MIAMI — Colombia’s World Cup run has become a celebration of more than just its national team: For many fans, it’s also a victory lap for the country’s Trump-backed president-elect.

Political rookie Abelardo de la Espriella — a right-wing former defense attorney and businessman who calls himself “El Tigre” — narrowly saw off a left-wing senator last weekend as Colombia swung from far-left to hard-right leadership. De la Espriella ran for president on a tough law-and-order platform, vowing to end outgoing left-wing President Gustavo Petro’s attempts to establish dialogue with armed groups. He also wants to build mega-prisons, emulating those of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, another Trump favorite in Latin America.

Fans who POLITICO spoke with outside the stadium in Miami on Saturday evening before a key game against Portugal were insistent that de la Espriella is going to make Colombia great again.

With de la Espriella’s victory, “There is no more corruption, there is no more guerrilla, there is security … it’s gonna be great,” said Hugo, a 62-year-old who lives in Miami but is originally from the Colombian capital Bogotá. “Just give him one year, and you will see the new Colombia,” added Alonso, 42, originally from Ibagué, who disputed that the election was as close (around one percentage point) as the official results showed — and said a combination of Trump and de la Espriella would be great for Colombia.

Colombia’s brilliant-yellow soccer jersey, ubiquitous in downtown Miami this week, also became a key flashpoint on the campaign trail, as de la Espriella — running to restore security, shrink the state and promote economic growth through deregulation — clothed himself in the kit.

In the sunshine outside Miami’s World Cup stadium, Juan, from Cartagena, said he liked de la Espriella wearing the soccer jersey because “it shows his whole campaign is about patriotism and to save the country, to give hope to the people.”

A Bogotá judge banned de la Espriella and his movement, Defensores de la Patria (Defenders of the Homeland), from using or displaying the jersey for his electoral campaign, and the left-wing candidate, Iván Cepeda, said, “The Colombian national team belongs to all Colombians. Its use for electoral, personal, and ideological purposes is a clearly opportunistic act, the legal implications of which must be examined.”

In response to a post-match question from POLITICO about the president-elect wearing the shirt and backing the team, Colombian coach Néstor Lorenzo said, “Football is played in a very passionate way in South America. I think that all the presidents, the South American countries, live in that passion. It is a way for us to identify, beyond the flag, the shirt that represents the most beautiful sport of all. The president wants to show, surely, that he is a real citizen.”

Only one yellow-clad supporter showed any reticence about de la Espriella, shaking his head and saying “it’s crazy” what’s happening in Colombia, before declining to talk more about politics or provide his name.

The Trump administration has embraced de la Espriella. Trump praised him as a “Smart, Strong, and Tough Leader.” At the game in Miami on Saturday evening, two senior U.S. officials — Secretary of State Marco Rubio and FBI Director Kash Patel — were in attendance, flanking FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

Last time Colombia played at the World Cup in the United States, it all ended in tragedy.

Defender Andrés Escobar scored an own goal against the U.S. at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California — then was shot dead outside a nightclub after returning to Colombia, a country still grappling with violence involving guerrilla groups and criminal organizations.

The dark-horse national team is performing considerably better in 2026 than in 1994, progressing easily to the second round. But political turmoil endures at home, where the bitterly fought election campaign — that came down to a June 21 runoff between de la Espriella and Cepeda — saw an assassination, bombings and kidnappings.

That specter of violence — even soccer-linked violence — is rarely far away in Colombia. The father of star soccer player Luis Díaz was kidnapped in late 2023 by far-left guerrillas, and only freed after 13 days.

As Colombia celebrated what it erroneously thought was a late winner against Portugal, the live broadcast cut to a jubilant supporter, cheering and wearing a red Defensores de la Patria hat.

Source link

President Donald Trump just finished the job in Louisiana.

First, he successfully ousted Sen. Bill Cassidy — a longtime rival who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges — last month. Then on Saturday, Trump got his preferred pick, Rep. Julia Letlow, over the finish line in the runoff to replace the senator.

It was a return to form after several recent misses in primaries, with Trump’s endorsed candidates going down in Iowa and Georgia and after the Republican he initially endorsed in South Carolina flopped. Saturday’s result reaffirms his grip on the Republican party: With Trump’s backing, Letlow overcame a late surge from rival John Fleming, the hardline conservative state treasurer who was also trying to rally the MAGA base behind him.

Letlow’s win sends another Trump ally to Washington, continuing the MAGA takeover of the party, and shows the continuing power of Trump’s blessing that lifts candidates even when others have conservative credentials of their own. It also bolsters the power of GOP Gov. Jeff Landry, whose steadfast support of Letlow was also crucial to her victory.

This primary was the latest test of an emerging question that will help shape the future of the GOP: How powerful is Trump’s endorsement against opponents who are also MAGA acolytes?

