Chris Kluwe: A Decent Anti-MAGA Former NFL PLayer

The Former NFL Player Who Embodies the Rage of the Trump Resistance
Susan Milligan
Mon, September 15, 2025



Ask a professional football punter: They don’t get no respect. Kick a ball downfield 45 yards so the punt can’t be returned—in other words, do your job well—and there’s a collective yawn from the stadium. But mess up and give the other team great field position, then everybody knows your name. And not in a good way.

Chris Kluwe, whose pro-equality activism dates back to his days with the Minnesota Vikings, is feeling the punter’s curse even in retirement from professional ball. Disturbed that the City Council in his hometown of Huntington Beach, California, approved the placement of a coded MAGA plaque at a local public library, Kluwe, 43, decided a simple objection wasn’t enough. He went to a City Council meeting in February to fight the plaque (which cheekily included the phrase “Magical Alluring Galvanizing Adventurous”) as well as a more explicitly pro-Trump line: “Through hope and change our nation has built back better to the golden era of Making America Great Again!”

Kluwe ticked off a list of what MAGA stands for, including “trying to erase trans people from existence,” “resegregation and racism,” “censorship and book bans,” and cuts to air traffic safety and education. “MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy, and most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement,” Kluwe said at the City Council meeting, winning applause from onlookers.

Kluwe then approached the council members themselves, placed his hands behind his back, and fell to the floor. He was quickly arrested and detained by local police. But it didn’t stop there: Edison High School, in the enviable position of having a former professional athlete as its freshman football coach, fired Kluwe. Like nearly anonymous punters everywhere, Kluwe wasn’t quite famous enough for the high school to fear a public national outcry over his dismissal. But he was just well-known enough to make the school skittish about what Kluwe said he was told was “too much attention” for their comfort level.

The library had been a target of conservative political activism for some time, Kluwe said, such as efforts to ban LGBTQ-themed books and another to privatize the collection. The MAGA plaque was what made him decide to conduct civil disobedience.

Kluwe said he thought, “I’ve been waiting for one of my elected officials to do something about this. I’ve been waiting for someone to get arrested for causing trouble, and no one has done it.” And then he thought, “I can’t ask them to do something I’m not willing to do myself.”

Kluwe’s acts are being replicated across the country by throngs of Americans protesting Trump administration policies. During a June wave of protests against immigration raids, several hundred were arrested in California, Texas, and at Manhattan’s Trump Tower. Others have filmed the masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and posted the videos online. At least five elected officials have been arrested or confronted by law enforcement as they challenged Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, was handcuffed and forced to the ground after he attempted to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a news conference.

Kluwe has a history of activism and speaking out, on matters football-related and beyond. He very publicly called out leading NFL colleagues for being “greedy” in what Kluwe thought was holding up a contract between the NFL and players. He slammed NFL brass for putting substandard replacement referees on the field to squeeze concessions from experienced refs.

Kluwe’s vocal support for same-sex marriage in 2012 — three years before the Supreme Court made such unions legal—led, he believes, to his release from the Minnesota Vikings in 2013. Kluwe said that special teams coordinator at the time, Mike Priefer, taunted him with homophobic comments. Kluwe threatened to sue, and the case ended with the Vikings agreeing to donate to several LGBTQ rights groups, including a charity run by Wade Davis, an openly gay former NFL player.

Kluwe never punted in a regular season NFL game again. Now 43, he writes the occasional op-ed and books and is running for a state legislative seat in California. “I don’t really want to be a politician, but we’re at the point in our nation’s history where it’s all hands on deck,” Kluwe said. “Are we going to act to save democracy or not? That really is the fundamental question we have to ask ourselves.”