The installation was targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles during the Epic Fury operation, but the threat posed by drones is even more plausible for the island outpost, especially at this extremely tense time as the standoff between the U.S. and Iran grinds on.
“We are aware of reported sightings of drones (UAS) over Diego Garcia,” the U.K. Defense Ministry (MoD) told us Monday morning. “We are unable to provide any details about a situation which may affect the security or operation of the joint U.K.-U.S. base on Diego Garcia.”
“The U.S. and U.K. Commanding Officers on Diego Garcia consider and implement appropriate measures to ensure the security and safety of the base and the safety of the personnel on the island,” MoD added.
U.S. officials were less forthcoming.
“As a matter of operational security, we do not discuss specific force protection measures or security procedures at U.S. military installations,” an official from U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) told us on Friday. “We remain vigilant in protecting U.S. personnel and facilities.”
Diego Garcia. (Google Earth)
Neither MoD nor PACOM would say what kinds of drones were sighted, when they were sighted, who was operating them or what, if any, defensive measures were taken as a result. Both military organizations were responding to our questions about an Aug. 7 posting on the Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page, an unofficial social media channel that posts about service topics.
“Inbox: ‘Diego Garcia. Drones spotted near fuel farm. Base on 0700 to 1900 curfew until further notice’ Note: message us if you have further information, thanks,” the post read.
(Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook)
On Sunday, the page published a second post on the topic titled “Diego Garcia Curfew reportedly due to Drone Threats.” The post displayed what the page purported to be an official listing of curfew times for various locations around the installation.
(Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook)
We cannot independently confirm the accuracy of these posts and have reached out to MoD and PACOM for details. MoD did not specify who reported the drone sightings over Diego Garcia, so we have asked for clarification. Making this an even more unusual event, Diego Garcia is essentially a closed island with no significant general population or tourists around to be operating drones on a recreational basis. So seeing one or more over the base would certainly raise alarms.
Though Diego Garcia is about 1,000 miles from Sri Lanka, the nearest large landmass, its remote location does not rule out the possibility of drone incursions by an adversary.
Diego Garcia (Google Earth)
During the run-up to the launch of the Epic Fury operation against Iran, the FBI sent out an alert warning about the possibility of an Iranian drone attack on targets in California using uncrewed aircraft launched from ships off the coast. Though the alert was based on raw, unverified intelligence, and was sent out of an abundance of caution rather than any fears of an imminent action, the overall threat of drone attacks from ships is very real. You can read our feature about this very real threat vector and its relation to that questionable intelligence release here.
FBI
Generally speaking, there are long-standing concerns that Iran and/or other actors operating on its behalf could seek to launch asymmetric attacks on targets in the United States, as well as elsewhere outside of the Middle East, in retaliation for large-scale strikes or even in an unprovoked manner. The risks of Iranians deciding to take such action have historically been seen as especially high in any scenario where there might be an existential threat to the regime in Tehran.
There were enough concerns about an Iranian attack on Diego Garcia that F-16s were deployed there in February, before the war erupted, for protection primarily against one-way attack drones and cruise missiles.F-15Es were first deployed to Diego Garcia for this same purpose last year, in what appeared to be a first of its kind force protection change. As noted earlier, Iran clearly sees the installation as a top target, as it has long been something of a refuge for U.S. forces to fallback from the Middle East from, if need be. Iran subsequently launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia during Epic Fury; however, neither struck the base.
The threat from drones launched by ships is not just limited to Iran. Russia is suspected of sending drones over key European military installations from vessels.
Long-range one-way attack drones with endurance measured in many hundreds of miles, if not more than a thousand miles, are increasingly a staple in military arsenals globally, and have also been proliferating to non-state actors. Yet the drone threat isn’t just limited to these kinds of weapons for remote locales like islands. Ukraine has carried out devastating attacks on Russian radars and other targets on Crimea and elsewhere using short-range aerial drones launched by uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). This same capability set is proliferating around the globe, allowing for the USV to work as a relatively low-cost delivery system for highly precise and relatively inexpensive short-range drones that can then execute near-field attacks. The U.S. and others are also developing similar capabilities for its submarines and future uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs), which could even more easily sneak into close proximity to targets ashore before launching their deadly drone munitions.
The following video shows a Ukrainian USV launching drones against Russian targets:
As we noted earlier in this story, the claims about drone sightings over Diego Garcia rekindle concerns that the U.S. is not doing enough to protect its aviation assets. This situation is another data point in the already heated debate over whether the U.S. military should be investing more in new hardened aircraft shelters and other base infrastructure amid rapidly evolving standoff aerial attack threats.
#exclusive – RAAF Base Williamtown – home to Australia’s F-35A stealth fighters – has been exposed as vulnerable after drones repeatedly breached its restricted airspace unchallenged ➡️ https://t.co/cgniuMAUYv
The reports of drones over Diego Garcia are certainly very concerning, although we do not know anything more about them at this time. Above all else, they are a reminder that the threat this very diverse group of systems and their potential delivery systems presents is only becoming more troublesome and complex as time goes on.
In the summer of 2020, the year “Ted Lasso” debuted on Apple TV, the largest audience for a televised soccer match in the U.S. was 1.7 million. Shortly before the soccer-based sitcom returned for a fourth season last Wednesday, nearly 63 million viewers in the U.S. watched the World Cup final.
Brendan Hunt, the actor who plays Lasso’s loyal sidekick Coach Beard in the series, can’t prove the show is responsible for that growth. But since he can’t disprove it either, he’ll just go with the flow.
“I would love it if we’ve had a role at all,” he said. “If we are a pebble in that avalanche, then I’m happy.”
What the Emmy-winning series has undeniably done is bring soccer into millions of unsuspecting households that had previously avoided the sport like a plague. So while Jason Sudeikis, the star and co-creator, alongside Hunt, of “Ted Lasso,” insists the show is not about soccer, the sport sure gets a lot of screen time. And that has made the game more palatable and popular for a public that can now relate to it.
“We tricked them by putting soccer in a comedy show,” Hunt said. “The first thing you’ve got to do to get somebody to become a soccer fan is just make them care about one team, to find one team.
“In this instance we’ve made them care about this fictional team and that easily can transmute, if you’re not careful, into caring about other teams. And then hopefully the sport itself.”
After a three-year hiatus, “Lasso” returned for Season 4 last week with the series’ eponymous title character, played by Sudeikis, returning to Richmond to coach a fledgling second-division women’s team. Hunt’s understated character makes his first appearance of the season in Episode 2 Wednesday.
“He is clearly going through something,” Hunt said. “Is it just what happens to Beard when he’s away from Ted for too long or is there something important that has happened? We’ll find out before too long.”
Speaking of having gone through something, Hunt, who plays a fictional coach for a fictional team, spent the first part of his summer being a very real journalist at a very real tournament, attending 14 World Cup games in more than half a dozen stadiums — including the Spain-France semifinal in Arlington, Texas, which he watched from the press box, and the Spain-Argentina final, part of which he watched from field level.
“That was a really cool experience,” said Hunt, who did a World Cup podcast with Rebecca Lowe, the studio host of Fox’s tournament coverage.
But for Hunt, 54, the most passionate soccer fan among the writers and actors on “Ted Lasso,” the sport was an acquired taste. Half a lifetime ago, Hunt was a die-hard Chicago Bears fan working in residence with an improv group at a small, aging theater in Amsterdam when he got swept up in Dutch soccer culture.
Eventually, he said, he was contributing weekly columns to Sp!ts, a free commuter newspaper in Amsterdam, chronicling his growing infatuation with the sport. When Sudeikis, another Midwesterner, joined the comedy troupe, Hunt began proselytizing about the sport, using PlayStation games to draw in Sudeikis.
“I found a secret that I had to tell everybody,” Hunt said. “When Jason came to Amsterdam, by that point I was fully a zealot. It was like a new recipe. ‘This thing is great!’
“I’ve been doing it ever since. I just have a slightly larger platform from which to do it.”
That platform is “Ted Lasso,” based around a soft-drawling college football coach, and Beard, his quiet but intense assistant. The concept debuted in a 2013 promo for NBC’s coverage of the English Premier League, then launched as a full-blown sitcom during the angst and fear of the coronavirus pandemic seven years later.
The series, with its message of optimism, kindness and patience and its call to “be curious, not judgmental” — a sentiment Lasso mistakenly credits to Walt Whitman — proved to be the perfect tonic for those trying times. Before it paused after Season 3, it had become the most-watched original streaming series across all platforms and the first Apple TV show to cross the billion-minute mark in a single tracking week.
But in addition to all the messaging and positivity, the show also included soccer. The offside rule and promotion and relegation are the butts of repeated jokes and there are discussions of tactics, positions, formations and other game-related details that would have previously frustrated viewers.
“Lasso,” however, proved U.S. soccer IQ was higher than expected; the sport may not have become fully mainstream, but it was no longer a foreign concept.
“There’s just a wider sense of like, ‘yeah, we’re fine. Soccer’s fine,’” Hunt said of the U.S. public. “We don’t need to explain it to people or impress it upon people. The World Cup has sort of finally cemented that.
“It feels like less and less of a capital S struggle right now.”
Brendan Hunt, left, and Jason Sudeikis in “Ted Lasso.”
(Apple TV)
For Hunt, who has been a season-ticket holder for LAFC and Angel City, getting to be a credentialed World Cup journalist — and a participant in the halftime show at the final — were once such far-fetched dreams that they never even made his bucket list. Getting paid to write scripts for a project he’s passionate about, then act out those scripts as a make-believe coach, was once only slightly less unbelievable.
Yet Hunt has done it all — and after a three-year break he’s back doing it again.
“It’s definitely fun,” he said. “For one thing it makes me a little more useful in the writers’ room than I would be on ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ And it also means that a world that I already really enjoy has now opened its arms to us.
“The world of football, to have responded so well to this show, has been truly a touching part of this experience.”
And no one can’t prove the show hasn’t played at least a small role in making the U.S. a soccer country at last.
The manager of the team that most needed Tarik Skubal sat in his office Sunday at Angel Stadium. The Milwaukee Brewers, the team that opened play Sunday with the best record in the major leagues, did not get Skubal.
“L.A. is America’s team,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.
Not based on the cries from across America, from fans outraged that the Dodgers helped themselves to the best available talent yet again to baseball insiders mystified that the Detroit Tigers could not land a better return for Skubal than the three prospects the Dodgers swapped, or at least taken a couple more days to pursue a better return.
“Was I rooting for the Dodgers to get Skubal? Personally, no,” Angels pitcher Brent Suter said. “I was hoping another team that hadn’t won the World Series the past couple of years was going to get him.”
Suter pitched for the Brewers for seven years.
Pitcher Tarik Skubal walks to the dugout during a matchup between the Tigers and the Orioles Wednesday in Detroit.
(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)
“They have a loaded farm system,” he said. “I thought they were going to get him.”
In last year’s NLCS, the Brewers started an opener twice, Freddy Peralta once and José Quintana once. In a five- or seven-game series this October, the Brewers could have started Jacob Misiorowski twice and Skubal twice.
That could have mitigated the Dodgers’ huge advantage in slugging. The Dodgers have seven players in double digits in home runs. The Brewers have four.
But any and all statistics obscure the larger point: If you’re a Brewers fan, when is your year?
The Brewers never have won a World Series. They are in line for their eighth playoff appearance in nine years.
Sustainable success is nice, and difficult to achieve. Much credit to the Brewers, who play in baseball’s smallest market.
But the point of the game is to win the World Series. If you’re not going all in when you have the best record in the majors for the second consecutive year, when are you going all in?
If not now, when?
“I know we made our efforts, too,” Murphy said. “I trust the way we operate. I understand the way we operate.”
Milwaukee Brewers infield players celebrate after defeating the Angels Saturday at Angel Stadium.
(William Liang / Associated Press)
This is all the more maddening in Milwaukee because, in 2008, the Brewers tried their best. That July, they traded four prospects for Hall of Fame pitcher CC Sabathia. Only one, outfielder Michael Brantley, developed into a productive major leaguer. That’s the norm, not the exception, in multiprospect trade packages.
