Editor, News-Register:

President Donald J. Trump’s recently announced order to have names of professional sports teams that were changed during the Biden administration, as a result that such team names were considered by many to have been racially or ethnically insensitive and disrespectful to many, is ridiculous. Among those teams with name changes are the former Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball to the Cleveland Guardians and the former Washington Redskins of the National Football League to the Washington Commanders.

Historically and for the record, the Cleveland baseball franchise certainly had good intentions when it changed the name of its team from the Cleveland Naps, named in honor of their star player, Napoleon Lajoie, to the Indians in honor of team player Louis Sockalexis, who is known to have been the first Native American to play professional sports in United States.

On the other hand, the naming of the Washington National Football League franchise as the Redskins, although at first presumably meant to be a term of respect, but in actuality such a name is quite disrespectful of Native Americans and can be considered a racial slur. Unfortunately, President Trump has threatened to withhold already agreed-upon federal funding to help pay for the construction of a new football stadium in Washington, if the franchise does not restore its former, quite offensive team name.

In my opinion, the only way that it may be considered appropriate to name a franchise after a race or ethnicity would be if all members of such a team would be members of that particular group, and that such would remain so permanently and be agreed upon by team members and management. In addition, keep in mind that Trump is also an advocate for the restoration of names of U.S. military bases that had until recently been named to honor Confederate generals who waged war against our great country during the Civil War.

Such actions of disrespect to our nation are quite typical for Trump, who essentially ordered his followers to engage in a violent insurrection against our government in order to illegally overthrow the 2020 election to keep him in office, which thankfully failed, but Trump continues to refer to said violent insurrection as patriots and political prisoners. As a result of the tremendous acts of violence they committed on that fateful day of Jan. 6, 2021 and those who had been legally imprisoned for their assault on democracy were granted full and absolute pardons, had their sentences commuted by Trump upon his return to the White House earlier this year.

Richard Hord

Martins Ferry