OPINION // OPEN FORUM

Cancel the 2028 L.A. Olympics

Hosting an Olympic Games requires working with a lawless U.S. regime — and its rights-violating security apparatus — as they openly wage war against California.

By Joe Mathews,
Syndicated columnist
July 27, 2025



This show must not go on. ... It’s time, right now, for greater Los Angeles to halt all preparations to host the 2028 Summer Olympics. Let’s turn over these Games to a world city better positioned to host them. ... Not because Angelenos don’t love the Olympics. We are a proud Olympic city, shaped by the 1932 and 1984 Games. In normal times, the city’s incomparable international connections, entertainment assets and sports facilities would make us the perfect host for what LA 28 chair Casey Wasserman calls “the largest peacetime gathering in the history of the world.” ... But it’s no longer peacetime in Los Angeles.

This event is now too dangerous for California. Hosting an Olympic Games requires us to work together with a lawless U.S. regime — and its rights-violating security apparatus — as it openly wages war against our city and state. ... National Special Security Events, like the Olympics, require host cities to let federal agencies take the lead during the Games. For the 2028 Olympics, an agreement, which took effect last year, puts the U.S. Secret Service in charge of security, with support from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

All those agencies work for President Donald Trump, who has launched a war against California that includes deploying troops and secret federal police in our neighborhoods. California leaders have righteously demanded that immigration raids end and the troops leave. But those demands are incompatible with the Olympics agreement, which gives these agencies the power to surge security personnel into Los Angeles.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explicitly linked the current federal occupation of Los Angeles with the 2028 Olympics. He recently declared that Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, by defending protesters instead of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, forced the feds to take over the city — and suggested they would do so again.

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