Trump Sees World Cup Visitors as a Threat, But America Sees a Chance for Hospitality
Plus: How the UFC and MMA went from outsiders to the sporting and political establishment—to the point where they’re being used for “diplomacy.”
Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Be better than this loser this week—stay true to your roots and don't root for your girlfriend's team.
I had a great newsletter for this week planned, but after playing 102 holes of golf in one day my travel back home hit a snag and I wasn't able to write. Fortunately, two Reason staffers helped cover the major collisions of sports and politics this week, so I still have plenty of content to share with you. Thank you, colleagues!
Don't miss sports coverage from Jason Russell and Reason.
Locker Room Links
- Pride Night controversies are back because some San Francisco Giants players who were forced to wear a rainbow hat wrote Bible verses on them.
- Brendan Sorsby caused a mess for the NCAA, but now he's jumping ship for the NFL—if they'll let him.
- Congratulations to the Knicks (begrudgingly) on their incredible, statistically unlikely, championship.
- Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are mad about the cost of NFL Sunday Ticket.
- What might LIV Golf 2.0 look like?
- Elsewhere in Reason: "Your Uber Driver May Soon Be Unionized. At What Cost?"
- A bunch of Democratic attorneys general sent a letter to Formula 1 and its sanctioning body, the FIA, telling them to ban nicotine pouch sponsorships (like with Zyn).
- Speaking of nicotine, this is incredibly silly, yet perhaps not the worst form of tobacco prohibition in the state of Massachusetts.
Amazing news coming out of Massachusetts this week, I've been riveted to this incredibly stupid drama. A few seniors on the Ipswitch lacrosse team were photographed holding cigars at their graduation (they were 18yo seniors), which was a violation of the no tobacco policy for the…
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) June 12, 2026
Friend or Foe?
Are global soccer fans and players terrorists, or people who should be welcomed because they'll come to love America?
Last week, our links section covered the immigration troubles of a few major figures in the World Cup (two players, one referee). But regular fans (and players' moms) have also had trouble getting to America to partake in the fun. "For the first time ever, Senegal was unable to bring an official fan delegation to the World Cup due to the U.S. immigration restrictions," as Reason's Matthew Petti writes. "The Ivory Coast also had to cancel its fan delegation." Both are on the long list of 39 countries that are fully or partially banned under President Donald Trump's travel ban (previously known as the "Muslim ban"). So are Haiti and Iran.
Other countries have struggled to get to the U.S., too, which could make for lonely rooting sections. As Petti writes: "When 150 Ghanaian fans applied to travel as a group, only three received visas. Abu Kass, the head of the Jordanian fans' association, told the BBC that only one Jordanian fan received a visa. He himself was rejected."
All that combined may just be a small fraction of those trying to travel here for the World Cup. Regardless, aside from the Trump administration, Americans seem to be welcoming World Cup visitors with open arms. This is a beautiful sight:
🗣️ "I want to say thank you to Algeria for choosing Lawrence, Kansas." 🇺🇸
The locals in USA are all getting behind Algeria. 🇩🇿 pic.twitter.com/e2kejLtxjb
— Dean Ammi (@AlgerianFooty) June 8, 2026
Then there's Freddy, some German guy who everyone has seen on their X feed since he landed in America and became famous for getting excited about normal American things, like Taco Bell and Buc-ee's.
We can see visitors to America as a threat, or as an opportunity. The Trump administration sees many potential visitors as the former and turns them away—which is only going to make them feel animosity toward America. As Petti writes, "It's strange behavior to throw a party and turn away guests at the door." Regular Americans, it seems, see soccer tourists as an opportunity to welcome visitors with open arms and share our great hospitality. One of these is better at spreading American values than the other.
Outsiders in the Cage
I was actually looking forward to watching the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House on TV. Would it be weird? Cringe? Cool? At the very least, I was hoping for a good introduction to a sport that's much more popular than you'd think but I know all too little about.
Unfortunately, I got trapped in an airport for most of the event and have nothing interesting to say about it. Thankfully, Reason's Billy Binion attended the media preview and published a great piece about it Sunday morning. "A series of cage matches is an unusual choice to celebrate the history of the Founding," he wrote. "But it is arguably the perfect event to capture this moment in history."
Mixed Martial Arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship were once outsiders, in multiple senses of the word. In the sporting sense, they were newcomers trying to battle the historic establishment of combat sports: boxing. In the political sense, they were outsiders with little political support: MMA was once banned in 36 states.
But now, as Billy writes, the White House "is no longer a place where outsiders are unwelcome by the establishment. It is a place where outsiders have become the establishment."
Obviously that's true in a political sense, now that UFC is welcome on the White House lawn and its president and CEO, Dana White, is good friends with Trump. But it's also probably true in the sporting sense, too. A major boxing match usually still gets more attention than a major UFC event, but UFC has more consistency and dedicated fans who tune in more frequently. Likewise, UFC undercard fighters are getting paid more than boxing's undercard fighters.
Perhaps the similarities between Trump and the UFC going from outsider to the establishment is the real reason Trump likes the sport so much.
Diplomatic Cage Fight
That would help explain why UFC is now going to get some taxpayer money for "cage fights for diplomacy."
As, again, Matthew Petti explains it, the agreement signed last week by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Dana White is less sexy than the headlines sound. "It enlists the UFC into the 'sports diplomacy' programs run by the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs," he wrote. "The bureau spent around $52.5 million on 'citizen exchanges,' which includes sports diplomacy and other non-academic cultural events, in FY 2025….In other words, rather than turning the United Nations into the Thunderdome, the new deal seems to be a way to give a leg up to a private sports league."
It's still unclear exactly what will come out of the agreement, but if it means UFC is getting taxpayer dollars, hopefully it's more useful than the self-defense seminar they did for the FBI.
Regardless, it's funny to me that the State Department has a small Office of Sports Diplomacy, the aim of which is "advancing U.S. foreign policy priorities through the universal language of sports." I have a feeling the aforementioned German guy named Freddy and a Pistons fan in South Korea have accomplished more for American sports diplomacy with no taxpayer dollars than the Office of Sports Diplomacy has.
Replay of the Week
Pulisic fighting through two defenders, McKennie's pass (shot?), the lucky deflection in—so much about this goal felt very American.
THE FIRST GOAL FOR THE #USMNT IN THE FIFA WORLD CUP 2026 pic.twitter.com/pvMAukJCou
— U.S. Soccer Men's National Team (@USMNT) June 13, 2026
That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real soccer game of the week—not the World Cup, but Halifax Tides vs. Vancouver Rise in Canada's Northern Super League (I love that this game is at 10 a.m. on a Thursday).
