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‘The United States is the villain of our story.' Nationalism surges in Mexico amid Trump threats

‘The United States is the villain of our story.' Nationalism surges in Mexico amid Trump threats

MEXICO CITY — At the entrance to Mexico City's largest park lies a towering marble monument to six young military cadets killed in battle.
The Niños Héroes — 'boy heroes' — died while defending Mexico's capital during the Mexican-American War, which broke out 179 years ago this week.
That conflict may not loom large in the minds of most Americans. But in Mexico, which in defeat was forced to cede more than half of its territory to the U.S., memories of the war and other military quarrels with the nation's powerful northern neighbor remain deeply felt.
Today, Mexico is once again locked in battle with the United States, this time facing an American president who is hurling insults, tariffs and threatening U.S. drone strikes here. Many see it as just the latest chapter in an age-old tale of U.S. aggression.
'In Mexico there's a perception that the United States is the villain of our story,' said historian Alejandro Rosas. 'That's the narrative you grow up with, it's what they teach you in school. We've been victims of the United States forever.'
The Niños Héroes are often viewed as the embodiment of courage, teenagers who fought like men against a northern invader. Their faces have appeared on currency, Streets bear their names, children learn about them in school.
At the white marble monument in Chapultepec Park, which this week was crowded with families enjoying spring break, many stopped to take pictures in front of the monument where the remains of the Niños Heroes are entombed.
'It's unfair,' said Monserrat Martínez Hernández, 20, a college student who snapped selfies alongside her mother, sister and two cousins.
'They already took away half our territory,' she said of the United States. 'Now they want to abuse their power again, this time from an economic perspective.'
Since Trump took office in January, Mexico has been seized by a wave of nationalistic zeal.
On TikTok, users have demanded a boycott of American products, filming themselves pouring Coca Cola down the drain. Companies have embraced the red, green and white of the Mexican flag in ad campaigns.
After the government announced a relaunch of the 'Hecho en Mexico,' or 'Made in Mexico,' seal on locally produced products, Grupo Modelo said it would print the slogan on its beer bottle caps.
Leading the way is Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has both stoked — and benefited from — the surge in national pride.
In the face of Trump's repeated attacks, Sheinbaum has had to walk a thin line, appeasing him enough to try to avert potentially catastrophic tariffs while also showing fellow Mexicans that she is defending national sovereignty.
She has cooperated with Trump on several key measures, sending thousands of National Guard troops to fortify the northern border and transferring dozens of suspected cartel members wanted by the U.S.
But she has pushed back when possible, suggesting Mexico would retaliate if the Trump administration carried out drone strikes in its territory, pushing a constitutional measure that effectively bans the planting of U.S. GMO corn and recently asking television stations to pull what she called 'discriminatory' ads produced by the Trump administration warning against undocumented migration. Her approval ratings — which hover around 80% — are among the highest in the world for a head of state.
She seems to work the word for sovereignty — soberano — into almost every speech.
Tellingly, she has often invoked history in her effort to rally support.
This month she marked the anniversary of the sixth-month long U.S. occupation of the port city of Veracruz in 1914.
'Mexico is and always will be a great country,' Sheinbaum told a stadium filled with smartly dressed naval officers. 'We are neither a protectorate nor a colony of any foreign nation.'
Recently, Sheinbaum used the word 'traitor' to describe an opposition party member who voiced support for a U.S. effort to designate drug cartels as 'terrorist' groups. She compared him with the conservative Mexicans who, in the 1850s, invited the French to help overthrow the liberal government of President Benito Juarez. The French ended up occupying Mexico for several years, briefly installing Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, an Austrian duke, as emperor.
But it is the history of U.S. antagonism, with its roots in manifest destiny and President Polk's obsession with territorial expansion, that Mexicans best remember. In 1845, the U.S. annexed Texas, a move Mexico rejected. After Mexican troops attacked U.S. soldiers in Texas on April 25, 1846, the U.S. formally declared war. The 1847 battle over Mexico City is recalled on the U.S. side in the opening line of the Marines' Hymn: 'From the Halls of Montezuma ...'
The U.S. and Mexico share a 2,000-mile long border and deep cultural, economic and family ties. Americans are largely welcomed with open arms and warm hospitality when they visit Mexico's vibrant cities, archaeological ruins and vast beaches.
But if an undercurrent of hostility is at times detectable, Rosas says it is related to how Mexicans are educated about their history. While neighboring countries often have territorial disputes, he said Mexican governments, particularly those associated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, made the U.S. the boogeyman in order to drum up domestic support, he said.
'They needed a shared enemy,' Rosas said. 'So they embraced very defensive, nationalistic and anti-interventionist politics.' It's no mistake, he said, that the war between the U.S. and Mexico is often referred to as 'the United States intervention.'
At the Niños Héroes monument, Mexicans reflected on that past and possible conflicts — economic ones — looming in the future.
Felix de la Rosa, 64, a chemical engineer from the state of Coahuila, which borders Texas, says he visits the monument every time he's in Mexico City.
'As Mexicans, we have to unite for this new battle — which is a trade war,' he said. 'But we shouldn't bow our heads without fighting. I think the boy heroes are a great example, and that is how we should act, with great courage and dignity in the face of this new battle.'
But for some, the lesson of history is that Mexico may again suffer the fate of being neighbor to one of the most powerful countries in the world.
'The truth is, our country doesn't have the economic strength they have,' said Gerardo Santos, a 33-year-old businessman. 'Our country is weaker, and President Trump knows this and takes advantage of it.'
'In the end, the gringos will win again,' he said. 'There's nothing we can do about a man like Trump. The guy is crazy.'
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Trump can't save Olympic sports through executive order, but he can by funding them
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Trump can't save Olympic sports through executive order, but he can by funding them