Unlike in primaries pitting MAGA against the establishment or against the president’s enemies — which MAGA is clearly winning — several contests this year have involved multiple candidates all seeking to run in the America First lane. In Louisiana and Alabama, Trump’s endorsees won, though both Letlow and Rep. Barry Moore were given a major run for their money by fellow pro-Trump candidates. But in a pair of governor’s contests, Rick Jackson’s billions helped him clinch the nomination in Georgia and Zach Lahn pulled off a surprise upset in Iowa, as both bear-hugged the president.

Fleming, a House Freedom caucus founder and former White House aide, ran as an unabashed Trump ally and spent the campaign arguing he represented MAGA’s ideological roots. He tried to cast Letlow as the establishment pick powered by elected officials rather than grassroots conservatives.

But Republican primary voters ultimately sided with the candidate carrying Trump’s seal of approval.

“Tonight’s runoff proves one indisputable fact: Donald Trump’s endorsement remains the apex predator of Republican politics,” said Louisiana GOP strategist Lionel Rainey. “Masterclass in raw electoral power.”

In one of the country’s reddest states, Letlow now enters the general as the overwhelming favorite to win in November. She’s up against Jamie Davis, a farmer, who won the Democratic runoff on Saturday.

Letlow’s likely ascent to the Senate marks a rapid rise in Louisiana politics: She won a special election to the House in 2021 to fill the seat of her husband, who died from Covid in 2020 just days before being sworn in. She jumped into the Senate race after Trump publicly endorsed her.

“President Trump, thank you for encouraging me to get into this race, thank you for your endorsement, Louisiana loves you,” Letlow said in her victory speech Saturday night.

Yet Trump’s endorsement of Letlow was not quite a knock-out punch. In the May primary, Cassidy, a top MAGA target, received less than 25 percent of the vote, and Letlow finished far ahead of the others — but she did not get enough to reach 50 percent support to avoid a runoff.

In the Saturday runoff, Letlow ran hard on Trump’s endorsement but Fleming also gained significant ground since his second-place finish in the first round of voting, and finished just 14 points behind Letlow, with nearly all the votes counted.

“Yes I love the heat of battle. I love the combat,” Fleming told supporters in his concession speech. “But it makes us stronger. It really makes us better.”

Letlow, who hails from north Louisiana, benefitted from outside national groups spending on her behalf, including the official political arm of the Make American Healthy Again movement, which pledged $1 million to boost her campaign.

Her victory is a sigh of relief for Landry, who invested tremendous political capital in getting her to the Senate, sometimes to a degree that frustrated fellow Republicans. Landry pressured donors to open their wallets for her campaign, and a super PAC aligned with the governor spent about $6 million on her behalf, mostly toward assailing Fleming with attacks about his stances on carbon capture and the border.

It’s unclear whether Landry will face a serious primary challenger when he’s up for reelection next year, but a Letlow loss would have made him more vulnerable to intraparty criticisms and skepticism about his political strength.

Some Louisiana Republicans immediately speculated that Fleming may now consider running against Landry. One Louisiana Republican, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about party dynamics, called it “payback.”

Landry, in a statement, congratulated Letlow “on her decisive victory,” and said the representative ran “an incredible race fueled by the support of President Donald J. Trump and hardworking Louisianians across our state.”

Source link

ARLINGTON, Texas — Jordan’s final World Cup match against Argentina gave its fans a chance to show their national colors one last time on the international stage. And, as they have throughout the tournament, many of them also used the opportunity to show support for Palestine.

Lots of Jordanians have roots in Palestine, and they brought those loyalties with them. Many people in the crowd wore black-and-white checked keffiyehs that are a symbol of Palestinian roots.

“Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are never far from our thoughts,” said Issah Essoh, a 32-year-old software consultant from Jordan who lives in Houston, said as fans filed into their seats.

Mohammed Abu Arayes, 37, who was visiting from Riyadh with his family for the match, is of Jordanian and Palestinian heritage. He was decked out in Jordanian colors and his wife sported a t-shirt emblazoned with “Palestine.”

He’s been happy with the reception, even amid a sea of Argentina fans sporting blue-and-white jerseys. “The Argentine people have been very welcoming,” Abu Arayes said.

Source link

Rep. Julia Letlow clinched the Louisiana GOP Senate nomination on Saturday, riding her endorsement from President Donald Trump to defeat state Treasurer John Fleming in a contentious runoff that became a referendum on MAGA credentials.

She will likely succeed ousted Sen. Bill Cassidy, who was ostracized by MAGA over his impeachment vote against Trump and finished in third in the first round of voting in May. His failure to qualify for the runoff marked a rare primary defeat for a Senate incumbent.

Letlow built on her first-place finish in the May primary, overcoming the self-funding Fleming, who made the race competitive by touting his conservative bona fides and bear-hugging the president. Along with Trump’s endorsement, she also was lifted by backing from Gov. Jeff Landry and other prominent Louisiana Republicans, like House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

In deep-red Louisiana, Letlow will almost certainly win the seat in November.

