An ex-girlfriend of embattled Senate candidate Graham Platner told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex.
Thursday Cartoons: Where’s Mitch
Posted: July 9, 2026 Filed under: just because 4 Comments
Starting this post with some hilarious memes about Mitch McConnell.
What is truly crazy is this shit:
That is fucking off the wall, Trump is such an ass…what an embarrassment.
Check out a few responses to this latest statement from Trump.
Remember just in the last 48 hours Trump has done all the things he accused Biden of doing:
Man…fuck Donald Trump.
Cartoons via Cagle:
Take care of yourself and have a good day…this is an open thread.
Wednesday Reads: Graham Platner, Just Because
Posted: July 8, 2026 Filed under: just because | Tags: Eric Swalwell, Graham Platner, Jenny Racicot, Lyndsey Fifield, Maine Senate race, Maria Kabbas, Nazi "Totenkopf" tatoo, rape, sexting, sexual assault, Susan Collins 7 Comments
Graham Platner
I’m going to write about Graham Platner today, because I am pissed off.
I have to believe that most women with any experience of abusive men could see right away that Platner was not going to be a good candidate for Democrats. I don’t live in Maine, so I haven’t even followed the stories about him that closely. Yet I could see this mess coming.
Frankly, I thought the Nazi tattoo was bad enough, but when I heard a about the racist, sexist, ableist social media messages and the sexting with other women soon after getting married, I thought this guy is a loser. I even hated his facial hair. The last thing we needed was another Eric Swalwell. I didn’t even know until yesterday that Platner served as a mercenary in Iraq. That would have been a red flag for me too. But Maine Democrats liked Platner, so nothing I could do about it.
Later I read the NYT article about women who found his behavior threatening and talked about his heavy drinking. I was not at all surprised to learn that a woman accused Platner of rape. The signs were all there. I don’t understand why so many people were supposedly shocked.
Maria Kabas had misgivings similar to mine. She writes at The Handbasket: We didn’t need a rape accusation to know Graham Platner was unfit.
Since we learned last fall about the Maine Democratic senate candidate’s Nazi insignia tattoo, the personal revelations about the Marine veteran and oyster farmer have only gone downhill from there. But an initial instinct told me not to weigh in. Let the people of Maine decide for themselves, I thought. I watched from New York as the public learned about shitty stuff he’d posted online, his previous work for the private military contractor Blackwater, and the sexually explicit texts he sent to other women while married to his current wife (which were flagged by her to his campaign as a concern.) And when the New York Times published a story just a few days before the June primary detailing “unsettling” behavior alleged by three women Platner had dated in the past, while I weighed in on social media, I shied away from opportunities to explicitly spell out how dangerous I believed him to be. He went on to win the primary.
It turns out the instinct that kept me from vocalizing my opinion on Platner was the same as the one that prevented Jenny Racicot from coming forward with allegations of a 2021 rape—that is, until this week. “One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” Racicot, who had dated Platner a few years back, told Politico. My position is in no way analogous with Racicot’s, but I, too, had a latent feeling that turning on Platner was in some way turning on an opportunity to kick Republican Susan Collins out of the senate, and possibly regain control of the entire chamber.
While Racicot was one of the women in the NYT story, the stomach-churning details of her sexual assault were for whatever reason not reported then. But on Monday, she said it all: “I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me. I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’” She describes Platner letting himself into her home while “almost blackout drunk” and having sex with her against her will. Now that we have a fuller picture of Platner’s malfeasance, there is finally consensus around what has long been clear to many of us: he’s a dangerous man. If only the earlier evidence was enough.
Marisa Kabas
When the NYT story dropped on June 4th describing “unsettling” behavior alleged by three women Platner had dated in the past, people who I considered political heroes insisted continuing their support. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders stuck by Platner, even when there was already more than enough evidence that he was not fit to be the Democratic candidate. Both Warren and Sanders finally pulled their support this week after the rape allegations were published, but it shouldn’t take a woman sharing details about a grotesque intimate experience to knock a man off his pedestal.