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Commentary: Paramount appeased Trump — but now it has to battle Colbert and all his friends
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Commentary: Paramount appeased Trump — but now it has to battle Colbert and all his friends

There may be a new entrant in the annals of corporate hole-digging: Media titan Paramount, which owns CBS and recently said it's canceling the top-rated "Late Show with Stephen Colbert." Paramount said it needs to cancel the Colbert show for 'financial reasons' and leaked reports likely sourced to the company suggest the show loses around $40 million per year. But the decision reeks of Trumpian subterfuge, putting Paramount in the fraught corporate position of picking sides in one of President Trump's many disputes over business and cultural priorities. Paramount plans to merge this year with media firm Skydance, to help stabilize its finances and ease the transition from legacy media behemoth to a nimbler streaming operation. The two companies agreed on the $8 billion deal last year, when Joe Biden was president. The Securities and Exchange Commission approved the deal in February. 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President Trump's executive order on college sports: Here's what it actually means
President Trump's executive order on college sports: Here's what it actually means

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday morning in the nation's capital, NCAA president Charlie Baker spoke to a few dozen members and guests of the National Press Club — an operation located in Washington's downtown, just a short walk to the White House. Just hours later, the association's years-long fight for federal intervention in college sports received, perhaps, a boost from the man living just a few blocks away. President Donald Trump released his long-awaited executive order related to college athletics, announcing in a five-page order titled 'SAVING COLLEGE SPORTS' that he is directing members of his cabinet to create policy around several aspects of the industry that protect the NCAA and conferences from enforcing and creating rules to govern it. But what exactly does Trump's executive order mean? What will it change, if anything, about college sports' athlete compensation and transfer environment? The short answer, at least for now, is not very much. The longer answer is … well … there are still questions. What are the most important items in the order? Trump's executive order has been a long time coming. In fact, just last week Yahoo Sports obtained a copy of a draft of the order, which isn't wholly different to the one he signed and released on Thursday. Above anything else, the order's preamble describes the college athletics landscape as having been subject to unfair court rulings that 'created an out-of-control, rudderless system' which is 'under unprecedented threat.' 'Waves of recent litigation against collegiate athletics governing rules have eliminated limits on athlete compensation, pay-for-play recruiting inducements, and transfers between universities, unleashing a sea change that threatens the viability of college sports,' Trump writes in the order. He goes on to write critically that some schools are paying their athletes as much as $50 million this year from a combination of House settlement-related revenue share and third-party NIL. 'A national solution is urgently needed to prevent this situation from deteriorating beyond repair and to protect non-revenue sports, including many women's sports,' he writes. How he plans to do this is to direct various members of his cabinet — the attorney general, secretary of labor, secretary of education, etc. — to create policy around several concepts that the NCAA and conferences have been requesting help on from Congress for years. Among those: Protecting scholarships for non-revenue sports: The executive order, most notably, requires schools to maintain or even increase the number of scholarships they provide to non-revenue sports. This is geared to protect Olympic and women's sports that are at risk of elimination as schools direct more funding away from those and to the sports that generate the revenue like football and men's basketball. Those with $125 million or budgets (most of the power league schools) must provide more scholarship opportunities than they did last year, for instance. Those with budgets of $50 million must provide at least the same, as seen in a screen shot of the section here. Prohibit third-party, 'pay-for-play': You might call