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World Cup Fans Are Cheering for a Free Palestine
The support shown for Palestinians has been especially inspiring at a World Cup that, like others, has been tainted by more signs of corruption.
Jul 14, 2026
The Palestinian national soccer team isn’t playing in this year’s World Cup. But despite a national and global crackdown on pro-Palestinian protest and speech, the games have witnessed an outpouring of support for Palestinians. Fans, players, and coaches from the likes of Egypt, Scotland, Brazil, South Korea, Morocco, Mexico, Turkey, Norway, Senegal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Algeria, Spain, and perhaps all 48 countries playing have publicly shown support for Palestinian lives and their struggle for freedom and a return to lands taken since 1948.
This comes after nearly three years in which the world has watched the Israeli government respond to October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, which killed around 1,200, with a war that has killed more than 73,000, mostly civilians, and is widely considered a genocide by international experts.
Games have featured Palestinian flags held aloft in stadiums and by players and coaches on the fields. Chants of “Free Palestine” have come from the stands and the streets surrounding games. People have attended games wearing the Palestinian national team jersey. Others have flown banners reading, “Kick Israel Out of FIFA” and “Red Card Israel.” (FIFA is the infamously corrupt international organization that runs the tournament; a red card is given to soccer players ejected and banned from games for foul play.)
The support shown for Palestinians has been especially inspiring at a World Cup that, like others, has been tainted by more signs of corruption. Most recently, President Donald Trump called FIFA’s president to overturn a red-card ban for a US player so that he could participate in what turned out to be a lopsided loss for Team America. The FIFA president also awarded Trump a meaningless “peace prize” not long before the United States joined Israel in an illegal and historically unpopular war in Iran.
“Palestinian families don’t get their homes back because people flew a flag in a stadium. But movements build over time and through moments of visibility, through the accumulation of pressure, and through the refusal to let the issue disappear.”
Expressions of solidarity at soccer games don’t change anything on their own. During the days of the tournament alone, the Israeli government, which receives extensive military backing from the US government, has killed dozens of people in Gaza. Before a match between Argentina and Egypt, Israel killed Mohammed al-Wahidi, a representative of an Egyptian humanitarian organization in Gaza, along with two children and another person, on the day al-Wahidi was organizing a Gaza City viewing party to watch the game. (Al-Wahidi is one of more than 1,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, reported killed by the Israeli military in Gaza since the officially declared “ceasefire” last year.)
A soccer tournament, alone, doesn’t solve anything, Palestinian journalist Dina El-Kurd has said: “Palestinian families don’t get their homes back because people flew a flag in a stadium. But movements build over time and through moments of visibility, through the accumulation of pressure, and through the refusal to let the issue disappear.”
Egypt’s coach Hossam Hassan has been one of the most bravely and consistently outspoken. “Before being Arab, Muslim, Christian, or anything else, I am a human being,” he said in a press conference when he might have only spoken about playing against probably history’s greatest-ever player in Lionel Messi and Argentina. “Through football—the world’s soft power—I want to send a message,” he said. “Please let the Palestinian people live. I ask athletes and journalists everywhere to help deliver that message.”
Along with coaches, journalists, and players—including, one hopes, the likes of Messi—isn’t that a message to share at viewing parties, bars, and family gatherings during the World Cup’s final matches—and beyond?
The red, green, and black colors of the Palestinian flag are easy enough to apply as face paint. I’ll be taking some small steps by wearing a Palestine jersey and using the games to raise funds for humanitarian relief in Gaza. Discussing the morality of continuing US military support for the Israeli government is a start.
Journalist El Kurd says she’s felt a kind of hope seeing the flag waived in stadiums: “It’s not the hope that this will be resolved soon or easily, but the hope that says Palestinians are not alone and the cause is not forgotten.”
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'Impeachment Is Next,' Says Senate Dem After Judge Voids Trump Slush Fund Settlement
In a searing rebuke of Trump's self-dealing lawsuit against the IRS, Judge Kathleen Williams wrote that "a court should not be a forum for a party that cynically views a lawsuit as a vehicle to achieve a predetermined outcome."
Jul 13, 2026
A progressive US senator on Monday welcomed a federal judge's ruling that found President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was an illegal act of self-dealing, while calling for the Republican to be impeached for a third time.
Trump and his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, "acted in bad faith and for an improper purpose by 'collusively filing a lawsuit with claims subject to multiple dispositive defenses solely to provide cover for a collusive settlement,'" US District Judge for the Southern District of Florida Kathleen Williams—who was appointed by former President Barack Obama—wrote in her 56-page ruling.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called Williams' order "a scalding, blistering judicial opinion calling out Trump’s sham litigation, striking down his corrupt IRS immunity, and holding his sycophant lawyers to account."
"That’s a good start," the senator said. "Impeachment is next."
Finding that "sanctions are appropriate here," Williams referred Trump's personal attorney Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar for "its consideration, review, and determination as to whether any disciplinary action is appropriate in light of the findings and rulings made in this order."
Williams also banned another one of the president's personal lawyers, Daniel Epstein—who is not related to Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted child sex criminal and former close friend of Trump—from seeking admission to practice law in the Southern District of Florida for one year.
The judge further found that acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche's "apparent capacity to speak for both plaintiffs and defendants, sign a 'settlement' document on behalf of all parties to this action, and then repudiate part of that agreement, demonstrates that there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout this case."
In January, Trump and his sons sued the Internal Revenue Service and US Treasury Department for $10 billion over the leak of the president's tax returns by a former IRS contractor. Trump’s own Department of Justice (DOJ) then settled the case in May by agreeing to exempt the plaintiffs from future IRS audits and create a roughly $1.776 billion settlement slush fund for people claiming they were unfairly targeted by the government.
