As practices begin this week, it is hard not to notice how the economics of football have changed.

Talent still matters most. Coaching still matters enormously. But resources matter more than they once did.

When I was growing up, many of Northern Virginia’s strongest football programs came from communities that were largely middle- or working-class. Toughness seemed almost part of the local geography. Today, many of the region’s perennial contenders are found in some of its most affluent school districts. That is not an accident.

There is an irony in that. Football has long been celebrated as the game of factory towns, mill towns, farming communities, and blue-collar suburbs. Yet as the sport has become increasingly professionalized, many of its strongest public-school programs are now found in some of America’s wealthiest ZIP codes.

Private position coaches, year-round strength programs, speed training, nutrition, seven-on-seven leagues, specialized camps, film services, and increasingly sophisticated equipment all require time and disposable income. None guarantees success. Together, however, they create meaningful advantages.

Last year I read about athletes in parts of Appalachia who faced a very different calculation. Some had to choose between football and jobs that helped support their families. An injury was not merely a setback on the field; it could mean medical bills, lost wages, or both. The opportunity cost of playing sports looked very different, even in an area that loves its sports.

Families across America now invest extraordinary sums in youth athletics, hoping for scholarships, or opportunities created by the changing economics of college sports. But affluent communities offer something beyond money. They offer freedom from competing obligations. Their athletes are less likely to choose between practice and a paycheck, or between rehabilitation and paying the bills. They can devote themselves more completely to development.

None of this diminishes the work of great coaches or the commitment of the players themselves. Success is still earned. But the starting line is changing.

Middle-class Vienna produced tough football players.

Today’s wealthier Vienna continues to produce outstanding teams.

The game has not changed nearly as much as the geography of opportunity has.

There is a schoolyard maxim, a small coming-of-age truth, that at some point you must punch the bully in the face. Once done, life improves. It is inspirational, if not universally practical.

One lesson, however, does seem durable: giving the bully everything he wants is a guarantee of failure.

Bullies often prefer emotional victories to physical ones. They win whenever they convince others that every response must be on their terms.

The harder lesson is that surrender and confrontation are not the only choices. Somewhere between them lies a narrow ground—difficult to find, difficult to hold, and often the only place from which lasting success is possible.

The last few weeks have offered several reminders.

We learned that the law firms that settled early with the administration—a moment of apparent momentum for the White House, given those firms’ influence and proximity—now face extensive reporting requirements on their compliance. Firms that declined to settle face no such burden and, so far, have fared well.

It is an old lesson: appeasement rarely ends pressure. More often, it simply changes its terms.

Then there is Gianni Infantino.

The FIFA president embraced Trump enthusiastically, even presenting him with FIFA’s own peace award and cultivating a close public relationship. Yet accommodation did not spare him from controversy. Instead, he found himself presiding over a World Cup marked by political distractions: visitors who did not feel welcome, political intervention into officiating, and a closing ceremony overshadowed by Trump’s attempt to insert himself into the celebration. Infantino now spends much of his time defending his decisions and blaming critics rather than accepting responsibility.

Accommodation bought him little.

Ukraine offers a different model.

Its struggle against Russia continues with more momentum than many imagined a year ago. On several occasions, President Volodymyr Zelensky could have capitulated to Trump, who urged him to surrender Ukrainian territory, or he could have openly rejected him, risking isolation while Ukraine remained heavily dependent on Western support.

Instead, Zelensky refused to let others dictate Ukraine’s strategy. He neither yielded nor provoked. He defended his country’s interests without losing the alliance upon which its survival depended. It is the kind of disciplined restraint that keeps nations alive.

And then there is Kaitlan Collins.

Honored at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, she endured Trump’s insults in person—the most powerful man on earth attempting to diminish her before her peers. Yet she neither returned insult for insult nor retreated. She continued doing what journalists are supposed to do: ask difficult questions, listen to the answers, and ask again when those answers proved inadequate.

Bullies thrive on emotional reaction.

Professionalism denies them that victory.

It is difficult to extract universal lessons from these years. Many who have stood up to Trump—Republican officials, journalists, foreign leaders, and private citizens—have seen their careers damaged or ended. Courage carries a price; that is why we call it courage.

But showing no courage at all carries a price as well, and that one is certain.

Bullies seek more than obedience. They want to write the script—to decide not only whether others resist, but how they resist. Their greatest victory is convincing people that they have no choice but to play the bully’s game.

The most effective resistance is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is strategic restraint. Sometimes it is quiet professionalism. Sometimes it is simply refusing to let the bully decide the terms of your conduct.

That narrow ground is difficult to occupy.

History suggests it is often the strongest ground of all.

But the war did not begin with that clarity. Early on, the administration seemed to imagine a rapid regime collapse—that a weakened and unpopular government, once bombed, might simply fall. When no uprising materialized, the hope shifted to decapitation: eliminate layers of leadership, inflict enough damage, and perhaps someone left in Iran would sue for peace. Instead, Iran absorbed the blows. Its leadership had planned for losses. And once Tehran demonstrated its ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic calculus changed. It has become increasingly difficult to describe what an American or Israeli “victory” would even look like.