Landry served as Letlow’s most vocal surrogate, dispatching his own staff to her campaign and pressuring donors to open their wallets. Helping Letlow earn a Senate seat gives him another ally in Washington and puts him on solid footing in the face of a potential primary opponent when he’s up for reelection next year.

Letlow, a disciplined messenger and reliable Republican vote in the House, also earned the support of Louisiana business leaders and posted solid fundraising numbers in the race.

It’s also another endorsement badge for Trump, who has been largely successful at picking winners this primary season, with some notable recent exceptions, like Rick Jackson’s win in Georgia and Zach Lahn’s win in Iowa.

Letlow survived attacks by her opponents that she was insufficiently conservative; both Fleming and Cassidy assailed her for comments she made in a 2020 video showing her speaking in support of diversity initiatives when she was interviewing for a job as president of the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Letlow has since disavowed those programs.

She became the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in the House when she won a special election in March 2021 to fill the seat of her deceased husband, who died from Covid in December 2020 shortly before he was supposed to take office. She jumped into the Senate race to challenge Cassidy with Trump’s endorsement.

A former House Freedom Caucus founder, Fleming also served in several roles in the White House during Trump’s first term. He also ran as a Trump ally, despite not earning the president’s endorsement.

Source link

Aging stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Harry Kane may still fill stadiums just by showing up, but their teams’ results are only as good as their on-field chemistry and coaching. The squad that best illustrated that principle over soccer’s long history is the one that first convinced President Donald Trump that the sport was worth a look.

In the 1970s, the moribund New York Cosmos, part of the North American Soccer League, convinced the Brazilian soccer icon Pelé to come play for them. He was followed quickly by stars like Giorgio Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto.

The stars, along with a sharp public relations push from club owner Warner Communications, transformed the team, the league and the arc of American soccer.

“Without the Cosmos and their panache, we wouldn’t have been in a position to bid for and get 1994,” said Jim Trecker, who served as public relations guru of both the Cosmos and that year’s World Cup, the first in the United States.

The team went from playing in a sparsely attended stadium on Randall’s Island to the very same Meadowlands where England and Panama played today. The Cosmos regularly drew over 50,000 fans, including Mick Jagger, Cher and Henry Kissinger.

“The one and only time I met Kissinger, he shoved me into Pelé’s lap,” David Hirshey, who covered the team for the New York Daily News, told POLITICO.

The Cosmos also convinced a young Trump, who at least once partied with Pelé at Studio 54, that soccer was worth watching. When asked about Trump’s Cosmos experience, the White House referred POLITICO to his family business, the Trump Organization, which did not respond to a request for comment. Multiple times, though, Trump has cited Pelé and the Cosmos as an inspiration for his own interest in the sport.

“Many years ago, I remember watching Pelé on a team called the Cosmos,” Trump said at the World Cup’s lottery draw in December. “I assume he is one of the greats. I said, ‘That man can play!’”

At the same event, the president seemed somewhat forlorn that the promise of the Cosmos didn’t manifest in the explosion of successful soccer across the country.

“For years, they thought soccer would be so big and big fast,” he said.

At the height of the Cosmos’ glory, Trump was a young, up-and-coming real estate scion with big dreams of filling the same rooms as New York’s most famous characters — even though he may have viewed them only from afar.

“I never saw Trump in the locker room,” said Hirshey. “You would think that’s where he would want to be.”

Read Calder’s POLITICO Magazine story about the Trump and the Cosmos here.

Source link

PHILADELPHIA — Josh Shapiro’s black SUV deposited him at a bougie cafe earlier this week, and the governor beelined to a backroom full of handpicked World Cup social media influencers and began working the room.

For roughly an hour, the Pennsylvania governor and potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate worked to build relationships with people who could cast this host city — and, one day, his potential candidacy? — in a positive light. He regaled them with personal anecdotes, waxing eloquent about how the former NBA star turned TV analyst Charles Barkley had said nice things about him, how he once got Jerry Seinfeld to laugh at one of his jokes and how Philadelphia would play host to UFC 330. (“I am not putting a claw on the governor’s residence lawn,” Shapiro joked. “We’re going to do it in a proper venue.”)

But what the governor, wearing a navy U.S. Men’s National Team polo and FIFA-themed Adidas Stan Smiths, really wanted to talk about was the World Cup.

“I don’t know that we’re gonna make a run all the way to the end here, but there’s something really exciting — I mean people who don’t know anything about soccer are tuning in and watching and getting pumped up,” Shapiro told them. “I think sports is an amazing thing, and it has the effect of changing the psychology of the entire city.”

Shapiro, more a Sixers than a Philadelphia Union guy, is among those recent converts to the world’s game. As of this week, he’s been to three matches at Lincoln Financial Field — more than any other potential 2028 presidential candidate. Save New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has blitzed soccer media to chat about arcane ball knowledge such as being “personally affected when Championship Manager became Football Manager,” perhaps no other Democratic politician has so fully embraced the tournament. (Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas may also have a claim.)

