Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, July 28, 2026, and National Soccer Day. In honor of The Beautiful Game, here is a compendium of the best goals in modern World Cup soccer (if the video doesn’t display, just click “Watch on Youtube” or go here. There are some beauts, so if you’re a soccer fan, watch these five minutes: It finishes with Maradona’s fabulous run and goal against England in 1986 (not the “hand of God” goal).
It’s also Buffalo Soldiers Day, National Hamburger Day, National Milk Chocolate Day, and World Nature Conservation Day.
“What are buffalo soldiers?”, you may ask. Wikipedia answers:
This Wikipedia photo is labeled “Buffalo Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment in 1890.”
Buffalo Soldiers were United States Army regiments composed exclusively of Black American soldiers, formed during the 19th century to serve on the American frontier. On September 21, 1866, the 10th Cavalry Regiment was formed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. According to legend, during the exodus of the 1870s, more than 20,000 African Americans migrated to Kansas. They hoped their journey would take them far away from poverty from the South. Others escaped by being soldiers. They served in the segregated army units and fought in the Western Indian Wars from 1867 to 1896. According to legend, the men were called “buffalo soldiers” by the Apache and Cheyenne. The soldiers adopted the name as a sign of honor and respect. Units of Buffalo Soldiers answered the nation’s call to arms mainly in the West, however, also in Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, and Mexico. They had a huge impact on the Reconstruction era.
Although numerous Black Union Army regiments were raised during the Civil War (referred to collectively as the United States Colored Troops), “Buffalo Soldiers” were established by the U.S Congress as the first all-black Army regiments in peacetime. The regiments were racially segregated, as the U.S. military would not desegregate until 1948. On November 15, 2024, Robert Dixon, the last surviving Buffalo Soldier, died aged 103. The oldest Buffalo Soldier, Mark Matthews, died in 2005 at the age of 111 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 28 Wikipedia page.
I have visitors and Hili dialogues may be thin or even absent this week.
Da Nooz:
*According to the NYT, yesterday 350,000 immigrants lost their “temporary protected status” per decision of the Supreme Court. Quotes below are from the summary in the paper’s morning newsletter.
In 1990, during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, Congress established a humanitarian immigration program called Temporary Protected Status. It was designed to shield from deportation people whose home countries were unsafe to return to because of extraordinary circumstances: an armed conflict, for example, or a natural disaster.
Last month, though, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end the program. And today that is happening for some 350,000 immigrants, mainly from Haiti. They are losing their work permits and face the prospect of deportation by the Department of Homeland Security, with T.P.S. holders from a batch of other countries soon to follow.
“D.H.S. is upholding the rule of law and getting back to common sense,” a spokesman said.
Why is TPS ending?
Critics say T.P.S. is a problem because it’s not really temporary. Look at the Salvadorans, they say. They first became eligible for T.P.S. in 1990 because of the violent civil war in their country. Another wave came after two devastating earthquakes in 2001. Decades on, there are about 190,000 of them here, living and working legally. (At least for now — their protected status is slated to end in September.)
The Trump administration calls T.P.S. a loophole, a kind of amnesty program. It says that many people now in the program came to the United States unlawfully, or came as students or on tourist visas and transitioned to T.P.S., then stayed for years as previous presidents extended the protections again and again.
A very big hit
Miriam Jordan and Madeleine Ngo cover immigration and have been reporting on the economic impact of the curtailing of T.P.S. They spoke to the director of a nonpartisan research organization who said that “for particular places and particular industries,” having “tens of thousands of workers no longer able to legally work is going to be a very big hit.”
Miriam also spoke with the chief executive of Hebrew SeniorLife, a nonprofit in the Boston area that has hired many T.P.S. recipients. Since the start of Trump’s second term, he said, other policy changes have already cost him 60 immigrant workers.
Now, the organization is preparing to lose 40 Haitians who have — had — T.P.S. protection. They are housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers and nurses who are among the legions of Haitians who have come into the program since an earthquake devastated their country in 2010.
. . .The Haitian T.P.S. beneficiaries who lose their work permits today now have to decide whether to stay or to leave the United States.
Staying would not be easy. The government knows where they live
There are of course mass protests about the ending of TPS, and those are mainly by the left, especially “progressives” who believe, in their heart of hearts, that anybody who sets foot in America should be allowed to stay forever. The Democrats or their candidates need to propose sensible immigration laws, but of course any restrictions are seen as a sign of ideological impurity. Were I a reporter in the upcoming midterms, I’d ask candidates, “What revision of America’s immigration laws do you favor?” This puts them in a bind, because while the party, moving towards “progressivism”, has no position, but regular Americans want to see some restrictions.
