dailynewsnblog
Ted Cruz thanks Trump for ‘getting rid of that ridiculous red card’
Cruz just thanked Donald Trump for “getting rid of that ridiculous red card” – apparently in reference to Folarin Balogun. The US striker received a straight red card from referee Raphael Claus after a video review, but Fifa have now lifted Bolagun’s one-match ban, making him now available to play for the USA in their knockout match against Belgium on Monday.
As my colleagues covering the World Cup note, despite the move being considered excessively harsh, Fifa’s disciplinary code does not permit appeals against straight red cards, with officials from the world governing body and US Soccer confirming after the game that the sanction could not be challenged.
Trump went on to admit in an Oval Office appearance that he called Fifa president Gianni Infantino to urge a review on the red card.
“I said I think it should be reviewed, because I watched the play, and he [Balogun] didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump told reporters.
The US president continued to refute the decision that Balogun fouled Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemovic, insisting that soccer officials must let the US team “use their best players”.
“The game tonight is going to be amazing, and we’re going to have a full team, and Belgium is going to have a full team,” Trump added. “If they [Belgium] beat us, then they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us … I say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020, but I won’t get into that.”
Key events
Donald Trump is currently taking part in a Rose Garden club lunch at the White House. I’ll bring you all the key lines here.
Bryan Armen Graham
In a statement issued after Donald Trump’s remarks, Fifa president Gianni Infantino confirmed that he had received a call from the US president but said he told Trump the matter was before Fifa’s independent disciplinary bodies.
“Fifa’s judicial bodies are independent,” Infantino said. “They operate autonomously, apply the Fifa Disciplinary Code, and decide cases based on the applicable regulations and the specific facts before them.”
He added that while he sometimes agreed and sometimes disagreed with disciplinary decisions, he “always” respected the autonomy of the bodies that made them.
As my colleagues on our World Cup live blog report, Infantino’s statement appears to be his “attempt to squirm his way out from under the bus Trump threw him under earlier”.
Trump earlier confirmed that he had personally asked Infantino to review the red card shown to USA striker Folarin Balogun, saying he believed the dismissal was unfair but insisting he did not pressure football’s governing body to overturn the suspension.
“All I did was ask for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I didn’t tell him what to do. I can’t tell him what to do.”
Preliminary hearing for man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk begins
A five-day preliminary hearing in the murder case against the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk is set to begin today.
Tyler James Robinson, 23, has been charged with aggravated murder related to Kirk’s death, after allegedly shooting the conservative political activist in the neck at a Utah Valley University campus event in September.
Kirk’s widow, Erika, and members of family will attend the hearing, and it will mark the first time they are in the same room as the man accused of killing the Turning Point USA founder.
Utah prosecutors are aiming to prove at the multi-day hearing that there is sufficient evidence for Robinson’s case should proceed to trial.
Ahead of the hearing, Erika Kirk and her family issued a statement, expressing thanks for the “outpouring” of support “during the darkest days of our lives”, but said that “out of respect for the judicial process, we will not be commenting further at this time”.
Richard Luscombe
Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay payment of a $5.8m judgment for defaming a magazine columnist whom a jury determined he sexually abused has been emphatically rejected by a federal court judge.
In a single-sentence 4 July order, US district Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the president’s request for more time to pay the civil judgment owed to E Jean Carroll, who was awarded the damages after a New York jury concluded that Trump sexually abused her in 1996 – then defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019.
Trump’s move came days after the US supreme court, without explanation or reasoning, turned down his demand to review the jury’s 2023 verdict.
In a subsequent filing to Kaplan, the judge overseeing the case, Trump’s attorneys referred to how his former lead counsel, Justin Smith, had been confirmed to a federal judgeship in June on the president’s nomination. New lead counsel Josh Halpern therefore needed more time “to become completely familiar with the facts and procedural circumstances”, Trump’s attorneys contended.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who is no relation to the judge, responded that the request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time” – noting Trump nominated Smith for the court of appeals more than five months previously, and that he had “ample time to retain new counsel”.
Trump confirms that he spoke to Fifa president over Balogun red card
Trump just confirmed to reported in the Oval Office that he did, in fact, call Fifa president Gianni Infantino about the straight red card decision against Folarin Balogun.
“I saw the play, and I’m a person that loves sports and was a good athlete, and I understand sports really well, really well,” Trump said.
“That wasn’t a foul … There was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other,” Trump added. “These are two great athletes that got tangled up.”
The president claimed, without providing evidence, that Raphael Claus, the referee who issued the inraction, “is a little bit suspect if you check his past” before going on to say that he asked Fifa for a review on the decision.
Trump added that if the US didn’t have the team’s “best player” to take part in subsequent matches, it would have “really stained” the competition. The president didn’t seem to quite understand the policy around straight red cards that resulted in a one-match ban for Balogun.
“I didn’t know what the hell a red card was. When I found out, I said, ‘you got to be kidding,’” Trump said.
When asked about the latest Russian strikes on Kyiv, that have killed 19 people and heavily damaged apartment blocks and other buildings, Donald Trump repeated claims that “we’re getting close” on reaching a deal on the conflict in Ukraine, despite the attacks happening just days after speaking with Vladimir Putin.