this the prohibition of booster collective pay to athletes, which, in a way, codifies the House settlement terms that prohibit collective pay to athletes if they are not deemed to be for legitimate endorsement or commercial opportunities. This issue is at the heart of negotiations among attorneys that is expected to result in a resolution soon that permits collectives to operate in a more open capacity than first thought. The executive order reinforces that provision in the House settlement. How does Trump plan to enforce these parameters? Well, that remains a bit murky, but he suggests in the order that members of his cabinet, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, have 30 days to create a plan on the enforcement of such, including potentially withholding federal funding for violators, opening up Title IX investigations, etc. Athlete employment: Trump directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to 'clarify the status of college athletes' — an obvious gesture toward the ongoing debate over courts potentially deeming college athletes as employees. As stated in the order preamble, Trump is against college athletes becoming employees and is clearly, with this directive, ordering cabinet members and the NLRB — he appoints the board — to rule that college athletes are students. Ironically enough, while many college leaders fight against employment, some of them believe collective bargaining is the only solution for the industry. Limited liability protection: This is another issue the NCAA and conferences have spent millions of dollars and six years lobbying for. They want to be protected from legal challenges so they can enforce their rules over things such as transfers, roster limits, booster pay — many of which have been deemed illegal by courts. Trump clearly disagrees with these court rulings, as he notes in the preamble. The order directs the attorney general and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to create policies to protect the 'long-term availability of college athletic scholarship and opportunities' when such is 'unreasonably challenged under antitrust' law. The attorney general and the FTC have 60 days to create such a plan, the order says. What are the immediate impacts of the executive order? The answer here is potentially … nothing. Trump's cabinet members — many of whom are quite busy with other more pressing matters — will need to make policy around these subjects. The specifics of that policy will dictate exactly how pivotal, if at all, this order is. What is a certainty is that whatever policies are created are not law and will likely be subject to legal scrutiny. Congressional action and court rulings are law in this country — not executive orders, legal experts tell Yahoo Sports. Baker even suggested this during his talk Thursday morning. 'You can't fix this stuff from executive order,' he said. 'Our focus for now really needs to be trying to get stuff dealt with through the legislative process.' As it turns out, Wednesday was a historic day for college sports with regard to congressional legislation. An all-encompassing federal college sports bill made its way out of committee for the first time since the NCAA's lobbying efforts began nearly six years ago. The SCORE Act, bipartisan but pro-Republican and NCAA-friendly legislation that many Democrats are against, received the necessary votes to advance out of committees and is eligible for debate on the House floor when members return in September from their traditional summer break. In many ways, the Score Act grants the NCAA and conferences similar protections as Trump's order. Above anything, Trump's executive order may get Congress to more urgently and swiftly push the bill across the goal line. However, if it does advance out of the House, the SCORE Act faces stiff pushback in a divided U.S. Senate, where at least seven Democrats are needed to overcome the filibuster and reach the 60-vote margin for any bill passage. The Senate, though, has been working toward the introduction of its own legislation, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, who, much like Trump, has made college sports regulation a priority. He's been in negotiations now for months with several Democrats, most notably Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal and Cory Booker. No agreement has been reached despite more than a year of intense talks. Will Trump's executive order change that? It's one of many questions on the topic that remains a mystery.

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