Trump to kick off yearlong celebration of America's 250th anniversary with event in Iowa
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and HANNAH FINGERHUT
President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to deliver a 'spectacular' yearlong birthday party to mark 250 years of American independence. On Thursday, he will be in the U.S. heartland to kick off the patriotic festivities — and to celebrate the final passage of his sweeping tax cuts and spending package.
Trump is expected to tout the major piece of his agenda when he takes the stage Thursday at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, according to the White House. This comes just hours after the House pushed it through in a tight roll call of 218-214.
Organizers see the coming year of festivities as a way to help unite a polarized nation and bridge partisanship. But it's a monumental task given the country's divides and the staunch Democratic opposition to the 800-plus page package full of the GOP's main policy priorities. More U.S. adults also disapprove than approve of how the Republican president is doing his job.
Iowa was a 'logical choice' for the kickoff, Crowley said, because of its central location and Trump's affinity for the state, which supported him in each of the last three general elections. She also said Iowa's middle-of-the-country geography is symbolic of the desire to use the coming celebrations to help bring people together.
'We've had so much division and so much polarization over the last many decades, but certainly over the last few years, that to be able to bring the country together to celebrate America's 250th birthday through patriotism, shared values and a renewed sense of civic pride, to be able to do that in the center of the country, is incredibly important,' she said.
A recent Gallup poll showed the widest partisan split in patriotism in over two decades, with only about a third of Democrats saying they are proud to be American, compared with about 9 in 10 Republicans.
About 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of Trump's performance as president, according to a June AP-NORC poll, while about 6 in 10 disapprove. That poll also showed a majority of Americans said the June military parade that Trump green-lit in Washington for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army — an event that fell on his 79th birthday — was 'not a good use' of government money.
Crowley spoke to the political and ideological schisms that left the country 'torn apart' ahead of its last big birthday celebration, noting that 1976 closely followed the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that led Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency.
'That moment was critical to uniting the country and moving forward, and I am very optimistic and hopeful that the yearlong celebration that we're about to launch will do the same thing in this present moment,' she said in an interview.
America's 250th birthday 'is something that I think that all Americans can come together to celebrate and honor our history as well as our present and our future,' Crowley said.
The Trump administration's own cost-cutting moves this year threaten to complicate the celebrations. Reduced funding led the National Endowment for the Humanities to send letters to state humanities councils across the country saying their federal grants had been terminated. Many of those councils had been working on programming to commemorate the 250th anniversary and had already dedicated some of their federal grants for events at libraries, schools and museums.
Gabrielle Lyon, executive director of Illinois Humanities and chair of the Illinois America 250 Commission, said the cuts already have curtailed some of the planned programs, including community readings of the Declaration of Independence.
More effects will be felt later this summer, she said, such as libraries not having enough money to hire performers and storytellers to highlight aspects of a region's history and heritage.
'It is very hard to understand how we can protect and preserve people's ability locally to make this mean something for them, and to celebrate what they want to celebrate, if you're not funding the humanities councils,' Lyon said.
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, officially marking the 13 colonies' split from Great Britain.
'We're gonna have a big, big celebration, as you know, 250 years,' Trump said about the birthday during his Memorial Day address to a solemn audience at Arlington National Cemetery. 'In some ways, I'm glad I missed that second term where it was because I wouldn't be your president for that.'
Video of then-candidate Trump proposing a 'Great American State Fair' in Iowa in May 2023 began to recirculate after his reelection last November. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, told the White House earlier this year that Iowa stood 'ready' to host the event and that Trump had the state's full support, according to a draft of Reynolds' letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The culminating fair instead will be held next year on the National Mall in Washington, according to a White House official who was not authorized to share details publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. But Trump honored his initial proposal with a kickoff in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
The lineup Thursday night will include Lee Greenwood, according to social media posts advertising the event, whose song, 'God Bless the USA,' is a regular feature at Trump rallies and official events. Also attending will be Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report. AP writers Gary Fields and Chris Megerian also contributed.
