Pew surveyed 42,000 people across 36 countries between February and May, and found that America has a largely negative impression on the global theater. Only 23 percent of surveyed adults expressed confidence in Trump’s leadership — eliciting less confidence than Chinese leader Xi Jinping (34 percent) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (31 percent).
Foreign policy is the biggest pain point for Trump’s international critics, who take issue with his handling of tariffs, Gaza, Iran, Greenland and the Russia-Ukraine war, according to Pew’s findings.
Meanwhile, fewer countries — and longtime allies — believe the U.S. is a reliable partner. In Canada, where 83 percent of respondents described the U.S. as reliable in 2022, that number is now down to 35 percent.
In 2023, 60 percent of Germans said the U.S. considers international interests in its foreign policy decisions. That share has now dwindled to 23 percent — Germany’s public opinion of the U.S. is “now similar to or more negative than what was measured during George W. Bush’s presidency, when many people in Europe and elsewhere strongly opposed the war in Iraq and other major elements of U.S. foreign policy,” writes Pew.
There are only seven nations where a majority rate the U.S. well — Israel leads the pack, with 81 percent of respondents viewing America favorably. Some of the country’s lowest ratings come from predominantly Muslim publics, “such as Malaysians, Pakistanis, Turks, and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
Over the past decade, Pew’s polling has found growing concerns about the health of American democracy. A 2013 Pew survey, just as Barack Obama entered his second term, an all-time high of 75 percent of respondents in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, the Philippines, South Korea and the U.K. said the U.S. respects its citizens’ personal freedoms.
Since then, declining shares of world respondents believe the U.S. respects its citizens’ personal liberties — and this year, 56 percent of respondents said the U.S. does not.
Alaska crews battle 13 wildfires, Anchorage warns of dangerous mud flats, Juneau shares updates on its ORV park, and a rehabilitated bald eagle returns to the wild.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he was kept apart from his two young children for 24 hours after someone made a false complaint about him to child protective services in Michigan.
In a Friday post to substack, Buttigieg said an anonymous caller who claimed to have met him several years ago at a conference in Alabama had reported him to CPS for committing “unspeakable violent crimes” and the caller believed his four-year-old twins were still at risk.
Buttigieg said the twins were placed with their grandparents’ and underwent a forensic interview as authorities investigated the allegations.
“For twenty-four deeply distressing hours, we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen,” Buttigieg wrote. “We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime.”
Michigan State Police confirmed in response to questions about the Substack post that they had responded to an anonymous report this week, which they determined to be false.
“False reports are dangerous and divert law enforcement officers and Child Protective Services workers from responding to legitimate emergencies and protecting vulnerable children and families,” Shanon Banner, spokesperson for the state police, said in a statement.
Despite the conclusion that the report was false, Buttigieg said he was told it would “take a bit longer” before the case is officially closed. A spokesperson for the former Cabinet secretary referred questions to the state police.
Buttigieg pointed out that it is a crime to file a false report, adding that “if there is any way to press civil or criminal charges over this, we will.”
Buttigieg, who formerly served as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and ran for president in 2020, called the false report “the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
“I cannot describe the mix of rage and sadness that I feel at the idea that someone brought our children into this. They are four years old. Four. They do not know or care what a Democrat or a Republican is,” he said. “For God’s sake, they are just kids.”
SEATTLE — Iran faces off against Egypt tonight in a match that will have wide-ranging implications for the nation and its U.S. hosts, just hours after the American military conducted a strike in response to an Iranian attack on a commercial ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
As the Washington-Tehran ceasefire frays, a draw tonight in Seattle would help set up a situation where Iran plays its potential next two games at a Canadian stadium, rather than again in the United States, a scenario that would offer the Trump administration a two-week reprieve from the complicated task of trying to host a tournament while imposing unique travel restrictions on just one of the 48 competitors.
