On July 13, Trump went to New Jersey for the FIFA (soccer) world cup championship.  A team from Great Britain — Chelsea – won.  Then the shitstorm started.

You know what else is confusing? That the trophy Chelsea was hoisting may be a replica, because according to Trump, Infantino gave him the real trophy during a March White House visit and told him he could keep it. Sure, seems fine.

Trump was booed when he walked onto the pitch. He was booed when he was shown on the Jumbotron. He was booed during the national anthem. Despite this, wannabe state media outlet the New York Post ran with a piece saying Trump was greeted by huge applause.

This isn’t the first time Trump’s insertion of himself into the world of sports was equal parts comical and gross. Who can forget his trip to the 2025 Super Bowl, where he apparently left, pouting, at halftime?

And last month, at the start of the FIFA Club World Cup, Italian soccer powerhouse team Juventus visited the White House, where Trump buttonholed them about trans athletes, asking whether a woman could make their team. When the team’s general manager explained that Juventus also had a very good women’s team, Trump responded: “But they should be playing with women, right? You know, one of those things.”

Trump showing up at the FIFA Club World Cup was pretty rich after his administration declared that Customs and Border Patrol agents would act as security for the first Cup game in Miami; An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told the media that non-Americans should bring papers documenting their immigration status. Or that federal agents tried to bully their way into Dodger Stadium before a scheduled game while in the midst of terrorizing Los Angeles. Or that the administration insists that soccer-related tattoos are proof of membership in the notorious MS-13 gang and justifies deporting people.

Trump’s immigration crackdown means that even American sports teams now have to warn their non-American players to carry papers documenting their status. Who doesn’t love their sports events with a side of “papers, please?” and the continual looming threat of deportation?

When your entire administration is focused on eradicating dark-skinned people and making white supremacy the law of the land, showing up at sporting events that celebrate that very thing is ridiculous. Stay the hell home, man.

So — what did Chelsea do?  As soon as the hoopla was over, they photoshopped Trump out of their official team photos.

Here’s the first photo.

Here’s the photo from Chelsea’s website.

The United States is set to play host to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, so we should be seeing more of Trump acting his usual asshole self at big-time games moving forward.

UPDATE

Trump is thrown off the stage.

We Warned About the First China Shock. The Next One Will Be Worse.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/opinion/china-shock-economy-manufacturing.html

https://archive.ph/NIBMJ

We Warned About the First China Shock. The Next One Will Be Worse.
July 14, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
By David Autor and Gordon Hanson

David Autor is an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gordon Hanson is an economics professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. They are both known for their research into how globalization, and especially the rise of China, reshaped the American labor market.

The first time China upended the U.S. economy, between 1999 and 2007, it helped erase nearly a quarter of all U.S. manufacturing jobs. Known as the China Shock, it was driven by a singular process — China’s late-1970s transition from Maoist central planning to a market economy, which rapidly moved the country’s labor and capital from collective rural farms to capitalist urban factories. Waves of inexpensive goods from China imploded the economic foundations of places where manufacturing was the main game in town, such as Martinsville, Va., and High Point, N.C., formerly the self-titled sweatshirt and furniture capitals of the world. Twenty years later, those workers haven’t recovered from those job losses. Although places like these are growing again, most job gains are in low-wage industries. A similar story played out in dozens of labor-intensive industries simultaneously: textiles, toys, sporting goods, electronics, plastics and auto parts.

Yet once China’s Mao-to-manufacturing transition was complete, sometime around 2015, the shock stopped building. Since then, U.S. manufacturing employment has rebounded, growing under President Barack Obama, the first Trump term and President Biden.

So why, you might ask, are we still talking about the China Shock? We wish we weren’t. We published the research in 2013, 2014 and 2016, along with our collaborator David Dorn of the University of Zurich, which detailed for the first time how Chinese import competition was devastating parts of America, through permanent declines in employment and earnings. We are here to argue now that policymakers are spending far too much time looking backward, fighting the last war. They should be spending much more time examining what’s emerging as a new China Shock.