Meanwhile, the administration’s messaging has grown erratic. One day there is talk of a deal; the next, threats of annihilation. The pattern repeats: declarations of progress, followed by warnings of catastrophic force. Iran, by contrast, has projected a clearer strategic objective. Its tactics have evolved with the battlefield, but its central message has remained more consistent. Its strategy may be objectionable, but it has been easier to discern.

The history between the United States and Iran is long and tangled. Some trace the quarrel to the hostage crisis of 1979; others to the 1953 coup. Either way, the relationship has been adversarial for generations. Yet in this particular conflict, Iran’s objectives have appeared more coherent than those of its adversaries.

The administration insists Iran must not have a nuclear weapon. On that point, most of the world agrees. But the phrase conceals the far more difficult question of enforcement. Preventing a nuclear weapon requires more than bombing facilities or threatening retaliation. It requires inspectors, monitoring, intelligence-sharing, verification, diplomacy, and some minimum level of trust. It requires institutions capable of determining what Iran possesses, what it is building, and whether it is complying with an agreement.

Those are precisely the tools this administration has often criticized, weakened, or treated with contempt. International inspectors are dismissed as ineffective. Diplomacy is portrayed as weakness. Alliances are treated as burdens. Trust itself is regarded as naïveté. Yet all of these would have to form part of any durable settlement. The president speaks constantly of making a deal, but a deal is not merely a document signed in front of cameras. It requires terms, inspections, enforcement, credibility, and confidence that each side will honor what it has promised.

The uncomfortable truth is that America’s own behavior has also made allies uneasy about our nuclear stewardship. When threats are issued casually, when strategy shifts by the week, when language oscillates between negotiation and obliteration, it is not surprising that partners grow anxious. Iran is an authoritarian state, but many of America’s closest partners in the region are authoritarian as well. And if Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, or the United States believed their national survival were at stake, few would simply absorb military blows without threatening broader escalation. That reality does not justify Iran’s conduct. It does, however, make the conflict less morally simple than political slogans suggest.

International institutions were created to address precisely this kind of problem. Preventing nuclear proliferation is not simply an American interest; it is a global one. The case against an Iranian bomb is strongest when it is advanced as an international principle, supported by credible institutions and enforceable agreements, rather than as the shifting policy of a single administration.

Otherwise, "They cannot have a nuclear weapon" is not a strategy. It is a slogan, and one that avoids the much harder work, expertise, diplomacy, inspections, and verification required to make any deal worthy of the name.

It makes sense that West Virginia claimed the song so quickly and eventually made it an official state song. What is more intriguing is how the rest of us claimed it too. Why does it echo through high school football stadiums in Loudoun County, through American soccer crowds, and even across Europe and Australia at sporting events? Other states have songs every bit as beautiful. Ray Charles’s Georgia on My Mind and James Taylor’s Carolina in My Mind carry the same emotional depth. Yet they have never become communal anthems in quite the same way. Even our national anthem, magnificent in its own right, does not evoke the same feeling; perhaps it is too much to ask a two-hundred-year-old battle hymn to supply modern sentiment.

The greatest irony is that the song was never conceived as a love letter to West Virginia. Danoff has said he was imagining the country roads of Massachusetts, inspired in part by a drive through Montgomery County, Maryland. West Virginia simply fit the lyric better, and the state embraced the song with a speed that speaks to its emotional truth. Like all great folk songs, it quickly became larger than the circumstances of its creation.

That may be because the song wears the clothing of one place while speaking to something much larger. The Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River give it a vivid setting, but listeners are rarely imagining West Virginia alone. They are imagining their own home—the roads they grew up on, the places they left behind, the people they miss. The geography is specific; the emotion is universal.

That is why Country Roads has endured for more than half a century. It is not merely a song about one state or one region. It is about belonging. Home is rarely perfect. Sometimes it is beautiful, sometimes difficult, often both at once. Yet it remains the place we carry with us. In the end, people do not embrace Country Roads because they dream of West Virginia. They embrace it because, wherever they are in the world, they find themselves dreaming of home.

Michelle Obama once urged that when others go low, we go high. During these Trump years, some dismiss the phrase as naïve. Yet the principle remains sound: we do not abandon our values because an opponent has abandoned theirs. Dignity is not merely ornamental; it is part of how a nation wins, and part of why it deserves to.

Ukraine, under President Volodymyr Zelensky, has lived that principle with remarkable discipline. Russia has waged its war with a brutality that recalls some of the darkest chapters of twentieth-century warfare—abducting children, bombing civilian infrastructure, and prosecuting a ground war many believed Europe would never see again. It has been a campaign marked by cruelty as much as by strategy.

Ukraine has largely avoided responding in kind. Rather than conducting indiscriminate attacks on Russian cities, its military has focused primarily on Russian soldiers and assets that sustain the war effort. As Ukraine found its footing, its drone campaign did not become an eye-for-an-eye campaign. Instead, it remained directed at oil facilities, logistics hubs, military infrastructure, and other economic arteries. The goal was not terror but disruption—to weaken Russia’s capacity to wage war and to inconvenience its citizens rather than to harm them.

This restraint is not merely tactical, though Ukraine has every reason to avoid escalation against a far larger adversary. Nor is it solely diplomatic, though Kyiv has long been mindful of maintaining Western support. It is also moral. Ukraine has sought to fight while preserving its values, even when Russia has discarded its own. It has chosen, as much as war allows, to go high.