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
29 minutes ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
A Battle Is Raging over Atvs on Public Lands
HANKSVILLE, Utah – Brett Stewart was in the lead, bouncing behind the wheel of a Can-Am Maverick X3 off-road vehicle that he likened to a 'Ferrari on dirt.' Then came Jean Robert Babilis, a 70-year-old with a handgun in the console, pushing a 114-horsepower Polaris side-by-side through the red rock canyonlands of southern Utah – spraying sand in defiance of the environmentalists who've fought a years-long battle to keep his kind away. The four off-road vehicles that set off in late May on the 100-mile Poison Spring Loop were exercising their right to recreate on America's public land, combatants in a noisy culture war about where off-road vehicles should be allowed to drive. The route was stunning: the hanging gardens and sandstone cliffs, the soaring buttes and endless mesas. But eight of these miles were particularly sweet: a stretch of hotly contested National Park Service land that Congress opened to off-road vehicles in May, overturning a rule finalized days before President Joe Biden left office that would have kept their convoy out. Sunshine was breaking through the clouds over a great American landscape. This was a victory lap. 'We're going to have a beautiful day, guys,' Babilis said. Then he hit the gas. The shift comes as environmentalists and others out West express alarm about the fate of public lands. Senate Republicans proposed selling more than a million acres of public land in Western states to build housing, before withdrawing the plan Saturday. The Trump administration wants to ramp up logging, mining and oil drilling and is considering shrinking several national monuments. Federal land management agency staffs that steward these landscapes have been slashed by layoffs and buyouts. The dispute over off-road vehicles is steeped in years of litigation, and technicalities about vehicle types and road classes and decibel thresholds. But it also boils down to conflicting visions about whether wild landscapes are more a playground to be enjoyed or a treasure to be preserved. 'At the end of the day, what ties us together is we all love this place,' said Jack Hanley, a field specialist with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an environmental organization that has fought for years to rein in off-road vehicle use on fragile public lands. The center of this long-running fight has been the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area – 1.3 million acres around Lake Powell, the country's second-largest reservoir – and particularly an area known as Orange Cliffs, which overlooks Canyonlands National Park. It's an exceedingly remote place where many people come to camp out under the stars and soak in the quiet and solitude. Hanley and his colleague at SUWA, staff attorney Hanna Larsen, spent two days slowly picking their way in a Toyota 4Runner over rugged cliff top roads and steep rocky trails that thread through this landscape. Some of those primitive roads were built decades ago in service of mining or ranching interests – and now offer a route for modern vehicles. With President Donald Trump back in office, Larsen said environmentalists were in 'defense mode,' picking their battles and trying to minimize the damage. Opening up Orange Cliffs could lead to more off-road vehicle access in national parks here or elsewhere, she warned. 'That tension has been brewing for a very long time,' she said. 'And it's come to a head with this.' For decades, environmentalists have pushed the National Park Service to regulate the off-road vehicles that plied the desert trails around Lake Powell. That used to be dirt bikes and dune buggies and is now dominated by utility terrain vehicles (UTVs), also known as side-by-sides, the car-like vehicles that have big studded tires and suspensions that can cost $50,000 or more, move fast over all sorts of rough ground, and often travel in packs. The decision by the National Park Service at the end of Trump's first term to allow such off-road vehicles on a portion of the Orange Cliffs area caused an outcry among environmentalists and led to lawsuits by SUWA and others. A settlement led to a new rule in January that blocked such access – which Republicans overturned in May by using the Congressional Review Act. Trump signed the resolution on May 23. 'My legislation was a response to local voices who wanted to access land they have enjoyed and explored for generations,' Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah), who proposed the resolution, said in a statement. Even though other conventional vehicles – such as four-wheel-drive trucks or Jeeps – could always drive these Orange Cliffs roads, environmentalists argue that off-road vehicles pose a unique threat to visitors' experience and the environment. They are louder, they say, and more capable of traveling off trail through the sage brush and pinyon pine landscapes if riders choose to do that. Some like to travel at night, antennas illuminated, an eerie vision in the desert. If you were camping in Canyonlands National Park and a group of those vehicles roared past Orange Cliffs, 'your whole night is screwed, that's just a fact,' said Walt Dabney, who was superintendent at Canyonlands for much of the 1990s. 