With World Cup 30 Days Away, ICE Still Threatens Fans

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents will be present at the 2026 FIFA tournament, casting an ominous shadow of violent authoritarianism over the beloved event.

Earlier this year, ICE head Todd Lyons announced that the agents would be present at the World Cup just for security, not enforcement. Now, Los Angeles’s World Cup hosting committee can’t even promise that—despite requests from FIFA President Gianni Infantino and strike threats from food and beverage workers, a group that is more likely to be subject to an ICE raid.

“We are working very closely with them to make sure they’re just focused on us, providing us a safe and secure event and nothing else,” committee head Kathryn Schloessman said. “But having said that, I am not the ultimate decision-maker on that.”

ICE’s presence and potential for raids may very well create an absolute nightmare for the U.S., host cities, international fans, and the countless migrant workers behind the scenes.

Even the president’s inner circle is tiring of his erratic, late-night social media binges—and the White House aide responsible for them.

Donald Trump’s executive assistant Natalie Harp is the woman behind his overnight Truth Social sprees, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Through twilight-hour shifts, Harp has created the impression that the president never sleeps and is instead spending his should-be bedtime obsessively retweeting baseless conspiracies about the 2020 presidential election and Fox News headlines about his purported popularity among the American public.

The 34-year-old aide supplies the president with stacks of printed-out drafts and awaits his approval before hitting post, sources told the Journal.

Her work has included posts that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and an AI-generated image of Trump as Jesus Christ. Trump took down both posts after they spurred immense public backlash. In the former instance, Trump claimed he did not see the section of the video that racistly mocked the former president and first lady. A White House official blamed the mistake on an editing error.

The frustration lies partly in the perceived chain of command: Harp does not share her drafts with anyone else in the White House but the president, claiming that she works for him and only him, reported the Journal. That’s prompted tensions between Harp and some of the federal employees affected by her incendiary writing, such as the chief of staff’s office.

In a statement, White House communications director Steven Cheung affirmed the president’s reliance on Truth Social as his primary mode of communication with the American people, yet declined to comment on how the office crafts them.

“Truth Social has never been hotter, and it’s because President Trump offers his unfiltered and direct thoughts to the American people, without the biased media taking him out of context,” Cheung said. “We don’t discuss internal deliberations of how the process works, but no other social-media tool has been more effective than Truth.”

Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes have been named by a top White House official as potential targets for the Trump administration’s counterterrorism strategy.

During an interview with Breitbart editor in chief Alex Marlow last week, Sebastian Gorka, the pugnacious far-right influencer angling to be the next head of the National Counterterrorism Center, was asked whether he considered right-wing extremism a threat.

Gorka claimed that there were not “comparable trendlines to violence on the right” as on the left (a favorite right-wing talking point), but he then name-dropped two of the highest-profile right-wing figures—who also happen to be MAGA defectors.

“We have to have an effective, accurate snapshot on who are part of the conservative movement today, because I would say to you I’m not sure that Nick Fuentes or Tucker Carlson are conservatives,” Gorka said.

“If you are lauding Sharia law, if you are saying that there are Muslim states that seem to be better qualitatively than America in terms of freedom and prosperity, I’m not sure that means you’re part of the conservative movement. So if you remove those individuals and you understand that they’re not conservatives, what’s left?”

To be clear, Carlson did not laud sharia law. Rather, he claimed that Western cities were degrading from “self-hatred,” while Eastern cities were fostering “stability” and “hospitality,” and were “tolerant of diversity.”

As independent journalist Ken Klippenstein pointed out Tuesday, none of this actually has to do with extremism at all: Carlson and Fuentes are being called out because they criticized Donald Trump over his reckless military campaign in Iran.

Carlson has been arguably more antiwar than many establishment Democrats, calling Trump’s Iran war “the single most foolish thing any American president has ever done.” Fuentes has urged against the strikes, and claimed the U.S. has “lost decisively,” having failed to achieve any of its objectives.

