January, 10 2021, 11:00pm EDT
PGA Terminates Agreement With Trump, 2022 Championship From Trump Bedminster
Women's group that urged professional golf to sever ties with Trump in 2016 reacts.
WASHINGTON
Late last night, the Professional Golf Association (PGA) of America's Board of Directors voted to exercise the right to terminate the agreement to play the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump's Bedminster golf course.
In 2017, UltraViolet, a leading national women's organization, called on the USGA and PGA to sever ties with Donald Trump, arguing that it was wildly inappropriate for the LPGA and the PGA to give millions of dollars in revenue, free advertising and branding to Donald Trump.
In reaction to the Professional Golf Association's announcement, Shaunna Thomas, co-founder and executive director of UltraViolet, issued the following statement:
"The PGA should have severed ties with Donald Trump a long time ago. While we welcome this announcement and repudiation of Trump, it is a little late.
"When challenged in 2016 and 2017, the LPGA defended its relationship with Trump and went so far as to force players in the US Women's Open to play on a course named for a serial sexual abuser and misogynist, knowing that their participation in the tournament would directly enrich Donald Trump and his personal brand.
"The PGA knew exactly who Donald Trump - a racist, misogynist, authoritarian - was from day one and are disappointed that it took this long for them to act.
"And while we welcome the PGA's decision to pull the 2022 Championship from Bedminster - they must do more. They must pull any and every tournament from Trump-owned golf courses going forward.
In 2016, UltraViolet launched a campaign calling on the USGA, PGA LPGA to sever ties with Trump. As part of the campaign, UltraViolet:
- Flew a plane banner over the U.S. Women's Open at Trump National in Bedminster, calling out the USGA for holding that tournament at a golf course owned by a self-professed sexual predator.
- Commissioned a digital truck billboard to circle the Bedminster golf course with messages from news columnists about the USGA's decision to hold the US Women's Open at Trump's golf course.
- Held a rally with UltraViolet and CREDO members outside Trump's Bedminster course, expressing outrage at the USGA for doubling-down on their relationship with Trump and putting the athletes competing at the US Women's Open in the impossible position of having to defend playing on a sexist, serial sexual abuser's golf course.
- Flew plane banners over the Bank of Hope Founders Cup in Arizona, the ANA Inspiring Women in Sports Cup in California, the US Men's Open in Wisconsin, and the US Senior Open in Massachusetts, calling on the LPGA and USGA to "Dump Trump."
- Held a protest at the Bank of the Hope Founders Cup. As part of the action, UltraViolet members handed out golf balls and golf ball-patterned beach balls that read: "LPGA: Dump Trump."
- Organized several progressive advocacy organizations - including Color of Change, Courage Campaign, CREDO, Democracy for America, NARAL Pro-Choice America & Make It Work - in a letter penned a letter urging the LPGA to move the U.S. Women's Open out of Trump National Golf Course. The letter was sent to USGA and LPGA corporate sponsors.
- More than 100,000 UltraViolet members signed the petition calling on the USGA and LPGA to show young golfers, especially women and people of color, that it stands for an inclusive and strong future to the support by severing ties with Trump and moving the tournament. A petition by CREDO, also calling on the USGA to sever ties with Trump and move the tournament, was signed by more than 174,923 people.
UltraViolet is a powerful and rapidly growing community of people mobilized to fight sexism and create a more inclusive world that accurately represents all women, from politics and government to media and pop culture.
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In Wake of Killing, UnitedHealth CEO Admits 'No One Would Design a System Like the One We Have'
One critic said UnitedHealth Group chief executive Andrew Witty should "resign and then dedicate every dollar he has to dismantling the current system brick by brick and building one based on public health in its stead."
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UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty wrote in a New York Times op-ed Friday that the for-profit U.S. healthcare system "does not work as well as it should" and that "no one would design a system like the one we have," admissions that came as his industry faced a torrent of public anger following the murder of UnitedHealthcare's chief executive.
Witty declared that his firm, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare and the nation's largest private insurer, is "willing to partner with anyone, as we always have—healthcare providers, employers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, governments, and others—to find ways to deliver high-quality care and lower costs."
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"Medicare for All is the only proposal on the table capable of delivering universal, continuous coverage for everyone, while also securing the efficiency and savings only possible through the elimination of private insurance."
While publicly pledging to cooperate with reform efforts, Witty has defended his company's care denials in private and urged his employees not to engage with media outlets in the aftermath of Thompson's murder.
Contrary to Witty's depiction of his company in his Times op-ed, UnitedHealth has historically been an aggressive opponent of reform efforts aimed at mitigating the harms of for-profit insurance and building public alternatives. The Leverreported in 2021 that UnitedHealth Group "held a webinar to pressure its rank-and-file employees to mobilize against efforts in Connecticut to create a state-level public health insurance option."
At the national level, UnitedHealth has spent over $5.8 million this year lobbying the federal government, according to OpenSecrets.
Witty, who was born in a country with a public healthcare system, did not detail the kinds of reforms he would support in his op-ed Friday, but it's clear he would oppose a transition to a single-payer system such as Medicare for All, which would effectively abolish private insurance and provide coverage to all Americans for free at the point of service—and at a lower total cost than the status quo.
In a column for The Nation on Friday, writer Natalie Shure argued that "the appalling amount of resources and energy we put into maintaining the existence of health insurance is wasted on an industry with no social value whatsoever."
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