As the torches were lit for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy, a different kind of firestorm erupted back home. Several Team USA athletes, entrusted with carrying the stars and stripes on the global stage, chose the eve of the games to air grievances about the nation they represent.
Their comments, touching on immigration enforcement and policies affecting minority communities, have ignited widespread outrage among Americans who expect Olympians to embody national pride rather than political dissent. With President Donald Trump in his second term overseeing aggressive border security measures, these remarks have exposed a rift between elite athletes and the public that funds and cheers their pursuits.
Freestyle skier Chris Lillis, a gold medalist from the 2022 Beijing Games and a veteran of men’s aerials, didn’t hold back when pressed on his feelings about competing for the U.S. “I love the USA. I would never want to represent a different country in the Olympics,” Lillis began, but quickly pivoted to criticism. “With that being said, a lot of times, athletes are hesitant to talk about political views and how we feel about things. I feel heartbroken about what’s happening in the United States. I’m pretty sure you’re referencing ICE and some of the protests and things like that. I think that, as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens as well as anybody, with love and respect.”
He added that he hopes viewers see the “America we’re trying to represent” through the athletes’ performances.
Hunter Hess, making his Olympic debut in men’s freeski halfpipe, echoed a similar sentiment with even more direct reservation. “It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now, I think. It’s a little hard,” Hess said. “There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. I think, for me, it’s more I’m representing my friends and family back home, the people that represented it before me, all the things that I believe are good about the U.S. If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
The backlash was swift and unyielding, particularly on social media platforms where patriotic fervor runs high during the Olympics. One user declared, “You shouldn’t be representing the U.S.A. if you hate it here. So tired of this Anti-American rhetoric!”
Another called for immediate action: “Chris Lillis and Hunter Hess should be sent back home immediately. They have insulted our entire nation on the world stage and should no longer be allowed to represent us.”
Calls for boycotts of any products endorsed by the athletes proliferated, with one poster vowing, “Won’t be buying any products that Chris Lillis & Hunter Hess endorse. Sick of the Anti-American rhetoric of sports & entertainment figures!”
Even sponsors came under fire, as users urged boycotts of companies funding what they deemed ungrateful competitors.
This controversy isn’t isolated to the freestyle skiers. Figure skater Amber Glenn, the first openly queer woman to represent the U.S. in Olympic figure skating, also weighed in during a press conference. She criticized the Trump administration’s approach to the LGBTQ+ community, stating, “It’s been a hard time for the LGBTQ+ community overall in this administration. It isn’t the first time that we’ve had to come together as a community and try and fight for our human rights. And now especially, it’s not just affecting the queer community, but many other communities.” Glenn refused to stay silent, arguing that politics impacts daily lives and that athletes shouldn’t be expected to “shut up about politics.”
Glenn’s vitriol drew its own wave of rebukes, leading her to step away from social media temporarily. In an Instagram post, she revealed receiving “a scary amount of hate/threats” simply for voicing her views when asked. “When I chose to utilize one of the amazing things about the United States of America (Freedom of speech) to convey how I feel as an athlete competing for Team USA in a troubling time for many Americans,” she wrote, emphasizing her right to speak out. Critics, however, saw it as another example of athletes using the Olympic platform for political activism, with one Facebook page dubbing the response “patriotic outrage” and urging her to “SHUT UP AND SKATE.”
These incidents highlight a recurring tension in American sports, where athletes increasingly blend competition with commentary on national issues. Under President Trump’s renewed focus on immigration enforcement through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), operations have ramped up, including deportations and border security measures that supporters view as essential for national sovereignty. Detractors, like Lillis and Hess, frame them as divisive and lacking in compassion. Yet, for many fans, the Olympics represent a rare moment of unity, and such statements shatter that illusion, prompting questions about whether taxpayer-funded teams should tolerate public disaffection.
Looking deeper, this pattern may stem from broader cultural shifts in elite athletics, where progressive viewpoints often dominate training environments and sponsorship circles. While no evidence suggests coordinated activism here, the timing—on the cusp of the games—raises eyebrows about intent. Are these athletes truly heartbroken, or are they signaling to peers and media for approval?
History shows that what starts as dismissed “conspiracy” in sports politics—think Colin Kaepernick’s protests evolving into league-wide gestures—can reshape institutions. Distinguishing fact from theory, the verifiable reality is that these comments have alienated a significant portion of the audience, potentially harming Team USA’s support base.
In the end, the athletes’ right to speak is unquestioned, but so is the public’s right to respond. As competitions unfold on Italian slopes and rinks, the real contest may be for the hearts of Americans watching from afar. If Olympians view their role as conditional on policy agreement, they risk eroding the very spirit that makes the games transcendent. True representation demands gratitude for the opportunities America provides, not caveats that divide. Perhaps it’s time for a reset: compete with pride, or step aside for those who will.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
