This show must not go on.

It’s time, right now, for greater Los Angeles to halt all preparations to host the 2028 Summer Olympics. Let’s turn over these Games to a world city better positioned to host them.

Not because we don’t love the Olympics. We are a proud Olympic city, shaped by the 1932 and 1984 Games. In normal times, our incomparable international connections, entertainment assets, and sports facilities would make us the perfect host for what LA 28 chair Casey Wasserman calls “the largest peacetime gathering in the history of the world.”

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But it’s no longer peacetime in Los Angeles.

This event is now too dangerous for California. Hosting an Olympic Games requires us to work together with a lawless U.S. regime — and its rights-violating security apparatus — as it openly wages war against our city and state.

“National Special Security Events,” like the Olympics, require host cities’ to let federal agencies take the lead during the Games.  For the 2028 Olympics, an agreement, which took effect last year, puts the U.S. Secret Service in charge of security, with support from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

All those agencies work for President Donald Trump, who has launched a war against California that includes deploying troops and secret federal police in our neighborhoods. California leaders have righteously demanded that immigration raids end and the troops leave. But those demands are incompatible with the Olympics agreement, which gives these agencies the power to surge security personnel into Los Angeles.

‘Enforcement partners’

Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explicitly linked today’s federal occupation of L.A. with the 2028 Olympics. He recently declared that Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, by defending protesters instead of ICE agents, forced the feds to take over the city — and suggested they would so again. “If this was a preview of their leadership ahead of next year’s World Cup games and the L.A. 2028 Olympics, we have bigger problems,” Duffy said.

It all may sound like Trumpian nonsense, but California leaders are actually citing the need to hold a safe Olympics to justify partnerships with the very federal agencies now attacking California.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, in his eagerness to go forward with the Games, has come to resemble the British prisoner-of-war Colonel Nicholson in the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” who proudly builds a railroad bridge even though it aids his Japanese captors.

McDonnell frequently refers to ICE as “law enforcement partners,” despite their attacks on the city that he is sworn to protect. Pressed by the L.A. city council on why he was still working with ICE, McDonnell replied: “Without that partnership, we wouldn’t be able to go into the World Cup, the Olympics.”

Such weakness demonstrates how Trump can use the Olympics against California.

That’s why it’s urgent that California take away the president’s leverage by immediately hitting pause, and following up with a deadline and clear demands: We will abandon these Olympics by Aug. 1 unless the Trump administration stops all immigration raids, removes all federal troops in L.A., releases all immigration detainees, supports an independent prosecutor to investigate the raids, and restores all frozen federal funding for California.

Anything less, and we’re out.

Threat to democracy

Sports officials worldwide would be furious. But if we drop the Games, we might refocus on our city’s. Longtime LA. city administrator Rick Cole asked: “If we can’t pave our streets, repair our sidewalks, trim our trees, house our homeless, light our bridges and fix our firetrucks, how can we host an Olympics in just three years?”

Unexpected expenses from the Games could hurt public budgets that are already in deficit. And Trump, famous for stiffing partners, could try to stick L.A. with billions in federal security costs.

Trump also is destroying the Games’ potential upside. The Olympics can make money if people all over the world come to see them. But Trump’s travel ban — and his regime’s willingness to detain and jail tourists — will discourage attendance. Some countries may even boycott.

The biggest threat posed by a Trump Olympics is to our democracy

Trump has indicated that he intends to use the Games to celebrate himself and consolidate his authoritarian regime. Expect to see Trump lighting the torch while sitting in the stands with his fellow autocrats — Hungary’s Orban, India’s Modi, maybe even Putin.

Indeed, the 2028 Games could take place while Trump is campaigning for an unconstitutional third term as president. Tyrants have used the Olympics in this way before. (Google “Adolf Hitler” and “1936 Berlin Olympics.”)

Why on earth should Californians spend our precious time and money on a fascist pageant for our oppressor?

If the 2028 Olympics go forward, they’ll be little more than a weapon for Trump to use against us.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.