Donald Trump vuelve a la carga contra el gobernador demócrata de California, Gavin Newsom. El presidente de Estados Unidos ha firmado este jueves en la Casa Blanca una polémica resolución con la que pretende anular el veto de California a la venta de ciertos vehículos de combustión a partir de 2035. La capacidad de vetar una norma estatal como esa desde Washington no está clara, pero el presidente ha elegido un momento en que está enfrentado al gobernador de California por el envío de tropas con motivo de las protestas de Los Ángeles contra su política migratoria.

Trump ha aprovechado para repetir media docena de veces, como viene haciendo los últimos días contra toda evidencia, que Los Ángeles estaría reducido a cenizas si no hubiera enviado a las tropas. El republicano acostumbra a inventarse un bulo y a repetirlo una y otra vez, dándolo como un hecho, para intentar que cale. Otra de las afirmaciones en que ha insistido sin fundamento, de nuevo este jueves, es que los disturbios de Los Ángeles están protagonizados por profesionales a sueldo.

En realidad, las protestas de Los Ángeles han estado muy localizadas en pequeños puntos de la inmensa ciudad, la Guardia Nacional y los marines han tenido un papel marginal en la represión de las mismas y el envío de las tropas ha exacerbado los ánimos, agravando aparentemente el problema. Este mismo miércoles está prevista una vista en la demanda que ha presentado Newsom contra el envío de militares, que considera un abuso de poder ilegal.

El acto de este jueves en la sala Este de la Casa Blanca no estaba relacionado con las protestas. Gavin Newsom anunció en 2020 planes para prohibir la venta de todos los vehículos nuevos propulsados por gasolina en el Estado para 2035, como parte de una agresiva iniciativa para reducir las emisiones del sector del transporte. Los híbridos enchufables y los coches de gasolina usados podrían seguir vendiéndose. Los reguladores estatales formalizaron las normas y la Administración de Joe Biden aprobó el permiso al Estado para implementarlas en diciembre, un mes antes de que Trump regresara a la Casa Blanca.

La resolución que Trump ha firmado este miércoles fue aprobada por el Congreso el mes pasado. Los republicanos utilizaron la Ley de Revisión del Congreso, una ley destinada a mejorar la supervisión sobre las acciones de las agencias federales, para bloquear las normas californianas. La Oficina de Responsabilidad Gubernamental de Estados Unidos, un organismo de control independiente del Congreso, determinó que las normas de California no están sujetas al mecanismo de revisión utilizado, un criterio que compartió el llamado parlamentario del Senado, autoridad jurídica de la Cámara Alta.

California ya ha iniciado una batalla legal contra la decisión, que considera ilegal. “El ataque sin cuartel de Trump contra California continúa, y esta vez está destruyendo nuestro aire limpio y la competitividad global de Estados Unidos en el proceso”, ha afirmado el gobernador Gavin Newsom en un comunicado. “Estamos presentando una demanda para detener esta última acción ilegal de un presidente que es una filial al servicio de los grandes contaminadores”, ha añadido.

“La normativa sobre automóviles de California ha sido un desastre para este país, y quiero dar las gracias a todos por estar aquí. Hemos rescatado oficialmente a la industria petrolera de Estados Unidos de la destrucción al poner fin de una vez por todas al mandato sobre vehículos eléctricos de California”, ha dicho en el acto de este jueves Trump, que aboga por impulsar las energías fósiles y ha dado por completo la espalda a la lucha contra el cambio climático.

Gavin Newsom, a quien el presidente insulta cada vez que menciona llamándole Newscum (nueva escoria), se ha convertido en uno de los blancos favoritos de los ataques de Trump. El gobernador de California se percibe como uno de los aspirantes a la nominación demócrata para las elecciones presidenciales de 2028 y está tratando de liderar la oposición al republicano. Los choques entre ambos son frecuentes en todo tipo de materias.

La Agencia de Protección del Medio Ambiente (EPA, por sus siglas en inglés) ha otorgado a California un centenar de exenciones durante mandatos demócratas y republicanos para que el Estado fuera libre para modelar sus propias políticas de emisiones, pero Trump acudió a las urnas prometiendo derogar lo que denomina “el mandato del coche eléctrico”.

La medida se produce un día después de que la EPA propusiera derogar las normas que limitan las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de las centrales eléctricas que utilizan carbón y gas natural como combustible. El administrador de la EPA, Lee Zeldin, afirmó que esto supondría un ahorro de miles de millones de dólares para la industria y ayudaría a “liberar” la energía estadounidense.

The United States remains the elusive promised land of world soccer. The largest market for television rights and ticket sales is resisting the allure of the sport that inspires the most passion worldwide. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who maintains a close relationship with Donald Trump, wants the Club World Cup and, above all, the 2026 World Cup for international teams, which the United States is hosting alongside Mexico and Canada, to serve as a catapult to boost the game’s popularity. But Trump’s policies, including hostility toward his neighbors, his immigration and trade decisions, and entry bans on citizens from multiple countries, in addition to the recent protests against the president’s policies that erupted in Los Angeles — including a curfew — threaten to overshadow both events.