China Shock 1.0 was a one-time event. In essence, China figured out how to do what it should have been doing decades earlier. In the United States, that led to unnecessarily painfully job losses. But America was never going to be selling tennis sneakers on Temu or assembling AirPods. China’s manufacturing work force is thought to be well in excess of 100 million, compared with America’s 13 million. It’s bordering on delusional to think the United States can — or should even want to — simultaneously compete with China in semiconductors and tennis sneakers alike.

China Shock 2.0, the one that’s fast approaching, is where China goes from underdog to favorite. Today, it is aggressively contesting the innovative sectors where the United States has long been the unquestioned leader: aviation, A.I., telecommunications, microprocessors, robotics, nuclear and fusion power, quantum computing, biotech and pharma, solar, batteries. Owning these sectors yields dividends: economic spoils from high profits and high-wage jobs; geopolitical heft from shaping the technological frontier; and military prowess from controlling the battlefield. General Motors, Boeing and Intel are American national champions, but they’ve all seen better days and we’re going to miss them if they’re gone. China’s technological vision is already reordering governments and markets in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and increasingly Eastern Europe. Expect this influence to grow as the United States retreats into an isolationist MAGAsphere.

More evidence of Trump’s dementia.

I saw this shocking exchange on a news show the other night.

Reporter: Who ordered the pause in weapons shipments to Ukraine?

Trump: “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

COMMENT: Someone made a significant foreign policy change and the President of the United States wasn’t in on it? Who’s running the country?

REPORTER: “Yesterday you said you were not sure who ordered the munitions ordered to Ukraine. Have you figured it out?”

TRUMP: “I haven’t thought about it.”

COMMENT: WTF! Foreign policy changes are being made without his knowledge, and he doesn’t seem to care?

REPORTER: “What does it say that such a decision could be made without you knowing?”

TRUMP: “I would know. If a decision was made I will know.”

COMMENT: But the day before, he said he didn’t know?! He’s obviously demented.

Let me guess:  Because they made C’s and D’s in high school, were fired from a job stocking shelves at Kroger, and need a job?

Kash Patel, Dec 2023:

“What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority. You can’t get the list?…Put on your big boy pants, and let us know who the pedophiles are.” The “black book” is “under direct control of the director of the FBI…Release it all.”

Kash Patel today:

MAKE UP YOUR FEEBLE, DEMENTED MIND, YOU RAVING BULLSHIT ARTIST!!

This is the best way to get people to stop talking about Epstein?!?!?!

Meanwhile, enjoy this photo of a younger Trump with his daughter Ivanka and a pair of parrots copulating.  And, NO, THIS IS NOT PHOTOSHOPPED.

Or how about this one — no, not Photoshopped.

Then, there’s always this one from a Trump publicity shoot in the early 1990’s.

The Pentagon has pulled the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly to lead the 7th Fleet following questions from a conservative news outlet about drag shows aboard an aircraft carrier nearly 10 years ago. Donnelly was nominated June 18 by President Donald Trump for promotion to vice admiral and command of 7th Fleet, based at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, and the Navy’s largest overseas force. However, Defense Secretary

Pete Hegseth has rescinded Donnelly’s nomination, an unidentified Pentagon spokesperson said Friday by email to Stars and Stripes. The spokesperson, who declined to identify themselves, would not comment on whether the decision to withdraw Donnelly’s nomination was related to drag shows.

Donnelly, currently the head of the Chief of Naval Operations’ air warfare division, was commander of the Ronald Reagan from 2016 to 2017. He also led Carrier Strike Group 5 and Task Force 70 at Yokosuka Naval Base from 2021 to 2023. While Donnelly was skipper of the Reagan, then-Petty Officer 3rd Class Joshua Kelley occasionally performed drag shows aboard the carrier under the stage name “Harpy Daniels.” Kelley also managed to win second place and a $1,000 Navy Exchange gift card in a lip-sync competition aboard the carrier, the Military Times reported in August 2018.