Meanwhile, men (and some women) who I nominally considered allies not only defended Platner at the time, but disparaged anyone concerned by the allegations.
Read more at the link. The men Kabas names as allies are people I can’t stand, like Ryan Grim and John Favreau, but even so, she had no problem seeing that Platner was trouble. Her “progressive” male examples:
Ryan Grim, a progressive journalist and co-founder of Drop Site News, tried to undermine the allegations because one of the women from the story, Lyndsey Fifield, is a Republican. He then went on the progressive podcast Breaking Points and said the Platner situation was good because it was forcing Democrats to confront bigotry against white men. “The current cultural divorce between progressives and white men is so, like, stark that it is—it’s just culturally, morally, ethically wrong,” Grim said. “But also just pragmatically, from a political perspective, you can’t build a national party if you assume every white guy or every white guy with a deep voice who is a combat vet or whatever is, like, out to get you.”
Jon Favreau of Pod Save America defended Platner at every turn and mega-streamer Hasan Piker vocally stood by him. The Substack journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote that continuing to defend Platner showed that “People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly. I call them smoothgroins: real-life barbie dolls with smooth plastic where a sexual organ should be.”
Read more at the link.
Here’s the Politico article by Jessica Piper and Adam Wren in which Jenny Raciot described her rape: Exclusive: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her.
A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.
The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office.
Jenny Racicot
Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.
“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”
Racicot previously described “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior by Platner to The New York Times, but says she didn’t go public with the specific assault claim because she didn’t want to be known as a rape victim.
Racicot said she later felt compelled to go public about her experience because the reaction to the Times story was dominated by controversy about another woman, Lyndsey Fifield, who alleged Platner mistreated her and faced attacks because of her ties to the Republican Party. (Contacted by POLITICO, Fifield stood by the allegations she made to the Times and declined to comment further.)
“My part of the story was just a read-over,” Racicot said in an interview. “And the story was Lyndsey, and the accusations of her being politically motivated.”
For many Platner supporters, that report crossed a line. But why was anyone surprised?
Here are some of the “red flags” from the June 4 article by Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer in The New York Times, headlined (gift article): Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior.
In interviews with The New York Times on Wednesday, several women [described] Mr. Platner as a fun and caring partner…saying they felt safe with him. Some remain friends with him to this day, years after their relationships ended.
But in extensive conversations over the past two months, three other women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner offered a far more complicated assessment, describing volatile and “toxic” relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.
Mr. Platner could be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but also demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful….
Lyndsey Fifield
Lyndsey Fifield, 40, a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns, recalled him as “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness.’” Ms. Fifield, who dated Mr. Platner from roughly 2013 to 2015, said that his offensive online posts “reminded me of just how much he hated women.”
Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, who said she dated him casually off and on between 2019 and 2021, said the posts deepened her belief that he did not respect women. “When I saw the old comments that he made online,” she said, “I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.” […]
The women who described difficult relationships with Mr. Platner knew him at different points of his life. Ms. Fifield said she dated him starting when they were both in their late 20s in Washington, during a time Mr. Platner has described as challenging. Ms. Racicot knew him in Maine when they were in their mid-30s and he was living in Sullivan, Maine, and working on his oyster farm.
The third woman, a Democrat from Maine who spoke on the condition of anonymity, had a long-distance relationship with Mr. Platner on and off for years, as recently as 2016.’
The three described him in similar terms. Spending time with him could be exhilarating, they said. But they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing. Asked to sum up how he treated her, the third woman said she felt like “collateral damage to the world that is his.”
It’s too bad that Racicot didn’t describe the rape for this earlier article–perhaps Platner would have lost the primary. But to me, Fifield’s experiences should have been enough.
