BOSTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has threatened to relocate World Cup matches set to be played next year in suburban Boston, after suggesting that parts of the city had been “taken over” by unrest.
Foxborough, Massachusetts, home to the NFL’s New England Patriots and about 30 miles from Boston, is set to stage matches as the U.S. cohosts the 2026 World Cup with Mexico and Canada. Trump was asked about Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, a Democrat whom he called “intelligent” but “radical left.”
“We could take them away,” Trump said of the World Cup games. “I love the people of Boston and I know the games are sold out. But your mayor is not good.”
He repeated those threats Wednesday.
Trump has previously suggested he could declare cities “not safe” for the 104-game soccer tournament and alter a detailed hosting plan that FIFA confirmed in 2022. It includes games at NFL stadiums near New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
World Cup host sites aren’t up to Trump. The 11 U.S. cities — plus three in Mexico and two in Canada — are contracted with FIFA, which would face significant logistical and legal issues to make changes in the eight months before the June 11 kickoff.
“It’s FIFA’s tournament, FIFA’s jurisdiction, FIFA makes those decisions,” the soccer body’s vice president Victor Montagliani said earlier this month at a sports business conference in London.
The organization seemed to soften its stance somewhat on Wednesday, saying in a statement that “safety and security are the top priorities at all FIFA events worldwide” and noting that precautions are “obviously the governments' responsibility, and they decide what is in the best interest for public safety.”
“We hope every one of our 16 Host Cities will be ready to successfully host and fulfill all necessary requirements,” the FIFA statement added.
Trump has insisted that “if somebody is doing a bad job, and if I feel there’s unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni – the head of FIFA who’s phenomenal -- and I would say, ‘Let’s move into another location’ and they would do that.”
The president meant FIFA head Gianni Infantino, a close ally. Trump said Infantino “wouldn’t love to do it, but he’d do it very easily.”
Speaking on a local podcast Wednesday, Wu questioned how Trump could take away the games with less than a year to go. She said most everything is already “locked down by contract” so no single person “even if they live in the White House currently can undo it.”
“There’s no ability to take away the World Cup games,” Wu said. “There’s no real threat when it comes to saying cities are so unsafe that they can’t host the games.”
Among the seven matches that will be played at Gillette Stadium in the Boston suburb of Foxborough will be five group stage matches, one match in the round of 32 and a quarterfinal match on July 9, 2026. The news of so many big games was a surprise to local organizers.
“The later in the tournament, the more eyeballs,” said Mike Loynd, head of Boston's World Cup organizing committee, when the schedule was announced last year. “For us, it’s just a matter of excitement. ... For us, it’s a perfect schedule. I don’t think FIFA could have done a better job.”
The tournament is expected to bring $1.1 billion in local economic impact, create over 5,000 jobs, and generate more than $60 million of tax revenue throughout the region, according to organizers. They also expect that more than 2 million visitors will come to New England throughout the tournament’s 39-day span.
Gillette Stadium is operated by Robert Kraft, who owns the NFL’s New England Patriots and Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution.
Kraft served as honorary chair of the United Bid to help bring the World Cup back to the United States. In a 2024 interview on “The Breakfast Club” he described himself as a “social friend” of Trump beginning in the 1990s shortly after he purchased the Patriots. He said in that interview that the only donation he’d ever made to Trump was a “strong donation to his inauguration” following his 2016 election.
But Kraft also gifted the president a diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring during his first term after the Patriots won the NFL’s championship to cap the 2016 season. Sitting presidents typically receive gifts from sports teams during celebratory White House visits — a personalized jersey is standard — but Kraft gave Trump a ring as well, the team confirmed at the time.
Kraft decided after the team’s April 2017 visit to have a ring made for Trump so he would have something special to display in his presidential library, the team said. But Kraft said in that same 2024 “Breakfast Club” interview that he hadn’t spoken to Trump since the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Boston and its mayor have been frequent targets of the Trump administration for much of the year.
Trump and his allies have focused their attacks on the city's so-called sanctuary city polices and how much police should support deportations. In September, the Trump administration sued the city, arguing its sanctuary city policies are illegal under federal law and the city’s refusal to cooperate with immigration authorities has resulted in the release of dangerous criminals who should be deported.
The Trump administration has already deployed National Guard troops to Washington and Memphis, and efforts to do so in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, have sparked legal fights. Democratic and Republican leaders across Massachusetts have pushed back against the National Guard deployment in Boston and Wu, who is running unopposed for reelection, often cites the city's historical low crime rates.
Wu touts the fact that gun violence fell to the lowest level on record in her first year in office and has continued to decline. The city saw a historical low number of homicides in 2024 with 24 — but the city has surpassed that number so far in 2025 with 27, the police department said.
Associated Press writer Kyle Hightower in Foxborough, Mass. contributed to this report.
FILE - President Donald Trump holds the FIFA World Cup Winners Trophy as FIFA President Gianni Infantino looks on during an announcement in the Oval Office of the White House, Aug. 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
SYDNEY (AP) — As the sounds of bullets rang out and the bodies fell, the young mother threw herself on top of her 5-year-old son and prayed.
“Please don’t let us die,” 33-year-old Rebecca begged God from her hiding place under a table in a park overlooking Bondi, Australia’s most iconic beach. Rebecca spoke on condition that her last name not be used for fear of retaliation. “Please just keep my son safe.”
It was faith that drew Rebecca and hundreds of other members of Sydney’s Jewish community to this picturesque spot to celebrate the start of Hannukah. And it was faith that authorities said made her and others attending the Channukah by the Sea gathering a target of two gunmen who began firing at revelers around 6:40 p.m. on Sunday. Authorities have called it an antisemitic act of terrorism.
