The New Republic

Donald Trump ended the tortured saga around his gala for America’s 250th anniversary in typical fashion. Trump claimed 150,000 people attended his final speech, which was humiliatingly contradicted by videos of the event. Then Trump made it worse. During the speech he insisted that 375,000 people had been present before storms and an evacuation caused chaos and turmoil, reducing the crowd to 150,000 (again, a baseless number). But then afterward he posted that the initial total had been 422,000. Somehow the number ballooned by nearly 50,000, delivering still another blow to his credibility. We talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, who writes really well about MAGA’s dwindling cultural relevance. We discuss the deeper failures of Trump’s extravaganza, why Trump can’t tell a compelling story about the country anymore, why Barack Obama’s national narrative is far superior, and why the World Cup is acting as the perfect foil to Late Stage Trumpism. Listen to this episode here.

A federal judge in Ohio ruled against the Trump administration Monday, citing bigoted comments President Trump and Vice President JD Vance made about immigrants. 

U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ordered the White House to unfreeze immigrants’ benefit applications, citing Trump and Vance’s “outright hostility towards immigrants, both before and after the 2024 presidential elections.” These applications include filings for work authorization and green cards from people in the U.S. from countries including Burma, Canada, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Tanzania, and Venezuela.

“Their ire appears focused on immigrants from countries in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and Asia,” Marbley, nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1997, wrote.  

The judge quoted many of Trump’s comments against immigrants of color, including the time he railed against people coming to the U.S. from “shithole countries” or when he claimed Haitians are “poisoning the blood” of our country. In his second term as president, Trump attacked Somali Americans and accused them of adding “nothing” to the country, and oversaw violent immigration crackdowns across the country, particularly in Minnesota.

Marbley also highlighted Trump and Vance’s made-up accusation that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pet cats and dogs. 

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said in 2024, which Marbley quoted directly.

“This general hostility to immigration contrasts with an apparent interest in and preference for the migration of white people,” Marbley added.

Now, the Trump administration’s racism has come back to bite Trump and Vance, and at least some immigrants can have a chance to establish some stability in the U.S. The administration’s attempt to shut them out and penalize them for where they come from, for reasons born of prejudice, was temporarily blocked Monday. 

Maine Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner has responded to more allegations of sexual misconduct against women.

Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old Maine resident who dated Platner on and off for two years, says that he sexually assaulted her in 2021—drunkenly entering her home uninvited and forcing himself on her even as she told him to stop multiple times.

“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” Racicot told Politico in an article published on Monday. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”

Racicot was one of the women who detailed Platner’s past “unsettling” behavior to The New York Times last month, but did not make her full allegation until recently due to reaction to the story being dominated by one of the women’s political connections to the GOP. She also mentioned the internal ideological conflict in her decision.

“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

Platner has denied the allegations.

“Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false,” Platner said in a video posted on X. “Over the last 10 months, I have been deeply humbled by the faith Mainers have put in me. You have welcomed me into your homes, into your places of work, into your restaurants.... Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful of the political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.”

pic.twitter.com/9itIt4Mw25

— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026

While the announcement is unclear, Platner’s political future is in more jeopardy than it already was, as calls for him to drop out begin to foment. 

This story has been updated.

The president can bellyache all he wants about advancing the SAVE America Act, but it once again appears to be completely and utterly dead in the water.

House Republican leadership has claimed that the controversial voter ID bill—which has so far held up confirmation hearings and bipartisan bill signings at Donald Trump’s behest—could still be passed through reconciliation. But at least one GOP lawmaker whose vote is very much needed to advance the effort to the president’s desk is not so confident.

“It can’t” pass through reconciliation, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis told MS NOW. “If it could, we’d already be talking about it. Let’s just stop playing games. Let’s stop being dishonest.”

When a reporter suggested that the House might strongarm the Senate into passing the act by blocking other legislation, Tillis responded bluntly: “That’s super cute.”

Tillis has been one of the more vocal conservative critics of Trump’s signature bill, openly questioning how the SAVE America Act could be implemented without the use of federal funds.

“Let’s assume you only allow early voting in the month of October,” Tillis told the Raleigh News & Observer last week. “Then do you honestly believe that we can have this thing up in 50 states? There’s no funding. There’s no specific implementation instructions.

“Unless they do the work to get to the 60 votes, they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater,” Tillis continued. “And honestly, here in North Carolina, or in virtually any state, the ability, if we go back to when we implemented voter ID in North Carolina, it took a year to get everything in place with adequate funding.”

The SAVE America Act sparked nationwide controversy earlier this year, particularly over a detail in the first version of the bill that would have made it more difficult for married women to vote. The backlash on Capitol Hill was so grave that it gummed up efforts to fund Homeland Security for several months, forcing Republicans to bail on the package in order to end the congressional gridlock.

The original SAVE America Act suggests numerous amendments to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, including line items that would abolish mail-in voting, require voters to bring proof of citizenship and proof of residency to register to vote, require voter ID, and mandate voter roll purges every 30 days, an enormous bureaucratic task that would place undue burdens on local election officials. The measure also would have added federal law to prevent men from competing in women’s sports, and a ban on “transgender mutilation surgery.”

