It’s no secret how President Donald Trump feels about sports teams turning away from Native American mascots. He’s repeatedly called for the return of the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, claiming their recent rebrands were part of a “woke” agenda designed to erase history.
But one surprising team has really gotten the president’s attention: the Massapequa Chiefs.
The Long Island school district has refused to change its logo and name under a mandate from New York state banning schools from using team mascots appropriating Indigenous culture. Schools were given two years to rebrand, but Massapequa is the lone holdout, having missed the June 30 deadline to debut a new logo.
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The district lost an initial lawsuit it filed against the state but now has the federal government on its side. In May, Trump’s Department of Education intervened on the district’s behalf, claiming the state’s mascot ban is itself discriminatory.
Massapequa’s Chiefs logo — an American Indian wearing a yellow feathered headdress — is expected to still be prominently displayed when the fall sports season kicks off soon, putting the quiet Long Island hamlet at the center of a political firestorm.
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The district is now a key “battleground,” said Oliver Roberts, a Massapequa alum and the lawyer representing the school board in its fresh lawsuit against New York claiming that the ban is unconstitutional and discriminatory.
The Trump administration claims New York’s mascot ban violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funds from engaging in discriminatory behavior based on race, color or national origin — teeing up a potentially precedent-setting fight.
The intervention on behalf of Massapequa follows a pattern for a White House that has aggressively applied civil rights protections to police “reverse discrimination” and coerced schools and universities into policy concessions by withholding federal funds.
“Our goal is to assist nationally,” Roberts said. “It’s us putting forward our time and effort to try and assist with this national movement and push back against the woke bureaucrats trying to cancel our country’s history and tradition.”
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