The Brief

The men's soccer World Cup kicks off next week at 16 stadiums across North America, just as summer weather arrives in many of the host cities. Millions of fans, players and workers could be exposed to potentially harmful heat, an NPR analysis finds.

More than one-third of World Cup matches are at high risk for dangerously hot, humid conditions, NPR found, and dozens more matches come with moderate heat risk.

NPR looked at two decades of temperature data for each host city, as well as the time each World Cup match is scheduled to start, and checked those temperatures against heat hazard guidelines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the American College of Sports Medicine.

The high-risk events identified in NPR's analysis include multiple high-profile matches, such as the game that determines which team takes home third place in the World Cup, and the World Cup final.

"Players can overheat, and match officials as well," says Donal Mullan, a climate scientist at Queen's University Belfast, who co-authored a study last year about heat risk at the 2026 World Cup.

"They can also overheat and collapse," Mullan warns. "This has happened to people."

In an email to NPR, a spokesperson for FIFA, the governing body for international soccer, wrote that the organization "is committed to protecting the health and safety of players, referees, fans, volunteers and staff."

FIFA scheduled many games for cooler afternoon and evening hours, added extra water breaks for players and referees and installed air conditioning on the sidelines for those who are sitting on the benches, the email states.

"Outdoor matches during the hottest parts of the day have been strategically limited, kick-off times adjusted in certain markets, and matches expected in warmer windows prioritized for covered stadiums where possible," the email also states. FIFA did not respond to further questions about why some matches were nonetheless scheduled for high-risk locations and times.

When the weather is especially hot, "spectators will be permitted to bring one factory-sealed water bottle, and venues will activate additional cooling capacity, including shaded areas, misting systems, cooling buses and expanded water distribution," the FIFA spokesperson wrote to NPR.

FIFA did not respond to questions about how hot it would need to be to trigger protections, whether every venue has misting systems available or whether workers at stadiums would have the same access as spectators.

Dangerous heat and limited cooling

Out of the 104 games, 67 of them are being held at locations and times that come with potential danger for heat illnesses, with 39 of those at high risk, according to their historical wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT). The WBGT measurement is a strong indicator of overall heat risk because it takes into account humidity, shade and solar radiation to calculate the temperature.

"All hot weather is dangerous, but hot, humid weather tends to be more dangerous," says Jennifer Vanos, who studies heat policy at Arizona State University.

Miami, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta rank near the top in temperature for their games, with averages as high as 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Attendees and workers in those stadiums will have air conditioning.

Stadiums in other parts of the U.S. don't have the same infrastructure, with games in Philadelphia, New Jersey and Kansas City, Mo., averaging as high as 79 F with no roofs covering their stadiums.

Miami's stadium is the hottest venue without air conditioning. The historical average temperature this time of year is around 80 F. That threatens multiple matches with dangerously hot weather, including the match that determines which team wins third place in the tournament.

Multiple scientific studies have come to similar conclusions, including one published last month by researchers at Imperial College London and collaborators, who found that about a quarter of World Cup games this summer are likely to be held while temperatures exceed 79 F.

It is possible that individual matches in Miami and other high-risk cities will get lucky and see overcast skies and cooler-than-average temperatures. But climate change makes such luck less likely. Overall summer temperatures across North America are steadily rising, as global warming drives longer, hotter heat waves. The last 10 years were the hottest decade ever recorded on Earth.

The risk is not theoretical

The dangers of hot, humid weather are not new to professional soccer players and tournament organizers, though the risks are getting more pronounced as the planet warms.

The last men's World Cup tournament was held in the winter because of concerns about dangerously hot, humid weather in the host country of Qatar. Summer weather in Qatar's capital is often so hot and muggy that the human body can no longer cool itself by sweating.

Many North American cities also get extremely hot and humid, and heat emergencies have happened at professional soccer matches in the United States in the past.

Two years ago, hot, humid weather caused a health emergency at a stadium in Kansas City, Kansas. During a June 25, 2024, international soccer match, referee Humberto Panjoj collapsed on the field due to heat illness and had to be rushed to the hospital.

A nearby stadium in Kansas City, Mo., will host the World Cup match between Tunisia and the Netherlands exactly two years later, on June 25, 2026, raising concerns about the safety of conditions during that upcoming game.