And, thus far, that choice has strengthened rather than weakened Ukraine’s cause. It has reinforced the contrast between aggressor and defender, helped sustain international support, and reminded the world that even in war, restraint can be a source of strength. History remembers not only who prevailed, but how they fought. Ukraine appears determined that, whatever the outcome, it will not become what it is resisting.

George Washington’s most important task in the war against Britain was not winning glorious battles. It was keeping his army intact. He did not need to defeat the British outright; he needed to show that the Continental Army could fight, endure, and outlast an empire stretched across the world. Survival was strategy.

Before modern vaccines existed, Washington turned to inoculation against smallpox. The procedure introduced the virus through the skin in controlled doses, enough to build immunity without unleashing the full disease. It was risky, but it worked. Smallpox did not destroy his army, and neither did hunger, cold, or the chronic shortage of funds. Washington accepted that some soldiers would become ill so that most could survive.

Today we have vaccines that carry statistically minimal risk and are supported by decades of scientific evidence. We can prevent diseases with extraordinary reliability. Yet rumor and political identity increasingly compete with science itself. The risk-reward calculus becomes impossible when the underlying evidence is dismissed—or when politics intrudes. Even Secretary Pete Hegseth, after halting the military’s routine influenza vaccination requirement, ultimately reinstated it following an outbreak. Reality, as Washington understood, has a way of asserting itself.

Washington was not the greatest battlefield tactician of his age. It is difficult to list many decisive victories that were his alone. But he possessed judgment, discipline, and common sense. He understood risk. He understood endurance. And he understood that leadership sometimes requires choosing the least bad option in order to preserve the whole.

History rarely deals leaders an ideal hand. Washington mastered the one he was given. Few leaders in American history have matched his instinct for balancing danger against necessity.

Washington did not triumph because he avoided risk.

He triumphed because he understood it.

We would do well to remember that.

When President Trump wandered into Spain’s team celebration at the World Cup, it was more than his instinct to occupy the spotlight or drain the oxygen from any room he enters. It reflected something deeper: a fascination with people who achieve victory in ways fundamentally different from his own.

Trump has enjoyed undeniable success, but not the kind associated with sustained operational excellence. His failures are well known—Atlantic City, the USFL, Trump Steaks, Trump University, multiple bankruptcies, and a succession of ventures that flared brightly before fading. His greatest successes have come elsewhere: branding buildings and resorts, transforming himself into a television celebrity through The Apprentice, and converting political power into extraordinary personal wealth through licensing, cryptocurrency, stock ventures, and other opportunities. His career has depended less on building better products or better organizations than on branding, publicity, leverage, litigation, political influence, and an extraordinary instinct for commanding attention. It is the old American habit of winning by influence rather than by craft.

Spain’s players had no such advantages. They had to win the match. No persuasion, no deal‑making, no procedural improvisation. They had to concentrate, stay healthy, defend, finish chances, endure inconsistent officiating, and perform under suffocating heat. Elite sport is one of the few arenas where influence eventually gives way to merit. When the final whistle blows, there is no negotiation. Trump appears genuinely drawn to people who prevail under those conditions because their victories are earned in a way that cannot be brokered, branded, or bargained into existence.

He has long displayed admiration for elite athletes, even those from communities that parts of his political coalition often regard with suspicion. He recognizes greatness when he sees it. And in moments like Spain’s celebration, he cannot resist moving toward it—drawn by accomplishments that no amount of influence, wealth, publicity, or political power can manufacture.

The tournament began with a message to visiting fans that was unusually blunt: some travelers were welcome, others were not, and no one should linger too long. It is difficult to recall another host nation adopting that approach. Mexico and Canada, by contrast, were models of hospitality.

Iran qualified and, despite the war, played admirably. After Egypt’s victory, its coach said they had won “on behalf of the Iranian team.” Yet Iranian players—many of whom live abroad and have no demonstrated connection to the government—found their lives made inconvenient. Some were asked to leave the country immediately after matches. Spain’s government, which has asserted its sovereignty by declining to support the war effort, behaved with dignity. Its players were gracious even as President Trump inserted himself awkwardly into the winner’s ceremony.

He also intervened in the rules of the game, claiming to contact FIFA president Gianni Infantino after U.S. leading scorer Balogun received a red card and became ineligible for the Round of 16 match against Belgium. Trump has never been shy about contacting judges, justices, or attorneys general. He follows the rules that suit him.

And so, at the end, he placed himself at the center of the medal ceremony—unlike the presidents of Mexico and Canada, who understood the moment belonged to the players. When Spain’s captain Modri gently redirected him so the team could celebrate, Trump lingered at the edge of the frame, obliging Spain and FIFA to edit him out of official photos.

He later praised the World Cup extravagantly. But the World Cup requires no praise. It is the largest sporting event on earth, and soccer is growing rapidly in the United States. The question is not whether the event was great—it always is—but whether he improved it. Intervening in officiating, unsettling guests, and disrupting the closing ceremony do not qualify. The tournament succeeded in spite of him.