The Iranian Football Federation decided to move its base camp from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico, amid concerns that the U.S. could not ensure its security. The State Department did not extend visas to Iran’s full delegation, including government officials and support staff, and limited the team’s players and coach to arrival within 24 hours of kickoff. The Department of Homeland Security relaxed those rules this week, allowing Iran’s team to spend two nights in Seattle before today’s match, although several players complained they were held for extended questioning upon arrival.
“Undoubtedly, the fact that the management and administrative staff could not accompany the team has negatively affected the players’ peace of mind and further complicated the national team’s work,” Abolfazl Pasandideh, Iran’s ambassador to Mexico, told POLITICO. “Despite these difficulties, the Iranian team has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to stay focused and perform at the highest level, even under adverse circumstances. The professionalism shown by the players and coaching staff in the face of these challenges has been paramount, and the results achieved clearly reflect that reality.”
“Any measure that facilitates athletes’ participation and competition on equal terms is a positive step,” Pasandideh said of the Trump administration’s relaxed travel rules for the Iran team.
Nonetheless the World Cup’s one cross-border commuter squad sits on the precipice of advancing to the knockout rounds depending on tonight’s results and an impenetrably complicated formula that FIFA tournament organizers are using for the first time.
“The White House FIFA Task Force has prepared for and is aware of all potential scenarios involving 32 teams that will move into the knockout rounds and will advance from there,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle.
There are, according to The Athletic’s invaluable World Cup tracker, 625 plausible scoring combinations between the two final Group G matches that will take place concurrently tonight — Iran’s encounter with Egypt, and Belgium’s against New Zealand in Vancouver.
In 21 percent of those situations, according to The Athletic, an Iranian draw against Egypt would set the team on a path to play its next two matches in Vancouver: on July 2 against Switzerland, and then potentially again there five days later.
That would shift responsibility for managing Iran’s travel arrangements from the U.S. to Canada, whose Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday that he would like to restore diplomatic relations with Iran after 14 years of suspension. (Ironically, it is Switzerland that has served as a “protecting power” for Iranian interests with both the U.S. and Canada in the absence of direct connections between those governments.
In other scenarios, including any that involve an Iranian win tonight, the country would play its subsequent matches in Dallas or Seattle. The last path, which The Athletic estimates as a 18 percent probability, would set up the most geopolitically fraught face-off of all: a U.S.-Iran match July 6.
“We have reiterated on numerous occasions that we have no issue with the American people,” Pasandideh said. “Our disagreement lies with the hostile policies that the United States government has implemented against the Iranian people.”
If the Trump administration kept its current travel rules in place, that would mean Iran’s team would touch down on American soil on the 250th anniversary of the United States — a fitting culmination for the first World Cup to begin with a host country at war with a competitor.
Ashley Novella, an ecologist with the Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation District, removes mewly sprouting chokecherry seedings during a volunteer weed pull on June 17, 2026, along Anchorage’s Lanie Fleisher Chester Creek Trail. Chokecherry trees, brought to Alaska as ornamentals, are aggressive invaders and have crowded out natural plants in parts of Anchorage and other communities. The ANchoraeg Soil and Water Conservation District is part of the Alaska Invasive Species Partnership, which advocated for a bill that would have established an invasive species council in the state Department of Fish and Game. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Thursday vetoed two environmental-protection bills that had passed with broad bipartisan support from legislators.
Dunleavy vetoed a bill to establish an invasive species council, Senate Bill 174, that was intended to be similar to coordinating organizations managing invasive species in other states, and a bill to ban restaurants’ use of polystyrene containers, House Bill 25.
Dunleavy, in veto messages, characterized both bills as overly burdensome and unnecessary expansions of government.
The invasive species bill would have established a council within the Department of Fish and Game to coordinate efforts that participants say are currently too disjointed to be as effective as they could be.
It was supported by numerous science and resource organizations, including the Alaska Invasive Species Partnership, a coalition of agencies and organizations that try to combat invasive species.