“I’m especially proud to see people from all across the world coming here to Philadelphia and being greeted not just by a governor who’s happy they’re here, but by Philadelphians and Pennsylvanians who are thrilled to see them here,” Shapiro told me in an interview. I think we are better than [President] Donald Trump’s cruel rhetoric. We are better than his cruel policies, and I think we’re seeing that on display here during the World Cup in Philly.”

Shapiro’s approach to the tournament could pay political dividends for him. “The U.S. team is kicking ass. And Trump is ignoring it,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left think tank Third Way. “Democrats should own it all — go to games, watch them in bars with fans, brag about our team, hang out with the Scots. Show the country that we’re normal, patriotic and fun-loving.”

After breakfast with the influencers, Shapiro made his way to the official FIFA Fan Festival at Fairmount Park’s Lemon Hill, and fist-bumped lines of volunteers. He darted over to a fan zone area where he assembled a collectible Bank of America Fan Band, selecting charms that would spell out “250” for the Semiquincentennial.

In nearly every interaction, he conducted an informal poll on who revelers thought was the tournament’s greatest player, namechecking Argentinian and French maestros.

“[Lionel] Messi or [Kylian] Mbappé?” he’d ask. It is, one of his staffers told me, a tic he has, a way to put people on the spot and also gather intel.

Next, he went over to a makeshift arcade featuring a video game called Soccer Jawn — a homage to the old Atari Pong — posing for selfies along the way. He took the controls of the game and rotated through several new acquaintances and opponents: a staffer, then a kid visiting from Virginia. His father, who said he was a fan of Shapiro, watched.

“Who do you think is better: Mbappé or Messi?” Shapiro quizzed again.

Mbappé, the kid replied.

Shapiro fist-bumped the kid and moved on to grip more hands and poll more people, stopping for selfies along the way.

“I think the world needs some more togetherness, needs some more cheer, and this is a great opportunity,” Shapiro told reporters in a gaggle.

A reporter asked whether he disagreed with former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who rejected FIFA and Chicago serving as a World Cup host.

“I’m not going to comment on Rahm, because I didn’t hear him say it, but I’ll just say we’re looking at $770 million in economic impact here, and remember it’s across the state with Reading, with Pittsburgh and Scranton, of course, here Philly, which is the center of the soccer universe,” Shapiro said. “I think you’re seeing with the record-setting crowds we’ve had here at fan fest, it’s not just people here, it’s people in our hotels, our restaurants, our bars.”

Later, Shapiro headed in the direction of the Linc, or Philadelphia Stadium in FIFA parlance, where he would take in the first half of Iraq vs. France, seeing Mbappé himself score a brace, including a back post screamer in the 13th minute. First, though, he sat for another interview on the World Cup, this time with NPR Sports in America.

Back at the FIFA Fan Festival, Shapiro spoke with me about his endorsed slate of congressional candidates, his recent meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Philadelphia’s ties to the men’s team.

The Commonwealth is home to three U.S. players: Matt Freese from Wayne, Christian Pulisic from Hershey and Auston Trusty from Media, I pointed out to Shapiro.

“Freese first off has just been lights out at goalie,” Shapiro said. “Hopefully, Pulisic is going to be healthy for Thursday night. [He was.] I got a soft place in my heart for Trusty.”

Shapiro explained that Trusty’s mom was partners in a law firm with the mother of his own son’s girlfriend. The group went out to dinner last week, though Shapiro didn’t join. The governor did make a video for Trusty and sent it to him. “Just letting them know how proud we are of him,” Shapiro said.

Trusty, Shapiro said, is “someone who can surprise us going forward.”

A press wrangler told me I had one more question.

“Messi or Mbappé?” I asked Shapiro.

“Mbappé today may be a slightly better player,” Shapiro said. “Messi has that thing that Michael Jordan had, which is just playing it at a different level, where it’s not just that he’s the best player on the pitch; he’s just in a different universe. He just does things that others simply can’t do. So, I mean, the three goals he had in that first game, actually, the first one, was extraordinary. I think Messi overall. Mbappé is pretty damn good right now.”

Source link

4 min read8 min

We are living in an incredibly unstable world, with decades-old global norms and institutions crumbling and serious threats to our own security.

Advertisement

While the threats may not feel as direct as they do in eastern Europe or the Middle East, geography is deceptive. Because whether it’s our power stations, our transport network, our banking systems or our hospitals, our critical infrastructure is already in reach of our enemies.

While our next Prime Minister is in post, escalation is not just possible but likely.

Andy Burnham is right to develop a policy agenda centred on locally powered growth and opportunity in our cities, towns and rural communities here in the UK. My fear is that ultimately it will be global events that determine the success or otherwise of this domestic agenda. To really protect and drive opportunity in these places, he will also need clarity of strategy, values and resource in his foreign policy.

