The three teams that were not on the field during the national anthem on Sunday – the Pittsburgh Steelers, Seattle Seahawks and Tennessee Titans – will not be fined for their action (or inaction, as the case may be), the NFL‘s top public relations official told reporters on Monday morning.
After Sunday’s displays of protest and unity, ramped up after President Donald Trump called players who protest “sons of bitches” and made repeated calls for team owners to fire those who protest, NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart held a conference call with reporters to pass along some information from the league’s perspective.
The NFL can fine teams for not being on the field during the anthem, but Lockhart affirmed it will not be doing so. In at least the case of the Steelers, coach Mike Tomlin said he called commissioner Roger Goodell on Sunday morning to inform Goodell of his team’s plan.
The U.S. Capitol Police arrested a total of 181 people for protesting during a Senate Finance Committee hearing regarding the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill on Monday.
Demonstrators were arrested upon failing to cease and desist from their activities during the hearing, which was disruptive. A total of 15 were arrested and charged with disrupting Congress.
The U.S. Capitol Police arrested a total of 181 people for protesting during a Senate Finance Committee hearing regarding the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill on Monday.
Another 143 were arrested for failing to cease and desist from their activities in the hallway outside the hearing room and were charged with crowding, obstructing, or incommoding.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said Monday that he regrets participating in his team’s Sunday protest of the national anthem.
Roethlisberger released a statement in which he said that he does not “believe the Anthem is ever the time to make any type of protest,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
On Sunday, the entire Steelers team remained in the locker room during the national anthem before their showdown with the Chicago Bears. Their absence was prompted by outrage across the NFL after President Donald Trump said on Friday that NFL players who, like Colin Kaepernick, kneel during the national anthem should be fired.
The Dallas Cowboys briefly took a knee on Monday night, joined by owner Jerry Jones in a display of solidarity with other protesting football teams.
The Cowboys kneeled before the anthem, but stood while it was sung, the Hill reports.
Jones’s joining his team to kneel is particularly noteworthy, as he has been in the recent past a strong critic of the national anthem protest begun by quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Broncos linebacker Von Miller may be out an endorsement deal as a result of kneeling during the national anthem.
Before the team’s game with the Buffalo Bills Sunday, Miller was one of 32 members of the Broncos who took a knee to protest what they see as racial injustice in the country.[…]
As a result of his actions before the game, Phil Long dealership asked CBS4 and other television stations to stop airing their ads featuring Von Miller. The general manager of Phil Long Ford in Denver told CBS4’s Rick Sallinger that Miller has not been fired, but instead they are changing some advertising.[…]
Phil Long Dealerships Statement:
We are evaluating the events of the weekend. It is important to state that we haven’t fired Von. We are in the middle of contract renewal and this weekend’s events remind us that sometimes we feel that we best represent ourselves. We support Von and his first amendment rights, we know Von and he’s a good person. He donated a police car to his hometown police dept. All that notwithstanding when we bring in celebrities to represent us we run the risk of being misrepresented.
We, like millions of Americans are concerned and will respond consistently with our values as a proud American company founded by a war hero (Phil Long). While we can’t control the actions of others we can be responsible for how we support our nation and community. That is why, years ago, our principal owner, Jay Cimino, founded the Mount Carmel Veteran’s Service center, and is supported by all Phil Long Dealerships. We support this cause not just with our words, but financially as well, and it is serving hundreds of veterans in need right here in Colorado. This would be a great time for our community to show support for our military community by supporting this cause or others that continue to serve them after they serve us.
Former Army Ranger and current Pittsburgh Steelers player Alejandro Villanueva told the media he’s embarrassed over the fact he stood alone during the national anthem prior to Sunday’s game in Chicago.
Villanueva was the only player to stand during the anthem Sunday against the Bears. The rest of his team waited in the tunnel.
Tribune-Review reporter Chris Adamski tweeted out several quotes the former Ranger gave to reporters on Monday.
“Every single time I see that picture of me standing by myself, I feel embarrassed,” he told the media.
NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” experienced its lowest television ratings of the season as NFL players continued to protest during the national anthem.
Sunday night’s game between the Washington Redskins and the Oakland Raiders scored an 11.6/20, meaning that an estimated 11.6 percent of all metered-market households watched the game and an estimated 20 percent of homes using a television at the time watched, Deadline reports.
That is an eight percent drop in viewership from the prior week’s game when the Atlanta Falcons beat the Green Bay Packers, and a 10 percent drop from early numbers for last year’s equivalent Sunday night game during the third week.