As it turned out, the Brewers lost in the first round of the playoffs, and Sabathia did not survive the fourth inning of his lone postseason start. Then he signed with the New York Yankees. So what? The Brewers went for it, and their fans believed.
After the trade for Skubal, Fangraphs increased the Dodgers’ chance to win the World Series from 25% to 31%. That still means a two out of three chance the Dodgers do not win.
“He’s an amazing player,” Suter said, “but it doesn’t mean a guaranteed World Series. It doesn’t guarantee anything.”
I could not believe the number of fans that reached out to say small-market teams could not match the Dodgers’ proposal because they had little chance to re-sign Skubal as a free agent.
The Brewers, with small-market resources, touted former Angels infielder Luis Rengifo as a significant winter free-agent signing. The Dodgers countered with Edwin Díaz and Kyle Tucker.
“L.A. is America’s team and has all the big names,” Murphy said. “Now they just added to that, with maybe the best pitcher in the game, certainly one of the greats in this era.”
If the Brewers and Dodgers meet again in October, Murphy will only be too happy to tell us who the underdog is.
“It’s going to be David and Goliath,” Murphy said. “We haven’t earned that right yet. We haven’t got there yet.
“If we get there, I’m sure the narrative will be pretty similar: the haves and the have-nots.”
Murphy wanted to make one thing perfectly clear: Fans across America might despise the Dodgers, but he does not.
“They’ve got a bunch of great dudes,” he said. “Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Teoscar [Hernández]. I don’t know [Shohei] Ohtani. He doesn’t even know who I am. But I feel like Ohtani is a great dude. I can just tell by his presence.
“How can you not love [Max] Muncy? Doc [manager Dave Roberts] is my good friend. [Coach Dino] Ebel, we’ve got his whole family playing for the Brewers.”
The Brewers made first-round picks of Ebel’s sons Brady and Trey over the past two years, paying $5.55 million in signing bonuses. The Ebel boys are top prospects. They can look forward to a long stay in Milwaukee.
When Washington celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, the celebrations will arrive bruised. There will be the customary funding disputes, a federal commission fighting against a more partisan task force from the White House, and a public worn by years of political turmoil, all of which will turn what could have been an occasion of civic healing into another USA ‘celebration’ in the world. None of this has gone unnoticed in Beijing, given that this ‘celebration’ is being interpreted more as a diagnosis than a birthday. What is being asked throughout the commentaries from Qiushi (求是), on CCTV, in Tsinghua and Peking University, is simply put, what kind of America is turning 250?
Within the last five years, the interpretation given from both the official channels and the more informal academic channels in Beijing has varied considerably. Most importantly, these streams have been diverging for some time and therefore offer significant insight into how Beijing has been interpreting the country it has been comparing itself to for the last 20 years.
From “the East rising” to a measured retreat
Many are familiar with the upbeat version of the story. After 2020, the phrases that framed China’s worldview included “great changes, unseen in a century” (百年未有之大变局) and “the East is rising, the West is declining” (东升西降). The latter, used by Xi Jinping in remarks to senior officials in early 2021 and again in 2023, provided the slogan for the official narrative. The Covid-19 pandemic, the insurrection at the US Capitol, and a decade of US political instability seemed to provide the empirical evidence for a thesis, rooted in Chinese Marxist theory, that capitalist systems contain the principle of their own disintegration. This was rationalized and systemized after the 2008 financial crisis and has remained largely unchanged.
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However, the reality is far more complicated than the slogan implies. Researchers who have traced the terminology in Chinese academic publications through the CNKI database have found that scholarly use of “the East is rising, the West is declining” (东升西降) peaked around 2021 and has subsided since then, even though the idea itself remained more prevalent than it was during the entire duration of Donald Trump’s first presidential term. In other words, the slogan was being diplomatically retracted within scholarly circles at the very moment it was most associated with official optimism. When Xi’s speech in 2023, which was published in Qiushi in January 2025, described the West’s decline, it was more a formal, official copy of a sentiment than a newly published speech.
The official rhetoric, however, did not soften. A Brookings study found a near doubling in the use of “American decline” terminology in official Chinese documents from 2025. State Security Minister Chen Yixin wrote in Qiushi in December of 2025, what could be described as a near complete inventory of the ills of the world: the usurpation of unipolar dominance gives way to economic decline and social disintegration, a domestic credit crisis and the collapse of foreign mythic structures. Around the same time, a popular phrase borrowed from gaming, the “kill line” (斩杀线) found its way to official Chinese publications. A Qiushi article from January 2026 described an America, the working class of which had been pushed (beyond the point of no return) along the path of ruin by an unrepairable (decomposing) industrial base while financial capitalism strangled the benefits. The conclusion that was drawn was that we had already entered the post-American world.
The correction of early 2026
Then the story changed once more, and the correction was from within Beijing’s own strategic community.
The consensus in Chinese policymaking following the Busan summit in October 2025, was that China had won the trade war and forced the US into a stalemate. The years of maximum pressure, they said, did not lead to the systemic concessions China had sought, but rather worsened American inflation and reduced productivity. For a few months, the optimism was high. However, by 2026, the optimism was replaced by apprehension. A series of adverse events for China, from losing equity in a German port buyout, to the Nexperia debacle, to the Iran war, led many to wonder if China’s victory was, in fact, a loss. The dominant question that the strategic community was debating was whether American power was in decline or if it was in fact, power rebounding.
What was most interesting was who took the cautious side. Both Chen Wenling and Yan Xuetong argued that the US had, and has, the military and economic capability to project power. In their view, the US had the edge, and Trump’s high stakes, risky policy decisions were based on the belief that the US had the dominant position. The gap was definitely closing, but was not yet a reality. The advice they gave was to be patient. If China was able to “manage its own affairs well,” it was likely that the US would be compelled to return to a more stable relationship.
The key observation regarding prominent intellectuals in Beijing is this. They have never been champions of the triumphalist position. Yan Xuetong has spent a great deal of time dismissing talks of “The East is rising and the West is declining” and multipolarity as delusional. His recently published book, Inflection of History (历史的拐点), which was published by CITIC Press in December of 2025, predicts a US-China bipolarity which, during the next decade, would be expected to stabilise rather than destabilise. In this scenario, over the next decade the gap in capability between the two powers would be expected to converge, although the US would retain an overall advantage. In this scenario, the US would retain overall dominance in services, cyberspace and global influence, while China would retain relative superiority in manufacturing and be dominant in the international arena. In this scenario, Yan does argue that Trump would be expected to damage American power, especially with regards to the international balance, through the closure of laboratories, the loss of researchers, and a declining international trade. However, damage to the leader of the bipolar order is not the same as the collapse of the order, and Yan is very cautious not to make confuse the two.
As China’s foremost authority on US studies, Wang Jisi (王缉思) of Peking University, has placed the greatest emphasis on the need for a clear and level-headed approach. His influential essay, titled, “Has America really declined? Chinese people should hold a sober understanding” ( 美国到底有没有衰落？中国人应有清醒认识), leads with the argument that the most important factors influencing the relationship are domestic political issues, and are not to be found in some quantifiable assessment of relative national strength, or within the confines of the Thucydides Trap. He has argued that the effects of Trump’s immigration restrictions would be more symbolic than real, and would not negatively impact the long-term potential of the US economy. Along with American scholar David Lampton, he wrote, that while both societies have convinced itself that the other is an existential threat, which is a dangerous narrative trap, similar to a noticeable shift of power.
Why AI keeps rewriting the script
If the quest for technological dominance was to be provided as a single reason for the inconsistency in the narrative, it would be the most accurate. The same confidence that characterized 2025 is the same that will characterize the sobriety of 2026. When Trump had his second inauguration in January 2025, DeepSeek had launched their R1. It disrupted the presumption of AI dominance in America and had a day effect of 200 billion on Nvidia’s valuation. For Chinese decision makers, since then, it has been electric. Carnegie researchers described it as the rediscovery of technological confidence. The effect was the realization of the theory of “The East is rising and the West is declining” (东升西降): a monumental achievement with controls on exports from a young lab in Hangzhou.
The second installment was more sobering. The launch of DeepSeek’s next model, V4, in April 2026, was received with indifference. In fact, DeepSeek’s own internal product documentation stated that V4 was between three and six months behind American models. Furthermore, V4 was reliant on domestic chips from Huawei, and was, in most assessments, dependent on American technology that was not easily replaceable. For Chinese analysts, this was not a case of falling behind, but one of the more difficult problems of maintaining the technological edge. Reshoring and tariffs told a similar story. The American industrial base, which the “kill line” (斩杀线) commentary presumed was a terminally stagnated industrial base, was the target of a renewed, aggressive, and partially successful push to bring industry back to America. A competitor with such a focus on rejuvenation and renewal is not, on the surface, a declining competitor.
The G2 Puzzle
There’s another element coming from Washington that adds to the complexity of the story of American decline. This element relates to Trump. Before the Busan meeting, Trump used the term “G2,” and several Washington officials followed suit. The decline thesis cannot account for this. If America is indeed in decline, why is it offering G2 (shared leadership) with China?
Chinese reflexive responses are interesting. The official position, as expressed in Zhou Li’s (周力) December 2025 article, is that G2 as a hegemony is incompatible with China’s commitment to a multipolar world and would alienate the Global South which China is trying to court. These scholars have found their own workarounds. Yan Xuetong and Zheng Yongnian have suggested that G2 is more a description of a scenario of existing bipolarity than a policy to adopt. Xia Liping of Tongji University has suggested that G2 be rephrased as “China-US coordination” (中美协调) instead of “China-US co-governance” (中美共治), which makes it easier for Beijing to accept peer status while not succumbing to a duopoly. The attempt to manage the terminology suggests that the US at 250 is still sufficiently powerful that its offer of co-leadership is significant, even to a China that is more confident than ever.
A mirror, not a verdict
What emerges from five years of this commentary is not a single Chinese view of America at 250 but a layered one. The loudest polemical phrase is that the US, a hegemon, is in an irreversible decline. Within a Chinese context, this serves a purpose unrelated to the US. The state media have found it convenient to juxtapose gun violence and homelessness against the backdrop of Chinese economic performance. The decline of the US economy flouts the-premise, as socialism is the ultimate victor among capitalist competition.
But that was in the loud tier. In the reserved tier, the people in Beijing who are actually relying on reading Washington have converged on a more cautious and, frankly, more accurate assessment. They have described America as a relative decline, but erratic, and still very formidable as well as technologically advanced, especially in the field of the upcoming and new challenges of competition. The assessments have consistently referred to America as “declining but dangerous,” and this phrase has proven to be the most accurate of the lot. Reality has justified the phrase. The same cannot be said of unqualified and total victory.
The inconsistency in narratives can be attributed to the fact that the accounts are serving two purposes simultaneously. They are both analysis and propaganda, and the two types of work are at odds with each other. After AI successes or trade wins, the propaganda is ahead of analysis. After the impacts of reshoring or when a Chinese model stays behind, the analysts bring it back. The occasion is provided by the anniversary, but the underlying reason is that China has not decided, and maybe cannot decide, if they think that simply waiting will work in their favour or if the gap they have slowly been closing over the past 25 years is going to be a stubborn gap.
At 250, in other words, the United States functions in Chinese discourse less as a subject to be judged than as a mirror. What Beijing sees in it, in any given month, tells you a great deal about how confident Beijing is feeling about itself
We threw in an education in United States history, geography, and the economics of the $20 baseball cap.
They expected an athletic tournament.
We staged a county fair, featuring nine exhibits stretched across 3,000 miles, with people and surroundings as varied as our twangs.
Visitors to the Boston venue will remember the success of the Soccer Train, a commuter rail and site of opposing pep rallies on the 50-minute trip to Foxboro Stadium.
Classic stories from the Los Angeles Times’ 143-year archive
Imagine that, longtime Bostonians said. A culture clash where nobody gets hurt.
Visitors to the Dallas venue will remember our failures: the blight around the aging Cotton Bowl, the empty seats inside, the construction-hampered traffic flow that turned game days into nightmares.
