The premise sounds nearly fictional: one boy and one lady from each state, territory and a few tribal nations, flown to a non-public campus in Ohio to compete in a televised athletic contest referred to as the Patriot Games — a Trump-backed youth competitors with impediment programs, patriotic testimonials and inevitable comparisons to The Hunger Games.
Except not like the dystopian ebook and film franchise the place children are pitted in a televised battle of survival, the stakes within the Patriot Games gained’t be life and loss of life. The female and male winners will every obtain $125,000 in faculty scholarship cash.
For 16-year-old Tylee Herrmann, the pitch was easy. In her video software, she gave her age, her college in Arizona and her cause for eager to compete: she needed to assist “bring patriotism back to the US.”
“I feel like a lot of times right now, we feel disunified,” Herrmann, the Cherokee Nation consultant, mentioned in an interview with CNN. “I think we need something to bring us all together, because we’re the United States of America, and we need to be a little more united.”
However, Herrmann says she’s already experiencing how controversial the Patriot Games could be.
“There’s definitely been a number of people that just stopped talking to me,” mentioned Herrmann, referring to her resolution to compete within the video games.
“I have a significant number of people that I know say that they hate the country because they hate the government,” Herrmann mentioned, including that “patriotism doesn’t belong to a political party.”
Hear extra from the contestants on the most recent episode of CNN’s ‘One Thing’ podcast.
Streaming reside over the weekend on ESPN with a primetime particular airing on ABC Aug. 13, the Patriot Games are the most recent instance of the Trump administration elevating the politics of athleticism and toughness in celebration of America’s 250th birthday.
They come amid a protracted summer time of spectacles placed on by Freedom 250, the President Donald Trump-backed group that organized the UFC combat night time on the White House garden that includes a army flyover, plus the Great American State Fair on the National Mall and the immense July 4th fireworks show in Washington, DC.
Last 12 months, Trump vowed that the video games would function “the greatest high school athletes.” However, the occasion seems to be shaping as much as be extra of a extremely produced show of youth patriotism than athletic excellence.
CNN interviewed 5 Patriot Games opponents and reviewed quite a few software movies posted on-line to YouTube and different platforms that confirmed college students displaying off abilities resembling backflips and parkour coaching.
Yet, athletic skill wasn’t the only issue thought of for participation within the competitors, and people chosen seem to have largely comparable backgrounds. Contestants had been requested to movie a video answering a collection of prompts about why they needed to compete and to elucidate how sports activities have formed their id. They had been additionally requested to record locations exterior their dwelling state the place that they had a “meaningful personal, family, cultural, military, or community connection,” based on the applying.
Applicants had been required to record their organic intercourse. When asserting the video games final 12 months, Trump pledged that on the video games, “there will be no men playing in women’s sports.”
Contestants ages 14 to 17 embrace youngsters of active-duty army and JROTC members, in addition to homeschooled college students. Of the youngsters featured within the Freedom 250 Instagram web page, many attend non-public Christian colleges. They additionally seem like overwhelmingly White; the applying for the Games didn’t ask to specify race.
Some college students had been chosen to signify states the place they don’t reside. The choose for Puerto Rico is a younger man from Texas. New Jersey’s ambassador attends a non-public Christian college in Texas. The feminine competitor for Massachusetts, 16-year-old Bobbi Vickers, attends college in California.
Vickers mentioned she was initially stunned to not be representing California.
“I get a bunch of questions like, why are you representing Massachusetts and not your home state?” she informed CNN. “But I think it’s really cool because a lot of my family is from there and my favorite basketball team is actually the Boston Celtics.”
Herrmann mentioned she utilized as each an Arizonan and as a citizen of the Cherokee tribe. She mentioned the Freedom 250 organizers did a background test and verified with the Cherokee tribe that she’s a member.
In movies posted to Instagram, lots of the opponents touted their Christian religion and thanked Trump personally for the chance, whereas others have posted about their curiosity in athletic pursuits like basketball, lacrosse or weightlifting on the gymnasium.
One pupil representing North Carolina is a member of a neighborhood chapter of Club America, a highschool program launched by Turning Point USA – the group based by the late activist Charlie Kirk. In an interview with conservative YouTube character Adam Francisco, the scholar was requested about WNBA participant Sophie Cunningham’s feedback about barring transgender ladies from ladies’s sports activities. The video, posted to Instagram, was captioned, “High school athletes get it, why doesn’t the left?”
Freedom 250 spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez touted the video games as a celebration of “America’s next generation of leaders, competitors and champions” in a press release. “Freedom 250 is proud to bring Americans together through unforgettable signature events — from the Freedom Trucks and July 4 celebrations to the 2026 Patriot Games — that celebrate our country and inspire the next generation.”
