Politics

What SoFi Stadium traffic is teaching LA politicians about the Olympics

Published

2 months ago

June 21, 2026

LOS ANGELES — Paul Krekorian, head of Los Angeles’ Office of Major Events, was driving to SoFi Stadium for the U.S. soccer team’s opening match against Paraguay when he found himself stuck in a traffic jam, trapped behind a mess of unmoving cars on a side street in Inglewood.

The problem: A self-driving Waymo vehicle was at the head of the line, attempting — without success — to make an unprotected left turn onto Manchester Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare.

“It couldn’t figure out that it was never, ever going to be able to make that left turn,” said Krekorian, a former LA City Council member appointed to the newly created major events role by Mayor Karen Bass.

He was annoyed. But what Krekorian actually saw was an opportunity — to correct a problem ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics, which will use the $5 billion-plus stadium for swimming events and the opening ceremony. It is the way many local officials are watching the World Cup unfold here: monitoring everything from the performance of traffic signals to signs of political unrest as a stress test for the Olympics.

“Instead of just steaming about it, I was thinking: OK, how are we going to geofence Waymos?” Krekorian said. “How are we going to work with the transportation network companies to make sure that we have effective pick-up and drop-off locations? All of that stuff.”

The messy lead-up to the World Cup — marked by weak hotel bookings, high ticket prices and security concerns — left some in LA leadership circles worried about the fate of the tournament, and its implications for the Olympics here. The World Cup’s economic benefit to the region remains a big question mark, and its early run in LA has revealed pressure points. In interviews with Blue Light News, state and federal officials said they were concerned about reports of traffic jams in Inglewood. They also lamented the high cost of parking and tickets to the matches, the latter a longstanding complaint among soccer fans who’ve been priced out of attending the tournament, and a source of frustration among California elected officials who have demanded answers from FIFA.

“We saw three to five hours of congestion just for people to go to SoFi to pay $200 for parking,” said LA City Council member Bob Blumenfield. “Seeing some of those things, obviously, LA28 is a much larger footprint, so … we really are going to have to focus on the transit element of all this. And obviously, with the Olympics, we are thinking about that.”

Los Angeles will host its fourth match of the World Cup today, between Iran and Belgium, the most of any venue thus far. It has avoided the major disruptions some had feared. And after more than a week of competition — including two high-profile games at SoFi Stadium, one of them involving Iran’s team — Los Angeles politicians are more confident than ever that the city can pull off the upcoming global sports gathering that has been in the works for almost a decade.

“Much of what we’ve done in preparation for welcoming the world for the World Cup will be applicable to what we will do in ‘28 for the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Krekorian said. “There’s a palpable excitement here to be hosting the World Cup, and this is only a fraction of what we’ll see when it comes time for ‘28.”

The stakes are unusually high in Los Angeles — perhaps more so than in any of the other 10 World Cup host cities in the U.S. — because a major misstep would inevitably raise questions about the region’s ability to put on the Olympics. The city has already been the target of criticism from conservative personalities and politicians who questioned Democratic leaders here after the January 2025 firestorms, including the late Charlie Kirk and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), both of whom suggested the Games should be moved elsewhere. If the World Cup is a success — eight games will be played here over several weeks — it would demonstrate that a liberal, blue-state city can still pull off a complex mega-event.

Reynold Hoover, CEO of LA28, the Games’ organizing committee, told Blue Light News he and his team are paying close attention to the soccer tournament — and that once it concludes, they will analyze data ranging from public transportation ridership and fan zone attendance to spectator flows in and around SoFi Stadium.

“This is an opportunity not just for LA, but for the country to show that we can actually do something really big together,” he said. “And when you look at the World Cup and what you’re seeing here in the United States, I think that’s a precursor, and I think both sides of the aisle see the value of having the Summer Olympics here in the United States for the first time since 1996.”

Concerns remain here, including about the cost of attendance. Blumenfield might benefit from attending a World Cup match at SoFi Stadium given that he is on the council’s ad hoc committee involved in preparations for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. But that’s not in the cards: “It’s too rich for my blood — I can’t afford a ticket,” he said.

Indeed, tickets to local World Cup matches have been climbing: the get-in price for Sunday’s Iran-Belgium contest is nearly $900 on one resale platform.