For nearly a month, in nine locations, the world has applauded our wonders, cringed at our bruises, and, in some places, even felt our embrace.
So how did we do?
Sometimes, we shined. Other times, we stumbled.
Sometimes we yelled too much, pushed too much. When the rest of the world was rushing joyfully out of a subway or dancing through an alley, often we put up our dukes and played the frightened bullies.
But we also smiled a lot, and listened a lot, and sometimes accepted that which we did not understand.
Like those hourlong postgame fan celebrations that forced stadium police to work overtime. We eventually realized something could not be so bad if it made so many people so happy.
We hollered and hugged, we were impatient and helpful. In other words, we were ourselves.
Sometimes we thrilled. But other times, we disappointed.
Visitors to the New York venue will remember what Dublin sales representative Gerry Taylor remembers.
Nothing.
Taylor learned on the first weekend that despite slick World Cup advertisements, New York was not New York.
Just as Boston was not Boston, but Foxboro. And Detroit was not Detroit, but Pontiac. And Los Angeles was Pasadena.
And New York was actually a smelly, industrial area in northern New Jersey.
Taylor left his Manhattan room early one Saturday morning, four hours before the opener between Italy and Ireland.
He wrapped himself in an Irish flag and planned on a making a pregame stop in a pub next door to Giants Stadium.
“Do this all the time in Dublin,” he said. “Pop a few Guinness at the pub, talk to other fans, get ready for the game.”
But upon arriving in East Rutherford, N.J., he realized the only thing he could drink next door to the stadium was toxic waste.
There wasn’t a pub in sight. Or a store. Or a house. Or even a street that wasn’t an expressway.
He spent the next three hours sitting with two friends on a curb, cursing his introduction to sports in America.
“Are all stadiums like this, away from cities, in the middle of nothing?” he asked. “Seems to me it must be hard to have good sports in places like this, isn’t it? We are let down.”
The only thing we can assure him, and others as disillusioned as Taylor, is it wasn’t because we didn’t try.
Rating the 1994 World Cup venues, best and worst of show:
Chicago
BEST: We knew this would be a great spot from the moment we first bit into something called “the Belly Buster,” sold at a hot dog stand near Soldier Field.
Ingredients: Polish beef dog, relish, ketchup, mustard, onions and jalapeno peppers. It lived up to its billing. Trust us.
And so did everything else.
Soldier Field is the perfect location for an international event, being just a short cab ride from one of America’s great downtowns.
Michigan Avenue has been buzzing for a month, what with German tourists in Bermuda shorts buying black patent leather shoes to accompany their white socks. At night, horse-drawn carriages fought with taxis for street space in some of the best action since Ben Hur.
Bolivian Marco Etcheverry tackles German captain Lothar Matthaeus from behind in Chicago, Ill. (AP Photo/Santiago Lyon)
(Santiago Lyon / Ap)
WORST: The only people who didn’t enjoy themselves here were the Greeks, both the national soccer players and the large Chicago-area community that gathered to watch them one Sunday morning against Bulgaria.
Greece lost that game, 4-0. In the process, the teams drove Greek fans so crazy they started seeing things.
At one point during the game, a Greek tossed a smoke bomb on the field, later claiming it was tradition to do so after his team scored.
His team is back in Athens, and it still hasn’t scored.
IMPRESSIONS: The World Cup’s kind of town, Chicago is. Not only were the streets brimming with international flavor, the shuttle system to Soldier Field was so efficient that cabbies complained about not getting enough chances to rip people off.
Now that’s a venue.
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: During a bachelor party held on the 36th floor of a prominent local hotel, somebody poured beer down the elevator shaft. By morning, the ale had dripped to ground floor and short-circuited the electrical system.
Many hotel guests–some checking out with reams of World Cup-related luggage–were forced to carry everything down 20 flights of stairs.
Once at the bottom, they had to tip valet-parking drivers for walking 10 steps to pick up their cars.
Boston
BEST: We marveled not at a city’s effect upon a World Cup, but vice versa.
“What has happened to a town divided along ethnic lines has been remarkable,” said E.J. Kahn of the Boston Host Committee.
By order of Mayor Tom Menino, the historic City Hall area was turned over to foreigners of every imaginable color and tongue.
Old-timers who never thought they would see an African soccer team playing at the home of the New England Patriots also never thought they would see people dancing on their cobblestone streets in tribal costumes.
Police were particularly worried the night after Argentina had defeated Greece in a first-round game. While the Greeks partied in front of City Hall, the Argentines celebrated eight blocks away in Copley Square.
The fiestas drew closer and closer until five Argentine fans wearing blue-and-white uniform shorts stood directly behind a dozen Greeks dancing in a circle.
Just as security guards prepared to move in, the circle slowly opened, and the Greeks motioned for the Argentines to join them. The Argentines did.
The hardened city sighed.
WORST: Many fans apparently didn’t realize that the game would be played about 45 minutes south of Boston in the desolate suburb of Foxboro.
And nobody knew that once they arrived at the stadium, in a forested area where parking availability seemed unlimited, parking spaces would cost $20 each.
Visitors got even with the World Cup Organizing Committee, though, by leaving their hotels in Boston and staying closer to the stadium in places such as Providence, R.I.
Our smallest state as a World Cup host? Not quite what organizers had in mind.
IMPRESSIONS: The Northeast may have tried harder than any other area, and it showed.
The normally reserved Bostonians, ranked 28th out of 36 U.S. city residents in a recent survey rating kindness to strangers, discovered warmth and tolerance.
When dozens of Irish tourists were swindled out of tickets, Bostonians found them more. When foreigners didn’t understand those distinct accents, Bostonians spoke more slowly.
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: For an hour after Argentina’s victory over Greece, more than a hundred Argentine fans remained at Foxboro Stadium, dancing and singing.
Police politely asked them to leave their seats, but the group only moved as far as the lower concourse. Thirty minutes later, police finally escorted them down the concourse and out the front gates, where they continued to party.
Was the game that exciting? Well, yes and no. With this stadium being 20 miles from the nearest decent-sized city, they had nowhere else to go.
Dallas
BEST: From the World Cup volunteers to city cab drivers, we appreciated the people. Amid bleak surroundings and uncomfortable temperatures, they provided the venue with some badly needed touches of humanity.
One hero was Laura Addington, a schoolteacher from Louisiana. She served as an interpreter for everyone. Well, at least everyone who spoke English, French, Spanish, Italian, German or Arabic.
Other stars were the African taxi drivers. They knew the roads, and they knew soccer, which is the only reason we were able to find Maradona during rush hour.
WORST: Some nights were almost cool enough to hold a sporting event. Yet most of the games were held in the blazing afternoon or early evening sun to accommodate European television.
Those brave enough to attend games suffered through stifling heat. Don’t buy those happy expressions you saw on ESPN. It was torture.
IMPRESSIONS: Dallas is a Cowboy town. And not the Germans, Argentines or any of the soccer fanatics who came through here changed that.
With poor attendance and a distinct lack of any electricity other than that generated by the Cowboys’ new set of uniforms, this proves there are about a thousand better places in this country to hold an international event.
Not that Dallas is a bad place–it’s merely the wrong place.
We have learned that events such as the World Cup require diversity of thought and appreciation of differences. Dallas is just too danged American for any of that.
What Dallas’ failure here portends for the 1996 Olympics in another southern town called Atlanta, well, that’s for another story.
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: By some estimates, the World Cup games here were outdrawn even by the demolition of the Cotton Exchange building downtown one Saturday morning. But at least at the soccer games, nobody was treated for smoke inhalation.
New York-New Jersey
BEST: With the melting pot of New York City nearby, this was the only truly international venue.
The stadium rocked with the sounds, colors and even smells of those countries competing.
Except for its location in New Jersey, Giants Stadium was also the perfect World Cup facility, with a beautiful field and gleaming facilities that had foreigners gawking.
WORST: The only Cup fever to hit New York City involved the Stanley Cup.
Maybe it was because of the Rangers. Or Knicks. Or Gay Games. It certainly wasn’t the Yankees, whose attendance was routinely tripled by the World Cup games.
Maybe it was because every day in New York City feels like an international festival. Or maybe it was because New York City simply didn’t have the time.
Whatever, the city that doesn’t sleep also didn’t care. It was interesting to drive to the stadium listening to New York City sports-talk radio hosts rip soccer, then arrive to discover mile-long lines at the front gates.
New Jersey license plates, all of them.
IMPRESSIONS: Organizers could save tourists and taxi fare by dropping all pretenses that the game is being played in New York City.
The success of this venue proves it is time to start celebrating the ethnic charms and splendid facilities of northern New Jersey . . . and leave New York to worry about the Mets.
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: The location for the World Cup host committee in this country’s largest city? New Brunswick, N.J., 90 minutes from Manhattan.
The location of these New Jersey-played games as listed on commemorative postal stamps? New York.
Detroit
BEST: Do not underestimate the accomplishment of organizers who ran the Detroit venue by avoiding all traces of Detroit.
Games were staged an hour’s drive north in the suburb of Pontiac, a bedroom community dominated by large front lawns and strip malls. If Detroit street gangs possess missiles that can fly that far, we didn’t see them.
The venue MVP (Most Valuable Professor) was Trey Rogers, the god of sod. The assistant prof of turf-grass science at Michigan State actually made grass grow inside the Silverdome.
After three years of experiments, at a cost of $2.4 million, the indoor stuff held up admirably and was hailed by all but the most serious allergy sufferers.
The crowd cheers at the Pontiac, Mich., Silverdome as the United States and Switzerland play. (AP Photo/Bill Waugh)
(Bill Waugh/AP)
WORST: Much like East Rutherford and Foxboro, there was no there there. The venue lacked big-city energy and a pulse.
The streets emptied at 10 p.m. After night games, if you hadn’t paid someone to hold a spot in line at Herschel’s Deli, the happening spot was a Taco Bell drive-through.
Of course, after a game in the non-air-conditioned Silverdome, all anybody wanted to do was lie down in a nice comfortable meat locker.
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: After the June 24 game between Brazil and Sweden, a thunderstorm passed directly over the media tent as hundreds of journalists were filing their stories. The thunder was deafening and the tent shook as if it were going to break.
Lightning threatened to knock out the power. The lights flickered, World Cup officials implored reporters to save their files or risk losing them.
This scene was repeated at media and hospitality tents in most of the venues. But aside from the Mexican team, nothing in the tournament has collapsed.
Washington
BEST: We never thought we’d say this, but we liked the subways.
The blue line, which stopped three blocks from RFK stadium, was a shoulder-to-shoulder mass of international passion.
The Dutch fans made their mark by pounding on the ceilings. The Swiss, by chanting through the underground terminals.
The Mexicans demonstrated their presence with songs, singing loud even though they could barely breathe while crushed in overloaded cars during the final 10 minutes of the trip.
It was all underground, but it was true democracy, rare even for our nation’s capital.
WORST: Everything was wonderful until you actually walked inside RFK.
The stadium is falling apart. The Mexican fans literally caused it to rock with their constant bouncing during Mexico’s emotional tie with Italy.
The stadium security officials were surly and overbearing. Maybe it was those horrible purple berets that made them so mad.
The stadium media-tent volunteers, mostly of college age, were the worst. This would be of no interest to the public, except many worldwide impressions of this country are created by foreign journalists.
And those foreign journalists were treated horribly. Little attempt was made to understand or deal with them.
Tickets were refused with no explanation given. Attempts to talk with media coordinators were denied. Questions about the facility were greeted with shrugs.
Translators working player interviews refused to even offer translated quotes until they had been typed and apparently approved by supervisors, which often took two or three hours.
When one Middle Eastern journalist complained about discrimination, one college girl working as a volunteer laughed in his face and replied, “I don’t think so.”
IMPRESSIONS: Sports organizers beware. Any further events staged here should not involve any local volunteers or officials from this World Cup.
This is a wonderful city, and as our capital, it should be the one of the first places promoters go for big events. But now we wonder if haughty attitudes and low-rent facilities haven’t kept the big games away.
