Politics

The man who runs the town between the stadiums

Published

3 months ago

June 14, 2026

ARLINGTON, Texas – In the run-up to the 2026 World Cup, politicians around the country have complained they’re being asked to foot the bill for transportation and security, while sky-high ticket prices make it impossible for locals to attend the matches.

You won’t hear that argument from Jim Ross, the mayor of Arlington, Texas. His city has spent hundreds of millions on professional sports stadiums over the last three decades — including the NFL venue that’s been renamed Dallas Stadium as it prepares for the World Cup’s busiest schedule.

Voters have approved the spending three times, twice for baseball stadiums and once for the football stadium.

The community of 400,000 has hosted a World Series, a Super Bowl, the final four of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and a Taylor Swift concert. If that’s not enough, there’s a Six Flags theme park and a water park near the stadiums.

Ross, a former Arlington police officer, spent part of his career providing security at baseball games. He later went to law school and was elected mayor in 2021 and 2026 as an independent (municipal elections in most of Texas are technically non-partisan). Ross said he became a soccer fan when his youngest daughter played the sport, watching FC Dallas in Major League Soccer.

He comes down squarely in favor of professional sports — and the hundreds of millions that the city has spent to subsidize them — arguing that AT&T Stadium alone provides $324 million in annual economic benefits to local businesses. And he’s not worried about the $8.5 million in World Cup-related expenses Arlington has racked up – he expects the state and federal governments will reimburse the city.

There are still critics. Game-day traffic around the stadiums can be a nightmare, and some residents question whether the city really really benefits from the public spending on sports venues.

And for fans, getting to the stadium can be a challenge. And Arlington is the largest city in the U.S. without a mass transit system, although the city sponsors a ride-share system.

The transportation agencies that serve Dallas and Fort Worth don’t extend into Arlington, but local officials cobbled together a system that will ferry fans to the stadium using a combination of a regional commuter rail and buses.

Driving to the games? Expect to pay hundreds of dollars for parking.

The first of six group-stage matches kicks off Sunday, with the Netherlands taking on Japan. Argentina, the defending World Cup champions, will play Austria on June 22 and Jordan on June 27.

Ross talked with Blue Light News about pros and cons of hosting professional sports, high ticket prices, transportation and other issues, along with his plans for the cup.

Does it irk you at all to have the stadium renamed for Dallas?

A: Listen, I love Dallas, they are great neighbors, but Arlington is my city, and we’re very proud of what we’ve done here in Arlington. Did I have a number of communications with FIFA about the naming of the stadium, and, and what it should be called, and shouldn’t be called – yeah.

The President of Mexico famously gave away her free ticket as a protest, the mayor of New York whooped and hollered about ticket prices, until FIFA put some relatively cheap tickets up for sale. Is that a concern for you, that regular folks are being priced out of the games?

It’s a concern for me that regular people are being priced out of games on all fronts. I mean, I’ll be candid, you, whether you go to a UFC fight, whether you go to a football game, baseball games, and all that stuff, it’s difficult.

I don’t set ticket prices for anything, anywhere. I certainly want everybody to have an opportunity to enjoy the games and to be a part of it, and I think there’s a number of avenues by which they can do that. (FIFA is giving away free tickets to veterans and first responders, and local charities have access to some tickets.)

Would you take the kind of risk that Mayor Monda Mamdani did — you know, jawboning and seeing if you could get lower price tickets for the fans here?

We’ve had discussions like that, with FIFA, not just ticket pricing.

If I had a city the size of New York, maybe we can get more people to listen to us on things. But we don’t, you know … we’re a smaller big city.

One of the other complaints that’s popped up around the country is, FIFA didn’t do cost sharing for security and other expenses this year. Has that been a problem for you?

We expect significant reimbursement from our federal and state partners on this, and there’s been money set aside to do just that. In fact, I was at the governor’s mansion last Monday with the mayor of Dallas, and when I was leaving there, Governor Abbott reassured me again. He was like, “Mayor, you call me if you need anything else from a public safety perspective, during the games.”

The other thing that’s popped up, you know, whether it’s the Olympics or the World Cup, and so forth, is whether big sporting events are a benefit for the host cities. Is it worth the city’s expense to have these stadiums out here and do these big events?

I’ll give you an example of just having AT&T (AT&T Stadium, the NFL venue where the Cup games will be held). AT&T gives an economic benefit to the city of Arlington of $324 million a year. That’s not the city of Arlington’s cash register ringing, that’s every small business around, their cash register ringing.

