JD Vance Is Booed at Olympics While Thousands Protest U.S. Sending ICE Agents to Games in Italy [View all]

With the 2026 Winter Olympics underway in Italy, we speak with writer and academic Jules Boykoff, author of six books about the Olympics, who says Milan is hosting the Games despite widespread public opposition from locals. Boykoff says that while the Olympics have attempted in recent years to institute some "cosmetic" reforms, "they don't get at the core elements that really plague the Olympic Games, and that's overspending, that's the intensification of militarized policing, that's greenwashing, that's corruption, that's the displacement of local populations."

Boykoff's recent piece for The Nation, co-authored with Dave Zirin, is headlined "Get Ready for This Year's Undemocratic, Debt-Ridden, and Mobster-Infused Winter Olympics."