US Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games at the San Siro stadium in Milan, Italy, on February 6, 2026. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
The vice president attended the opening ceremony in Milan, where people also protested the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Winter Olympics.
US Vice President JD Vance was booed at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Italy on Friday, but at least one widely shared video of it was swiftly scrubbed from X, the social media platform controlled by former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk.
Acyn Torabi, or @Acyn, “is an industrialized viral-video machine,” the Washington Postexplained last year, “grabbing the most eye-catching moments from press conferences and TV news panels, packaging them within seconds into quick highlights, and pushing them to his million followers across X and Bluesky dozens of times a day.”
In this case, Torabi, who’s now senior digital editor at MeidasTouch, reshared a video of the vice president and his wife, Usha Vance, being booed that was initially posted by filmmaker Mick Gzowski.
However, the video was shortly taken down and replaced with the text, “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”
Noting the development, Torabi, said: “No one should have a copyright on Vance being booed. It belongs to the world.”
As of press time, the footage is still circulating online thanks to other X accounts and across other platforms—including a video shared on Bluesky by MeidasTouch editor in chief Ron Filipkowski.
JD Vance loudly booed at the Winter Olympics today.
The Vances’ unfriendly welcome came after a Friday protest in the streets of Milan over the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Winter Olympics, with some participants waving “FCK ICE” signs.
The Trump administration has said the ICE agents—whose agency is under fire for its treatment of people across the United States as part of the president’s mass deportation agenda—are helping to provide security for the vice president and other US delegation members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Demonstrators take part in a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Milan, Italy on February 6, 2026. (Photo by Mattia Rinaldi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
One Olympic athlete, a skier representing Britain, registered his disgust with US immigration enforcement agents by urinating the message “Fuck ICE” in the snow.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the streets of Milan, Italy on Friday to protest the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the 2026 Winter Olympics, with protesters waving “FCK ICE” signs and condemning Trump administration officials—including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Reutersreported that demonstrators rallying ahead of the opening ceremony could be heard “blowing plastic whistles, which have become a symbol of anti-ICE rallies in the US.” The Trump administration said a small group of ICE officers would be traveling to Milan to help provide security for Vance and Rubio, who arrived in the city on Thursday.
One demonstrator, a Minnesotan currently studying in Europe, told the outlet that she “thought that this was a good opportunity to show that the rest of the world is not okay with what’s happening in Minnesota.”
“It’s not okay to just acquiesce and go with the status quo,” the protester said.
Demonstrators take part in a protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Milan, Italy on February 6, 2026. (Photo by Mattia Rinaldi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The protests came a day after Gus Kenworthy, a skier representing Britain, urinated the message “Fuck ICE” in the snow ahead of the winter games’ opening festivities and urged Americans to pressure their representatives to rein in the agency.
“Innocent people have been murdered, and enough is enough,” Kenworthy wrote on social media. “We can’t wait around while ICE continues to operate with unchecked power.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Palestine defenders rally with a banner reading, “Against the Genocide” in Rome on September 22, 2025. (Photo by Simona Granati/Corbis via Getty Images)
“Meloni should take a stand with the facts against those who have slaughtered 20,000 children, rather than limiting herself to saying ‘I do not agree,’” said one critic of Italy’s right-wing prime minister.
Italian labor unions led a massive 24-hour general strike on Monday to protest Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, with estimates of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rallying in dozens of cities across Italy.
Protesters took to squares, streets, transport hubs, ports, university campuses, and other spaces in more than 75 cities and towns, rallying under the call to “Block Everything.” Places including schools, train stations, and retail stores were shut for the day.
“The strike is called in response to the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, the blockade of humanitarian aid by the Israeli army, and the threats directed against the… Global Sumud Flotilla, which has on board Italian workers and trade unionists committed to bringing food and basic necessities to the Palestinian population,” explained Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), a grassroots union confederation known for its militant stance on labor and political issues.
General strike in Italy for Palestine, here’s the amazing view from the top of Termini station in Rome. The people – not the government – stand for solidarity and justice pic.twitter.com/9O7P8DV6tZ
In Rome, tens of thousands of Palestine defenders rallied at the Termini rail station, Italy’s largest, with many of the demonstrators occupying the building.
While protest activities snarled traffic in some parts of the Italian capital, many Roman motorists showed solidarity with the demonstrators by honking their horns and raising their fists into the air.
Watch: Pro-Gaza protesters who blocked a highway near Rome were met with visible solidarity from drivers. Regional news coverage of the paralyzed Central Station showed only people expressing support for the protest.Source: Paolo Mossetti on X (@paolomossetti)
Milan saw an estimated 50,000 people turn out to locations including the central rail station, where some protesters damaged property and clashed with police, who said 10 people were arrested and 60 officers were injured.
“If we don’t block what Israel is doing, if we don’t block trade, the distribution of weapons and everything else with Israel, we will not ever achieve anything,” protester Walter Montagnoli, who is the Base Unitary Confederation’s (CUB) national secretary, toldThe Associated Press at a march in Milan.
In Bologna—home to the world’s oldest continuously operating university—students occupied lecture halls and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, including the Tangenziale, the ring highway around the city, where police attacked them with water cannons and tear gas.
Dockworkers and other demonstrators marched and blocked ports in cities including Genoa, Trieste, and Livorno.
Thousands of protesters also blocked the main train station in Naples.