At another 2024 match, held in Miami, a star player for Uruguay left the game at halftime and later told The Athletic that he suffered from dizziness and dehydration.

In 2017, professional soccer player Rachel Daly collapsed due to heat exhaustion during a match in Houston, despite additional water breaks during the game. She recovered and later posted on X: "those conditions are not safe to play at your maximum."

The sport's largest players union, FIFPRO, has expressed concern about player safety at the 2026 World Cup. FIFPRO did not respond to specific questions from NPR about heat safety at the tournament.

The reasons for avoiding the heat of the day go beyond protecting player and fan health. Soccer is a more dynamic game when it's played in cooler weather, studies have found, because players run faster and cover more ground.

Evening games are safer than afternoon ones

One of the simplest ways to protect people from hot weather during the World Cup is to schedule games for the evening, when temperatures are slightly cooler and there is less direct sunlight.

"The heat risk goes down significantly after about 6 o'clock in the evening, typically," Mullan says. "FIFA have by and large avoided the worst times of the day."

In an email to NPR, a FIFA spokesperson wrote that the organization took such considerations into account when it created the World Cup schedule.

FIFA did not answer questions about why the World Cup final is scheduled for the heat of the day, 3 p.m., on July 19 at an uncovered stadium outside New York City.

That start time, during the hottest part of the day, may have been chosen to maximize the global audience, much of which is located in later time zones. An evening start time would have required fans in Europe, Africa and Asia to tune in late at night or in the very early morning.

But the heat risk at that match is clear, Mullan says. "Obviously, if you schedule these matches for the midafternoon at some of these hottest locations, then that's your recipe for disaster," he explains. NPR's analysis found that the World Cup final match is likely to see wet bulb globe temperatures of 79 F, putting players and fans at risk for dangerously hot, humid weather.

World Cup fans and workers are also at risk for heat illness

The players and referees running around on the field are not the only ones at risk from very hot weather. Spectators and workers are also threatened.

That's because you don't need to be exercising to be affected by heat illness.

"I think about the person dying at the Taylor Swift concert in Brazil," says Vanos, of Arizona State University. In 2023, a Brazilian university student died while waiting for a brutally hot concert by the pop star.

In 2024, more than 1,300 people died during the Hajj, when that pilgrimage coincided with very hot weather in Saudi Arabia.

Both of those tragedies occurred during heat waves, when temperatures exceeded 100 F. While average summer temperatures in World Cup host cities generally remain lower than that, North American heat waves in recent years have led to triple-digit temperatures. And climate change means record-breaking heat waves are happening more often.

Vanos says large gatherings, like concerts, pilgrimages and sporting events, exacerbate the threat posed by heat because people are in large crowds, often visiting areas they are unfamiliar with. "Understanding the local context of the climate, where you can go to get water, where the water is safe, where you can go to find air conditioning — all of these things that sometimes it's easy to take for granted, but that can actually be really hard to find and get if you're in a really different context that you've never been in before," Vanos explains.

More than 6 million tickets are available for World Cup matches, according to FIFA, although the organization is not disclosing exactly how many it has sold.

Such a large event requires thousands of extra workers and overtime hours for local employees, many of whom will be working outside. The federal government is spending $625 million on local security in U.S. host cities — for example, NPR member station KCUR reports that Kansas City is using $59 million of that funding to cover police overtime at matches and extra officers from other locations.

Vanos says such workers could face dangerously hot conditions, especially if they're exposed to the sun during the hottest part of the day. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends that workers be given water and shade breaks to prevent heat illness, but some states, including Florida, do not have laws on the books to enforce such recommendations.

This story was edited by Neela Banerjee. The graphics were edited by Alyson Hurt.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A wave of relief moved through L.A. communities on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship.

The 6-3 decision to affirm the nation’s 158-year-old legal standard also rejected an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, moments after his inauguration. Had the Supreme Court upheld the executive order, citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. would have depended on their parents’ nationality and residence history.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who argued on behalf of the Trump administration, said the nation’s longstanding practice has incentivized foreigners to travel to the U.S. to have babies — including some from “hostile nations.”

“ For more than a century and a half, our laws have reaffirmed that fundamental right. Today's ruling is a long overdue message to Donald Trump: No president can pretend to erase a bedrock constitutional guarantee with the flick of a pen,” said Alvaro Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

“We're relieved that the Supreme Court firmly rejected the Trump administration's overreach and reaffirmed what frankly should never have been in question,” he added. “ Today, we can breathe a sigh of relief.”

