Trump Threatens To Block Commanders' Stadium Deal Unless Team Readopts Its Former Slur, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A Football Franchise Had Successfully Stopped Insulting Native Americans

WASHINGTON. President Trump announced Sunday that he may withhold federal cooperation on the Washington Commanders' planned stadium unless the franchise readopts the name it retired in 2020, resolving a long-standing concern within the administration that an NFL team had gone five years without insulting Native Americans.

In a series of posts on Truth Social, the President wrote that the team "should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team," described "Commanders" as a "ridiculous moniker," and added that "I may put a restriction on them" blocking any stadium deal in the District if the former name is not restored. He extended the request to Major League Baseball, instructing the Cleveland Guardians to revert to a name the club retired in 2021.

The Commanders' proposed $3.7 billion stadium would sit on the former RFK Stadium grounds, a parcel of federal land whose transfer to the District was authorized by Congress only months earlier. Administration officials characterized the President's intervention as a routine application of executive leverage, noting that the federal government's role in the land transfer had given the President a rare opportunity to make a professional sports franchise's branding a condition of its lease.

"The President believes that if the United States is going to be involved in a stadium, the United States should get something for it, and what he would like is the slur," said one official, who described the position as consistent with the administration's broader effort to ensure that federal authority is never exercised without first being attached to a personal preference. The official added that the President considered the matter a victory for "our great Indian people," a constituency the administration has not otherwise consulted, funded, or protected.

Native American organizations, which spent decades campaigning for the name's removal and welcomed its 2020 retirement, were not asked to weigh in. The franchise, which has sold merchandise under the new name since 2022, declined to say whether it would surrender a multibillion-dollar facility rather than retain a word the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as "usually offensive."

At press time, the President had identified four additional teams, two rivers, and one Army base whose insufficiently offensive names he was prepared to correct.