Let’s see if I understand this:  SECDEF Hogsbreath can have a makeup room that he uses before appearing in public but drag shows on aircraft carriers are verboten?  SECDEF Hogsbreath can get shit-faced, knee-walking, commode-hugging drunk and climb on stage and try to fuck a stripper, but . . . .

ICE Said They Were Being Flown to Louisiana. Their Flight Landed in Africa.

When eight men in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement boarded a plane in May, officials told them that they were being sent on a short trip from Texas to another ICE facility in Louisiana.

Many hours later, the plane landed in Djibouti. The men were held in shipping containers for weeks, shackles on their legs. This past weekend, they were expelled to the violence-plagued nation of South Sudan.

This deception, revealed by an Intercept investigation, highlights the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to further its anti-immigrant agenda and deport people to so-called third countries to which they have no connections.

Lawyers for three of the men said that their clients were told, after resisting deportation to Africa, that they were instead being transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana. ICE then hustled them onto a plane, in the wee hours of the morning, and flew them out of the country without their knowledge or consent. This account was further corroborated by the wife of one of those same men who was told about ICE’s tactics in real time.

“This underscores just how abysmal and reprehensible the government’s treatment of these men has been from the very beginning, and the fact that the government made no genuine attempt to comply with the district court injunction in place prior to shipping them out of the United States,” said Glenda Aldana Madrid, a staff attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project who is representing one of the men, Tuan Thanh Phan.

South Sudan is subject to a U.N. warning about the potential for full-scale civil war. South Sudan is also under a U.S. State Department “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory and the department advises those who choose to go there to draft a will, establish a proof of life protocol with family members, and leave DNA samples with one’s medical provider.

https://theintercept.com/2025/07/08/ice-deportation-louisiana-south-sudan/

There is no doubt in my mind that trump is trying to kill these people, one way or another.

A community’s rapid response to a heavily militarized raid targeting undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles’ diverse MacArthur Park neighborhood helped stave off authorities.

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Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park was strangely desolate on a summery Monday morning until the ground began to rumble.

Then, the convoy arrived: The eight-wheel diesel-powered U.S. Army tactical trucks, Humvees and armored vehicles — with roof hatches. They accompanied white, unmarked passenger vans and black SUVs, not to mention a large trailer containing numerous horses.

The Humvees blocked traffic on Wilshire Boulevard, which bisects the 35-acre park at the heart of this densely populated and famously Central American neighborhood west of Downtown Los Angeles, leaving diesel exhaust in their wake.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrived, along with its support, including U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback. Those agents wore black padded armor, helmets and, beneath them, masks that made them virtually unidentifiable.

Dozens of other masked agents, dressed in camouflage and tactical vests and heavily armed, emerged from armored cars and unmarked vans. Their faces too were hidden — beneath reflective glasses, military-style helmets and more masks. (Their U.S. Border Patrol patches were visible on their uniforms.) A black Department of Homeland Security helicopter circled overhead.

Meanwhile, the normal daily life of MacArthur Park had come to a halt. There were no children hanging from its jungle gyms, swinging from its bars or just running around on the playground. The parents who typically lounge about on the nearby benches, keeping an eye on their children, were gone, as though by some magic spell. The ambulant vendors who sell candy, fruit, juices, soft drinks and cheap plastic toys were nowhere to be seen. No one kicked a soccer ball.

Other typical sounds of the park, like people speaking Spanish or the ancient Quiché Maya indigenous language from Central America, were gone. There was no music — no cumbias, merengue and reggaeton blasting from visitors’ handheld speakers — and no evangelical preachers quoting Bible verse to warn listeners of the End of Days on mobile speakers.

The previous day, warnings appeared — single sheets of paper taped to light poles, trees and fences around the park — warning locals to stay away. They cited rumors of possible ICE raids at MacArthur Park. Word also spread on Instagram, as well as other social media apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp.

