What if the world doesn't come?

It had been awhile since the last pep rally. Thursday's non-announcement beneath the perpetual flame — the Coliseum will be co-hosting the 2028 opening ceremonies with SoFi Stadium, which has always been the plan — seemed staged to remind everyone that, in case you forgot, LA's megaevent future is still burning bright. "The games present a unique opportunity for all of us to come together and work with urgency to better our city," said LA Mayor Karen Bass, framed in the arch of the Coliseum's peristyle. "This is the only time the world comes together as one."

Tidying up LA to "welcome the world" has been Bass's top message in 2025. "Cleaning, greening, and preparing our city for the world stage," is the tagline for her new volunteer program Shine LA, where she picked up trash and planted trees wearing a Team USA jacket. "In 15 short months, the world is going to come for the World Cup!" she said at last month's event. "And we want to make sure our city is ready to welcome the world." But each time I report that the world is hypothetically coming to LA, Torched readers fill my replies with some variation of, sure, if they want to be kidnapped and disappeared to a Salvadorian prison! This is the correct assessment of our current geopolitical posture, even if federal officials aren't saying it out loud.

And then, this week, they said it out loud.

As the White House convened its new World Cup task force, Vice President JD Vance threatened to deport World Cup tourists who come to the U.S. next summer. He then kicked it to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose face is already quite familiar to World Cup fans. A disgusting Homeland Security ad starring Noem has been airing during major soccer matches in Mexico. Her message to our World Cup co-host? "We will hunt you down," she says in the ad. "Criminals are not welcome in the United States."

In about a year, the first U.S. match of the World Cup will be played at SoFi Stadium, one of 16 venues in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Hospitality packages just went on sale, and for just $6,750 a person, you can follow one of the 48 teams to all their early stage matches across the three host countries, which honestly sounds pretty cool. In three short years, at least 200 teams will be lining up at the Coliseum — and/or SoFi, not sure exactly how it will go — for the parade of nations in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. If millions of international visitors do, in fact, come to LA, it will be at their own peril, risking travel bans, detainments at border crossings, and deportations carried out by the federal agents we've already ceded control to, per those games agreements. LA leaders may say we're "welcoming the world" but we have put ourselves in a situation where the world is very much not welcomed.

The calls to take upcoming megaevents away from the U.S. are now coming from inside the house. Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins appealed to the organizers’ bottom line: "If the significant perception persists, both domestically and globally, that this country is not a safe place for international visitors or, more important than anything to FIFA and the IOC, a safe place for their money, the governing bodies have the power to move these events to a more hospitable and dependable partner." In The Nation, Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin go one step further, urging athletes and fans to boycott U.S.-hosted World Cup matches. "For the safety of the players, their families, and fans, games scheduled to be played in the United States must be moved to Canada and Mexico, and every qualifying country should say that they will boycott the World Cup if they aren't," they write. "Attend matches in Mexico and Canada instead, and send the message that you refuse to support neofascist sportswashing."

Who would deny the U.S. its role as host? Certainly not FIFA, whose president Gianni Infantino was cuddled right up next to Trump at the task force meeting, laughing during the most cringey exchanges. Next week Infantino is skipping a FIFA summit so the besties can go to Saudi Arabia together. Similarly, Olympics and Paralympics organizers have placed their full confidence in Trump, with LA28 chair Casey Wasserman flying to Mar-a-Lago just before the inauguration. Gene Sykes, chair of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (and former LA28 chair) recently said he has received "significant reassurances" that Trump’s White House is in sync with the IOC, despite impending travel restrictions being placed on 41 countries, echoing the 2017 Muslim ban. Meanwhile, industry groups continue to raise alarms about a travel system that is unable to process documents in a timely manner. Even Wasserman's own music client couldn't get a visa to play Coachella this year.