This is the pattern of the Trump presidency. We have a formidable military—one of the strongest in the world—and it continues to perform well. But firing senior officers, lecturing them about their weight, and involving them in a conflict without a clear strategic end does not strengthen it. We don’t need the president to brag about the economy either; adding tariffs, manufacturing uncertainty, and terrorizing parts of the low‑cost workforce simply means the economy is succeeding in spite of the harm being done. The resilience of American institutions does not elevate the person who meddles with them.

If the world did not already understand this, the 2026 World Cup offered a blunt reminder.

But American political rhetoric has developed a peculiar habit. Words are repeated until their meanings detach from reality. “Antifa” becomes sinister. “Voter fraud,” “Hunter Biden,” “Hillary’s emails,” and “the Russia hoax” take on lives of their own, shaped less by evidence than by repetition and conviction.

The difficulty with attacking Antifa is that, as an organization, it does not meaningfully exist. When Trump‑era officials testified before Congress, they could not identify leaders, membership, or structure. The name was invoked, but the facts never followed. Saying a word does not make it real.

In some ways, it is helpful when the world sees this. Much like the reaction to the reflecting‑pool vandals, foreign observers do not engage with the issue as Americans do. They simply note the absence of factual grounding. It reminds them that the United States of Roosevelt, Wilson, and Eisenhower has given way to something different—more improvisational, more rhetorical, and more willing to weaponize language.

I have never met a member of Antifa. Many of my closest friends would say they are against fascism, but that is not the same thing. “Antifa,” as a term, has little stable meaning. No one wants to be labeled part of a terrorist group simply for opposing authoritarianism. So we are left with the simplest truth: we are against fascism.

And that should be enough.

It also rests on an assumption for which there is remarkably little evidence: that increasing testosterone in otherwise healthy service members produces better soldiers.

The war in Ukraine offers a vivid demonstration of contemporary conflict. Many assumed after World War II that Europe would never again see a major land war. Yet we have one—bloody, grinding, and technologically complex. One war is a small sample, but it is the best laboratory available, and nothing in Ukraine suggests that testosterone is the decisive variable.

Russian soldiers have suffered staggering losses despite possessing all the traditional attributes once thought to define military power: large numbers of young men, physical strength, and a willingness to endure enormous casualties. The battlefield has instead rewarded adaptation, intelligence, logistics, electronic warfare, precision weapons, and increasingly, software. Modern war is proving remarkably indifferent to brute chemistry.

The confrontation with Iran underscores the same point. Contemporary conflict is shaped by intelligence, cyber capabilities, economics, diplomacy, precision strike systems, and political judgment. The testosterone levels of the participants are not being measured. Nor would they tell us much if they were.

These stereotypes are hardly new. For generations they have distorted how societies think about military effectiveness. One of the most successful soldiers of the Second World War was Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the Ukrainian sniper credited with 309 confirmed kills on the Eastern Front. Whatever her hormone profile, she represented precisely what every military seeks: extraordinary effectiveness in combat. Today, Ukrainian women continue to play critical roles in drone operations, one of the most consequential innovations of the war.

So is this merely another curious story in an administration that seems to produce them daily? Perhaps. But symbols matter. If it alienates talented men and women in uniform, it matters. If it encourages commanders to mistake physiology for combat effectiveness, it matters. And if it distracts us from thinking seriously about how wars are actually fought, it matters a great deal.

One of the central lessons of Ukraine is that modern war has not become less deadly. It has become less intuitive. Success belongs less to the strongest army than to the army that learns fastest. Ukraine has repeatedly demonstrated the possibilities of adaptation. Russia has repeatedly demonstrated the cost of failing to evolve.

There are better ways to measure and prepare a fighting force than its testosterone levels.

“The Reflecting Pool Vandals”

I saw a version of this myself years ago when my son’s club team traveled to the Netherlands. The boys were told not to wear an Ajax shirt in Rotterdam. Even a jersey purchased simply because they liked the design could be interpreted as a declaration. Football shirts in much of Europe are less fashion than identity.

Does this make the American fan a better fan?

Not necessarily.

But it does make the American fan a different kind of fan.

In Europe, a manager can win a championship and still be dismissed the following season if the opening months fail to meet expectations. In America, that same manager would almost certainly be given a full year. The rhythms of loyalty are simply not the same.

Part of the difference lies in how supporters come to their clubs. In Europe, allegiance is often inherited—a matter of family, neighborhood, religion, or local identity. Supporting a club can feel less like making a choice than accepting an inheritance. Some clubs even maintain formal supporter organizations with voting rights and organized travel, reinforcing the idea that fandom carries obligations as well as privileges.

American supporters face nothing comparable. I can become an Alabama fan because I live in Alabama, because my father attended school there, or simply because I admire the team. No registration. No generational expectation. No civic duty beyond enthusiasm.

Another part of the difference may lie in the societies themselves. Americans often organize their lives more intensely around work and economic success. European societies, though hardly uniform, generally provide a little more space for passions that exist outside one’s profession. For many supporters of Rangers or Celtic, Saturday’s match is the emotional center of gravity for the week. Americans can be every bit as passionate, but the balance is different.

We even coined terms like fair-weather fan and bandwagon effect. In some ways, those are healthy ideas. Why shouldn’t someone support a club whose style they admire or whose values they share, even if the commitment is not lifelong?