Mr. Platner could be rough with her, Ms. Fifield said, particularly when they were drinking, leaving her shaken and sometimes afraid. In the interviews, Ms. Fifield grappled with how to process her experiences. She was quick to note that he “never hit me, he never punched me.”
But she said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.
During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was “calm.” Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning.
“It hurt,” she said. But she added: “It didn’t cause an injury, it didn’t break my arm.”
Ms. Fifield also recalled that Mr. Platner’s displays of weaponry and discussions of violence sometimes left her uneasy.
Apparently, some people dismissed her story because she is a Republican. I thought it sounded authentic.
Yesterday, The Washington Post published this story by Amy Brittain, Liz Goodwin, and Amy B. Wang with more information from Lyndsey Fifield: Ex-girlfriend of Graham Platner says he removed condoms without consent during sex.
Lyndsey Fifield, who said she dated Platner from 2013 to 2015 in D.C. and has previously accused him of physical abuse, said that she told Platner on multiple occasions that he had to wear condoms during sex because she was not on birth control.
“He would pull condoms off,” she said in an interview. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.”
Fifield, 41, is the second woman to allege this week that Platner engaged in nonconsensual sexual conduct. Jenny Racicot, 41, who said she previously dated Platner, told The Post and other outlets on Monday that he sexually assaulted her in late 2021, leading a growing number of allies to drop their endorsements and call on him to withdraw from the race for a Maine seat in the U.S. Senate….
Fifield initially told The Post about the alleged condom removal during a June 20 interview that was off the record. She said she decided to speak publicly about it Tuesday in part because, she said, she wanted to show that Racicot was not alone in experiencing issues with Platner involving sexual consent.
Removing a condom during sex without consent, known as “stealthing,” is classified as a form of sexual assault in several countries, including Britain, Canada and parts of Australia. In the United States, Maine, California and Washington state have laws that address the nonconsensual removal of condoms during sex. The alleged incidents involving Platner took place in D.C., Fifield said.
She estimated that Platner removed condoms without her consent at least six times when they had sex at both of their residences in D.C. during their two-year, on-and-off relationship. She said she told him that she was upset about it but that he would make light of the situation.
“I confronted him both during and after [sex] because he knew that I was not on birth control and how dangerous that was,” she told The Post in one interview. In another, she said: “He would act like cute about it, like ‘Oh sneaky me.’”
The guy is a complete asshole. I just can’t understand why Democrats supported him for so long.
Graham Platner
This piece at MSNOW is by Michael A. Cohen, who opposed Platner’s candidacy from the beginning: Why Graham Platner’s progressive supporters ignored glaring warning signs.
For nine months, Graham Platner’s supporters have insisted that Democrats should ignore the mounting evidence of his personal foibles and political vulnerabilities — and support his bid for the Senate in Maine.
They argued that his Nazi “Totenkopf” tattoo was a youthful indiscretion and parroted his ludicrous argument that he didn’t know the origins of the Nazi insignia that was on his chest for 18 years before he covered it up with more ink. They waved away his dozens of racist, misogynistic and, frankly, creepy Reddit posts. They said his sexting with as many as a dozen women soon after his wedding was between him and his wife. They insisted that he was the best candidate to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, even as polling showed him badly underperforming other Maine Democrats.
On Monday, they ran out of excuses and rationalizations.
Jenny Racicot’s story of Platner’s alleged assault is stomach-turning, and while some Democrats will seemingly excuse antisemitism, a Nazi tattoo and persistently bad behavior toward women, sexual assault is the line the party won’t cross.
Now Democrats are abandoning Platner in droves, but the signs were there all along. Cohen:
The first lesson is don’t fall in love with an unvetted political outsider — or, for that matter, any politician. When he announced his candidacy, Platner told a compelling story. He was a political outsider with no experience in electoral politics, a Marine combat veteran and an oyster fisherman in a state where working on the water is a badge of honor.
But as quickly as Platner emerged, so too did the stories of his past deeds — his controversial Reddit posts, his Nazi tattoo and an actual life story that didn’t quite match up with his campaign narrative.