'To have a small group of these users ruin it for everybody else, I don't think is justified,' he said. 'There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles of backcountry four-wheel-drive adventures to be had. You don't have to go everywhere.' Off-road advocates feel they are unfairly maligned by environmentalists. They say their vehicles don't cause any more damage than conventional ones, and it's just a few drivers who veer off designated paths. The Blue Ribbon Coalition, which advocates for off-road vehicle access, is currently involved in three lawsuits against the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management to open about 1,600 miles of trails closed during the Biden administration, executive director Ben Burr said. Burr, who organized the convoy on the Poison Spring Loop, used to be an aide to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and is a relative by marriage. His family name is all over the landscape out here – the Burr Desert, the Burr Trail – dating back to his Mormon ancestors who drove cattle in the area in the 1800s. He considers singling out off-road vehicles 'purity culture nonsense.' 'It's like skiers versus snowboarders, e-bikes versus non-e-bikes, non-motorized versus motorized – we've created all these distinctions and tribes we put ourselves into,' he said. 'But really all the agencies should be looking at is: How do I make the benefit of being here available to the most people?' 'The bigger the playground' The off-road vehicles started the Poison Spring Loop on sage brush flatlands. It wasn't long before Stewart, a former bricklayer, saw something he didn't like. 'All my signs are gone,' he said. Stewart, who has a nonprofit called Utah O.H.V. [Off-Highway Vehicle] Advocates, had put up skull-and-crossbones stickers to mark the Poison Spring Loop and someone had removed them. He knew many people loathe his hobby. 'People just hate these – flat out hate 'em,' he said. There are now more than 200,000 registered off-road vehicle users in Utah, according to a spokesman for the Utah Department of Natural Resources. Babilis said he's spent decades driving four-wheelers and motorcycles on trails in southern Utah, a pastime he's shared with his seven children and more than 20 grandkids. He's purchased several side-by-sides in recent years as they've swelled in popularity. Some of the places he used to drive have been closed to off-trail vehicles by the federal government, including in the Bears Ears National Monument that was created by President Barack Obama. 'They just shut off every trail that we've been riding on for decades,' Babilis said. To Stewart, exploring the outdoors in the type of vehicle that can cruise at 100 miles per hour is his preferred brand of therapy. He's too old to hike very far, he said, and off-roading allows him to experience vast landscapes away from crowds. 'I'm not worried about it being overridden because it's so spread out,' he said. 'The bigger the playground, the less people we'll see.' Life-changing lands By the next afternoon, SUWA's Hanley and Larsen had reached Panorama Point, on top of Orange Cliffs. It had been a slow, bone-jolting drive over rocks and boulders on the most primitive road, but the view was worth it, stretching out endlessly over the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park and the place where the Green River merges with the Colorado River. Along the way, Hanley had stopped regularly to point out what caught his eye. A pronghorn antelope amid the juniper trees. The call of a black-throated gray warbler. He'd stopped to smell a cliffrose and sample the wasabi flavor of a pepperweed. 'You want to hear my favorite sound?' he asked, and rattled a narrowleaf yucca. Hanley, who grew up in the Bay Area, took a family trip through the Southwest when he was 21 that included Zion National Park. He was stunned by the setting but also by the meaning of public lands. Standing around without buying something in a city is loitering; out there, commerce was not required. 'I could just sleep on the ground, you know,' he said. 'It just felt right to me in this way that really made sense.' Instead of going to college, he started rock climbing and washing dishes with a Zion concessionaire. He went on to work as a backpacking and canyoneering guide and interpretative ranger with the Park Service. When the first Trump administration slashed the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, he decided to get more involved in protecting public lands and joined SUWA. Hanley has volunteered with BLM offices to help restore damaged landscapes by raking off-road tire tracks or putting up fences to keep vehicles off prohibited roads. In every field office where he's worked, he said, he's seen evidence of off-road vehicles that left the trail and tore up the landscape. 'I've had fences I've built cut. Signs that I put in shot or ripped out of the ground,' he said. 'I think there's something to the culture – those machines are designed to be driven off of roads.' On top of Panorama Point, Hanley tried to explain what the canyons in the distance meant to him. The first time he hiked into the Maze, he said, he followed mountain lion tracks for two days without seeing human footprints. Out there, he's come across haunting four-foot-tall pictographs that date back thousands of years. He's survived on spring water from a trough put in by ranchers a century ago and found a sherd from an ancient ceramic jar on the ground nearby – the water source has been convening people for millennia. Hanley and Larsen set up camp that evening on the cliff top. As night fell, they marveled at the stillness and watched the innumerable stars that began to appear. 