High school athletes from around the country will converge next year to compete in a new athletic competition as part of the United States’ 250th birthday celebration, President Trump announced Thursday.
The newly minted “Patriot Games” will be a “first-of-its-kind” athletic event, spanning across four days and featuring “one young man and one young woman” from each state and territory.
“In the fall, we’ll host the first-ever ‘Patriot Games,’ an unprecedented four-day athletic event featuring the greatest high school athletes,” Trump said in a speech from the Oval Office on Thursday — assuring that there would be no co-ed competition.
“But I promise there will be no men playing in women’s sports,” he said. “You’re not going to see that. You’ll see everything but that.”
The president signed the “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports” executive order in February, banning biological males from competing in female athletic events through Title IX.
Freedom 250, the organization sponsoring several official events celebrating the nation’s birth, teased that the young adult showcase would “light the torch” for future Americans.
“This first-of-its-kind athletic competition will spotlight male and female high school athletes from every state and territory,” the organization’s website stated. “From opening heats to the live final day in front of a live audience, these competitors will light the torch for a new generation of Americans.”
Additional details of the games, including host location and types of athletic events, were not immediately revealed.
Democrats immediately bashed the “Patriot Games” by comparing the athletic event to dystopian-novel-turned-film-series, “The Hunger Games.”
“And so it was decreed that, each year, the various districts of Panem would offer up, in tribute, one young man and woman to fight to the death in a pageant of honor, courage and sacrifice (The Hunger Games, 2012),” the official Democratic party X account posted — and the backlash was swift.
“So the Olympics are dystopian as well,” one commenter asked.
“Pretty funny that for fat slob democrats, asking them to exercise is equivalent to asking them to fight to the death,” another commented.
“You do realize the capital is 1000% the democrats and district 13 is the republicans right?” a third asked.
Other events scheduled for America’s semiquincentennial bash include a national prayer gathering in May, the Sail4th 250 parade of tall ships in the New York Harbor, the Great American State Fair on the National Mall with pavilions for all 50 states and the “Salute to America” 250th fireworks celebration.
Trump reestablished his plans to build the National Garden of American Heroes, a sculpture he originally ordered in an executive order in January 2021.
“We will build the National Garden of American Heroes featuring statues of all-time greatest Americans,” he said, in addition to the triumphal arch planned to be constructed just across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial.
“But all of this is just the beginning. 2026 will be a celebration of America like no other, honoring our nation and all of its glory,” the commander in chief vowed.