The pre-game show at RFK Stadium prior to the Norway v Mexico group stage match of 1994 FIFA World Cup. (Photo by David Caban/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
(David Caban/David Caban)
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: A local activist hung a “Save Bosnia” sign in the stands during the opening game here between Mexico and Norway. It was taken down by local officials. He sued for the right to display it. He won.
Not that the guy wanted to rub it in, but visible the next game were two “Save Bosnia” signs.
San Fransisco-Palo Alto
BEST: We love Los Gatos. This mountain town of 28,000 near San Jose has adopted–and been adopted by–the Brazilians.
After Brazil’s games at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, Los Gatos became Little Rio, complete with samba music, incessant drumbeats and conga lines through Town Plaza Park.
“This is very exciting,” local resident Judy VanKampen said. “It is totally different than what you normally see in Los Gatos, which is people walking down the street with dogs and strollers.”
Even though crowds were lively, they were orderly. Some of the women might have strained the city’s public decency codes with their skimpy bikinis, but city officials, to their credit, looked the other way.
Sure they did.
Brazilian forward Romario beats United States defender Alexi Lalas at Stanford Stadium, July 4, 1994 in Stanford, Calif. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle)
(Thomas Kienzle / Associated Press)
WORST: The whining of Palo Alto politicians because World Cup organizers identified the venue as San Francisco.
But unless we are missing something, nobody has written a song called, “I Left My Heart in Palo Alto.”
IMPRESSIONS: Of all the venues, Stanford University was the worst in creating obstacles for World Cup organizers.
University officials were in position to drive a hard bargain because FIFA, soccer’s organizing body, wanted a presence in San Francisco but did not want to use Candlestick Park because of its smaller size.
Thus, Stanford Stadium is by far the least modern of the venues. Even though some improvements were made, World Cup organizers did not get all of their demands met.
Yet those academics learned that the World Cup is just the type of event that educational institutions should be encouraging.
The excellent soccer is the least of its legacies. Teams from four continents played here, and the visitors who followed those teams to Palo Alto left something of themselves behind.
Unfortunately for the merchants, it was not money. They were disappointed in their take.
But the visitors contributed something more valuable, their cultures. Los Gatos, one feels, will never be the same.
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: A Brazilian woman walked into an ice cream store in Los Gatos one hot day and ordered a beer.
Los Angeles-Pasadena
BEST: My, but the old lady still can sing. Our Rose Bowl looked wonderful with its face lift and colorful frills.
When the air is clear and the heat isn’t oppressive, there is no better view in this World Cup than that of the San Gabriel mountains looming behind the Rose Bowl scoreboard.
Well, OK, the view of that scoreboard after the United States played Columbia was pretty nice too.
Soccer fans inside the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, Calif., prior to World Cup Final match between Brazil and Italy, Sunday July 17, 1994. (AP Photo/Lois Bernstein)
(Lois Bernstein / Associated Press)
WORST: That World Cup chief Alan Rothenberg would allow his hometown facility to rip off hungry and thirsty soccer fans–many of them his neighbors–with inflated prices is inexcusable. Two dollars and fifty cents for a Sno-cone? Fish and chips for $7.50?
IMPRESSIONS: The scene reminds us of the 1984 Olympics, causing emotions we never thought we would feel again. Traffic flowing smoothly, the city clean and pressed, citizens talking about something fun.
Surveys say that many people here couldn’t care less about the event, but the ones who do have made it memorable.
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: With so many men ignoring the “Women” signs on the portable toilets outside the Rose Bowl, officials placed “Out of Order” signs on several working potties and secretly passed around the word that women should use those.
Orlando
BEST: Quick, somebody get this town an NFL team. There was no better stadium-area atmosphere than here, where fans congregated less than a mile from the Florida Citrus Bowl at a trendy shopping and dining area called Church Street Station.
One night the Dutch fans were having so much fun, they started stealing baseball caps from policemen. Another night, the Mexicans were having so much fun they lay down on the railroad tracks upon hearing an oncoming train.
OK, so maybe we don’t all have the same kinds of fun.
Expensive restaurants became rollicking pubs. Thousands of foreigners became wailing, wandering messes.
Did we mention that the Irish were also in town?
WORST: This was soccer in a sauna. Every team that played under the unforgiving midday sun recorded a triumph of spirit.
For fans, merely getting to the games was a similar triumph. Ten dollars to ride a parking lot shuttle? Fifteen dollars to park at a local school, with the money being handed to a member of the PTA?
This was central Florida hucksterism at its worst. But then, they learned from the experts down the street, those guys wearing the ears.
IMPRESSIONS: With the Dutch and Belgians in town, this was supposed to be the site of hooliganism. Police from around the state were summoned for 12-hour shifts. But nothing happened. The most serious crime involved people refusing to leave bars at closing time.
Already our vacation capital, Orlando proved that it deserves to become a sports capital as well. It knows how to turn a game into an event without anybody getting hurt.
After existing for so long in the shadow of fantasyland, it acts as if it loves this real stuff.
YOU HAD TO BE HERE: In the downtown area on July 4, fans from everywhere joined to sing “Happy Birthday.”
To whom? To the United States, of course. Considering how we came of age in yet another international sporting scene this summer, it was a happy birthday indeed.
Times staff writers Elliott Almond, Julie Cart, Lisa Dillman, Chris Dufresne, Helene Elliott, Randy Harvey, Mike Penner and Times Sports Editor Bill Dwyre contributed to this story.
In New York, the Brooklyn Bridge went up in flames briefly during a fireworks display. In Washington D.C., stormy weather delayed a grievance-filled speech by President Trump.
And here in Los Angeles? On Saturday night, tens of thousands of Angelenos joined voices peacefully at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum to sing along with Chris Stapleton as the country star compared a lover to Tennessee whiskey.
A unifying cultural figure beloved by both liberals and conservatives, Stapleton was the headlining act at a Fourth of July benefit concert that also featured Smashing Pumpkins, Chaka Khan, Maren Morris and Queen Latifah. (I’d be surprised if those five names had previously appeared together in the same sentence.) The show, with tickets priced at $17.76, was presented by America250, a bipartisan commission that Congress created in 2016 to plan celebrations for the country’s 250th birthday; proceeds went to Feeding America, which calls itself the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the United States.
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“No politics — just purpose” is how America250 Chair Rosie Rios described the night in remarks from the stage, and it wasn’t hard to interpret the distinction she was seeking to draw between her group and Freedom 250, Trump’s rival semiquincentennial initiative that organized Saturday’s windblown event on the National Mall (not to mention an earlier concert by Vanilla Ice that was called off due to the threat of rain).
But here’s the thing: Compared with the president’s celebration, where he complained about his treatment by the justice system and suggested we should refer to his current term as his third, the show at the Coliseum really did feel like a politics-free zone — the somewhat rare occasion these days when folks from different walks of life come together just to listen to music and drink overpriced micheladas.
Said Stapleton not long into his set: “I won’t waste time talking.”
America250’s success was hardly a sure thing. Despite the relatively low price, tickets moved slowly in the weeks before the concert; one guy I talked to Saturday told me he’d paid six bucks for a discounted pass. Yet to my eyes the Coliseum was close to full by the time Stapleton came on.
The country singer was as solid and soulful as always, snarling gently through “Bad as I Used to Be,” then trading loving harmonies with his wife, Morgane, in “Millionaire.” He closed with “Tennessee Whiskey,” of course — a trusty yet somehow un-shopworn piece of Americana that’s earned a place on the shelf next to Ray Charles’ “Georgia on My Mind” and Willie Nelson’s “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.”
Smashing Pumpkins was perhaps a stranger fit for an explicitly patriotic event — “The world is a vampire,” frontman Billy Corgan sneered in “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” — yet the band sounded sharp and punchy in the ’90s alt-rock hits that have brought zoomers and even Gen Alpha kids into its audience.
Billed not inaccurately on the concert’s poster as “the legendary Chaka Khan,” the 73-year-old funk doyenne flexed her vocal chops in jammy renditions of “Ain’t Nobody” and “Tell Me Something Good” and got people hoisting their drinks for “I’m Every Woman.” Morris, who’d flown in from New York after attending her pal Taylor Swift’s wedding on Friday night, made an improbably smooth segue between her and Zedd’s synthed-up “The Middle” and the rustic “My Church.”
As the show’s host, Queen Latifah dispensed uplifting thoughts about American idealism throughout the evening but also got a slot of her own to do her classic “U.N.I.T.Y.” with help from a rambunctious drum line. It’s an unapologetic message song about demanding respect, and what was moving about hearing it here is that nobody seemed put off by that idea.
Donny Hathaway had already been expounding on the splendors and indignities of American life by the time he got to the Troubadour in West Hollywood in the last week of August 1971.
A classically trained pianist with a declamatory voice shaped by his years in the church, Hathaway closed Side 1 of his 1970 debut with an original called “Tryin’ Times” — “Maybe folks wouldn’t have to suffer,” he sang, “if there was more love for your brother” — and finished the LP with a stately rendition of Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Months after the album was released, he dropped a joy bomb of a holiday single, “This Christmas,” that unapologetically made space for a Black experience in the yuletide-industrial complex.
Donny Hathaway performs at Mister Kelly’s in Chicago in 1971.
(Val Mazzenga / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Yet Hathaway captured something indelibly American during his week of shows at the Troubadour, which were recorded (along with a later gig at New York’s Bitter End) for the singer’s classic “Live” album that came out in February 1972. On an LP full of spine-tingling performances, the undeniable high point is Hathaway’s take on Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” — a clear-eyed if optimistic portrait of resilience and cultural exchange.
King — who’d made her name in the 1960s as half of a prolific Brill Building songwriting duo with her husband, Gerry Goffin — wrote “You’ve Got a Friend” after leaving Goffin and moving to Los Angeles with her two young daughters. Here she remade herself as a low-key singer-songwriter dispensing wise yet unflashy tunes about love, home and family — part of a gentle resetting of pop’s mood after the turmoil of the previous decade.
Cut like the rest of the album at A&M Studios on La Brea Avenue, “You’ve Got a Friend” helped drive King’s 1971 “Tapestry” LP to sales of more than 10 million copies and to a boatload of trophies (including album, record and song of the year) at the Grammy Awards; the singer’s pal James Taylor, whom she’d performed with for the first time in late 1970 at the Troubadour, topped Billboard’s Hot 100 with his own cover of “Friend” featuring background vocals by Joni Mitchell.
On the advice of Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler, Hathaway also recorded “Friend” as a studio duet with Roberta Flack, a fellow Howard University alum; their take sat in the Top 20 of Billboard’s R&B chart as Hathaway began his run at the Troubadour — popular enough that the audience on “Live” erupts at the sound of Hathaway’s opening organ lick.
Carole King at A&M Studios in Los Angeles in 1970.
(Jim McCrary / Redferns via Getty Images)
Indeed, the crowd is really the thing in this live version of “You’ve Got a Friend.” Hathaway and his band — including guitarist Phil Upchurch, bassist Willie Weeks and 16-year-old Fred White (soon to be of Earth, Wind & Fire) on drums — are cooking, to be clear; the groove is funky and viscous, and Hathaway’s vocal is gorgeous, not least in his nimble ad-libs.
But it’s his interplay with the few hundred folks in the room that elevates the recording to a deeply moving piece of art.
For King (and Taylor), the song’s promise of unflagging support is an intimate one-to-one matter; their renditions use homey acoustic arrangements to create a picture of two people exchanging confidences. In Hathaway’s hands, “Friend” is about community: Before he even asks them to, the audience takes over for him on lead vocals in the song’s chorus, a congregation in all but name.
Given the proximity to the civil rights movement, it’s impossible to hear Hathaway’s “You’ve Got a Friend” as disconnected from the struggles of Black people. At the Troubadour (as in his and Flack’s duet), he nixes the song’s second verse to arrive more quickly at the bridge, in which he describes a cold world filled with those who’d “hurt you and try to desert you” — even “take your soul if you let them.”
As Emily J. Lordi notes in her 2016 book about “Donny Hathaway Live,” the crowd lays back during the bridge before rejoining Hathaway for the song’s second chorus; the decision, somehow spontaneous and collective at once, is an expert bit of record-making on the part of an audience that, according to legend, hadn’t been told the concert was being taped.