'The beauty of a special place like this is it's a reminder that you come from the earth,' Hanley said. The 'do not touch' area The off-road convoy stopped at a couple of spots to look at Native American drawings along the Poison Spring Loop, which is also a popular thru-hiking trail. Many of them had been defaced by more modern visitors. Stewart's favorite lore is about Butch Cassidy, the famed bank robber and outlaw who hid in these canyons with loot that Stewart is still looking for. At one stop, Stewart led the group behind a giant boulder. He revealed where someone had carved 'Butch Cassidy' into the rock. It's a place he treasures, and each time he approaches, he's terrified vandals might have marred the inscription. Is it real? 'Only Butch knows,' he said. The convoy drove across the silty waters of the Dirty Devil River and up precipitous switchbacks, past Gunsight Butte and through Sunset Pass. A weathered wooden sign marked the entrance to the Orange Cliffs unit of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Four plaques identified what was allowed (camping, hiking) and prohibited (campfires, pets). A fifth plaque – which once banned off-road vehicles – had been pulled off. 'Now we're in the 'do not touch' area,' Stewart said of the 8-mile portion of the loop on Park Service land. 'There is nothing much different. It's just dirt and red rock.' The convoy eventually reached an intersection along a stretch of grasslands where large signs warned away off-road vehicles. Those routes continued to other parts of Orange Cliffs and to Canyonlands National Park. 'No OHVs beyond this point,' Stewart read. Conventional vehicles could continue. But on that day, at least, this group could not. 'They don't have bullet holes in 'em,' Babilis said of the signs. 'Not yet,' Stewart replied.
The Diplomat
an hour ago
- The Diplomat
Cambodia, US Nearing Agreement on Trade, Phnom Penh Says
Among the ASEAN nations, Cambodia is the most potentially exposed to any sudden shift in U.S. trade policy. Cambodia and the United States have agreed to a framework for a trade agreement, the Cambodian government announced today, just days ahead of the Trump administration's July 9 tariff deadline. The announcement came after a virtual meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chanthol and Sarah Ellerman, the assistant U.S. trade representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. 'In this meeting, both sides reviewed and agreed on the draft Joint Statement on Framework for United States-Cambodia Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, which will be released to the public soon,' the government said in a statement. It added that Prime Minister Hun Manet's government 'will continue to cooperate closely with the United States of America to achieve a mutually beneficial trade and investment relationship.' During President Donald Trump's 'liberation day' tariff announcement on April 2, Cambodia was hit with a 49 percent tariff – the highest of any nation in Southeast Asia. Since then, the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) and the Ministry of Commerce have held three rounds of negotiations with U.S. trade officials, the latest of which took place on June 25. However, unlike the cases of Vietnam and Indonesia, the reporting on the trade talks between Phnom Penh and Washington has been vague as to what has been discussed during the negotiations or what the impending framework agreement will involve. Chanthol said recently that Cambodia had submitted a comprehensive set of documents to the U.S. trade authorities. As the Khmer Times reported, 'these include proposed tariff rates, export compliance conditions, and a framework for how U.S. goods would be taxed upon entering the Kingdom.' While Cambodia's trade negotiations with the U.S. have not received as much attention as its neighbors Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, the potential political impacts of the tariff are perhaps greater here than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Of all the nations that rely on the U.S. market, Cambodia is the most exposed to any potential change in U.S. trading conditions. The country exported $9.91 billion worth of goods to the U.S., according to Cambodian government figures. This made up around 37 percent of its total exports, and a whopping 24.8 percent of its gross domestic product for 2024. (The U.S. Trade Representative's Office puts the figure for Cambodian exports higher, at $12.7 billion, as compared to $321.6 million in U.S. exports to Cambodia.) This trend has continued in 2025, with Cambodian exports totaling $4.35 billion from January to May – a 27 percent increase compared to the same period in 2024. For 2024, total exports stood close to $10 billion. As such, the imposition of a significant U.S. tariff on Cambodian imports could have a major effect on the country's manufacturing industry, particularly its garment and footwear sectors. During a workers' forum on June 7, Cambodian garment workers expressed their concerns that the 49 percent tariff increase would lead to job losses, worsening working conditions. Long Sophat, a 38-year-old factory worker in the Teuk Thla area of Phnom Penh, told the forum that a cut in garment orders would likely affect the lowest-skilled workers, Camboja News reported. 