Politics

Americans’ opinion of Republican Party on the rise

Published

2 years ago

November 28, 2024

Americans’ opinion of Republican Party on the rise

Americans’ opinion of the Republican Party is on the rise, according to a new poll from The Economist/YouGov. In the poll, 45 percent of Americans said they feel “favorable” toward the Republican Party, up 6 points from an Economist/YouGov poll in late October, when 39 percent said they felt favorable toward GOP…
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Politics

Maine Democrat Shenna Bellows drops out of race to replace Graham Platner

Published

5 minutes ago

July 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SANFORD, Maine — Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ended her Senate campaign on Sunday, further clearing the path for rival Troy Jackson as he consolidates support in a fast-moving Democratic nomination contest.

“This has been an unprecedented nominating process, compressed into days instead of months, and I’m grateful to every volunteer who worked around the clock for this movement,” Bellows said in a statement. “That energy is exactly what we need to beat Susan Collins in November — and Democrats don’t have a day to waste in unifying around that shared goal.”

Bellows was the most prominent woman to enter the breakneck contest, which has unfolded over the last week after Graham Platner ended his campaign following POLITICO’s report that a woman who used to date him accused him of sexual assault. He has denied the allegations.

Politics

Following Messi’s lead, Milei bids to separate stadium and state

Published

5 minutes ago

July 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Looming over the World Cup final is another rivalry: the bitter feud between Argentine President Javier Milei and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

For the past two years, Argentina’s libertarian-populist leader has been embroiled in a war of words with his progressive counterpart in Madrid. Milei has resented Sánchez’s efforts to cast him as a far-right firebrand, and responded by repeatedly insulting the Spanish premier and his wife, Begoña Gómez, whom he has repeatedly called “corrupt.”

In Buenos Aires, one leading political observer doesn’t expect the president to mix the World Cup final with his personal animus toward Sánchez.

“I can’t imagine him trying to turn this match into a political issue,” Martín Rodríguez Yebra, deputy managing editor of Argentina’s leading conservative newspaper La Nación, told Blue Light News. “It’s not in his interest.”

According to Rodríguez Yebra, who has spent years following the Sánchez-Milei feud, Argentina’s leader has identified Sánchez — one of the world’s most recognized left-leaning political figures — as a useful antagonist in his “cultural battle” against “woke forces around the world.”

“He uses Sánchez almost as a punching bag to demonstrate that he’s confronting the international left,” he said, adding that the tactic plays well among Milei’s most devoted followers.

But Rodríguez Yebra noted that for average Argentinians “who likely wouldn’t recognize Sánchez if he sat next to them in a café in Buenos Aires,” the contretemps is “a squabble that is seen as a random distraction” on most days, and which would be considered totally inappropriate to bring up in the almost sacred context of the World Cup final.

“There are no words to accurately describe the idolatry people feel for our current national squad, which is perhaps the most admired in modern Argentine history,” he said. “And they — and in particular [Lionel] Messi, in his role as the squad’s captain — have made clear that they will not tolerate attempts at politicization.”

In previous editions of the World Cup, Rodríguez Yebra said, Argentina’s national team had become mixed up with the country’s politics. The squad is widely considered to have been instrumentalized as a propaganda tool when the country hosted the 1978 tournament, when the government was in the hands of a military junta that carried out the forced disappearances of tens of thousands of political dissidents.

A few years later, legendary squad captain Diego Maradona didn’t hide his close relationship with center-left populist President Carlos Menem, with whom he appeared on the balcony of the Casa Rosada presidential palace in Buenos Aires following the country’s 1986 World Cup win. Menem would eventually make the striker his government’s official “sports adviser” and even gave him a diplomatic passport usually reserved for high-ranking officials.

Under Messi’s leadership, however, the national team has taken steps to distance itself from Argentina’s polarized political scene, and after winning the last edition of the World Cup, the squad declined an invitation from then-President Alberto Fernández to emulate Maradona and celebrate the victory at the presidential palace.

Rodríguez Yebra said the current squad captain appeared to have been shaped by his lengthy professional career with FC Barcelona, which played out in parallel with the rise of the Catalan separatist movement and the unauthorized attempt to declare the Spanish region’s independence in 2017.

“Despite the enormous pressure to do so, he never waded into the issue, and as captain for Argentina he’s taken the same approach and stayed on message,” he said. “Don’t mix us up in your politics: We’re athletes and we represent the entire country, not politicians.”

The La Nación journalist pointed out that following the semifinal match against England, Messi stayed away when some of the victorious Argentine players unfurled a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” (“The Falkland Islands are Argentinian”).

“He doesn’t want to be involved,” he said.

Rodríguez Yebra said Milei is a canny politician who attempts to align himself with overwhelming public sentiment and knows how to be pragmatic. That’s why his war of words with Sánchez has ultimately not had a significant impact on Spanish-Argentine relations.

