The Belgian soccer federation wants an explanation from FIFA about a decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play at the World Cup despite getting a red card in his previous game.
Belgium takes on the United States later Monday for a spot in the quarterfinals.
The Belgian federation (RBFA) said it has still not received either “FIFA’s decision or any explanation regarding this matter. In these circumstances, it has no choice but to challenge the player’s eligibility for the upcoming match.”
It did not specify where it intends to appeal FIFA’s decision.
U.S. President Donald Trump intervened on behalf of star U.S. forward Balogun, whose red-card suspension was lifted in a decision that allowed him to play against Belgium.
The Belgian federation said it learned through media reports about the FIFA's move and sent a letter to the governing body requesting a copy of the decision as well as an explanation of the process.
“As its only response, FIFA sent a letter to the RBFA stating that it considered this correspondence to constitute an appeal, that a judge had been appointed, and that the RBFA had only a few hours to complete that appeal,” it said. “No information whatsoever was provided by FIFA.
The RBFA insisted that FIFA’s regulations state that the reasoned decision must first have been communicated to the appellant.
“While the RBFA was merely seeking legitimate explanations, FIFA itself created an appeal and immediately ensured that it would be declared inadmissible,” it said. “All of this occurred while FIFA simultaneously refused to respond to the RBFA’s legitimate requests.”
Balogun, the star forward for the U.S. with three goals in the tournament, received a red card for stepping awkwardly on the right ankle of Tarik Muharemović of Bosnia-Herzegovina in a 2-0 round of 32 win on Wednesday, triggering an automatic one-game suspension.
FIFA announced Sunday that the suspension had been lifted for the round of 16 match, an extraordinary move that triggered praise from Trump and outrage from Belgium’s team. It appeared to be the first time since 1962 that a red card during a World Cup didn’t result in a suspension.
“Regardless of the sporting outcome of this match, the RBFA is deeply concerned by the course of events and will continue to fight in the coming hours, days and months in defense of the fundamental principles of ethics, fair competition, and the interests of football as a whole,” the Belgian federation added.
The FIFA decision drew criticism from the European Commission, the powerful executive arm of the European Union, which is based in Brussels.
Glenn Micallef, the European Union’s commissioner for sport, said that decisions “on sporting rules and sporting matters belong to sporting bodies, not politicians.”
“Influencing sporting decisions would undermine the autonomy of sport,” he wrote in a message on X. “Our focus should instead be on the real governance challenges facing sport, including the weaponization of sport for political purposes.”
See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here
Belgium's Youri Tielemans (8) celebrates after scoring thrd goal during the World Cup round of 32 soccer match between Belgium and Senegal in Seattle, Wednesday, July 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
United States forward Folarin Balogun (20) gestures after scoring a goal during the first half of the World Cup 2026 Round of 32 Football match between United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina in Santa Clara, Calif., Wednesday, July 1, 2026. (Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
The Belgian soccer federation is demanding an explanation from FIFA about a decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play at the World Cup despite getting a red card in his previous game. President Donald Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino after the game and asked FIFA to review the red card, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Trump rang a ceremonial bell Monday as the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq opened, a symbolic Oval Office act reflecting how much he's counting on the stock market. The event was aimed at promoting the launch of Trump Accounts for children, which Republicans created as part of their 2025 tax and spending cuts bill.
Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on Wednesday at the NATO summit in Turkey, as Kyiv tries to refocus his attention on the conflict with Moscow and as Trump publicly mused about Syria’s role in the Middle East.
Asked about his role in getting Balogun’s red-card penalty suspended, Trump acknowledged calling Infantino and asking that FIFA take a second look.
The president said he didn’t initially know what a red card was or what its consequences were. When he found out that it could keep Balogun out of Monday’s match against Belgium, Trump said he felt compelled to intervene.
“All I did was ask for a review,” Trump said to press at the White House. “I didn’t think it was a foul,” he added. “I thought it was two great athletes that crashed each other and got entangled.”
He said the red card was a “horrible” call, arguing that the slowed-down video review made it look worse than it was.
“That’s very unfair,” he said. “How do you penalize them for a game that hasn’t been played?”
“Capitalism” has been the word du jour of the Trump Accounts event, with speakers talking about how the investment vehicles will energize children about financial investing.
But Trump found a way to weave in a reference to the opposing socioeconomic system of communism — applying the label to the Democratic socialist candidates whose primary wins have energized many anti-Trump voters.
Asked by a reporter if the program would go down as one of his “signature policy achievements,” Trump took the opportunity to accuse these candidates in the upcoming midterm elections of being “communists” who “want to destroy our country.” The rhetoric is reminiscent of similar narratives he has employed throughout his political career.
Speaking alongside the president, Cruz began his remarks by thanking Trump for working to get FIFA to reverse Balogun’s red card penalty of a one-game suspension.
“On behalf of all Americans, thank you for getting rid of that ridiculous red card,” Cruz said. “It was spectacular. There was a reason the FIFA trophy sat here for as long as it did.”