But the bill has been radically pared down since then, in large part due to the improbability of passing it in whole. House Speaker Mike Johnson has claimed that the current iteration of the act proposed by the lower chamber preserves the “backbone” of what Trump is pushing to pass in the Senate. That includes requirements to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and a mandate to present photo identification when casting a ballot.

“That eliminates the problem, all the fraud and everything that everybody’s concerned about in our elections, particularly, frankly, in these blue states,” Johnson told Fox News Sunday, describing the SAVE Act as a shared top priority between the lower chamber and the White House.

The House is currently in a two-week recess, and only a handful of legislative weeks remain before midterm elections. Beyond that, lawmakers aren’t convinced the president will be satisfied with whatever solution could even get through Congress.

“He wants to go it alone, his way to the highway, and it don’t work,” Nebraska Representative Don Bacon told MS NOW. “He’s trying to pound the square peg through the circle, and it doesn’t work.”

Despite Trump’s aggressive efforts to turn the tide, Republican holdouts on the bill haven’t budged—and those that remain wish that the current administration would let this strenuous chapter come to a close.

“Republicans—those of us who can do math—would like the president and other members to recognize that there isn’t a path forward,” an unidentified lawmaker told the network.

Nearly a year after President Donald Trump’s mass government layoffs, the National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association are still scrambling to replace scientists and collect missing data.

The NWS is hiring for hundreds of mostly entry-level positions, after the agency lost about 15 percent of its employees during Trump’s first year back in office, CBS News reported Monday. 

Tom Fahy, legislative director of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said that the agency had shed roughly 600 workers in 2025. Most of those employees were seasoned workers who accepted early retirement packages, while roughly 100 were probationary employees in their first year of work. Meanwhile, NOAA employed nearly 300 fewer meteorologists and hydrologists at the end of May than it did in January 2025, according to federal data reviewed by CBS News. 

Former government scientists told CBS News that mass layoffs, which forced out experts, have undermined the research and forecasting conducted by these agencies. 

Alan Gerard, a meteorologist who worked for three decades at the weather service and NOAA before retiring last year, told CBS News that the Trump administration’s sudden reductions to the workforce disrupted the flow of institutional knowledge. 

“Obviously, people retiring and new people coming up is a natural part of any business or agency,” Gerard said. “But it’s meant to be done in an organized process, where the new people coming in have the benefit of working for a period with people who are experienced and can help train them and build up their expertise.”

Rick Thoman, a climate specialist in Alaska who worked for three decades as a weather service meteorologist, told CBS News that the sudden layoffs had been “a really bad thing.”

“Alaska is not like forecasting for Nebraska, and there are no schools of meteorology in Alaska. Everyone has to come here and learn it,” Thoman said “So, even though there’s some effort to increase staffing now, because there are no old-timers left, and folks come in here without any experience in high-latitude weather forecasting, it just makes it that much harder.”

Already, the cracks have started to show. Since Trump returned to office, employees, including Gerard and Thoman, have observed a notable decline of “upper air” data collected by weather balloons as several weather stations have stopped launching probes twice daily.  

“There’s concern about the quality of the models because of the lack of upper air data,” Gerard told CBS News. “There’s a lot of expression of just being less confident, and having less confidence in your data tends to undermine a lot of your operational decisions, right?”

Thoman pointed out that in October, weather models had incorrectly predicted a storm that displaced more than 1,000 people, after more than half of the area’s scheduled balloon launches failed to take flight in the days before the storm hit. 

Thoman said it was “inconceivable” that the lack of data had made no impact on the weather model forecast.

This shortage of both data and weather experts is especially concerning with the hurricane season about to start. Climate change has resulted in longer, more intense storms—and now, it looks like some people won’t be as well equipped to face them.

Last month, two ICE agents showed up to David Streever’s front porch in Rochester over one strongly worded email he sent to former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons. Now he’s suing the Department of Homeland Security for First Amendment violations.

Two agents with Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, rang Streever’s doorbell on June 23 and left a “WARNING NOTICE” with his wife, which said he was possibly in violation of federal law and that Lyons was “requesting that you promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior.”

Streever was in Finland with his daughter at the time. When they returned, federal agents even came to the JFK Airport hotel he stayed at that night and left a note for him at the front desk.

The visit came five months after Streever initially sent the email. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, highlights that.

“If someone is really threatening a government official, you don’t wait five months to act on it,” Adam Steinbaugh, senior attorney at FIRE, said. “The fact that authorities didn’t respond immediately shows that David presented no threat. This pursuit is designed to intimidate lawful speech, pure and simple.”

Streever’s January email to Lyons followed ICE’s killing of Americans Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

The subject line was “what’s next,” and Streever warned Lyons would be haunted by the shootings.

“You will seek to lose yourself, to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself,” he wrote. “But wherever you go, you will find yourself. You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.” He also equated Lyons with a Nazi.

Streever sent the email on January 26, two days after Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents in Minnesota, and 19 days after Good suffered the same fate.

