Researchers and staff involved with Brandeis University’s National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities have learned that they will not be able to soon apply for continued federal funding, likely forcing the center’s operations to stop when current funding runs out at the end of August.

Working across roughly a decade, the center has investigated laws that allow states to strip parents of custody based on disability and health disparities faced by disabled parents, and provides assistance to disabled parents who reach out for support. It is the only research center in the US focused on disabled parents.

Without further funding, “there’s going to be no national infrastructure dedicated” to those issues that offers evidence-based solutions to parties including judges in the child welfare system, healthcare providers, and disabled parents themselves, said principal investigator Monika Mitra.

Last week, the grant through which the center is funded was removed from the federal grant portal Grants.gov. The grant is one of 36 awards, together worth more than $6.5 million, from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research that were expected to be made available but removed from the federal database so far this year. Mitra was told by an inside contact at NIDILRR that the grant would not be reposted.

“The parenting center’s absence would leave a gaping hole of critical support,” said Heather Watkins, a disabled parent who sits on the research center’s board.

In May, the White House Office of Management and Budget, led by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, released a proposal that, if finalized, would have the federal government arbitrarily terminate grants and involve political appointees more deeply in the grantmaking process. The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment, referring me to the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Mia Ives-Rublee, the disability justice initiative senior director at the Center for American Progress, said that the “absolutely essential” center’s funding cutoff represents part of a “continual attack on the disability community.”

Nicole Lomerson, now a research associate at the center, used its public resources after her parenting was called into question due to her cerebral palsy when her infant was in neonatal intensive care.

Now, as part of the center’s work, Lomerson responds to disabled parents seeking support with regard to the child welfare system.

“We were really hoping to expand our technical assistance efforts to parents,” Lomerson said. “We were thinking about novel ways to provide support that was meaningful, that was delivered by peers.”

Mitra said she was stunned to find the center wasn’t able to apply for further funding under a grant she’d expected to be available. “It is a profound setback for disability rights and family equity,” she said.

President Trump said on Wednesday morning that ICE should continue making vehicle stops, appearing to contradict his own administration’s suspension of the stops following federal officers fatally shooting two men within a week.

“We must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”

ICE agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston last Tuesday and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine on Monday. Both men were unarmed, neither was the actual target of a federal immigration operation, and the agents did not wear body cameras.

People with knowledge of the directive told several news outlets that federal officers had been told to temporarily halt pulling over drivers on Tuesday, but it remains unclear what officer conduct the administration would evaluate during the pause.

“What I understand [from] talking to the director of ICE, it’s a short pause just to make sure we are doing the right thing,” Tom Homan said on Fox News on Tuesday, insisting that the decision would not affect the number of ICE arrests. According to the Associated Press, the suspension includes carve-outs for carrying out criminal warrants or working with partner agencies.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, federal immigration agents have shot and killed at least 11 people. Five of them were in their vehicles at the time. As my colleague Sophie Hurwitz wrote last week, the Department of Homeland Security’s go-to justification is that the victims weaponized their vehicles and were thus dangers to the officers and the public. Noah Lanard reported for Mother Jones, that, according to ICE’s own data, none of its officers have been killed by an immigrant and law enforcement officers are taught not to shoot into cars, as doing so will likely not stop a moving vehicle. 

Even if the Trump administration follows through with its temporary suspension of vehicle stops, its violence will continue. Isabela Dias noted in January that ICE implements the brutality by design with its goal to hit record numbers of arrests. According to the New York Times, federal officials detained more than 10,000 people in five days, and ICE has doubled its daily arrest numbers from last year.

On Monday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were involved in yet another fatal shooting, this time in Biddeford, Maine.

The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said the victim was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States, according to the Portland Press Herald. “He was a member of our community, a neighbor, and a human being whose life was cut tragically short. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, loved ones, and everyone now grieving this unimaginable loss,” the two immigration organizations said in a statement.

Daniel Boucher, who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting, told the Portland Press Herald that he was getting ready for work and after hearing what sounded like fireworks, he witnessed agents remove the driver of a sedan. “He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher told the Press Herald. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.’” 

A representative of the Biddeford Police Department said calls about the shooting should be directed to ICE; the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment. FBI agents were photographed at the scene of the shooting as part of an apparent federal investigation.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told the Associated Press that he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the shooting. Mullin reportedly told him that the victim “weaponized” his vehicle. Similar claims by DHS have fallen apart after video footage of shootings has come to light.

It is unclear whether video of Monday’s shooting will emerge. The ICE agents involved were not wearing body cameras, according to King.

Monday’s victim is one of more than 20 people whom federal immigration agents have shot at since last year, according to the New York Times. Most of those shootings have involved people who were inside their cars. At least nine people have now been killed during encounters with immigration agents during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Another witness to the aftermath of Monday’s shooting, who asked to be identified as Em, told the Press Herald that she heard gunshots then saw a white car whose driver appeared to have lost control of his vehicle. ICE then rammed into the car to get it to stop, she said.

Lucas Scott told the paper that he saw an ICE agent draw his weapon as he was yelling at the driver of the car. Scott then said he witnessed the driver try to hit the ICE agent with his car before the agent opened fire.

Images from the scene of the shooting show what appear to be bullet holes through the windshield of a white Kia sedan. The victim can be seen lying on the ground alongside the car.

Gov. Janet Mills said that she has been “briefed on the shooting” and that Maine State Police are on the scene. Other state politicians have been more outspoken. Democrat Ryan Fecteau, speaker of the House of Representatives, was quick to name ICE as the agency involved. Troy Jackson, who is running to replace Graham Platner as Maine’s Democratic nominee for the US Senate, called for ICE to be abolished. “For too long, ICE agents have been abducting our neighbors in brazen violation of the Constitution, and today they have tragically escalated even further,” Jackson said. “This rogue agency must be abolished.” 

