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Good morning! Today is Sunday, the 14th of June, 2026 and this is the Weekend Edition of GEORGE.
Today’s issue of GEORGE has the news to get you through your Sunday and into the work week, chock full of global stories that matter, with reportage and commentary on what you need to know today.
It’s Flag Day in the United States, a day that honors the adoption of the standard of the United States on 14 June 1777 as well as the likely apocryphal story of Betsy Ross, who sewed the first flags for General George Washington.
GEORGE is how curious thinkers catch up on global stories that matter, each and every weekday morning. It’s your tool to stay ahead of the news with reporting and commentary on what you need to know today.
Our @On the Pitch sports writer reports on the stunning U.S. men’s team victory at the World Cup, Canada’s tie, and a police operation that was able to divert a major narcotics distributor’s attention because the police officers donned the costumes of the mascots of this year’s World Cup. In addition, the report examines why pink is the new black when it comes to players’ boots.
GEORGE is pleased to introduce a new columnist, @Diocles on Sports, Gaius Appuleius Diocles In the Roman Empire, chariot racing was the most popular, high-stakes spectator sport in the ancient world, and Mr. Diocles, a Roman charioteer in the 2nd century B.C.E., is frequently cited as the highest-paid athlete in human history, racing for 24 years and accumulating massive fame and wealth. It seemed appropriate to honor his memory and accomplishments in this manner and our @Diocles on Sports columnist reports on the viral anthem that begins “My Mayor Muslim. My Bagel’s Jewish” that has been uniting New York and New Yorkers as the New York Knickerbockers basketball team won its first National Basketball Association title in 53 years.
In @World News Roundup for the weekend, our news team brings you dispatches covering a judge’s suspicions that her order barring Mr. Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund might not be heeded, a controversy over a federal directive aimed at AI company Anthropic, and a move by a major professional medical society to distribute its own vaccination schedules versus using those supplied by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Also covered in @World News Roundup: It was a bad day for U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to create dozens of memorials to himself in name or in action. Mr. Trump’s attempt to rename the Kennedy Center after himself in addition to the late President Kennedy was stymied by several court rulings, as were his changes to historical plaques at national parks that whitewashed history, which a different court ruled must be undone.
It was certainly not a good day to be the leader of the Tren de Aragua, as he was killed in U.S. military strike seeking to bring down the transnational narcotics traffickers.
Our @The Sketch editorial cartoon columnist shares his take on our news story concerning Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and the massive celebration he is planning at the White House.
In addition, GEORGE has other exclusive news in today’s edition, so don’t touch that dial. Simply scroll down and read more GEORGE, starting with today’s editorial cartoon in @The Sketch. GEORGE will be back tomorrow with a brand-new editorial cartoon, even more news, and stories you won’t find elsewhere.
Until then, remain curious!
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VOLUME VI… № 1,738
@THE LEDE (above)
@THE SKETCH (above) Our Iranian Guest
IN THIS ISSUE
@INTERMEZZO I The White House
@ON THE PITCH World Cup 2026 Coverage
@INTERMEZZO II The U.S. Capitol
@DIOCLES ON SPORTS
@INTERMEZZO III Hotel Pennsylvania
@WORLD NEWS ROUNDUP
@INTERMEZZO IV A child surrounded by flags at the Washington Monument
@HERODOTUS ON HISTORY Flag Day in the U.S.A.
@RECENT DISPATCHES OF NOTE
@ABOUT GEORGE
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The White House, home to U.S. presidents since 1800, when its first residents, President John Adams and his wife, Abigail, moved in.
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— U.S. football, ahem soccer, fans experienced a euphoric moment: a World Cup opener on home soil, thunderous chants of “U-S-A” in the stadium, a chance to elevate the sport in the United States, followed by the best 45 minutes of football in U.S. men’s World Cup history. In Los Angeles Stadium (formerly SoFi Stadium), 70,492 fans witnessed a rousing 4-1 victory over Paraguay. Not only did the U.S. men’s team take control of a World Cup game early on in a way that they never had before, the team managed to score four goals in a World Cup game for the first time in FIFA history.
