Team USA fell to Belgium in the round of 16 at the 2026 FIFA World Cup after coming out flat in a 4-1 loss Monday night. After an impressive tournament start, winning two of their group stage games and dominating in their opening knockout stage match against Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0, the United States Men’s National Team (USMNT) suffered a blowout loss in Seattle to Belgium. The return of Folarin Balogun after his controversial red card, which FIFA suspended, and Belgium’s appeal fell flat was not enough as Team USA struggled to generate enough offense to advance to their first quarterfinal since 2002. Favorites to advance, Belgium put the United States on its heels early when Charles De Ketelaere scored from point blank range in the ninth minute of play after the USMNT struggled to clear the ball from their own box. This was the story of the first half, as Belgium was winning the race to every ball. After earning a free kick from just outside the penalty box, Malik Tillman scored in his second straight game. His shot bounced off a Belgian defender’s head and landed in the back of the net in the 31st minute, tying the game at one apiece. MALIK TILLMAN FORCES THE EQUALIZER FOR THE @USMNT

Notorious anti-Trump singer Bruce Springsteen claims that criticizing President Trump actually makes him a patriot. “I believe in critical patriotism,” the New Jersey-based entertainer said during his recent PBS special, “Bruce Springsteen: Finding America in Song.” He added, “I believe that’s the definition of a patriot, you know, that you love your country so much that you are willing to look at it clearly, recognize its faults, encourage it to be a better place, and believe that you carry in your heart the country that is waiting.” Springsteen recently ended his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour, which was filled with political protest and Trump-bashing galore, as The Daily Wire previously reported. The far-left singer, 76, made endless political statements during the tour, both on and off the stage. “There’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous sh*t going on out there right now,” he said during his Manchester stop. “In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death.” On the topic of the Trump administration targeting illegal aliens for deportation, Springsteen said, “They are removing residents off American streets and without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons.” “In my country they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society,” the singer said at another point. “They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.” But Trump has not accepted the criticism in silence. Recently, the president made his opinion known, calling for a MAGA boycott against Springsteen and his shows. “Bad, and very boring singer, Bruce Springsteen, who looks like a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon, has long had a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS,” the president wrote, echoing what many on social media were saying. “The guy is a total loser who spews hate against a President who won a Landslide Election, including the popular vote, all Seven Swing States, and 86% of the Counties across America.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is looking to deport an illegal immigrant semi-truck driver who allegedly killed a Pennsylvania State Trooper in a devastating crash. Haitian national Michael Bon allegedly struck and killed Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Pahira Jr., 44, while he was inspecting a vehicle on the shoulder of Interstate 81 in Cass Township last Wednesday morning. ICE has since filed a detainer asking local authorities to hand Bon over for deportation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Monday. Bon allegedly struck Pahira and dragged him under the truck “for quite some distance down the road” as it caught fire, Lieutenant Colonel George Bivens said during a recent press conference. Both vehicles burst into flames at the scene of the collision. Pahira later succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. The 20-year state police veteran had just moved back in with his parents to care for his mother, who is battling cancer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said during the press conference. “The man died a hero,” Bivens said. “He was an outstanding trooper, an excellent motor carrier enforcement officer … had been doing it for a number of years and was considered to be one of our best.”   Pennsylvania State Police The Biden administration released Bon into the United States in July 2024 under its signature humanitarian parole program that allowed certain migrants to fly directly to the United States to bypass the border, according to Fox News. He later applied for Temporary Protected Status, but was denied the deportation shield, DHS said. Federal authorities terminated Bon’s parole status in June 2025, ordering him to leave the United States, according to Fox News. Still, Bon remained. He obtained a Massachusetts commercial driver’s license in March 2025, which was renewed in February 2026, Fox News reported. “This Haitian illegal alien was RELEASED into our country by the Biden Administration, and the sanctuary state of Massachusetts gave him a Commercial Driver’s License,” Acting Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement Monday. “Now, because of these reckless policies, a Pennsylvania State Trooper is dead after a crash that was 100% preventable. Illegal aliens should not be driving trucks on America’s highways. Our hearts and prayers go out to his family and the Pennsylvania State Police as they mourn this loss,” Bis added. Authorities charged Bon with vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter, according to CBS Pittsburgh. He is being held on $700,000 bail at Schuylkill County Prison, according to Fox News. Following a series of recent crashes involving illegal immigrant truckers, the Trump administration has tightened restrictions on the issuance of commercial driver’s licenses. Among those actions, the Department of Transportation has pushed to enforce English language requirements for truckers and has threatened to withhold federal funding from states issuing licenses to illegal aliens. “These senseless tragedies are why I am working my heart out to change the policies that encouraged illegal drivers, enabled shady trucker schools, and drove down the wages for American truckers,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an X post after the latest fatal crash. “Trooper Pahira — Rest in peace,” he added.