I became an Arsenal supporter because I loved the way they played when I first began following European football—and because I admired Arsène Wenger. I admired the club even more when it stood by him during seasons many supporters considered disappointing.

The results had changed.

The principles had not.

I have long felt similarly about Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin. Critics often argued that he did just enough to keep his job. I saw something different. He represented continuity—the values of a franchise whose ownership has remained within the Rooney family since the 1930s, and whose identity has always been steadiness rather than spectacle.

Those are the institutions I find myself drawn toward—steady enough to survive disappointment without abandoning themselves.

No one forces us to support a team, whether in America or Europe. But the choices we make—and the cultures that shape those choices—are fascinating. They reveal not only what we value in sport, but how we understand loyalty itself.

The teams we choose say surprisingly little about football.

They say a great deal about community, belonging, and ourselves.

“Anthems and Strange Emotions They Stir”

As strategy, however, it tells us very little.

With the nation’s 250th anniversary still fresh in mind, the Revolutionary War offers a reminder of how wars are actually won. George Washington fought what we would now call an asymmetric campaign. Rather than seeking decisive battles against a better-equipped British Army, he focused on preserving the Continental Army itself. The British, contrary to Hollywood, did not burn every colonial city or systematically destroy American infrastructure. They fought a war intended to restore political control, not annihilate the society they hoped eventually to govern. They possessed the capacity to inflict far greater destruction than they ultimately chose to. They understood that destruction alone would not constitute victory.

The British won many battles. They lost the war because military superiority could not compensate for political objectives they ultimately proved unable to achieve.

The Civil War offers a different lesson. Sherman devastated much of the South because his objective was to break the Confederacy’s capacity—and ultimately its will—to continue the war. But strategies that succeed against one adversary often fail against another. Iran’s government appears to possess a remarkably high tolerance for suffering, particularly the suffering of its own people. Coercion is never one-size-fits-all.

This raises a broader question about American strategy. The Powell Doctrine at least offered a coherent theory of victory: define a clear objective, apply overwhelming force, and leave once that objective had been achieved. In the current Iran crisis, however, the objective remains difficult to identify. Are we seeking to prevent a nuclear capability? To compel regime change? To secure the Strait of Hormuz? To deter future regional aggression?

One cannot apply overwhelming force toward an undefined end.

Modern warfare repeatedly demonstrates that strengths can become weaknesses. Precision weapons, unmatched military budgets, and global reach are extraordinary advantages. But they can also encourage the illusion that destroying targets is the same as achieving political objectives. It is not. Tactical victories—eliminating commanders, destroying facilities, demonstrating capability—may contribute to strategy, but they are not strategy itself.

There are options available to the United States. But boasting about American military performance means very little, particularly when America already spends more on defense than any other nation by a wide margin. Capability answers the question, Can we?

Strategy answers the question, Why are we?

Until we define victory, talk of domination tells us very little.

By the goals he scored.

In the 2026 World Cup, Black players representing Norway, Switzerland, Austria, England, and many other nations contribute with remarkably little public controversy. Diversity, once a source of political debate, has become ordinary.

But recent remarks by a Spanish politician questioning whether France is truly “French,” along with crude comments from a Paraguayan official after an emotional defeat, have returned questions of national identity and football to public discussion.

World Cup eligibility is not a DNA test. FIFA permits players to represent a country through birth, ancestry, or, in limited circumstances, naturalization coupled with a substantial period of residency. Most footballers dream of representing the nation where they grew up or where their family roots lie. Yet the World Cup is also the sport’s greatest stage, and one outstanding tournament can transform a career.

This year has already offered an example. Vozinha, Cabo Verde’s 40-year-old goalkeeper, captivated audiences around the world and is now reportedly attracting interest well beyond his current second-division Portuguese club. Many others will leave this tournament with opportunities they did not possess a month ago.

Players choose national teams for reasons that are rarely simple. Loyalty matters, but so do opportunity and practicality. Breaking into France, Brazil, or England may be far more difficult than becoming a regular for another country to which a player is equally entitled. For those already competing in Europe’s top leagues, representing a distant home nation often means long travel, interrupted club schedules, and demanding qualification campaigns. Some African internationals have also spoken openly about federations that struggle to meet financial commitments or provide adequate support. None of that makes them less patriotic. Complaining about one’s country is something many of us do. It is often a sign of investment rather than indifference.

For Americans, the conversation feels different. The United States is a young nation built by immigrants, and most of us have grown comfortable with that reality in sport. Even Donald Trump, whose immigration policies have been arguably the most restrictive in American history, supported efforts that helped Folarin Balogun overturn a suspension for the United States while simultaneously advocating broader immigration policies that would have made many similar stories more difficult. It is one of those curious contradictions that politics occasionally produces.

Americans have long understood that athletic excellence has a way of eroding rigid ideas about identity. College football learned that lesson during integration in the South. International football has been learning a similar one for decades.

Choosing a national team is, in its own way, a compliment. It is a declaration of belonging. If a player qualifies under the rules, earns a place in the squad, and contributes to his country’s success, that contribution stands on its own.

International football has always been a story about nations.

Increasingly, it is also a story about migration.

Those two realities are no longer in conflict.

They are simply the modern world.

