Welcome to Trump’s World Cup, a depressingly angry version of football uniting the planet | Barney Ronay
Center Left
Ted Lasso will deliver a message of hope before the USA’s first game, in an America that is not a fit or desirable host right nowShortly before 6pm local time on Friday night at the Los Angeles Stadium, the actor who plays Ted Lasso – the fictional manager of a fake team in a falsely heartwarming version of football – will tell hundreds of millions of TV viewers tuning in to watch the start of the American leg of the Fifa World Cup that football unites the world.In an interesting twist, the actor Jason Sudeikis will do this at a time when the World Cup host is simultaneously bombing the second-ranked country in Group G, having recently murdered its head of state. The message of unity is one likely to be heard by the US president, Donald Trump, who has initiated six military conflicts in his second term, and whose brutally divisive immigration policies have now led to the barring of Omar Artan, the reigning African referee of the year. Continue reading...
A White House reporter drew attention to an "incredible quote" from House Speaker Mike Johnson regarding President Donald Trump's threats against Iran.The president threatened on social media to take control of Kharg Island and seize Iran's oil and gas markets, which would require the deployment of ground troops, but the Louisiana Republican dismissed his comments as a negotiating tactic."I think he's communicating directly with our adversaries over there," Johnson told reporters. "I would not put too much stock in the details of that."Associated Press correspondent Seung Min Kim was flabbergasted by the House speaker's statement."It's kind of an incredible quote because, you know, we are supposed to take the president of the United States' word, especially when he makes these really serious threats in an ongoing war," Kim said. "But what the president or what, sorry, what the speaker seems to be signaling, and we should note that the speaker has met with the president several times this week to talk about other issues, but I'm sure the issue of the war came up.""He's signaling that this is sort of this, you know, three-dimensional chess negotiation play," she added.Invading the Persian Gulf island would represent a major escalation in the war, and the president acknowledged the political risk in a phone call Thursday morning to "Fox & Friends.""We do need to underscore how serious of a move that would be, particularly on Kharg Island, because if, you know, aside from the reason why it's such a critical target, obviously being where all, nearly all of the oil exports go through, it's also very close to the mainland," Kim said. "So if you do have American troops there, it makes them very vulnerable to missiles, drone, other attacks from the Iranian mainland, and that is what the president is hinting at in his Fox interview, that this is something that the Americans would not have the stomach for." - YouTube youtu.be
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin accuses the Biden administration of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse reports targeting migrant children.
President Trump’s Freedom 250 birthday extravaganza is looking so bleak that entire states are pulling out.NOTUS has reported that Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and North Carolina—the last of which Trump won in 2024—have all declined to send a representative to the president’s 16-day fair on the National Mall. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington remain undecided even as the fair begins just two weeks from now.Each state is supposed to have a 600-square-foot themed booth with a representative or official sent by state leadership. With these states declining to send one, the administration has decided to pick their own. Multiple states said they had no knowledge as to who was chosen to represent their homes or why.Other states noted the hefty price attached to the event. Michele Walker, the comms director of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, told NOTUS her state would have to spend a minimum of $100,000 on travel, hotels, and their themed booth all together.“We decided early in the process that we do not have the capacity to participate,” Walker said. “Our limited resources are focused on America250 events across North Carolina.”This news comes just a week after nearly all of the first wave of musical performers—from Young MC to the Commodores—dropped out as well. This lack of enthusiasm only reaffirms that this “Freedom 250” event, unlike the educational America250 commission, is just a birthday party for Trump.