“From this perspective,” Lordi writes of Hathaway’s fans — some number of whom had surely availed themselves of the Troubadour’s bar, as she points out — “they are not stealing the show so much as they are holding him up, ensuring he won’t sing the duet alone.” Together, performer and audience are turning back (not that they necessarily had a choice) to the ugly truths that singer-songwriter music sometimes sought to move past.
In this way, Hathaway’s “Friend” becomes a reinvention of a reinvention — an act of moral imagination about as American as it gets.
This wasn’t the only instance of a Black soul singer interpreting a tune King had written as a single mom newly arrived in L.A.: In May 1972, the Isley Brothers released a sultry cover of “It’s Too Late”; a month after that, Aretha Franklin’s live “Amazing Grace” album mashed up “You’ve Got a Friend” with “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” completing the gospel-ification that Hathaway had begun in a bastion of white rock culture temporarily remade as an African American church.
Yet in Hathaway’s “Friend” you can hear the whole story American music tells about identity and belonging (and about commercial ambition).
“This might be a record here,” Hathaway tells the crowd near the end of the song, and so it was — a document of adaptation, a testament to borrowing, a bulwark against pretty fictions.
SEATTLE — James Wilson, one of just six men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, never could have imagined how grand the country he was founding would become. But he knew how it could get there.
Wilson envisioned a steady stream of foreigners coming to America every year, reinvigorating the energy and vitality the nation needed if it were to survive, much less thrive. Which is why Wilson, who moved to the colonies from Scotland at 22, argued against barriers on immigration that would “deprive the government of the talents, virtue and abilities of such foreigners as might chose to remove to this country.”
What Wilson had in mind, then, is something such as the U.S. national soccer team, which gathered to train Saturday morning, on the country’s 250th birthday.
Six of the 26 players on the team, which will face Belgium in a World Cup elimination game Monday, are foreign-born. Five others were born to immigrant parents and two others have immigrant grandparents or great-grandparents. Nearly half have dual nationality.
U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino jumps into the arms of his players after their World Cup win over Paraguay at SoFi Stadium on June 12.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Yet they all play with the U.S. flag stitched over their hearts. What could be more American than that?
“It is special,” U.S. captain Tim Ream said of having the team together on Independence Day. “Obviously, doubly special because it’s during a World Cup and triple special because it’s here in the U.S. “As a group, with all our different backgrounds, it’s a true representation of what America is. It’s a melting pot of, of people, of personalities, of characters.”
And it’s led by a country-music-listening Argentine coach, Mauricio Pochettino, who first learned to throw a baseball last week so he could perform first-pitch duties at a Seattle Mariners’ game. (He threw a strike.)
“That sort of stuff can only happen in America,” said striker Folarin Balogun, who grew up in England with Nigerian parents but plays for the U.S. because he was born in Brooklyn, qualifying for birthright citizenship through the 14th Amendment to the constitution Wilson helped write.
It would be hard for the U.S. soccer team to more closely resemble the architects who founded the country, nor the vision those architects had for their creation.
Eight the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence and eight of the 55 framers of the Constitution were immigrants. That’s about the same percentage of immigrants on this summer’s World Cup roster. Another 20 of the Founding Fathers were the sons of immigrants; again, the same percentage as the national team.
“That is the U.S. experience of taking different people from all over the world, the immigrant experience, and mixing it into something that the world has never seen,” said Adam Sawyer, a co-founder of Relevant Research, a Baltimore firm which provides support to immigration researchers and organizations.
“One in seven Americans was foreign-born. Our soccer team is like one in four. I always think of soccer [as] leading society and it’s pulling us with it,” continued Sawyer, who recently published an analysis of the role global migration has played on World Cup success. “Our sporting teams push us forward towards further integration.”
The signers of the Declaration of Independence never foresaw a World Cup, much less an American World Cup team. But they did see immigration as such a fundamental strength, they used America’s founding document to condemn King George III for endeavoring “to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners.”
Without that naturalization, Christian Pulisic might not be playing for the U.S.; in fact, he might not even be in the U.S. His paternal grandfather Mate immigrated from the former Yugoslavia in search of opportunity and was later naturalized as a U.S. citizen. The paternal ancestors of goalkeeper Matt Turner became naturalized citizens after fleeing to the U.S. to escape religious persecution in Lithuania and midfielder Cristian Roldan’s parents escaped civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, then gained permanent residency through President Reagan’s amnesty program.
“This soccer team is reflecting America at its best,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, co-chief executive of RAICES, a Texas-based humanitarian aid and immigration services nonprofit. “Its global roots, its shared purpose, its one jersey.”
Soccer in the U.S. has long been an immigrant sport. In the years after World War II, when soccer was still an amateur and semi-pro game, the best teams in the country had names such as the Philadelphia Ukrainian Nationals, New York German-Hungarian SC and the Los Angeles Danes. Joe Gaetjens, one of the country’s first stars and the man who scored the goal that beat England in the 1950 World Cup, was a Haitian immigrant.
In recent years, however, the national team has begun recruiting dual-nationals from overseas, among them World Cup midfielder Malik Tillman, who was born to a U.S. serviceman in Germany, and Antonee Robinson, who was born in England to a naturalized U.S. citizen father, and Sergiño Dest, a Dutch native whose father is Surinamese American.
“It is definitely a team that embraces their diverse backgrounds, and that’s quite meaningful, especially now,” said Al-Juburi, the son of Iraqi immigrants. “This notion that we are stronger with impenetrable walls that divide us is definitely not reflected in this team. It credits a lot of its success to its immigrant roots.
“And I think that’s incredibly powerful to see that and to see a nation cheering and getting behind that diversity. It is a reminder that we are stronger from that coexistence.”
But Al-Juburi doesn’t see the result as a melting pot, which burns away the unique flavors and characteristics of each ingredient. For him, it’s more a gumbo in which every ingredient changes and improves the mix.
U.S. players huddle seconds before playing Bosnia-Herzegovina during a World Cup knockout round match at Levi’s Stadium on Wednesday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
“You’re looking at lineage from Nigeria, from Guatemala, from El Salvador, from Mexico, from Liberia, Jamaica, Croatia,” he said. “All these disparate ingredients work together so beautifully and in such a balanced way.”
And when that team succeeds, as the U.S. has this summer, it not only underscores the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, but it offers a lesson for today as well.
“This team contains a different picture of inclusion really mattering, just by being exactly who they are,” said Jules Boykoff, a political science professor at the University of Portland (Ore.) and a former U.S. youth international. “They don’t have to say anything. They just have to be who they are and do their best on the pitch.”
The Potomac isn’t just the name of a river, it’s part of a much older story. Al Jazeera’s Emma Withrow explains, from Alabama to Yosemite, our latest online interactive explores the Native American origins of 50 names across the United States, what they mean, and how they were originally pronounced by Indigenous speakers.
WASHINGTON — Small towns across America had big plans to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial this weekend. Local historical societies scheduled town square readings of the Declaration of Independence, hired bands to play patriotic tunes, organized parades and set up themed baking contests.
But many of their most ambitious plans were scrapped after the Trump administration cut $100 million in federal funding for humanities nonprofits and state councils at the start of its term. The decision severely hampered local planning for America’s 250th anniversary, disrupting history projects, museums and educational programs nationwide.
Instead, the Trump administration funneled tens of millions in federal dollars to Event Strategies, the firm behind Trump’s infamous rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, to organize anniversary events throughout the nation’s capital centered on President Trump.
The result, historians say, has become a centralized, more politicized spectacle, marking the national milestone as a celebration of an imperial presidency rather than a revolution from kingly rule.
The spectacular show that Americans will see features Trump at its center, culminating a year of concerted efforts by the president to put his face on passports and currency, national park passes and government buildings.
Members of the Dance4Life studio in Claymont, Del., prepares to march ahead of the Red, White, & Blue To-Do Pomp & Parade on July 2, 2026, in Philadelphia.
(Al Drago / Getty Images)
Yet, beyond the noise of the nation’s capital, historians and teachers, docents and curators, archivists, tour guides and reenactors have sustained the messy, organic discourse of the American story, less funded but no less vocal in their patriotism.
“The way history has been argued since Trump returned to office has been a reminder that governments and political figures have remarkable power to shape a society’s historical memory,” said David Ekbladh, a history professor at Tufts University and author of “Look at the World: The Rise of an American Globalism in the 1930s.”
Trump’s effort to control the anniversary narrative has reminded Ekbladh of one of George Orwell’s most famous quotes: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
“The administration’s clear signals that it can and will restrict funding to institutions seems to have muted the way many institutions, like museums and universities, have approached the anniversary,” Ekbladh added. “With this said, Trump’s own direct, personal use of the 250th has been less about articulating a clear view of the nation’s history than using the moment itself to keep attention on him.”
The White House has taken a more active role in the festivities than initially planned, setting up its own Freedom 250 project to supplement America250, a bipartisan congressional effort to celebrate the occasion.
Fencing is seen around the Great American State Fair on the National Mall on Thursday.
(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
The Trump administration has directed funding to events centered on the president’s attendance, primarily around Washington, and partnered with conservative organizations such as PragerU and Hillsdale College to present the country’s founding story through a conservative Christian lens.
Historians are in broad agreement that this year’s celebration has garnered far less attention than the bicentennial, marked in 1976, which generated blanket media coverage and widespread national excitement.
Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “The New Imperial Presidency,” attributed the lack of enthusiasm this time in part due to a more fragmented media landscape than existed 50 years ago, denying the country a “core curriculum” and a shared story.
“I don’t think it’s a lack of patriotism, so much as a determination that no presidential administration should be able to center itself as the focus of that patriotism,” Rudalevige said.
“There’s a lot to celebrate in the text of the declaration. But that’s not where the focus of the Freedom 250 efforts has been,” Rudalevige said. “It would have been interesting to see what the bipartisan America250 initiative could have come up with if its funding and energies had not been diverted.”
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is fenced off in preparation for Fourth of July fireworks.
(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
Trump has scheduled little national travel around the anniversary, visiting North Dakota this week for an event that allowed him to debut a new version of Air Force One, donated by Qatar and outfitted to the president’s tastes. Trump intends to keep the plane after leaving office for his personal use.
The jet will fly over the National Mall alongside the Defense Department’s most impressive equipment on Saturday, before the president delivers a speech in what is forecast to be a blistering heat wave. The evening will end, according to administration officials, with the largest fireworks display in U.S. history.
“The fundamental challenge that we face now is the fight between the historians — people who have been studying the past and who have been thinking about how to tell that story to the public — and government leaders over who gets to control that story,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the history department at Washington University in St. Louis.
“The people who are really on the front lines are museum professionals, the operators of historic sites and schoolteachers,” he said. “They face the responsibility for explaining the past to a general audience on a day-to-day basis, and they are the ones who most often face the backlash from people who want the story to be told differently.”
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
Here’s TWZ’s weekly carrier tracker monitoring America’s flattop fleet, including deployed Carrier Strike Groups (CSG) and Amphibious Ready Groups (ARG), using publicly available open-source information. Check out last week’s report here.
The U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports remains in full effect, for now, pending the execution of the ceasefire agreement, scheduled to be formally signed on Friday in Geneva, according to a notice released today by NAVCENT. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces launched multiple waves of strikes last week against Iran following the shootdown of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter, and disabled an additional two commercial vessels that tried to skirt the blockade, bringing the total to nine. Two carriers, USS Abraham Lincoln and USS George H.W. Bush, embarked with a combined seven squadrons of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, two squadrons of EA-18G Growlers, and one squadron of F-35C Lightning IIs, continue to support “self defense” strikes and blockade operations.
The Lincoln CSG has been deployed for nearly seven months and would likely be among the first naval assets to rotate out of the theater if the blockade winds down. The details, and scale, of the drawdown of forces in the CENTCOM area of responsibility (AOR), as agreed upon in the memorandum of understanding (MOU), are murky as of publication. More than 20 U.S. Navy surface combatants have been operating in the region.
