Eagles star Jalen Hurts skips White House ceremony to celebrate Super Bowl championship
President Donald Trump feted the 2025 Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles at the White House on Monday, but several players, including quarterback Jalen Hurts, decided to skip the celebration.
Article content
Article content
Hurts and other players cited scheduling conflicts as the reasons for their absences, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Article content
Article content
Still, Trump called Hurts a 'terrific guy and terrific player' who turned in 'one stellar performance after another' in helping the Eagles to a 14-3 regular season and their Super Bowl run.
Article content
'The Eagles have turned out to be an incredible team, an incredible group,' Trump said.
Article content
In his first term, Trump invited and then canceled a celebration for the Eagles in 2018 after the franchise's first Super Bowl title. He instead threw his own brief 'Celebration of America' after it became clear most players weren't going to show up.
Article content
Asked by a reporter on the red carpet of the Time magazine gala last week whether he would take part in the White House visit, Hurts responded with an awkward 'um' and long silence before walking away.
Article content
Eagles star running back Saquon Barkley visited Trump over the weekend at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and caught a ride with the president to Washington on Air Force One and then to the White House on Marine One.
Article content
'He loved it,' Trump said of Barkley's short flight on the presidential airplane. 'He's a great young guy and an incredible football player. Saquon had a season for the ages, running behind the most powerful offensive line in the NFL,' Trump said.
Article content
Barkley, meanwhile, pushed back on social media criticism earlier Monday for spending time with Trump. He noted that he has golfed with former President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
Article content
'Maybe I just respect the office, not a hard concept to understand,' Barkley posted on X.
Article content
Barkley ran away with the Offensive Player of the Year award this past season after rushing for 2,005 yards, eighth-best in NFL history. It was his first season with the Eagles.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Winnipeg Free Press
27 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Trump administration says he has the authority to cancel national monuments that protect landscapes
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Lawyers for President Donald Trump's administration say he has the authority to abolish national monuments meant to protect historical and archaeological sites across broad landscapes, including two in California created by his predecessor at the request of Native American tribes. A Justice Department legal opinion released Tuesday disavowed a 1938 determination that monuments created by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act can't be revoked. The department said presidents can cancel monument designations if protections aren't warranted. The finding comes as the Interior Department under Trump has been weighing changes to monuments across the nation as part of the administration's push to expand U.S. energy production. The Republican in his first term reduced the size of two Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah, calling them a 'massive land grab.' He also lifted fishing restrictions within a sprawling marine monument off the New England Coast. Former President Joe Biden reversed the moves and restored the monuments. noting that Bears Ears was the first national monument to be established at the request of federally recognized tribes. The two monuments singled out in the new Justice Department opinion were designated by Biden in his final days in office: Chuckwalla National Monument, in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park, and Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, in Northern California. The Democrat's declarations for the monuments barred oil and natural gas drilling and mining on the 624,000-acre (2,400-square-kilometer) Chuckwalla site, and the roughly 225,000 acres (800 square kilometers) Sáttítla Highlands site near the California-Oregon border. Chuckwalla has natural wonders including the Painted Canyon of Mecca Hills and Alligator Rock, and it is home to rare species of plants and animals like the desert bighorn sheep and the Chuckwalla lizard. The Sáttítla Highlands include the ancestral homelands of and are sacred to the Pit River Tribe and Modoc Peoples. All but three presidents have used the 1906 Antiquities Act to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources, and about half the national parks in the U.S. were first designated as monuments. But critics of monument designations under Biden and Obama say the protective boundaries were stretched too far, hindering mining for critical minerals. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lanora Pettit wrote in the Trump administration opinion that Biden's protections of Chuckwalla and the Sattítla Highlands were part of the Democrat's attempts to create for himself an environmental legacy that includes more places to hike, bike, camp or hunt. 'Such activities are entirely expected in a park, but they are wholly unrelated to (if not outright incompatible with) the protection of scientific or historical monuments,' Pettit wrote. Trump in April lifted commercial fishing prohibitions within an expansive marine monument in the Pacific Ocean created under former President Barack Obama. Environmental groups have anticipated more actions against monuments by Trump since his first days in office. They said Tuesday's Justice Department opinion doesn't give him the authority to shrink monuments at will. 'Americans overwhelmingly support our public lands and oppose seeing them dismantled or destroyed,' said Axie Navas with The Wilderness Society. Wednesdays Columnist Jen Zoratti looks at what's next in arts, life and pop culture. Since 1912, presidents have issued more than a dozen proclamations that diminished monuments but did not outright revoke them, according to a National Park Service database. Dwight Eisenhower was most active in undoing the proclamations of his predecessors as he diminished six monuments, including Arches in Utah, Great Sand Dunes in Colorado and Glacier Bay in Alaska, which have all since become national parks. Trump's moves to shrink the Utah monuments in his first term were challenged by environmental groups that said protections for the sites safeguard water supplies and wildlife while preserving cultural sites. The reductions were reversed by Biden before the case was resolved, and it remains pending. President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act after lobbying by educators and scientists who wanted to protect sites from artifact looting and haphazard collecting by individuals. It was the first law in the U.S. to establish legal protections for cultural and natural resources of historic or scientific interest on federal lands.