Ad hoc community defense groups that have formed in recent weeks to protect locals and document raids in many parts of Los Angeles played a substantial role in spreading the warnings in online discussion threads. Such efforts succeeded in essentially emptying the vast park of its habitual patrons.

So, when the agents on horseback and others swept through the park, they encountered little more than empty playgrounds, fields and benches. The agents, for the most part, advanced quickly. But the area wasn’t empty. Local Spanish-language television crews were ready to broadcast from their branded vans. Photographers representing the New York Times, the Associated Press, Agencia Press, the Los Angeles Times and other news organizations were present near the park’s amphitheater and beyond.

Dozens of anti-ICE rapid response team organizers, as well as legal observers in bright yellow t-shirts, stayed close, some speaking into megaphones to tell residents to stay away. One man rolled a mobile P.A. system that played a pre-recorded message in English and Spanish laying out people’s rights — to remain silent; to speak to an attorney; to ask for a signed warrant; and to not sign documents.

The cacophony of their announcements drew people out of surrounding businesses, medical offices and apartments, even as more reporters arrived to document the scale of the “raid,” as well as its lack of any apparent success in detaining people without papers.

By the time agents walked from the west end of the park to the eastern edge, the rapid response teams and people in the neighborhood — collectively numbering in the hundreds — began to surround the agents and their cars, in some cases cutting them off from their own route out of the area. Some yelled, “ICE out of L.A!” Many recorded the confrontation on their phones, live streaming it onto Instagram and other social media platforms.

 

On the northeastern corner of the park, beyond the intersection of Sixth and Alvarado, a pair of dark SUVs attempted to drive into a traffic blockage where federal agents had shut down the intersection. The window of one of the vehicles, which had police sirens blaring, rolled down, revealing the head of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who peered out. Recognizing their mayor, people moved toward the vehicle, yelling at her to protect the city — before the vehicles made their way through traffic and onto Wilshire Boulevard. In a subsequent news conference, Mayor Bass described the Customs and Border Protection action at MacArthur Park as “outrageous and un-American.”

Soon after, the mounted officers retreated back to the horse trailers, and the armed agents returned to their vehicles.

A separate group of people followed armed agents back to another collection of parked vehicles. Agents gathered around a black armored car with a decal of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A gold stencil on the vehicle read “Special Response Team Police Rescue.” Atop the vehicle was a tripod-mounted rifle. Below, a rifleman peaked out of the roof hatch, looking east through the gun’s scope while aiming his weapon.

An agent in green camouflage with a police patch on his chest climbed into an SUV while one of his comrades moved a silver canister back and forth in his hands, his fingers playing with the pin as onlookers yelled, “Just go! Just go!” He eventually followed his colleagues into the car.

Slowly, the SUVs and white passenger vans drove onto Wilshire Boulevard as dozens of people walked alongside their vehicles, chanting: “ICE out of L.A.!”

The rifleman in the armored ICE truck — still hanging out of the roof hatch where the tripod was set up — put his fingers in the shape of a V to signal peace to the crowd as they drove away.

Meanwhile, on the northwestern edge of the park, a crowd gathered near a social services building where the police officers, who had been present before ICE arrived, remained.

In front of someone recording a video, a man shouted at the officers: “What about them kidnapping us! You fucking pigs, fucking collaborators, motherfuckers!”

According to the Department of Homeland Security, 1,618 immigrants were detained for deportation in Los Angeles and surrounding regions of Southern California between June 6 and June 22.

Less than an hour after arriving, the Border Patrol and ICE agents were gone from MacArthur Park, along with the rest of their military convoy. It is unclear whether authorities detained anyone there on Monday.

After they departed, local vendors began to slowly return to the park, ringing their bells to attract customers as they did.

A vendor passed a sign taped to a pole nearby:

Military Members   Is this what you signed up for?

Will you feel proud about what you’re being ordered to do when you look back on it?

If you have concerns about mobilizing against civilians, you’re not alone.

You have options. You have rights.