U.S. Navy fighter jets and command and control aircraft prepare to take off from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) as the ship transits the Arabian Sea. pic.twitter.com/SAGl2e7y0e
USS Nimitz entered the final leg of her homeport shift to Norfolk, operating off the east coast in U.S. 2nd Fleet AOR after a monthslong circumnavigation of South America, according to flight tracking data and public AIS. Nimitz conducted operations northwest of Cuba and the Bahamas last week. On Thursday, six Super Hornets, attached to the “Kestrels” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 137, carried out an air power demonstration and show of force, dropping MK-82/BLU-111 bombs on a simulated target in the Gulf of America.
U.S. Navy photo by LT Will “Simple Will” Shortal LT Will “simple Will” ShortalU.S. Navy photo Petty Officer 2nd Class Peter McHaddad
On the west coast, USS Theodore Roosevelt continues working up in preparation for a future deployment. The flattop got underway on June 10 for INSURV inspections to verify readiness and returned to San Diego the following day. The group was also spotted conducting a live fire exercise with the Mk 38 25mm machine gun. USS Carl Vinson got underway for sea trials after a nine-month Planned Incremental Availability (PIA) and moored at port in San Diego on June 13.
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Devin Kraemer Seaman Recruit Devin Kraemer
In the Western Pacific, USS George Washington is on a summer patrol and operating in the Philippine Sea. The CSG conducted a replenishment-at-sea with USNS Earl Warren and helo operations while underway in the vicinity of Guam last week. Destroyer USS Shoup, part of the CSG, pulled into Apra Harbor early this morning, according to AIS.
Eyes in the sky.
An MH-60S Sea Hawk assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 12 operates above Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73) while underway in the Philippine Sea.
Two ARG-MEUs are currently deployed. Forward-deployed USS Tripoli continues operations in the CENTCOM AOR, and USS Boxer is underway in the Indo-Pacific (INDOPACOM) AOR, operating in the South China Sea. For a detailed review of America’s amphibious assault fleet, check out our recent report here.
Note: Positions are general approximations.Non-deployed LHA/LHD amphibious warships are not shown.
Contact the author: ian.ellis-jones@teamrecurrent.io
Tyra Banks has filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix and the directors of “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model” claiming that she was manipulated and misrepresented in the series.
The three-part documentary, directed by married duo Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, revisited the reality show’s rise and many controversies, including former contestant Shandi Sullivan discussing what she described as a blackout sexual encounter that took place during Cycle 2 of the series and was a major plot point because Sullivan was in a relationship.
Sullivan said in “Reality Check” that she felt like producers should have stepped in considering she was heavily intoxicated, but instead they followed her into the bathroom and bedroom to record a sexual encounter with a male model. In a following scene, Banks lectures Sullivan about cheating and “carnal” temptation.
“Tyra Banks participated in the Netflix documentary series about ‘America’s Next Top Model’ because she believed viewers deserved a candid conversation about the show’s legacy — its successes and its shortcomings,” reads the lawsuit. “There are aspects of the show for which Ms. Banks takes accountability and she wanted ANTM viewers to hear that from her directly.”
The lawsuit, filed on Saturday in the Central District of California, claims that the supermodel turned media personality participated in a 3½-hour interview, of which about 16 minutes was used.
“The producers used what could be stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed,” reads the suit. “The accountability Banks took ended up on the cutting room floor.”
The suit alleges that producers used “selective editing, deliberate omission and surgical manipulation of continuous footage” to create a false narrative that Banks “knowingly allowed a contestant to be sexually assaulted on her show, exploited that contestant’s trauma for ratings, and then could not even remember it when asked.”
Banks claims that she asked Netflix and the producers of the docuseries for access to the unedited footage of her 3½-hour interview, and proposed they work together to “correct the record.”
“Had they agreed, Ms. Banks could have made the truth public and this litigation would likely have been unnecessary,” reads the suit.
According to the suit, Banks was pitched the docuseries as a “definitive three-hour Netflix docuseries exploring America’s Next Top Model as a groundbreaking popculture phenomenon.” The pitch had a Netflix logo on its cover, and Banks had “long trusted and admired Netflix.” The streamer’s involvement was the reason Banks claims she considered the project.
Banks claims the pitch included promises that the documentary would unpack the show’s legacy “not as a takedown, but as a thoughtful in-depth reflection on its influence, evolution, and impact on fashion, television, and culture.”
The suit claims Banks was prepared for a fair comeuppance, but ultimately the former supermodel felt hoodwinked. “Nothing suggested that the project would falsely accuse Ms. Banks of covering up a sexual assault, or being indifferent to what a contestant characterizes as a traumatic experience.”
In February, directors for “Reality Check” revealed that Banks wasn’t invited to participate in the docuseries until well after production began
“It was like, ‘Hey, this can be a great addition, but definitely not a necessity,’” Sivan said. “People talking trash about her is very easy to find. … But having her passion, bringing this program to life, is something that only she could tell.”
Sivan and Loushy, who also helmed the acclaimed 2025 docuseries “American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden,” said they treated “Reality Check” with the same level of care as previous heavyweight projects.
“There were things that were sensitive and important for me,” Loushy said, from the harassment that she said “ANTM” contestants endured to the insecurities that “to us as women, are sitting tight and hard every day on our heart.”
The directing duo hoped to examine the good intentions Banks and producers had, of turning the fashion industry on its head, empowering women and championing diversity, and the way those intentions evolved as the show moved through cycles.
“At the end of the day, was it a force of good, or was it a force of evil? I hope people keep debating that,” Sivan said.
Former Times staff writer Malia Mendez contributed to this report.
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
Today, the U.S. Marine Corps celebrated the end of more than half a century of Harrier ‘jump jet’ operations with a sundown ceremony at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina. For more than 20 percent of the history of the republic, the British-originated jump jet helped to defend America. The story of how the U.S. military first got involved in the program is a little-known but fascinating one. Michael Pryce, who has worked on various aircraft projects, from the Harrier to the Tempest, explains, and, in the process, connects the dots between the AV-8 and its replacement with the Marine Corps, the F-35B Lightning II.
Read our coverage of the Marine Harrier sundown here.
A British-made U.S. Marine Corps AV-8A of Marine Attack Squadron 231 drops a Mk 20 Rockeye cluster bomb during training, in 1979. U.S. Navy
Right from the start, the Harrier had been of immense interest to Britain’s ‘cousins’ across the pond. In the 1950s, the threat of nuclear war led to the creation of jump jets, and NASA, plus the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Army soon found that developing rockets seemed easy in comparison to this new class of combat aircraft.
Despite valiant efforts, no American jump jet could be made to work.
A video shows the Ryan X-13 Vertijet during tests. It was one of many Cold War-era jump jet projects that ended in failure:
VERTIJET
All three services got involved in trials of the Hawker Siddeley P.1127 Kestrel, the first iteration of what would become the Harrier, initially in a joint British-American-West German trials squadron. Then, six of the Kestrels were taken to America to continue testing there, and they were renamed as XV-6As once on U.S. soil. Unlike other jump jet projects, the P.1127 utilized four adjustable exhaust nozzles beneath the wing, which rotated to provide thrust for vertical, backward, or hovering flight as well as conventional forward movement.
The XV-6A Kestrel demonstrated operations from grass, semi-prepared surfaces, and ship decks, offering great operational flexibility. U.S. Air Force photo
The thing that impressed the Americans was the sheer simplicity of the British jump jet. With just one engine, and ‘not an electron’ needed in its flight controls, the Kestrel soon transformed into the Harrier, and in 1968 the U.S. Marine Corps decided they would acquire them. Despite not having flown any of the Kestrel trials, they knew they wanted to bring the jump jet into the front line as soon as possible.
The British makers of the Harrier, Hawker Siddeley, first found out about the U.S. Marines’ interest when two men in uniform walked into the Hawker Siddeley hospitality chalet at the 1968 Farnborough Airshow and said they wished to fly the jet. Within two weeks, they had. It was the start of the Marines’ love affair with the Harrier, but it was not America’s first encounter with the British jet.
A Royal Air Force Harrier jet involved in a mock bombing run at the Farnborough Airshow in 1968. Photo by PA Images via Getty Images
Over 10 years before, another American had walked into Hawker’s fancy tent at another Farnborough airshow and asked to see their design for what would become the Harrier. Col. Willis “Bill” F. Chapman of the U.S. Air Force was an American in Paris, there to find European weapons that America could fund. Jump jets were all the rage, and the Hawker P.1127 seemed to him to be the most promising.
Six pre-production Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR1s pictured at the manufacturer’s test facility at Dunsfold aerodrome, Surrey, in 1968. The first Royal Air Force squadron to be equipped with the Harrier GR1, No. 1 Squadron, started to convert to the aircraft at RAF Wittering in April 1969. Crown CopyrightCol. Willis F. Chapman was commander of the 340th Bomb Group in 1944. Joseph Heller based the Catch-22 character of Colonel Cathcart on him, stretching artistic licence. Chapman thought Heller was a poor bombardier. Patricia C. Meder
As leader of the 340th Bomb Group in Italy in World War II, Chapman had seen dozens of his B-25 bombers wiped out, first by a volcanic eruption and then by a Luftwaffe attack. He knew nuclear missiles could do much worse. Soon, he had funded the Pegasus engine, the heart of the Harrier, and struck up a strong friendship with the Hawker design team led by Ralph Hooper, driving their design forward, from the drawing board into the sky.
Ralph Hooper, right, after flying in the two-seat Harrier he designed in the 1970s. BAE Systems
In 1968, one of the U.S. Marines who walked in at Farnborough would play an equally vital role in getting the Harrier into Marine service. Col. Tom Miller had flown in Korea and Vietnam, and scored a speed record in a McDonnell F4H Phantom for good measure. Deeply impressed by the Harrier, he went into battle on ‘The Hill’ to secure it for the Corps, then on to lead it into service as the commander of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Cherry Point — the same unit that retired the Harrier today, 55 years later.
John H. Glenn, Jr., Gen. David M. Shoup, Commandant of the Marine Corps, and then Lt. Col. Thomas H. Miller Jr., at Marine Corps Headquarters in 1960. (Marine Corps Archives)
The rest of the history of the Harrier is well known. From the initial, British-built AV-8A to the jointly-developed, with mostly American technology, second-generation AV-8B Harrier II, the Harrier found more use, and created more jobs, in America than in Britain. The American connection was the making of the British jump jet, and helped cement relations between the two countries’ pilots, engineers and ground crews over decades.
In the 1980s, there were attempts to make a new, supersonic successor, with the speed of the Marines’ F/A-18A Hornet and the vertical flight ability of the Harrier. Once again, the Americans turned to British designers. In 1981, Hooper and a team of engineers from the Harrier factory at Kingston-upon-Thames went to work at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis, Missouri, to design the ultimate jump jet. Over drawing boards and at tailgate parties after ball games, they evolved a great beast of a jet, the P.1218, with two crew, two engines and the latest tech, to succeed the U.S. Navy’s F-14A Tomcat fleet interceptor and A-6E Intruder all-weather strike aircraft. Despite arriving at a joint design, money was limited, and the work was re-focused on research with NASA — the start of what in time would become the Joint Strike Fighter program.
Images of the British Aerospace P.1218 concept are very hard to come by, but the joint work with McDonnell Douglas fed into the broadly similar Model 279-4 design, seen here. McDonnell Douglas/Boeing
Although the U.S Navy buys jets for the Marines, the big twin-engined design was of less interest to the Corps than another of Hooper’s designs, a smaller, single-engine jet that weighed the same as the Hornet. This supersonic jump jet was seriously studied in the United Kingdom, with tests and design work over many years. The U.S. Marines were involved too, officers visiting the Kingston factory to talk about its prospects. When Britain delayed jump jet plans in favor of what became the Eurofighter Typhoon, it meant Hooper’s single-engined P.1216 design, with its wild-looking twin-boom configuration, seemed to miss its chance with the Marines. The British designer retired too, but he did not let that stop him.