Last week, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who lived in Texas for three decades. As Mother Jones has reported: 

Salgado’s son Ronaldo Salgado held a press conference Wednesday calling for an independent investigation into his father’s death. “I want to tell you about my dad,” he said. “He was a hardworking family man. He was also a man of routine.” Every day, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo got up before dawn and drove to work on a construction site, just as he had done for 35 years.

“At 6:45 a.m., he should have been picking up the last of his guys before heading to North Houston to finish up construction on some houses,” Ronaldo Salgado said. By 6:55, his father had been shot by ICE agents who followed him in an unmarked car.

In a statement, DHS said Salgado had attempted to evade arrest and “weaponized his vehicle,” echoing language used in the hours after an ICE agent shot and killed US citizen Renée Good in her car in Minneapolis in January.

DHS ran with the same story to justify the shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago; she survived. In both cases, video evidence greatly undermined the government’s claims. DHS’s lies following the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January further eroded the department’s credibility. 

After Good’s killing, Seth Stoughton, a former Florida police officer who is now a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, made clear in a Q&A with Mother Jones that cops have been trained for decades not to place themselves in front of a potentially moving vehicle and to avoid shooting at drivers. “If you imagine a vehicle driving toward you, shooting the driver is not going to cause that vehicle to stop,” Stoughton explained. “One, you might not actually incapacitate the driver. But even if you do, you’ve just gone from having a guided missile to having an unguided missile.”

In the aftermath of the Monday morning shooting, calls to Maine’s Immigrant Defense Hotline reported ICE activity elsewhere in the area. Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, called for accountability in a statement shared with the press. “We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable,” she said. “How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?”

On Monday, Ulises Peña López, represented by Disability Law United and Pangea Legal Services, sued the US government and private prison contractors GeoGroup and CoreCivic over his arrest by ICE officers and his following treatment in ICE detention facilities. Peña López was deported to Mexico in October 2025 after spending over six months in ICE detention.

Before his arrest, Peña López, a carpenter, already lived with disabilities due to a mini-stroke, which was diagnosed in August 2024 and was managed before his detention. The lawsuit contends that after ICE officers detained Peña López in February 2025 in Sunnyvale, California, they took him to an alleyway and beat him until he lost consciousness and required CPR.

His wife, Aby, and their young daughter witnessed part of the beating by ICE, according to the lawsuit.

Peña López’s ongoing symptoms, the lawsuit says, include new and worsening “headaches, weakness and numbness on his right side, eye pain, hearing loss, insomnia and nightmares, blurry vision, back pain, and difficulty walking.” Peña Lopez is unable to work to support himself, according to an interview with the NPR affiliate KQED.

“What I want more than anything, I can’t get back: to recover my health, to be with my wife and daughter, and to be able to work again,” Peña López told KQED.

The lawsuit filed for Peña López’s complaints cites Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which mandates that places receiving federal funding, like ICE detention centers, accommodate disabled people, among other laws. Peña Lopez’s wife and children are also part of the lawsuit due to the distress his arrest and subsequent treatment caused them.

During Peña López’s eight months in ICE detention in facilities operated by GeoGroup and CoreCivic, the lawsuit says, López received inadequate medical care and was also mocked by employees for his disability.

The lawsuit alleges that staff’s verbal abuse was particularly cruel at Golden State Annex, operated by GeoGroup. Detention staff reportedly told Peña López that “motherfucker, you don’t get to be asleep” and “you’re never gonna walk again.”

During Peña López’s transfer to California City Detention Center last August, the lawsuit says, “detention staff denied Ulises timely administration of his daily medication, violated his disability rights, and subjected him to unnecessarily harsh conditions,” such as not getting adequate medical care. At the facility operated by CoreCivic, Peña López also struggled to get his medications. As a result, Peña López’s health worsened before he was deported.

A spokesperson for CoreCivic told Mother Jones that while the company does not generally comment on active litigation, “we can share that the safety, health , and well-being of the people in our facilities is our top priority.”

ICE and GeoGroup did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

For Peña López’s lawyers, this lawsuit represents not only a pursuit of López but also of others mistreated by ICE.

“This lawsuit seeks accountability for the physical and emotional harms our clients suffered, but it also joins a growing wave of lawsuits challenging abusive ICE enforcement and detention practices,” said Elena Hodges, co-director at Pangea Legal Services, which is representing Peña López and his family, in a press release.

“We hope this case will send a powerful message to immigrant communities that they are not alone,” Hodges said, “and that ICE officials and private prison contractors are not above the law.”

Update, July 10: After publication, an ICE spokesperson wrote to Mother Jones saying that “any claims of subprime medical care at ICE facilities are FALSE” and that “staff always use the minimum amount of force to safely deescalate situations.”

On Tuesday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant and three-decade Houston resident. It was the second ICE-involved shooting this week alone; since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, federal immigration agents have shot and killed at least 10 people.

Now, as hundreds march in Houston and Salgado’s family demands an impartial investigation, the Department of Homeland Security is using a familiar playbook: Officials are blaming Salgado for his own death by asserting he “weaponized his vehicle.”

Salgado’s son Ronaldo Salgado held a press conference Wednesday calling for an independent investigation into his father’s death. “I want to tell you about my dad,” he said. “He was a hardworking family man. He was also a man of routine.” Every day, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo got up before dawn and drove to work on a construction site, just as he had done for 35 years.

