Politics

Mike Johnson to attend Turning Point event with far-right global leaders

Published

4 months ago

February 26, 2026

Turning Point Action, the political organization founded by the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, will bring together U.S. and international politicians at a conference next week — including members of far-right parties across the globe.

Markus Frohnmaier, a political leader from the far-right German party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), is among the announced guests at the Alliance of Sovereign Nations, scheduled for March 4 to 6 in Washington. Other guests include House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.); Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.); George Simion, founder of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians; and European Parliament members Barbara Bonte of the far-right Vlaams Belang party and Petra Steger of Austria’s right-wing Freiheitliche Partei (FPÖ).

In an interview, Turning Point Action COO Tyler Bowyer said the event was “spurred” by Luna and that more attendees will be announced soon. He referred to the parties that will be represented, including AfD, as “center-right.”

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in May 2025 classified parts of the AfD as “proven right-wing extremist” for being an alleged threat to the country’s democratic order and agitating against migrants. But the party filed a legal challenge, and a court made a temporary ruling this week suspending the designation until the case is fully decided.

“There’s a lot of people from a lot of different countries that are representing center-right politics across the world. So it’s important to hear everyone,” Bowyer said. “There’s a lot of things going wrong in Germany right now. It’s important to hear everybody out.”

Spokespeople for Johnson and Luna declined to comment. In a social media post Wednesday morning, Luna wrote, “Next week members of government from around the world will be coming together at the Alliance of Sovereign Nations! @SpeakerJohnson will be there!”

The conference’s mission statement declares “every country has a rightful obligation to defend its sovereignty and put their interests first,” according to its website. The conference is also sponsored by Republicans for National Renewal.

The AfD party has gained increasing support in Trump’s Washington. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance have condemned efforts to label the party as extremist. Frohnmaier has recently traveled several times to Washington for meetings with Luna and other Republican representatives as well as State Department officials. State Department officials have accused the German government of suppressing freedom of opinion, an accusation the German government strongly rejects. Sarah Rogers, undersecretary of State for diplomacy, this week called a criminal investigation by German police of a critical post directed at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz “a case of lèse-majesté.”

In October, Luna posted on X that she met with Anna Rathert, a member of Germany’s federal parliament who’s part of the AfD’s parliamentary group and member of the foreign affairs committee in Bundestag. She and other members of Congress also met with Kay Gottschalk and other members of the AfD in Washington in December. She praised the party as “actually working to strengthen ties with the United States and restore a healthy relationship between our governments” and accused Germany’s chancellor of “trashing our president and censoring German citizens.”

In an interview with Welt last November, Luna said she was planning the conference as an event that “will counter Davos” and be more focused on “the sovereignty of nations.”

In Germany, AfD currently polls in second place, only a few percentage points behind the governing Christian Democrats of Merz.

Last December, Frohnmaier was awarded a prize at the New York Young Republican Club gala for AfD’s “courageous work undertaken in the particularly suppressive and hostile political environment of Germany,” as the invitation stated.

Only weeks earlier, the New York State Young Republicans chapter was disbanded after POLITICO reported on a group chat in which leaders praised Adolf Hitler and joked about the Holocaust.

Politics

Canada’s biggest fan may be its biggest problem

Published

2 minutes ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

OTTAWA — Mark Carney may be Canada’s loudest booster at the World Cup, but some of his countrymen fear he may be hurting more than helping — because he always does when it comes to sports.

In March 2025, the new prime minister joined the Edmonton Oilers for a pre-game skate. That night the Oilers fell to the Winnipeg Jets, followed by a wave of injuries on the team. Former Oiler and “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast host Ryan Whitney took to X: “The Carney Curse is real for Edmonton. What the hell just happened. Guy is on the ice with the Oil this morning and now everyone is injured.”

Now some Canadians are worried that their prime minister has brought the “Carney Curse” to the World Cup, blaming him for Canada’s defeat against Switzerland on Wednesday. His country’s only only goal coincided with a moment that Carney left his box seat at Vancouver’s BC Place.

For a brief, glorious moment last week, the Ottawa fishbowl wondered if the curse had been broken. Carney skipped Canada’s World Cup opener against Bosnia-Herzegovina. But then, after days of anxious whispers over whether he’d jinx the squad, the prime minister witnessed Canada thrash Qatar. If Canada had beaten or tied the Swiss, the team could’ve played as many as two elimination games in Vancouver. With the loss, they fell to runner-up — and a knockout-round game in Los Angeles against South Africa on Sunday.

Canada’s men’s soccer team joins an ever-growing list of inadvertent “victims” of prime-ministerial fanhood, including: the Toronto Blue Jays, who lost the World Series after Carney visited the team; the Canadian women’s rugby team, for whom he traveled to the United Kingdom to cheer on at the World Cup last summer; and the Montreal Canadiens, whom he dubbed “Canada’s team” during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Politics

Orange gush: KC mayor parties with the Dutch

Published

47 minutes ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas danced with Netherlands fans to their famous song “Links Rechts” ahead of the Orange Walk in Kansas City’s Power & Light District on Thursday. The Dutch supporters — along with the Scots and the Norwegians — have been some of the most exuberant in backing their team around the U.S. One local told the Kansas City Star that the experience topped a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade.

Politics

How much longer can Donald Trump go missing from the World Cup?

Published

1 hour ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Some of soccer’s biggest names have to come to play at the World Cup: Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Vinícius Júnior and now even Cristiano Ronaldo have left their mark on the score sheet.

But one key player who loomed over just about every step of pre-tournament preparations has been notably invisible: Donald Trump.

Pre-tournament fears that the American president would trample on the soccer jamboree have, so far, proved largely unfounded after the first two weeks of competition. Trump has yet to attend a match, and even as the U.S. team mounts its best World Cup performance in decades he has done little to claim the success as his own.

Aside from persistent complications surrounding the Iran squad’s entry and exit to the U.S. for games, and the ban on a Somali referee from entering the country before the tournament started, political incidents involving the Trump administration and soccer — or leaders of other World Cup countries, including the neighboring co-hosts with whom he often spars — have been few and far between.

No ICE arrests around matches. No heavy-handed policing like soccer fans sometimes suffer in Western Europe. No beef between Trump and Democratic leaders of cities and states where some of the tournament’s highest-profile matches have been played.

As one European-based senior sports executive told Blue Light News last year about the administration and the World Cup, “Why would they want to f—k it up?”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended the USMNT’s opener against Paraguay in Los Angeles, while Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — along with other senior Cabinet officials — was at the American match vs. Australia in Seattle. Though Trump himself hasn’t been to a game yet, he did send the U.S. squad a message of support at the start of the tournament.

In an interview last week with Blue Light News, Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said her administration had worked with the U.S. government “around transportation funding, security funding. That’s the way it should be. There should be that kind of work and coordination.”

Trump allies are on the same page as the tournament progresses serenely through the group stage, beyond continued griping about high ticket prices and transport to and from some stadiums.

“It’s been really good to see the coordination, certainly from a law enforcement perspective,” said Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House’s World Cup task force, as he praised cooperation with police and security services in blue states like New York, New Jersey and California, where the administration doesn’t “agree eye to eye with the mayors and the governors.”

“It’s fun to see moments where the country can come together as well, and I think this is one of those great moments over our 250th birthday where that can happen,” he added.

This week, FIFA chief Gianni Infantino confirmed what many have expected: Trump plans to attend the final on July 19 and help present the winner’s trophy. Can a president who loves the spotlight stay away til then?