Cruz appeared to be referring to a White House visit by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who in a rare move brought the World Cup trophy.
Trump thanked FIFA over the weekend after he and the White House intervened to enable Balogun to play in Monday’s match against Belgium.
“I think we’re getting much closer than people realize. And President Putin wants it to end, I will tell you that very strongly,” Trump said Monday while talking to press at the White House. He added that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also wants to end the war “now.”
The war and efforts to end it are forecast to be a central topic at the upcoming NATO summit this week. Trump plans to meet with Zelenskyy at the meeting in Turkey.
“I think we’re going to get it ended,” Trump said. “It’s been a terrible situation.”
To the children assembled for the investment accounts event, Cruz tried to break down the stakes in a way they might grasp: McDonalds.
Referencing a brand no doubt recognizable to all of them, the Texas senator said the Trump Accounts and their stock market investments mean the children could go into the restaurant knowing they “now own a little bit of McDonalds.”
Cruz made a similar reference for the kids, feeling a different connection to aeronautics manufacturer Boeing, the next time they fly in an airplane.
Yes, thanks to contributions from some of the country’s wealthiest investors and executives.
Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, pledged to give $6.25 billion targeted so children 10 or under can get $250 in seed money if they live in ZIP codes with a median family income of $150,000 or less.
Trump announced that Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron Technology, would give $250 million. Hedge fund founder Ray Dalio and his wife, Barbara, pledged $75 million so kids under 10 in qualifying zip codes in Connecticut can get $250. And Trump said investor Brad Gerstner would donate $250 to Trump Accounts for every child under 5 in Indiana.
Corporations are being urged to add such contributions to their benefits packages through what Bessent calls the “50 State Challenge.”
The president preemptively waved away potential questions from the press about the White House’s involvement in getting FIFA to reverse a red card against U.S. star Folarin Balogun.
After introducing the press at an Oval Office event on Monday, Trump said: “They don’t want to know anything about soccer slash football. Fortunately, they won’t be asking any questions on that. Nobody cares about that, right?”
Trump said he wanted to keep attention on his administration’s new investment accounts for U.S. children, the topic of Monday’s Oval Office event.
Critics point out that the accounts do little to help children in their early years, when they’re most vulnerable and most likely to be in poverty. The accounts, they say, also fail to offset the cuts the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have made to other programs that benefit young people and the adults in their lives, including food assistance and Medicaid.
And even with government contributions, critics say the Trump Accounts will widen the wealth gap. Affluent families that can afford to make the maximum pretax contributions will realize the greatest benefits. Poor families that can’t afford to set aside money for the accounts will benefit the least. Assuming a 7% annual return, the $1,000 in seed money would grow to roughly $3,570 over 18 years.
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Ahead of the president ringing the market bell, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave an overview of the program so far.
He said that 86% of the 6 million signed up came from families earning less than $200,000.
Under the program, parents can open special investment accounts for any child born during Trump’s second term and automatically receive $1,000 from the government. Accounts can be opened for older children — as long as they don’t turn 18 before the end of the calendar year — but they will not receive the $1,000. The accounts were set to open for deposits July 4, which was also the day the Treasury Department plans to transfer the $1,000 bonus.
Trading had begun just before Trump rang the ceremonial bell brought to the Oval Office to mark the opening of trading in U.S. markets on Monday.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it was the first time the opening bell had been rung in the Oval Office. Trump joked that he wanted to keep the large, silver bell for the White House.
A crowd gathered in the Oval Office to watch as Trump rang the bell, including a group of children who were visibly — and vocally — excited to be there.
Someone whispered “be quiet” to a child who began speaking just as the president was launching into an intro about the importance of the moment.
The Oval Office bell-ringing is aimed at promoting the launch of Trump Accounts, which were created as a vehicle for children to have investments in stock indexes as part of Republicans’ big 2025 tax and spending cuts bill.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has emphasized that millions of people — 38% of American adults have no direct exposure to stocks, so don’t immediately benefit from investments that largely accrue to more affluent households — “but with Trump Accounts, over time, we can get that number down to zero.”
The S&P 500 posted gains of 17.9% in 2025, after annual returns of 25% in 2024 and 26.3% in 2023 under President Joe Biden. The benchmark stock index has risen roughly 10% so far this year. But just as inflation crushed public support for Biden, Trump has also seen his approval fall as his tariffs and the start of the war in Iran created new inflationary pressures.
Trump rang the opening bells for the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq from the golden confines of the Oval Office on Monday, a symbolic act that reflects how he has increasingly tied his presidency to the stock market.
With high inflation hurting Trump’s popularity, the Republican president has tried to get more Americans to focus on their 401(k) investments, claiming that his policies should get the credit for any gains, particularly as the November midterm elections draw closer.
Only 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s economic leadership, according to a June survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The Belgian federation says it is challenging FIFA’s decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play Monday as co-host United States faces Belgium with a quarterfinals place at stake.