“At 6:45 a.m., he should have been picking up the last of his guys before heading to North Houston to finish up construction on some houses,” Ronaldo Salgado said. By 6:55, his father had been shot by ICE agents who followed him in an unmarked car.

In a statement, DHS said Lorenzo Salgado Araujo had attempted to evade arrest and “weaponized his vehicle,” echoing language used in the hours after an ICE agent shot and killed US citizen Renée Good in her car in Minneapolis in January.

DHS at the time alleged that Good, too, had “weaponized her vehicle.” Independent investigators disputed that characterization, but the officer who killed Good was never indicted. Before Good, there were Carlitos Ricardo Parias and Marimar Martinez. Both were shot at by federal agents in 2025 and were accused of trying to ram those agents with their vehicles. Both survived. Ruben Ray Martinez, who was shot by an ICE agent in March 2025, was killed. The agent who shot him in the heart said Martinez was using his car as a weapon.

It’s a narrative that law enforcement agencies frequently employ to justify fatally shooting unarmed motorists. A New York Times investigation found that US police officers killed over 400 unarmed drivers between 2015 and 2021. In many of those cases, the officers involved said they fired because the vehicle itself was a weapon.

The data shows that ICE is no exception. In 2024, journalist Lila Hassan identified 18 ICE shootings that involved a moving vehicle between 2015 and 2021. Over that same time period, public records show ICE agents shooting at least 59 people total and killing at least 23. Not a single indictment resulted from those incidents. Since that study, ICE’s budget has ballooned by tens of billions of dollars and its internal oversight offices have been gutted. The killings haven’t stopped.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo “did not deserve to die,” Ronaldo Salgado said Wednesday. “He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of Mexican man shot and killed by ICE.” Ronaldo Salgado learned of his father’s passing, he said, from a video on social media. He recognized him immediately: “Not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street bleeding out.”

Graham Platner, the scandal-ridden populist Senate candidate from Maine, suspended his campaign Wednesday night. His announcement came two days after a rape allegation against him was made public in a Politico report, and prominent Democrats—many of whom had looked the other way at Platner’s Nazi tattoo and prior abuse allegations—one by one dropped their endorsements.

In an 11-minute video posted to social media, Platner categorically denied the allegation and lashed out at “the corporate media system and the political establishment,” which he said acted as “judge, jury and executioner.” He insisted that his video was not an admission of guilt—but after nine minutes, he nonetheless said: “I intend to file my paperwork to withdraw.” 

If Platner does file that paperwork before 5 p.m. ET Monday, he will be leaving the Maine Democratic Party with just 19 days to nominate a replacement. The Maine Democratic Party has released a statement saying it will hold a nominating convention before the July 27 deadline.

Devon Murphy-Anderson, the Maine Democratic Party’s executive director, posted a video to social media on Tuesday promising an “open, inclusive, transparent and fair” convention—and accused Platner’s team of trying to “manipulate this process” and select his successor themselves.

The Maine Democratic Party has approved plans for a nominating convention that will involve roughly 600 delegates, most of whom will be local party officials from around the state. They will pick a candidate to replace Platner—who got over 150,000 votes, the most of any Democratic Senate candidate in Maine primary history. Then, that candidate will face off against incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November.

At least eight candidates’ names have been floated to replace Platner: brewery owner Dan Kleban, social worker Paige Loud, former Maine CDC director Nirav Shah, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and former political staffer Jordan Wood among them. But in Platner’s Wednesday night announcement, he said he believes his volunteers—not the Maine Democratic Party—should be the ones to choose his replacement. “These decisions need to be made in the open by the people of this state, the people who got us here,” Platner said. “My name might be on the ballot right now, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine.”

“There is an unprecedented amount of energy and enthusiasm among Maine Democrats, driven in part by many of the dedicated volunteers and supporters who were inspired by Graham Platner’s campaign,” Maine Democratic Party leaders said in a statement. “We look forward to coming together and harnessing that energy around our new nominee as we work to defeat Susan Collins in November.”

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the US would continue strikes on Iran for a second night, and—if it had to—seize much of the country’s oil and target electric and desalination plants. 

The desalination plants are part of Iran’s vital civilian infrastructure, and, as I wrote in April, international law experts consider hitting these facilities to be war crimes because of the disproportionate harm targeting them would cause to civilians. 

On Wednesday, Trump also said that the US-Iran ceasefire agreement was over and that he would allow US officials to continue current negotiations to end the war, but they would be “wasting their time.”

Trump’s threats come amid multiple American strikes against Iran since it signed an interim deal with Iran on June 17. The US strikes came in response to Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a passageway that carried about 20 percent of the world’s crude oil and natural gas before the 2026 war began.

In late June, during the first major US strikes on Iran since the interim deal, Trump posted on Truth Social that if Iran continued its strikes, “we will be forced to military complete the job…if that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

As part of the US and Iran’s June agreement, Iran would allow ships to pass through without paying tolls for 60 days. But the country’s leadership has stated that oil tankers passing through the strait must use approved routes. According to a Wednesday report by the Associated Press, the ships Iran struck on Tuesday appeared to deviate from the designated route.

These recent maneuvers put more lives at risk. As of June 10, multiple Iranian government ministries reported that about 3,500 people have been killed in Iran since the war began in February.

Nate Swanson, President Joe Biden’s director for Iran at the National Security Council, told me two weeks ago what he considered the strategy at play here. The US doesn’t seem to be interested in making complex concessions to Iran, Swanson said, and Iran may be unwilling to agree to a deal with Trump specifically, given his support of the Gaza war and his strikes on the country in June 2025.