Today’s French team includes players who could have represented African nations—or even other European countries—through birth or ancestry.

But today they wear blue. On Bastille Day.

Vive la France.

“Anthems and the Emotions They Stir”

He served as a JAG officer. He became the loyal lieutenant of John McCain, whose approval carried unusual moral weight with many Americans. Graham opposed Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries and ultimately supported Evan McMullin. Yet once Trump prevailed, Graham gradually settled beneath the new Republican tent. After January 6, he seemed briefly prepared to step away, only to return once more as one of Trump’s most reliable allies.

We often speak of such choices as though they are simple, as though courage and calculation can always be cleanly separated. Politics is rarely so accommodating. Trumpism evolved far beyond the rhetoric that first accompanied it, and those who remained within the movement continually faced decisions about conviction, influence, and survival. Some, like Jeff Flake and Paul Ryan, chose to step aside. Graham chose to remain—not only in Washington, but at the center of events, even traveling abroad in the last few days to advocate continued support for Ukraine.

And then this weekend he died.

His passing sharpens the question that hovered over his career.

Which Lindsey Graham was the real one?

The man who stood beside John McCain, speaking the language of constitutional conservatism? Or the man who stood beside Donald Trump as the Republican Party remade itself?

Perhaps that is the wrong question.

Perhaps Graham’s career illustrates something older and more uncomfortable: the tension between principle and influence. Some politicians preserve their convictions by leaving the arena. Others remain, believing that proximity to power allows them to shape events for the better, even if doing so demands compromises they once thought impossible. History offers examples of both, and rarely judges either as cleanly as contemporaries would like.

That does not absolve Lindsey Graham of responsibility for the choices he made. But it may explain why his career has remained so difficult to understand.

He leaves the stage having answered many political questions.

He never quite answered the one about himself.

“Underdogs on the March”

But there is another consequence we rarely acknowledge.

Mass deportation makes the country poorer.

Removing workers shrinks the available labor force, particularly in industries already struggling to hire. It removes consumers from local economies. Rent goes unpaid. Restaurants lose customers. Stores lose business. Employers lose experienced workers and must spend time and money replacing them. Many undocumented workers also pay taxes, contribute to Social Security, and participate in the economic life of their communities. These costs rarely appear in political slogans, but they are costs nonetheless.

The administration has largely framed the debate in moral and legal absolutes. We are told that “we don’t have a country” without aggressive enforcement, and that the issue is simply one of obeying the law. That leaves little room to discuss the inevitable tradeoffs. Every public policy has costs, and immigration enforcement is no exception.

Reasonable people may disagree about the proper level of immigration enforcement. A sovereign nation has both the authority and the responsibility to secure its borders. But serious disagreement should not prevent honest accounting. Some of the costs of mass deportation are moral. Some are constitutional. Some are humanitarian.

Some are economic.

That is the point too often overlooked.

Policies that depart from our constitutional traditions often impose costs beyond the ethical ones. They make us less free, but they also make us less prosperous. A smaller labor force produces less. A diminished consumer base spends less. Businesses invest less confidently when uncertainty surrounds significant portions of their workforce. None of this eliminates the government’s right to enforce immigration law lawfully. It simply reminds us that enforcement is never free.

Every raid has legal consequences.

It has human consequences.

It has constitutional consequences.

And it has economic consequences.

We should at least have the honesty to acknowledge all four.

“Cuba and the Costs We Pretend Not to See”

With Iran in crisis, the World Cup underway, and the 250th anniversary dominating headlines, another story surfaced almost unnoticed: another shooting in ICE custody. Since the departures of Rachel Good, Alex Pretti, and Kristi Noem, ICE and Homeland Security have operated more quietly. They continue detaining undocumented individuals, but without the theatrical displays that once seemed designed to frighten migrants and reassure certain voters. Former Senator Mullin appears to prefer silence over spectacle.

Silence, however, has its own dangers.

We have grown increasingly numb to images of masked agents making arrests, to the vast sums directed toward Homeland Security, and to the extraordinary authority entrusted to an agency whose day-to-day operations often remain opaque to the public. Much of its work unfolds beyond the view of local communities, journalists, and even those responsible for broader oversight. The public usually sees the outcomes, not the process.

We often attach names to tragedies—victims, officers, perpetrators. Names illuminate individual stories, but they can also distract from the larger structure that produced them. The deeper issue is not a single agent or a single incident. It is the system we have built, and the incentives we have allowed to govern it.

Whenever an institution conducts hundreds of thousands of encounters under conditions of limited transparency, imperfect screening, and enormous discretion, mistakes and occasional abuses become less surprising than inevitable. That observation is not unique to immigration enforcement. It applies to policing, prisons, intelligence agencies, and militaries alike. It is not that ICE agents are uniquely prone to misconduct, nor that protesters inevitably cross legal lines. It is the arithmetic of power itself: grant any institution sweeping authority without corresponding transparency, and abuses will eventually follow. We may blame the individuals involved, but responsibility also belongs to those who designed the system—and to the public that permits it to persist without sufficient scrutiny.

James Madison understood this long before the modern administrative state existed. He did not assume those entrusted with power would be unusually wicked. He assumed they would be human. That is why constitutional government disperses authority, balances competing institutions, and relies on accountability rather than virtue alone.