A British Aerospace P.1216 in pseudo-U.S. Navy VFA-14 “Tophatters” markings escorts Soviet Backfire bombers, alongside a British version of the twin-boom supersonic jump jet. BAE Systems
Keen to see a supersonic jump jet in Marine service, he turned to Miller once again. As the accompanying letter in this article shows, in 1992 he gave Miller the technical plans of the new jump jet, and Miller showed it around at Marine HQ at a vital time — just as 10 years of research was turning into the serious acquisition program for the Joint Strike Fighter.
via author
The emerging requirements specified a weight the same as the Hornet — the same, too, as Hooper’s P.1216. Speed, range and weapons load were close too. While avionics and stealth had advanced beyond the British jet’s capabilities, the knowledge that the man who made the Harrier thought a practical jump jet of Hornet size would work helped get the ball rolling on the third generation of jump jets. Miller’s support ensured the Corps got behind it, leading to the Lockheed Martin F-35B now taking over Cherry Point.
An F-35B with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron (VMFAT) 501 prepares for takeoff at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry, North Carolina. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Christopher Hernandez
Making a fighting jump jet that works is extremely challenging. The Harrier had its problems — without rigid training, accident rates echoed those of its 1950s origins. The F-35B has had to overcome its own hurdles too.
In the early 2000s, Hooper was called in to help fix those. The transatlantic story of the Harrier may have ended today, but the people who found ways to cut bureaucratic corners by trusting each other, and who cracked the technical code of making the Harrier work, continue to support the next generation of F-35Bs.
Hawker Siddeley Aviation Executive Director and Chief Engineer Ralph Hooper talks U.K. Aerospace Minister Michael Heseltine through the features of a mock-up of the HS.1182 cockpit — the future Hawk trainer. Photo by PA Images via Getty Images
The ‘Harrier Mafia’ worked their own way, but always in line with the motto of the Marine Corps. “Semper Fi” was a value shared by British pilots who flew American Harriers in combat operations on exchange as much as by the men and women who made, and supported, 55 years of Harrier operations at Cherry Point.
Jump Jet: The Secret History of the Harrier by Michael Pryce is published on August 27 and is available for pre-order.
WASHINGTON — When nearly all the scheduled musical performers pulled out of a concert series marking America’s 250th anniversary — fearing the event had become too closely tied to President Trump — he responded by making it official.
Trump announced he’d now be the headlining act of the Great American State Fair.
That put to rest any possible scenario where a president who has built his personal and political persona on seizing the spotlight might cede the stage to avoid overshadowing a national celebration bigger than himself. It also offered a peek into how the president is likely to approach hosting the upcoming World Cup.
From his reality shows before becoming a politician, to hours spent entertaining at events in ways planned and impromptu, to proudly showing off his various properties and efforts to overhaul the White House, the president relishes hosting. Last year he even jokingly mused about leaving the presidency to do it again full time on TV.
Trump can be a gracious, personable and highly watchable master of ceremonies — but he’s also one who tends to make every event about himself.
“The president has an outsized personality,” said Timothy Naftali, former director of Richard Nixon’s presidential library and professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “There’s a predictability to the way in which the president frames his actions — or any actions around any event associated with him — and that’s just part of who he is, and his makeup and his professional background.”
Exhibit A is the fair, which begins June 25 and was supposed to feature concerts but now will be kicked off by a Trump rally. That will follow a UFC bout at the White House on June 14. Trump is a longtime cage match fan and the event marks his 80th birthday, but the president has sought to bill it as part of the anniversary festivities.
Many presidents relished hosting — but not like this
Andrew Jackson threw open the White House for an 1829 Inauguration Day bash so unruly that staff eventually dispersed the crowd by moving tubs of whiskey and ice cream to the lawn. Franklin D. Roosevelt mixed pre-dinner cocktails for friends and aides at White House gatherings he playfully dubbed “The Children’s Hour.” Audrey Hepburn was among the luminaries Ronald Reagan hosted at the White House.
Trump frequently had first-term dinners with business leaders but has more fully embraced the role since returning to the White House. He built a patio area similar to one at his Mar-a-Lago estate and frequently travels to Florida and his properties in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Sterling, Virginia, to headline fundraisers and other swanky gatherings.
Asked if Trump might overshadow events meant to bring the country and the world together, White House spokesman Davis Ingle pointed to the president’s efforts to lead extensive renovations at the White House and around Washington. He said in a statement that the “historic beautification” gives the city “the glory it deserves during our nation’s historic semiquincentennial celebration — something everyone should celebrate.”
Still, Trump has found unprecedented ways to inject himself into the anniversary.
The State Department is issuing passports with the president’s picture and officials have designed a new $250 bill with his likeness. The Trump Organization, being run by Trump’s children while he’s president, applied to trademark “Trump 250” logos and other merchandise.
The U.S. Mint is also producing a 24-karat gold commemorative coin with Trump’s face, though that recalls a half-dollar silver coin bearing the likeness of President Calvin Coolidge to help mark America’s 150th anniversary in 1926.
Past presidents had starring anniversary roles
Ulysses S. Grant opened a Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia to mark the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1876. Richard Nixon, in 1971, inaugurated a five-year “Bicentennial Era” ahead of the 200-year mark, though he resigned before the big day arrived.
Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, then in the midst of an ultimately unsuccessful reelection campaign, began the week of July 4, 1976, by inaugurating the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and attending a Kennedy Center event featuring Bob Hope, OJ Simpson and others reading patriotic texts.
On Independence Day, Ford spoke at historic Valley Forge, then traveled to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, declaring, “Liberty is a living flame to be fed, not dead ashes to be revered.“ He also went to New York Harbor for a tall ship parade, presided over naturalization ceremonies at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate and hosted a state dinner for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.
Still, “while Ford certainly hoped to use the bicentennial to promote his reelection campaign, he didn’t do it in such a self-aggrandizing, self-centered, narcissistic way,” said Marc Stein, a history professor at San Francisco State University and author of “Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s.”
Ford, added Naftali, “knew when to step out of the limelight and make sure the focus was on what mattered, which was the United States of America and the Declaration of Independence.”
Trump, by contrast, “generally has contempt for norms” and rarely mentions “the great sweep of history,” Naftali said.
Dueling anniversary planners as Trump pushes to revise history
Congress charged a national organization, America250, with planning commemorative events. Ahead of the 2024 election, the group drafted a memo asking whomever the incoming president was to mobilize federal agencies and welcoming presidential involvement in events and initiatives.
Asked about Trump, America250 Chair Rosie Rios said the group “has had a very supportive and collaborative relationship with the organizations planning initiatives on behalf of the president.”
But Rios’ organization is separate from Freedom 250, a mix of public and private partnerships which the Trump administration established to fund and prepare anniversary events — which has caused confusion.
America250 aims to “inspire our fellow Americans to reflect on our past, strengthen our love of country, and renew our commitment to the ideals of democracy through programs that educate, engage, and unite us as a nation.”
That might seem a departure from the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order Trump signed last year. It sought to beat back a “revisionist movement” responsible for “replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
Stein, now serving a one-year term as president of the Organization of American Historians, is helping organize “We Want More History,” a push to coordinate local events celebrating the public’s love for the subject in fact-based ways.
He said Trump’s version of history is “closer to propaganda, and it’s closer to cheerleading.”
World Cup gives Trump another platform to play host
The president has similarly taken his exceeding-normal-limits approach to the soccer tournament the U.S. is co-hosting with Mexico and Canada.
He created a federal World Cup task force, and leads it. He collected a peace prize from soccer’s governing body, FIFA, and said he’d be on stage to present the tournament’s golden trophy to the winning team.
Trump even oversaw the tournament’s draw at the Kennedy Center, which he’s sought to rename for himself, sparking legal challenges.
He returned to the same building to headline December’s Kennedy Center Honors, noting, “We never had a president hosting the awards before.” He later posted on social media, “Would you like me to leave the Presidency in order to make ‘hosting’ a full time job?”
Naftali noted, “Whatever filters there were in the first term — and there weren’t many — are gone.”
When Craig Ferguson left CBS’ “The Late Late Show” in December 2014, fulfilling a pledge made public the previous April, it was assumed by some that it had something to do with not being offered the chair being vacated by his illustrious lead-in, David Letterman. (Stephen Colbert, you may be aware, was named the new “Late Show” host.) Others simply couldn’t believe anyone would just walk away from such a job, which Ferguson had held for two weeks shy of 10 years, because, even in the less prestigious 12:30 time slot it seemed like a prize — but mostly because he was so good at it.
“That’s one of the odd things about that particular genre of television,” he told me in 2016. “The minute I started at 12:30, the question became when and do you want and how are you going to get 11:30? But I never wanted 12:30, never mind 11:30. Why is that a thing?”
Ferguson went on to other things. He’s hosted game shows (currently the CW’s “Scrabble,” with puckish energy); toured as a stand-up (he’s on the road into June); hosted a history-themed panel show, “Craig Ferguson: Join or Die”; launched “Joy, a Podcast,” which is as close as he’s come to the confessional freestyling of “The Late Late Show”; and published “Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations & Observations.”
His latest show, premiering Saturday on CNN, is “American on Purpose,” which shares a title with his first memoir, a reference to the Scottish-born Ferguson becoming an American citizen. Timed generally to the 250th anniversary of the United States, it finds Ferguson in a five-episode crazy quilt of observations, interviews, inquiries, stunts, games and documentary vignettes forming a comical, but not unserious, somewhat wayward look at American ideas and ideals — freedom of speech, capitalism, patriotism, individualism and immigration. It’s a vision wide enough to include monster trucks, lowriders, underground comedy, Miami street art, Texas barbecue and haggis tacos, dreamed up by Ferguson and executed by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson.
Ferguson, a Scotsman, having haggis tacos on “American on Purpose.”
(CNN)
“You know me,” Ferguson said when we spoke over video call recently. “Less format is better for me always.”
His caveat to the producers was that he wouldn’t “make an anti-American show. I wouldn’t make a show pointing out everything that’s wrong. I feel that’s a market that’s heavily catered to. I’m not a f—ing idiot, I’m not making propaganda, I won’t make a jingoistic show. But I want to make a show which is celebratory,” Ferguson says. “And I want to be clear that the show I make for CNN will be the same as if I was making it for Fox News. It has to be my point of view, which is upbeat without being dumb — I hope. I feel like we got pretty close.” This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
A good friend of mine, an Englishman, recently became an American citizen and had only wonderful things to say about the naturalization ceremony, the diversity of his fellow new Americans, and the graciousness of the people conducting it. What was your experience?
My ceremony was in Pomona fairgrounds in 2008. And I think it was 2,000 of us; I think it was 1,999 new Mexican Americans and one new Scottish American. And it was f—ing wonderful. And it is moving. I kind of wish it for my friends who are born here, American citizens, because you have to remove your everyday, “Oh my God, did you see the news today” cynicism, and remember what this place is about — freedom, second chances, third chances, escape, representation, individualism, different ideas coexisting in one country, wildly different points of view somehow managing to get along. That is f—ing beautiful. What I still feel as an immigrant American is a certain gratitude that doesn’t leave you. I’m not blind to the faults of the United States. Show me a country that doesn’t have faults. We talk about the bloody past. Show me a country that doesn’t have a bloody past. Humans have a bloody past. I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong, but I’m not looking at that in this show. I’m looking at what makes me feel great about this place, and it is a great place, an aspirational place. To my mind, we are still the big foam finger number one. I don’t think there’s anyone can touch us for … unusualness. We’re really unusual.
It’s a very optimistic show. Is that how you feel personally about the future of the country, and humanity?
Like most people, I have my moods. I got a real boost of optimism [hanging out] with very clever academics who kind of guard the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. And you say to them, “People say the country’s never been this divided.” They always laugh. They laugh at the idea it’s never been as bad as this, the rhetoric has never been this hateful. They’re like, “It’s always been like this. It’s always been an argument. The whole point of this place is that it is an argument.” The guys who started this country, some of them hated each other with just as much venom and outrage and indignance as political players hate each other today. I find that quite encouraging. Like I said, I’m not blind to the fact that there are issues and faults and deep things to worry about. But that’s not what this show’s about. It’s as if I was a musician, and I decided to write a happy song. People say, “Why aren’t you sad?” I’m like, “Well, I get that sometimes, but this song is a happy song, this is a rock song. I’ll do a power ballad later on.” It’s not terrible to to do something upbeat every now and again.
