A view of the Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Stadium, defunct and presently below demolition, in Washington, D.C., on April 28, 2025. President Trump is threatening to intervene in a deal for a brand new stadium.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP through Getty Photographs
conceal caption
toggle caption
Brendan Smialowski/AFP through Getty Photographs
President Trump is threatening to derail a plan to construct a brand new stadium in Washington, D.C., for the Washington Commanders soccer group except the group adjustments its identify again to the earlier identify.
“The Washington ‘No matter’s’ ought to instantly change their identify again to the Washington Redskins Soccer Workforce,” Trump wrote on his Fact Social account. “There’s a huge clamoring for this.”
The soccer group dropped the longtime identify in 2020 after a few years of criticism that it was racist towards Indigenous folks.
Trump additionally known as for the Cleveland Guardians baseball group to alter their identify again to the Cleveland Indians. That identify change was introduced in 2021.
“Our nice Indian folks, in huge numbers, need this to occur,” Trump wrote, with out providing proof. “Our nice Indian folks, in huge numbers, need this to occur. Their heritage and status is systematically being taken away from them.”
Suzan Harjo, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes who fought for many years to get the group’s identify modified, instructed NPR in 2022 that the “R-word” was linked to racist attitudes that perpetuated “emotional and bodily violence” towards Native Individuals. “After I was a lady, you barely might make it by way of your younger life with out getting attacked by a bunch of white folks — whether or not they had been boys or ladies or males or girls. And they’d all the time go to that phrase,” she stated.
In a later publish, Trump threatened to scuttle the Commanders’ plans for a brand new stadium, which might transfer the group from its present location in Maryland again to the nation’s capital after renovating an antiquated stadium on federal property.
“I’ll put a restriction on them if they do not change the identify again to the unique ‘Washington Redskins,’ and do away with the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I will not make a deal for them to construct a stadium in Washington,” Trump wrote.
Congress gave town management over the location of the proposed new stadium final December, which former President Joe Biden signed into regulation in January. The D.C. Council is now contemplating a multibillion-dollar plan to redevelop the property for the group. It is unclear how Trump might intervene with the undertaking.
Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s workplace stated in an e mail that the mayor had no remark. The Commanders and the Cleveland Guardians didn’t instantly reply to NPR’s request for remark.
