Werder Bremen, a top German soccer team, is canceling its planned trip to Minnesota this summer, after violence and political chaos engulfed Minneapolis amid the Trump administration’s major immigration enforcement push in January.

“Playing in a city where there’s unrest and people have been shot, that does not fit with our values here at Werder Bremen,” Christoph Pieper, the club’s head of communications, said in a statement. “Furthermore, it was unclear for us which players could be able to enter the United States due to the stricter entry requirements.”

The administration sent roughly 3,000 federal immigration agents to Minneapolis beginning in December, in a deportation effort dubbed Operation Metro Surge. Agents killed two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in separate incidents last month as demonstrations spread throughout the city.

And while White House border czar Tom Homan announced the White House was ending its surge in Minnesota last week, Werder Bremen’s cancellation is far from the only economic fallout of the surge. Minneapolis city leaders announced last Friday that the operation had resulted in a more than $200 million financial impact.

Werder Bremen, one of the founding members of the Bundesliga and a winner of four German championships, has a reputation as one of the most progressive clubs in Europe. The club left X for Bluesky in 2024 due to “hate speech, hatred towards minorities, right-wing extremist posts and conspiracy theories” that had “been allowed to spread on X at an incredible pace,” it said in a statement at the time.

“We as a club, we have clear values,“ Pieper said Friday. “Our club stands for an open, pluralistic and united society. We are committed to ensuring that all people — regardless of their origin, skin colour, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or disability — are naturally included and have a firm place in our community.”

The global soccer community has largely been kind to President Donald Trump since his return to the White House last year. The U.S. — alongside Canada and Mexico — is playing host to the quadrennial FIFA World Cup this summer. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has worked to court Trump’s favor, presenting him with a new FIFA Peace Prize in December and pledging millions for the White House’s Board of Peace initiative this week.

Werder Bremen is in the midst of a difficult season in the Bundesliga, languishing in 16th place in the league table with just four wins in the first 22 games of this year’s campaign. But just last year, the team finished in the league’s top 10 — with a 51-point effort keyed by 10 goals from Danish striker Jens Stage.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on Wednesday accepted President Donald Trump’s offer to help fix the massive sewage spill outside the city, making an unusual request for Trump to declare the area a disaster and pay for repairs.

Bowser’s request came days after Trump tried to blame the spill on her and other Democrats and said that if they want federal help “they have to call me and ask, politely.”

Bowser signed her letter “Respectfully” in asking for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to offset all “costs incurred” by the city and regional sewer authorities following the Jan. 19 collapse of a sewer line in Montgomery County, Maryland. FEMA usually pays 75 percent of disaster repairs unless damage is extreme.

Bowser’s office did not respond to questions Thursday morning about why she was making the request now. In addition to seeking assistance, the three-term mayor — who is not seeking reelection — declared a local public emergency and asked the federal government to support several other water quality and flood protection projects in the city.

No president has approved a disaster declaration for a sewage spill, according to an E&E News analysis of FEMA records dating to 1953.

President Barack Obama approved an emergency declaration in 2016 for water contamination in Flint, Michigan, that began in 2014. FEMA provides limited aid for emergencies.

But presidents have authority to approve disasters for a wide range of events. In his first term, Trump approved disaster requests for every state to cover their costs of handling the Covid-19 pandemic. FEMA has given states roughly $140 billion for pandemic costs.

Bowser’s letter contains no cost estimates — which governors routinely include in their multipage disaster requests — and acknowledges aid would help residents outside her jurisdiction, in Maryland and Virginia.

Federal law says that disaster requests “shall be made by the Governor of the affected State” — or by a government leader such as a tribal chief, territorial governor or the mayor of Washington, and that a disaster request must be based on a finding that a jurisdiction cannot handle an event by itself. Bowser’s letter to Trump makes no such claim.

Neither Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland nor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, both Democrats, have requested disaster aid from Trump. DC Water, the sewer authority, operates the sewer line that extends from as far as Dulles International Airport to a treatment plant in the city and did not respond to a request for comment.

“Maryland will not be seeking an emergency declaration because the responsibility for the repair and subsequent clean up does not fall to Maryland,” said Rhylan Lake, a spokesperson for Moore, in an email. “Since Maryland owns neither the infrastructure nor the land, Maryland does not anticipate needing supplemental resources at this time.”

Neither the White House nor FEMA responded to questions Thursday about whether they planned to grant D.C.’s assistance request.

Considered the largest raw sewage spill of its kind in U.S. history, the broken sewer line has released over 250 million gallons of raw sewage in the Potomac River. Environmentalists have been raising concerns for weeks about the spill, which could render the river unsafe for fishing and boating and undermine longstanding efforts to repair the Chesapeake Bay.

Local environmentalists said they would welcome federal funding to help with the cleanup, but that the priority should be to increase water quality monitoring and better notify the public about whether it’s safe to use the river.

“Going directly from zero comments on it to an emergency declaration after the fact seems like an unusual pathway,” said Betsy Nicholas, president of Potomac Riverkeeper Network. “We haven’t heard anything from the mayor or the mayor’s office on this for an entire month, which in and of itself was a little surprising and frustrating.”

Representatives for the utility have previously noted that they are working to accelerate a previously planned rehabilitation project to fix the sewer line. The line dates to the early 1960s.

Trump administration officials and local authorities have traded jabs in recent days over who is responsible for the spill, with the exact cause still undetermined.

Trump has primarily cast blame on Moore, with the White House describing the state as responsible for protecting water quality in the Potomac. But both Moore’s office and Bowser say that EPA is the primary regulator of DC Water.

A FEMA report Thursday morning says DC Water “is engaged with” EPA, FEMA, environmental agencies in the District, Maryland and Virginia, and the National Park Service, which owns the wooded parkland where the spill occurred next to the Potomac.

“Since the incident was first reported, DC Water has provided daily updates,” the FEMA report says.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine would not immediately endorse his fellow Buckeye, Vice President JD Vance, for his party’s 2028 presidential nomination and would not express confidence in Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem amid reports that ICE could target Springfield.

Asked whether Vance should be the Republican party’s nominee, DeWine said Thursday that “he’s a favorite son of ours, and we’ll see how this whole thing plays out.”

At Blue Light News’s 2026 Governors Summit, the Ohio Republican said he has not heard further news following reports that Springfield could face an ICE crackdown on its large population of Haitian immigrants: “We’ve not been told at all if they’re going to come in.” And while DeWine said that state and local law enforcement would work to keep the peace if there was a crackdown, he warned that federal officers also need to perform professionally.

“Frankly, we expect ICE, if they come in, to follow good police protocols. If they do that, we’re going to be able to work our way through it,” he said.

DeWine sidestepped multiple opportunities to express confidence in Noem’s handling of DHS’ stepped up interior enforcement.

“Look, I think that what happened in Minnesota was a signal to a lot of people — they didn’t like what they saw,” DeWine said when asked about Noem.

DeWine did defend Les Wexner, the billionaire businessman and former client of Jeffrey Epstein whose name is blazoned across many central Ohio institutions, including the The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. DeWine said Thursday that no evidence has emerged of his wrongdoing.

“Barring some new information of something that he has done illegal, I don’t see that as a problem,” said DeWine.

The governor, who has frequently tangled with Trump and Vance — including over their baseless attacks of Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield — would not say whether the president has been a “force for good” for the GOP and country.

Instead, he praised Trump’s actions on border enforcement.

“He has done something that has not been done before, and that is he has basically sealed the southern border,” DeWine said. “And you can talk to Democrats, talk to Republicans. I think everybody is happy about that.”