The 2026 World Cup, which hit its halfway point this week, has brought a flood of political story lines.
How much would President Trump and his policies hover over the soccer tournament? How would the Iranian team be treated during a war with their country? Will the U.S. do enough to leverage all the soft power it can get from hosting the event?
First, a step back. The World Cup, which is held every four years, is the biggest sporting event on the planet. Nothing draws more eyeballs on television or traveling hordes of fans to support their teams, period. (No, not even the Summer Olympics.)
While Mexico and Canada are also co-hosting this year’s tournament, 78 of the tournament’s 104 matches will be played in the United States. It should be a prime opportunity to showcase the country at a time when people around the globe have an increasingly negative view of American foreign policy, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center this week.
Ahead of the World Cup, though, many thorny questions loomed. Would Trump attend Team U.S.A.’s opening match against Paraguay on June 12? (He didn’t, sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio instead.) Would Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers try to check immigration papers at stadiums? (Apparently not.) Would police officers let the big party that is the World Cup breathe? (Apparently yes.)
Trump does plan to attend the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19, according to Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, which organized the tournament. Infantino confirmed the appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday.
Infantino has bent over backward to court Trump in recent years. But fans loudly booed Trump when he appeared last year at the FIFA Club World Cup final, which was also held at MetLife.
The tournament’s politics have leaned international, and have centered on the denial of entry of a highly regarded Somali referee and the war with Iran.
My colleague Tariq Panja has reported on how some Iranian team staff members were denied visas, how the team’s training camp was moved at the last minute to Mexico from Arizona, and how stringent travel restrictions gave Iranian players little time to prepare for matches. Some of those restrictions were eased this week.
Perhaps that is why Americans — and American politicians — have been so taken with foreign visitors who have embraced Americana, from Buc-ee’s to baseball games to Bass Pro Shops. At a time when our politics are so polarized and dark, their joy in mundane discoveries like Costco has felt like a balm. And is there a better organic ad for a city than Norwegian fans “rowing” in Times Square or Dutch fans marching on Kansas City?
On Wednesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who is widely seen as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful, offered a welcoming message for a German fan known as Freddy. (Freddy’s posts on X about his American World Cup road trip have gone so viral that he has scored invitations to NASA and the White House.) “Your 13th state, but first Commonwealth,” Shapiro wrote on social media. “Welcome to PA, Freddy. Let freedom ring.”
Not to be outdone, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican who could also have 2028 ambitions, posted on X that he had met in Miami Beach with Shaun Alexander, a Scot whose U.S. travels have also taken social media by storm.
Perhaps the best example of American soft power that I saw in my reporting on the World Cup came from Donnie MacNeil, a 69-year-old from Scotland, who was in Miami ahead of his country’s match against Brazil this week. Next week, he said, he will be in New York — to my surprise, to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
“I wish we had an Independence Day,” he said.
quote of the day
“The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
That was Vice President JD Vance speaking about the Watergate scandal, which toppled Richard Nixon. If the controversy happened today, Vance suggested in a speech at the Nixon library, it would be “like a 12-hour news story.”
Vance then compared himself to the former president: “Young senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media,” he said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance.”
Judge stymies Trump’s mail voting order
A federal court in Massachusetts struck down key parts of an executive order from Trump that aimed to restrict mail voting. The order had, in part, tried to use federal oversight of the U.S. Postal Service to regulate mail voting.
The ruling, my colleagues Nick Corasaniti and Adam Sella write, amounted to a broad rejection of the Trump administration’s attempts to change federal election procedures through an executive order, given that the Constitution grants authority over elections to individual states and Congress.
What democratic socialists stand for
On the heels of a slew of primary wins for the Democratic Socialists of America this week, my colleague Emily Davies laid out the key tenets of the movement. They include:
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Ending military aid to Israel.
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Expanding the social safety net.
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Guaranteeing free health care.
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Taxing the rich.
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Defunding or abolishing prisons and the police.
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Raising the minimum wage and shortening the workweek.
TAKE OUR QUIZ
This question comes from a recent article in The Times. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)
What kind of place did former President Barack Obama tell podcast hosts this week that he occupied in Trump’s head?
Taylor Robinson contributed reporting.
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