Platner’s supporters claimed he’d grown and matured and that his bad behavior was the result of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered in Iraq….
Redemption and maturity are certainly attributes to be celebrated, but perhaps it would have been better for Platner to work out his personal issues in private, not under the harsh klieg lights of one of the most competitive Senate races in the country….
Second, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.
With Platner, it wasn’t just one news cycle of bad stories. It was a constant drumbeat — and many of these allegations shared the same theme: Platner disassembling and distracting.
It turned out that, far from being a successful oyster fisherman, his biggest customer was his mother, who runs a restaurant. Platner’s claims of a hardscrabble youth were contradicted by stories of living off his parents’ generosity and stints at an elite private school.
When the New York Times published on-the-record accounts of him allegedly physically assaulting a former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, Platner and his allies dismissed the claim by arguing that Fifield is a Republican and thus can’t be trusted.
There’s more at the link. Again, the simple truth is the signs were there all along.
Graham Platner shows the tattoo he got to cover up the Nazi one.
Get this: Platner is demanding that his replacement share his progressive politics as a condition for his dropping out! Andrew Howard and Jessica Piper at Politico: Graham Platner’s campaign says it contacted state party to discuss process if he drops out.
Graham Platner’s campaign said it had reached out to the Maine Democratic Party to discuss the process for replacing him if he were to drop out of the state’s U.S. Senate race.
The acknowledgment came after the state party accused the campaign of improperly trying to influence that succession process, and it’s the clearest indication yet Platner is considering leaving the race after saying Monday he was “taking the time to reflect” on his bid for Senate.
Devon Murphy-Anderson, the party’s executive director, said in a Tuesday night press release and social media video that Platner’s campaign staff had repeatedly reached out to the state party in an attempt to “put their thumb on the scale” in selecting his replacement.
“We’ve repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like,” Murphy-Anderson said. “We have also reiterated that Graham Platner must drop out of this race so that Democrats in Maine can focus on defeating Susan Collins this November.”
Read the rest at Politico.
Two more speculative posts on what comes after Platner:
Christa Dutton at NOTUS: Ties to Graham Platner Could ‘Haunt’ a Replacement.
Democrats are coming to realize Graham Platner will be a specter in Maine’s Senate race even if he ends his campaign.
Platner has denied the allegations of sexual assault and misconduct from former girlfriends that have ratcheted up pressure on him to drop his bid for the seat. Still, Democrats who anticipate he will be forced to end his run told NOTUS their party has a unique challenge: Democrats need a replacement candidate who is distant enough from Platner to avoid his toxicity, but not so far from his politics that they would undermine the Democratic primary voters who nominated Platner.
Given that this is playing out in one of the most competitive Senate contests in the country, any ties to Platner could become an issue for a potential alternative candidate — and the rest of the Democratic Party, they said.
Nate Cohn at The New York Times: Why Democrats Would Probably Come Out Ahead if Platner Dropped Out.
It may be only a matter of time before Graham Platner drops out of the Maine Senate race.
If he does, it’s too soon to say who might replace him, but it’s not too early to suggest that his replacement would probably be a modest favorite against Susan Collins, the longtime Republican incumbent. The same couldn’t be said for Mr. Platner, even before he faced a rape accusation on Monday.
If the race does get a reset, it will be an enormous break for Democrats. Without a victory in Maine, their path to control of the Senate is extremely challenging — not just in 2026, but potentially even if they secure the tiebreaking vice presidency in 2028. It would be an exaggeration to say Mr. Platner was doomed before the latest allegation, but his candidacy was already in a lot of trouble.
To take one example from last week’s New York Times/Siena poll of Maine: Thirty percent of Mr. Platner’s own supporters said his various controversies were making them question whether they could support him. Although he led Ms. Collins in the poll by two percentage points, it was an open question whether he would be able to withstand another round of controversy — and another round seemed all but inevitable. The extraordinary speed with which Mr. Platner’s loyalists pushed him to withdraw after the allegation Monday is partly a reflection of how badly he was wounded. He was already near the breaking point….