In the Adriatic seaside resort of Termoli, hundreds of student-led Palestine defenders rallied in St. Anthony’s Square and, with Mayor Nicola Balice’s permission, draped a Palestinian flag from the façade of City Hall.
“Faced with such an important subject, the genocide in Palestine, we students… said this would be a nonpartisan demonstration because in the face of what is happening in the Gaza Strip—hospitals bombed, children killed every day—there can be no political ideology,” said one Termoli protester. “We must all be united.”
Some participants in Monday’s general strike pointed the finger at their own government.
“In the face of what is happening in Gaza you have to decide where you are,” Italian General Confederation of Labor leader Maurizio Landini toldLa Stampa. “If you don’t tell the Israeli government that you have to stop and don’t send them more weapons, but instead you keep sending them… you actually become complicit in what’s happening.”
While European nations including Ireland, Norway, Spain, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, and Denmark have formally recognized Palestine or announced their intent to do so since October 2023, Italy has given no indication that it will follow suit. More than 150 of 193 United Nations member states have recognized Palestine.
Although increasingly critical of Israel’s 718-day genocidal assault—which has left at least 241,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza—right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been accused of complicity in genocide for actions including presiding over arms sales to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meloni has rejected the ICC warrants and said Netanyahu would not be arrested if he enters Italy.
“Meloni should listen to the voice of those who are peacefully protesting and asking her to act, rather than curling up to Washington to protect her friend, the war criminal Netanyahu,” Giuseppe Conte, who leads the independent progressive Five Star Movement, said Monday on social media. “Meloni should take a stand with the facts against those who have slaughtered 20,000 children, rather than limiting herself to saying, ‘I do not agree.’ And she should stop running away from the debate in Parliament.”
Activists protesting against police infiltrations in Italy. Source: Cambiare Rotta/Facebook
Potere al Popolo is pressing the Meloni government to explain five police infiltration attempts targeting the party’s youth organizations.
Italian left party Potere al Popolo! (Power to the People!) continues to demand full government transparency following revelations that multiple police agents infiltrated the party’s youth groups, Collettivo Autorganizzato Universitario (Self-Organized University Collectives, CAU) and Cambiare Rotta (Changing Course). For approximately eight months, undercover police officers infiltrated or attempted to infiltrate chapters in Naples, Milan, Bologna, and Rome, only to be uncovered through by the party’s internal investigation and independent media outlet Fanpage.
Speaking to Peoples Dispatch, Giuliano Granato, one of Potere al Popolo’s spokespeople, stated that the party is exploring all potential avenues for action, emphasizing that it will not wait passively in the meantime. A key priority is compelling the relevant institutions, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, to publicly explain what happened. “They owe the public some answers,” Granato says. “Who ordered this operation? Who planned it? And on what grounds?”
Meloni’s government and institutions, however, are not known for responding transparently to uncomfortable questions. This became evident again after the first case was exposed in May, when official statements ranged from evasive to outright absurd. One explanation offered, Granato recalls, was that the officer who infiltrated the youth group in Naples had done so not as part of an official assignment, but rather because he had “fallen in love with a Potere al Popolo activist.”
“Are we now supposed to believe five officers from the same training course all suddenly fell in love with five of our activists at the same time?”
Another line of defense claimed that while the infiltrations were official operations, they did not target Potere al Popolo as a political party, but only the specific youth collectives. Yet, even if one was to accept the dubious legitimacy of undercover operations in youth organizations on campuses, that explanation raises new questions. As Granato notes, there are many youth collectives across Italy active on similar issues, including Palestine solidarity and housing. “And yet, the only ones where infiltrators were discovered are the ones organically tied to Potere al Popolo.”
A state increasingly intolerant of dissent
Granato also stresses the importance of keeping public attention on the issue. Since the revelations in May, Potere al Popolo! has received solidarity from grassroots networks and trade unions, civil society organizations, and even a few opposition parties that submitted formal inquiries to the government. “In contrast to this, there has been no media uptake of the case,” Granato said. “Apart from Fanpage, only Il Fatto Quotidiano and il manifesto covered it. The rest of the mainstream media landscape? Radio silence. All the big self-declared progressive media ignored it.”
“This is a very grave thing,” he continues, “because these are the same center-left media that now and then raise concerns about Meloni’s authoritarian drift.” By choosing not to cover the infiltrations in Potere al Popolo, Granato suggests, they show that they will only raise issues when it benefits them, ignoring the public interest when it doesn’t.
The tendency is particularly worrying in the current context, Granato says, considering the infiltration of Potere al Popolo is not an isolated case but part of a broader trend. He points to connections to other recent cases, such as the surveillance of Fanpage journalists and of activists from Mediterranea Saving Humans, who have challenged the government’s deadly migration policies through their work. He also mentions the government’s so-called security decree and an ongoing campaign against the right to strike. “If we connect all these little dots, what emerges is a picture of a government and institutions that are less and less tolerant of dissent,” Granato explains.
Yet it is not individual dissent they are afraid of. Instead, what state authorities and institutions fear is collective dissent that organizes people and gives them the tools to change the status quo, Granato says. This fear is one of the reasons why they would want to infiltrate Potere al Popolo, as they recognize it as a political force capable of posing a real threat to the structures they want to protect.
One way to resist this tendency, Granato concludes, is to remain persistent in showing solidarity, including to those who have been infiltrated by the police. “Publicly showing solidarity means publicly showing there’s still a democratic fabric that hasn’t been destroyed, both in Italy and beyond.”