Toronto Star
35 minutes ago
- Toronto Star
Trump's actions in LA spur debate over deportation funds in his ‘big, beautiful' bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' in Congress includes more than tax breaks and spending cuts — it also seeks to pour billions of dollars into the administration's mass deportation agenda. Republican leaders capitalized Tuesday on the demonstrations in Los Angeles, where groups of protesters are demonstrating against Trump's immigration raids at Home Depot and other places where migrants congregate, to make the case for swift passage of their sprawling 1,000-plus-page bill.
Winnipeg Free Press
an hour ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
North Carolina GOP sending immigration crackdown bills to Democratic Gov. Stein
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Republicans at the North Carolina legislature gave final approval Tuesday two pieces of legislation that would compel state agencies to participate in President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and would toughen a recent law that required sheriffs to help federal agents seeking criminal defendants. The series of House and Senate votes on the measures could mean an early showdown between the GOP-controlled General Assembly and new Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who since taking office in January has tried to build rapport with lawmakers on consensus issues like Hurricane Helene aid. Stein has yet to a veto a bill, and pressure will build on him to use his stamp on one or both bills given overwhelming Democratic opposition to the measures during floor votes. The GOP's legislative maneuvers happened while National Guard troops have been deployed by Trump to Los Angeles to confront protesters angry with federal conducting sweeps that led to immigrant arrests. Should Stein issue vetoes, Republicans in the ninth-largest state could face challenges in overriding them, since the GOP is currently one seat shy of a veto-proof majority. Republican leaders would need at least one Democrat for their side during an override vote or hope some Democrats are absent. Dueling immigration philosophies Republicans say the measures are needed to assist the Trump administration's efforts to remove immigrants unlawfully in the country who are committing crimes and or accessing limited taxpayer resources that are needed for U.S. citizens or lawful immigrants. 'North Carolina is one step closer to increasing the safety of every citizen in the state,' said Senate Leader Phil Berger, a primary sponsor of one of the bills. 'The Republican-led General Assembly made it clear that harboring criminal illegal aliens will not be tolerated in our state.' But Democrats and social justice advocates of immigrants say the bills vilify immigrants who work and pay taxes, leading residents to feel intimidated and fear law enforcement, which will ultimately make communities less safe. Demonstrators opposed to GOP action filled the Senate gallery during debate. Republicans are spending their time 'trying to sell a lie that immigrants are the source of our problems,' Democratic Sen. Sophia Chitlik of Durham County said, telling colleagues that their constituents 'didn't send us here to round up their neighbors. They sent us here to make their lives better.' Stein spokesperson Morgan Hopkins said late Tuesday that the governor 'will continue to review the bills. He has made clear that if someone commits a crime and they are here illegally; they should be deported.' Breaking down the bills One measure receiving final approval in part would direct heads of several state law enforcement agencies, like the State Highway Patrol and State Bureau of Investigation, to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would include having to officially participate in the 287(g) program, which trains officers to interrogate defendants and determine their immigration status. A Trump executive order urged his administration to maximize the use of 287(g) agreements. The measure also would direct state agencies to ensure noncitizens don't access state-funded benefits and publicly funded housing benefits to which they are otherwise ineligible. The same applies to unemployment benefits for those aren't legally authorized to live in the U.S. And the bill also prohibits University of North Carolina system campus policies that prevent law enforcement agencies from accessing school information about a students' citizenship or immigration status. Thousands of international students attending college in the U.S. had their study permissions canceled this spring, only for ICE to later reverse decisions and restore their legal status. The other approved bill Tuesday builds on the 2024 law that lawmakers enacted over then-Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's veto that directed jails hold temporarily certain defendants whom ICE believe are in the country illegally, allowing time for immigration agents to pick them up. The law was a response by Republicans unhappy with Democratic sheriffs in several counties who declined to help immigration agents with offenders subject to federal immigration detainers and administrative warrants. The proposed changes expands the list of crimes that a defendant is charged with that would require the jail administrator — expanding in the bill to magistrates — to attempt to determine the defendant's legal residency or citizenship. A defendant with an apparent detainer or administrative warrant would still have to go before a judicial official before a defendant could be released to agents. A jail also would have to tell ICE promptly that they are holding someone and essentially extends the time agents have to pick up the person.
