The incompetence of Los Angeles and California Democrats in handling violent riots and other criminal activity is embarrassing. It may even embarrass the United States on the world stage as Los Angeles prepares to host the World Cup and the Summer Olympics in the coming years.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Tuesday that community leaders must come together to clean up the blocks covered in graffiti before the World Cup in 2026. Los Angeles will host eight of the 104 World Cup games as part of the joint U.S.-Canada-Mexico bid, including the U.S. Men’s National Team’s first match. In 2028, the Olympics will also come to town, meaning Los Angeles will be at the forefront of global sports for the next few years.
The U.S. couldn’t have picked a worse city. Along with the downtown graffiti problems, Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) have allowed violent rioters to loot stores and burn cars in downtown Los Angeles as left-wing summer riot season kicks into gear. Newsom and Bass have watched as rioters throw rocks and concrete at federal agents, California Highway Patrol officers, and LAPD officers. Then, they complained when President Donald Trump brought in the National Guard and Marines in an attempt to suppress the violent riots.
If you think the extensive graffiti downtown will make Los Angeles look bad during the World Cup, wait until the world sees the boarded-up stores and the burnt husks of Waymo cars.
HEARTBREAKING: LA family-owned jewelry store owner, with tears in his eyes, after looters destroyed his family business:
“Very bad… Why they come here?… I’m not a big guy. I’m not a big fish.” pic.twitter.com/KuokCar794
— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) June 10, 2025
Additionally, Los Angeles Democrats’ economic illiteracy threatens to add its own problems to the city’s hosting duties. Los Angeles is jacking up the minimum wage for airport and hotel workers, with the goal of hitting $30 an hour by July 2028, just in time for the Olympics. At least eight hotels have threatened to drop out of a discounted price agreement for Olympic sponsors, officials, and media, arguing that the discounts are unworkable with the artificial wage hikes.
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Meanwhile, in the five months since the Los Angeles fires, the city has approved just 24 rebuilding permits, including just one permit in Pacific Palisades. Los Angeles’s lasting image for the world will be burned-down houses, graffiti, and destroyed businesses from riots tacitly approved by the its mayor.
Los Angeles is a black eye on the U.S.’s global image, and it will soon be on full display to the rest of the world.