The danger, then, is rarely that institutions attract monsters.

It is that ordinary people, given extraordinary authority and too little scrutiny, will eventually make extraordinary mistakes.

That is the quiet machinery of power.

“Language, Permission, and the Comfort of Cruelty”

One of the most fascinating aspects of the World Cup has nothing to do with tactics or even the football itself. It is the way the tournament exposes how differently societies think about competition, fairness, and success.

Most of the world operates under a football system unlike anything Americans are accustomed to. No club is guaranteed a permanent place at the professional level. Through promotion and relegation, a team can fall from the top division all the way into what England calls “non-league” football. It does not happen often—resources, coaching, and talent usually protect the biggest clubs—but it can happen. And on the other side of the pyramid, clubs like Wrexham or Leicester City can climb toward the top with the right mix of investment, management, and a little luck. The same is true for players. Jamie Vardy famously rose from England's non-league football to Leicester City and eventually the Premier League, a reminder that in much of the world the path to the highest level remains open to both clubs and individuals.

The system rewards ambition and punishes failure. It is, in its own way, remarkably market-driven.

European competitions reinforce this philosophy. Successful clubs from smaller nations qualify for continental tournaments and earn the opportunity to face the giants of England, Spain, Germany, and Italy. It resembles March Madness in one important respect: smaller clubs get their chance on the biggest stage, and the knockout format means that, on the right night, anything is possible. Promotion stories are among the most inspiring in sports. Relegation stories are among the most devastating.

Americans embrace minor-league baseball and, increasingly, USL soccer. We enjoy local clubs and local professionals. But we are also comfortable with a system in which those clubs have no realistic path to the highest league. Likewise, when NFL or NBA teams perform poorly, we do not expect them to lose their place. In fact, fans sometimes root for losing seasons because they improve draft position—a system designed to promote competitive balance rather than punish failure.

That reflects a different philosophy. North American sports prize parity. Global football prizes mobility. Neither system is inherently superior, but they reward different values. One seeks to keep every franchise competitive. The other insists that clubs should be able to rise if they earn it and fall if they do not. Compared with American sports, global football places far greater emphasis on opportunity than protection.

Those differing assumptions help explain one of the tournament’s most controversial moments. After U.S. striker Folarin Balogun received a VAR-upgraded red card, President Trump publicly acknowledged calling FIFA to express his belief that the decision had been unfair. He said he did not tell officials what to do, but FIFA ultimately cleared Balogun to play against Belgium. Many Americans shrugged. They believed the original decision was harsh, wanted their best striker available, and were happy with the outcome.

Viewed through the lens of American sports, that reaction is understandable. We are accustomed to systems that intervene in the name of fairness, protect franchises from failure, and often accept powerful institutions shaping outcomes if the result seems beneficial. To many football supporters elsewhere, however, the appearance of political influence touching the integrity of competition feels profoundly uncomfortable.

Perhaps that is why the World Cup feels larger than sport. It does not simply showcase different styles of football. It reveals different ways of organizing competition, rewarding success, and defining fairness. In that sense, the World Cup does not merely mirror the real world. It offers a glimpse into the values that shape it.

“Why I Don’t Want the US to Become a Soccer Super Power”

There were reports this week that, amid everything else happening in the world, the administration is once again examining the Smithsonian—this time extending its attention beyond the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The concern, according to those reports, is that certain exhibits portray America in an unduly negative light.

The controversy is about more than museums.

Over the past two decades, the phrase administrative state has entered our political vocabulary, often paired with the more ominous deep state. In this telling, unelected bureaucrats frustrate the will of elected leaders and substitute their own preferences for those of the public.

Moments like this remind us why professional civil servants are not a flaw in democratic government. They are one of its safeguards.

We do not want the interpretation of our nation’s history, values, and cultural memory rewritten every time political power changes hands. Museums, archives, and historical institutions should be guided primarily by historians, curators, and scholars—unelected, yes, but ultimately accountable through elected officials, professional standards, and the rule of law. Their responsibility is not to flatter the present moment. It is to preserve the past as faithfully and honestly as the evidence allows.

The same principle applies well beyond museums. We rely on career military officers rather than partisan generals, career diplomats rather than campaign volunteers, career scientists rather than political operatives, and professional archivists rather than whichever administration happens to hold office. In each case, expertise and institutional memory provide continuity that democratic politics, by design, cannot.

That continuity is one of the great, if often overlooked, achievements of the modern state. Whether the subject is public health, environmental regulation, military planning, historical preservation, or immigration administration, governments necessarily depend upon professionals whose work extends beyond a single election cycle. Bureaucracies are imperfect. They can become inefficient, insular, and occasionally resistant to change. But they also preserve knowledge, maintain competence, and provide stability when politics becomes turbulent.

The administrative state is not a rival to democracy. It is one of the structures that prevents democracy from being rewritten every four years.

Every election should change policy.

It should not require us to rewrite history.

Explanations are offered, laments rehearsed, and the contrast with our far more decorated women’s side is invoked with ritual solemnity. Yes, we usually survive CONCACAF’s qualifying gauntlet, slipping past Costa Rica or Honduras with enough competence to book passage. But the World Cup is a different realm entirely, one in which the top ten nations play with a level of sophistication and relentlessness we encounter only in these quadrennial examinations.

