LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Las Vegas Stadium Authority is considering and almost certainly will approve a $158 million upgrade to the north entrance at Allegiant Stadium, with $75 million coming from a taxpayer fund and the rest from the Las Vegas Raiders.
No action was taken on the agenda item Thursday at the Stadium Authority meeting, but instead a vote could occur Sept. 2.
Construction isn't expected to begin until after the Raiders' season ends with the goal of it being completed in late 2028 or sometime before the 2029 Super Bowl at Allegiant.
“Those are not aspirational goals," Raiders President Sandra Douglass Morgan told the Stadium Authority. “They're based on some educated conversations that our tech and design teams have had.”
Funds would go to the 65,000-seat stadium that opened in 2020 at a cost of $2 billion to add pedestrian and event decks, a plaza and transportation enhancements. The public money will come from surplus room tax revenue.
Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said that while Stadium Authority owns the stadium, the Raiders are responsible for its upkeep.
“We want to make sure the stadium remains a world-class venue,” Hill said. “We want to make sure Allegiant Stadium is well-funded from both a private standpoint as well as a public standpoint.”
Many fans walk over a nearby bridge from the Las Vegas Strip to attend Raiders games and other events. The new entry would create a more direct path to the venue by remaining on an elevated walkway.
“The north side of the building has become one of the more pressure points in the guest experience,” Douglass Morgan said. “That infrastructure is stretched to capacity.”
The stadium was constructed with $750 million in public money, with backers saying it not only would house Raiders games, but also be the home to UNLV football, major sporting events and concerts.
Allegiant Stadium hosted the Super Bowl in 2024. This season's college football national championship is set for Allegiant, and the Final Four is scheduled for 2028.
“When the Raiders came to Las Vegas (from Oakland, California), this was never about bringing an NFL team to Nevada,” Douglass Morgan said. “It was a long-term commitment to this community and the state."
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Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis, right, talks with Raiders minority owner Tom Brady prior to a preseason NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
Las Vegas Raiders tight end Michael Mayer (87) celebrates his toucdown against the Arizona Cardinals with teammates, including wide receiver Jalen Nailor (9) and offensive tackle Kolton Miller (74), during the first half of a preseason NFL football game, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump appeared Thursday on his former fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen's radio show, holding a stunning public reunion with the man who once called him a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain” and testified against him both in court and before Congress.
For Cohen, who served prison time for his role in what he said was covering up Trump’s “dirty deeds,” it was the culmination of a behind-the-scenes detente that would have been impossible to imagine several years ago.
The interview, part of which aired on Cohen's 77 WABC radio program Thursday evening and which will air in full on Sunday, was an exceptionally friendly affair, with only passing reference to the men's tumultuous history.
“They weaponized you like nobody's ever been weaponized, like few have been,” Trump told Cohen.
“I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said,” he went on. “That’s a big thing that you did."
In an interview with CNN shortly before the radio interview aired, Cohen said he had resubmitted a pardon application to the White House that had been denied by the previous administration, but had yet to receive any response and planned to follow up on Friday.
The truce with Cohen makes him the latest in a long line of Trump loyalists who have had public falling-outs with the president but found themselves back in his good graces. Other recent examples include Elon Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But the split from Cohen was perhaps the most personal. Cohen once boasted that he would “take a bullet” for the president and was by Trump’s side during his political rise. After their public breakup, Cohen’s testimony in Trump’s 2024 criminal hush-money trial instead helped secure Trump’s criminal conviction just as he was trying to make his political comeback.
Cohen has since criticized prosecutors in the case — an admission that paved the way for their reconciliation.
Cohen has said he and the president have had multiple conversations over the past year and introduced the interview by explaining his decision to move on.
“Forgiveness does not mean amnesia. It does not mean that the past did not happen. It does not mean the scars vanish, that the pain was fake or that I have forgotten a single second of what transpired, I have not. Forgiveness isn’t about erasing history," he said. “It is about having the courage to decide that yesterday will no longer dictate tomorrow.”
He sounded nostalgic about a time when he was one of Trump's most trusted aides.
“Boss, remember when I was by your side,” he said at one point.
The clip was introduced with the 1975 War song, “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” and closed with the lyrics, “Reunited and it feels so good,” from the 1978 Peaches & Herb song.
In a long post on his online newsletter Thursday promoting the interview, Cohen said that although his relationship with Trump became “political blood sport,” there were 15 years of close friendship between them.
“The good times don’t cease to have existed because the bad times came afterward,” Cohen wrote.
Simply, he said: “We forgave.”
Trump had made no warm public statements about Cohen before Thursday, but in a series of social media posts this year, he linked to some of his former lawyer’s comments saying he felt pressured by prosecutors to testify against Trump in the criminal hush money case and a civil fraud case.
In 2024, Cohen was the star witness in Trump's criminal hush money trial, which resulted in a 34-count felony conviction. He ended up facing no punishment.
But over days of probing questioning by prosecutors, followed by bruising cross-examination, Cohen placed the then-Republican candidate at the center of schemes during the 2016 presidential election to stifle accounts from an adult film actor and former Playboy model who said they had sexual encounters with Trump.
Cohen testified that Trump promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and that he was constantly updated on behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.
“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.
Cohen’s testimony at the time appeared to be the final breach in a once-close relationship between the lawyer and his client that was tested in dramatic fashion in 2018 when FBI agents searched Cohen’s office, home and hotel room.
Cohen later pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Russia as well as to campaign finance violations in which he implicated Trump in payments that went to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, and Playboy Playmate Karen MacDougal. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
Since his trial testimony, though, Cohen has sung a different tune as he’s moved closer to Trump, insisting that he had testified under duress.
“I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump,” he wrote in a Substack post in January.
Cohen testified before Congress in 2019, alleging Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.
He gave similar testimony in a 2023 civil fraud trial in New York, which found that Trump and his companies had engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades. A New York appeals court later threw out a $550 million judgment against Trump in that case. Trump has asked a court to overturn the remaining parts of the case.
In his tell-all memoir in 2020, “Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” Cohen was unsparing, calling Trump an “organized crime don” and “master manipulator.”
But, foreshadowing their later rapprochement, Cohen also wrote that he still cared for Trump, writing, “I had and still have a lot of affection for him.”
FILE - Michael Cohen speaks during a news conference announcing his new radio show in New York, July 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE - Michael Cohen speaks during a news conference announcing his new radio show in New York, July 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