The UFC Freedom 250 fight night, which will be held on June 14 is being presented as a patriotic celebration to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States. But in actual fact, the date doesn’t coincide with the birth of the nation, it falls on the President’s birthday.By installing an MMA octagon on the most symbolically charged turf in American democracy, Donald Trump is doing more than celebrating a sport. He is staging a vision of power in which the head of state no longer serves the nation – he embodies it, as a champion who dominates and subdues.With his administration navigating one of the gravest international crises of his second term, Trump appears consumed by two preoccupations: his plans for a grand White House ballroom and the UFC fight event scheduled on the South Lawn for June 14th. He has compared the structure being erected – a 27-meter-high octagon called “The Claw” to the Eiffel Tower, and has suggested it might never come down.The event was deemed significant enough that according to Politico, the G7 schedule was adjusted G7 schedule was adjusted to avoid a conflict.Claiming ownership of national symbolsOrganisers have framed the event as a patriotic and apolitical celebration of American history: between bouts, the UFC plans to air segments honouring national heroes, the nation’s founding, and the 250th anniversary of the United States. Yet none of the commemorations invoked actually fall on that date. The 250th anniversary of independence will be marked on July 4 2026; the flag’s 250th anniversary comes in 2027; and the Army’s bicentennial was already observed in 2025. The only milestone that actually falls on June 14 is Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. Under the cover of national commemoration, the event functions first as a presidential birthday party – and a political and financial operation.The broadcast will air on Paramount+, whose parent company was acquired in August 2025 by David Ellison, the son of Oracle’s co-founder and a figure closely associated with Donald Trump. The audience has been carefully selected: military personnel selected by the Pentagon under specific fitness criteria will serve as the televised backdrop. Trump has personally acquired shares in TKO Holding Group, the UFC’s parent company, which he has been promoting for months. This is not a sporting event honoured by the president’s presence. It is a presidential event dressed up as an MMA gala.A long-standing fascination with combat sportsTrump has long been drawn to combat sports and the spectacle of violence – this despite having avoided military service during the Vietnam War through a diagnosis of bone spurs provided by a physician who was a family acquaintance.In the 1980s, he cultivated close ties with professional wrestling’s WWE. In 2007, he staged a scripted showdown with WWE owner Vince McMahon in an event billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires”.Professional wrestling operates according to the logic of kayfabe – a convention by which audiences are invited to engage with a narrative everyone knows to be scripted. This dynamic illuminates much about how Trump operates. He grasped early that politics worked on the same principle: he did not turn politics into spectacle, he revealed that it already was one.The UFC, however, belongs to a different register. The fights are real. Trump’s interest dates to the early 2000s, when he hosted several UFC events at his Atlantic City casinos. Dana White, the UFC’s CEO, regularly recalls the support Trump allegedly provided when the organisation was still struggling for legitimacy. This closeness is not a recent enthusiasm – it reflects a long-standing relationship with a cultural world that has become central to a significant strand of the contemporary American right.From civic hero to fighting championTo appreciate the full weight of this choice, it helps to trace how the figure of the heroic American president has evolved. From the founding era onward, presidents have frequently been associated with a form of heroism – beginning with George Washington, whose greatness derived not from force but from his willingness to relinquish power after victory. Lincoln embodied moral authority rather than military might. In the twentieth century, the president-as-hero – from Roosevelt to Eisenhower – drew legitimacy from the idea of service: suffering, sacrifice, putting the nation before oneself. The democratic hero existed to serve something larger than himself.That model began to fracture after September 11, 2001. American political rhetoric gradually displaced it with the notion of toughness – hardness, resilience, the will to dominate. The hero was no longer expected merely to serve; he was expected to win. George W. Bush landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, already gestured towards this shift.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche twice refused to discuss the federal lawsuit threatening Trump's White House UFC fight — with a ruling expected within hours.Blanche was appearing alongside DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin at a Thursday morning press conference on unaccompanied migrant children when a reporter tried to get him on record about the looming court fight."'On the UFC fight—'" the reporter began."'I'm not going to talk about the UFC fight,'" Blanche cut in. "'We're just here to talk about this.'"The reporter pressed: "'If [the judge] does order that it be blocked?'""'I'm not going to talk about the UFC fight,'" repeated Blanche, whose own DOJ filed the brief defending the event. "'We're here just to talk about why we're here.'"His remarks came just hours before oral arguments before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.The Public Integrity Project filed suit on June 7 on behalf of two Virginia residents, arguing the administration skipped congressional approval for the 92-foot, 600-ton "Claw" arena on the South Lawn, bypassed mandatory environmental review, and misused a temporary National Park Service rule designed for legitimate semiquincentennial events — not, the suit argues, a for-profit UFC card timed to Trump's 80th birthday.A lower court paused construction of Trump's $400 million White House ballroom project in April, citing lack of congressional approval. A separate judge ordered Trump's name stripped from the Kennedy Center in May on identical grounds.Stanford Law's Matthew Sanders told USA Today the complaint "lays out in a careful way the laws that apply and how they've been violated here."DOJ's own brief pushed back hard, arguing more than $60 million had been spent on the event and that plaintiffs had waited too long to file. Blocking it now, the government wrote, would amount to letting them "exercise a heckler's veto."