If he drops out by next Monday, the Maine Democratic Party will get to choose his replacement. It would have until July 27 to select a new nominee, and my colleague Reid Epstein reports that Maine Democrats are considering several means of doing so, from a pop-up convention to a statewide caucus. Most of the likeliest Democratic replacements aren’t especially well known statewide or nationally, but in this political environment Ms. Collins would be in jeopardy against any one of them.
On paper, this is a race Democrats should win. Yes, Ms. Collins has won many times before, despite Maine’s Democratic lean, but that does not mean she should be expected to defy political gravity forever.
I think Platner should drop out today, and certainly before the weekend. Maine Democrats need to make sure it happens.
Sorry this isn’t a news post, but this is an important issue. Women need to pay attention to and call out the red flags that men just don’t seem to notice. Platner was poison from day one. Women in politics need to pay attention to the signs and speak out loudly.
Tuesday Cartoons: Sleepy Trump
Posted: July 7, 2026 Filed under: just because 12 Comments
Hello, before we get to some news, check this out:
Here are a few postcards:
Now for some news:
To start off with,
And out of Maine, I don’t understand why they didn’t demand this guy withdraw months ago…
Next up:
This is a good summary of how the recent World Cup Trump scandal illustrates the nature of Trump’s thought process towards the rule of law in America.
The president of the United States pressuring the president of FIFA to change the rules for his favored player perfectly represents the way Trump thinks about the rule of law in the United States. And the rejection of a level playing field shows in the way Trump and the Republicans have skewed the U.S economy so only their team can win.
Read the entire article, she backs up her claim with receipts.
Cartoons via Cagle:
Enjoy the day, and stay safe.
Mostly Monday Reads: Trump goes all Mafia on FIFA
Posted: July 6, 2026 Filed under: #FARTUS, #We are so Fucked, 2026 FIFA, Trump Mafia Moves | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, FIFA 2026, ICE, ICE Thugs, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Trump Crime Syndicate, Trump ruins everything for nearly everyone 12 Comments
“Seems like for the estimated $10M midnight apocalyptic firework extravaganza for our Dear Leader, they could have afforded a T.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
While getting ready for the Netherlands v Mexico last night, I just happened to flick through some headlines and let out a loud ‘What the Hell?’ Loud enough to get a response from down the hall: “What now?” The hell was two headlines — one from the New York Times and the other from The Independent — that convinced me it was real. I posted excerpts in response to JJ’s post last night downthread.
It basically gave the world another good reason to hate us or laugh at what we’ve become under Orange Caligula. My thought is we’ve become a Mafia state. This is the headline from the NYT: “Trump Asked FIFA to Review U.S. Player’s Suspension. Now He’s Eligible to Play. The reversal of Folarin Balogun’s World Cup suspension is highly unusual. It was the first time since 1962 that FIFA has nullified a suspension for a red card received during the World Cup.”
It’s basically big news today, so I’ll lead with it. This time, he insulted our friend and ally, Belgium, so I’ll start with their response today as reported by the AP. It’s reported by Samuel Petraquin. Also, there are pictures of the offense that got the red card. “Belgian federation to challenge FIFA’s decision to let Folarin Balogun play in World Cup match.”
The Belgian soccer federation wants an explanation from FIFA about a decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play at the World Cup despite getting a red card in his previous game.
Belgium takes on the United States later Monday for a spot in the quarterfinals.
The Belgian federation (RBFA) said it has still not received either “FIFA’s decision or any explanation regarding this matter. In these circumstances, it has no choice but to challenge the player’s eligibility for the upcoming match.”
It did not specify where it intends to appeal FIFA’s decision.
U.S. President Donald Trump intervened on behalf of star U.S. forward Balogun, whose red-card suspension was lifted in a decision that allowed him to play against Belgium.
