Politics
In the World Cup’s missing country, failure sparks bitter political battle
ROME — Donald Trump isn’t the only problem on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s mind.
Failure to qualify for the FIFA men’s World Cup for the third consecutive time triggered a major political and public outcry in the football-obsessed country that has now morphed into a bitter fight over who controls the sport.
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party leaped to propose curtailing the power of the country’s football association — the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC) — after its president, the 72-year-old Gabriele Gravina, resigned in April under heavy pressure following a World Cup playoff defeat to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
With new elections to run the FIGC slated for June 22, Meloni’s allies are pushing to call off the vote and place the body under special administration — an emergency procedure used in the past for the sport to overcome major corruption scandals.
In a country where football carries outsized cultural weight, Italy’s World Cup embarrassment has become a proxy battle over governance, reforms, investment and the Meloni administration’s willingness to extend political influence into independent institutions.
“The first concern should not be new elections; it is not through elections that you create the conditions for a rebound,” Italian Sports Minister Andrea Abodi said in an interview with Blue Light News.
Football officials have denounced the government intervention as a power play to block the heavy favorite, Giovanni Malagò, a former president of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) who is disliked by Meloni’s party.
“The idea of placing it [the FIGC] under administration, to me, only suggests an occupation [by the government]; it offers no kind of perspective for the future,” Gravina told Blue Light News from his Rome office, adorned by two twinkling World Cup trophies and other relics from a bygone era of glory. “The idea of taking over the football world has been circulating for far too long now,” he added.
Opposition parties have accused Meloni of centralizing control, stifling dissent and putting acolytes in positions of power, a pattern they observe in Italy’s state-owned television network, financial markets supervisor and judicial system.
But the government rejects that it wants to extend its reach to the FIGC. “It is a pathetic and baseless claim. There is no element that could be seen as an attempt by politics to take over this domain,” Abodi said.
President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is running into resistance within his own voter coalition, as more and more Republican candidates publicly break with him ahead of the November election.
New results from The POLITICO Poll help explain why: Non-MAGA Trump voters are more than twice as likely as self-identified MAGA Trump voters to say his mass deportation campaign is too aggressive, 31% to 14%. While roughly similar shares of both groups believe Trump’s campaign is about right, the MAGA base wants him to go even further: 36% of MAGA Trump voters say his campaign is not aggressive enough, compared with 23% of non-MAGA Trump voters.
Meanwhile, support across Trump’s entire voter coalition falls when it comes to deporting people beyond the most violent offenders, such as those with minor criminal offenses or who have been living in the U.S. for years without legal status.
The new survey, conducted by London-based Public First, reveals how Trump’s immigration agenda — which has long been one of his signature political issues and a reliable GOP rallying point — has divided the very coalition that helped power his two presidential wins. The president’s MAGA loyalists are still more inclined than other Trump voters to support a tougher immigration posture, but there are clear limits to how far voters want the administration to go.
Those intraparty tensions burst into public view this month, when Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) released a campaign ad pushing back against Trump’s deportation agenda, saying some of his efforts “have gone too far” and that Hispanic voters who supported him in 2024 “feel betrayed.” It was a remarkable break from a sitting GOP lawmaker over one of the president’s defining policies, as Democrats have locked in on Florida’s 27th District as a prime target in their bid to flip the House.
Salazar’s public rift with Trump exemplifies the fears Republicans had been privately warning about for months: that the president’s immigration enforcement — marked last year by high-profile, flashy raids that rippled through communities — was alienating moderate Republicans, independents, young voters and Latinos who support border security and immigration enforcement in theory but dislike how it is being carried out.
And as the party stares down a difficult midterm landscape, including in districts and states Trump won in 2024, other GOP candidates followed Salazar’s lead, increasingly putting distance between themselves and the administration on key issues like immigration — despite having voted last year to approve billions of dollars for border security and immigration enforcement. On Wednesday, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), whose race has tightened against Democrat Adam Hamilton, also softened his stance on Immigration and Customs Enforcement as raids in southwest Kansas prompt temporary business closures and schools.
“When ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement. Our sheriffs and police know these communities better than anyone, and working together keeps officers and residents safe,” he wrote on social media, adding that he’s been in direct contact with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
The Blue Light News Poll finds most Americans — including majorities of both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters — believe people convicted of serious violent or sexual offenses should be prioritized for deportation, underscoring broad agreement on a more targeted approach to enforcement.