— Canada was left searching for its first World Cup victory ever after its men’s team and Bosnia and Herzegovina finished their tournament-opening match tied at 1-1 in the first game played in Canada in the 2026 World Cup.
— The second Group A match, which was played on Saturday between South Korea and Czechia had a final score of 2-1, while the second Group B match – Qatar and Switzerland – ended in a 1-1 tie. The Qatari team celebrated its first-ever goal at a World Cup Match, while a headline at Swiss French-language language public broadcaster RTS blared: “QATARSTROPHE.”
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— Pink (the pop star) was not only having a moment at this year’s Tony Awards but, as it turns out, pink (the color) is having quite a moment at the 2026 World Cup. Athletic shoe makers Adidas, New Balance, Nike, Puma, and Skechers have all supplied players with variations of bright pink cleats. Why pink? It turns out that the color pink really stands out when players are on the green grass on the pitch. In addition, no teams at this World Cup have primarily pink kits, although the Brussels team’s away kit, which has splashes of pink, does come close.
— Police officers in Lima, Peru, conducted a drug raid while dressed as FIFA World Cup mascots on Wednesday. Video footage of the raid shared on social media shows officers wearing Maple the Moose and Clutch the Bald Eagle suits while smashing through a metal gate with a battering ram. Once inside, they handcuffed a suspected trafficker and uncovered bags of weapons and unidentified drugs. Apparently, Zayu the Jaguar did not make an appearance. Peruvian National Police colonel Carlos Fredy Alcántara Obregón told the Associated Press that everything went as planned. “Thanks to the intelligence work carried out by the team, we were able to establish that the person we were about to arrest was a die-hard football fan, living and breathing the World Cup fever,” Colonel Obregón said. “So we proceeded to disguise my Green Squad personnel as World Cup mascots in order to approach him without arousing suspicion and make the arrest.”
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The U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.
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Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knickberbockers
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As this issue went to press, the New York Knickerbockers, more commonly referred to as the Knicks, had won the National Basketball Association finals, with a victory in game five against the San Antonio Spurs of 94-90. The mood in New York City has been electric, the Big Apple has become the blue-and-orange apple, crowds roaring at watch parties across the city can be heard for miles (kilometers) away, and – as of last week – a chant that went viral has become the city’s new unofficial anthem:
My mayor Muslim
My bagel’s Jewish
My Christian Dior
Knicks in four
The lines, “pure New York poetry,” as the New York Times put it, were penned by MD Ahnaf Hossain, a 23-year-old Knicks fan, and the anthem has spread far beyond the borders of New York City. Mr. Hossain had to update the lyrics as the series progressed to require a fifth game.
My mayor Muslim
My bagel’s Jewish
The pope’s on our side
Knicks in five
Mr. Hossain may yet have to update the anthem to account for the Knicks’ victory, but a message left for him by a reporter had not been returned at press time.
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The Hotel Pennsylvania on the Avenue of the Americas in New York CIty
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The head of Tren De Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, was killed in a U.S. military strike conducted in coöperation with the Venezuelan government. Héctor Guerrero Flores, better known as Niño Guerrero, ran the drug- and human-trafficking organization from a prison cell which he escaped from in 2023. Mr. Guerrero Flores was credited with transforming a Venezuelan prison gang into a transnational operation that cut across large swathes of Latin America and the United States, even reaching into Spain. He was listed as a “most wanted” fugitive by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was killed in a “swift and lethal kinetic strike,” Mr. Trump said.
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Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia extended a block on the creation of Mr. Trump’s $1.8 billion so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for supposed victims of “lawfare.” The term “lawfare” term in this context means the use of legal systems and principles against an enemy. The president has continued to defend the scheme, which has faced numerous legal challenges, despite the fact that his administration said in court that it had pulled the plug on it. The judge said the legal case would be dismissed if the government submits a sworn declaration to abandon the fund. She also said she was frustrated that the Department of Justice has not said under penalty of perjury whether the fund is truly dead, underscoring the fact that “none of those statements” from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche or Mr. Trump “have been made under the penalty of perjury.”