On Wednesday, Trump told reporters that Iran’s leaders were “scum” and “sick people.” “Based on their actions over the last week or two, they’re not doing a service to the people,” he said. “I’m not sure I want to make a deal with them.”

The Trump administration’s efforts to end the war appear to be going backward. Republican lawmakers criticized the June ceasefire deal with Iran as “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.” While many publicly blamed JD Vance, whom Trump said was responsible for Iran negotiations, the war is extremely unpopular with his base, which could hurt the GOP’s chances in the upcoming midterms.

A woman who dated Graham Platner said he raped her in her Maine home in 2021, an allegation that follows accounts from at least six other women who described troubling behavior—including infidelity, excessive drinking, and, in one case, physical abuse—by Maine’s Democratic nominee for US Senate.

The woman, Jenny Racicot, 41, gave a detailed account of the alleged assault in a Monday Politico report, saying Platner entered her home while heavily intoxicated and forced her to have sex despite her repeated objections.

“These allegations are troubling, serious, and false,” Platner responded in a Monday statement. “Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically untrue.”

While several Democrats have begun dropping their endorsements of Platner as their Senate nominee following Racicot’s credible rape allegations, many have not as of Tuesday morning.

The Democrats who have pulled their endorsements since Monday did not do so after several women detailed Platner’s abuse in a June New York Times report. Some even campaigned for Platner. Perhaps they believed the Democratic nominee’s repeated denials. Perhaps they simply didn’t care.

They did not rescind their endorsements when reports revealed Platner’s tattoo of a symbol used by Nazi paramilitary organizations, including Adolf Hitler’s SS police. Perhaps they believed Platner when he dismissed it as just a design he got while drunk with fellow Marines during his third deployment or were satisfied when he said he later covered the tattoo. Perhaps they simply didn’t care.

Prominent voices across the “left–of–center” political spectrum backed Platner—from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to the hosts of the popular podcast Pod Save America (Both Sanders and Pod Save America have since called on Platner to drop out of the Senate race). Some called the allegations against Platner politically motivated. Many justified their endorsements with Platner’s so-called progressive values and the idea that the party must oust Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to have a better chance at winning a majority in the November midterms.

“We all say Democrats should fight harder, but what does it mean to fight harder?” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said at a June campaign event for Platner regarding the effort to flip the Senate. “To me, it means you show up when an ally who challenges power is under attack.” The event took place one day after the New York Times report, which detailed Platner physically assaulting one woman he dated, Lyndsey Fifield, and trapping her in a bedroom during an argument and saying he would rape or kill people he considered a threat.

One only has to look at the reaction to Platner’s Monday announcement that he would continue his campaign, taking time “to reflect on the best path forward.” Considering his denial of “nonconsensual behavior,” Platner’s statement suggests public relations strategizing rather than accountability. The Senate nominee and others have spread conspiracy theories that political opponents are actively coordinating the allegations.

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But this perspective considers only the good abusive men like Platner can contribute and dismisses the people they abuse. It treats survivors with disdain, devaluing what they add to their communities. It slams shut any pathway to speak out and denies survivors personhood by condemning them for even daring to exercise the right to speak. It forces survivors to feel like they should stay silent due to fear that it could hurt others.

“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 told Politico. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

As many have stated, Platner already hurt his chances of becoming a senator with his abuse. The Democratic Party must reckon with how it continued to support an abusive man and prop up a system that allows those in power to skirt responsibility and actively harms survivors.

The Trump administration’s July 4th fireworks show will likely produce unhealthy levels of pollution at the National Mall and the surrounding area—a fitting byproduct of the president’s 250th American anniversary celebration. 

Internal documents from the National Park Service, which hosts the annual DC fireworks celebration, and obtained by the Washington Post, say that people in the area should “remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show” and “wear an N95 mask when outdoors” to prevent “irritation symptoms.” 

A significant contributor to these warnings is the scale of the fireworks display: the approximately 850,000 fireworks for 40 minutes. This is about 50 times more than the usual number of fireworks and double the typical show duration. 

To fund the extravagance, Trump is using $1.6 million in revenue from entry fees to national parks—five times more than what’s usually spent on the show. According to the Washington Post, the president is funneling a total of at least $90 million from national park entry fees for his plans to remake DC in his own image. This includes $76 million for repairing fountains, such as the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. 

Surely, this is the best use of these funds, considering the US Department of the Interior states that, as of September 2025, it needs $35.4 billion for maintenance and repair tasks that have already been postponed.

As my colleague Dan Friedman noted in May, some watchdog groups say the Trump administration skipped past congressional oversight by funneling money to the public-private partnership Freedom250.

It’s just another set of opaque business deals to serve one man’s vanity.

Despite the countless problematic aspects of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup—power-hungry fascists and the wealthy elite grabbing every ounce of political and monetary gain they can imagine at the expense of fans, national team players and staff, workers, and more—there are a few inspiring stories that I have been following. 

Among them: A national team playing in its first World Cup, outplaying established opponents with their spirit and tactics; a friendship between residents of a Kansas town and the national team players training there; and a young player showing the world what his sister always saw in him. 

As Jules Boykoff, a former US men’s national team and professional soccer player—and current politics professor at Pacific University in Oregon—told me just before the tournament started, soccer has the power to spark new connections within our communities and organizing. More simply, it can be fun.

Cape Verde’s ascent to the knockout stages

Cape Verde, a nation of about 530,000 people (about the same population as Atlanta), qualified for its first World Cup last year. This year, they earned draws against their three group stage opponents: Spain, one of the favorites to win the whole tournament, Uruguay, and Saudi Arabia. Vozinha, the goalkeeper, had a star performance against Spain with seven saves and gained 14 million followers on Instagram as a result, but beyond that, the Verdean team genuinely challenged Spain during the match in ways that they had no answer to.