What did you discover in the course of making the show?
There were many things, actually. In L.A., I did a kind of run around with the guys who make the lowrider cars, and the community and the story of how that came about are really fascinating, a kind of parallel run of the rise of the automobile in America, but how it was taken on by the Mexican culture. Another that really stuck with me was in the Everglades, when I was with the Gladesman there, finding out that a large percentage of them [were descended from] displaced Scottish peasants, cleared out of the Highlands to make room for sheep for the landowners; they went to Canada, and they drifted all the way down to the southern tip of the United States. These guys there could trace their ancestry back to 100 miles from where I grew up. Americans would be kicked out of most of the countries of the world. So it makes us awesome. I mean, 40% of this country can trace themselves through Ellis Island, through that administration building in New York. That’s insane.
Ferguson at Venice Beach in a segment on the show.
(CNN)
When did you get interested in history?
In Scotland, we’re surrounded by it all the time. There’s a lot of stuff still lying around from a long time ago. American history became interesting to me because it was so attached to Scotland. The Scottish Enlightenment is really kind of the origin story of the Declaration of Independence. Knowing that the philosophy that was coming out of Edinburgh in the 1700s was directly feeding into what these guys were doing, it felt like the continuation of a certain strain of Scottish history. It didn’t end with “Highlander” or “Shrek.”
There’s a road movie element to the series. Do you take trips around the country on your own time?
All the time. I don’t think you can know the United States unless you’ve driven across it at least a couple of times. If you can take a car from New Orleans to Northeastern Maine, Florida to Washington state, it’s worth doing. One of the things that was in the engine for me when I started this [series] was, I’ve seen over the years a lot of — probably more in Britain than in America — lazy kind of pseudo-intellectual documentaries where somebody will say, “Well, you know, the thing about America is…” Well, which America are you talking about? And they will go and get some guy that lives on his boat in Fort Lauderdale with a hat that’s got “Who Farted?” written on it and tell you that’s America. That guy’s there and he’s awesome, but it’s not the whole story. You know what I mean? It’s like saying “Well, you know, Hitler was a vegetarian.” That’s true, he was. But it’s not really the whole f—ing story, is it?
The most drastic setback to U.S. inventories involved the use of Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAMs) and THAAD and Patriot interceptors, according to CSIS. The think tank derived its expenditure figures from an internal analysis, which TWZ cannot independently verify.
CSIS
Tomahawks
The exact amount of Tomahawks on hand is secret, however, researchers at CSIS calculated that prior to the Feb. 28 launch of Epic Fury, the U.S. had about 3,100 TLAMs. CSIS said it based its estimates on Fiscal Year 2027 Pentagon budget documents.
CSIS estimated that U.S. forces lobbed more than 1,000 TLAMs at Iran during the conflict, or about a third of the entire inventory as assessed by the think tank.
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black (DDG 119) fires a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) in support of Operation Epic Fury, Feb. 28, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo) U.S. Navy Photo
Making up that supply will take some time. Tomahawk procurement “averaged 86 missiles in the past 10 fiscal years (FY 15–FY 26), with most orders coming from the Navy,” CSIS noted.
While Raytheon, which makes the missiles, has a goal of increasing capacity to produce more than 1,000 Tomahawks per year, “the recent annual production rate is less than 200 because of small past orders,” according to the think tank. “Existing orders will begin replacing the 1,000+ Tomahawks expended during the Iran War, but will not be enough to fully restore inventories to pre-war levels.”
Another factor to consider are foreign military sales, with nearly 800 due to Japan, Australia and the Netherlands.
CSIS
THAAD
CSIS estimated that before the war began, the U.S. had about 400 THAAD interceptors and used between 190 and 290 during the war to protect American and allied interests. According to The Washington Post, about 200 were deployed defending Israel in particular.
The Army “has requested 857 THAAD interceptors in FY 2027,” CSIS explained. “Their deliveries, projected to start in mid-2029, will complete the replacement of Iran War usage by the end of calendar year 2029.”
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. (MDA)
The delivery timelines in the budget documents “imply that THAAD production is at the current surge rate of 96 interceptors a year,” the report states. “With additional facilities and tooling, Lockheed Martin plans to expand production capacity to 400 a year, a needed increase to fulfill large U.S. procurement orders and those of allies.”
The strain on the reservoir of THAAD interceptors is something we brought up last year during the 12-Day-War between Israel and Iran, when reports suggested that the U.S. Army fired off about 150 to protect Israel.
CSIS
PATRIOT
At the start of the war, there were about 2,500 Patriot interceptors in the U.S. inventory, according to CSIS, though its accompanying chart does not specify which variant. During the course of the conflict, between 1,060 and 1,430 Patriots were fired. We don’t know what that tally includes, but we do know that PAC-2 and PAC-3 series interceptors have been employed in the latest conflict with Iran.
Current production PAC-3 MSE “is around the baseline rate of 650 interceptors per year, with half the deliveries going to the United States and the rest to allies and partners,” CSIS postulated.
“Because U.S. procurement in the last decade has averaged 225 missiles per year, deliveries from prior years will not be enough to fully replace expenditures,” CSIS cautioned. “For that, the United States will need to wait for the 3,203 Patriot missiles requested in the Army’s FY 2027 budget. These are projected to start delivery in May 2029.”
Before Epic Fury, the U.S. Navy had about 400 SM-3s, capable of intercepting ballistic missiles in space, and used upwards of about 250, according to CSIS. There were about 1,250 Standard Missile-6s (SM-6), which can intercept air-breathing and ballistic missile targets, as well as attack targets on land and at sea, in the arsenal and between 190 and 370 were launched.
These munitions will take about two years to replenish to pre-war levels, CSIS estimated.
A Standard Missile-3 being launched. (DOD)
“Both missiles have lengthy production lead times,” the think tank explained. “The Missile Defense Agency and the Navy requested large quantities in the FY 2027 budget: 78 SM-3 Block IBs, 136 SM-3 Block IIAs, and 540 SM-6s. These orders will take between 36 and 39 months to begin deliveries once Congress provides appropriations.”
“Because of the small size of past orders, inventories will not return to pre-war levels until early 2029 despite the relatively low usage in the campaign,” CSIS pointed out.
There were more than an estimated 4,000 stealthy air-launched Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in the U.S. arsenal before the war and U.S. aircraft fired off more than 1,100 of them. However, though heavily used, there will be “large deliveries from recent procurements.”
“U.S. forces began this campaign with a sizable JASSM inventory,” according to CSIS. “The Air Force has procured large quantities of these long-range cruise missiles since the 2000s—on average, nearly 500 a year for the past decade. To deliver these orders, current production appears to be already at the surge rate unlike the other munitions discussed in this article. Further, the missile was not used in operations until 2018. Thus, while over 1,100 JASSMs were expended, U.S. inventories will recover fairly quickly as past orders are delivered.”
F-16 carrying JASSMs on a test flight. U.S. Air Force photos by Staff Sgt. Brandi HansenCSIS
The inventory of these missiles, however, “is limited as it is a relatively new system with deliveries beginning in 2023,” CSIS highlighted, estimating that there were fewer than 100 prior to the war. During the conflict, between 40 and 70 were used, the think tank posited.
“Lockheed Martin has been scaling up PrSM production, setting an annual target of 400 units last year and announcing further increases under the framework agreement with the Trump administration.
CSIS
Asked about the CSIS report, the Pentagon did not express concerns.
“America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the president’s choosing,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement to TWZ. “We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests.”
Despite Parnell’s statement, the expenditure of weapons in Epic Fury is having a cascading effect on supplies. Last week, for instance, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao testified before the Senate that the U.S. is pausing arms sales to Taiwan because of the war with Iran.
“Right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury,” Cao told Sen. Mitch McConnell.
America’s reputation as an arms provider had already taken a hit when it cut off supplies of Patriots and other weapons to Ukraine last year over concerns about the U.S. stores. Deferred or slowed deliveries are common among other allied customers as well now.
During the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee hearing earlier today, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told senators that arms shipments to Taiwan have been paused, saying “Right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic… pic.twitter.com/DIcQCBh5hq
The president’s $1.5 trillion FY 2027 defense budget “reflects these magazine depth concerns,” CSIS suggested. “A war supplemental for additional munitions funds is expected as the DOD seeks to replace what was expended in Operation Epic Fury and then build inventories above the pre-war levels. The administration has also signed a series of framework agreements with industry to expand munitions production capacity, which could expedite future deliveries.”
Tensions around the world bring into question whether even expedited timelines for production of these weapons is adequate to meet near-term future needs. As we mentioned earlier in this story, there are concerns that China could move on Taiwan over the next few years, a conflict that could draw in the U.S. There are other flashpoints in the Pacific that could touch off a China fight.
Meanwhile, there is a non-zero chance that even more of these weapons could be expended should the U.S. and Iran resume hostilities. Just last night, a U.S. official told us that CENTCOM swatted down four Iranian drones and fired on a ground control station in Bandar Abbas about to launch a fifth.
US official: CENTCOM forces shot down 4 Iranian drones posing threat around Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces also struck Iranian ground control station in Bandar Abbas about to launch a 5th drone. Actions were measured, purely defensive, and intended to maintain the ceasefire.
CENTCOM said Kuwaiti forces intercepted a ballistic missile Iran launched in response.
At 10:17 p.m. ET on May 27, Iran launched a ballistic missile toward Kuwait that was successfully intercepted by Kuwaiti forces. This egregious ceasefire violation by the Iranian regime occurred hours after Iranian forces launched five one-way attack drones that posed a clear…
With the shaky ceasefire marred by these intermittent kinetic exchanges and the peace negotiations sputtering on, a new drain on U.S. weapons stockpiles remains a real possibility.
WASHINGTON — Yet another White House construction project is underway, though this one is meant to be only temporary.
Crews are erecting an octagon-shaped cage on the South Lawn that will host next month’s UFC bout, helping mark the nation’s 250th anniversary — and President Trump ‘s 80th birthday.
Online renderings depict what the completed, wire-mesh-fence-ringed fight space is expected to look like ahead of the June 14 event. It will be ringed by a red, white and blue stage under a towering arch featuring stars and stripes patterns and two large screens carrying the action live.
The cage and stage will themselves be surrounded by thousands of temporary seats, including ringside space for a full marching band that can set the entire scene to blaring music.
The project is part of a series of events celebrating the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence’s signing on July 4, 1776. Other planned functions include an IndyCar race that will pass by the White House and the Great American State Fair taking place on the National Mall.
Trump has said that the finished UFC project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House.” Additional large screens broadcasting the fights will be set up in a park at the nearby Ellipse, and the UFC has said it plans to issue as many as 85,000 free tickets to accommodate spectators at both locations.
“I have never seen anybody want anything so much as people want those tickets,” Trump said recently of demand to attend the UFC fight, adding, “That’s gonna be something.”
The card has been panned by fans online as underwhelming, featuring just two championship fights. Brazil’s Alex Pereira will meet France’s Ciryl Gane for the interim UFC heavyweight title. Then Spanish-Georgian lightweight champion Ilia Topuria takes on interim champ Justin Gaethje, one of just two Americans who currently hold even a share of the UFC’s 11 championship belts.
The octagon and surrounding structures are the latest project in the White House building boom Trump is leading.
The president’s other efforts to leave his mark include tearing up part of the Rose Garden to make room for a patio space reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, affixing partisan plaques to the wall of the colonnade for a Presidential Walk of Fame, redoing the bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom and renovating the Palm Room, placing new flag poles on the north and south lawns and demolishing the entire East Wing for a sprawling ballroom.
The president also wants to repaint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building beside the White House and build a 250-foot arch at the nearby Lincoln Memorial — the same monument where weigh-ins for the upcoming UFC fight are scheduled to take place, bout organizers say.