Mexico, our greatest North American rival, remains, for all its admirable qualities, a half-step below Europe's aristocracy, whose squads are stocked with players hardened by the weekly demands of the world’s elite clubs. And yet, perhaps because we were hosts, perhaps because we began brightly, perhaps because we could point to players like Folarin Balogun and Christian Pulisic—men who have scored meaningful goals in meaningful leagues—there was genuine optimism. Even among my own circle of local players, a reasonably discerning bunch, 84 percent believed we would dispatch Belgium, a nation whose footballing pedigree is substantial even if its current roster lacks the incandescent stars of recent vintages.

When President Trump intervened to accelerate the bureaucratic machinery that made the suspended Balogun eligible, optimism swelled further. It became one of the defining storylines of the tournament. The intervention reflected something many may find admirable—a president eager to see his country succeed on the world’s biggest sporting stage. But it also illustrated a recurring American temptation: believing that enthusiasm, influence, or administrative solutions can substitute for the slower work of developing footballing culture. Balogun made us better. He could not make us Belgium.

From the opening whistle, Belgium made such questions moot. Freese was forced into action within minutes, and soon Charles De Ketelaere arrived at the back post to turn in Nicolas Raskin’s low cross for his first international goal. His second came later, a forceful header over the 38-year-old Tim Ream, who endured a night he will not wish to remember. Malik Tillman briefly restored parity through a deflection that owed more to fortune than design, but Belgium’s immediate reply told the truer story.

The difference was not merely technical. Belgium anticipated danger sooner, escaped pressure more comfortably, and seemed to know where the next pass would be before it was played. The United States spent much of the evening reacting rather than dictating. It was less a question of effort than of accumulated football education—the product of players raised in one of the world’s deepest football cultures.

The second half brought more of the same: two additional Belgian goals, several near misses, and only one moment requiring Thibaut Courtois to exert himself—when Balogun finally wriggled free. Belgium played with the serenity of a side accustomed to high stakes: comfortable passing out of pressure, unhurried in possession, yet capable of accelerating the tempo at will. Soccer is a sport of moments, yes, but tournaments reward the ability to create chances, convert them, and deny them. This single match revealed, with clinical clarity, the gulf that still exists between the United States and the sport’s upper tier. A win over Paraguay in group play, however admirable, does not constitute proof of parity with Germany or France.

And so the perennial questions return. Is our pay-to-play system throttling the development of our most promising prospects? Does the absence of promotion and relegation dull competitive edge? Are our best athletes still choosing other sports? The difficulty is that we rarely receive enough meaningful tests against this caliber of opposition to isolate any single explanation. Our diagnostic opportunities arrive only every four years.

Meanwhile, basketball offers a quiet warning. A sport we once dominated with near-feudal authority has become fiercely competitive as the rest of the world steadily closed the gap. Excellence is never permanent. It must continually be renewed.

We have the crowds, the enthusiasm, even a national government willing to involve itself in the fortunes of the team. But none of that substitutes for the fundamentals. Passion cannot compress generations of football culture into a few promising tournaments.

The uncomfortable reality is that wanting to become a soccer power is very different from being one.

In the Round of 32, U.S. striker Folarin Balogun was involved in a challenge on a Bosnia defender. The referee initially allowed play to continue, but VAR intervened, recommending an on‑field review. After watching the replay, the referee upgraded the decision to a straight red card. Under the rules, Balogun—a star for first division French team Monaco and scorer of three goals for the US in World Cup—would miss tonight’s match against Belgium.

On Sunday, FIFA invoked a clause allowing flexibility in disciplinary decisions, clearing Balogun to play.

President Trump publicly praised the reversal soon after. Media reports suggested he made a personal call on the matter. His relationship with FIFA president Gianni Infantino has been visible for some time, most notably during the 2025 Club World Cup—widely seen as a dress rehearsal for this tournament—and the awkward moment when a Chelsea player had to ask Trump to step aside from the podium so the team could celebrate. Infantino was widely criticized for that episode, and for the relationship that produced it.

The original red card was not impulsive. It was made with deliberation, and the contact fell well within the definition of serious foul play. As with all such decisions, it is easy to second‑guess, because red cards are harsh by nature and because fans can always point to occasions when similar contact went unpunished. But this call was comfortably within the referee’s discretion.

What is not discretionary is the automatic suspension that follows. “Historians” of the sport often cite 1962, when Brazilian great Garrincha was allowed to play after a red card. But pointing to the rule itself—and to every other occasion—makes that precedent difficult to defend. And having the president of the host nation rumored to have intervened is a terrible look for a sport that insists on neutrality.

The timing is politically fascinating. Last week, President Trump expressed frustration that the Supreme Court did not overturn birthright citizenship, despite the clear language of the Fourteenth Amendment stating that those born in the United States are citizens. Balogun was born in New York to Nigerian parents traveling from London; when his mother was deemed too pregnant to fly, he was born here. It is touching, in a way, to see him celebrated, even defended and advocated for. But athletes, entertainers, and the wealthy often find themselves exceptions to rules that bind everyone else.

The words of the Fourteenth Amendment are straightforward. The rule governing red‑card suspensions is even more so.