Against Uruguay, Cape Verde scored its first two goals—including Kevin Pina’s stunning, long-distance free kick that punished their opponents’ flimsy defensive wall—and the team created much better chances to score than Saudi Arabia. 

Prior to the start of the tournament, Cape Verde was projected to have the fourth-lowest chance of making it out of the group stage behind Iraq, Curaçao, and Haiti. They beat the odds with flying colors and will play Argentina, led by perhaps the greatest player of all time, Lionel Messi, on Friday. 

Lawrence, Kansas, residents connect with Algerian national team players and fans

At the start of the World Cup, a video of two Lawrence residents enthusiastically welcoming Algerians to town after the national team set up their training camp there went viral. If you didn’t get the chance to watch it, one resident explains to a reporter that he attended what appears to be a fan event because he was “so happy” that “they chose our town for their base camp.” While both he and another resident said in the interview that they didn’t know much about Algeria, they were already adopting their fan chants: “1, 2, 3, vive l’Algerie,” or “1, 2, 3, long live Algeria”—a phrase with ties to Algeria’s fight for independence from French occupation. 

Local outlets have done some great reporting on the new Kansas-Algeria bond, which I highly recommend you give a read.

The friendship has led to some of my favorite videos to come from the tournament:  

Bless this man, his excitement about Team Algeria and their base camp in Lawrence, Kansas, is just 🤌

— Anne Thériault (@annetheriault.bsky.social) 2026-06-13T03:35:16.643Z

Algerian fans chanting THANK YOU LAWRENCE

— Rodger Sherman (@rodger.bsky.social) 2026-06-28T19:20:03.383Z

Ivory Coast’s star winger Yan Diomande plays a great tournament for his first fan

I sometimes find myself searching for the personal stories of the soccer players I enjoy watching. Diomande plays for the major German club RB Leipzig; his story in the Players’ Tribune, a platform that publishes first-person stories from athletes, really moved me.

You should take a look at it yourself—his words are so powerful that any description I come up with wouldn’t do it justice—but Diomande talks about his sister Roxanne, who believed that he would become a great soccer player, taking him to tryouts for professional teams, and about his shock and grief when Roxanne died at the age of 15 after someone spiked her drink at a party. Yan Diomande has achieved so much at just 19 and is attracting the attention of the best teams in the world.

His dribbling is mesmerizing, and his decision-making after the dribble—whether that be a pass or shot—is impressive for how early he is in his career. His Ivory Coast teammates are so cleverly organized and look to get him the ball often to cause chaos in the opposing team’s defense. 

Given that, I still think about one quote from Diomande’s story, entitled “Dear Roxanne”: “Everything I do on a football pitch, it’s for you.”

Although the Ivory Coast lost 1-2 against Norway on Tuesday, he and his teammates have achieved so much, reaching the knockout stage for the first time in their World Cup history.

It’s been a very long week for Beatriz Armada, the Venezuela operations manager for the humanitarian nonprofit Humanity and Inclusion. Hers is just one of many non-governmental organizations that have been responding to the devastation of two massive earthquakes that struck Venezuela last week, which have left, by a conservative estimate, some 1,700 people dead and thousands injured, with more than 15,000 displaced from their homes.

Many survivors who were pulled from the rubble needed amputations, Armada told me, a further challenge for Venezuela’s health care system—and health care workers in Caracas were affected as well, making it “very complicated to be able to give medical attention,” she said.

Armada told me that around 38 structures related to health care infrastructure had been decimated by the earthquakes, including one that specifically provided help for disabled people, who are disproportionately impacted by earthquakes.

“There was nothing left of the entire building, and so many people with disabilities who lost their lives in this, in this particular space,” Armada said.

One disabled man and his family that Armada spoke to lost everything in their home, including hard-to-replace equipment “that he would normally need to be able to have dignity.”

“We’re mobilizing resources to be able to more directly support people with disabilities,” Armada said, including with mobility devices and rehabilitation, “which is also quite a main need at the moment.”

Armada says she’s heartened by the responses of people across other parts of Venezuela, where people are also being transferred for medical care, and by international support. She hopes it doesn’t end prematurely.

“We need this [support] to continue in the upcoming months, because I think it’s going to take months, or even years, to be able to fully recuperate from,” Armada told me.

On Tuesday, US Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) returned to Congress after a four-month previously unexplained absence, during which he received his full salary despite missing over 100 votes.  He revealed on the House floor that he sought treatment for depression.

“I am grateful that I accepted help because today I stand before you healthier, stronger, and excited to return to the work that I love,” Kean said. 

But during his two decades in the New Jersey Senate, Kean consistently opposed paid sick leave for his constituents.

He voted against New Jersey’s historic Earned Sick Leave Act, which mandates 5 paid sick leave days per year for New Jersey workers. He also voted against New Jersey’s No Surprise Medical Bills act and two of its paid family leave laws, in 2008 and 2018.

For Yarrow Willman-Cole of the nonprofit New Jersey Citizen Action, who organized for the Earned Sick Leave Act in 2018, Kean’s four-month absence is bitterly ironic. “He’s been able to rely on things he directly voted against,” Willman-Cole said. 

On the House floor on Tuesday, Kean said he has been a longtime “supporter of mental health care.” But, he hasn’t made it easier for others to take the leave they need. 

“You want your lawmakers to really be connected to their constituents and understand what their constituents need,”  Willman-Cole said, “and this disconnect with a lawmaker clearly not representing the needs of the average worker, the average family, is a problem. That’s not what government should be like.”