When the Supreme Court overturned President Donald Trump’s executive order last week, it held that the Fourteenth Amendment affords citizenship to all persons born on U.S. soil — including those born through birth tourism schemes. It is one of the court’s most unpopular decisions in recent years, with Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent questioning whether it will stand the test of time. One underreported aspect of this issue, however, is an obvious but (until recently) largely unknown consequence of birthright citizenship: a thriving, cross-border commercial surrogacy industry. Without congressional action, women and children remain vulnerable to exploitation through lucrative birth tourism schemes. Foreign nationals are taking advantage of the U.S.’s permissive surrogacy laws, advanced technology, and birthright citizenship to have anchor babies to whom they may or may not be biologically related. And where do the plurality of such foreigners come from? China. This is perhaps why President Trump congratulated “President Xi, and the Great Country of China, on their massive Birthright Citizenship WIN,” on X — because it certainly wasn’t a win for American sovereignty or vulnerable women and children. As the Center for Bioethics and Culture said in a press release, Although the Court framed its decision as an exercise in constitutional interpretation, the ruling fails to engage substantively with the empirical realities at the center of the controversy: women and children are being systematically exploited by actors who manipulate U.S. immigration law for commercial profit, citizenship acquisition, and immigration advantage… Women in the United States should not be reduced to vehicles for the procurement of citizenship. Children should never be treated as legal instruments, commodities, or expedients for evading immigration law. And the industry is only growing. A January 2024 report found that surrogacy cycles for international intended parents increased 78% between 2014 and 2019, with Chinese nationals accounting for 41.7% of foreign buyers.  Lax U.S. laws allow foreign nationals to outsource nearly every step of reproduction within our borders. The resulting child receives a U.S. birth certificate, Social Security number, and passport, even when neither parent is a citizen and the child is raised abroad from birth. At 21, he can petition to bring his parents and siblings to America. At 35, he can run for president of the United States.  This isn’t a hypothetical reality. Within days of President Trump’s original executive order, the agency Surrogate First promised legal workarounds, admitting that “the certainty of their child obtaining U.S. citizenship at birth is a significant factor” for international clients. Another agency pitched surrogacy as a “cheaper alternative than an EB-5 visa.” The co-founder of one California agency told NPR that dual nationality would be “a win-win situation for your children,” while a fellow agent admitted many of her clients were “high-level Communist Party officials and celebrities” seeking American citizenship for their children. The consequences are already on display. In Arcadia, California, authorities discovered 21 surrogate-born children — discovered after an infant suffered severe head trauma — in the home of a former CCP official with ties to gambling, immigration fraud, and smuggling operations. Or consider Xu Bo, a Chinese national with dynastic ambitions who has 100 children and counting through American surrogates.  With more than 107 Chinese-owned surrogacy agencies operating in Southern California alone, some with locations listed in mainland China or with Mandarin-only marketing, it is clear that birth tourism fuels a lucrative market selling children and citizenship to foreign buyers.  Beyond the citizenship abuses and national security risks, surrogacy itself presents an irreconcilable injustice to the mother and child. Given the lack of background checks, home visits, and best-interest-of-the-child assessments, children and their surrogate mothers pay the price. Take for example the stories of Melissa Cook and Brittney Pearson. In Cook’s case, she was horrified to learn that the triplets she carried through a surrogacy agreement were going to a single purchasing father who turned out to be partially deaf, under-employed, and living with a history of poor mental health — allegedly in the form of abusing pets and pulling out his own hair. He requested that she abort one of the babies, and when she refused, he pursued legal action. He remains the legal father of the three children to this day. For Pearson, she delayed her own lifesaving care after receiving a cancer diagnosis halfway through her surrogacy pregnancy. When the purchasing parents — a same-sex couple — found out the child might have health complications from his premature birth and incur additional NICU fees, they asked her to have an abortion. She refused, but in the end, they denied the child life-saving care, and the child died not long after birth. Likewise, gay men with records of pedophilic comments, child sexual abuse material, or sex offenses have repeatedly purchased babies through surrogacy. A basic adoption screening would likely reject each of these men, and yet they had no issue with surrogacy. And those are just the ones we know about. Once the child is born, the payment clears, and the paperwork comes in, no one knows what happens to these children: Do they go to loving homes, or do they suffer abuse, neglect, or