In the minutes that followed, the assault would take the lives of at least 15 people, officials said, including a 10-year-old girl, a Holocaust survivor and a beloved rabbi. It would also take away a sense of security in a country that, because of strict gun laws, has largely been insulated from the mass shootings so common in the United States and other Western nations.
This reconstruction is based on interviews with survivors and footage of the assault.
Under the table that held food for the partygoers, Rebecca pulled buckets of drinks on top of her body, to try and hide herself and her son. Suddenly, a man lying on his side just 10 centimeters (3 inches) from her was struck in the chest by a bullet.
“I’m dying,” he told Rebecca. “I can’t breathe.”
Under fire and separated from her husband and 7-year-old daughter, Rebecca could offer him nothing but words. “You’re going to be OK,” she told him desperately. “You’re going to be OK.”
She did not know if that was true.
It started out as a classic Sunday summer evening in Sydney. The sun had not yet set, and the temperature was still a balmy 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit). The Tasman Sea was speckled with swimmers and surfers.
In the park overlooking Bondi’s golden arc of sand, children giggled and cuddled animals at a petting zoo set up as part of the Hanukkah celebration. Rebecca’s son scampered up a rock-climbing wall. Music competed with the sound of crashing waves.
And then the bubbles floating through the air were replaced with bullets, the laughter replaced with screams. From their positions on one of the pedestrian bridges connecting the busy main road to the beach, two armed gunmen — a father and son, according to police — had begun firing into the crowd.
Young people began to run, but older people struggled to get up. From her perch on a bench, Rebecca watched in horror as a bullet struck an older woman sitting next to her. Rebecca grabbed her son and dove under the table.
On the beach and the boardwalk, it was bedlam.
Some surfers and swimmers frantically paddled ashore, while others sought safety in the sea. Eleanor, who also spoke on condition that her last name not be used for fear of retaliation, said she been walking down the boardwalk on her way to dinner when she heard the gunshots. Her mind went blank, apart from one command: “Run.” And so she did, fully clothed, into the ocean.
Crowds of people — gathered on a grassy slope overlooking the sea for a sunset viewing of the Christmas romcom, “The Holiday” — abandoned their blankets and beach chairs and fled.
From their hotel room overlooking the streets of Bondi, Joel Sargent, 30, and his partner, Grace, from Melbourne, heard the shots and began to film. Their footage, obtained by The Associated Press, shows that the gunfire went on for at least seven minutes, with dozens of blasts. Grace spoke on condition her last name not be used because she didn't want people at work to know she had been involved.
"Baby, I’m scared," Grace can be heard saying as they watched throngs of screaming people stream past their building. She shouted down to them: “Get off the street!”
Phones across the city lit up with panicked calls and messages. Lawrence Stand was at home when his phone rang. It was his 12-year-old daughter, who had been attending a bar mitzvah inside the Bondi Pavilion, overlooking the beach.
Stand told his daughter to stay on the phone as he leaped into his car and raced toward the beach. He found her and pulled her and others into his car, speeding them away from the carnage.
Many did not know where to find sanctuary. Inside a Greek restaurant, 20-year-old American friends Shira Elisha and Lexi Haag first hid in the restaurant’s bathroom, and then ran back to Elisha’s home, where they hid under her bedding. The pair wondered how a situation so common to the U.S. but so alien to Australia was happening here.
Back in the park, the man next to Rebecca was bleeding out. Rebecca’s 65-year-old mother-in-law grabbed a piece of discarded cardboard and pressed it against his wound.
The man did not survive.
The shots kept coming. Sirens wailed. Minutes passed. A bystander can be heard shouting in one video: “Where are the cops?”
That and other widely circulated videos of the attack chronicled what happened next.
Near one of the shooters, a passerby identified by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke as Ahmed al Ahmed crouched behind a parked car. Ahmed, a fruit shop owner and father of two, then rushed the shooter and wrestled away the gun, before pointing the weapon at the shooter, who fell to the ground. Ahmed was shot in the shoulder by the other gunman, but survived.
The man disarmed by Ahmed got up but, under fire from police, soon fell again. The other shooter traded fire with police for another minute before he, too, fell.
Police later confirmed the older of the two suspected gunmen, a 50-year-old, was fatally shot. His 24-year-old son, who was shot and wounded, is being treated at a hospital.
Back in the park, rescuers frantically pumped the chests of unmoving bodies on the grass, near a picnic table, an abandoned stroller and the petting zoo.
On Monday, Elisha, the American who hid in the restaurant bathroom, wandered down to the beach, where rows of shoes abandoned by fleeing beachgoers lined the sand.
“It just reminded me of the Holocaust — all these shoes lying here. This is like Oct. 7,” she said, referring to Hamas-led militants’ 2023 attack in Israel. “How many times do Jews need to be attacked before the world just wakes up and realizes that we have targets on our backs?”
After a sleepless night, Rebecca and her sister-in-law, draped in the flag of Israel, made their way to the beach to mourn before a memorial of flowers.
Rebecca’s children have asked her many questions since the attack, for which she has no answers, she said.
She has her own questions: for officials she said did little to address a surge in antisemitic crimes in Sydney and Melbourne over the past year.
“The world needs to wake up and see what’s happening,” she said. “They specifically targeted us, the Jewish people. ... No one did anything. They turned a blind eye.”
Police cordon off an area at Bondi Beach after a reported shooting in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
People offer hugs to each other at a flower memorial placed outside Bondi Pavilion at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, a day after a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
A woman places an Israeli flag over flowers outside Bondi Pavilion at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, a day after a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
A couple embrace a day after a shooting at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
Shoes sit lined up following a shooting the day prior at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