Infantino attended Trump’s victory rally in Washington on January 19, where the Republican mentioned him five times, always by name. “Thank you, Gianni, for the World Cup.” “This is FIFA at its most respectful,” the FIFA president said in a video on Instagram. “To be mentioned by the new president of the United States of America at his victory rally, in his victory speech, is something unique. It’s beautiful,” he added.

The FIFA president was one of the select guests at Trump’s inauguration at the Capitol the following day. He also accompanied the U.S. president to Saudi Arabia and Qatar during his Middle East tour, even at the cost of arriving late to the FIFA assembly in Asunción, Paraguay, to the astonishment and anger of those in attendance.

“The last minute changes to the timings of the FIFA Congress are deeply regrettable […] to have the timetable changed at the last minute for what appears to be simply to accommodate private political interests, does the game no service and appears to put its interests second,” UEFA complained in a statement after a hint of a standoff.

“I felt I had to be there to represent all of you, to represent football,” Infantino apologized. “As FIFA president, my responsibility is to make decisions in the best interests of the organization,” he argued.

“I think it is absolutely crucial for the success of a World Cup to have a close relationship with the president,” the FIFA chief said in February. Trump, meanwhile, considers Infantino a “great friend.” They have played golf together, see each other relatively frequently, and shower each other with praise. “President Trump is definitely a sportsman. I am lucky enough in my life to come across some of the most talented athletes in soccer. And President Trump is made of the same sort of fiber. He is a competitor. He wants to compete, he wants to win. He wants to show who is the best,” Infantino said of him in 2020 when introducing him at a dinner with executives in Davos.

Trump is, in principle, the person who will present both the Club World Cup and the World Cup. The golden trophy destined for the champions of the world has been in the White House for weeks.

Soccer, however, remains a second-class sport in the United States, where football (both the NFL and college football) is the undisputed king of sports. According to a Gallup poll published in 2024, gridiron football is, at 41%, the favorite sport of most Americans, followed by baseball (10%) and basketball (9%), although at least soccer (5%) has overtaken ice hockey (4%). The sports are not mutually exclusive, but when citizens are asked if they are fans, soccer’s relative position does not improve.

Not even the Messi phenomenon has caught on with broad segments of the population, despite the fact that the Argentine star’s arrival at Inter Miami caused a surge in team jersey sales and ratings for MLS in general. Soccer, however, is gaining ground and has a somewhat stronger position among the younger segment of the population and the Latino community. Therefore, the double World Cup presents itself as a unique opportunity.

The Club World Cup kicks off this Saturday with Messi’s Inter Miami in the opening match. Thirty-two teams are participating, but peculiar qualification rules have allowed four Brazilian and three MLS sides into the draw, while Spain, England, Germany, and Italy have only two representatives each. Something is amiss when Al-Ahly, Al-Hilal, and Al-Ain are participating, but not Liverpool, Barça, or Napoli, the latter three champions of their domestic leagues this season.

It will, in a sense, be a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup, the largest in history, with 48 participating countries, compared to 32 in 2022. The United States will have 11 host cities, where 78 of the 104 World Cup matches will be played. Canada will host 13 matches in Toronto and Vancouver, and Mexico will host another 13, spread across Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara.

“The United States is on the verge of becoming the soccer power in the world. You don’t know it yet, but it’s coming faster than you think,” Infantino said in Davos in January 2020. “President Trump has been in this venture from the very beginning. He wanted it to be organized, together with Canada and Mexico, in prelude of the great trade agreement that you just signed last week. So, soccer is in advance of trade as well,” Infantino said at the time. This is the trade agreement Trump has torn up at the start of his second term.

Overall, Washington’s relations with its neighbors are far from the unifying ideal with which the candidacy was presented. Trump has flirted with the idea of annexing Canada, provoking a nationalist backlash in the country. Tariffs and immigration policy have deteriorated relations, and no one knows how they will evolve until the start of an event that requires logistical coordination and agility at the borders. Canadian tourist arrivals have plummeted, and visits to the United States in general are declining due to Trump’s hostile immigration and border policies.

Last month, the Trump administration’s 2026 World Cup Task Force insisted that all fans would be welcome and claimed supporters would be able to enjoy a “seamless experience,” in Trump’s words. “I know we’ll have visitors from close to 100 countries,” Vice President J.D. Vance said. “We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the game. But when the time is up, they’ll have to go home.”

Last week, Trump issued an executive order banning entry into the United States for citizens of 12 countries and placing severe restrictions on those of seven others. Among the banned countries is Iran, a 2026 World Cup qualifier. The executive order includes an exception for soccer players participating in the World Cup, coaches, their families, and necessary support staff, but not for fans. Furthermore, in other countries not subject to visa restrictions, the wait times and requirements for visas are such that they discourage attendance.