Beneficiaries of the so-called "Anti-Weaponization Fund" were expected to include January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrectionists, roughly 1,500 of whom were pardoned by Trump and dozens of whom have since been charged or convicted for serious crimes, including child sex crimes, rape, grand larceny, burglary, home invasion, gun violations, death threats against public officials, and fatal DUI incidents.
Blanche has signaled that the DOJ will no longer pursue the creation of the slush fund.
Williams wrote in her ruling that "certainly, a court should not be a forum for a party that cynically views a lawsuit as a vehicle to achieve a predetermined outcome: 'I’m suing myself."
"President Trump did not pursue his claims until he once again occupied the White House and had appointed his former lawyer, and the former lawyer of persons who are putative beneficiaries of the 'Anti-Weaponization Fund,c' to prominent positions in the DOJ," she continued. "These officials then negotiated on behalf of the United States, with his current lawyers, including his former White House counsel, to reach a 'settlement.' It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the parties."
“Even the fund amount—$1.776 billion—speaks of a ‘branding’ effort rather than a deliberate and thoughtful calculation of damages,” the judge added.
A spokesperson for Trump's legal team responded to Monday's order in a statement asserting that “the IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to The New York Times, ProPublica, and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people."
"President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable," the statement added.
Defenders of the rule of law welcomed Monday's ruling, with Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, co-presidents of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, taking a swipe at Trump's "brilliant idea of suing the government he runs and resolving the lawsuit with the creation of an illegal and unconstitutional nearly $1.8 billion slush fund, paid for at taxpayer expense and likely to be distributed to January 6 insurrectionists, among others, as well with as an immunity deal protecting Trump and his family from IRS investigation."
"Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was a willing participant in this fraud on the court and the American people," the pair added. “If the Senate needed an additional reason not to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general, it just got it.”
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Watchdog Says Rule Change for Federal Grants a ‘Recipe for Corruption’ on a Never-Before-Seen Scale
“This is not a grant reform—it is a blueprint for a spoils system applied to federal science funding."
Jul 13, 2026
An environmental watchdog group is calling on the White House Office of Management and Budget to withdraw a proposal that it said will give President Donald Trump and his allies unchecked power to control over a trillion dollars worth of federal grants.
Monday marked the end of the public comment period for a proposal from the OMB, spearheaded by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought and issued in late May, that would require all discretionary federal grants to “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities.”
As Elizabeth Kolbert explained in The New Yorker:
It would replace the current guidance for signing off on government grants, which generally leaves the task to civil servants and peer-review panels.
Instead, the final say would go to political appointees. All discretionary awards from the federal government would have to be assessed by senior administration officials, who could deny them on the [grounds] that they didn’t fit the President’s agenda. Grants could also be terminated at any time for the same reason.
The rules would affect hundreds of billions of dollars in funding disbursed by agencies ranging from the National Endowment for the Arts to the Transportation Department, to pay for everything from local dance performances to massive infrastructure projects.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a formal comment on Monday urging the OMB to withdraw the proposal.
"The scale of what is proposed is staggering," the group said. "This rule would institutionalize corruption and cronyism in the distribution of over a trillion dollars in annual federal funds."
The comment noted the proposal's language forbidding political appointees from deferring to peer review, which the group said will lead grants to be awarded based on ideological conformity rather than scientific merit.
"This language makes clear that the rule's purpose is not to add accountability over expert review but to replace expert judgment with political judgment entirely," the comment says. "Researchers would learn quickly to propose only work likely to survive ideological screening, while federal program officers, many of whom are being stripped of civil service protections, would face pressure to recommend or approve grants to preserve their jobs. "
“This would corrupt scientific judgment at every level of the process,” it adds, noting the Trump administration’s concerted effort to strip away funding for research on health and environmental issues that conflict with his political agenda, including climate science, vaccine safety, chemical safety, and emerging infectious diseases.
Since last year, the administration has terminated or frozen nearly 8,000 research grants and has effectively slashed the budget of the National Science Foundation by refusing to disburse funds appropriated by Congress. The agency is on track to issue the fewest grants in more than half a century, according to a report last month from Grant Witness.
The proposal would also allow agency heads to keep grants from being posted publicly whenever they determine that doing so would be contrary to the "national interest," which the rule does not define.
PEER said this change "permits agencies to offer grants by invitation only among preferred recipients with no requirement to explain or justify the determination."
The group pointed to the Trump administration’s pattern of directing no-bid contracts to the president’s family, friends, and supporters.
Trump megadonor and former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk, the comment notes, was allowed to oversee the cancellation of the contracts for numerous vendors while never touching any of the more than $19 billion his businesses held in federal contracts.
“This is not a grant reform—it is a blueprint for a spoils system applied to federal science funding,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of PEER.
PEER's comment is one of nearly 342,000 OMB has received about the proposal in just over a month, of which 52,000 are publicly posted. The office is hoping to finalize the proposal by October 1 and has denied requests from watchdog organizations to extend the public comment period.
If that happens, Whitehouse has said it would upend the systems of accountability and transparency for scientific funding that have been in place for decades.
“Grant money has historically been distributed through programs authorized by Congress using statutory, regulatory, formula-based, or competitive criteria rather than direct tests of political loyalty,” added Whitehouse. “Placing all scientific research funding under the unreviewable discretion of political appointees is not an administrative reform; it is a recipe for corruption on a scale not seen even in this administration.”
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