The Belgian federation said it learned through media reports about the FIFA’s move and sent a letter to the governing body requesting a copy of the decision as well as an explanation of the process.
“As its only response, FIFA sent a letter to the RBFA stating that it considered this correspondence to constitute an appeal, that a judge had been appointed, and that the RBFA had only a few hours to complete that appeal,” it said. “No information whatsoever was provided by FIFA.
Politico reports this on the Trump maneuver. “Inside the White House push to get Folarin Balogun back on the field. President Donald Trump got involved minutes after the U.S. striker received a red card that would have banned him from a crucial match.” Sophia Cai has the lede.
The campaign to keep Folarin Balogun on the field for the United States’ World Cup run began just minutes after the team’s leading goal-scorer received a red card that would sideline him for the team’s next match.
Following Wednesday’s victory against Bosnia and Herzegovina, White House FIFA World Cup Task Force executive director Andrew Giuliani alerted President Donald Trump to Balogun’s punishment for a rash tackle — removal from the Bosnia match and a routine one-match suspension that would keep him out of a must-win encounter against Belgium.
Trump and Giuliani had been speaking regularly about the World Cup for months. During the planning stages for the tournament, the president received frequent briefings on logistics, security and the U.S. team’s prospects. Once the competition began in mid-June, those conversations accelerated to multiple times each week.
By Wednesday night, the White House had committed itself to taking action over Balogun’s red card, which some soccer analysts believed to be a harsh punishment for the infraction. Giuliani, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and senior U.S. Soccer Federation officials — all of whom had watched the Bosnia match in person at Levi’s Stadium near San Francisco — began activating plans to challenge the referee’s on-field decision to issue a red card. Successful appeals of World Cup red cards are exceedingly rare.
That kicked off four days of coordinated lobbying, legal maneuvering and diplomacy that stretched from the Oval Office to FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich — and underscored how invested Trump’s inner circle had become in the second World Cup hosted on U.S. soil and the fortune of the U.S. men’s national team competing in it. POLITICO spoke to a half-dozen U.S. government and soccer officials who were either directly involved in or briefed on the week’s events.
On Sunday, a day before the U.S. was due to face Belgium with Balogun on the bench, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee announced that it was suspending Balogun’s one-match suspension for a year. Trump thanked FIFA for “doing what was right and reversing a great injustice.” The Royal Belgian Football Association and European confederation UEFA, of which Belgium is a member, are considering taking action against the FIFA ruling, according to a high-ranking UEFA official granted anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations.
On Thursday, Trump placed a call to FIFA President Gianni Infantino. The two men had built a friendship over nearly eight years, with Infantino becoming a frequent visitor to the Oval Office during Trump’s second term. They remained in contact even when events put U.S. government policy in conflict with FIFA’s objectives, according to people familiar with their relationship. That included when the Trump administration launched military strikes against Iran in February, jeopardizing the country’s ability to compete in the World Cup — a personal history that mattered when Trump dialed Infantino about the Balogun matter.
Trump asked about FIFA’s rules around the red card decision and the grounds for a suspension. Infantino listened carefully but made no promises about the outcome. FIFA declined to confirm any specific discussions but reiterated to POLITICO that the decision to suspend the one-match ban was made by an independent disciplinary committee.
As U.S. Soccer’s legal team formally prepared and submitted its appeal to FIFA, Giuliani and Lutnick also offered to make White House attorneys available to assist with legal analysis if needed, according to people involved in the discussions.
At the same time, Giuliani and Scott Goodwin — a hedge-fund manager who had helped to personally pay the salary of U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino — zeroed in on the officiating history of referee Raphael Claus, who made the red card call on Wednesday. Articles examining previous controversies involving the Brazilian referee circulated among senior government officials as they evaluated every possible argument that could bolster the appeal, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
Stephen Collinson of CNN has the story on what the rest of the world thinks about this shake-down.
