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from that day on, any semblance of taking a knee – and standing in unity with the movement started by Kaepernick – has been rejected by much of white America

right before kickoff, players from both teams met at midfield and linked arms for what was billed as a “Moment Of Unity” following the performance of the Star-Spangled Banner and Lift Every Voice and Sing, commonly known as the Black national anthem. (The Texans had stayed in the locker room for both songs.)

These messages do not denigrate the military. They do not attack white people (in fact they were endorsed by white players on both teams). They do not tell people who to vote for. They do not call for the flag to be burned. They just call for simple goals, reasonable to any right-thinking person, no matter what their race or political persuasion

NEW YORK — Scores of lawsuits involving thousands of former players touched by concussions and brain injuries have been consolidated into one master complaint, setting up a massive and potentially costly case for the NFL.

"The NFL, like the sport of boxing, was aware of the health risks associated with repetitive blows producing sub-concussive and concussive results and the fact that some members of the NFL player population were at significant risk of developing long-term brain damage and cognitive decline as a result," the complaint charges. "Despite its knowledge and controlling role in governing player conduct on and off the field, the NFL turned a blind eye to the risk and failed to warn and/or impose safety regulations governing this well-recognized health and safety problem."

The NFL on Wednesday pledged to halt the use of "race-norming" — which assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive function — in the $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims and review past scores for any potential race bias.

Wednesday's announcement comes after a pair of Black players filed a civil rights lawsuit over the practice, medical experts raised concerns and a group of NFL families last month dropped 50,000 petitions at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia — where the lawsuit had been thrown out by the judge overseeing the settlement.

Neuropsychologists will propose a new way of testing

Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety, was speaking at a roundtable discussion on concussions convened by the House Committee on Energy & Commerce. When asked by Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.) if a connection between football and CTE had been established, Miller replied, “The answer to that question is certainly yes.”

Miller’s admission followed comments by Dr. Anne McKee, a professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University who focuses on neurodegenerative diseases. “I unequivocally think there’s a link between playing football and CTE,” she told the panel Monday

“We’ve seen it in 90 out of 94 NFL players whose brains we’ve examined, we’ve found it in 45 out of 55 college players and 26 out of 65 high school players,” McKee continued. “No, I don’t think this represents how common this disease is in the living population, but the fact that over five years I’ve been able to accumulate this number of cases in football players, it cannot be rare. In fact, I think we are going to be surprised at how common it is.”

Fueled by Trump’s Tweets, Anthem Protests Grow to a Nationwide Rebuke

On three teams, nearly all the football players skipped the national anthem altogether.

Dozens of others, from London to Los Angeles, knelt or locked arms on the sidelines, joined by several team owners in a league normally friendly to President Trump.

For almost a century the NFL has positioned itself as a culturally important exercise, and the audience has agreed on that importance. The league insists that its brand of controlled violence is important in the shaping of strong young bodies, important in the self-making of men and important in expressing something vitally American.

But lately the league seems more concerned with brand than with justifying its philosophy or grappling with a new reality.

“We’ve gone through 100 years of knowing football is violent, and the consequences of violence were always deemed to be acceptable, the benefits outweighed the cost. But that ended with Mike Webster’s brain. Are we watching with a greater sense of the danger, can we still fully give ourselves over to the experience of watching, and of saying, ‘Wow, look at what these bodies can endure, what they do to each other?’ Are we seeing a temporary blip in ratings or a kind of resetting of the NFL’s cultural power?”

Do the president’s words matter?In Donald Trump’s first year in office, there has been a surprisingly widespread effort to argue that they do not. Liberals and moderates occasionally insist that the media and the public should shift their attention from the president’s vulgar statements to the real policy work happening at federal agencies.

The upshot seems to be: Ignore the words, heed the substance.

But Trump’s words are his substance. “Politics is persuasion as well as coercion,” the political scientist Jacob Levy wrote last week, rightly arguing that Trump has “changed what being a Republican means.”