Another thing that’s been a problem around the country is transportation to the stadiums. Arlington is, famously, the biggest city in the country without a mass transit system.

A: Arlington doesn’t have a transit problem as much as North Texas has a transit problem.The problem is the transit authorities were developed to address transportation within certain regions, but not necessarily throughout the (whole) North Texas region.

The Dallas system moves people in and out of downtown Dallas, and the Fort Worth system moves them in and out of downtown Fort Worth?

Exactly right.

You worked the stadiums as a police officer – what did you learn about crowd control from that experience?

Crowds feed off of each other. Yeah, you know, if you take a small issue … and you handle it in a horrifically aggressive manner, you can spark a much bigger issue.

I think understanding crowds and the controlling of crowds is an art and a skill that takes highly trained people. I would argue that Arlington PD probably does it better than most, because we have more experience in it than almost any city around.

The Rangers won the World Series (in 2023), and we had over 700,000 people hit the streets in Arlington, and about 10 arrests were made with 700,000 people on the streets. I think that speaks volumes for how our PD handled the crowds.

Does having an international crowd change the dynamics at all?

The Netherlands have a tradition of doing a fan march, and that’s where they bring tens of 1000s of fans, and they march to the stadium. Not all of those fans will necessarily have tickets to get in, but that’s part of their tradition and their celebration, and all that.

So we’ve had to coordinate with the Netherlands and work with them on doing the fan march, talking to them about what is involved in that, and helping them understand here’s what the laws are here in Texas.

I’m probably going to go out there for the Netherlands fan march and participate with it, because culturally speaking, this is so important for Arlington.

And will they be waiving the open container laws during the fan march?

Ah, don’t get me lying.

Politics

Poll: A crack is emerging in Trump’s coalition over deportations

Published

7 hours ago

September 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is running into resistance within his own voter coalition, as more and more Republican candidates publicly break with him ahead of the November election.

New results from The POLITICO Poll help explain why: Non-MAGA Trump voters are more than twice as likely as self-identified MAGA Trump voters to say his mass deportation campaign is too aggressive, 31% to 14%. While roughly similar shares of both groups believe Trump’s campaign is about right, the MAGA base wants him to go even further: 36% of MAGA Trump voters say his campaign is not aggressive enough, compared with 23% of non-MAGA Trump voters.

Meanwhile, support across Trump’s entire voter coalition falls when it comes to deporting people beyond the most violent offenders, such as those with minor criminal offenses or who have been living in the U.S. for years without legal status.

The new survey, conducted by London-based Public First, reveals how Trump’s immigration agenda — which has long been one of his signature political issues and a reliable GOP rallying point — has divided the very coalition that helped power his two presidential wins. The president’s MAGA loyalists are still more inclined than other Trump voters to support a tougher immigration posture, but there are clear limits to how far voters want the administration to go.

Those intraparty tensions burst into public view this month, when Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) released a campaign ad pushing back against Trump’s deportation agenda, saying some of his efforts “have gone too far” and that Hispanic voters who supported him in 2024 “feel betrayed.” It was a remarkable break from a sitting GOP lawmaker over one of the president’s defining policies, as Democrats have locked in on Florida’s 27th District as a prime target in their bid to flip the House.

Salazar’s public rift with Trump exemplifies the fears Republicans had been privately warning about for months: that the president’s immigration enforcement — marked last year by high-profile, flashy raids that rippled through communities — was alienating moderate Republicans, independents, young voters and Latinos who support border security and immigration enforcement in theory but dislike how it is being carried out.

And as the party stares down a difficult midterm landscape, including in districts and states Trump won in 2024, other GOP candidates followed Salazar’s lead, increasingly putting distance between themselves and the administration on key issues like immigration — despite having voted last year to approve billions of dollars for border security and immigration enforcement. On Wednesday, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), whose race has tightened against Democrat Adam Hamilton, also softened his stance on Immigration and Customs Enforcement as raids in southwest Kansas prompt temporary business closures and schools.

“When ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement. Our sheriffs and police know these communities better than anyone, and working together keeps officers and residents safe,” he wrote on social media, adding that he’s been in direct contact with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

The Blue Light News Poll finds most Americans — including majorities of both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters — believe people convicted of serious violent or sexual offenses should be prioritized for deportation, underscoring broad agreement on a more targeted approach to enforcement.

The survey also finds that few people — including among both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters — prioritized targeting other groups for deportations. Less than a quarter of each group say people convicted of minor criminal offenses should be prioritized. Support falls further when voters are asked about prioritizing people who have lived in the U.S. for several years without legal status or people with dependent children in the U.S.