For 24 days, the World Cup seemed to achieve a rare feat in America in 2026: It had almost nothing to do with Donald Trump.
But in an extraordinary twist following an appeal from the president, star US goal-scorer Folarin Balogun will play in the knockout clash with Belgium on Monday, despite being sent off in the previous match and earning a one-game ban.
“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president posted Sunday, taking a victory lap on Truth Social.
Trump added more rhetorical rocket fuel to the controversy on Monday, confirming that he’d called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to ask him to review the suspension.
“I didn’t say, ‘You have to do this,’” Trump said in the Oval Office, adding that he didn’t think Balogun’s offense was even a foul.
Balogun’s reprieve rocked global soccer, triggering fresh speculation about the cozy relationship between Trump and the FIFA supremo.
Trump’s call to Infantino and FIFA’s ultimate decision lifted a controversy about soccer refereeing into an international incident surrounding the world’s most popular sporting showcase.
The subsequent drama raises concerns about political interference and the integrity of the tournament. It doesn’t necessarily matter whether Trump’s muscling into the issue was decisive. Just the impression that it was risks souring global perceptions of an event that had generated remarkably positive headlines.
Controversy is guaranteed at World Cup finals. Who could forget Diego Maradona’s “hand of God” goal for Argentina in 1986 or French star Zinedine Zidane’s 2006 World Cup final headbutt?
Read more on this controversy at any of the three links. Believe me, there are a lot more out there. So, here’s another headline that’s making me think doing all that ish to get my passport was a good idea. This headline is from Wired as reported by Maddy Varner. “ICE’s Internal Watchdog Is Now Investigating Online Critics. The Office of Professional Responsibility has opened more than 100 cases over what ICE officials call “incidents of doxing and threats” against ICE employees.” ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is set up to conduct internal investigations, but has recently begun investigating American Citizens.
OPR is supposed to act as an internal watchdog. It’s responsible for inspecting detention facilities, investigating allegations of employee and contractor misconduct, and processing security checks for new applicants. On its site, it says it also protects against “external threats” by managing badge access to buildings and maintaining the agency’s network security. But lately, court documents indicate, it appears to be pursuing more civilians like Gonyea for what they say online.
In a court declaration filed in April, an ICE official said that between January 2025 and March 2026, OPR investigated 131 cases involving “incidents of doxing and threats directed towards ICE employees nationwide.”
It’s unclear how many of those cases resulted in criminal charges. WIRED was able to identify only one instance when OPR was credited for its investigative work in a case where the Justice Department accused a California man of harassing an ICE attorney and her mother. The DOJ alleged that the man, who pleaded guilty, used to live in the same building as the mother and that he started his harassment campaign in January 2024, well before President Trump took office. ICE did not respond to questions about whether other cases have been brought based on OPR’s work or how many additional cases OPR has opened since March.
“It takes a lot to actually convict someone for their speech, and it’s only possible in very limited circumstances,” says Laura Moraff, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “People do have a First Amendment right to criticize the government and to do that online and to do that anonymously.”
OPR was behind at least one of the flurry of administrative subpoenas sent to tech companies in recent months in an effort to unmask online critics. In court filings, lawyers for the poster argued that the subpoena, which asked for the poster’s name, address, telephone number, and other details, violated the poster’s right to free speech. The government withdrew the subpoena rather than trying to litigate its merits.
You may read some examples of U.S. citizens they’ve bothered by these claims in the article. You might recall this story via the article cited above.
… ICE agents arrived at a polling site in Syracuse, New York, during the state’s primaries in June. The agents were there to see Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker who says they were concerned about an Instagram post she had supposedly made in January, “doxing” an ICE agent.
