The federal government wants credit for mounting the World Cup’s best defense.
The Transportation Security Administration this week said its federal air marshals have seized more than 300 drones that broke through Federal Aviation Administration airspace restrictions imposed over World Cup stadiums or at nearby fan events in what the Department of Homeland Security called “the most comprehensive airspace security and drone mitigation effort in U.S. history.”
As part of that effort, local Federal Bureau of Investigation offices across Atlanta, Miami, New York, Dallas and elsewhere have released rolling social-media updates on their counter-drone enforcement activities, including the interception of
This is the June 26, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox every Monday through Friday.
JOE’S NOTE
My father was a Nixon supporter. He believed left-wing reporters and the East Coast elites conspired to bring down the Republican president until Richard Nixon’s final days in office.
But once news reports of his tapes’ contents became public, Dad had enough.
“If this man has done half of what they say,” he muttered while reading the morning Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “then he’s unfit to serve as dog catcher.”
Millions of others must have reached the same conclusion as Dad, because a week later, Nixon resigned.
It was obvious — and should have been far earlier.
A half-century after the 37th president’s sins had been laid bare before history, the current vice president sat at the Nixon Library and blamed the “deep state” for bringing Nixon down.
Never mind the Watergate break-in. The enemies list. The Saturday Night Massacre. The robbery of a psychiatrist’s office. The abuse of power inside the FBI, CIA, and the Justice Department. The bugging of Americans’ phones. The lying under oath.
Never mind Nixon’s fingerprints smeared across the greatest political scandal of the century. Let’s just instead blame the constitutional breach on the hidden hand of the deep state.
It sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?
JD Vance knows about the burglaries, the bugged phones, the break-ins. And he shrugs.
The vice president scoffs at political crimes that took down a president and mocks them as nothing more than a 12-hour news story. And thinks it’s “crazy” that Watergate ended an American presidency.
But that’s just Vance being Vance, defining deviancy down in hopes of excusing his own shameful behavior in office.
Unlike Mr. Vance, Richard Nixon was one of the most significant political figures of his time.
Nixon went to China. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. As vice president, he championed civil rights. He also received more votes than any other political candidate in U.S. history.
But the San Clemente politician also disgraced his office, weakened his country, and brought eternal shame to his legacy.
My father saw through Nixon’s actions and finally turned on a president he loved. Vice President Vance has seen the same evidence but laughs it off.
How pathetic. How cynical.
How perfectly predictable.
ON THE CALENDAR
The annual Pride March, commemorating the 1969 Stonewall riots, is set to take over the streets of New York City on Sunday. Find a spot — among millions — here.
In the nation’s capital, things are sizzling at the Annual Barbecue Battle, back for its 34th year. Prodigious pitmasters meet at the BBQ Battle Pit to vie for $50,000 — and bragging rights to the best smoke in town.
Country lovers in Chi-Town: Hideout brings back A Day in the Country, a Sunday-long celebration of Americana, bluegrass, and honky-tonk music, served alongside homemade pies, BBQ, and cold drinks. Treats for the eyes and ears alike.
Light on weekend reading? Austin and Charlotte are both hosting African American book festivals — Austin’s is its 20th — celebrating Black voices and their contributions to literature.
Out west, the Printing Museum of Los Angeles hosts “QWERTY: A Typewriter Festival.” Write your heart out on vintage keys, marvel at old design, and take home a story to tell. My type of weekend.
In Philadelphia, the Manayunk Arts Festival has “art lover” written — and painted, drawn, carved — all over it. The region’s largest juried art festival brings together work across media, rain or shine.
For the fabulous down south: Wynwood is throwing a special edition of Big Wig Drag Fest for Miami Pride. Drag, dance music, and club theater, all on the menu.
And on the pitch: The World Cup’s Round of 32 begins Sunday. Powerhouses France and Norway meet today; Colombia and Portugal play tomorrow. ¡Vamos!
MAILBAG
Thank you to all our readers who wrote in this week. As always, you’re welcome to write to us anytime.