The lawsuit argues that Streever’s email was speech protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is actively threatening that freedom, tracking down and retaliating against speakers like Plaintiff David Streever because he exercised his fundamental right to criticize one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in the United States,” the suit reads. “ICE’s issuance of formal ‘WARNING NOTICE’ documents to critics who engage in protected speech—and its decision to have federal agents deliver those warnings in person—can have only one purpose: to systemically chill ICE’s critics and coerce them into silence.”

Streever said his email came from frustrations with ICE’s violent tactics.

“Like many Americans, I was deeply upset after the shootings in Minnesota and I felt compelled to do something,” Streever said in a statement. “Writing an email to the head of ICE seemed like the least I could do to express my sense of outrage. I never dreamed it would lead to a knock on my door by federal officers or descending on my hotel in the dark of night.”

It certainly shouldn’t have. Yet this pattern of speech repression has become all too common under the Trump administration, as it has attacked or threatened to attack people for anything that threatens its ideology, whether writing op-ed columns in support of Palestine or criticizing Charlie Kirk.

This year’s World Cup has been unusually thrilling on the field, even by the tournament’s high standards for drama, and has largely gone off without a hitch, despite prior concerns about stadium travel logistics for fans and whether the obscenely expensive matches would sell out. But the Cup has not been without off-field controversy, thanks largely to the Trump administration’s xenophobia. The U.S. blocked a FIFA referee from Somalia from entering the country, and did not allow the Iranian national team to stay in the country for more than one night before its two matches in Los Angeles, forcing them to be based in Tijuana, Mexico (for Iran’s third match, in Seattle, the team was allowed to arrive two nights beforehand, though the team had to leave the country soon after each of their games concluded).

Yet those moves, and the unavoidable reality that the principal host nation is run by an authoritarian president, somehow have not sullied the World Cup, which, at its best, serves as a potent display of multiculturalism and global togetherness. Hundreds of thousands of fans from all over the world have been welcomed to the U.S., whose national team includes players who have spent most of their lives living abroad, principally in Europe. No player better represents that World Cup than Folarin Balogun, a star striker at Monaco in France’s top league and the U.S. team’s highest scorer in this tournament. Balogun is a U.S. citizen only because his mother was deemed too pregnant to fly back to England from the U.S. In other words, as many have pointed out, he is precisely the type of birthright citizenship case that Trump wishes to abolish.

The team last week won its first knockout game in 24 years because of a goal from Balogun, but he was later given an unduly harsh red card, which triggered a series of events that have engulfed FIFA in particular, and the World Cup in general, in a typically Trumpian controversy that may sour the event from here on out.

That red card carried a one-match ban for Balogun, with no chance to appeal, thereby keeping him out of Monday night’s game against Belgium in the round of 16. But on Sunday, FIFA announced that it had effectively lifted his punishment, allowing him to play while on probation of sorts. Why did FIFA do this? Because they can, mostly. There is a statute in their rule book that allows them to suspend red cards whenever they want, a power they used ahead of this tournament so that several players—notably global superstar Cristiano Ronaldo—could play in opening matches that they otherwise would have had to sit out. FIFA has a long history of bending the rules in the interest of providing the best possible on-field entertainment.

Which is just another way of saying that FIFA doesn’t care nearly as much about the integrity of the sport as it does about money. The success of the U.S. Men’s National Team is important to FIFA because the U.S. is the tournament’s main host and source of revenue. Because of the cost of tickets and the Trump administration’s nativist immigration policies, U.S. residents are also the people buying the most tickets. So it’s in FIFA’s financial interest to keep the U.S. happy. FIFA surely knew that wiping out Balogun’s red card, even though the ref’s decision was widely considered wrong, would be controversial—but it bet that ultimately people would forget about it because during World Cups, the on-field action almost always prevails over off-field issues.

That might have been the case here, except for one thing: Trump. The Balogun reversal has grown into an international incident largely because, as The New York Times reported on Sunday, the president intervened on behalf of the USMNT with a call to FIFA president Gianni Infantino. By Monday, Trump was patting himself on the back. “I asked for a review by FIFA. I spoke to a man who’s highly respected.… I’m the one who got them to do it,” he said at a press conference. “It was not Biden, Biden was asleep!”

The Royal Belgian Football Association appealed the decision, but FIFA on Monday afternoon rejected it. The Union of European Football Associations, Europe’s governing body, has come to Belgium’s defense, turning this into a nasty proxy fight. The USMNT is caught in the middle.

The reversal of Balogun’s suspension is part of a long history of FIFA inserting itself to protect its own interests. But what makes this decision different, and what has elevated it into a profound crisis, is Trump’s involvement. Even with the USMNT’s on-field success, the administration has largely kept quiet, at least by its standards. Administration officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have attended games, but the president has been relatively quiet.