Athletes and countries aren't organizing against the U.S. just yet. But they’d have a chance to sooner than 2026. As Trump and Infantino discussed during the press conference, FIFA's new Club World Cup tournament is being played next month at 12 U.S. venues, including right here in LA County at the Rose Bowl. Tickets are selling. A total of 32 teams from all over the world are scheduled to compete, even though some of these countries have issued grave warnings for their own residents traveling to the U.S. So far no country is boycotting the Club World Cup. And popular sentiment wouldn't necessarily sway the decision. In 2022, a poll showed that a majority of U.S. soccer fans thought we should boycott the World Cup due to Qatar's human rights abuses. We didn't.

But despite any official megaevent opposition, LA is already suffering from what city officials have labeled "tourism boycotts," with a sharp drop in international travelers contributing to our $1 billion budget shortfall. The tourism industry is calling it the "Trump Slump."

And it's about to get much, much worse:

While the overall air tourism from Canada is down 15 percent, flight bookings from Canada to the U.S. fell by more than 70 percent in early 2025, forcing airliners to reduce 300,000 seats from LAX through October, according to John Ackerman, chief executive officer for Los Angeles World Airports.

"The LA Tourism and Convention Bureau is anticipating year-over-year reductions in total international visitors to LA by between 25 and 30 percent," Ackerman said, adding Mexican air tourism was also down 24 percent so far this year. 

I get why leaders aren't publicly railing against Trump: LA was already desperate for federal infrastructure dollars, and the situation is even more dire post fires as more federal programs are being cut. But LA will miss out on billions if those travelers actually stay away over the next few years. A pre-fires, pre-Trump assessment estimated that the 2026 World Cup would deliver $594 million in economic impact to the region, with foreign visitors spending nearly two times the amount of their domestic counterparts. FIFA's got its own rosy forecast claiming both the World Cup and Club World Cup tournaments will bring in $47 billion nationally. That's hard to square now as travel analysts have predicted a worst-case scenario of $90 billion in tourism losses for the U.S. this year.

Instead of saying the world is welcome, the LA leaders hyping these events need to show the world that they actually mean what they're saying. So far we don't have a whole lot of assurances. Bass is trying to leverage her federal connections; she recently convened a group of LA County congressional leaders around megaevent preparedness where I'm told there was a conversation about how to protect international soccer fans traveling into and around the country. But right now, members of Congress can't even guarantee the safety of their own constituents.

With a dozen megaevents in the queue, you'd think Gavin Newsom would pledge to shield international visitors while vigorously defending our state's sanctuary status. California's podcaster-in-chief has made one ad wooing back Canadian tourists which refers to Trump as "you-know-who." (No, he hasn't made one for Mexico yet.) But Newsom’s sudden interest in "fairness" in sports seemed to be signaling to Trump that he's fully on board with the administration's plan to denationalize trans athletes, putting more people in danger.

And where is the protection for the workers who were excited to staff the venues until Trump was elected? State Senator Ben Allen, who heads a new megaevents-focused committee in the California legislature, seems to think Trump doesn't pose a threat to LA's immigrant workforce. "I think he’s starting to realize that some of the things he proposed have had a very deleterious impact on the economy in ways that he did not, perhaps, fully anticipate," Allen told the Los Angeles Daily News. "So I think you’re starting to see him recalibrate." After taking a quick scan of this morning's headlines — elected officials being arrested by masked federal agents! — I'm going to say that kind of thinking is absolutely delusional. Allen then proposes an alternative which is only solution that anyone seems to have for hosting megaevents these days: if we don't have workers, we'll just use volunteers.

The World Cup overlaps with yet another megaevent: next year is the semiquincentennial of the United States. The celebrations had been previously coordinated; on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the World Cup match is in Philadelphia. But Trump is obsessed with "America's 250th birthday" and at the World Cup press conference he hinted that huge plans, bigger than the Olympics, are in the works. "That's a big one, maybe that's the biggest," he said. "That's going to be a year-long celebration." This week it was confirmed that Trump has seized control of the planning and scheduled a 250th anniversary military parade on his own birthday, June 14. The idea that LA might be able to retain any control over how the Olympics and Paralympics are produced now seems like a distant possibility. At this point, I just hope we as a country make it to 251. 🔥