It’s the lack of resources that has rightly been in the news following John Healey’s resignation. It’s personal for me too: As the former head of a humanitarian aid agency, I tolerated cuts to our international aid budget last year. I did so because I recognised the urgency of increasing defence spending and I know that means making tough choices about other budgets. But it’s now clear that the aid cuts have not supported the meaningful scale-up in defence spending needed to make us safer. In fact, I suspect time will prove the opposite, as reduced global aid flows trigger more migration, faster spread of pandemics, and further marginalisation and radicalisation of young people.

Advertisement

Investing in defence is the bedrock of our security, as is engaging in international development and diplomacy, given the preventative and stabilising role they play.

But equally important is strategy.  We cannot go it alone in the world. We must decide whether we’re willing to remain reliant on a volatile United States for our security and prosperity, whether we forge alliances with other ‘middle powers’ in the way that Mark Carney suggests, or whether we double down on our relationship with Europe, which I personally think is our best bet. We must decide what our red lines are in our diplomatic and economic relationship with China, particularly for domestic industries like car manufacturing where cheap Chinese alternatives flood our market.

While it’s easy to jump to the alliances of foreign policy, we must also be clear about the values that guide us. Clause IV of the Labour Party’s Constitution sets a clear ambition, to “secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all.” Yvette Cooper is dogged in her commitment to ending violence against women and girls. But our values should be woven through all our foreign policy, from tackling the threat to our democratic freedoms from misinformation, to standing with people in the world’s worst humanitarian crises. In this sense, despite the challenges we face, our international agenda can also be a hopeful one.

Advertisement

One final point is important. Foreign affairs isn’t just the concern of government; it’s the concern of all of us.  On defence, we must work at pace to build public and political understanding of the threats we face the need to keep ourselves safe. In Estonia, every high school kid now learns about defence and security, and thousands of people are being trained in how to use drones as part of a national civilian preparedness strategy. We too need a strategy for society-wide resilience if the threats to our security worsen.

But there is also opportunity for our communities in foreign affairs. Whether it’s the trade deals that generate opportunity for small businesses, the rallying of community groups around Ukrainian refugees, or the work, study and travel made possible by a closer relationship with the EU, foreign policy offers hope too.

Source link

EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey — Before the World Cup began, New York and New Jersey unveiled competing transportation plans.

After several matches, $20 shuttle buses subsidized by New York keep selling out, but $98 New Jersey Transit train trips don’t.

Now New Jersey Transit is poised to lose millions during the tournament, blaming the revenue shortfall on lower-than-expected demand caused in part by the cheaper options. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has suggested maybe that is because of the sticker shock fans face to get on New Jersey trains and buses — an observation sure to rub salt in Jersey’s wounds.

The tensions are just the latest manifestation of a dysfunctional relationship between the two jurisdictions that comprise what FIFA calls “New York New Jersey,” where England and Panama will face off today in their final group-stage match.

After the tournament’s first game at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium — between Brazil and Morocco on June 13 — lines swelled in the parking lot for New York-run buses back to Manhattan. Worried about a crowd stuck at MetLife, the New Jersey State Police asked New Jersey’s state-run transit agency to carry some of the waiting fans instead.

New Jersey Transit had room for 40,000 people but only about 22,000 customers that night. It had spent months on a plan that was moving people quickly and did not want to suddenly upend it with an unexpected surge in passengers on its trains and buses. The agency fears a repeat of the 2014 Super Bowl, in which overcrowding left fans in the same stadium’s parking lot for hours and stained the agency’s reputation for years.

Kris Kolluri, the head of New Jersey Transit, said the bistate host committee, the New Jersey governor’s office and the State Police all decided that the transit agency would move thousands of people after 90 minutes, if needed. By then, however, the lines had calmed on their own.

The asphalt standoff stemmed in part from the cross-Hudson divide over pricing.

The border states separated by the Hudson River are symbiotic — New York companies depend on workers commuting from New Jersey suburbs — and also apt to squabble over everything from how to deal with the mob and fight wildfires to what state Ellis Island is in.

Perhaps over no issue do they bicker more than transportation. Unlike other regions that have a unified transit system, the New York City metropolitan area has three public transit agencies. The states have fought over tolls (a New Jersey governor once threatened a “nuclear option” when New York created new ones), how to split the check for big infrastructure projects and how to staff their bistate Port Authority.

“Transportation is too important for any mayor or governor to give up power to any other mayor or governor,” said Mitchell Moss, a longtime New York City urban planning adviser who is also a professor at New York University.

Things went more smoothly at MetLife following a French win over Senegal and despite a deluge before and after another Senegal loss at MetLife to Norway. After the Norway win, the first New Jersey Transit train got to Penn Station in 35 minutes. The average shuttle bus back to Manhattan took 45 minutes or less.

But there continued to be a behind-the-scenes back and forth over whether New Jersey Transit should lower its prices to get more people aboard.