'I am afraid my boss will invest in other countries, and working conditions will worsen or result in the loss of job and income. I am responsible for my family, and I have bank debts,' she said. According to Camboja News, as of last year, the country had 1,555 factories and enterprises, employing nearly 1 million workers, many of them women from rural Cambodia. Mass layoffs in the Cambodian apparel and garment manufacturing sector, should they eventuate, could well result in widespread hardship and potentially political unrest. Working against Cambodia is the fact that the country has never commanded much attention in Washington – but when it does so, it is often for the wrong reasons. Since the first Trump administration, U.S. officials have become concerned about the country's economic and strategic proximity to China, a concern that has come to center around the Ream Naval Base, the subject of extensive Chinese refurbishment over the past few years. More recently, questions have been raised about the industrial-scale online scamming operations that have planted themselves firmly on Cambodian soil since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a report last week, the rights group Amnesty International accused the Cambodian government of being 'complicit' in the scamming operations run mostly by Chinese crime syndicates, which have defrauded billions from victims around the world – including the United States. (The Cambodian government has denied this and similar allegations.) As Trump told Fox News earlier this week, 'We'll look at how a country treats us – are they good, are they not so good – some countries we don't care [about]. We'll just send a high number out,' he said. All of this compares unfavorably with Vietnam, a nation that was hit with a similarly harsh 46 percent tariff on April 2, but which has grown into an increasingly important strategic partner of the U.S. over the past two decades. Given that Vietnam's recently announced trade agreement will still see the country hit with a 20 percent tariff, it is hard to see how Cambodia can get a much better deal, at least without making substantial concessions on non-trade issues of concern to Washington.
Tokyo Weekender
an hour ago
- Tokyo Weekender
Sanseito Leader Says ‘Japanese First Approach Is Not Based on Xenophobia'
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List of Contents: Sanseito Leader Speaks About Party's 'Japanese First' Approach Residents Unable To Sleep as Tokara Islands Hit by 900 Quakes in Two Weeks Japan Endures Hottest June on Record Trump Calls Japan 'Very Spoiled,' Claims It Won't Buy US Rice Crossfaith Suspend Activities Due to Guitarist's Inappropriate Messages to 14-Year-Old Fan Naomi Osaka Through to Round Three at Wimbledon Related Posts Sanseito Leader Speaks About Party's 'Japanese First' Approach Official campaigning for the July 20 House of Councillors election in Japan began on Thursday. More than 500 candidates are running for 125 seats in the 248-seat upper chamber. The focus of the election is whether the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner Komeito will be able to hold onto their majority. They need 50 seats. The relatively new right-wing populist party Sanseito, meanwhile, is aiming for six seats. Led by Sohei Kamiya, the party has been gaining a lot of attention due to its 'Japanese First' approach. Speaking at the FCCJ on Thursday, Kamiya insisted that this approach was 'not based on xenophobia.' Responding to a question about immigration, he said, 'Our party is not in favor of accepting migrants to substitute for the drop in Japan's population,' adding, 'Please understand we're not intending to exclude foreign workers who are here legally. We just believe cheap foreign labor's not the right way.' During his first campaign speech, Kamiya reportedly stated that Japan needs more young women to give birth because 'old women can't have children.' However, the livestream allegedly cut off while he was saying it. Akusekijima, part of the Tokara Islands | Image: Victoria Bennett Tokara Islands Hit by More Than 1,000 Earthquakes in Two Weeks The Tokara Islands in Kagoshima Prefecture are continuing to shake. In less than two weeks, the archipelago, which consists of 12 small islands located between Yakushima and Amami-Oshima, has experienced more than 1,000 earthquakes. The seismic swarm has further ignited fears of a catastrophic disaster hitting Japan soon and, understandably, left residents feeling apprehensive. 'It feels like it's always shaking,' one person who lives there told the regional broadcaster MBC. 