*The Times of Israel explains how NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is repeatedly invoking “international law” to indict what he sees as war crimes. But he hasn’t been successful.
In late 2024, Zohran Mamdani, then a candidate for New York City mayor, pledged in an interview that, if he was elected, he would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the premier came to New York.
“As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu,” Mamdani told Zeteo. “This is a city that our values are in line with international law. It’s time that our actions are also.”
He dismissed the fact that the US is not a party to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had issued the arrest warrant for Netanyahu.
“It’s time that we actually step up and make clear what we are willing to do to showcase the leadership that is sorely missing in the federal administration,” he said.
That pledge collapsed on Tuesday night, when Mamdani acknowledged that the city could not carry out an ICC arrest.
The statement marked an admission, more than a year and a half after his initial pledge to arrest Netanyahu, that Mamdani had been forced to reckon with the fact that international law does not have any bearing on the city government, despite Mamdani’s repeated description of New York as a “city of international law.”
. . . Legal scholars had said for more than a year, though, that a New York City mayor could not arrest a foreign head of state for a variety of reasons.
Neither the US nor Israel is party to the ICC, so the court does not have any jurisdiction in the US; foreign affairs are the exclusive purview of the federal government; federal law bars the imprisonment of a foreign head of state and bans any cooperation with the ICC; the NYPD cannot make illegal arrests or take acts that are prohibited by federal law; and New York City cannot extradite defendants to The Hague for trial.
. . .Mamdani’s Tuesday statement raised questions about what had taken so long to make the determination. Asked twice about the timing in a press conference on Wednesday, he declined to say when he knew that the city couldn’t make the arrest.
Netanyahu travels to New York for the UN General Assembly each September, so Mamdani needed to resolve the issue by then.
The ordeal highlighted how Mamdani has used “international law” as a cudgel against Israel.
Mamdani has almost exclusively deployed international legal arguments against Israel. He has said that he believes ICC warrants against other leaders, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, should also be honored, and has condemned Hamas for “war crimes,” but has only made those statements while talking about Israel.
. . .Mamdani has accused Israel of genocide more than three dozen times on X alone since the start of the Gaza war. He has also made the accusation in debates, TV interviews, radio appearances and during a meeting with Trump. The only time he invoked the accusation in another context appears to be a statement about Armenia.
In Wednesday’s press conference, he twice declined to say that Hamas had committed genocide, only stating that the October 7 attack was a “horrific war crime.”
Yes, ladies, and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, this is the bellwether of Democratic politics. This performative behavior is embedded in the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mamdani is a member. I’m no fan of Netanyahu, but have said that no prime minister of Israel could ever win approbation of “progressives.” An Israeli leader is, by definition, a “Zionist.” There will probably be something on Mamdani tomorrow, too, as I’m amazed that he got elected and that people don’t mind his turning NYC into Antizionist Central.
*From Eli Lake at the Free Press, “Mr. President, give up on a nuclear deal with Iran.” Lake explains why that won’t happen but suggests an alternative.
The problem is that Trump has been giving diplomacy a chance since April and he has little to show for it. That was when he first sent Vice President J.D. Vance to lead a U.S. delegation to Islamabad, Pakistan, to negotiate an end to the war. He made that decision 24 hours after threatening to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges.
Ever since the war started, two separate negotiations have been conflated in Trump’s strategy. There is one set of talks aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and then there are negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump has used the prospects of negotiating to open the strait as a way to tame oil markets. And to his credit, it has worked for now. But as Trump learned last month, the price for a temporary opening of the strait is too high. Trump would not only have to commit to reviving the economy of a regime that struggles to pay its soldiers, but also concede that Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, had a right to continue to hold that country hostage. The Hormuz negotiations were always destined to eventually fail. Perhaps Trump wanted them to fail slowly.
The other negotiation, though, to get the remaining hard-liners in Tehran to sign a nuclear pact, is folly. The main reason is that the nuclear program being negotiated has largely been destroyed. The only thing left to do is to secure what the president has called the “nuclear dust,” what remains of the highly enriched uranium buried deep beneath the remains of Iran’s underground facilities in Isfahan and Natanz.