Trump first teased the Patriot Games throughout his bid for a second time period in 2023. In a marketing campaign video, he outlined plans for America’s 250th birthday and declared that “major sporting contests for high school athletes” would enable younger individuals from “every state to show off the best of American skill, sportsmanship, and competitive spirit.”
Sports have featured closely in Trump’s second time period. He grew to become the primary sitting president to attend a Super Bowl in particular person in 2025, and has appeared on the NBA finals, US Open, Daytona 500, and the World Cup Final. Trump was additionally instrumental in expediting plans for the Freedom 250 IndyCar avenue race in downtown Washington, DC, later this month.
“He has done more than any president that I can think of to try to graft sports onto his own identity,” mentioned Michael L. Butterworth, director of the Center for Sports Communication & Media at The University of Texas at Austin.
The video games are set to happen on the SPIRE Academy, a boarding college and sports activities coaching facility in Geneva, Ohio, which hosted a Trump marketing campaign rally in 2016. According to the Freedom 250 Instagram account, Trump plans on visiting the video games’ finale on Tuesday. They are certainly one of two contests backed by the administration geared toward selling patriotism in younger Americans – a demographic that has largely soured on Trump and the nation. According to a June 2026 Gallup poll, simply 14% of adults aged 18 to 34 mentioned they had been “extremely proud” to be an American.
The first contest was the Presidential 1776 Award in June, the place high-school aged finalists answered questions on American historical past and authorities for an opportunity to win a scholarship price as much as $150,000. The broadcast drew 1.63 million reside viewers on CBS, the Department of Education said last month.
But that contest has since change into mired in controversy.
The household of Aangad Singh, a 15-year-old from Connecticut has publicly forged doubt on the outcomes, telling NOTUS last month they consider a few of his solutions had been incorrectly scored and that he ought to have been one of many three winners. Along with Democratic lawmakers from the House and Senate, they’ve requested the Education Department to present extra details about the scoring.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy launched a video final week the place he alleged that Singh, who’s the son of Indian immigrants, was sidelined to uplift contestants who higher aligned with Trump’s agenda. All three of the finalists had been White, and one recognized as a Trump supporter in an interview with CNN.
“How do you justify running a merit-based competition based upon how much you know about American history, and then denying a kid a place in the winner’s circle, perhaps simply because his parents are immigrants,” Murphy requested.
In a press release to CNN, the Education Department mentioned that each one contestants had agreed that judges — fellows from the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation — “would judge the competition in good faith with full discretion over scoring.”
“They also understood that in the live competition, the judges would have to exercise their best judgment and deliberate in real time. It was a fierce and close competition, and Mr. Singh was an outstanding competitor,” the company mentioned.
Competitors for the Patriot Games had been informed that there can be a points-based system, awarding athletes who end with the perfect marks in every spherical probably the most. Some of the scholars who spoke to CNN expressed confusion about how people can be scored throughout the workforce occasions, resembling dodgeball.
“I don’t know how that’s going to work, that’s kind of a gamble for me,” mentioned 17-year-old Liam Nies from Ohio. “No two teams are equal, so it’s really if you get the better team or you don’t.”
In an interview with CNN, Nies mentioned that he heard concerning the Patriot Games from “Granny Bibbins,” Instagram influencer Arleta Kay Didier, who promotes conventional values and says in her bio that she’s hoping to “inspire the next generation of Moms.”
Tatum Palmer from Oregon informed CNN she additionally realized of the video games from Didier, whereas Missouri’s Madison Glise mentioned she was inspired to use by her mom, a member of the Air Force, after everybody at her army base acquired an electronic mail about them.
Part of Nies’s software was displaying off his skill to do a backflip – he does one a day and posts a video on Instagram about it. He spent a lot of his childhood residing in Belgium earlier than transferring again to the US for center college.
He mentioned his notion of America as a child in Belgium was “big cowboys everywhere and just hillbillies.” Now, “I have a different view on America,” Nies mentioned. “I think I’m just more noticeable of the opportunities that we have here.”
Dozens of video purposes posted to YouTube present numerous the reason why younger individuals needed to take part. An applicant from South Carolina detailed her expertise as a stage 4 most cancers survivor and her love for swimming and monitor. A New York monitor and volleyball athlete mentioned he needed to ease faculty tuition prices for himself and his twin brother. A 14-year-old, sporting a black “Freedom” t-shirt popularized by Kirk, mentioned he needed to take part to “show everyone why Oklahoma is the real red state.”
For Herrmann, the video games may assist her go to her dream college: Liberty University, an evangelical Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia. She desires to get her grasp’s in enterprise by the point she turns 20. Her objective is to work in authorities in the future – perhaps even an elected place like a congressman or a senator.
“If it happens, I would love to be the president,” she mentioned.
CNN’s David Rind contributed to this report.