Well, when the jocks at the White House gathered around the proverbial water cooler … the mood was glum:
In the hours after the U.S. secured its first victory in a World Cup knockout match in more than 20 years last Wednesday, the mood inside the White House was anything but celebratory.
The game, held 2,400 miles away in Santa Clara, Calif., had been marred by a controversial red card for the Americans’ top scorer at this tournament, striker Folarin Balogun—and it meant he would be automatically suspended for the next match.
That’s when senior Trump administration officials hatched a plan that would go down as one of the most audacious in the 96-year history of the World Cup.
The New York Times broke the story that President Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino on Thursday about Balogun’s suspension, and Infantino reportedly said he would look into the matter. Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House’s World Cup task force, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were reportedly also in communication with FIFA.
The suspension was lifted and Belgium—the other team in tomorrow’s match—was informed. At this point, it appears that top scorer Balogun will be playing and the U.S. “Trump Card” is a trending headline this morning (here and here, for example). Reuters reports that FIFA’s decision has churned up a storm. U.S. fans react.
Fresh from his soccer victory, President Trump heads to the NATO summit, where he will likely create another storm. In a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “The Elephant at the NATO Summit,” the editors are critical of the president’s threat to withdraw U.S. troops from Europe, which they contend would be “a dangerous signal to Putin.” A news story in the Wall Street Journal gets behind the rupture between the U.S. and Europe.
Meanwhile, Rodríguez Castro, 42, grandson of Fidel, designer-apparel clad, who has never before spoken to the American media, says he’s willing to negotiate with President Trump. Rodriguez isn’t in a great position. USA TODAY reports:
There’s no time to waste. Cuba faces a cratered economy, a humanitarian crisis and an oil blockade from the Trump administration. It wants to avoid being the next Venezuela as the United States levels sanctions and raises a military threat unseen between the countries since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Did the Supreme Court Steal the Midterm Elections?” is the headline on Allysia Finley’s Wall Street Journal column on the Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority ruling striking down federal limits on what political parties can spend in elections. The liberal media is claiming it’s a win for the GOP, but Karl Rove said on the Wall Street Journal’s weekend show Saturday that it’s a win for both parties and curbs the power of consultant-driven PACS (sorry, no link).
Speaking of political campaigns, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow announced Sunday that she is suspending her campaign for U.S. Senate:
The announcement clears the way for the two remaining candidates — Stevens, a four-term representative aligned with the Democratic establishment, and El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official who recently nabbed an endorsement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — with just under a month to go until the state’s Democratic primary.
Pennsylvania’s personable Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro has been the guy that some Republicans can imagine voting for, but Jonathan Turley is disappointed that Shapiro “caved to the loons”:
Shapiro decided to deliver his defining moment on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” when he abandoned all principle and decided to join other Democratic establishment leaders in offering up the Supreme Court to the radical left. Shapiro used the common coded reference to court packing, calling for “radical reform of the court.”
The only “radical” reform being seriously discussed is packing the institution with an immediate liberal majority to reverse a series of recent decisions and to greenlight an equally radical agenda for changes to our political system.
What is so disappointing is that Shapiro truly could have been a contender, an alternative to the cringing, accommodating politicians who are yielding to the demands of the mob. Figures from Kamala Harris to Pete Buttigieg have recently embraced the scheme to show their bona fides to a rising socialist and radical movement in the Democratic Party.
The Fourth of July was glorious, wasn’t it? It’s not too late to call your attention to Wilfrid McClay’s “America’s Indispensable Man” in City Journal. The indispensable man was George Washington:
When we celebrate the American Revolution, what do we think of? We likely recall the resounding words of Thomas Jefferson, explaining to the world our reasons for separating from our mother country, words that not only declared that we had come of age as a distinct “people” but also laid down certain truths—that all men are created equal, and enter into the world possessing rights that no government can deprive them of—that would guide and inspire this people in the years ahead.
But the Revolution was not just a matter of words but of deeds. It was deeply impressive for the Revolution’s leaders to sign their names to a document that pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to the cause. That pledge carried real weight, since they knew they would surely pay the ultimate price if their cause failed…. In remembering these magnificent results, we naturally think of Jefferson’s soaring words. But we should never forget the bloody struggle that followed, the profound sufferings of the men who fought and died for this seemingly unwinnable cause—and the indispensable man who led them. The deed of gift was many deeds of war.
Unfortunately, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani chose to make a speech on July Fourth. I characterize his speech as a despicable socialist dystopian fantasy of America:
“We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place,” he said. “The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.”
Batya Ungar-Sargon also writes about Mamdani’s “disgraceful” speech. Her subtitle sums up the speech:
What makes America great, according to Zohran Mamdani, and the only thing that makes it great, is that it can be fundamentally changed by people like him.
America’s fabulous 250th birthday wasn’t the only big deal extravaganza over the weekend. There was also Taylor Swift’s wedding. But what if Taylor and Travis’s big day was ten years behind the zeitgeist? An Unherd piece provocatively headlined “Taylor Swift: Modern America’s Marie Antoinette” proposes this:
Five or 10 years ago, Taylor Swift’s marriage to NFL player Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden on Friday would have been treated as America’s answer to the Windsors. It would have been William and Kate in 2011….
Yet Swift chose to stage an expensive spectacle in 2026, just as the country began electing more eat-the-rich populists and democratic socialists. … The details admittedly did not help. The wedding was held at Madison Square Garden in front of roughly 1,000 guests, was officiated by Adam Sandler, and reportedly cost up to $20 million. Swift and Kelce wore custom Dior which she accessorized with Cartier jewelry; celebrity guests such as Selena Gomez arrived in glittering gold gowns reminiscent of Gatsby-era decadence.
. … When a catering van handed out leftover pastries to fans camped outside the arena, the “let them eat cake” jokes wrote themselves.
It would have been better for Taylor and Travis to have tied the knot during the Michael Bloomberg era, when New York still welcomed billionaires with open arms. Instead, on the very same day she sealed herself inside Madison Square Garden, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivered an America 250 speech about a nation divided between workers and the wealthy.
Maybe it should have been a Dr. Zhivago-themed on the cusp of socialism wedding.
