Their Cup doesn’t runneth over
The Foxborough Select Board has a simple demand of Boston 2026, sponsors of World Cup matches in New England. Show us the money.
With the premier international sporting event due to kick off in the United States, Canada and Mexico in less than 100 days the town and sponsors are fighting over the payment of $7.8 million to provide security for the matches.
Security for an international event taking place in the Land of the Free and the Home of Brave in the weeks preceding the nation’s 250th birthday. Why worry about that?
Could it be because the other host nations have been, at various times, the focus of hostility from the Trump regime which has made closing the border a priority as part of its immigration crackdown?
Or that Todd Lyons, director of the masked paramilitary thugs enforcing Stephen Miller’s goal to deport 100 million people, says ICE will play a “key part” of security for the event?
Perhaps it’s because Haiti and Brazil are two nations slated to play matches in the renamed Boston Stadium. And that Massachusetts hosts the second largest Brazilian population in the United States, and the third largest Haitian population?
What could possibly go wrong?
The town south of Boston is home to the New England Patriots American football team and — at least for now — the New England Revolution team that plays what the rest of the world calls football. Both clubs and the venue are owned by Robert Kraft, a Donald Trump bestie.
The money would enable the town’s police and fire chiefs to be ready for the fans who will flock to seven matches scheduled there during the course of the tournament.
Town officials say no funding, no entertainment license. Attorneys representing the organizing committee say trust us, the Kraft Sports and Entertainment Group is good for it.
Police Chief Michael Grace isn’t buying it, because that pledge came with conditions that included a June 1 deadline for security equipment procurement when the first match is scheduled for June 13.
Grace described the proposed plan as a “failed strategy.”
“We do not wait till the week before and then force the board and public safety to cancel an event because we can’t settle the matters … when we should be settling now. We are 99 or 100 days away from hosting the largest sporting event in the world, and we’re deciding, or can’t seem to find, necessary funding for necessary equipment that’s been identified in over a year and a half of planning with thousands of hours in 14 working groups throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch, whose district includes Foxborough, backed up local officials at a Tuesday night meeting, adding his own thought about Lyons’ threat, er, declaration:
“We’re going to have a ton of fans coming in who are foreign nationals and part of the welcoming committee is going to be ICE — masked, armed agents? I don’t think so,” said Lynch. “We can handle this with local law enforcement, No. 1. No. 2, we don’t want the folks who ran the operation in Minneapolis and killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good running the operation at Gillette Stadium. That doesn’t work for us.”
Ya think?
All of this is playing out in an environment where international tourism to the United States is dropping since the start of Trump 2.0. And with the regime laying out new requirements for anyone coming from one of 42 visa-exempt countries, including most of Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Those new rules would force tourists to disclose any telephone numbers used in the last five years, email addresses used in the last 10 years, family member names, addresses and telephone numbers as well as the last five years of social media activities.
Welcome to the U.S. of A., y’all.
Not that the regime would play politics with the tournament, but the Department of Homeland Security, who oversees ICE, is also responsible for handling some $46 million in security earmarked for Massachusetts in the One Big Beautiful Boondoggle Act passed by Congress last year.
And DHS is the focus of a government shutdown lost in the storm of news about a war with Iran and missing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Lynch, a long-time elected official, doesn’t believe in coincidences:
“Maybe what’s happening here is they think they’re using this as leverage to try to get approval of funding. It seems like that might be the play here by Kristi Noem.”
And DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s cruelty and incompetence was a centerpiece of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, where she tried to weasel her way out of calling Pretti and Good domestic terrorists in justifying ICE’s murder of the two Americans.
“I was getting reports from the ground, from agents at the scene,” Noem said. And I would say that it was a chaotic scene.”“I did not call him a domestic terrorist. I said it appeared to be an instance of” domestic terrorism.”
A closer examination of her comments and those of Customs and Border Protection “uber commander” Gregory Bovino make it clear Noem is a stone cold liar.
“Violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and to perpetuate violence. That is the definition of domestic terrorism … “He was there to perpetuate violence, and he was asked to show up and to continue to resist by a governor who’s irresponsible and has a long history of corruption and lying, and we won’t stand for it anymore.”
It’s certainly fair to ask, given all this evidence about the regime’s hostility to immigrants whether anyone, particularly people of color, would want to venture anywhere near a World Cup venue. If they could even afford tickets that are going right now in the four-figure range.
And when ICE’s indiscriminate roundup leads to the arrest and shackling of tourists with valid documents.
It sounds like Kraft bestie and FIFA Peace Prize winner Trump has (another) problem on his hands.