For fans from the world who don’t immediately come to the region and begin following local politicians, transit planners or local gadflies on X, much of the back and forth is invisible. Yet consequences of two states that don’t see eye to eye are affecting how they come and go from the eight matches, including the July 19 final.

As soon as New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration in April unveiled plans to charge fans $150 for a roundtrip ticket to the World Cup, Hochul worried it would throw “cold water” on the tournament and helped create a competing $20 shuttle bus.

Sherrill cut the price to $98, but that’s still higher than any other public transit system, and now New Jersey Transit trains are only two-thirds full. Her administration quietly blames the low-cost shuttle buses for siphoning away customers.

Allies of both governors have framed the opposite approaches as affordability-minded: Hochul wants a low price to signal that New York is welcoming the world. Sherrill wants the high price to cover the cost of providing a special service, and to prevent her voters from subsidizing trips for out-of-town fans to an event few locals can afford to attend.

In the real world, the cheaper bus tickets are selling out, while New York officials remain concerned New Jersey Transit’s high prices mean it isn’t carrying its load. New Jersey Transit, on the other hand, is proud of a smooth-running operation, which Sherrill has described as “the best option” for getting to matches.

Bistate tensions over transportation planning predate Sherrill and Hochul, but aren’t inevitable. Both Democrats only a few months ago worked together to restart construction on a new train tunnel between the states that President Donald Trump cut off funding for. But ongoing fighting could represent challenges for other bistate ventures, like a long-awaited overhaul of New York’s Penn Station on which the states will be asked to cooperate.

Source link

Alert readers will have found it hard not to notice that Wings is currently focused on trying to solve one mystery above all others: why nobody in Scotland has been prosecuted for a massive theft of hundreds of thousands of pounds, which happened in open sight, beyond any dispute, and has been openly admitted by someone who was there at the time.

Until this week, nobody in the two organisations responsible for criminal prosecutions in the country – Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (the Crown Office or COPFS for short) had issued any sort of explanation why the original Operation Branchform investigation apparently fell by the wayside when it led police to discover a second crime: that of embezzlement against the SNP by its then-Chief Executive, Peter Murrell.

But this week, with very little fanfare, the BBC quietly put out two extended interviews with senior representatives of those organisations, seemingly the unused footage from their half-hour televised documentary “Peter Murrell: The Man With The Money”.

The first was with Police Scotland’s Deputy Chief Constable, Stuart Houston.

Advertisement

?

The second was with the shadowy figure of John Logue, a Crown Agent at COPFS.

?

You can watch them in their entirety above, although we don’t particularly recommend it – they’re both pretty dull, and largely concerned with the embezzlement case, about which they provide no dramatic new revelations.

Advertisement

But both also touch on (the lack of) prosecutions over the original complaint. So what happened when the BBC’s Glenn Campbell brought the subject up?

?

Campbell admirably persists for several minutes, but Houston refuses to be drawn on any sort of answer other than that Police Scotland passed the question on to COPFS for “advice and guidance”, and when given several opportunities to confirm Sturgeon’s claim that she was “completely exonerated” by his force, steadfastly refuses to say whether the police wanted a prosecution or not.

Now without wishing to be rude to DCC Houston, much of what he says is barely in comprehensible English sentences, so let’s get it down in writing and tidy up all the ums and emms and ehs and see what it looks like.

Advertisement

GLENN CAMPBELL: Why was Nicola Sturgeon not reported for prosecution?

STUART HOUSTON: So again, part of the police investigation we’ve commented upon that Nicola Sturgeon was subject to arrest and interview during the investigation, as was Colin Beattie. The circumstances of those arrests, the information that the police held was all subject of [an] Advice And Guidance Report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, where it was laid out what their involvement or what their position was in relation to any crime. And –

GC: Did she do anything wrong?

SH: The police, you know, and I suppose for me to say that we report the circumstances to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service [to] allow them to make the decision whether someone is prosecuted. For us, we put in the circumstances to allow them to make an informed decision –

GC: You didn’t recommend prosecution in her case?

Advertisement

SH: We didn’t make any recommendations to prosecute or otherwise, our role is to report the circumstances.

GC: Well, the Crown are very clear that they accepted your recommendation that there was not enough evidence for a prosecution. Is that correct?

SH: So, our our role is to report all the circumstances to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in relation to everything that’s happened. You know, whether that be any investigation and not necessarily unique to this inquiry. We then seek advice and guidance what way they think that that should go. It is their decision in relation to the prosecution of cases.

GC: Were you happy to leave it at that?

Advertisement

SH: Again, we we act and work in conjunction with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and we have to do that, and the fact is that we are there to act on their behalf to carry out investigations, and it’s essential that we work together and reach agreement on certain things to make sure how we take things forward, whether about progressing to get warrants etc.

So as I say we report the circumstances and again it is for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to assess that as well and provide any advice and direction.

GC: And just one last thing on that – were you in agreement with the Crown that there was no case to pursue that might lead to a prosecution?