But that was never going to last. Trump had long planned to not just attend the Cup final but to hand the trophy to the captain of the winning team. The controversy over Balogun’s suspension, it seems, was too good for him to stay away, especially since it allowed him to take credit for an outcome that FIFA probably would have arrived at without the U.S.’s intense lobbying campaign. This is also an opportunity for Trump to recite his familiar list of grievances—and not just against Biden. In the press conference on Monday, Trump said, referring to Belgium, “If they beat us [with Balogun], they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us, we’ll say—I say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020, but I won’t get into that.”

We have grown used to rolling our eyes when Trump says such things, but for him to utter this familiar lie in the context of the World Cup makes one’s blood boil anew. Trump has now poisoned a USMNT that had, until this point, remarkably good vibes. This was a team that you could get behind regardless of your political allegiance. It was also a team that was truly multicultural, and that, like most of this tournament, has not fallen victim to America’s toxic politics or FIFA’s blatant corruption. No more. FIFA’s opaque, rotten bureaucracy has aligned with Trump’s megalomania for a perfect storm that has the power to wreck this World Cup, at least for fans of the underdogs in red, white, and blue.

Western alliances are turning away from America.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters at a press conference in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday that NATO’s traditional reliance on the U.S. is no longer a sustainable model for the military and economic coalition.

“What you are seeing is a NATO which indeed is changing in a transformational sense,” Rutte said. “I would argue that the NATO we had only three or four, five years ago was not sustainable.”

“It is not sustainable that we ask a country with 350 million people, living eight hours flying from here, to defend against the Russians with 600 million people living in this part of NATO territory—the richest part of the world—being so overly dependent on the United States,” Rutte continued.

“So rebalancing that, the United States still providing nuclear, the United States still providing crucial conventional support to NATO as a whole, and therefore to the transatlantic security, and therefore of course also to their own security.”

“Rebalancing that is crucial, and therefore a stronger European role, Canada also stepping up, is important, because all of us—the alliance, to be honest—would long-term probably not have been sustainable,” Rutte said. “Stronger Europe, stronger NATO.”

Canada has made generational investments in its defense spending over the last year, and is reportedly on course to meet NATO’s next commitment: using 5 percent of its gross domestic product for defense spending by 2035, according to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Carney has made a point to publicly criticize Donald Trump and his apparent disinterest in being the leader of the free world. Earlier this year, Carney delivered a scathing address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he marked the finale of Pax Americana and the reorganization of global power.

“The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said at the time.

Leaders from NATO member states, including Trump, are meeting in Turkey this week in what foreign policy experts anticipate will be one of the tensest summits yet. Late last week, Trump claimed that the NATO alliance had become “one-sided,” and that the U.S. “didn’t need anything” from the Cold War–era coalition. In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump referred to America’s involvement in NATO as “ridiculous” and claimed that “they were not there for us!!!”

But that’s not true. Despite Trump’s rhetoric, there has only ever been one time in history in which NATO’s Article 5 has been invoked: the global mobilization to support America in its military offensive against Afghanistan after 9/11.

Nonetheless, Americans don’t seem to believe that the country’s long-standing European allies would support the U.S. if it were attacked. A Politico survey of more than 31,000 respondents, published Friday, found that just 43 percent of U.S. adults believed that the alliance would assist their home country if it were attacked. That was the lowest score out of any of NATO’s 32 member states when asked the same question.

The U.S. president has been on the offensive against NATO since the early days of his first term in office. He regularly threatens to remove America from the coalition, and has been remarkably cavalier at times about the organization’s potential dissolution. He has also baselessly insisted that other NATO members have failed to pay their dues to the entity and shortchanged America in the process, even though that’s not how the alliance operates.

It is unclear who in the Western world benefits from the dissolution of NATO. John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser and a policy hawk who also served under Ronald Reagan, has said that the consequences of exiting the alliance could be dire.

President Donald Trump has thought of yet another useless White House renovation to drain taxpayer dollars—and his rush to show off to world leaders is only making things more expensive.

The Trump administration sped up construction of a new helipad on the White House’s South Lawn, adding $875,000 to the price tag in the process, according to the records from Clark Construction obtained by The Washington Post.

The project to install the helipad, renovate the White House’s South Portico, and re-top the driveway with white stone already cost a whopping $13 million.

The contractor’s documents showed that the company received a last-minute demand to complete construction by September 17, in anticipation of an “upcoming state visit.” The request was made just days after Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the White House on September 24.

This isn’t the first time that the budget for one of the president’s renovations has exploded. Trump originally claimed that his White House ballroom project would only cost $200 million, but that number later ballooned to $300 million, and then $400 million after he decided to tack on extra construction. Last month, a bombshell report revealed that taxpayers would actually be responsible for half of a $600 million price tag.

Speaking to reporters at the White House Monday, Trump announced that Sikorsky, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin that builds Marine One helicopters, would cover the cost of a $5 million or $6 million helipad, complete with a White House seal carved out of granite.

It’s not clear who’s picking up the rest of Trump’s multimillion-dollar tab—but I have a sneaking suspicion it will be the same people who he wants to pay for his gaudy ballroom: American taxpayers.

President Trump’s intervention to lift the red card ban on U.S. Men’s National Team soccer player Folarin Balogun is breaking the integrity of the World Cup tournament. 