“[Putin] wants to end it, and Ukraine wants to end it, and we’re in talks, and we’ll see if we can get it ended. It’s a terrible thing,” Trump added.
Ted Cruz thanks Trump for ‘getting rid of that ridiculous red card’
Cruz just thanked Donald Trump for “getting rid of that ridiculous red card” – apparently in reference to Folarin Balogun. The US striker received a straight red card from referee Raphael Claus after a video review, but Fifa have now lifted Bolagun’s one-match ban, making him now available to play for the USA in their knockout match against Belgium on Monday.
As my colleagues covering the World Cup note, despite the move being considered excessively harsh, Fifa’s disciplinary code does not permit appeals against straight red cards, with officials from the world governing body and US Soccer confirming after the game that the sanction could not be challenged.
Trump went on to admit in an Oval Office appearance that he called Fifa president Gianni Infantino to urge a review on the red card.
“I said I think it should be reviewed, because I watched the play, and he [Balogun] didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump told reporters.
The US president continued to refute the decision that Balogun fouled Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemovic, insisting that soccer officials must let the US team “use their best players”.
“The game tonight is going to be amazing, and we’re going to have a full team, and Belgium is going to have a full team,” Trump added. “If they [Belgium] beat us, then they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us … I say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020, but I won’t get into that.”
Republican senator Ted Cruz is standing alongside Trump today. The Texas lawmaker once had a prickly relationship with the president, particularly during the 2016 GOP presidential primary – where Cruz also ran for the nomination.
Trump just joked that he has received comments about nominating Cruz for the supreme court if one of the senior justices retires.
“He’s the only one I can think of that’s going to get 100 votes,” Trump said. “All Republicans will vote for him, all Democrats will vote for him, because they want to get him the hell out of the Senate.”
Trump rings Wall Street opening bell on launch day for Trump Accounts
Trump launched his namesake savings accounts today, and rang the Wall Street’s opening bell for the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq from the Oval Office to mark the occasion.
As I mentioned earlier, the accounts for children will be managed by major firms and invested in stock indexes.
My colleagues at our World Cup 2026 live blog are covering the latest on the fallout of Trump intervention to lift Folarin Balogun’s red card band.
A reminder that Uefa has criticised Fifa’s move to lift Balogun’s suspension for “incomprehensible and unjustifiable” and accusing world football’s governing of crossing “a red line”.
A reminder that Trump accounts were created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the president’s prized domestic policy package, signed into law last year.
All accounts established for children born between January 2025 through December 2028 – nearly the entirety of Donald Trump’s second term – will receive $1,000 from the government. Parents, friends and employers will be able to deposit as much as $5,000 a year into the accounts.
The accounts will be controlled by parents and guardians until their children turn 18, after which they will take responsibility and be able to use saved-up funds to pay for college, buy a home or start a business.
Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington. We can expect to hear from the president at 9.30am ET, when he holds a launch event for Trump accounts – the savings accounts for children that invest in funds managed by major Wall Street firms – in the Oval Office.
The rest of the day won’t be open to the press, while Trump takes part in closed-door meetings. We will keep an eye out for the president when he leaves for Ankara, Turkey, later today to attend the Nato summit.
Trump lobbied Fifa to lift Folarin Balogun suspension for World Cup game v Belgium
Matt Hughes
Donald Trump lobbied Fifa to lift the US striker Folarin Balogun’s one-game ban for a red card received in the team’s win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, preceding Sunday’s stunning announcement that he would be available for the cohosts’ last-16 clash against Belgium in Seattle on Monday night.
Sources have told the Guardian that Trump made three calls to Fifa, starting from Wednesday, to ensure that the change was made.
The decision gives the US a huge boost on the field as they attempt to reach the World Cup quarter-finals for the first time since 2002. Balogun has been a constant threat for the US so far this tournament, and has scored three goals in three starts.
Fifa has been approached for comment. The US president thanked football’s world governing body for suspending the red card. “Thank you to Fifa for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) said in a statement that it was “astonished” at the decision. The RBFA later pointed out that the suspension of the ban ran in contradiction to Fifa statutes governing the punishment for red cards, which carry a one-game ban “automatically”. The RBFA said it was “investigating all potential options”.
Jeremy Barr
A group of prominent conservative organizations has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny license renewal requests from the eight local television stations owned and operated by ABC, accusing the network of political, racial and sexual bias and supporting the Chinese communist party.
The petitions come after the commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, took the nearly unprecedented step of requiring the network, a frequent recipient of attacks from Donald Trump, to apply several years early to maintain its ability to broadcast in markets around the country.
While Carr has said the early license renewal process stems from an FCC investigation into ABC’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, petitioners are free to include a variety of grievances against the network and concerns about whether ABC is operating in the public interest.
The petitions – part of an open process that allows anyone to argue that ABC is not fit to hold publicly owned television licenses – came from groups like the Center for American Rights, which has played a significant role during Carr’s tenure atop the FCC agency as an initiator of complaints against major broadcast television networks.
