The Belgian soccer federation is demanding an explanation from FIFA about a decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play at the World Cup despite getting a red card in his previous game. President Donald Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino after the game and asked FIFA to review the red card, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Trump rang a ceremonial bell Monday as the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq opened, a symbolic Oval Office act reflecting how much he's counting on the stock market. The event was aimed at promoting the launch of Trump Accounts for children, which Republicans created as part of their 2025 tax and spending cuts bill.
Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on Wednesday at the NATO summit in Turkey, as Kyiv tries to refocus his attention on the conflict with Moscow and as Trump publicly mused about Syria’s role in the Middle East.
The president preemptively waved away potential questions from the press about the White House’s involvement in getting FIFA to reverse a red card against U.S. star Folarin Balogun.
After introducing the press at an Oval Office event on Monday, Trump said: “They don’t want to know anything about soccer slash football. Fortunately, they won’t be asking any questions on that. Nobody cares about that, right?”
Trump said he wanted to keep attention on his administration’s new investment accounts for U.S. children, the topic of Monday’s Oval Office event.
Critics point out that the accounts do little to help children in their early years, when they’re most vulnerable and most likely to be in poverty. The accounts, they say, also fail to offset the cuts the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have made to other programs that benefit young people and the adults in their lives, including food assistance and Medicaid.
And even with government contributions, critics say the Trump Accounts will widen the wealth gap. Affluent families that can afford to make the maximum pretax contributions will realize the greatest benefits. Poor families that can’t afford to set aside money for the accounts will benefit the least. Assuming a 7% annual return, the $1,000 in seed money would grow to roughly $3,570 over 18 years.
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Ahead of the president ringing the market bell, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave an overview of the program so far.
He said that 86% of the 6 million signed up came from families earning less than $200,000.
Under the program, parents can open special investment accounts for any child born during Trump’s second term and automatically receive $1,000 from the government. Accounts can be opened for older children — as long as they don’t turn 18 before the end of the calendar year — but they will not receive the $1,000. The accounts were set to open for deposits July 4, which was also the day the Treasury Department plans to transfer the $1,000 bonus.
Trading had begun just before Trump rang the ceremonial bell brought to the Oval Office to mark the opening of trading in U.S. markets on Monday.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it was the first time the opening bell had been rung in the Oval Office. Trump joked that he wanted to keep the large, silver bell for the White House.
A crowd gathered in the Oval Office to watch as Trump rang the bell, including a group of children who were visibly — and vocally — excited to be there.
Someone whispered “be quiet” to a child who began speaking just as the president was launching into an intro about the importance of the moment.
The Oval Office bell-ringing is aimed at promoting the launch of Trump Accounts, which were created as a vehicle for children to have investments in stock indexes as part of Republicans’ big 2025 tax and spending cuts bill.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has emphasized that millions of people — 38% of American adults have no direct exposure to stocks, so don’t immediately benefit from investments that largely accrue to more affluent households — “but with Trump Accounts, over time, we can get that number down to zero.”
The S&P 500 posted gains of 17.9% in 2025, after annual returns of 25% in 2024 and 26.3% in 2023 under President Joe Biden. The benchmark stock index has risen roughly 10% so far this year. But just as inflation crushed public support for Biden, Trump has also seen his approval fall as his tariffs and the start of the war in Iran created new inflationary pressures.
Trump rang the opening bells for the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq from the golden confines of the Oval Office on Monday, a symbolic act that reflects how he has increasingly tied his presidency to the stock market.
With high inflation hurting Trump’s popularity, the Republican president has tried to get more Americans to focus on their 401(k) investments, claiming that his policies should get the credit for any gains, particularly as the November midterm elections draw closer.
Only 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s economic leadership, according to a June survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The Belgian federation says it is challenging FIFA’s decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play Monday as co-host United States faces Belgium with a quarterfinals place at stake.
The European soccer body UEFA said FIFA “crossed a red line” by deciding, after pressure on the world soccer body’s leader Gianni Infantino from his close ally Trump, not to enforce Balogun’s mandatory one-game ban for getting a red card in his previous game.
“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” UEFA’s statement said.