SH: So again, our line was very much “Here is all the evidence that we have collated as much as we could find”. Our job is not to to have that final decision. Our job –

Advertisement

GC: But hang on a minute – in the case of Peter Murrell, you’re sending in a report saying that this guy’s committed a crime and should be prosecuted. I recognize that it was a different type of report that you sent in in relation to Nicola Sturgeon, but therefore can we conclude that you did not think there was the evidence there for her to be prosecuted or for further inquiries to be made?

SH: So I think to to distinguish between the two types of report is in the fact is of Peter Murrell there is a Standard Prosecution Report to say we have carried out an investigation and we can have evidence of certain offenses that we put forward.

An Advice And Guidance Report is that – the word is in it – is the fact is “here’s the circumstances that we’ve uncovered. We’re seeking your advice and guidance on where we go next” and that’s really important, and the fact is in those occasions where there is a circumstance that you need to examine, that’s for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to give us advice on where we go next.

GC: Would you be happy for that report, that advice and guidance file that you sent into the Crown, to be published?

Advertisement

SH: Again, I think that’s something that we need to be very mindful of the fact is that that is a lot of information. Some of that is sensitive information regarding other individuals. And again, that is a report that is shared between the police and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service –

GC: You’re not saying no.

SH: That wouldn’t be a matter for the police to release that that information.

GC: But would you be comfortable if eventually that was put into the public do?

Advertisement

SH: That [wouldn’t] be a matter for us. We’ve delivered that to the Crown Office and any release of information for that would be a matter for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

Now, frankly that’s still pretty much just burbling word salad, but one theme does come across loud and clear:

“Not us, guv, you don’t wanna be asking us, ask the Crown Office, it’s all on them. We’re just evidence-gatherers, the Crown Office makes the decisions”.

In that short clip alone, DCC Houston mentions COPFS no fewer than eight times in nine answers. He couldn’t be any clearer where he wants us to look for accountability.

Advertisement

So what happened when Campbell DID go and ask the COPFS man?

?

John Logue (or as we believe he’s known to all his homies in the ghetto, J-Logue) is a rather more eloquent speaker than DCC Houston. But his theme is remarkably similar to the police officer’s:

“It weren’t me, guv, the police didn’t want to prosecute and we just agreed with them. They decided it. Not us. Them.”

Advertisement

He mentions the police 12 times in his answers, almost all asserting that the police had made a decision – something we’ve just watched the police unequivocally deny.

Again, here it is in text form:

GLENN CAMPBELL: Why no prosecution of Nicola Sturgeon?

JOHN LOGUE: There was no prosecution because the police came to the conclusion that while they had reported Peter Murrell to us for consideration of prosecution, the police came to the conclusion that before they would submit any report, they would check with us as prosecutors, which is a normal thing that happens in any other case, whether they had enough evidence to prosecute.

And it was clear, I think, to the police that if they had had enough evidence in their eyes to prosecute, then they would have reported Nicola Sturgeon. There would have been no reason not to having reported Peter Murrell. But their investigation in relation to Nicola Sturgeon reached a point where they felt the right thing to do was to check with us as the prosecutors whether there was enough.

Advertisement

And we looked at it and we agreed with their assessment that there was not enough evidence to report Nicola Sturgeon to us for prosecution. And so that police assessment was entirely correct.

GC: As you mentioned, you have a power of direction. Um, did you ask them to go and do more work on her?

JL: So, in looking at that evidence that they had investigated, our conclusion was we couldn’t see any further reasonable lines of inquiry that would allow you to develop and build the case.

So, that was an obvious point that we considered, but our conclusion was there didn’t appear to be anything else that could be done. And therefore the police assessment that they did not have enough to report Nicola Sturgeon to the prosecutor was an appropriate decision.

Advertisement

GC: So that’s not to say there was no evidence but insufficient evidence to develop into a prosecution.

JL: Well, we have to be very careful what we’re talking about when we talk about evidence because when you talk about evidence that doesn’t necessarily mean evidence of someone’s wrongdoing.

It can be evidence particularly in a case like this of the surrounding circumstances of what were the arrangements for the management of the funds within the SNP. Did Nicola Sturgeon have knowledge of how those funds were being used? Didn’t Nicola Sturgeon know that things that were being purchased were being purchased with SNP funds?

So you look at the evidence in the totality and we’re very careful when we say there was insufficient evidence.

Advertisement

That doesn’t mean there is always evidence that you’re looking at because you’re looking at these financial circumstances within an organisation.

But I want to be very clear that people shouldn’t read into that that there’s any sense of a quantity of incriminating evidence, but it just wasn’t enough. That’s not the way we look at it.

We look at the evidence in the round and some evidence can be incriminating, some evidence can be exculpatory. And our job as prosecutors is to look at it in its totality and reach a conclusion about could we persuade a jury to convict someone according to the normal procedures and laws in Scotland.