'It's very scary to even fall asleep.' Another commented, ' It's not clear when all this will end. I should think about whether to evacuate my kids.' From June 21 to late afternoon on Thursday, a total of 1,031 earthquakes were recorded in the region. That same day, at 4:13 p.m., a magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck Toshima Village. It registered lower 6 on the shindo scale, which measures the degree of shaking. Lower 6 indicates that most people would find it difficult to remain standing. A 5.6 magnitude quake struck the same village on Wednesday afternoon at 3:26 p.m . On Friday morning, Toshima residents started departing the village, heading to a port in Kagoshima, where they are expected to stay in temporary accommodation. Image: Jason Rost Japan Endures Hottest June on Record On Tuesday, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) revealed that Japan experienced its hottest June on record. It said the nationwide average temperature was 2.34 degrees Celsius above normal, based on figures recorded between 1991 and 2020. It was also close to 1 degree Celsius warmer than the previous record set five years ago. The most intense temperatures last month were recorded between June 16 and June 18. Much of Japan was still in the rainy season at the time. The agency said the severe heat is expected to continue throughout July. In the past few days, many countries in the Northern Hemisphere have experienced unusual heat waves. 'Extreme heat is no longer a rare event — it has become the new normal,' said UN Secretary General António Guterres. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the world will simply have to get used to these extreme conditions. 'As a result of human-induced climate change, extreme heat is becoming more frequent, more intense. It's something we have to learn to live with,' said WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis. She added: 'What can we expect in the future? More of the same, even worse.' Trump Calls Japan 'Very Spoiled,' Claims It Won't Buy US Rice Driven by a surge in domestic prices, Japan has been importing historically high volumes of US rice over the past year or so. According to US Census Bureau trade data, the country purchased $298 million worth of the cereal grain in 2024 and, in the first four months of this year, bought $114 million worth. Yet despite these figures, US President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Japan was refusing to take American rice. Posting on Social Truth, he wrote that it was an example of ' how spoiled Countries have become with respect to the United States of America.' Speaking to a reporter aboard Air Force One the following day, he described Japan as 'very tough' and 'very spoiled,' adding, 'I'm not sure we're going to make a deal. I doubt it… On trade, they've been very unfair, and those days are gone.' He threatened to impose a '30% or 35%' tariff on the East Asian nation if a deal is not reached. Earlier in the week Trump criticized Japan for not taking American cars. With less than a week to go before the July 9 deadline for trade deals, talks between the two nations remain deadlocked. Crossfaith Suspend Activities Due to Guitarist's Inappropriate Messages to 14-Year-Old Fan On Monday, the Japanese metal band Crossfaith announced via X that the group is suspending all activities for the foreseeable future. The decision was made after it came to light that guitarist Daiki Koide had engaged in 'inappropriate communication' with a teenage fan on Instagram. The band's X account posted screenshots of the conversation. Koide described the teenager as 'beautiful,' and later said he wanted to see her. After she told him she was only 14, Koide replied, 'You're so young!! But very mature!! I'm 37 years old!! But I don't think it's a problem.' The fan's mother contacted Ronnie Radke, vocalist of the American band Falling in Reverse, who Crossfaith recently supported on tour. Radke subsequently posted a video on his Instagram page, condemning Koide and the organizers of the Graspop Metal Meeting 2025 festival in Belgium, which he said let Crossfaith play even after he had shared information about the conversation. On Saturday, the band announced that it was dismissing Koide from the band 'effective immediately.' Two days later, the group announced that it was suspending its activities. Koide posted on X, stating that he 'is not a pedophile.' Naomi Osaka Through to Round Three at Wimbledon On Wednesday, Naomi Osaka celebrated the birthday of her daughter Shai with a convincing 6-3 6-2 win over Kateřina Siniaková of the Czech Republic in the women's singles second round at Wimbledon. In doing so, she tied her best record at the tournament. The four-time Grand Slam winner reached the third-round stage in 2017 and 2018. She will play Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the third round. In the men's competition, the 2019 Wimbledon junior champion Shintaro Mochizuki was narrowly beaten by world No. 20 Karen Khachanov from Russia in the second round. In other sports news, the Japan XV rugby team were overpowered by New Zealand's Maori All Blacks, losing 53-20. A crowd of around 37,000 people lined the streets of Tsubata in Ishikawa Prefecture for the homecoming parade of Onosato. He was named sumo's 75th yokozuna in May. Shohei Ohtani, meanwhile, smashed his 30th home run of the season in the Dodgers' 6-1 win over the Chicago White Sox. It's the fifth straight season he has reached that milestone. Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched seven innings in the game, allowing one run and three hits in seven innings. Related Posts Nearly 500 Earthquakes Rattle Japan's Tokara Islands Taichi Kokubun of Tokio To Be Suspended for Compliance Violation Japan Ranks 118th Again in Latest Global Gender Gap Report