In a letter to lawmakers, the partnership’s chair said the board strongly backed the bill. “This legislation represents a vital step toward strengthening the coordination, education, and actions needed to protect Alaska’s environment, economy, and public health from the growing threat of invasive species,” the letter said.
It passed the Senate unanimously on May 8 and it passed the House by a 35-5 vote on May 19. In addition to the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, 14 other senators from both parties and 11 Democratic, Republican and independent House members signed on as cosponsors.
But Dunleavy, in his veto message, said there is no need to add new invasive species duties to the Department of Fish and Game.
“Rather than strengthening direct operational capacity, the bill adds a formal advisory layer that is not necessary for the department to continue its efforts,” Dunleavy said in his veto message.
Felled chokecherry trees, a fast-growing invesive species, lie along the edge of Anchorage’s Lanie Fleisher Chester Creek Trail on June 17, 2026. In the background, working as part of a weed-pull crew to remove invasive species, is Lizzie Bishop of the Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation DIstrict. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
“The State should also be cautious about creating advisory structures that may become a vehicle for broader restrictions on land use, permitting, and responsible development.”
Dunbar called the governor’s reasoning “misguided” and “unfortunate.”
“In the battle over invasive species, Mike Dunleavy has joined the battle on the side of the invasive species,” he said.
As to why Dunleavy is contradicting state officials who are Alaska Invasive Species Partnership board members, “I think it boils down to animosity and ideology,” Dunbar said.
The animosity is because members of the Senate “have not been rolling over on certain issues,” he said. The ideology is the resistance to anything that appears to be an expansion of government, Dunbar said, even though experts advised that the more coordinated approach through the council the bill would have established would make invasive species effort more cost-effective.
Invasive species that threaten Alaska’s ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them, particularly seafood harvesting, include imported plants like elodea and fish species like northern pike, which prey on native salmon in Southcentral Alaska, and European green crabs, which eat native crabs and damage fishery habitat. European green crabs were first discovered in Alaska in 2022; since then, tens of thousands have been trapped in Southeast Alaska, but the species is expanding northward.
Ban on plastic foam containers nixed
The bill banning restaurant use of polystyrene containers was aimed at reducing plastic pollution in Alaska, particularly pollution from microplastics, the long-lasting remnants of crumbled-up plastic trash that have become ubiquitous in waterways and the food web, even in remote parts of Alaska.
Dunleavy, in his veto message, said the bill would have created an “unrealistic implementation timeline for businesses,” especially affecting rural Alaska.
A torn Styrofoam cup emerges with other trash from a melting pile of snow on April 26, 2026, in a parking lot by Northern Lights Boulevard in Midtown Anchorage. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
“A rapid transition away from customary packing could increase costs for businesses and consumers without giving affected businesses enough time to adapt,” he said.
The bill’s effective date was to be Jan. 1, but the measure included a provision allowing restaurants to continue to use stockpiled supplies of polystyrene containers until they were depleted.
The bill had bipartisan support, though the support was not as wide as that for the invasive species council measure.
It passed the House originally on April 21 by a 25-15 vote. It passed the Senate on May 18 by a 13-7 vote, and the House on May 19 concurred with Senate changes by a 26-14 vote.
Organizations that have been tracking plastics pollution in Alaska and advocated for the bill delivered angry reactions to the governor’s action.
“This veto is shameful,” Pamela Miller, executive director and senior scientist with Alaska Community Action on Toxics, said in a statement. “Governor Dunleavy had a chance to protect children, families, fish, wildlife, and future generations from unnecessary toxic exposure. Instead, he sided with plastics manufacturers and pollution. His time as governor is winding down and this veto will be part of his legacy, a legacy associated with divisiveness, negativity, and a refusal to act when human health is on the line.”
Dyani Lezama, state director of Alaska Environment, said she was “incredibly disappointed” by the veto.
“Polystyrene foam is bad for our health, produces a huge amount of litter and is incredibly hard to clean up. Products that we use for just a few minutes shouldn’t pollute our environment for hundreds of years,” she said in a statement.