Matthew Camarda, the advocacy and public policy director of the nonpartisan NAMI New Jersey, said that all politicians should recognize the importance of the need for mental health care. 

“All individuals with mental health conditions deserve that opportunity to get care and to recover on their own terms,” Camarda said. 

Kean also notably voted for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which establishes work requirements for people on Medicaid. For low-income people on Medicaid, the need to fulfill work requirements to keep their health care could be a barrier to treatment as they go into effect.

“All of it makes it very challenging for millions of Americans in this country who do have mental health conditions like depression to get the care that they need without risking their employment and the rest of the stability of their lives,” Camarda said. 

Whether or not Kean’s voting record and absence are dealbreakers will be up to constituents in his district come November, when he is facing Democratic challenger Rebecca Bennett to keep his seat. 

“Many of our lawmakers are out of touch with the reality of most working people,” Willman-Cole said, “but the good news is there [are] always elections.”

The Texas Senate race between Attorney General Ken Paxton and James Talarico looks to be in a tie, according to several voter polls published in the past month.

A Tuesday survey by the New York Times and Siena University has the two candidates both locked at 47 percent of likely voters. A win for Talarico, a Democratic state legislator, would represent the first statewide election win for the party in Texas since 1994. 

The New York Times/Siena poll was conducted among 656 likely voters from June 19 to June 27, with a sampling error of 4.5 percentage points.

Polling suggests that Talarico’s numbers are largely down to a majority of likely voters seeing the Democrat as having good character—he is a former public school teacher and is currently training to become a minister—as opposed to Paxton, who was indicted for securities fraud and impeached as state attorney general by the Republican-dominated Texas state House (although the Republican-majority state Senate acquitted all 16 articles of impeachment against him). Paxton is also a Trump loyalist, and may be associated with President Trump’s mishandling of the economy amid a widespread struggle with affordability.

My colleague Tim Murphy, who has covered the Senate race extensively, noted that many Senate Republicans favored incumbent John Cornyn but Trump endorsed Paxton late in the primary race. And on Talarico, Tim wrote in March that Talarico is “unsullied by doings in Washington” and his “faith-based populism impressed Joe Rogan and Barack Obama and showed strength in the places the [Democratic] party has been hemorrhaging support.” 

Given that Democrats need to flip four Republican seats while defending all of their seats to win a Senate majority this November, Paxton vs. Talarico is definitely a race to watch.

On Monday, officials in 25 states and Washington, DC, sued Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz over the interim final rule for Medicaid work requirements established by President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The new rule, their lawsuit contends, “will create unnecessary bureaucracy and lead people who are either already working or eligible for an exclusion to lose or be denied coverage.”

As I previously reported, the rule released near the beginning of June was even more onerous than many state officials feared. It was a surprise to states that individuals already on Medicaid with serious health conditions would have to jump through further hoops to prove that they were unable to work:

State officials were blindsided by this medical frailty definition outlined in the new federal rule, which was never brought up in discussions between states and the federal government, Jennifer Wagner, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ director of Medicaid eligibility and enrollment, told me. “We have heard that this was driven more by the White House,” Wagner said. “I don’t think it was CMS intentionally misleading states.”

The lawsuit specifically raises the point that CMS “provided no indication
that it intended to place specific limits on States’ ability to rely on self-attestation” rather than requiring health care workers’ certification in all circumstances.

In a press release, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, who helped lead the suit, said that the “abrupt changes in [federal] implementation of the statute leave states insufficient time to adjust…or effectively communicate to members what is required.”

“This eleventh-hour attempt to further narrow protections for medically frail Medicaid recipients seeks to punish those who cannot fend for themselves,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, who is also joining the suit, in a press release.

The lawsuit asks that a federal judge stay the interim final rule and vacate parts of it. The rule would otherwise go into effect in states with Medicaid expansion by January 1.

On Saturday, President Trump nominated Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma State Trooper, to serve as the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If confirmed, he would become the agency’s first permanent director since 2017. The pick signals a broader push to integrate local and federal law enforcement.

Schroyer has 29 years of state law enforcement experience, but his federal resume is thin. A former member of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s security detail, Schroyer only joined ICE in March as a senior advisor. But according to Mullin, Schroyer is still qualified for the job because, in his role as a State Trooper, he worked “alongside state and federal partners to remove illegal aliens from Oklahoma under the 287(g) program.” 

The 287(g) task force program, expanded by executive order at the start of Trump’s second term, essentially allows ICE to deputize local police and jails, transforming traffic stops and local arrests into a pipeline for federal deportation. Over 1,200 local partner agencies have reportedly signed up for ICE bounties. Schroyer’s selection is another step towards merging local law enforcement with ICE, integrating the controversial and violent agency further into America’s day-to-day policing apparatus. 

While Schroyer worked on Oklahoma’s 287(g) program, Oklahoma police departments held some of the largest ICE contracts of any state. Second only to Florida, Oklahoma law enforcement agencies held at least $47 million in ICE contracts as of March, according to a payout ledger obtained by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein. At least 30 Oklahoma agencies signed 287(g) agreements under Schroyer’s watch—mostly local police departments, but also further-afield groups like the state narcotics agency. In March, one rural K-12 school district police chief almost entered into a collaboration with ICE by accidentally signing a 287(g) agreement. 

A February ACLU report showed that the Oklahoma State Highway Patrol, as part of its ICE partnership, orchestrated “mass arrest events.”