. . .Now Trump risks looking like a paper tiger, a mad king lunging between war and capitulation. At this point, the Iranian regime has taken the measure of their adversary and called his bluff. They don’t care about the welfare of the Iranian people (the late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered a massacre of peaceful protesters in January). So Trump’s threats are not going to force his enemy to fold.
To be sure, securing the “nuclear dust” would be an ideal solution. But at this point it’s hardly necessary. Iran’s regime, for now and in the near to medium term, cannot get to that material either. And even if they could, they no longer have the centrifuge cascades or the workshops to turn that uranium into a nuclear weapon. Even still, if U.S. sensors and satellites detect an effort to secure that material, our military has the capability to end those efforts as they begin.
Lake’s suggestion (yes, every pundit has a suggestion):
The right strategy now is to play a longer game. Stop trying to get the Iranians to admit defeat and surrender the remains of their nuclear program. For now, just keep the military and the blockade in place as they are. This will disabuse Iran’s leaders of the hope that Trump is desperate to cut a deal that will revive its war machine and economy.
Over the coming weeks and months Trump can allow America and its allies to replenish its stock of interceptors and precision-guided munitions. Meanwhile, Trump can continue U.S. efforts to help plot alternatives to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, turning Iran’s blackmail leverage into a depreciating asset. Finally, Trump can authorize more cooperation between the CIA and Israel’s Mossad to assist Iran’s battered opposition to be prepared to take on the regime when the right moment comes.
When Trump threatens war only to back away at the last minute, he is fooling no one. He only makes the battered and impoverished regime in Iran look stronger than they really are.
Of course that strategy raises the price of gas, and Americans don’t like that at all.
*I wasn’t aware that Pete Buttigieg, my #1 choice for Democratic Presidential candidate, had been separated from his two-year-old twins, or even that he had twins. But the separation (apparently lasting just one day) appears to come from a mentally unstable individual and there is no specific accusation. (Article is archived here.)
Child welfare experts who reviewed the documents at The Post’s request said they illuminate a flawed process that was made worse by poor judgment by agencies and a lack of communication among investigators from two states.
Michigan State Police reports detail the chain of events from the allegation to its eventual determination it was unfounded and potentially politically motivated. Indiana child welfare authorities who received a tip on a hotline with “very limited information” about Buttigieg did not pass along the caller’s name or contact information when notifying officials in Michigan, where Buttigieg now lives, which the Indiana child welfare agency says is their policy.
Michigan police waited six days after approaching Buttigieg to attempt to identify the caller.
By then, Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and 2020 presidential candidate, had gone public with the ordeal in a June Substack post, describing it as “the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
Michigan authorities had told Buttigieg he could not be alone withhis 4-year-old children until they could be interviewed away from their parentsthe next day, Buttigieg recounted. The children stayed with their grandparents who lived nearby. Buttigieg, who is widely expected to run for presidentagain, called that 24-hour separation “among the darkest hours of my life.”
Buttigieg said the authorities initially would not tell him what he was accused of. Vivek Sankaran, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and child advocacy law expert, said he was troubled that Michigan State Police went to Buttigieg’s door with such a vague allegation that didn’t present any indication that children were imminently at risk.
Believe me, this allegation, which isn’t really an allegation since there is no accusation of wrongdoing, will be brought up by Republicans if Mayor Pete secures the nomination. But I’m told that there’s only a slim chance of his nabbing that nomination, for he’s openly gay. I find it hard to believe in this day and age that someone’s sexual orientation should bar them from the Presidency unless it impairs their ability. (It clearly has not for Buttigieg.) But, at least according to this 2024 Gallup poll, Americans would rather vote for a woman or a black person than for a gay or lesbian candidate. As for atheists, fuggedaboutit:
*On December 30 of last year (my birthday!), a large group of humpback whales gathered in the sea near Capetown, South Africa, and the video has just been released (below):
A South African couple found themselves in a rare situation when they witnessed a humpback whale “supergroup” consisting of nearly 300 of the giant marine mammals gathering together.
It’s an indication, scientists say, of how some whale species numbers have strongly rebounded in the southern hemisphere oceans decades after an international whale hunting ban came into effect in 1986.
Chris and Monique Fallows said they were used to seeing bigger and bigger groups of humpback whales off the west coast of South Africa but weren’t prepared for what they saw one morning last December. Plumes of whale breath and spray burst into the air one after the other from blowholes, and the husband and wife found their boat in the midst of what’s known as a supergroup.
“It was extraordinary,” said Chris Fallows, a renowned fine art wildlife photographer who has documented marine animals for 35 years. “Quite quickly we realized that there must be several hundred whales coming together in one particular area.”
