Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump got booed at the World Cup Final and then refused to leave the podium during Spain’s trophy lift. A Republican congressman campaigning for a third term is facing serious accusations of assault and child abuse. The FBI has reportedly told ICE it will no longer investigate assault claims against ICE agents who shoot people. And Trump is threatening news tariffs against Canada over wildfire smoke.
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Now, let’s go.
Trump Ruined Spain’s World Cup Trophy Lift
Spain lifted the trophy. Trump lifted himself onto a stage nobody invited him to and simply refused to leave.
Spain beat Argentina at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, winning the nation’s second World Cup title. Trump attended, and the crowd let him know how they felt. He was booed during the national anthems. He was booed again when he walked onto the pitch alongside FIFA President Gianni Infantino. He was booed while handing out medals.
He handed Spain’s captain Rodri the trophy. Rather than let the team have its moment, Trump lingered at the end of the stage. Infantino had to jog over to him. Trump refused to move until he was eventually led away.
Players hoisted the trophy anyway and celebrated around the uninvited guest. The final score was 1-0, meaning Trump got booed more times than both teams scored.
If this sounds familiar, it is. He did the exact same thing a year ago at the Club World Cup Final, when Infantino tried to guide him offstage and he lingered instead.
FIFA’s next hire shouldn’t be a referee — it should be a bouncer.
The FBI Will No Longer Investigate ICE
The fox is now the henhouse’s independent oversight body.
According to a New York Times report, ICE agents have been told the FBI will no longer investigate claims of assault against federal officers. On Thursday, FBI managers reportedly received written notice of the change, and some ICE agents around the country were informed by their FBI counterparts.
When ICE agents are involved in fatal shootings, the FBI has been tasked with determining whether the agent was assaulted before firing. Evidence from those probes could later be used in civil rights investigations or prosecutions.
Under the new guidance, Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, would investigate assault claims made by ICE’s own agents. DHS does not have jurisdiction to investigate civil rights violations. So an ICE agent who shoots an unarmed person becomes markedly less likely to be investigated for breaking federal law.
The change was reported just days after an ICE agent shot and killed a Colombian man, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, in Biddeford, Maine. He was at least the seventh person shot by ICE agents since January 2025. He was the second this month.
When oversight disappears, the only thing left is reporting. No one is going to investigate these shootings, which means the only people tracking what ICE does with its new freedom are journalists. That work doesn’t fund itself. Become a paid subscriber today.
GOP Rep. Faces Child Abuse Allegations
In mid-March, two detectives, an Ohio child welfare caseworker, and a Cleveland Clinic physician met on Zoom to figure out how the two-year-old daughter of a congressman wound up with a fractured clavicle.
One detective wrote that the bruising surrounding the fracture made the injury suspicious, and that the injury would have required a high degree of impact.
Neither the child’s father, Republican Rep. Max Miller, nor mother, conservative policy adviser Emily Moreno, admitted to knowing what caused their daughter’s injury or that it occurred while their daughter was under their care. A child protection specialist said the bruising near the fracture resembled a “handprint.”
Moreno told detectives that Miller had previously thrown hot water at her, shoved her, and held a gun to her head. She recounted her daughter saying, “Daddy’s house is scary.”
The DCFS investigation was ultimately ruled “unsubstantiated” — meaning there wasn’t enough evidence, not that nothing happened.
The records are part of more than 2,000 pages Mother Jones obtained about Miller, containing allegations of drug use, misogyny, verbal abuse, and violence against multiple women dating back over a decade. This includes reports that he threw a girl down the stairs in high school and faced college expulsion over a violent incident with a female student, which he neither confirmed nor denied.
Trump Threatens to Tariff Canada Over Wildfires
We have moved on from taxing goods to taxing wind patterns.
Trump threatened to slap new tariffs on Canada over wildfire smoke drifting into the U.S., accusing the country of “willful negligence” in forest management. On Truth Social, he called the air “filthy, polluted, and unhealthy” and said the costs “must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.”
What he didn’t mention: his own administration has spent the past year dismantling the government agencies that study wildfire smoke. The EPA’s Office of Research and Development, which operated the world’s only lab for controlled human-exposure studies on wildfire smoke, has been effectively shuttered.
A lung health scientist was reassigned to a finance office. An epidemiologist was told her new job is issuing hazardous waste permits. The Forest Service’s Seattle smoke lab, which developed tools to predict where smoke travels, is on a closure list. And a drone-mounted EPA sensor called Kolibri, designed to fly into smoke plumes and measure airborne pollution, has been grounded.
But the real question is what Canada plans to do about all this.
Stand Up and Fight Back Against Billionaires
These four stories all underscore one major point: American democracy can only survive if powerful people are held accountable. ICE just got the power to investigate its own shootings. A congressman’s toddler turned up with a fractured clavicle and a bruise shaped like a handprint, and the case was ruled ‘unsubstantiated.’ In both cases, the systems that were supposed to protect people failed. The only reason you know about any of it is because journalists did the work those systems wouldn’t.
AlterNet America can cover stories like these because we don’t have a billionaire owner or a corporate parent. But that also means readers like you are the only thing keeping us operational. If you found this newsletter valuable and are still reading this on the free list, we need you — yes, you — to become a paying subscriber right now. Don’t wait.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Troy Jackson Dominates Maine Democratic Delegate Elections for U.S. Senate Nominee. Maine Democrats needed a new Senate nominee after Graham Platner dropped out over a sexual assault allegation, so they spun up county caucuses across all 16 counties in a single weekend. A progressive logger from a town of 200 people near the Canadian border absolutely ran the table. Troy Jackson won over 460 of 500 delegate slots, caused three rivals to drop out before the convention has even happened, and is now set to take on Susan Collins in November. He’s backed by Bernie Sanders’ organizing network, supports Medicare-for-all and taxing billionaires, and went from finishing third in the governor’s race to locking down a Senate nomination in under two weeks. Collins should be paying attention.
Andrew and Tristan Tate Arrested in Miami as Britain Seeks Extradition. The influencer brothers who built an online empire on wealth, male dominance, and misogyny were taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service in Miami on Saturday, on a sealed warrant. British prosecutors announced they were seeking extradition on charges alleging the brothers raped and trafficked women between 2010 and 2017. The U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service brought a total of 38 new charges related to four further victims, with Andrew Tate — a vocal Trump supporter banned from YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for hate speech — facing an additional 19 charges relating to indecent images of a child and extreme pornography. The brothers had flown to Florida on a private jet last year after their Romanian case stalled.
Federal Judge Bars Trump From Using Obscure Clause for Huge Funding Cuts. A federal judge in Boston ruled Friday that the Trump administration cannot use an obscure “agency priorities” clause to make billions of dollars in funding cuts. Twenty-three states had sued over the administration using the clause to slash everything from crime prevention to food security to scientific research. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found that the administration’s interpretation “runs counter to the regulatory scheme” and would violate the Spending Clause. The clause, introduced in 2020 and revised in 2024, allows termination of a grant that “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities” — language the states said was being weaponized for a “nationwide slash-and-burn campaign.”
Flock Cancels Its Creepy Audio Surveillance Feature After Backlash. The surveillance company Flock has ended its “human distress detection” pilot, an always-on audio tool that monitored public places for the sound of “screaming.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced the cancellation Friday, crediting a scattered but ferocious public pressure campaign that has included countless people hacking down, blinding, or sabotaging Flock cameras. Flock said the feature was only available to a small number of customers in a limited trial and was removed after “community consultation.” The company still has thousands of audio devices installed in communities across the U.S., so the fight is far from over. But it turns out a company will abandon a microphone that listens for screams if enough people scream about it.