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol used traffic stops and “Oklahoma’s ports of entry” to conduct two major operations in fall 2025 targeting drivers, interrogating more than 1,000 people and making 193 immigration arrests. “We set up a command post at the port, we provide troopers, our emergency response troopers, that come out to process them,” Oklahoma Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Tipton told a local outlet. “It’s really a mass arrest event once you do that, when you have hundreds of people that you’re detaining.

Immigrants’ rights advocates have stated that the 287(g) program takes resources away from local law enforcement—and that it makes immigrants less likely to report crimes such as domestic violence, out of fear that police will use any interaction as a pretext to hand them over to ICE. 

At the National Sheriff’s Association Conference earlier this month, Mullin encouraged local police departments to work with Schroyer, the Wall Street Journal reported. Mullin said that Schroyer, then a major in the Oklahoma state highway patrol, had joined DHS to advise agencies newly joining the 287(g) partnership program. 

“We have him on staff. You guys want to talk to him? You guys want to utilize him, see how he does it,” Mullin said. “He is fully committed and understands that the 287(g) program can be a tremendous asset to you and to the country.”

Current Acting ICE Director David Venturella, a former private-prison executive who took office earlier this month, will continue in his role until Schroyer is confirmed by the Senate, a DHS official told the Associate Press. 

Caitlin Clark is in danger, but thankfully she has the good citizens of right-wing media to protect her.

On Wednesday night, Clark’s Indiana Fever took on the Phoenix Mercury when, in the second quarter, Clark lost her footing while driving to the basket. During a brief scramble for the ball, Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas lodged a fist into Clark’s throat. Thomas, known widely to people in the know as one of the more physical players in the league, was eventually given a flagrant 2 foul, the league’s most serious penalty, after league review and suspended for one game.

That’s not enough for right-wing media, which has gone overboard in her defense. Noted conservative commentator Benny Johnson, for instance, wanted justice, tweeting the next day to his four million followers, “This is our George Floyd.”

This is our George Floyd pic.twitter.com/TLEy6a7aPR

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 25, 2026

As of this writing, the pile-on continues:

This is absolutely vile.

I’m no WNBA fan but Caitlin Clark is CLEARLY being assaulted constantly just because she’s White.

I’m sick of pretending otherwise.

They are beating her because they are anti-White and they hate she’s better than them. pic.twitter.com/YNktm2bxGB

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) June 25, 2026

Boomer Esiason, a former pro football player turned radio personality, even floated the idea of Clark taking her talents over to Europe. “If I were Caitlin Clark, I would seriously consider going to play overseas somewhere and get the royal treatment,” Esiason said. “She’s a straight, white basketball player. And she is not being treated with any sort of respect.”

"If I were Caitlin Clark, I would seriously consider going to play overseas somewhere and get the royal treatment…she's a straight white basketball player. And she is not being treated with any sort of respect" – Boomer Esiason pic.twitter.com/zeFRdOMLVn

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 25, 2026

And look, maybe Boomer has a point. Maybe players are being unnecessarily mean to Caitlin Clark. After all, young, popular athletes in other leagues are never targeted like this by their peers, and it’s only been Black women who have publicly challenged Clark’s dominance. Maybe she should go to some peaceful majority-white oasis where she can be free of dumb squabbles about race and gender. She could probably become the multi-million dollar face of a league, even get her own signature shoe. Caitlin Clark could become an icon.

Oh, wait.

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton pleaded guilty on Friday to keeping security information from his work in his personal records—an act less egregious than what Donald Trump and Joe Biden previously got away with unscathed.

A Florida judge dismissed Trump’s case in 2024 for allegedly retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, saying that special counsel Jack Smith, who filed the charges against Trump, was illegally appointed by the Justice Department—rather than the President and confirmed by the Senate. 

And Biden was not charged for purportedly keeping documents in a former D.C. office and his personal residence in Delaware. One reason given was that Biden would likely present himself before a jury “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” which would make it difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him for “a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

But, as of Friday, Bolton has pled guilty to one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information out of a total of 18 official charges. Prosecutors said that Bolton faces a prison sentence of up to five years and agreed to pay $2.25 million in fines. His sentencing date is set for October 28.

Since leaving his position in the first Trump administration in 2019, Bolton has become a vocal critic of the president. When he was first indicted last October, Bolton said the case was an attempt by Trump to use the Justice Department to punish his political enemies. The president has gone after officials like former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. 

The Justice Department under Joe Biden continued to gather evidence in the case and the 18-count indictment focused on Bolton’s private messages containing national security information—not the contents of the memoir. The indictment alleged that Bolton used his personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1000 pages of notes with two family members. 

The indictment said that Bolton’s emails were later hacked by someone with ties to the government of Iran. “A representative for Bolton notified the U.S. government of the hack in or about July 2021,” the filing reads in part, “but did not tell the U.S. government that the account contained national defense information, including classified information.”

Tom Kean Jr. was once lost, but now he is found. At home in Westfield, New Jersey, waiting for you in a suit and tie, with his wife silently smiling in the background.

Sound strange? Well, that’s how the New Jersey Republican greeted a New York Times reporter on Wednesday night, the first sighting since effectively vanishing in March due to an undisclosed health condition and missing more than 100 votes in the House. Kean’s absence sparked intense speculation, particularly in the lead-up to his primary election earlier this month. (He ran unchallenged, made zero campaign appearances, and won.)

So what was it like to see Kean in the flesh? Honestly, it seemed unsettling!

He could be seen from the street on Wednesday evening, standing in a brightly lit front room of his Westfield home just before 8:45 p.m.

“It’s good to see you,” he said after a reporter for The New York Times rang his doorbell. He was wearing a dark suit and a red tie. “I’ll talk to you next week,” he said. “Thank you.”