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It’s curtains for “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” and the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite the past by requiring plaques and signs at national parks to be taken down that did not align with the administration’s preferred narrative. In separate actions, a judge ruled that Mr. Trump’s name must completely scrubbed from the Kennedy Center, including the venue’s façade, while another judge ordered that all national parks restore the plaques and signage that were found to be objectionable. “Under the guise of promoting American dignity, this Administration seeks to share a limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, and interpretive exhibits at National Parks that do not align with its preferred narrative, thereby telling half-truths,” Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts wrote. In March 2025, national parks were told to not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., workers removed Mr. Trump’s name from the white marble façade of the Kennedy Center early on Saturday morning, responding to a federal judge’s ruling that its rebranding was unlawful. When Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington ruled on Congresswoman Joyce Beatty’s suit late last month, he found that the board did not have the power to unilaterally rename the institution. That power lies only with Congress, he wrote in his order, citing legislation enacted in 1964 that dedicated the institution to the late President Kennedy, a supporter of the arts who had advocated its establishment.
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The Trump administration on Friday demanded that artificial-intelligence company Anthropic cut off foreign access to its two most advanced systems, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. The company in turn responded by disabling access for all customers. News of the administration’s directive shocked cybersecurity experts as well as former U.S. officials, many of whom questioning the validity of the directive. Meanwhile, pundits pointed out that the action diverged from the hands-off approach to providing oversight to the AI industry that Mr. Trump had endorsed earlier this month. The company said that the Trump administration’s directive did not go into detail about the national security concerns that occasioned it; however, it did say that the federal government had become aware of a way to jailbreak security restrictions on Fable 5 that were intended to restrict users from using it for hacking or other types of illicit usage. Anthropic did say that concerns over the jailbreak method were grossly overstated.
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The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, a prominent OB-GYN group, announced vaccine recommendations on Wednesday that differ from what the U.S. government advises. The immunization recommendations are specifically intended for pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding women and it aligns with prior recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made changes. “ACOG has made the decision to formally release its own immunization schedule to provide and communicate clear evidence-based guidance and to address the growing vaccine misinformation that is circulating,” said Dr. Christopher Zahn, the group’s chief of clinical practice. The ACOG schedule was endorsed by 13 other professional and medical societies. Other professional societies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics have also released vaccine recommendations since Secretary Kennedy’s appointment that differ from the CDC’s.
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Switzerland is voting today on a nationwide initiative to cap the resident population at ten million. The measure aims to drastically reduce immigration as the country approaches that level, which it conceivably could reach over the course of the next ten years. The measure, however, isn’t about immigration or migrants; rather, it is more about ecology, density, and infrastructure in the Alpine country. Still, the measure was put to voters by the right-wing Schweizerische Volkspartei, or Swiss People’s Party, which put other anti-migration measures to the vote in the past.
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Donald J. Trump is turning 80 today, making him the second oldest leader of the United States after Joe Biden, who left office in early 2025 at the age of 82 years and two months old. If Mr. Trump manages to complete his term of office at age 82, he will be the oldest president to have held office, at 82 years and seven months of age. His sleep habits – or lack thereof – as well as his late-night social-media posting sessions are visibly catching up with him as he ages, yet he shows few signs of slowing down. As he enters his ninth decade, he attempts to maintain a schedule devised to ward off questions about age and stamina but, as put by the philosopher Thales of Miletus, “Time, which sees all and hears all, exposes all.” Administration officials attribute the frequent bruising seen on his hands to the handshaking he does, and his swollen ankles have a diagnosis, namely chronic venous insufficiency. He does appear to nod off, famously observed in April 2024 during his hush money trial in a New York courtroom, when he was seen leaning his head back and appearing to fall asleep, thus sparking the nickname “Sleepy Don,” and the pattern has continued. Tucker Carlson, an American conservative political commentator, was an ally of Mr. Trump who has fallen out with him over the war. In an interview with the New York Times, he said that the president does not enjoy discussing the topic of his age and mortality: “He’s really uncomfortable with it.” He has been showing signs of age “for quite some time,” Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, told the Guardian. “It’s on display almost daily as he struggles to stay awake during official meetings, he is more irritable and going on rage tangents and throwing temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. These are not signs of a well-adjusted adult approaching 80 years old.” This all notwithstanding, Mr. Trump is expected to remain in office for his 81st and 82nd birthdays, and he may have his work cut out for him over the next two years: If Democrats win one or both chambers of Congress, an outcome that polls indicate is more likely as the United States gets closer to Election Day in November, he will be a true lame duck facing his political mortality.
