“I think that when human lives are at stake, it’s bigger than anything else,” the basketball star Breanna Stewart said.
Over the weekend, the basketball star Breanna Stewart didn’t have her normal bounce during player introductions. As soon as the announcer shouted her name, Stewart walked out holding a white sign with a message: Abolish ICE.
“I think that when human lives are at stake, it’s bigger than anything else,” Stewart said at a press conference following the game with Unrivaled, a three-on-three professional basketball league she co-founded in 2024.
Stewart’s declaration was daring because it was also personal. Her wife, Marta Xargay Casademont, was born in Spain and is in the United States on a green card. The couple is working on getting Casademont American citizenship, and Stewart criticizing ICE so publicly could jeopardize her chances.
During times of political and social turmoil, the public often looks to athletes to speak out against harmful policies and actions that are directed at marginalized communities. Doing so can be risky: The Trump administration has frequently attacked and mocked athletes who challenge the president, and many team owners are among Trump’s backers.
But it can be worthwhile. Historically, when athletes have chosen to speak out, their advocacy has helped effect real change. The often-cited example of how an athlete can shift the political discourse is the boxing icon Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be drafted into the Army in 1967 during the Vietnam War.
In more recent times, we’ve seen stark examples of athletes changing the political dynamic with their involvement. As I wrote two years ago, in 2020 we saw athletes participating in the George Floyd protests and driving voter-registration campaigns.
In Georgia, WNBA players banded together to help elect the state’s first Black senator, the Democrat Rapahel Warnock—despite the fact that his opponent, Kelly Loeffler, was a co-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream at the time.
Loeffler drew players’ ire when she criticized them for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. When Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot seven times in the back by Kenosha, Wisconsin, police that August, professional games across five different sports were postponed.
