Fast Takes: FIFAs foul red-card reversal, Europes internal NATO problem and other commentary

President Trump’s “hostility” to NATO “boiled over during his war with Iran,” when some alliance members “temporarily denied American forces access to their military bases,” notes The New York Times’ Massimo Calabresi, prompting Trump to ask: “Why should America stay in NATO?” Though NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has tried to remain “optimistic,” he keeps butting against “European shortcomings” that have “bedeviled the alliance,” including “industrial protectionism, nationalist distrust and an instinct to blame America for everything.” Underspending” on defense has “tanked” Europe’s “military readiness.” Even faced with threats of a US “drawdown,” European “leaders still struggle to overcome” local contracting preferences and “centuries of suspicion” of German or French domination.The question now is “whether Europeans can be good allies for themselves.”Far from being “grateful” or “celebratory” about America’s 250th birthday, Mayor Mamdani, “surrounded by a host of grim, unsmiling immigrants like himself,” gave a July 4 speech to “point out everything wrong with” the country, sighs Batya Ungar-Sargon at her Substack.

Mamdani insisted that “America isn’t the greatest, freest nation on earth,” but a place where “children go hungry” and “undocumented neighbors” are disappeared by agents in “unmarked vans.” Mamdani believes immigrants “will determine America’s future, America’s values, America’s nature,” because they have a “special power.” According to him, “the only thing that makes America great, is that it can be fundamentally changed by people like him.” How pathetic: America’s greatness, he believes, lies only in allowing itself to be “perfected” by immigrants.After President Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino, the organization partially suspended the red card for the US men’s soccer team striker Folarin Balogun, observes Na...