The European soccer body UEFA said FIFA “crossed a red line” by deciding, after pressure on the world soccer body’s leader Gianni Infantino from his close ally Trump, not to enforce Balogun’s mandatory one-game ban for getting a red card in his previous game.
“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” UEFA’s statement said.
Infantino’s predecessor Sepp Blatter, who was forced from office in 2015 in fallout from corruption scandals, posted Monday on social media: “Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls. They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies.”
Trump may be preparing to install his own team at the Smithsonian Institution after a White House report branded its leadership, especially at the National Museum of American History, as radical activists who cannot be trusted.
Trump already revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian with an executive order targeting funding for programs advancing what he called “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology.”
Historian Lonnie Bunch, the Smithsonian’s current secretary, is the first African American to lead the institution. In an unrelated interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bunch said “America’s greatest strength, it’s not running away from its history, but it’s understanding how that history shaped us and continues to shape us.”
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Trump got what he wanted from NATO at last year’s summit: an alliance whose members had largely acceded to his demands to step up their defense spending.
This week, when he meets leaders in Turkey, his mission is to enforce that pledge.
The speed with which most NATO countries have tried to heed Trump’s call to spend 5% of their annual gross domestic product on defense over the next decade underscores how the U.S. president has reshaped the alliance and bent it to his will — even as he continues to spar with its members over the Iran war, his flirtation with annexing Greenland, and various personal tiffs.
Trump leaves Monday evening for the summit, and for days leading up to the trip has been airing grievances about how much the U.S. spends on defense compared with other countries. That’s despite efforts from Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary-general, who tried to feed the ego of the tempestuous U.S. leader in an Oval Office meeting last month.
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Trump on Sunday posted a falsified image of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding an Air Force One that had been spray-painted with graffiti.
It came months after another racist post by the president that showed the couple as primates in a jungle. That one was deleted after stiff, bipartisan backlash.
The latest image shows the Obamas smiling and waving at the top of stairs alongside a baby blue and white presidential plane with graffiti painted on it that included the Democrat’s campaign slogan “Yes We Can,” “Obama” and “BLM,” short for Black Lives Matter. The post also shows graffiti in Arabic on the plane that says the phrase “alhamdulillah,” which means “praise be to God” or “thank God.”
Trump has a yearslong record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas, and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric. That includes everything from feeding the lie that Obama was not born in the United States to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries and posts that have sparked anger on his Truth Social website.
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Trump intervened on behalf of star U.S. forward Folarin Balogun, whose red-card suspension was lifted in a decision that allows him to play in a World Cup match against Belgium on Monday.
Balogun, the American leader with three goals in the tournament, received a red card for stepping awkwardly on the right ankle of Tarik Muharemović of Bosnia-Herzegovina in a 2-0 round of 32 win on Wednesday, triggering an automatic one-game suspension.
FIFA announced Sunday that the suspension had been lifted for the round of 16 match, an extraordinary move that triggered praise from Trump and outrage from Belgium’s team. It appeared to be the first time since 1962 that a red card during a World Cup didn’t result in a suspension.
Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino after the game asking FIFA review the red card, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
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The Trump administration will not seek new bids to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday as he faced new questions about the troubled project and the taxpayer money involved.
Like Trump, Burgum said he was 100% sure that vandals caused the damage to the century-old Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Trump has charged that a 350-foot gash was cut into the pool’s liner in the midst of recent renovations, while Burgum described it as multiple cuts adding up to that figure. He also said the pool would have to be at least partially drained in the coming week to finish the repairs.
The repairs will not be opened up to new contractors, he said.
“We’ll use the same company, because they did a fantastic job,” Burgum told CNN’s “State of the Union.” ”Thankfully, the vandalism was small. It was bad. I mean, it could cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair, so then it could fall into a felony ... just like damaging any other government property could. But the job that was done to fix the Reflecting Pool was done extremely well.”
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President Donald Trump plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on Wednesday while attending the NATO summit in Turkey, the White House said. Those discussions will come as Kyiv tries to refocus Trump’s attention on the conflict with Moscow and as Trump has publicly mused about Syria’s role in the Middle East.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly confirmed the meetings in a call with reporters while previewing the upcoming summit in Ankara, where Trump also plans to meet with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday. Before returning to the United States on Wednesday, Trump is scheduled to have a news conference, Kelly said.
Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy comes as Russia’s war in Ukraine is now in its fifth year. Both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin held phone calls with Trump on Saturday, congratulating him on the July Fourth commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, center, arrives ahead of the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, Monday, July 6, 2026. (Abdullah Güçlü, Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks during a media conference at the end of the NATO summit as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listen in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
A worker wades through the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as crews install fireworks ahead of the America 250 July 4th celebration on the National Mall, Thursday, July 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
FILE - President Donald Trump holds the FIFA World Cup Winners Trophy as FIFA President Gianni Infantino looks on during an announcement in the Oval Office of the White House, Aug. 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
