Politics
Candidate security costs up in era of political violence: Research
Federal campaigns and committees have spent more than $100 million on security measures over the past decade amid an uptick in threats of political violence, including bomb threats and doxxing, according to a new report. The report, released Thursday by the Public Service Alliance, found that security spending during the 2023-2024 campaign cycle was more…
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Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?
If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.
VANCOUVER — Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber joined Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday to watch Canada’s thrashing of Qatar. Garber probably did not want Carney to enjoy the stadium experience too much.
BC Place is Major League Soccer’s most troublesome facility. The arena is old, was not designed with soccer in mind, and is owned by a government agency — the BC Pavilion Corporation, which also controls the Vancouver Convention Center — that forces the Vancouver Whitecaps to fight for dates on the calendar against concerts and other events.
“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” Garber told reporters Friday in Seattle.
The Whitecaps are now up for sale, and Garber is actively pushing British Columbia’s political establishment — including Premier David Eby and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim — to find a solution can keep the team from decamping to Las Vegas. While the government has been willing to renegotiate its financial relationship with the team, a proposed new stadium would take “four-plus years” in construction, which Garber said was untenable.
“It unimaginable how long we’re going to be out of the stadium,” he told reporters Friday in Seattle. “They are very relevant club that doesn’t have a good business model, and you can’t be sustainable.”
Garber recounted he met with Eby while in Vancouver, and sat with Carney and Victor Montagliani — the head of regional soccer confederation CONCACAF and a close ally of the prime minister — during the match itself. Garber said he has placed a league official in Vancouver full-time to manage the negotiations with local officials over the Whitecaps’s future.
“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” said Garber. “It’s easier for business people to make decisions, a little harder for politicians.”
In 2001, airline employees stopped a seven-months pregnant Florence Balogun from traveling home to London, deeming her too pregnant to fly. She stayed in New York, where she was visiting, eventually giving birth to a son, Folarin, before returning to London.
Twenty-five years later, Folarin Balogun has attracted global notice as a rising soccer star. Despite training in Arsenal’s youth academy and spending much of his career playing for England’s youth teams, Balogun — legally an American citizen, thanks to his Brooklyn birth — has emerged as a key contributor to the U.S. team’s attack at this year’s World Cup. The striker scored two goals in America’s opener against Paraguay last Friday, hoisting his team to a record-breaking 4-1 victory, the most goals the U.S. men’s team has ever scored in a World Cup game.
While Balogun’s performance has fueled fresh hopes about America’s World Cup prospects, he’s also found himself in the middle of America’s ongoing birthright citizenship debate.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order overturning the country’s long-standing birthright citizenship practice. The American Civil Liberties Union then sued to block the move, taking their legal battle to the Supreme Court. The court is expected to issue a final ruling soon — though it seems“broadly skeptical” of Trump’s effort.
“The executive order itself doesn’t claim to strip away [Balogun’s] citizenship or or the citizenship of other people born before [Feb. 19, 2025],” Cody Wofsy, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s case, told Blue Light News. “But the constitutional theory that the government is asking the Supreme Court to adopt casts a shadow over the citizenship of millions and millions of people who were born in this country and have lived their entire lives as citizens.”
Examples of high-profile birthright citizens — like Balogun, but also politicians such as Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio — help illustrate the reality of banning birthright citizenship, Wofsy said.
“We don’t know what the justices are thinking,” he said, “but I would hope that they understand just how grave an action the government’s asking them for.”
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