“Despite the inflammatory rhetoric between our leaders, the high-level officials below them have continued working together on trade, investment and international issues, including the recently concluded EU-Mercosur trade agreement,” he said.

“Ministers continue meeting, and diplomatic channels remain open even as the presidents trade barbs,” he added. “Milei insults Sánchez when it suits him, and right now, given the team’s insistence to keep politics out of the match, it is not in his interest to do so.”

On Sunday, Argentina’s president will be playing the part of cheerleader-in-chief from Buenos Aires. While Sánchez will watch the match in person in New York, Milei will remain at home in an act of political superstition.

“In 1990 Menem traveled to Italy to watch our team play against Cameroon and he ended up presiding over our most shocking World Cup defeat,” Rodríguez Yebra said. “The episode was politically devastating for him, because it caused him to develop a reputation for being jinxed, and since then our presidents have steered clear of the matches.”

Rodríguez Yebra said Milei has every interest in doing whatever he can to ward off bad luck.

Rising unemployment and corruption cases involving close aides have eroded the president’s approval ratings, with around 60 percent of voters saying they disapprove of his performance. While the lack of a serious political rival means that the populist remains the clear front-runner ahead of next year’s presidential election, an Argentine win on Sunday would still be a godsend.

The same goes for Sánchez, should La Roja emerge victorious. Unlike Argentina, Spain’s unemployment is at a record low and the country’s economy is among the fastest-growing in Europe. But like Milei, the prime minister is grappling with damaging corruption scandals. Last month, the country’s former transport minister was handed a 24-year prison sentence for bribery, embezzlement and influence peddling, and earlier this week, Sánchez’s brother was found guilty of administrative misconduct after a regional court concluded he had been unfairly awarded a public sector position.

“This World Cup has been a welcome distraction that has already helped him enormously, and could benefit him even further if it results in our team’s victory,” Rodríguez Yebra said about Milei. “Even without engaging in politics, a win for our team is a win for him.”

Politics

FIFA anti-discrimination partner warns against Olympic-style transgender ban

Published

35 minutes ago

July 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The head of FIFA’s anti-discrimination partner is calling on the international soccer body to not adopt a ban on transgender athletes at the Women’s World Cup, after the Trump administration publicly announced its intention to pressure the organization to do so last week.

Andrew Giuliani, the head of the White House World Cup Task Force, told Blue Light News Thursday that getting FIFA to guarantee that “women play in the Women’s World Cup and not biological men” could represent a lynchpin issue during planning negotiations for the 2031 tournament.

If successful, the endeavor would represent a major victory for the Trump administration’s efforts to bar transgender women from competing in women’s and girls’ sports domestically and abroad. Earlier this year, the International Olympic Committee adopted a blanket ban for its female categoriesthat paralleled an earlier White House executive order.

But Piara Powar, the executive director of anti-discrimination group Fare network, warned that such a restriction would only further stigmatize transgender athletes and marginalize women with intersex characteristics.

“We think it’s important that even if a ban comes into force for the World Cup in 2031 it should not be embedded in FIFA regulations permanently,” Powar wrote in a text message to Blue Light News. “FIFA should not go the way of the IOC and exclude human beings from participation in football.”

FIFA did not respond to requests for comment.

The organization currently has no centralized sex-verification regime, instead requiring each national federation to verify the eligibility of its players before submitting rosters, including investigating “any perceived deviation in secondary sex characteristics” and maintaining documentation of its findings.

The IOC’s policy, meanwhile, dictates that athletes competing in female categories undergo a one-time genetic screening.

Powar said such a ban at FIFA would impact women with medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSDs, which can manifest as testosterone levels outside the typical female range and having male chromosomes.

Jon Holmes, spokesperson for the advocacy group Football v Homophobia similarly warned that women with DSDs would “bear the brunt of this.”

He suggested that the administration’s efforts are largely performative — noting that “there’s no suggestion anyone is near international level,” referring to transgender female soccer players.

Payoshni Mitra, an advocate for abolishing sex testing in women’s sports, however, said in an interview Friday that it was too early to speculate about a policy that doesn’t exist, but noted that she “will be very, very surprised if suddenly they come up with a very exclusionary policy.”

Mitra said she’d hope that FIFA acts “in a way that is based on science,” adding: “If they come up with a policy, the policy will be based on science, evidence-based science, and also should take into account athlete well-being and the other conditions that concern these policies.”

FIFA has yet to formally announce the location of the 2031 tournament, for which the U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica have submitted the sole joint bid. Giuliani said Thursday that the organization had already told President Donald Trump that the U.S. would host the contest.

Powar pleaded with other sporting groups to consider the human price of hosting their tournaments in the U.S., despite the lucrative commercial appeal of the country.

“We would urge all sports bodies to think of the credibility of their sport and the harmful impact of accepting all U.S. conditions of hosting — it may come at the cost of excluding participants,” Powar wrote. “And in football, a sport that has always been the most open and accessible, that could be devastating.”