“This is a bipartisan issue that most Alaskans agree on, despite significant lobbying from the plastics industry. It’s time to leave foam foodware in the past and I look forward to building greater public support to deliver a victory in 2027,” she said.
Not once, not twice, but thrice. France winger Ousmane Dembélé scored three goals in the first half of its World Cup match against Norway on Friday, putting the Paris Saint-Germain star firmly in the mix for the Golden Boot race for the tournament’s top-goal scorer. All of Dembélé’s goals came in the first 32 minutes of the match at Boston Stadium. He became the first player to score a first-half hat trick at a men’s FIFA World Cup since Russia’s Oleg Selenko in 1994, who finished with five goals in the match against Cameroon. The fastest World Cup hat trick took only 7 minutes, 42 seconds. Hungary striker Laszlo Kiss, who had come on as a substitute, managed that feat late in the match against El Salvador at the 1982 World Cup in Spain. Dembéé’s the second fastest from a starter. Dembélé completed the feat with three completely different goals. The third goal was a combination of his first two — a curler with his left foot from the same spot he powered his first goal in with his right foot. Dembélé entered Friday’s match with one goal. With four goals, he sits behind Lionel Messi (five goals) in the Golden Boot race. He joins Messi and Canada’s Jonathan David as the third player with a hat trick at this tournament. Dembélé is tied with France teammate Kylian Mbappé, with four goals at the tournament. Mbappé assisted on two of the goals. Dembélé By The Numbers 1: Ballon’Or award, which he won in 2025 as the world’s best player. 3: Dembélé is the third player to score a hat-trick for France at a men’s World Cup, after Just Fontaine (two in 1958) and Kylian Mbappé (one in 2022). 11: Number of international goals he now has, with his first coming back in 2017 in a friendly match vs. England. 19: The number of previous major international tournament games without scoring a goal before France’s last game; Dembélé now has four in the last two.20: By assisting Dembélé on two of his goals, Mbappé has tied Germany’s Miroslav Klose for the second-most most goal contributions (goals + assists) at the World Cup since 1966 (20: 16 goals, 4 assists). Only Lionel Messi has more than Mbappé (26). 32: The number of minutes for Dembélé to achieve his hat trick. It’s the second earliest ever in World Cup history (Austria’s Erich Probst did in 24 minutes in 1954 vs. Czechia).Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
We have tragic news to report out of France today.
Luis de la Rosa, the acclaimed animator, whose credits included Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, died Friday after he was struck by a train while attending the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
He was just 34 years old.
A commuter walks on a platform to catch her train at Paris Saint Lazare railway station on January 29, 2009 in Paris, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
According to local newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré (via TMZ), emergency crews responded after a man was hit by a locomotive near the train station in Annecy, a city located close to the French-Swiss border.
Despite their efforts, the victim could not be saved.
Authorities initially did not publicly identify the victim. However, the Annecy International Animation Film Festival later confirmed that the man killed was de la Rosa.
Early reports indicate that de la Rosa was killed while walking too close to the tracks, but that detail has yet to be confirmed by police.
De la Rosa had built an impressive resume over the past decade, beginning his career in animation in 2016 with work on Nickelodeon’s Pig Goat Banana Cricket.
He later contributed to several major productions, including My Little Pony: The Movie, Animaniacs, Space Jam: A New Legacy, and the Oscar-winning animated hit Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
He was reportedly attending the Annecy festival’s industry market to showcase his original project, Ash Raider World, while also meeting with fellow artists and potential collaborators.
Festival organizers have announced that Artistic Director Marcel Jean will honor de la Rosa during Saturday’s closing ceremony, recognizing both his contributions to animation and the devastating loss felt throughout the industry.
News of de la Rosa’s death has sent shockwaves through the animation community, with many remembering him not only for his talent but also for the promising career that was tragically cut short.
Our thoughts are with Luis de la Rosa’s family, friends, and colleagues during this incredibly difficult time.