Transit remains a major issue, too — and one that several elected officials said they are monitoring closely.

Rep. Laura Friedman, who called the World Cup “a great dress rehearsal” for the 2028 Games, said it is paramount that Olympic organizers build on public transit gains from the soccer tournament. According to Los Angeles Metro data, ridership on Metro buses serving SoFi Stadium increased 41 percent from the first World Cup match at the venue to the second. While Friedman praised Metro for “performing very well,” she said that “for the Olympics we can try to increase” use of public transit.

“At SoFi Stadium, we have seen very expensive parking fees, we’ve seen a lot of congestion, long travel times,” said Friedman, a Burbank Democrat. “Especially for foreign visitors who may not be renting a car, they expect to be able to take public transportation — easily and safely.”

For all the comparisons of the two events, the Olympic Games are a vast enterprise many times larger than the World Cup — a fact not lost on local elected officials who caution against an apples-to-apples comparison. “The success of the World Cup at SoFi underscores our ability as a city to be able to manage these types of large-scale events,” said LA City Council member Monica Rodriguez, who also is on the ad hoc 2028 Games committee. “The difference with the Olympics is that we’re going to have multiple venues that are going to be hosting all at the same time. … So my primary concern is about the cost of security.”

On that front, LA has avoided major public security problems during the World Cup. The closest thing to a controversy at LA’s matches has been the uneven enforcement of FIFA’s ban on the display of Iran’s pre-revolution flag inside the stadium during the team’s draw with New Zealand on Monday.

LA City Council member Adrin Nazarian, a former state lawmaker who was born in Iran, attended that game and said “it felt very safe.” He also took public transportation to get there, and gave the trip high marks. “I wanted to experience that myself, just to kind of see how it is,” he said.

“What was happening in the Metro lines, for example, I was blown away,” he said. “Extremely helpful staff, ambassadors all over the place, high-visibility security. So, for folks coming in who may have had a negative impression about Los Angeles and the homelessness or safety concerns, you wouldn’t have experienced it.”

Public transportation helped Nazarian avoid Krekorian’s fate. As for the major events czar, did he ever get to make that left turn onto Manchester?

“I made a six-point turn … and I got out of there and took a different route,” Krekorian said with a laugh.

Politics

These mayors live along Lake America’s shores. But they won’t be calling it that.

Published

3 hours ago

September 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Robert Corradino has never lived anywhere but Oswego, New York. As the only commercial port city on the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario, everything bears the lake’s name — the streets, the convention center, the historic fort.

And in his first term as mayor, Corradino — a Republican who said he previously voted for President Donald Trump — said he worries that a distant political feud is threatening to erase part of his city’s history.

In the days following Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, Corradino and other mayors in upstate New York said Trump’s decision is “regrettable” and could upset voters in the region — and even further impact an economy so closely tied to the U.S.’s relationship with Canada.

“The water is part of our identity,” Corradino said. “Not only our identity, but the economy and the history of the lake is tied to the city.”

Oswego, a city of 17,000, is split between Democrats and Republicans, Corradino said. However, the larger Oswego County is one of the reddest in the state and 61 percent of its voters went for Trump in the 2024 election.

Yet on Monday, several Oswego County legislators from both parties approved a resolution rejecting the new name, out of concern for the cost of the rebrand on taxpayers and businesses. The resolution said it does not intend to diminish the authority of the federal government, rather it aims to “recognize the longstanding historical and regional significance of the name Lake Ontario.”

Last Thursday night, at Oswego’s weekly summer concert series, Corradino said everyone he interacted with said they didn’t support the name change and they weren’t sure why it was happening. The general sentiment, he said, was frustration.

Asked about the issues Oswego residents actually care about, Corradino said his constituents are concerned about less immigration enforcement and the war with Iran.

“In general the consensus I see is it just seems like the country is heading in a direction that we’re not all happy about,” Corradino said.

The pushback is not isolated to Oswego. Hours after Trump signed the executive order, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who runs the only state that borders Lake Ontario, said in a post to social media, “New York won’t be calling it that.”

And there’s been mixed adaptation nationally — similar to when Trump dictated that the Gulf of Mexico now go by Gulf of America.

Signs mark the entrance to the Lake Ontario State Parkway on Aug. 25, 2026, in Rochester, N.Y.

