US President Donald Trump has established a taskforce for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, signalling his willingness to be associated with the event as a new polls shows locals turning away from the Games.

Trump signed an executive order last week calling for the taskforce to co-ordinate security and planning for the Games, and to streamline visa processing and credentials for the athletes, coaches, media and other visitors coming to the US. 

When the International Olympic Committee announced in September 2017 that Los Angeles would host the 2028 Summer Olympics, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti predicted: “The Olympics will spur a bold vision for our city.”

Eight years later, enthusiasm in the City of Angels has dwindled considerably.

Current Mayor Karen Bass is under increasing pressure from locals who are concerned that LA, which is already experiencing a budget crisis, will be stiffed with a hefty Olympic bill.

Under Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is wreaking havoc on the city’s immigrant population, with masked agents in military-style garb snatching Angelenos off the streets – often violently – and cramming them into vans and ultimately into detention facilities with inhumane conditions.

Amid the mayhem, a poll from the anti-Olympics coalition NOlympicsLA finds that public support for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics has soured significantly over time.

A firm majority of respondents – some 54 per cent – asserted a preference for spending public resources on wildfire recovery rather than the Olympics.

Less than a quarter of respondents (24 per cent) supported funding the Olympics over those still reeling from the wildfires that swept through LA in January 2025, ravaging places like the historically black foothill community of Altadena.

The poll also found a notable age gap, with millennials and gen Z overwhelmingly spurning the LA28 Games.

A mere 22 per cent of those polled between the ages of 18 and 29 were supportive of LA28, whereas in the 45-to-60 age bracket 53 per cent supported the Games.

The NOlympics LA survey also uncovered a gender gap: Women were more likely than men to oppose or be neutral toward hosting the LA 2028 Games (40 per cent to 23 per cent of men) and keener to prioritise wildfire recovery over Olympic preparations (61 per cent to 49 per cdnt for men).

The Olympics tend to be popular in the abstract, but as the reality of hosting the Games draws closer – with overspending, gentrification, displacement, police intensification, greenwashing and corruption coming into sharper focus – public support tends to shrink.

For instance, a few months ahead of the Paris 2024 summer Olympics, a poll found that 44 oer cent of Parisians thought the 2024 Olympics were a “bad idea.”

Then, a couple weeks before the Paris 2024 Olympics kicked off, another poll discovered that the French were less than thrilled at the prospect. More than 65 per cent of the population was either indifferent (36 per cent), concerned (24 per cent), or angry (5 per cent) about hosting the Olympics.

At the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games, staged a year later in 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic, a whopping 83 per cent stated that the games should be either postponed again or scrapped altogether.

When the public ramped up pressure on Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to take action, he was forced to admit that the host-city contract handed the power to cancel or postpone solely to the International Olympic Committee.

The IOC ignored public opinion and rammed ahead, resulting in a dramatic uptick of Covid-19 rates in Tokyo during and after the games, while more than 800 people tested positive for Covid-19 inside the so-called “Olympic bubble.”

To say the Olympics has a democracy problem is to make an understatement. Where democratic practice flourishes, the Olympics tend to struggle to gain popular traction.

Between 2013 and 2018 alone, more than a dozen cities rejected their Olympic bids, after either losing a public referendum, facing the mere prospect of a public vote, or succumbing to political pressure against the games.

This is precisely why the International Olympic Committee opted in September 2017 for the hail-Mary move of announcing two host cities at once, selecting Paris to stage the 2024 Summer Games and Los Angeles to host in 2028.

The two cities were originally bidding for the 2024 Olympics, but after conspicuous bid withdrawals from Boston, Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome, the IOC made the unusual dual declaration. Neither Paris nor Los Angeles carried out a public referendum where voters could weigh in on whether or not to host the complicated and expensive sports mega-event.

The NOlympicsLA poll asked Angelenos their thoughts on the possibility of a democratic referendum on the games. Their results were bracing. They found that “only 54 per cent would vote to support LA28 if there were a referendum tomorrow”.

Turns out, a referendum might be on the horizon. In Los Angeles, Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents hotel and restaurant workers, has filed paperwork to create a ballot measure that would provide LA voters a chance to weigh in on whether to develop or expand “event centres” like sports venues, convention facilities, or hotels.

The union not only zeroed in on permanent facilities, but also temporary structures like ones being proposed for the 2028 Olympics.

As The Los Angeles Times reported, this “could force at least five Olympic venues to go before voters for approval”, including the LA Convention Centre, the John C. Argue Swim Stadium, and the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, which is slated to host Olympic events like three-on-three basketball and skateboarding in the San Fernando Valley.

Jonny Coleman, an organiser with NOlympicsLA, pointed out that “this polling took place before the budget crisis and before the ICE incursion”.

“We believe our message has reached many more Angelenos since this poll was conducted, and we are confident more and more Angelenos will reject LA28 and the World Cup on the basis of the ICE collaboration alone,” he said.

Coleman also noted that organisers with LA28 have “not made a single public comment since June 6 about the violence taking place against working class Angelenos and how that will continue to be weaponised”.

The Olympics have a long and ignominious tradition of short-circuiting democracy, but it’s not too late for Los Angeles to make amends.

While it’s true that neither the word “democracy” nor “democratic” appear in the host-city contract between the IOC and LA, Angelenos could force a democratic vote on key issues. NOlympicsLA’s new poll shows that there is a fresh interest in asking big questions about the 2028 LA Games.

Comedian John Mulaney recently joked that “making LA host the Olympics … would be like if you had a friend, and she was having a nervous breakdown, and she had no money, and part of her house was on fire. And to cheer her up, you made her host the Olympics.”

Well, the joke may end up being on LA28 Olympic organisers who thought they could press ahead with status-quo thinking in a whipsaw world. A public referendum on the LA Olympics, set against the backdrop of an increasingly authoritarian country, might be just what the democracy doctor ordered.

Jules Boykoff is professor and chair of the Government and Politics Department at Pacific University