What would $300 billion do for Ukraine or healthcare subsidies?
— Mark H., Manchester, N.H.
$300 billion for Ukraine would end Russia’s war of aggression against it, and more importantly, send a clear message to tyrants across the globe that aggression does not pay.
That U.S. support would free Poland, the Baltic states, and the rest of Central Europe from the fear of future invasions from Vladimir Putin.
Tragically, Donald Trump would rather direct that money to the terrorist state in Tehran than a group of freedom fighters trying to keep Europe free. What else does one need to know about Trump’s foreign policy?
$300 billion would also go a long way to reversing the tragic cuts to Medicaid that Republicans passed in their One Big Blighted Bill.
Those Medicaid cuts will disproportionately hurt the very people who voted for Donald Trump in rural America. Rural hospitals will shut down, emergency centers will disappear, and working Americans will be left with worse healthcare because the Republican Party chose instead to pass tax cuts for the richest billionaires in the world.
Workers need that money. Instead, it will be handed over to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and its radical Islamist clerics.
We can only hope the deal falls apart before Iran’s terrorist state gets even more powerful.
With Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner (real estate professionals who are not even [full] government employees) handling top level negotiations with foreign entities … what is Secretary of State Marco Rubio doing? It seems his job has been pre-empted.
— Anonymous
The secretary of state is clearly doing everything he can to stay as far away from the Iran negotiations as possible. He would much rather the vice president and U.S. negotiators take the fall for the current debacle unfolding in negotiations with the terror state. Rubio is instead focusing on a future invasion of Cuba.
So much for America First.
If we are so concerned about nuclear weapons in Iran, why wasn’t the same problem issued for North Korea in Trump’s first term? I feel like everyone has forgotten about that. Now North Korea has an open plan for nuclear weapons.
— James R., Greenville, S.C.
At their meeting during the 2016 presidential transition, Barack Obama reportedlytold Donald Trump that his biggest problem would be North Korea’s nuclear program. And for the first six months of the president’s term, Obama was proved correct.
Reports out of the National Security Council and the Pentagon suggested the president’s team was considering options for launching a war on the Korean Peninsula.
An ill-considered meeting with North Korea’s tyrannical leader, and a handful of “love letters” later, Donald Trump lost his will to stand up to Kim Jong Un, and North Korea instead cemented its place as a nuclear power.
This geopolitical disaster was brought to you by the same president who once claimed Iran could never have a nuclear program — but has again backed down, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the United States.
ONE MORE SHOT
Marc Atkins/Getty Images
Ecuador fans celebrate as Gonzalo Plata scores the winning goal against Germany in New Jersey at the FIFA World Cup.
House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., subpoenaed billionaire investor Leon Black on Friday, saying he had refused to answer questions about allegations that he signed nondisclosure agreements with women tied to Jeffrey Epstein.
One subpoena is for Black to appear for a deposition under oath on July 16 and the other is for the NDAs he allegedly signed with women in Epstein’s orbit, said Comer.
Comer announced the subpoenas during Black’s voluntary interview with the committee regarding his long relationship with Epstein. The announcement immediately derailed the interview, with Black departing just an hour into it.
Black told lawmakers he would not answer questions about the terms and substance of the NDAs, on the advice of counsel, according to a person familiar with the interview. Another person familiar with the details told MS NOW that, when he was asked about it, Black’s attorney said, “We are not going to get into NDAs,” noting that the interview was voluntary and not a subpoena.
The people spoke to MS NOW on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the closed-door proceedings publicly.
Black is one of several people believed to have signed NDAs with women who have accused Epstein and his associates of sexual misconduct. Comer said prior to Black’s interview that the committee was “pretty confident” that the financier signed NDAs with some of Epstein’s victims.
Black was handed the subpoenas near the end of committee Republicans’ first hour of questioning. He took an extended break, then departed the building shortly after, bringing the interview to an abrupt end before Democrats had their turn at questioning.