The Club World Cup has so far generated little excitement in the United States. The high price of tickets — those for the opening match were initially priced at between $300 and $500; now they’re selling for just over $50 — the deteriorating economic situation (also due to Trump’s erratic policies), the novelty of the tournament, the lack of prominent teams (and the presence of many marginalized ones), and the low popularity of soccer in general in the country all play against it. The setting of prime European viewing times for many of the matches is an implicit acknowledgment that soccer’s conquest of the United States will have to wait.

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For several days, tempers have been flaring in Los Angeles against Trump’s immigration policy, almost like an uncontrolled flame. Amidst the protests and demonstrations by the Latino community over the criminalization of immigrants, a boiling cauldron has been simmering over this fire. It takes the form of Truth Social, the Republican president’s social network. It is a space that ultra-conservative followers, media outlets, and public figures have been using to spread hate speech, threats and misinformation against Mexico and its president, Claudia Sheinbaum.

Statements in Truth Social are unrestrained. Media outlets like Breitbart headline “Mexico provides legal aid to illegal immigrants arrested by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in Los Angeles.” The article puts a political spin on it, suggesting a violation of U.S. sovereignty, when in reality this is a service that every consular office must provide to its citizens abroad. “The first law to be honored among neighbors is one’s sovereignty. Which she [Sheinbaum] has defecated all over ours. Sheinbaum is as much an ally to American as is Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” reads one of the more than 2,000 comments on the story.

Other similar outlets, such as The Federalist, have asserted that “Mexico is complicit in the Los Angeles riots, and there must be consequences.” Ultraconservative content creators and activists have taken a similar stance, such as the political commentator Charlie Kirk, with nearly 3 million followers on Truth, who has asserted that “Sheinbaum is a bigger threat to Americans than Vladimir Putin.”

The controversy grew following a statement the Mexican president made in late May in San Luis Potosí. In that video, which has gone viral on social media for all kinds of purposes—including AI-altered versions in which the president speaks in English—Sheinbaum mentioned Trump’s intention to tax remittances sent by Mexican immigrants to their families back home. In her speech, she announced that she would do everything possible, through diplomatic channels, to prevent this measure from being passed in the U.S. Congress.

“We have called on our fellow countrymen there to send letters, emails, and social media posts to the senators, telling them we disagree with this. And we will continue to report this, and if necessary, we will mobilize, because we don’t want taxes on our fellow countrymen’s remittances,” the president stated.

The president did not clarify what she meant when she said “we will mobilize” — whether she would call for street demonstrations, a rally in Mexico City’s Zócalo square, or political and diplomatic efforts to address the issue. However, Sheinbaum condemned the violence at the L.A. protests from the outset, despite the accusation Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem that the Mexican president was encouraging the unrest.

This decontextualization has led to the spread of other headlines such as “Is Claudia Sheinbaum financing the protests in Los Angeles?” or “Sheinbaum has called for an invasion of the United States” or “Mexico has declared war on the US.” This has also led to the spread of hashtags to categorize disinformation into groups with #AnexenaMéxico or #MakeMexicoGreatAgain, with the most extreme posts inciting military intervention in the country or “sending a drone” against the president. Many have also called for more tariff sanctions or intensified mass deportations of all protesters who, despite many of them being U.S. citizens, are being described as “invaders” and “traitors.”

Nor have the ill-advised statements by Mexican Senate leader Gerardo Fernández Noroña helped this fragile diplomatic moment between the two countries. A video of the senator is circulating on Truth Social in which he agrees to his country paying for the construction of a border wall between the two nations, as long as it demarcates and includes the territory that Mexico lost to the U.S. after the 1846-1848 war.

This delicate moment in bilateral relations has also served as a sledgehammer for opposition politicians and other public figures in Mexico seeking to capitalize on the situation. The businessman Ricardo Salinas Pliego wrote on his X account, in a mocking tone: “My mom says they should cancel the protests and violent mobilizations, because she [Sheinbaum] has already been scolded,” alluding to Noem’s accusations against the Mexican president. The comedian and communicator Chumel Torres stated, “We were too used to AMLO [former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador] spouting nonsense and no one dressing him down. It’s not like that anymore. Trump wanted ONE excuse, Sheinbaum gave it to him.”

Senator Lilly Téllez of the National Action Party (PAN) also didn’t hesitate to accuse Sheinbaum of triggering the events in Los Angeles. “And who’s going to pay the price for Claudia Sheinbaum’s loose talk? Well, the migrants are. Morena [the governing party] threw them to the lions. It made them believe that in the United States they could break laws without consequences, as if it were Mexico,” she said in a video posted on her X account.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, who took up his post on May 20, has tried to cool the diplomatic escalation through his X and Truth Social accounts. Just a few days ago, he was asking for recommendations for places to eat with his wife in Mexico City; his most recent posts have been a call to “restore order and the rule of law.”

“I once again join President Donald Trump and President Claudia Sheinbaum in condemning the violent protests taking place in the U.S. These actions are not helping; on the contrary, they create more problems for the innocent majority,” he wrote on both platforms. Even with the diplomat’s conciliatory tone, Truth Social overwhelmingly amplifies the president’s hardline message and remains a loudspeaker for propaganda, disinformation and xenophobic messages that are viewed and shared by millions of users.

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