On Saturday, Google Maps, which uses the U.S. Geographic Names Information System that comes from official government sources, officially changed the name. Map users on the American side will see “Lake America” while users in Canada will see “Lake Ontario.” For users outside of both the U.S. and Canada, they will see both names. Apple Maps followed suit, using the same naming approach as Google.

But MapQuest — the once-dominant mapping service of the 1990s and early 2000s — rocketed up app stores after refusing to use Lake America.

Long before the lake was renamed, Alex Morgia — a Democrat and mayor of Sackets Harbor, N.Y. — said his community has been grappling with the deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Canada.

Sackets Harbor, located along the eastern shores of Lake Ontario, is home to a number of Canadian residents. A village of 1,400 people, it was a major military outpost and naval command center during the War of 1812, when the U.S. clashed with British and Canadian forces.

Since 1971, the village has hosted the Can-Am festival to commemorate the village’s Canadian-American heritage.

The festival “reminds everyone that it’s not very nice to be at odds with your neighbor,” Morgia said. “Having good relationships with your international neighbors is important, particularly for people that live along the border on either side.”

Last year’s festival was the first time residents began making floats of maple leaves and Canadian flags to protest the Trump administration’s calls to make Canada the “51st state” and to remind Sackets Harbor residents that there were Canadian citizens among them, Morgia said.

This year, as Trump has continued to roll out tariffs against Canadian products, and relations with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney continued to worsen, Morgia joked that the theme for this year’s parade should’ve been “we’re sorry.”

The overall atmosphere at this year’s parade in July was “somber,” Morgia said.

“I kind of hoped that the Canadian issue had gone by the wayside, but you know [Trump] seems to bring it up when he needs to,” Morgia said.

Sackets Harbor is split between Democrats and Republicans, Morgia said. Jefferson County, which encompasses Sackets Harbor, overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 election with 61 percent of its vote.

“It’s a three-hour drive to Montreal, a two-hour drive to Toronto and a six-hour drive to New York City,” Morgia said. “The biggest metropolitan cities near us are Canadian, and a lot of North Country businesses and people rely on the southern part of Canada. … I’m hopeful that voters will think about that at the polls in November and in 2028.”

In the village of Sodus Point, N.Y. — which is located along the southern border of the Great Lake — Republican Mayor Pat Nolan said he’s disappointed by the name-change as “Ontario” is rooted in the Indigenous history of the region.

The name Ontario, is largely believed to come from Iroquoian roots, meaning “beautiful lake” or “sparkling water,” according to the Canadian government. The Canadian province of Ontario, is named after the lake.

A village of 1,000 people, Sodus Point is located in Wayne County, where Trump received 61 percent of the vote in 2024. Nolan was elected in a write-in campaign last year.

“My hope is that, rather than allowing this decision to become another wedge that further divides people,” Nolan wrote in an email, “it can encourage a broader discussion about the history of this great body of water, the Indigenous people who first gave it its name and the generations of communities that have grown along its shores.”

Politics

Trump invites battleground Republicans to Rose Garden dinner

Published

12 hours ago

September 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump has invited a group of GOP lawmakers including Republicans in competitive races to dine with him Wednesday night at the White House as many in the party press the president to unleash his massive war chest ahead of the November elections, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The White House plans to hold the dinner in the Rose Garden, according to two of the people who know about the invitation. The people were granted anonymity to discuss private planning. Some House Republicans in tough races were sent invitations, including Reps. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) and Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who are planning to attend, along with a wider group of GOP lawmakers and senators.

“Of course,” Van Orden said when asked if he would go to the dinner.

The White House invited at least several dozen lawmakers, according to two people familiar with the invitation list. The dinner also comes ahead of next week’s GOP midterm convention in Dallas, though attendance from Republican lawmakers is expected to be mixed. Barrett, for example, said in an interview Tuesday he is not planning to attend the convention and will instead campaign and spend time with his family. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s political operation, MAGA Inc., has spent little of its $400 million war chest to help GOP lawmakers. But he recently helped boost Sen. Darline Graham over the line in her heated primary.

Senate Republicans are eager for him to start spending for Ken Paxton in Texas as he has thus far been outspent on the airwaves by Democrat James Talarico and his allies.