Two organizations, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and The American Legion, are openly criticizing National Football League (NFL) players for protesting the American flag by kneeling during the national anthem.
NFL players making use of sports events to disrespect the American flag is unacceptable, VFW’s national commander Keith Harman, a Vietnam combat veteran, said in a statement Monday.
A total of 28 NFL teams, which include approximately 250 players, engaged in protests during flag ceremonies, following tweets from President Donald Trump on Saturday blasting players who have chosen not to stand for the national anthem.
“There is a time and place for civil debate, and wearing team jerseys and using sporting events to disrespect our country doesn’t wash with millions of military veterans who have and continue to wear real uniforms on real battlefields around the globe,” Harman said.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis does not care about NFL players who kneel during the national anthem. He’s got bigger things to worry about, like North Korea’s insistence that Donald Trump has “declared war” and the ongoing threat of ISIS.
During a question and answer session with members of the media while en route to India on Sunday, a reporter asked Mattis if he had “anything to say about the NFL, being someone who has served in the military.”
“I’m the secretary of defense,” Mattis said. “We defend the country.”
WASHINGTON – The Defense Department has dispatched about 2,600 troops to aid Hurricane Maria victims in the U.S. Virgin Islands and in Puerto Rico, where access to power and communications remained severely limited five days after the Category 4 storm struck the U.S. territory.
The military has focused primarily on conducting search and rescue operations, delivering life-sustaining supplies and providing generators and fuel to power critical infrastructure such as water treatment facilities and hospitals, Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday.
Military units were also conducting route and airfield clearance in Puerto Rico, Manning said. Marines and sailors from the USS Kearsarge, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship now in the Caribbean Sea, were deployed Sunday on the island for the mission. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico National Guard members were conducting similar clearance operations while also helping evacuate victims and installing temporary communications infrastructure.
A man who is accused of trying to rob a Fresno, California Starbucks plans to sue a customer who stopped him for using excessive force.
Fresno police called the customer a “courageous hero” for his actions and did not charge Cregg Jerri for his actions.
It happened on July 20th. Police say that Ryan Florez wore a Transformers mask and showed what ended up being a fake gun before pulling a large knife and demanded money from the barista.
Jerri says what was going on, grabbed a chair and attacked Florez. Jerri was stabbed in the neck but managed to wrestle the knife from Flores and stab him repeatedly.
North Korea threatened on Monday to shoot down American warplanes even if they are not in the country’s airspace, as its foreign minister declared that President Trump’s threatening comments about the country and its leadership were “a declaration of war.”
“The whole world should clearly remember it was the U.S. who first declared war on our country,” the foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, told reporters as he was leaving the United Nations after a week of General Assembly meetings in New York.
“Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country,” he said.
The last time North Korea shot down an American warplane was in 1969, during the Nixon Administration, killing all 31 crew members of a spy plane that was flying off its coast.
A new German law banned face-obscuring clothing for drivers, angering Muslims who say that the law is unnecessary and anti-Islamic.
The German Bundesrat’s final session before Germany’s Sept. 24 elections approved the ban on facial coverings for drivers, citing the need to determine a driver’s identity in the case of a crime or accident, according to Deutsche Welle. The law applies to any form of facial covering and does not outlaw head scarves such as the Islamic hijab. The Central Council of Muslims in Germany, however, have interpreted the law to be a “burka ban,” specifically targeting Muslims, and decried it as “symbolic politics.”
“Proof of this is the fact that laws are being passed in areas that don’t need to regulated,” deputy council chairman Nurhan Soykan told DW. “We know of no case in which a burka or niqab wearer caused an accident that can be linked to wearing a full-body veil.”
Trump has been stoking this culture war between “coastal elites” and Middle America—the irony of course being that Trump himself is a “coastal elite.”
Here’s the thing: I grew up in Kentucky. I sold insurance door-to-door. I sold ladies’ shoes. I worked at an all-night liquor store. I would buy suits that were too big and too long and cut the bottom of the pants off to make ties so I’d have a tie to go on job interviews.
I grew up understanding what it was like to not have health insurance for eight years. So this idea that I’m somehow the “Hollywood elite” and this guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable.
People in Hollywood, for the most part, are people from the Midwest who moved to Hollywood to have a career. So this idea of “coastal elites” living in a bubble is ridiculous. Who lives in a bigger bubble? He lives in a gold tower and has twelve people in his company.