More to the point, both figures have been critical of Israel. Fuentes is a straight-up Hitler-loving neo-Nazi, while Carlson is an openly racist conspiracy theorist who also criticizes the U.S-Israel relationship and the ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

Both figures retain immense influence among the conservative population, but in diverging from MAGA’s full-throated support of Israel, Fuentes and Carlson have landed themselves among the ranks of people the Trump administration seeks to target. The two men definitely stand out: The administration has described other domestic terrorists as “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

New polling from CNN shows that President Trump’s net economic approval rating isn’t just bad, it’s one of the worst of all time.

A whopping 77 percent of Americans blame President Trump for increasing the cost of living in their community, up 37 percent from 2024. Seventy-five percent of Americans feel that the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon that Trump started has had a negative impact on their financial situation. And just one out of four Americans believes that the recent developments in the stock market that Trump touts incessantly have had any real impact on their lives. And even fewer approve of how he’s handled inflation—the very issue that helped vault him back into office.

“These are the ugliest numbers I have ever seen on inflation … the five worst polls ever, for any president—they all belong to Donald John Trump, and they have all occurred within the last month,” CNN’s Harry Enten said on Wednesday. “Promises made by Donald Trump—in the minds of the American people—are not promises kept by Donald Trump.”

This comes just a day after the president so indignantly proclaimed that he didn’t care about the financial struggles of Americans “even a little bit.” Those numbers, combined with the president’s complete detachment from the economic realities of Americans—many of whom voted for him—point to an uphill battle, at best, in the upcoming midterm elections.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got more than a softball interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday—he got to choose his interlocutor.

The New York Post reports that CBS editor in chief Bari Weiss gave Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, a choice between the show’s longtime correspondent Lesley Stahl or the network’s chief Washington correspondent, Major Garrett. Netanyahu chose Garrett, who doesn’t work for 60 Minutes.

Stahl had reportedly spent months trying to land the interview with Netanyahu, only to have Weiss, a self-described “Zionist fanatic,” book Netanyahu herself and give him his pick of interviewers. Status reports that this did not go over well with 60 Minutes staffers including Stahl.

“Bari did what she had to do to secure the interview,” an unnamed source told the Post. “Bibi’s office picked Major over Stahl.”

Ever since she was named editor in chief, Weiss has directly intervened in programming and journalism decisions at CBS. She pulled a story about Venezuelan migrants whom the Trump administration deported to El Salvador’s CECOT last year, and recently chose not to renew the contract of the journalist behind the story, Sharyn Alfonsi.

Last month, Weiss meddled with another CBS show, CBS Sunday Morning, making last-minute script changes and edits on a story about Israeli archeological digs in the West Bank. One of the story’s subjects, cultural heritage researcher Zaid Azhari, later complained that his interview was “selectively edited to falsely portray me as someone who erases Jewish history.”

Journalism appears to be taking a back seat to ideology at Bari Weiss’s CBS, and her pro-Trump and pro-Israel views are becoming a staple of the network’s coverage. The White House, as well as the Israeli government, are liking what they see.

Last week, Tennessee Democrats were kicked out of a meeting room while protesting the Tennessee GOP’s brazen attempt to gerrymander the state map and eliminate the legislature’s only Democratic representative—while carving up the majority-Black Memphis-area district he represents in the process. Now those same Democrats have been removed from every single committee assignment they held as further punishment.

On Tuesday, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton wrote in a letter that “members of the Democratic Caucus will receive individual letters removing them from all standing committees and subcommittees of the House, except where membership is required.” He justified this blanket censure by referring to their protest, stating that the Democrats “aimed at disrupting the democratic and legislative processes and creating disorder on the House Floor.”

The GOP is responding to Democrats protesting being wiped off the map by ripping away the last bit of representative power they had, all while scolding them for “instigating and encouraging disruptions … in coordination with paid protestors and attendees,” and using “prohibited props and noisemakers on the House Floor.”

“Speaker of the TN House Cameron Sexton just removed me and every Democrat—and therefore every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on,” said Representative Justin Pearson, who was at the forefront of last week’s protests. “This move strips nearly 2 million Tennesseans from the representation they deserve in TN state [legislature].

