Category: Politics

Egyptian Ambassador Motaz Zahran and wife are hosting an informal farewell party tonight for close friends and family at his Washington, D.C. residence tonight, according to an attendee, hours before Egypt faces off against Iran in a closely watched game in Seattle. Ambassador Mohamed Hamdy Mohamed Mokhtar El-Molla will replace Zahran as the new Egyptian envoy to the U.S.

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America’s stint hosting the World Cup is drawing mostly positive reviews to date — and it couldn’t come at a better time.

According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, views of America across the world are worsening and confidence in President Donald Trump’s leadership is dropping.

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.

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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.”

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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.

​Politics

The federal government wants credit for mounting the World Cup’s best defense.

The Transportation Security Administration this week said its federal air marshals have seized more than 300 drones that broke through Federal Aviation Administration airspace restrictions imposed over World Cup stadiums or at nearby fan events in what the Department of Homeland Security called “the most comprehensive airspace security and drone mitigation effort in U.S. history.”

As part of that effort, local Federal Bureau of Investigation offices across Atlanta, Miami, New York, Dallas and elsewhere have released rolling social-media updates on their counter-drone enforcement activities, including the interception of dozens of unauthorized drones, along with warnings to recreational drone operators to keep their aircraft grounded.

“These incidents reflect the reality that drones are becoming part of the security environment surrounding major public events,” Michael Robbins, president of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, told POLITICO.

“The encouraging news is that authorities successfully detected and mitigated these incursions, demonstrating both the professionalism of the teams on the ground and the value of investing in effective counter-unmanned aircraft systems capabilities,” said Robbins, whose group represents drone manufacturers and suppliers.

Beyond countermeasures kits that include portable or wearable detection or jamming tools, law enforcement officials and security personnel are also utilizing enhanced training measures at the FBI’s drone training center in Alabama, which opened last year. FBI director Kash Patel boasted to Congress that “every single agency across the country wants their police officers there.”

As enforcement ramps up, a more fundamental question persists: whether many of the operators behind these incursions are knowingly breaking the rules or simply unaware they are flying where they shouldn’t be.

A former drone industry executive, granted anonymity to candidly discuss how drone policy has evolved in the last few years, said some drone manufacturers have simply put more responsibility on operators to figure out restrictions instead of baking it into the technology.

“Stepped up enforcement has some deterrent effect, but ultimately technology solutions will be most effective at preventing or mitigating incursions,” the executive said.

For now, as large-scale events continue across the U.S. — including the upcoming Olympic games — the next phase of thwarting drones must include “continuing to modernize our counter-UAS framework, expanding the deployment of proven detection and mitigation capabilities, and ensuring federal, state, and local partners have the clear authorities and tools they need to protect the public while preserving the tremendous economic and public safety benefits that drones provide every day,” added Robbins.

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The World Cup is the great unifier. Hasan Piker, who will find himself in the crowd along with Second Lady Usha Vance and former Vice President Kamala Harris at SoFi Stadium for tonight’s game, tells POLITICO he’s backing Turkey tonight. “You got to root for the underdog,” the far-left streamer said.

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Second Lady Usha Vance is expected to attend the United States’ final group-stage match this evening in Los Angeles, according to an administration official. Her husband, Vice President J.D. Vance, appeared earlier this afternoon at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in nearby Orange County as part of his book tour.

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