a more just world, taking our taxpayer money to wage a war (which he calls flippantly an excursion) on Iran that includes attacks on civilian infrastructure. He has torn into the White House itself, a building whose restrained architecture once symbolized a leadership that refused the grandiosity of false emperors. And this Sunday, on his 80th birthday, he is converting its South Lawn into a $60 million carnival of toxic masculinity: a cage-fighting spectacle staged to soothe an unbelievably fragile ego, men bashing into one another beneath the windows of the people's house.
This is only scratching the surface. If the Spurs were truly in our heads, the heads of so many of us in the United States and around the world, they would find us grappling to locate our way back to hope during this time of polycrises.
And yet, somehow, that is exactly what is happening. It has nothing to do with chest-thumping enactments of domination. Nor does it have anything to do with positive thinking, manifestation, or any other individualizing nonsense. The Knicks, friends, are showing us something about how communities find their way out of despair, and maybe even out of fascism.
The long arc toward justice is indeed long. It can look devastating. Unprecedented. It can break new records in how low it sinks. There might be a step toward the championship, and then suddenly the gap grows wider than it has ever been.
But Jalen Brunson and his teammates did not simply believe. They did not repeat mantras. They did not lash out with aggression because they were threatened and humiliated. They kept working. Possession by possession. A 13-0 run to claw the lead under 20. Brunson answering basket after basket, he would finish with 36 points, while OG Anunoby added 33 of his own.
Mariame Kaba, the brilliant abolitionist organizer and author, teaches us that hope is a discipline. Not a feeling that visits us when conditions improve, but a practice we commit to precisely when they don't. Half a century earlier, the critical psychologist Erich Fromm arrived at the same insight in The Revolution of Hope, distinguishing real hope from both passive optimism and desperate waiting. For Fromm, hope is active or it is nothing, a readiness to move toward what does not yet exist. He also warned that our language for experiences like hope has been flattened into "worn-out coins," and that art often captures what essays cannot.
On Wednesday night, the Knicks embodied what Kaba and Fromm theorized. Hope as remaining present. Hope as remaining committed. Hope as continuing to work when you are 29 points down and the other side is telling you they're in your head. That is hope. That is also how change happens.
Some fans at Madison Square Garden walked out early during those moments of deep devastation. I don't judge them, they weren't wrong about how bad it looked. They were only wrong about what it meant to stay. They read the score as the ending rather than the middle, and walking to the subway they missed witnessing one of the greatest moments in NBA history. So many around us conclude that the score of our democracy is final. Despair is a premature exit from a game that is still being played.
And, the lessons do not stop here. That winning basket, with 1.2 seconds left, was not a triumphant swish. Brunson's three-pointer missed. The game was won because Anunoby crashed the boards anyway and, unthinkably, miraculously, gloriously, tipped the miss in with one hand. The decisive act of the greatest comeback in Finals history was someone showing up for a shot that failed. If you want a single image of disciplined hope, there it is: The work continues even when the shot doesn't make it, especially when the shot doesn't make it.
I would be remiss as a critical psychologist if I did not name a very important irony playing out before us as well. The Spurs' young superstar is a French immigrant, beloved and celebrated by a state whose government has made the persecution of immigrants and white supremacy its signature project. None of this is his fault, he is 22 years old and magnificent at his craft, and he deserves none of our resentment. The contradiction belongs to Texas, and to a country that cheers immigrant excellence in its arenas while caging immigrant families at its borders.
So this is my invitation. This Saturday night, while the machinery of spectacle prepares the White House lawn for Sunday's celebration of brute force, watch the Knicks instead. Watch a group of people who were further down than anyone has ever been, who did not posture and did not quit, attempt to finish what they started, one win from the franchise's first championship since 1973. Fromm was right that art captures human experience better than abstraction ever could, and the art of basketball, through the brilliance of these Knicks, captures hope better than any essay I could write, including this one.
We need to understand how change happens in devastating times. We need to understand how we, too, can participate in revolutionary care. Not by thumping our chests when we are up. Not by throwing in the towel when we break records in our losses. But by continuing to show up. By the discipline of persisting, not out of naïve faith, but out of practice.
The game isn't over. Find your team, and keep making your way toward the basket. And, when it is time to celebrate, get in community and dance under those famous orange and blue skies!
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