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A child at the base of the Washington Monument.
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Today, Sunday 14 June 2026, is Flag Day in the United States.
The holiday, which always falls on the 14th of June, commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on 14 June 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress. This makes the U.S. flag in its various iterations 247 years old this year.
Tradition holds that, in 1776, General George Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and two members of a congressional committee – Robert Morris and George Ross – visited Mrs. Ross to commission the first flag. Mrs. Ross went on to make numerous flags for the Pennsylvania navy during the American Revolution and continued to make flags for some 50 years after the British surrender in 1783.
The congressional resolution stated: “That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
The day also serves as a commemoration of the birthday of the U.S. Army, which was founded on 14 June 1775 when the Continental Congress authorized the enlistment of riflemen to serve the United Colonies, also referred to as the Thirteen Colonies, for a period of one year.
Flag Day is not an official federal holiday although, in 1916, then President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established the holiday and the date. In 1949, an Act of Congress established National Flag Day on the same day.
Relatively few states observe Flag Day although Pennsylvania became the first starting in 1937.
Several individuals are credited with the holidays creation to various degrees including George Morris of Hartford, Connecticut, which he caused to observe the holiday in 1861 although he is first credited for having done this in a book published in 1912; Bernard J. Cigrand, a grade school teacher in Wabeka, Wisconsin, who in 1885 held the first recognized observance of Flag Day at the Stony Hill School; William Kerr, who in 1888 created the American Flag Day Association of Western Pennsylvania, and the following year assumed the position of national chairman of the American Flag Day Association; and Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, attempted to have a resolution passed requiring the American flag to be displayed on all Philadelphia’s public buildings.
Many towns and cities hold local observances for the holiday to honor both the flag and its creator, Betsy Ross.
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Space Exploration Technologies, doing business as SpaceX, a private American spaceflight, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence company, announced what amounts to the world’s largest initial public offering, Elon Musk’s rocket company sold 555.6 million shares at $135 per share, raising $75 billion and giving the company a $1.77 trillion valuation. Some investors see the $1.77 trillion valuation as “pie in the sky” as Mr. Musk and his investment bankers pitch far loftier propositions about what the rocket and artificial-intelligence company is capable of achieving. Indeed, investors who were burnt by Mr. Musk’s promises with respect to other companies including Twitter, which saw its advertising revenue plunge 65% last year, fear that his lofty promises for SpaceX are the 21st century equivalent of snake oil.
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Anger is rising against Elon Musk, believed to be the world’s wealthiest man, in Belfast and across Britain for adding substantial fuel to the fire following his promotion of anti-migrant rhetoric and far-right figures during violent street protests. The unrest, which was initially sparked by a horrific knife attack of Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast, has escalated rapidly into race-based riots targeting immigrant neighborhoods. “It’s appalling,” said Labour Party Chair Anna Turleysaid of Mr. Musk’s interference, speaking to Britain’s LBC radio station Thursday. “Anyone that is seeking to drive and exploit a situation like this to drive their own political agenda is grievously wrong and doing damage. We’ve seen children, families having to flee their homes on the streets of Belfast last night.”
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Jonathan Spira, Alexander Khusid, Tim Perry, Christian Stampfer, Kurt Stolz, Anna Breuer, and Paul Riegler contributed to this issue of George.
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