The survey also finds that few people — including among both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters — prioritized targeting other groups for deportations. Less than a quarter of each group say people convicted of minor criminal offenses should be prioritized. Support falls further when voters are asked about prioritizing people who have lived in the U.S. for several years without legal status or people with dependent children in the U.S.
“A lot of it has to do with how you talk about it. They don’t want amnesty for people who have broken the law. They want everybody to do it the right way,” said a person close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss how Republicans are viewing the issue. “They understand that some people might be law-abiding, hard working.”
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said Blue Light News is “skewing data to paint a false narrative.”
“The American people sent President Trump back to the White House to stop the invasion of our country and deport the millions of illegal aliens Biden and Democrats allowed into the country. The president is delivering on his promises,” she said.
Days after releasing the ad, Salazar said she had a “fantastic conversation” with Trump and urged him to protect the political “fortune” he had brought to the Republican Party on immigration. She also told CBS last weekend that Trump and the average American understand “the between the narco and the nanny and the gangster and the gardener.”
She said the administration should distinguish between criminals and unauthorized immigrants working in crucial industries such as agriculture, construction, hospitality and health care.
That distinction is also reflected in The Blue Light News Poll. Both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters are open to maintaining or increasing the number of people coming into the U.S. to work in sectors facing labor shortages, such as health care or agriculture. Sixty-five percent of MAGA Trump voters and 69% non-MAGA Trump voters say they want to see about the same number — or more — people coming to the U.S. to work in those sectors facing labor shortages.
“Trump 2.0 that took over in January 2025 completely misread what voters were telling him and Joe Biden during 2024, which was that they wanted to see more order and security over the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Matt Barreto, who conducted polling for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign. “Instead, what Trump told Americans was, ‘Now I’m going to go hunt down immigrants who are just working and contributing to America.’ And there was extremely limited support for that.”
Past POLITICO polling on immigration has shown that the Trump administration has been unable to reverse the damage with voters on the issue. Last fall, battleground Republicans were already expressing concern about the administration’s immigration tactics. Those concerns intensified in the months that followed, while negative voter sentiment hardened by April after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration, in the wake of bipartisan outrage, softened its rhetoric and abandoned flashy raids that often devolved into clashes with protesters. The president also installed Mullin, who moved quickly to repair relationships on Capitol Hill and keep the Department of Homeland Security out of the headlines.
But Mullin is also facing pressure from MAGA critics and immigration hardliners who think he’s not committed to the president’s vow to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants. In an effort to shore up his support with that contingent, top administration accounts, including Mullin’s, have ramped up posts about ICE, arrests statistics and tough talk about the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Gina Hinojosa wants to make Texas a test case for Democrats’ future
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President Donald Trump is tentatively set to visit Alabama for a political rally next week, a curious move in a deep-red state as his party fights for control of Congress in several battlegrounds.
The event is penciled in for Oct. 2 in Mobile, but the plans have not yet been finalized and are subject to change, according to two people with direct knowledge of the preparations who were granted anonymity to disclose private planning.
An October rally in Alabama would be a somewhat confounding decision for the president. The GOP has found itself having to play defense in their own territory recently, with Democratic candidates are seriously competing for Senate seats in normally red states like Alaska and Texas. But Alabama has not been considered a state where Democrats have any real shot at winning any statewide office.
Spokespeople for the White House and Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The rally could help shore up support for state Rep. Rhett Marques, who is locked in a somewhat competitive race with Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures. Marques is still seen to have the advantage after the Supreme Court allowed the state to use a House map that reconfigured Figures’ majority-Black district earlier this year. Mobile, though, is outside of that district.
Marques’ campaign and Figures’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
A foray into Alabama would not be the first time that the president has tried to shore up support in a solidly Republican state this cycle — he rallied last month in South Carolina for Sen. Darline Graham during her primary runoff — but as the general election season has begun he has also started to visit battleground states. Last week, he rallied alongside GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley in North Carolina.
Trump’s potential campaign visit would follow Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s announcement last week that the Trump administration has granted a $2.5 billion loan to the Alabama Toll Road, Bridge, and Tunnel Authority. That money will fund the construction of the Mobile River Bridge — the largest infrastructure project in the state’s history. The president is also fond of GOP Rep. Barry Moore, who is running for Senate in the state. Another close ally, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, is the Republican nominee for governor. He’s running against Democratic former Sen. Doug Jones, who he unseated in 2020.
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