labor and/or sexual exploitation? Do they act as pawns in foreign infiltration schemes? We have no idea. Unlike adoption, surrogacy involves the intentional creation of children who will be severed from their birth mothers and, at times, their biological mothers (egg donors) to fulfill another adult’s desire for parenthood. Second, strict adoption laws ensure that no parent pays a woman for her child. In surrogacy, this lucrative payment is the basis of the agreement. Indeed, the only difference between a legitimate surrogacy contract and baby selling is the timing of the contract. As legal scholar Anthony Sirven has argued, for a surrogacy contract to be enforceable, courts must treat the children themselves as property, as “something less than full persons” in which adults can hold an ownership interest. That is precisely what the Thirteenth Amendment was written to outlaw and what the Fourteenth was written to repair. Law professor Adeline Allen presses the point further: The industry’s claim that a surrogate sells only the services of gestation, not the child, is “disturbingly similar” to the argument of 19th-century slaveholders, who insisted they trafficked not in human beings but in their labor.  The Reconstruction Amendments abolished that logic. Surrogacy contracts resurrect it, and the Supreme Court’s ruling now rewards it with citizenship. As Congress and the administration scramble to craft a viable pathway to correct the Supreme Court’s error, they must keep in mind the most pervasive example of surrogacy birth tourism abuse enabled by birthright citizenship.  Florida enacted a law to prohibit foreign nationals from contracting with surrogacy agencies and mothers in the state, mirroring federal legislation introduced by Senator Rick Scott and a separate bill by Congressman Scott Perry. As most developed nations have already done, Congress can unilaterally prohibit foreign nationals from contracting with American surrogates or agencies. Likewise, lawmakers can amend requirements to deny anyone a visa who is traveling to the U.S. for the purpose of having or picking up a child born via surrogacy.  The Fourteenth Amendment was written so that no person born on American soil could ever again be treated as property. We owe its authors — and these children — better than this. *** Emma Waters is a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation and the author of the book “Lead Like Jael: Seven Timeless Principles for Today’s Women of Faith” and host of the new podcast Rethinking Fertility.  This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

According to a bombshell claim from Maine Wire Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson, protective measures have been beefed up for people worried about revenge from supporters of Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner. NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich amplified Robinson’s report that certain Mainers are on edge over what he dubbed “Platneristas,” writing, “Security has been increased among certain people in Maine who are afraid of who he called ‘Platneristas’ and Platner, especially given his past and statements about violence.” @SteveRob reports security has been increased among certain people in Maine who are afraid of who he called “Platneristas” and Platner, especially given his past and statements about violence — Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 6, 2026 The Maine Wire itself vouched for the claim, insisting on social media that the account was accurate. This is 100% true https://t.co/68yZgQQtq0 — The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) July 6, 2026 Robinson doubled down by explaining that Platner didn’t just dabble in firearms circles — he allegedly built and ran a paramilitary-style outfit stocked with hard-Left radicals. The guy started and trained a paramilitary org filled with left-wing extremists and revolutionaries. https://t.co/7bZCBLvaBH — Steve Robinson (@SteveRob) July 7, 2026 That accusation traces back to Robinson’s own reporting from last October, when he first revealed that Platner — a Marine-turned-oyster farmer — had personally drilled members of the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA) in gun handling. Robinson built on that scoop, writing of Platner: Posting under the Reddit handle “P-Hustle,” he wrote in August 2020 that his chapter ran “lots of range days, firearms education classes,” that he’d “just put on a defensive handgun course two weekends ago,” and that the group ran monthly introductory courses plus “more advanced classes for experienced members.” In a separate post, he recruited a Mainer to the chapter directly: “We’re quite active.” On X, the far left gun club posted images from multiple training sessions showcasing members with blurred faces and an arsenal of firearms. The SRA blurs faces in the photographs, but some were insufficiently blurred — including a red-haired, red-bearded man matching Platner. Platner “was teaching actual paramilitary tactics to an explicitly political, far-Left organization,” Robinson reported. Robinson also pointed out a political irony: a bill cracking down on paramilitary-style firearms instruction sailed through Maine’s Legislature in 2024, championed by Democratic state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Congress in this year’s primary. Robinson noted that the law was framed around fears of Right-wing militias, even as Platner was overseeing the kind of training the statute was designed to outlaw.