“A lot of it has to do with how you talk about it. They don’t want amnesty for people who have broken the law. They want everybody to do it the right way,” said a person close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss how Republicans are viewing the issue. “They understand that some people might be law-abiding, hard working.”

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said Blue Light News is “skewing data to paint a false narrative.”

“The American people sent President Trump back to the White House to stop the invasion of our country and deport the millions of illegal aliens Biden and Democrats allowed into the country. The president is delivering on his promises,” she said.

Days after releasing the ad, Salazar said she had a “fantastic conversation” with Trump and urged him to protect the political “fortune” he had brought to the Republican Party on immigration. She also told CBS last weekend that Trump and the average American understand “the between the narco and the nanny and the gangster and the gardener.”

She said the administration should distinguish between criminals and unauthorized immigrants working in crucial industries such as agriculture, construction, hospitality and health care.

That distinction is also reflected in The Blue Light News Poll. Both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters are open to maintaining or increasing the number of people coming into the U.S. to work in sectors facing labor shortages, such as health care or agriculture. Sixty-five percent of MAGA Trump voters and 69% non-MAGA Trump voters say they want to see about the same number — or more — people coming to the U.S. to work in those sectors facing labor shortages.

“Trump 2.0 that took over in January 2025 completely misread what voters were telling him and Joe Biden during 2024, which was that they wanted to see more order and security over the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Matt Barreto, who conducted polling for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign. “Instead, what Trump told Americans was, ‘Now I’m going to go hunt down immigrants who are just working and contributing to America.’ And there was extremely limited support for that.”

Past POLITICO polling on immigration has shown that the Trump administration has been unable to reverse the damage with voters on the issue. Last fall, battleground Republicans were already expressing concern about the administration’s immigration tactics. Those concerns intensified in the months that followed, while negative voter sentiment hardened by April after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

The Trump administration, in the wake of bipartisan outrage, softened its rhetoric and abandoned flashy raids that often devolved into clashes with protesters. The president also installed Mullin, who moved quickly to repair relationships on Capitol Hill and keep the Department of Homeland Security out of the headlines.

But Mullin is also facing pressure from MAGA critics and immigration hardliners who think he’s not committed to the president’s vow to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants. In an effort to shore up his support with that contingent, top administration accounts, including Mullin’s, have ramped up posts about ICE, arrests statistics and tough talk about the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda.

Politics

Gina Hinojosa wants to make Texas a test case for Democrats’ future

Published

17 hours ago

September 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Gina Hinojosa wants to make Texas a test case for Democrats’ future

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Politics

Trump eyes an October campaign rally — in Alabama

Published

22 hours ago

September 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump is tentatively set to visit Alabama for a political rally next week, a curious move in a deep-red state as his party fights for control of Congress in several battlegrounds.

The event is penciled in for Oct. 2 in Mobile, but the plans have not yet been finalized and are subject to change, according to two people with direct knowledge of the preparations who were granted anonymity to disclose private planning.

An October rally in Alabama would be a somewhat confounding decision for the president. The GOP has found itself having to play defense in their own territory recently, with Democratic candidates are seriously competing for Senate seats in normally red states like Alaska and Texas. But Alabama has not been considered a state where Democrats have any real shot at winning any statewide office.

Spokespeople for the White House and Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The rally could help shore up support for state Rep. Rhett Marques, who is locked in a somewhat competitive race with Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures. Marques is still seen to have the advantage after the Supreme Court allowed the state to use a House map that reconfigured Figures’ majority-Black district earlier this year. Mobile, though, is outside of that district.

Marques’ campaign and Figures’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

A foray into Alabama would not be the first time that the president has tried to shore up support in a solidly Republican state this cycle — he rallied last month in South Carolina for Sen. Darline Graham during her primary runoff — but as the general election season has begun he has also started to visit battleground states. Last week, he rallied alongside GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley in North Carolina.

Trump’s potential campaign visit would follow Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s announcement last week that the Trump administration has granted a $2.5 billion loan to the Alabama Toll Road, Bridge, and Tunnel Authority. That money will fund the construction of the Mobile River Bridge — the largest infrastructure project in the state’s history. The president is also fond of GOP Rep. Barry Moore, who is running for Senate in the state. Another close ally, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, is the Republican nominee for governor. He’s running against Democratic former Sen. Doug Jones, who he unseated in 2020.