With posts on sports team names, Trump wades into a decades-old dispute

Players take the field for their first home game as the Cleveland Guardians in Cleveland, Ohio, April 15, 2022. The Guardians and Washington Commanders had seemingly resolved the name matter by selecting new names. Now, thanks to the president of the United States, the issue has come back to the table. (Dustin Franz/The New York Times)

By Victor Mather

In urging two professional sports teams to change their nicknames, President Donald Trump has entered into a dispute that has lasted decades and to most people had seemed to be resolved.

The teams, now known as the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians, wrestled for years over their former names, which referred to Native Americans and which many found offensive. The teams had seemingly resolved the matter by selecting new names. Now, thanks to the president of the United States, the issue has come back to the table.

“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back,” Trump wrote Sunday on social media. “Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen,” he claimed, without offering evidence. (Surveys have shown that many Native Americans objected to the old names, especially Washington’s.) Trump also suggested that he might intervene in a stadium deal for Washington if it did not change its name back.

This is how we got here.

1914: Cleveland needs a new name

The baseball team in Cleveland had been known as the Naps, after their star player Nap Lajoie. But Lajoie was traded in 1914, and a new nickname was needed. Baseball writers were surveyed, and the team selected “Indians.” The exact impetus for the choice remains murky.

Cleveland once had a talented player named Louis Sockalexis, a Native American who died two years before the name change, and over the years it has been suggested that the new name was to honor him. But there is little hard evidence for this explanation.

Names based on Indian tribes or imagery were common in the 20th century; the Boston Braves were the 1914 World Series winners.

1933: A new team in Boston

The Washington football team used a slur for Native Americans for decades, actually predating the team’s time there.

When a new team joined the National Football League in Boston in 1932, it initially was known as the Boston Braves. After a year, the team’s owner, George Preston Marshall, changed the name, probably to avoid confusion with the baseball team of the same name.

The new nickname he chose was “Redskins.” For a game against the Bears, Marshall told his players to apply face paint. The name moved with the team to Washington in 1937.

Marshall was also known for being the last NFL owner to integrate his team, doing so only in 1962.

Protests begin

As far back as the 1960s, movements were afoot to push to change uncomfortable and offensive nicknames alluding to Native Americans that had been given to school teams. One of the first to act was Dartmouth College, which dropped its “Indians” nickname in 1974.

Native Americans were at the forefront of the protests, although the movement received outside support, too.

Despite the protests, the Cleveland and Washington teams did not move to change their nicknames and instead defended them. Washington noted in a statement in 2013 that scores of high schools across the country often used the same nickname with pride. Many, but not all, home team fans vigorously defended the nicknames of the teams they had cheered on for years.

Other professional teams, such as the Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Chiefs, faced scrutiny both for their nicknames and for their use of pseudo-Native American imagery like a “tomahawk chop” chant among fans.

Change comes

In 2018, Cleveland announced that it would drop its logo, a cartoonish caricature of a Native American known as Chief Wahoo. The team name stayed.

New scrutiny came to the nicknames in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.

In July 2020, Washington announced it was dropping its nickname. (It also removed references to Marshall from its stadium.) After two seasons playing as the generically named Washington Football Team, it adopted the Commanders nickname in 2022.

In December 2020, Cleveland announced it would play one more season as the Indians, then change its name. The new name, Guardians, refers to two giant statues, known as the Guardians of Traffic, on the Hope Memorial Bridge in Cleveland.

Trump objected then, too. “Oh no!” he wrote on social media at the time. “What is going on? This is not good news, even for ‘Indians.’ Cancel culture at work!”

And now in 2025 he has renewed his objections, claiming that “Times are different now than they were three or four years ago.”

Both teams have said the new names are here to stay.