In a petition to deny filed last Monday, the group said the stations were not being operated “in the public interest” in part because ABC’s programs “show a consistent and overt partisan bias”, citing the group’s past complaints about late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and the network’s moderation of a 2024 presidential debate, among other concerns.
“ABC ignores long-standing Commission precedents and principles protecting the integrity of the news,” the group wrote. “ABC engages in explicit racial and gender discrimination. ABC cozies up to the Communist Chinese Party and airbrushes over religious and ethnic cleansing. ABC fails to respect this Commission’s rules.”
The organization lobbied the FCC to deny ABC’s renewal requests and to call the matter for a hearing, “because the Petition and accompanying materials raise sufficient questions [about] whether ABC is operating in the public interest or remains worthy of the public trust”.
Ramon Antonio Vargas
The president of the US’s top administrator of collegiate sports on Sunday said his organization does not anticipate adjusting its rules on transgender athletes after a recent federal supreme court decision allowed states to ban them from participating in school athletics.
In an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation, Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, alluded to how his organization in late January 2025 had effectively banned transgender athletes from women’s sports by closing off those programs to athletes who were assigned male at birth or were taking testosterone therapy. There are no restrictions for participation in NCAA men’s sports, which Baker referred to on Sunday as “the open network”.
Baker recounted how the NCAA implemented that ban on trans athletes in women’s sports in response to an executive order signed by Donald Trump early in his second term.
“We needed some sort of clarity around what the national standard for this would be – and we adopted and comply with the standard that was put forth by the administration,” Baker, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, told Ed O’Keefe, a CBS senior political correspondent. “I think what happens at the state level is a different question.”
Baker’s remarks seemingly nodded to how it is expected to have far-reaching consequences for the supreme court to have decided on 30 June to uphold laws in conservative West Virginia and Idaho excluding transgender girls and women from competing in female sports.
Democrats to choose between progressive and establishment candidate in Michigan as McMorrow drops out of race
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Progressive Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed has emerged as the party’s frontrunner in the Michigan primary campaign after Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the race.
El-Sayed, a supporter of Medicare for all who would be the first Muslim US senator, has drawn high-profile backing from leaders of the American left, including Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed him last week.
He will go head-to-head with the Democratic ‘establishment’ candidate Haley Stevens, a congresswoman, in the bid for the party’s nomination.
McMorrow’s retreat also marks the end of a center-left bid to hold the seat being vacated this year by the Democrat Gary Peters. The three-way primary contest was a close one earlier in the campaign, but polls indicated that McMorrow’s support had plunged in recent weeks, as El-Sayed raced past her and Stevens to emerge as the frontrunner for the party’s nomination.
“I may be suspending this campaign, but I am not leaving the fight,” McMorrow said in a video statement announcing her decision to drop out. “When regular people get in the fight, things can change,” she added.
Meanwhile, Stevens, a moderate Democrat, has the support of Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Super Pacs have spent more than $16m on her campaign, including pro-Israel groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) outraged by El-Sayed’s refusal to say that nation has a right to exist as a Jewish state.
“Israel exists,” he told CNN last week. “The question is whether or not we want a politics where our money is sent over to Israel to do genocide and apartheid, instead of investing in our own kids.”
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
The bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act, designed to shield individuals from soaring electricity prices amid the datacenter boom, would fail to meaningfully protect the public from the centers’ true costs, consumer advocates warn. The bill, backed by some in big tech such as Microsoft, moved through a House subcommittee in mid-June, and a vote in full committee scheduled for 1 July was delayed.
Carlos Giménez, a Republican congressman from Florida, broke with the Trump administration on Sunday, calling on the White House to reconsider its push to eliminate temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitian migrants. Returning some 350,000 Haitians to their chaotic, dangerous homeland following the US supreme court’s ruling that the Trump administration can cut off temporary legal protections, would be a grave error, Giménez said.
The Atlantic on Saturday republished a JD Vance essay that dismissed Donald Trump as “cultural heroin” exactly 10 years earlier, bringing back to the fore his evolving from a critic of the president to his vice-president. In an editor’s note, the magazine said it was republishing the essay on the occasion of its 10th anniversary – and the US’s semiquincentennial – “so that our readers can judge for themselves how well his assessment [of Trump] … has stood the test of time”.
The president of the US’s top administrator of collegiate sports on Sunday said his organization does not anticipate adjusting its rules on transgender athletes after a recent federal supreme court decision allowed states to ban them from participating in school athletics. In an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation, Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, alluded to how his organization in late January 2025 had effectively banned transgender athletes from women’s sports by closing off those programs to athletes who were assigned male at birth or were taking testosterone therapy.
The husband of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was involved in a hit-and-run car crash in California that left a parked vehicle with “major” damage, authorities said on Saturday – and he could face misdemeanor charges. Paul Pelosi was driving his brown convertible on Friday in Yountville, a town in the heart of wine country, when he struck a legally parked car on the side of the road, briefly stopped and then drove away, the Napa county sheriff’s office said in a statement. No injuries were reported.
