WASHINGTON — Native American groups have hit back at President Donald Trump’s threat to block a new stadium for the Washington Commanders if the team does not bring back its former name — a term that Native Americans view as a slur.

The team dropped that moniker and related logos in 2020 after years of pressure from indigenous groups.

“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington R——- Football Team,” Trump posted Sunday on Truth Social, using the team’s old name. And he threatened to block a deal for a new stadium that would bring the team back to the capital from suburban Maryland.

The president likely has the power to scuttle or at least impede the stadium deal because the federal government has ultimate authority over the District of Columbia.

On January 6, two weeks before leaving office, President Joe Biden signed a short-term spending bill into law that included a provision transferring control of land for the stadium to the D.C. government for the next 99 years.

The stadium would be built on the site of the old Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium two miles east of the Capitol. The team played there for 36 seasons, from its opening in 1961 until 1996. It was renamed for RFK – father of the current secretary of health and human services – in 1969, the year after his assassination while running for president.

The team and the D.C. city government struck a deal in April that would have the Commanders invest $2.7 billion toward a new 65,000 stadium, with the city contributing about $1.1 billion. City leaders envision a 170 acre development that would rejuvenate that part of the city.

The president cannot unilaterally rescind the district’s control of the land.

But he could cause disruptions through the National Capital Planning Commission, which must approve the design.

The president directly appoints three of its 12 commissioners, plus three agency heads who also sit on the commission. Republican congressional leaders also serve, meaning that Trump allies vastly outnumber the city’s designees.

The team changed its name and logo in July 2020. Protests over racism and police killings were at their peak and the team had faced criticism for years for using a name that Native American groups – and the Oxford Dictionary, among others – describe as dated and offensive.

For two seasons the team was called simply the Washington Football Team, becoming the Commanders in February 2022.

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was serious about his threat to derail the stadium deal if the team refused to revert to the name it had used from 1933 to 2020.

She asserted that he had the support of local residents and football fans.

“If you actually poll this issue with sports fans across the country, and even in this city,” she said, “people actually do support the president’s position on this.” Native American groups are vehemently opposed, however.

The Association on American Indian Affairs reiterated its view that sports mascots with Native American themes do not honor indigenous peoples but rather reduce them to caricatures.

“The idea that Native Nations broadly support the use of these mascots is false,” the group said in a statement. “Hundreds if not thousands of Native Nations, Native organizations, scholars, and youth leaders have repeatedly and clearly expressed that Native ‘themed’ mascots are offensive and dehumanizing.”

The National Congress of American Indians also condemned Trump’s stance, saying it “unequivocally opposes” any effort to revive mascots that demean Indigenous communities.

“Imagery and fan behaviors that mock, demean and dehumanize Native people have no place in modern society,” the group’s president, Mark Macarro, said in a statement.

Trump has publicly advocated for the previous, offensive name at least since 2013.

When then-President Barack Obama described the name as inappropriate, Trump chastised him on Twitter, writing that “our country has far bigger problems! FOCUS on them, not nonsense.”

Commanders owner Josh Harris, who bought the organization for $6 billion in 2023, said in February that players and fans alike have embraced the current name and he did not intend to change it again.

Trump has also sought to pressure the Cleveland Guardians, a Major League Baseball team, to revert to a name it abandoned in 2022.

A group called Cultural Survival blasted Trump.

“Calls to bring back racist mascots and slurs in sports are outdated and harmful. Indigenous communities have worked for decades to end offensive stereotypes and demand respect in public life,” the group said in a statement.

While tribal advocacy groups overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump’s pressure campaign, a group called the Native American Guardians Association sees no problem.

That group lauded his “call to return common sense and sanity back to our nation. … Virtually all Americans, to include American Indians, are fed up with cancel culture.”

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

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Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News. It is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

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