The N.F.L. signed new media rights agreements with CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Amazon collectively worth about $110 billion over 11 years, nearly doubling the value of its previous contracts.

The contracts, which will take effect in 2023 and run through the 2033 season, will cement the N.F.L.’s status as the country’s most lucrative sports league.

“Along with our recently completed labor agreement with the N.F.L.P.A., these distribution agreements bring an unprecedented era of stability to the League and will permit us to continue to grow and improve our game,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.

freedom to protest

Meanwhile, government leaders both around the globe and right here in the U.S. are threatening to limit freedom of speech, with everything from legislation to litigation to violent force. 

Individuals can exercise their First Amendment rights in various ways—from writing a letter to a government or community leader, to marching in a protest, putting a sign on their lawn or kneeling for the national anthem. 

The National Football League, which for years disputed evidence that its players had a high rate of severe brain damage, has stated in federal court documents that it expects nearly a third of retired players to develop long-term cognitive problems and that the conditions are likely to emerge at “notably younger ages” than in the general population.

They also appear to confirm what scientists have said for years: that playing football increases the risk of developing neurological conditions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that can be identified only in an autopsy.

Concerns that the fund might run dry are largely moot now because the N.F.L. agreed in June to pay an unlimited amount in awards to address concerns raised by the judge

Americans do not and should not worship idols. We do not and should not worship the flag. As a nation we stand in respect for the national anthem and stand in respect for the flag not simply because we were born here or because it’s our flag. We stand in respect because the flag represents a specific set of values and principles: that all men are created equal and that we are endowed with our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

These ideals were articulated in the Declaration of Independence, codified in the Constitution, and defended with the blood of patriots. Central to them is the First Amendment, the guarantee of free expression against government interference and government reprisal that has made the United States unique among the world’s great powers. Arguably, it is the single most important liberty of all, because it enables the defense of all the others: Without the right to speak freely we cannot even begin to point out offenses against the rest of the Constitution.

Now, with that as a backdrop, which is the greater danger to the ideals embodied by the American flag, a few football players’ taking a knee at the national anthem or the most powerful man in the world’s demanding that they be fired and their livelihoods destroyed for engaging in speech he doesn’t like?

Trump’s problem isn’t with athletes being political. It’s with athletes speaking out against racism.

Despite President Trump's harsh words about NFL players protesting racism, there's one thing you aren't likely to hear him say: “Stay in your lane.”

Trump respects — even invites — athletes to weigh in on political matters, as long as they are pro-Trump policies.

The Post has indeed found that there’s a strikingly consistent number of fatal police shootings each year: close to 1,000 people of all races. But that figure includes the armed and the unarmed.

In the first six months of this year, for example, the Post found a total of 27 fatal shootings of unarmed people, of which black men constituted seven.

There are 22 million black men in America. If an African-American man is not armed, the chance that he will be killed by the police in any recent year is 0.00006 percent.

Trump Attacks Warriors’ Curry. LeBron James’s Retort: ‘U Bum.’

President Trump took aim at two of the world’s most powerful sports leagues and some of their most popular athletes, directly inserting himself into an already fiery debate over race, social justice and athlete activism and stoking a running battle on social media over his comments.

In a speech on Friday and a series of tweets on Saturday, he urged N.F.L. owners to fire players who do not stand for the national anthem, suggested that football is declining because it is not as violent as it once was and seemed to disinvite the N.B.A. champion Golden State Warriors from the traditional White House visit because of their star player Stephen Curry’s public opposition to him.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees drew the ire of NBA great LeBron James when he said on Wednesday he does not feel NFL players should kneel during the national anthem and called the gesture disrespectful to the American flag.

Brees was asked during an appearance on Yahoo Finance’s On the Move about the possibility of players protesting against racial injustice by kneeling during the anthem when the NFL’s 2020 season kicks off in September.

“I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country,” Brees told the program before explaining that when he hears the anthem he thinks of his two grandfathers who served in the military.