GC: So in her particular case, you didn’t think she knew what was going on.

Advertisement

JL: We thought the police were correct in their assessment that there was not sufficient evidence to report it to the prosecutor for the question of prosecution.

The reason I’m being quite careful about that is there are important legal differences. So this was not a case where the prosecutor decided not to prosecute having had a report from the police. That’s a very different type of decision and has different legal consequences.

So that’s why I think it’s important given the public interest in the issue to be as clear as possible that this was a case where no report was sent to the prosecutor and our view having looked at what the police had done was that that was the correct thing for the police to do.

GC: Why did it take seven months to reach that decision?

Advertisement

JL: Because of what I’ve explained about the need to look through the type of evidence that I’ve talked about. You’re talking about really complex financial records. Some pieces of evidence had tens of thousands of pages of files with many many lines of transactions.

GC: Not in her case, right?

JL: No, but the evidence was looked at together. We were looking at the question of the evidence against Peter Murrell and at the same time we were considering whether the police had reached the right conclusion in relation to Nicola Sturgeon.

And the other reason I think you’ve got to remember why this took time was the documents didn’t all easily match up. This wasn’t a financial case where you could easily get one set of records, get a second set of records and fit them together and they were a complete match because of what we could show Peter Murrell had done to change and alter the way in which the transactions were being recorded in the SNP. Nothing matched.

Advertisement

And so it takes time then you’ve got to really unpick all the records that are there which have for example reasons against them which turn out not to be true. And so you can’t just easily find a corresponding entry in each system.

GC: So is it reasonable for Nicola Sturgeon to say that she was cleared as a result of all this investigatory work that she was exonerated? Is that reasonable for her to say?

JL: All I can say is that Nicola Sturgeon was not reported to the prosecutor in Scotland by the police for consideration of prosecution. How anyone else chooses to characterize that, I have to leave it to them.

But my view of it is she was not reported to the prosecutor in Scotland for consideration of prosecution because the police took a view on the evidence that had come from their investigation and our view was that that was correct.

Advertisement

GC: Did Nicola Sturgeon fully cooperate with the police and the Crown in their inquiries?

JL: Nicola Sturgeon was interviewed by the police and after the interview provided information through her solicitor.

GC: Was that sufficient — that statement that she gave after her no comment interview?

JL: The statement was an explanation of her position and we were able to take that account into our assessment of the evidence and it didn’t materially change in one way or another the conclusion that we reached.

Advertisement

So what have we just learned? Basically it goes like this:

POLICE SCOTLAND: Here is all our evidence on Nicola Sturgeon. Please give us some advice and guidance on what to do next.

COPFS: We agree with your decision that we shouldn’t prosecute her.

POLICE: But that’s not what we said. We said we didn’t know what to do, and we asked you for advice and guidance.

COPFS: Our advice and guidance is that we agree with you.

Advertisement

POLICE: Agree with what? We asked you a question.

COPFS: Yes, we agree with your decision.

And so on, back and forth, ad infinitum. Ping follows pong follows ping follows pong. Neither man actually makes explicit reference to the disappearing fundraiser money, and Logue in particular keeps subtly trying to steer things back towards the separate crime of Murrell’s embezzlement.

Note this passage:

Advertisement

“Did Nicola Sturgeon have knowledge of how those funds were being used? Didn’t Nicola Sturgeon know that things that were being purchased were being purchased with SNP funds?”

That only makes sense with regard to the embezzlement. It is, plainly, ludicrous to suggest that the leader of the SNP wouldn’t know that SNP resources were being spent on what John Swinney described as the “ongoing activities” of the party.

Why, indeed, would anyone even attempt to hide that from her? “SNP spends SNP money on legitimate SNP activities” isn’t any sort of crime.

The problem, of course, and the trigger for there having been an investigation in the first place, was that this money expressly and explicitly WASN’T supposed to be spent on the normal “ongoing activities” of the party.

And in those circumstances it IS a crime. Sturgeon insisted there was no missing money, so she must have known that it had been spent intentionally, even if she didn’t know Murrell had diverted some of it into exotic tableware for her house rather than election leaflets.

Advertisement

?

So we have incontrovertible evidence of TWO crimes, only one of them dealt with, and the other being one that Sturgeon MUST have been up to her neck in.

But after 70 minutes of video from the two men whose job it was to decide who got prosecuted, we’re still absolutely none the wiser as to why she didn’t face charges, and indeed didn’t even have to face any proper questioning. We haven’t seen the report, and Sturgeon hasn’t produced the list of written answers she sent the police, despite saying she’d be happy to publish it, but it’s up to her lawyer.

Everyone’s batting the ball to everyone else, saying THEY’VE got the answers, and that we all need to stop asking, and that they’ll be making no further comment.

Advertisement

?

But we promise you this, readers: the questions are never going to stop. And unlike the SNP, we keep our promises.

Source link

The post The NHS is systematically failing mothers and babies appeared first on spiked.

Source link