Afterward, Black’s attorney, Susan Estrich, dismissed the subpoenas as “nothing more than a planned political stunt” in a brief statement to reporters.
“They made a premeditated political decision to serve him with subpoenas after less than an hour of questioning, and before they even asked a single question about his legitimate payments to Epstein,” she said about the committee. “Mr. Epstein had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or not. Let me reiterate, the committee did not ask a single question about the legitimate payments to Epstein for professional services on tax and estate matters.”
Black, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management, was Epstein’s main source of income for several years. From 2012 to 2017, Black paid Epstein more than $150 million for what he described as tax- and estate-planning services, far more than what he would have spent on similar services from established firms.
According to his opening statement before the committee Friday, which MS NOW obtained, Black said he “knew nothing” about Epstein’s crimes until the previously convicted sex offender was charged with sex trafficking in 2019.
Black denied any wrongdoing and said he was deceived by Epstein.
“With hindsight, I now see that Epstein exaggerated, embellished, manipulated and outright lied — prolifically and without concern for me or my family,” he said, according to his statement.
Although the interview ended before committee Democrats had a chance to question Black, ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said he backed Comer’s decision to subpoena the financier.
“There’s no question that as soon as this interview started that the witness was not going to answer critical questions,” Garcia told reporters. “Mr. Black was unwilling to have [that] important conversation, and so the subpoena for the documents and the subpoena for him to appear were absolutely the right moves.”
The turn of events was unlike any other voluntary interview that the committee has conducted as part of its investigation into Epstein. The Oversight panel has interviewed more than a dozen people about Epstein, including former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and several of Epstein’s former assistants.
The District of Columbia has settled a lawsuit by a protester who said he was detained and handcuffed for following National Guard troops around the city while playing Darth Vader’s theme song from “Star Wars.”
As Venezuela seeks to recover from twin earthquakes Wednesday — with magnitudes of 7.2. and 7.5, respectively — that killed at least 920 people, injured thousands and have caused extensive damage, the fallout from another natural disaster, and the U.S. response to it back then, is instructive for what happens next today.
In December 1999, torrential rains sent walls of mud and rock down the mountains onto Vargas, the coastal strip between Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, and the sea now known as La Guaira. Death toll estimates run from 10,000 to 30,000 — the exact figure remains unknown. In the aftermath of what is still considered the deadliest natural disaster in modern Venezuelan history, Washington offered to help. U.S. Navy engineers and Marines began steaming toward Venezuela aboard the USS Tortuga, with bulldozers and the equipment to help clean and rebuild a shattered region.
Alleviating Venezuelan suffering means not just digging through rubble but also rebuilding these systems.
But Hugo Chávez, not trusting the U.S. and fearing a loss of sovereignty and political power, turned away the aid deployment. Venezuelans have paid for that ego-based miscalculation ever since.
Today, Venezuela is run by the successor to Chávez’s regime. Since the Jan. 3 operation that removed Nicolás Maduro from power — and brought him and his wife, Cilia Flores, to face charges in U.S. courts — the U.S. has conducted military operations inside Venezuela, taken effective control of its oil revenue and acquired extraordinary leverage over the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez. The constraint that bound Chávez in 1999 — the political cost of being too close to the U.S. — no longer applies. Washington can dictate terms.
Yet while some things have changed in Venezuela since Jan. 3, two crucial issues have not. The first is the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that is daily life for millions. Years of mismanagement and the regime’s kleptocracy hollowed out the country long before the 1999 disaster; afterward, supplies never reached hospitals, there were chronic shortages of food and basic medicines, and the health system could not reliably deliver basic services. The mismanagement and corruption of Chavismo intensified after Maduro came to power in 2013.
After I became the U.S. chief of mission in July 2018, I visited hospitals in Caracas and in other states and checked on school feeding programs in tough neighborhoods. Together with the U.S. Agency for International Development, we at the embassy documented children who were stunted from lack of calories and the number of people who died in hospitals due to lack of medicines. The aid that did arrive was politicized.
