The idea sounds outlandish, if not downright impossible.
Leaders at the World Anti-Doping Agency are considering adopting a rule that could bar President Trump and all U.S. government officials from attending major international events — even if they take place on American soil.
A few coming up are as big as they get: this summer’s World Cup; the LA Olympics in 2028; the Winter Games in Utah in 2034.
This is not a fight of Mr. Trump’s choosing, but rather one being pursued by WADA itself, which has been the subject of bipartisan and virtually universal disapproval in Congress, in the Trump and Biden administrations and in the offices of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for most of this decade.
The proposal is the latest and most extreme maneuver in a yearslong exchange of rhetoric, threats and fighting between all parties. It stems from the U.S. government’s refusal to pay its annual WADA dues.
The U.S. has held back a total of $7.3 million over 2024 and 2025 in protest of WADA’s handling of a number of issues over the years, most recently, a case involving Chinese swimmers who were allowed to compete despite testing positive for a banned substance. WADA took Chinese regulators’ word that the athletes had been accidentally contaminated.
WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald said the rule, if passed, would “not (be) applied retroactively so World Cup, LA and SLC Games would not be covered.” However, the proposal, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, does not include language to that effect.
Mr. Fitzgerald did not respond to a series of follow-up questions sent Monday, including one asking how a rule being considered for passage this year would not be applied retroactively to events that have not taken place. Mr. Fitzgerald did say last week that the final decision wasn’t due until November, after the World Cup, though correspondence between WADA and European officials indicated that decision could come sooner.
WADA came into existence in 1999 and was charged with writing the rules that governed anti-doping in sports and making sure they were executed correctly.
In recent years, with the onset of more troubling and complexdoping sagas, WADA has gotten more involved in investigating doping allegations — a function that has largely been handled by the dozens of organizations that oversee the use of performance enhancers in certain countries and sports.
WADA’s funding comes equally from two places — governments of countries that participate in the Olympic movement and the International Olympic Committee. Representatives on WADA’s key decision-making bodies are generally divided equally between sports and government.
Part of sending teams to major international events, such as the Olympics and the World Cup, requires everyone involved to pledge to follow WADA’s rules, whether they’re directly related to doping or to administrative issues, the likes of which the latest proposal covers.
Sports organizations — for instance the IOC and the governing bodies of individual sports — are considered “signatories” to the WADA code.
Still, it’s hard to see how the WADA could ban the American president from attending an event on American soil. Rahul Gupta — the drug czar during the Biden administration who was every bit as critical of WADA as is his successor, Sara Carter — called the idea “ludicrous.”
Mr. Gupta said that’s not just because it would be logistically impossible to restrict where the U.S. president goes, but it would also send the wrong message to a host nation, which oversees the games and ensures the proper investments are made in security, venues and other infrastructure.
“That’s the responsibility of the government, not so much WADA,” Mr. Gupta said. “It’s clear that WADA attempting to propagate any rules-based system that interferes with a government, especially a host government — that would be a concern to any government.”
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