Now the French national team has appealed to FIFA, the soccer governing body, to rescind Michael Olise’s yellow card, which he received during the match with Paraguay on Saturday. Olise was penalized for a tackle for contact with Paraguyan Matias Galarza’s face, but replays showed Olise only held Galarza’s shirt.   

A yellow card doesn’t directly translate into a suspension like a red card, but France evidently feels that overturning Balogun’s suspension has opened the door. It follows British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also intervening with FIFA to prevent the start time for England’s match against Mexico being moved up over weather concerns, with England believing that they wouldn’t have enough time to train for high-altitude conditions at Mexico’s national stadium, Estadio Azeteca. 

British Attorney General Richard Hermer also may intervene with FIFA to overturn England player Jarrell Quansah’s red card, issued Sunday versus Mexico, The Telegraph reports. FIFA, meanwhile, denied an appeal from Belgium Monday challenging the decision to lift Balogun’s red card.

The red card came after Balogun awkwardly stepped on Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemović’s ankle during the match on Wednesday. Hours after the game ended, Trump called up FIFA President Gianni Infantino to complain about the decision, and on Sunday, FIFA’s disciplinary committee announced it was overturning Balogun’s suspension, leaving him free to join the U.S.-Belgium game Monday.

It’s the first time a red card has been rescinded in this manner since 1962, and Trump enlisted the full force of the U.S. government to get the foul overturned, with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and White House World Cup task force director Andrew Giuliani quickly engaging lawyers to help U.S. Soccer put together an appeal. 

On Monday in the White House, Trump openly bragged to reporters about his role in getting the suspension overturned, noting that he called Infantino himself, and attacking the match referee’s credibility. 

“He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s our best player, or one of our best players … and [the referee] gave him a red card. Then I started hearing that means he can’t play in the next game.… When they take your best player … and they say you can’t play? That’s very unfair,” Trump said. “So yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.… I’m the one that got them to [rescind the suspension]. It was not Biden. Biden was asleep.”

Correct call or not, this chain of events has ruined the credibility of FIFA and this tournament. Infantino denied any kind of wrongdoing in a statement Monday, claiming that the FIFA Disciplinary Committee is an independent body. 

“Yes, I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States, and on this matter, I did receive a call from President Donald Trump, just as I receive calls from heads of state, government officials, football stakeholders and business executives from around the world on many different issues,” Infantino said. “During our conversation, I explained that there was an ongoing legal process involving FIFA’s independent judicial bodies and that the case would be decided in due course by the competent bodies. That is how FIFA’s system works, and it is a principle that I will always uphold.” 

Infantino’s predecessor, Sepp Blatter, himself banned from soccer activities over corruption allegations, ironically called out Infantino’s decision to overturn the red card in a post on X early Monday morning. 

“Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls. They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies. If a U.S. President intervenes with the FIFA President—and a player is suddenly cleared before a World Cup knockout match—the question is unavoidable: Quo vadis, FIFA? Football must never become a playground for political power. #FIFA #WorldCup #GianniInfantino #DonaldTrump,” Blatter posted. 

President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim.

The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.

The innocent, celebratory clip—orignally posted on X in June by the right-wing “End Wokeness” account—was re-upped by Trump, who also posted the account’s original caption: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”

The post was then seized on by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters all over again, as Trump’s comment section was full of calls to deport the children and ban hijabs.

This post is Islamophobic, weird, and creepy. It should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.

Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota

Every girl is in a hijab… in kindergarten pic.twitter.com/08JOggCMU8

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 12, 2026

This comes just a week after a Kentucky church’s vacation Bible school came under fire for holding a violent mock execution of an immigrant in front of dozens of children. But Trump takes more issue with Muslim kindergarteners graduating.

Donald Trump announced Monday that a slew of tech companies are expected to contribute to his eponymously named childhood investment accounts. But when asked to elaborate on the financial backing behind Trump Accounts, the president suddenly trailed off into a lengthy rant about his popularity on TikTok.

“On the Trump accounts—the SpaceX president has said that she is going to donate shares to the Trump accounts,” said Yahoo Finance’s Jennifer Schonberger, referring to Gwynne Shotwell. “Have you spoken at all with Elon Musk about further share donations as well as other corporate—about share donations?”

“I’m like a cheerleader for geniuses,” Trump started before almost immediately switching the topic. “Now there’s a thing called TikTok, have you heard of it?”

Trump recalled a segment he had seen recently on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria. “It was announced about two days ago, the new numbers just came out. Do you know who the number one person on TikTok is by far? Trump. Me.”

“I’m number one. Like Taylor Swift was number 11. I’m number one, by far,” Trump repeated.

The president then suggested that the social media company’s influence couldn’t be too dangerous, since he was such a hot topic on the platform.

“Maybe they’re bad, maybe they’re not,” Trump said. “I know one thing: Great American people, tremendous businesspeople and companies, bought it.”

“American companies, great ones, own our TikTok, and it’s very influential, but I’m number one by a lot,” he continued. “I think it helped me win the election in a landslide, if I tell you the truth.”