So, who knows what they may be up to? Let’s hope the press stays on top of it. You may read a great update on the amount of nothing being done by the ICE Agent who killed Renee Good, who is at the root of the Paigelynne Gonyea OPR shenanigans. It’s at this link at The Atlantic. “The Death of Renee Good Has Yet to Be Properly Investigated. Six months after she and Alex Pretti were shot on the streets of Minneapolis, little has come of the probes into their killings.” Quinta Jurecic is the reporter for the story.
Nearly six months have passed since federal officers shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis. No one has been arrested, the Trump administration has provided no reason to believe that any serious investigation is taking place, and federal officials continue to stonewall state and local investigators in Minnesota.
This inaction was predictable. The day after Good’s death, Vice President Vance insisted at a press conference that the agent who shot her would face no criminal charges. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” Vance told reporters. “He was doing his job.” Soon, Stephen Miller doubled down on the message, announcing “to all ICE officers” that “you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.” Federal agents apparently received the message: The next day, an ICE agent fired a gun into a Minneapolis home, wounding a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. The week after that, Pretti was killed outside a doughnut shop. The Department of Homeland Security called him a “domestic terrorist” and said that the officers who shot him had acted in self-defense.
Typically, after a contentious killing by a law-enforcement officer, the Justice Department would launch a criminal civil-rights probe. Following George Floyd’s murder, for example, DOJ conducted an investigation alongside Minnesota law enforcement, and both federal and state prosecutors brought separate charges against the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. So far, though, the federal government has succeeded in protecting immigration officers from serious consequences for the violence of what DHS termed “Operation Metro Surge.” But in promising a total shield from accountability, Miller and Vance may have been premature. Law-enforcement officials in Minnesota are—albeit haltingly—beginning to move forward with investigations and prosecutions on their own. Their efforts may become the locus of yet another clash between state and federal authority in the age of President Trump.
For the first few hours after the ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Good inside her car, the mechanisms of accountability appeared to operate normally: The FBI began mobilizing to investigate the crime scene alongside the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state’s investigative agency. By the evening of the day she was killed, however, officials in Washington, D.C., had frozen out both Minnesota police and law enforcement in Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located. In a recent podcast interview, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty recalled joining a conference call after Good’s death with the FBI, federal prosecutors, and Minnesota investigators: “Everybody agreed this would once again be a joint investigation. And then suddenly the BCA was kicked off the case.” Minnesota abruptly found itself without access to any of the evidence collected at the scene. Even Good’s maroon Honda Pilot, the windshield pierced by Ross’s bullet, was bundled away by the FBI into a storage facility before state law enforcement could get a look at it.
DOJ was now the only agency able to conduct a full investigation into the shooting. But it had little apparent interest in doing so. According to The New York Times, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, refused to open a criminal investigation into Ross. Instead, DOJ looked into the possibility of investigating Good, along with her widow, Becca Good. Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned in protest, as did an FBI agent in Minneapolis.
Bobo, who hangs out on the kitchen stairs waiting for friends and food.
The link is gifted and definitely worth the read.
So, that’s it for me today. I’m still working on trapping the feral cats living under my house, whom I feed and speak to daily. Work is progressing on the kathouse. The electrical work is mostly done. The A/C works again. The backyard no longer has a dilapidated pergula. It’s about to get a nice green space with a nice grill/smoker, a fire pit, many more plants, lighting, and Adirondack chairs. I look forward to the nice cooler fall days.
I’m off to set up traps for the infamous duo Bobo and Sparks.
Try to have a nice, quiet week. I was hoping the games would be a nice break, but then Orange Caligula can never let good enough alone. He has to get involved and ruin it for everyone. I still enjoy the openers where all the soccer kids come out with the players. Their looks make me realize we have to ensure the world is a better place before we leave it.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
Sunday Cartoons: Chaos!
Posted: July 5, 2026 Filed under: just because 3 Comments
So…how was your 4th of July?
Way better than this woman, who was surrounded by white nationalists while taking public transport…how horrifying.
What a way to start the Fourth.
Some more items about yesterday:
Cartoons via Cagle:
Enjoy your Sunday and try to stay cool.
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