David Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
The Team and the Bridge Alliance are proud to announce the creation of the Engaged Athlete Fellowship.
The Team and the Bridge Alliance are ideally suited to partner in this important endeavor, expanding the Bridge Alliance’s civic ecosystem to a new, promising audience of leaders and influencers.
The Bridge Alliance is a leader in the world of non-partisan democracy reform and civic renewal, bringing hundreds of organizations together to support a movement to co-create a thriving, just and healthy democratic republic. Through their Citizen Connect initiative, people from all walks of life, political parties, race/ethnicity, identities, and religions can become civically engaged. All participants have the common conviction that America is stronger if We the People work together. It isn’t about agreeing on everything; it’s about finding what we can agree on and making it happen.
The Team provides award winning offerings to help athletes become great teammates, leaders, and citizens. Since their inception in 2020, The Team’s innovative approach to civic engagement has positively impacted over 50,000 student athletes around the country. The Team’s past student athlete civic leaders have won many prestigious awards and recognition for their work including invitations to work on programs with major sports figures like NBA star Stephen Curry and Athletes Unlimited’s Cassidy Lichtman. Their stories of modeling innovative forms of civic engagement have been profiled in major media publications like ESPN, The Fulcrum, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and others.
Starting this fall, this inaugural fellowship will empower student athletes from across the country to strengthen non-partisan civic participation on their teams, on their campuses, and in their broader communities.
The Engaged Athlete Fellowship program will focus on three areas:
● Provide a leadership and developmental curriculum developed by esteemed professors, coaches, professional athletes, and civic leaders.
● Provide mentorship, support, and a financial stipend for the athletes personalized civic engagement or service project on campus or in their community.
● Participate in a multi-day all expenses paid summit in Washington, DC to meet other Fellows, participate in workshops, network, and present their work from the year.
The Engaged Athlete Fellowship is led by Joe Kennedy, a 2007 graduate of Northwestern, a former basketball player and coach who served as a special assistant for the Office of Public Engagement at the White House. Most recently, in September of 2022, Kennedy became the first Executive Director of The Team. During the 2020 election cycle, Kennedy connected with Coach Eric Reveno, where they became a major force leading a new college athletics movement to expand student athlete voter registration and create civic resources for coaches and teams. Coach Joe Kennedy is working towards a future where all student athletes and athletic departments establish civic engagement as a priority, and he believes the Engaged Athlete Fellowship can make that dream a reality.
“More than 500,000 student athletes are largely overlooked by most traditional civics programs, and yet, these athletes are often some of the most powerful voices and influential leaders on their campuses. We are building energy around the importance of athletes, coaches, and administrators becoming more engaged citizens. We offer tools and resources to help them shape the future they want to create.”
Joe’s staff includes Hannah Nusbaum (Director of Programming), Elizabeth Ford (Fellowship Coordinator and former Penn Volleyball Player), plus advisors Chase Griffin (Quarterback, UCLA Football), Lisa Kay Solomon (Professor, Stanford d. school), and Eric Reveno (Coach, Oregon State Basketball).
The Fellowship is about impact and action, and athletes are encouraged to dream big. The Team co-founder and Stanford Futurist and Designer in Residence, Lisa Kay Solomon, succinctly and clearly sums up what the Engaged Athlete Fellowship is all about.
“What would make it easy for student athletes to take the first step? Every resource, program, and relationship is aimed to reduce the noise and friction of this moment, and focus instead on foundational moves to support democracy and ignite civic agency.”
Listen to advisor Chase Griffin (Quarterback, UCLA Football) as he tells his story showing how the leadership learned on the field was harnessed to help his community and country.
In the coming weeks we will introduce you to the Engaged Athlete Fellows with the hope of inspiring you to use your time, energy, and skills in whatever way you choose to help your community, your state, and your country.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.