While the World Cup provides a rare moment of shared spectacle, the political climate in the United States continues to darken. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened states that refuse to comply with President Trump’s election demands, following the president’s nationally televised address in which he repeated baseless claims about electoral fraud in 2020.
Trump also claimed, with scant evidence, that China had interfered in the election he lost to Joe Biden — despite assessments from intelligence officials finding no foreign actor altered any technical aspect of the vote. Democrats accused Trump of “working to rig the midterms” in advance. On Truth Social, the president insisted his speech had received “great reviews.”