“I just got an official letter from Speaker Cameron Sexton stripping me of all my committee assignments for protesting their white supremacist agenda.… Just as my white Republican colleagues chose racial retaliation against Tennessee’s Black voters, the Speaker of the House is now choosing retaliation against a Black lawmaker for standing up against their Jim Crow racial gerrymander,” Representative Justin Jones wrote. “His assault on our democracy is not about me, but silencing the voices of the people who democratically elected me, the 70,000 people who call District 52 home.

“For refusing to play along, Democrats are now being removed from committees.… The real disorder is not passionate dissent on behalf of Tennesseans whose voices are being silenced,” House Minority Leader Karen Camper said. “The real disorder is a legislature that increasingly believes rules only apply when convenient and democracy only works when they get the outcome they want.”

Multiple groups have begun legal action against the newly drawn Tennessee map.

Representative Jen Kiggans won’t explain why she agreed with racist comments about House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The Virginia Republican was completely mum Tuesday as MeidasTouch asked several point-blank questions related to her recent endorsement of a radio host saying Jeffries had “cotton-picking hands.”

“Representative, do you have anything more to say after agreeing with racist comments made by a radio host?” asked the reporter.

Silence.

In another exchange, the MeidasTouch reporter asked if Kiggans would resign for agreeing with those comments, and the Republican briskly walked away.

Kiggans has faced immense blowback since she appeared on Richmond-based radio commentator Rich Herrera’s show Monday to discuss the state’s hotly contested congressional maps. The since-deleted interview flew off the rails when Kiggans emphatically concurred with Herrera after he referred to Jeffries as a slave.

“He spent $20 million-plus on our redistricting debacle we had. He now is talking about ... firing our Supreme Court justices,” Herrera said of Jeffries. House Majority Forward, a nonprofit connected to Jeffries, spent roughly $40 million on the redistricting effort.

“If Hakeem Jeffries wants to be involved in Virginia politics, then I suggest he ... leave New York, move down here to Virginia, run for office down here, you can represent us,” Herrera continued. “If not, get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia.”

“That’s right. Ditto. Yes. Yes, to that,” Kiggans replied.

The term “cotton-picking hands” is heavily rooted in the history of U.S. slavery, literally referring to the Black men, women, and children who were forced to pick cotton.

Kiggans is up for reelection in November. One of her opponents in the race, former Representative Elaine Luria, wrote Monday evening that “the racist comments proudly endorsed today by Jen Kiggans ... are disgusting and beneath any elected official.”

In a statement on X Monday night, Kiggans claimed that she did not agree with the host’s remark and that it was “obvious” she was responding to the larger argument about Jeffries’s involvement in the redistricting effort. She argued that the nationwide political rebuke was “precisely what’s wrong with Democrats.”

“Every lie and distortion is intended to distract from getting their hats handed to them and the Virginia Supreme Court’s clear message: stop trying to rig our elections,” Kiggans wrote. “Democrats are trying to destroy Virginia’s court because they disagree with it. THAT is the real danger to our country.”

Christie Stephenson, a spokesperson for Jeffries, derided Kiggans Tuesday as an extremist who endorses “disgusting, vile and racist language” and “pretends to be a centrist.”

“The voters of Virginia will hold her accountable at the ballot box in November,” Stephenson said in a statement shared on X.

President Donald Trump demanded a congressional aide be fired Wednesday for making Senator Mitch McConnell look “completely out of it” during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. 

The staffer approached McConnell after the Kentucky Republican attempted to preemptively conclude the hearing Tuesday, during which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine testified about the Pentagon’s behemoth budget request and the war in Iran. The staffer explained that some senators still needed to ask questions, and his directions were audible on the microphone.  

“The guy that came up to Mitch McConnell today when McConnell thought the hearing was over, and started speaking in his ear for Mitch to belatedly introduce some other people, all Democrats and, by doing so, made Mitch look foolish and completely out of it, should be immediately fired,” Trump posted on Truth Social early Wednesday. 

“This was a case where Mitch wasn’t confused, he just didn’t understand why he was being asked to do something when it was too late, and people were wrapping up to leave—They wanted to go home.”