He said what they saw can best be described as a “Manhattan skyline” of whale breath plumes.
Chris and Monique documented 299 humpback whales in the group, they said. They count whales by taking a photograph of their tail, which is called a fluke, said Monique Fallows, an author and naturalist.
Each whale’s tail is different and it’s a common tactic used by scientists to identify individuals.
It appears to be the biggest group of humpback whales sighted, according to Alex Vogel, the Africa coordinator for Happywhale. That organization has a global database of whales built off photos and information sent in largely by what it calls “citizen scientists” — ordinary people who capture images of whales that are then verified.
But all is not perfect:
Vermeulen [“Els Vermeulen, the chief scientist at the University of Pretoria’s Whale Unit in South Africa”] also raised a new threat for whales around South Africa: the conflict in the Middle East.
She said a recent preliminary assessment she co-authored showed that shipping around the southern point of Africa had quadrupled since December 2023 — after the Israel-Hamas war broke out and Yemen’s Houthi rebels began attacking ships in the Red Sea.
That is being made worse by the Iran war and the security crisis over the Strait of Hormuz, diverting more ships around Africa.
Because most whales killed by ships sink in the ocean there are no detailed statistics. But Gregg Oelofse, the coastal and environmental manager for the city of Cape Town, said more whales and more shipping clearly increase the risk.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, things are complex:
Hili: I’ve been wondering about the problem of complexity.
Andrzej: It’s quite complicated. We’ll talk about it over lunch.
In Polish:
Hili: Zastanawia mnie problem złożoności.
Ja: To dość skomplikowane, porozmawiamy o tym przy obiedzie.
*******************
From Meow Incorporated:
From The Grammar Police; two errors here:
From Things with Faces:
Masih refers to the car killing at Berlin’s Gay Pride Parade. The suspect was killed by cops.
A car didn’t kill people.
An Islamist terrorist did.
He drove into an LGBTQ Pride event. He killed a person. He injured more than a dozen others. He targeted people for who they are and who they love.
Say it. Don’t look away. Stop being politically when it comes to Islamist… https://t.co/caaq29Z9nY
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) July 27, 2026
From Luana, sex-related laws in Belgium:
I’m a biology/biotechnology lecturer from Belgium. This is what Belgium is like today.
In Belgium, we have laws that allow self-identification of sex. In practice, this means that a man can go to the town hall, fill out an administrative form (with no other requirements), and…
— Suzy Eeckelaerts (@SEeckelaerts) July 27, 2026
An “electability” poll. This doesn’t mean much now, but it shows where the Demoratic candidates stand:
New – Electability Index – Democratic Primary
Odds of winning general election, if they win primary:
🔵 Jon Ossoff: 75%
🔵 Gavin Newsom: 65%
🔵 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 59%
🔵 Pete Buttigieg: 54%
🔵 Josh Shapiro: 53%
🔵 Kamala Harris: 47%https://t.co/MV3he9jewr pic.twitter.com/uw9lcTnFJD— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) July 26, 2026
Larry wins! Cat 1, D*g 0:
Damn straight. https://t.co/ZAyhc4g72A
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 27, 2026
Two from my feed. First, a polite but hungry Indian elephant:
The baby elephant drops by the café… not to cause any trouble at all, but to order some milk!
So adorably polite, waits so patiently, and even knows how to bow its head in thanks~ melting my heart already 🥰 pic.twitter.com/7neh5pClJR
— Beauty of music and nature 🌺🌺 (@Axaxia88) July 26, 2026
Israel tracks down the October 7 killers (I believe the name is spelled “Shani Louk“):
The Hamas rapist-murderers of Shani Luke have all been eliminated by a team dedicated to tracking down and eliminating anyone who planned, executed or otherwise partook in the Oct 7 massacre. Every last one is not an empty slogan, it’s a promise pic.twitter.com/McFbLDwWKP
— Ari ארי آري 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 (@AriFromKfarSaba) July 26, 2026
And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was 3 years old, and would be 86 today had he lived. https://t.co/RpGuMhYbNv
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 28, 2026
One from Dr. Cobb, showing a calculation of selection against the black variant of the peppered moth after its previous rise during times of pollution. It’s strong selection, nearly 0.2, which means for every offspring left by a white individual, only 0.8 offspring are left by a black one.
I once calculated the selection pressure in the decline from linear regression of the logit phenotype frequency
— jim mallet (@wtf-r-species.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T18:32:47.852Z