In February 2019, for example, the United States sent C-17s laden with food and medicine to Cúcuta, Colombia, to help the Venezuelan people. Maduro’s response? He ordered the bridge connecting the two countries blockaded and sent Iris Varela, the head of the prison ministry (and current National Assembly member), into the streets with armed thugs to stop the delivery of supplies. Most of the supplies were burned in chaotic protests generated by the regime. At the time, Rodríguez claimed there was no humanitarian crisis. A mere two years later, Maduro welcomed the United Nations World Food Program to help feed hungry schoolchildren, but only if his regime could decide where the food would go.
That hunger and need for healthcare has not been ameliorated. Even before Wednesday, the U.N. counted nearly 8 million Venezuelans in need of humanitarian assistance. The Rodríguez government’s energy has gone elsewhere — toward oil and gas contracts, mining concessions and a steady cadence of memorandums of understanding that outline future oil and gas deals but have so far led to little money moving to Venezuela, much less to its exhausted people. And now the strongest earthquakes to strike Venezuela in more than a century have further fractured the populace.
The other key issue amid all this is government censorship. Rodríguez presides over a regime that throttles the flow of information. Platforms such as X remain blocked inside Venezuela. In the hours after disaster strikes, information is crucial to relief and rescue efforts for informing citizens where to go, how they can help others and more. The channels Venezuelans would use to find one another, and help, are still choked off by the state.
The U.S. and other nations are mustering support for Venezuela at this dire moment. While the knowledgeable and capable USAID flyaway teams are no longer available due to that agency’s unfortunate demise, the U.S. can still lead on sending assets such as the USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship. Fully staffed, with its 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms, it ranks among the world’s largest hospitals, and it has done this sort of work before — after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was stationed off New York. It should be sent. Other efforts reportedly underway include mobilizing the 80-person urban search-and-rescue team from Fairfax County, Virginia, alongside crews from Los Angeles and teams from Mexico and elsewhere.
The other key issue amid all this is government-run censorship. The channels Venezuelans would use to find one another, and help, are still choked off by the state.
Speed is essential in the search for survivors, but the immediate response is only the beginning. Venezuela’s health system and its electrical grid have decayed for years. Earthquake damage will expose the weaknesses in both. Alleviating Venezuelan suffering means not just digging through rubble but also rebuilding these systems.
The earthquakes have wrought enormous stress on Venezuela’s institutions — and disasters have a way of becoming political instruments. Chávez let the Vargas recovery dissolve into political squabbling, and the promised rebuilding never happened. The danger today is that Rodríguez uses the emergency — the suspended normalcy and diverted attention — as another reason to defer a genuine democratic transition.
Washington has only recently started pressing the issue, through nascent conversations between Jorge Rodríguez, the current president of the National Assembly (and brother of Delcy, the acting president), and Dinorah Figuera, the president of the 2015 National Assembly, which the U.S. had until recently identified as Venezuela’s last democratic institution. Their discussions regarding the electoral machinery and prospects for future democratic elections were already fragile; this disaster presents an incentive for the government to let them lapse.
Humanitarian relief and political accountability are not competing priorities. The U.S. has the leverage to insist on both: to provide massive help to the Venezuelan people and to make unmistakably clear that this latest natural disaster is not an off-ramp from democratization. In 1999, Venezuela’s regime cited sovereignty as the excuse for letting people suffer. In 2026, the tragedy of the earthquakes should not derail the march toward freedom.
Bode’s high summer 2026 collection celebrates the upcoming American Semiquincentennial. Designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla speaks with Vogue about the collection.
Luis de la Rosa — an animator with credits on big projects like “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” — is dead after he was hit by a train while attending a film festival in France. Local newspaper Le Dauphine Libéré reported the fatal…
Francia se hace presente en el Estadio de Boston en un choque de gigantes ante Noruega, que cuenta con una generación dorada liderada por Erling Haaland y Martin Odegaard.