The remaining senators were Democrats Tammy Baldwin and Jeanne Saheen and Republican John Kennedy.

Clearly, someone—likely not Trump—had done some research on who the staffer was: Robert Karem. Although the president called him a “Never Trumper,” it seems Trump nominated Karem to serve as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in 2017. Karem currently serves as majority clerk for the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

Now, Trump accused Karem of “grandstanding,” adding: “FIRE THE BUM!” Trump seems to have taken a page out of Elon Musk’s book by targeting specific government workers on whom to unleash his most crazed followers. 

The state Democratic Party favorite won Nebraska’s senatorial primary Tuesday evening—though she has no plans to make it to the general election.

Cindy Burbank actually campaigned on exiting the race. The retired pharmacy technician easily won over the state’s liberal voters Tuesday evening, securing 89.2 percent of the vote and every region of the state sans one rural county in a primary match-up against anti-abortion pastor Bill Forbes.

Forbes was accused of being a covert Republican, “planted” in the Democratic primary by Senator Pete Ricketts in order to give the incumbent an advantage come midterms.

While Burbank earned the state Democratic nomination, she was never the party’s favorite. Instead, knowing they would have little success on the ballot against an incumbent Republican, Democratic party leaders chose an unexpected third option: endorsing Dan Osborn, a mechanic and former labor union leader running as an independent.

“William Forbes is not running to serve Nebraskans. He is running to trick voters,” Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said in March. “The Nebraska Democratic Party made a deliberate, principled decision not to field a candidate in the U.S. Senate race.”

Ricketts has denied any association with Forbes.

Osborn’s odds in a match-up against Ricketts are surprisingly good, Democrat-aligned polls indicate. The lone question for Democrats heading into Tuesday’s primaries was how the party could avoid a three-way split between Ricketts, Osborn, and a candidate on their own ticket. Enter: Burbank.

“I don’t wanna split the ballot,” Burbank told The New York Times via text message after her win. “I have no expectations of being able to win in November.”

After the race, Burbank told the times that she was “kinda disappointed” by her overwhelming success Tuesday evening. The race was called just six minutes after polls closed, which Burbank joked had taken “all the fun out of it.”

In another message, asked if she hoped Ricketts would also drop out, Burbank wrote: “That would be such sweetness.”

Burbank was initially stripped from the ballot by the GOP secretary of state due to her unorthodox plan, but she sued the state and ultimately had her ballot access restored.

The Republican National Committee announced Tuesday that it has deployed poll watchers and election observers in at least 17 states for the midterm elections.

In a post on X, RNC Chairman Joe Gruters posted an audio clip where he said, “We’ve already deployed field staff and we’ve hired state directors and election integrity directors.”

Gruters didn’t name the states but said that the effort was part of the Republican Party’s plan to hold onto Congress for the 2026 midterm elections.

“We focus on the big picture. We focus on winning. We have a plan. We’re executing the plan,” Gruters said.

Meanwhile, speaking to the press Tuesday, President Trump said he’d “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” in response to a question on whether he’d deploy the National Guard or ICE to voting locations in November.

It’s a disturbing thing for Trump to say, just two days after he called for an “Election Integrity Army.” In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed that Republicans had one in 2024 “in every single State to preserve the sanctity of each legal vote” and attacked Democrats for forming their own elections task force led by former Attorney General Eric Holder.

“​​We will be doing the same again in 2026, but it will be much bigger and stronger. All Americans should have their voices be heard by casting a vote. Be assured this Election will be fair! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” Trump posted.

It appears that the RNC has heard Trump loud and clear, and is taking action. It’s on top of everything else the Republican Party is doing to meddle in the midterms and beyond, from mid-decade redistricting that disenfranchises Democrats and Black Americans to spreading election-denial conspiracies from 2020. It has even installed election denialists in local governments and election boards across the country.

Deploying ICE agents or National Guard troops at the polls seems to be a ploy to frighten people of color from voting, and is unprecedented. It appears that the midterms are shaping up to be a tense battle in more ways than one.