Mr. Kean’s wife, Rhonda, stood in the background, smiling pleasantly. He declined additional comment and closed the door.

Last week, Kean’s office announced that the congressman would return to Congress on June 30 and finally explain the mystery surrounding his monthslong absence. But will Kean explain walking around one’s house in formalwear? At bedtime? What about the ghost stock trades? That’s what I want to know.

On Thursday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) will introduce a resolution that calls for the Department of Justice to rescind a memo issued last week that contests the longstanding interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead v. L.C. decision, a landmark case that limits states’ power to compel people to live in psychiatric and other institutions, such as nursing homes.

“I am not going to let this administration move us back to a time when people were ripped out of their communities, ripped out of their homes against their wills, and forced into institutions,” Duckworth told me in an interview.

The DOJ memo itself does not change the law, but it may influence how the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services approach agreements and programs that help disabled people live in their communities, outside institutions. Following the release of the memo, HHS took down its webpage on Olmstead and community living.

The slip opinion, which Bloomberg Law reported was allegedly driven by the demands of ultra-right Trump advisor Stephen Miller, was met with immediate backlash from disability advocates and legal experts. As George Washington University law professor Alison Barkoff told me when I covered the opinion last week, the Trump administration’s “interpretation is completely inconsistent with virtually all courts” with respect not only to the interpretation of Olmstead but also that of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which the Olmstead decision builds on. That also greatly concerns Duckworth.

“This is taking us back to a time when there were forced lobotomies in this country,” Duckworth said. “We just cannot let that happen.”

The resolution is also co-sponsored by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), among others. The DOJ opinion, the resolution says, “rejects the integration mandate and threatens the hard-won progress towards full integration of individuals with disabilities into society in the United States,” compounded by GOP cuts to Medicaid-funded home and community-based services, which will also force more disabled people into institutions. The resolution also calls for the US government to recognize the importance of fulfilling Olmstead and a reversal of Medicaid cuts.

“This is clearly the ableism that exists in this administration that starts with Donald Trump, the president,” Duckworth told me. “He’s the guy who looked at wounded veterans, amputees, and said those guys are suckers and losers.”

Olmstead‘s integration mandate, Duckworth emphasized to me, is “critically important to our society.”

“We cannot be a leader of the free world if we continue to segregate groups of people in our own country, whether it is through racism or through ableism,” Duckworth said. “They underestimate the willpower of the disability community.”

New York City’s right-wingers, who evidently cannot handle losing elections, are dealing with their anger by once again attempting to fearmonger Jewish Americans into leaving New York, the most Jewish city in the country.

Last night, allies of Mayor Zohran Mamdani swept the New York City Democratic primaries. Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier—all of whom have condemned Israel’s genocide in Gaza—each won a congressional seat, consolidating socialist power in New York. The socialist New York Jews of generations past might perhaps have jumped for joy. But the Republican Party figureheads of today would like Jews, specifically, to panic instead of celebrating.

“To my beautiful Jewish friends in America. We love you. You are not alone. We are just as freaked out as you are and see with clear eyes exactly what is happening,” Meghan McCain wrote on X. As a beautiful Jew in America, I was not initially sure what she was talking about.

Far-right activist Laura Loomer joined McCain in telling the 1 million Jews who call the five boroughs their home to go on ahead and pack their bags. Loomer, helpfully, made it clear that unconditional support for Israel is not and has never been about American Jewish safety: for her, it is about fighting the supposed “Islamic takeover of America.”

If you’re a Jew in NYC, now is your time to move. After tonight’s election in New York, nobody who is Jewish is safe.

I’d love to see the Trump administration address this Islamic takeover of America and the exploding Jew hatred.

We need leadership on this issue. It’s…

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) June 24, 2026

Loomer is, of course, a crank. But more serious people, like Dan Goldman—the Congressman ousted by Brad Lander last night—have also invoked the specter of antisemitism in this week’s elections.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), in concession speech: “Jews have given back so much to this country. As history has taught us, antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, some of which I heard personally on this campaign, will ultimately be the undoing of our democracy if we all don’t lean in…

— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) June 24, 2026

Goldman, who is Jewish, lost by an absolute landslide to the also-very-Jewish Brad Lander, a man who named his children after a Jewish leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and a Jewish labor organizer. Nonetheless, Goldman reportedly accused Lander of using “dangerous antisemitic tropes” to win. It is not clear whether the trope in question was Lander’s attack of Goldman for taking AIPAC money, something Goldman did do while publicly disavowing AIPAC donations.

Serious conversations beginning over whether there is a future for Jews in the United States. Israel is in a dangerous neighborhood but it controls its own borders. Nobody voted for the kind of migration that allowed New York to go from Jewish capital to capital of antisemitism.

— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) June 24, 2026

Some serious thinkers have once again begun to wonder whether New York Jews might be better off living in Israel than in the United States. Joel Pollak of the California Post wasted no time casting the blame for antisemitism vaguely on “migration,” by which he presumably means “very scary Muslim mayor” and/or “very scary immigration.” Stephen Miller and Katie Miller joined in: “New York will now be run by foreign communists.”

Jews, who not so long ago were being blamed for encouraging hatred of white people by supporting immigration, are now being told that in a city of immigrants they should be afraid of immigrants, because some of those immigrants might not like Israel.

When Zohran Mamdani was elected earlier this year, the very same commentariat crowed for a Jewish exodus from Gotham. Such an exodus, by all accounts, did not happen then, and won’t happen now.

Why would it? Antisemitism is real, but it isn’t caused by critics of Israel winning elections. And it isn’t solved by Jews fleeing New York.