Infantino’s predecessor Sepp Blatter, who was forced from office in 2015 in fallout from corruption scandals, posted Monday on social media: “Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls. They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies.”
Trump may be preparing to install his own team at the Smithsonian Institution after a White House report branded its leadership, especially at the National Museum of American History, as radical activists who cannot be trusted.
Trump already revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian with an executive order targeting funding for programs advancing what he called “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology.”
Historian Lonnie Bunch, the Smithsonian’s current secretary, is the first African American to lead the institution. In an unrelated interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bunch said “America’s greatest strength, it’s not running away from its history, but it’s understanding how that history shaped us and continues to shape us.”
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Trump got what he wanted from NATO at last year’s summit: an alliance whose members had largely acceded to his demands to step up their defense spending.
This week, when he meets leaders in Turkey, his mission is to enforce that pledge.
The speed with which most NATO countries have tried to heed Trump’s call to spend 5% of their annual gross domestic product on defense over the next decade underscores how the U.S. president has reshaped the alliance and bent it to his will — even as he continues to spar with its members over the Iran war, his flirtation with annexing Greenland, and various personal tiffs.
Trump leaves Monday evening for the summit, and for days leading up to the trip has been airing grievances about how much the U.S. spends on defense compared with other countries. That’s despite efforts from Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary-general, who tried to feed the ego of the tempestuous U.S. leader in an Oval Office meeting last month.
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Trump on Sunday posted a falsified image of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding an Air Force One that had been spray-painted with graffiti.
It came months after another racist post by the president that showed the couple as primates in a jungle. That one was deleted after stiff, bipartisan backlash.
The latest image shows the Obamas smiling and waving at the top of stairs alongside a baby blue and white presidential plane with graffiti painted on it that included the Democrat’s campaign slogan “Yes We Can,” “Obama” and “BLM,” short for Black Lives Matter. The post also shows graffiti in Arabic on the plane that says the phrase “alhamdulillah,” which means “praise be to God” or “thank God.”
Trump has a yearslong record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas, and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric. That includes everything from feeding the lie that Obama was not born in the United States to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries and posts that have sparked anger on his Truth Social website.
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Trump intervened on behalf of star U.S. forward Folarin Balogun, whose red-card suspension was lifted in a decision that allows him to play in a World Cup match against Belgium on Monday.
Balogun, the American leader with three goals in the tournament, received a red card for stepping awkwardly on the right ankle of Tarik Muharemović of Bosnia-Herzegovina in a 2-0 round of 32 win on Wednesday, triggering an automatic one-game suspension.
FIFA announced Sunday that the suspension had been lifted for the round of 16 match, an extraordinary move that triggered praise from Trump and outrage from Belgium’s team. It appeared to be the first time since 1962 that a red card during a World Cup didn’t result in a suspension.
Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino after the game asking FIFA review the red card, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
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The Trump administration will not seek new bids to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday as he faced new questions about the troubled project and the taxpayer money involved.
Like Trump, Burgum said he was 100% sure that vandals caused the damage to the century-old Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Trump has charged that a 350-foot gash was cut into the pool’s liner in the midst of recent renovations, while Burgum described it as multiple cuts adding up to that figure. He also said the pool would have to be at least partially drained in the coming week to finish the repairs.
The repairs will not be opened up to new contractors, he said.
“We’ll use the same company, because they did a fantastic job,” Burgum told CNN’s “State of the Union.” ”Thankfully, the vandalism was small. It was bad. I mean, it could cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair, so then it could fall into a felony ... just like damaging any other government property could. But the job that was done to fix the Reflecting Pool was done extremely well.”
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President Donald Trump plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on Wednesday while attending the NATO summit in Turkey, the White House said. Those discussions will come as Kyiv tries to refocus Trump’s attention on the conflict with Moscow and as Trump has publicly mused about Syria’s role in the Middle East.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly confirmed the meetings in a call with reporters while previewing the upcoming summit in Ankara, where Trump also plans to meet with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday. Before returning to the United States on Wednesday, Trump is scheduled to have a news conference, Kelly said.
Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy comes as Russia’s war in Ukraine is now in its fifth year. Both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin held phone calls with Trump on Saturday, congratulating him on the July Fourth commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
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