Trump tried and failed to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app during his first term in the White House. At the time, the White House said there were national security concerns associated with allowing TikTok to operate without U.S. intervention, claiming that the social media platform had created a back door for the Chinese government to access American data.

Congress passed a bipartisan ban on TikTok in 2024, yet American access to the app has prevailed due to negotiations that transferred domestic control of TikTok’s U.S. business to American investors. The principal investors in TikTok’s U.S. operations are Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, who are responsible for data protection and content moderation within national boundaries.

President Trump wants Vice President JD Vance to succeed him. 

Axios reports that the president is happy with how Vance has handled his position, from TV appearances to public remarks, and consistently talks up the former Ohio senator to his inner circle to the detriment of another prospective heir, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

“POTUS isn’t asking, ‘JD or Marco?’ anymore,” an unnamed source told the publication. “He’s no longer asking, ‘How’s JD doing?’ He’s now saying, ‘JD looks great, right?’”

A senior Trump adviser told Axios that “JD is earning it, and Trump sees it,” adding that Rubio “wasn’t planning to run [for president in 2028] anyway, and he’d be even less likely to do so now.”

A pivotal event for Trump’s positive opinion of Vance came after he worked with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to reach a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Iran, which has brought momentary peace. Vance benefited from positive media attention over his role in the negotiations while at the same time beginning a media tour to promote his new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.

Vance’s 33 TV appearances impressed Trump, who has a fixation with the medium, and even though Trump hates many of the shows on which Vance appeared, particularly ABC’s The View, he was impressed with the video clips circulating from those appearances. 

Vance has raised $70 million for the Republican National Committee, and he’d rely on the organization if he ends up running for president. He’s still very unpopular with the American people, just like Trump, but is almost as popular among Republicans as the president, with a 62 percent favorability rating as opposed to Trump’s 65 percent. Early 2028 polls also have him leading the Republican field nationally and in pivotal states like New Hampshire.  

Still, pro-Israel conservatives have soured on Vance in recent months after he criticized the country’s leaders for denouncing the MOU with Iran, and on Saturday, the head of the conservative, pro-business Club for Growth, David McIntosh, said on X that Vance didn’t understand the importance of free markets.

Even if he overcomes all of that to get the 2028 Republican nomination for president, Vance faces an uphill battle to take Trump’s place in the White House. His book has been poorly received and reviewed, and Trump has saddled him and the Republican Party with record unpopularity with everyone who isn’t in the MAGA faithful. As 2028 approaches, it will be interesting to see if Vance tries to attach himself to Trump, or tries to create some distance, to better his own political prospects. 

President Donald Trump had a humiliating outburst during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the White House in February 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.  

The two world leaders attempted to dial in to a video call led by then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—but Trump became frustrated by a technical issue that prevented him from speaking. In response, he lobbed the tablet he was using over the Resolute Desk and onto the floor, an official told the Journal.

This incident was part of an expansive Journal report detailing the crumbling relationship between the United States and Europe—and Trump’s outburst in front of Macron was only the beginning. The president has continued to escalate feuds with European leaders, give hall passes to their enemies, and make deranged demands to seize their territory. 

This also isn’t the first time one of Trump’s temper tantrums has turned violent. 

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top assistant to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, previously testified to Trump’s lunatic behavior behind the scenes. 

In December 2020, Trump launched his lunch at the wall after Attorney General William Barr denied the president’s claims of widespread voter fraud, according to Hutchinson. 

On January 6, 2021, when Trump was told it wasn’t safe to go to the Capitol, the wild-eyed president tried to take the wheel of his car. When a Secret Service agent tried to hold him back, the president tried to grab an agent just below the neck, Hutchinson testified to Congress. 

President Trump openly admitted to World Cup corruption while explaining how he got FIFA to rescind Team USA star Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension—the first time the soccer organization has done so since 1962. 

Balogun was initially supposed to be suspended from playing in Monday’s Round of 16 match against Belgium after receiving a red card for a tackle against Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemović last week. FIFA stated that teams are unable to appeal red cards, which keep a player out of the following game. Nevertheless, Balogun will be playing on Monday after Trump’s call with FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Belgium has challenged the decision at the time of this writing, but no update has been made. 

“Can you describe your phone call with Gianni Infantino about the red card?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House on Monday morning. 

“You’re asking me about the whole soccer thing? Yeah, I did, I spoke to Gianni, who’s highly respected, who’s produced the most successful World Cup in history by, they say, four times.… So I saw the play. And I’m a person that loves sports, was a good athlete. And I understand sports really well. Really well. And that wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction,” Trump replied. “That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other. You can’t take your foot and properly place it on somebody else’s foot—these were two great athletes that got tangled up. And this referee, who is a little bit suspect, if you check his past … he made a call that nobody could believe, even people on the other side.” 

Reporter: Can you describe your phone call with Gianni Infantino about the red card? Belgium is appealing the decision.

Trump: You’re asking me about the whole soccer thing. So, yeah, I did. I spoke to Gianni.

That wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction. That was two… pic.twitter.com/zpC1e5L818

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 6, 2026

“He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s our best player, or one of our best players … and [the referee] gave him a red card. Then I started hearing that means he can’t play in the next game.… When they take your best player … and they say you can’t play? That’s very unfair,” Trump continued. “So yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.… I’m the one that got them to [rescind the suspension]. It was not Biden. Biden was asleep.” 

“All I did, all I did, I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul. And, you know, again, I’m good at this stuff. I didn’t think it was a foul.” 

Trump was later asked about the Belgian response, and if he would speak to the country’s prime minister before the game. 

“The people in Belgium—if they win the game, they can be very proud. If they win the game with a player missing, it would have been a different feeling. You can’t do that, and I’m very glad. All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say, “You have to do this,” he said. “This man is a smart, tough man, Gianni Infantino. He’s a smart, tough man, and his stock has gone through the roof.… I fear we have to have all the best players on the field.”

Trump: The people in Belgium—if they win the game, they can be very proud. If they would have won the game with the player missing, it would have been a different feeling. You can’t do that, and I’m very glad.

All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say, “You have to do this.”… pic.twitter.com/CxJIVVsY0x

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 6, 2026

The decision has been met with protest from fans, the Royal Belgian Football Association, or RBFA, and even UEFA, the governing body of European soccer. 

“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” UEFA said in a statement. “Equally, such a decision creates a precedent in the ongoing tournament, where similar situations will now require an equal treatment, to the detriment of the competition.… “We express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision.”

Balogun’s tackle was certainly a foul. And even if you don’t agree that it should have been a red card, it is undeniable that the president of a country pressuring the FIFA president to go against a rule it hasn’t broken in 64 years is a baseline example of political corruption in sports. Infantino and Trump already have a questionable relationship, as the former’s gifting of the  “FIFA Peace Prize” to Trump raised conflict-of-interest questions that have now only grown louder. 

This play is being reviewed for a potential red card against the US pic.twitter.com/EdyPpgpycA

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) July 2, 2026

“Decisions on sporting rules and sporting matters belong to sporting bodies, not politicians. Influencing sporting decisions would undermine the autonomy of sport,” European Commissioner for Fairness Glenn Micallef wrote on X. “Our focus should instead be on the real governance challenges facing sport, including the weaponisation of sport for political purposes.” 

All’s fair in love and Trumpworld.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer-turned-political defector, is reportedly back on good terms with the president, according to The New York Post.

Cohen had served as a personal attorney to Trump for more than a decade before he became the middleman in Trump’s hush-money fiasco with porn star Stormy Daniels. To save himself, Cohen testified in Trump’s 2024 criminal trial, divulging that the real estate tycoon had directed him to pay Daniels ahead of the 2016 election in order to quell reports that Trump had had an extramarital affair with the adult film star circa 2006.

The hush-money trial ultimately found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records, but the bad blood between Cohen and Trump is apparently history. 

Cohen, as of this past weekend, has landed a new gig at 770 WABC radio—with the president’s blessing.

Cohen told the Post that the new gig will be “completely liberating” and give him an “unfiltered pipeline to the people.”

“I’m moving my 1.5 million followers from my podcasts, YouTube, and Substack over to this new platform, and it’s an absolute rush to have a space where I can give them the plain, unvarnished truth,” Cohen said on Sunday, noting that “after everything I’ve been through, I know exactly what BS smells like, and I’m here to call it out every single day.”

“I’m here to use my past and my insider knowledge to pull back the curtain and set the record straight for them,” Cohen told the Post.

WABC owner and major Trump supporter John Catsimidatidis told the Post that Cohen and Trump had made amends.

“I checked with the White House and they had no objection,” Catsimatidis said. “I understand everything is fine.”

Cohen is expected to take over the Sunday slot from the disgraced ex-governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, though Cohen is reportedly vying for a regular, five-days-a-week show. His voice will be heard on the conservative talk radio station beginning July 12.

“I was told the president  gave me a glowing recommendation for this gig because he believes I’m going to be the next Rush Limbaugh,” Cohen said.

President Donald Trump is sitting on a more than $350 million war chest, but Republicans are starting to feel shortchanged, Politico reported Monday.

MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, hasn’t spent directly on a race since March, when it spent $17,900 to back Georgia Representative Clay Fuller’s campaign. Since then, MAGA Inc. has only given $560,000 to MAGA KY, which used it to back Ed Gallrein’s challenge against Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie.

Trump has openly mocked mounting concerns about affordability, and actively downplayed Republicans’ efforts to address it. Now, Republicans are frustrated that the president hasn’t spent a dime to convince voters that his party actually cares about them.

“We didn’t leave our most powerful missiles on the ships when we were trying to crush Iran. Money is the political equivalent in politics,” a GOP lobbyist and donor told Politico. “The electorate’s mindset on the economy is normally locked in stone by Labor Day after a summer of backyard conversations and paying for summer vacation gas.”

“Now is the time to sell the message—America 250, the world loves America, the Democrats are crazy left again, and we sealed the border,” the lobbyist added.

Matthew Bartlett, Republican strategist and former Trump appointee to the State Department in the first administration, wasn’t optimistic that help was on the way.

“What makes you think they’re going to spend? We’ve been waiting for the cavalry,” Bartlett told Politico. “Every day matters about shaping sentiment and ideas, and when you have limited time, you should be attacking that early. So the notion of waiting is just inherently concerning … but even more of like, are you even actually going to be playing?”

Beyond sorely neglecting Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections, in some cases, Trump has actively undermined them.

President Trump took a shot at Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Sunday afternoon on Truth Social, posting a picture showing her looking up at him with the caption “restraining order needed.”

Trump’s latest attempt to antagonize Meloni comes ahead of a NATO meeting in Turkey on Tuesday, which both leaders will be attending.

Last month, the president nearly sparked a diplomatic crisis by claiming to an Italian TV station that Meloni “begged” him for a picture with her at a G7 summit in France.

“She wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her,” Trump said. Meloni denied ever saying that, posting a video on X stating, “Neither I nor Italy ever beg,” in Italian.

“Donald Trump’s statements are completely made up,” Meloni said. “I am frankly astonished. I don’t ‌know why ⁠the president of the United States behaves like this towards his allies: It is not the first time, moreover.”

After that, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani canceled a planned trip to the U.S., calling Trump’s remarks “serious and offensive.” Footage emerged from the summit of Meloni appearing to speak forcefully toward Trump, not appearing to beg at all.

Trump doubled down days later, claiming that Meloni asked for a picture “over and over” and telling NBC News that she “was a big fan” of his.

“But I don’t want her as a fan because she was not there―along with the NATO group―having to do with the strait,” Trump said, referring to Italy’s refusal to join in any efforts to retake the Strait of Hormuz along with other European allies of the U.S. He also mocked Meloni and claimed she needed a photo with him because “she is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity.”

“My popularity is none of your concern,” Meloni later replied. “I suggest you focus on yours.”

What his intention is with his latest post doesn’t make sense, and is likely to make things worse. He clearly has some kind of obsession with her, as he called her a “beautiful young woman” in an embarrassing moment at a peace summit in Egypt last year. She was less than impressed.

President Trump is once again attacking Smithsonian director Lonnie Bunch and the museum system, the latest development in his “war on wokeness.”

“The Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of American History in particular, under its current leadership and current interpretive ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic,” the White House Domestic Policy Council wrote in a report published the evening of July 4.

“As this report shows, confirmed in the words of Museum leadership, this ideological capture has moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country,” the report continued. “By the intention and at the direction of current Museum and Smithsonian leadership, has become subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”

From the Kennedy Center to Ivy League schools to the National Park Service, Trump has made a concerted effort to imbue cultural institutions with a more whitewashed version of American history that minimizes the injustices suffered by minority groups while ignoring the well-documented sins and valid critiques of the country’s founding fathers. This is all tied to his “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order signed upon his return to office.

“American history belongs to us all. Any attempt to erase history will fail. It lives in our very DNA,” former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile wrote on X.

Last spring, the National Park Service briefly removed a picture of African American slave and freedom fighter Harriet Tubman from its webpage on the Underground Railroad, changed the words “enslaved African Americans” to “enslaved workers,” and removed a section that discussed Benjamin Franklin being a slave owner.

“There’s not one individual narrative that a president gets about our history,” Pennsylvania governor and presidential hopeful Josh Shapiro said in a CNN interview aired the day after Trump’s report. “And any president should want to make sure that that full history is shared, that the American people are able to draw their own conclusions.... If we understand where we came from, we’re going to have a better path forward.”

President Donald Trump may have revealed just how corrupt FIFA’s 2026 World Cup really is.

Just hours after top U.S. Soccer scorer Folarin Balogun received a red card and a minimum automatic one-game suspension, Trump urged FIFA President Gianni Infantino to review the decision, four people told The New York Times.

FIFA announced Sunday that it had reversed Balogun’s suspension, making him eligible to play against Belgium on Monday as the U.S. tries to advance to the quarterfinals. This is the first time since 1962 that a player has been allowed to appear in a game after receiving a suspension.

The unprecedented decision has sparked serious concerns of favoritism. Earlier this year, Infantino shocked his own top officials by cooking up the FIFA World Peace Prize, apparently to placate Trump after his campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize crashed and burned.

It wasn’t just Trump who intervened—senior administration officials including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and World Cup task force director Andrew Giuliani worked quickly to engage lawyers to help U.S. Soccer mount an appeal.

When FIFA delivered its decision, the organization offered no explanation for why Balogun was exempt from his suspension, sparking widespread outrage.

The Royal Belgian Football Association released a statement Monday arguing that FIFA had failed to follow its own rules in processing an appeal, and was “investigating all potential options.” Shortly after, the federation announced it was challenging the decision.

The Europa League also released a statement saying the decision was “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable,” and that FIFA had “crossed a red line.”

“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” the football club said.

Meanwhile, Trump celebrated the decision. “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social Sunday afternoon.