Angelenos respond to SCOTUS

In Los Angeles, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights spoke to reporters at its headquarters, inviting fellow advocates and local residents of all ages to celebrate the majority opinion.

“ The decision today carries profound meaning for all of us,” said Dahni Tsuboi, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Southern California, which was among dozens of advocate groups that filed a brief in support of immigrant families.

“More than 60%of Asian Americans in this nation were born somewhere else. So for us, immigration is not a policy debate . . . It is our story of how we came here, how we created home here, how our children's dreams took shape,” she said.

“ The Trump administration tried to challenge the 14th Amendment, which initially guaranteed birthright citizenship in the aftermath of slavery, ensuring that formerly enslaved Black people and their descendants could not be denied membership in the nation that they built,” added Maraky Alemseged, an organizer with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on birthright citizenship, they noted, comes on the heels of its decision to allow the Trump administration to cancel temporary protected status for Haitians and other groups, without being subject to review in federal courts. The administration has also moved to cancel naturalization ceremonies for people who hail from countries it’s deemed to be “high-risk.”

In response, Alemseged called for continued advocacy and “a broader vision of belonging, one where humanity is not contingent on [immigrant] status.”

Why it matters

Cecilia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU, represented families who could have been affected. The nonprofit sued the Trump administration almost immediately after the president signed the executive order.

When speaking before the Supreme Court in April, Wang — herself a birthright citizen — pointed to some of the darkest moments in U.S. history to bolster her argument.

“ Even in World War II, when the United States was detaining Japanese nationals who were deemed ‘enemy aliens’ of the United States, when those ‘enemy aliens’ had babies in these detention camps, everyone agreed that those babies were U.S. citizens,” she said.

Wang also cited United States v. Wong Kim Ark, a landmark case involving a Chinese American man from California. In that 1898 case, Wang noted, the court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to almost anyone born in the country, regardless of their parents' nationality or immigration status.

In 2023, birthing people who were undocumented immigrants or who had legal temporary status had 320,000 babies, representing about 9% of all the 3.6 million children born in the U.S. that year. According to the Pew Research Center, about 260,000 of those babies would not have qualified for birthright citizenship if Trump’s executive order had already been in effect.

Immigrant advocates feared such children would become part of a permanent underclass. The United Nations has signaled that when people are rendered stateless, they can encounter a host of challenges — everything from barriers accessing education and healthcare to the inability to travel freely. Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, Sauer dismissed those concerns as alarmist “ end-of-the-world type predictions.”

LeBron James will not be back with the Los Angeles Lakers and plans to play a record-extending 24th NBA season elsewhere.

His decision is perhaps the biggest domino that will fall during the NBA’s offseason player movement window, alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo being traded by Milwaukee to Miami — one of James’ former stops.

The Lakers released a statement Tuesday thanking James for his eight seasons with the club.

“LeBron James is one of the greatest athletes in history,” said Jeanie Buss, part of the Lakers’ ownership group. “We will always be thankful for his eight years with the Lakers, including the title he led us to in 2020 under the toughest imaginable circumstances, and the countless records he broke in purple and gold. We wish him all the best in the future, both on the court and off. He will always be a cherished part of the Lakers family.”

ESPN, citing James’ longtime agent and Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, first reported James’ plans.

James can begin talking officially to new clubs after 3 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, when the league’s free agent period opens. He will not be able to sign with a new team until the league’s offseason moratorium is lifted on July 6.

A slew of options will be available to James on the open market, including Golden State. Longtime Warriors forward Draymond Green did not exercise his $27.6 million option for this coming season earlier this week in large part to allow his team flexibility to make other roster moves.

“Personally, I’m always willing to work with the team on whatever is best, especially at this point in my career,” Green said on the latest episode of his podcast, which was released Tuesday. “So my decision to opt out was for a few reasons. As you all know, I’ve always taken the approach of working with the organization. I’ve been in one place for 14 years. It’s more of a family to me than anything.”

It could be the move that convinces James to go to Golden State — a franchise he faced four times with Cleveland in the NBA Finals. He also has close relationships with Green, Stephen Curry and Warriors coach Steve Kerr.

James spent eight seasons with the Lakers, the longest he spent in one stint with one NBA team and led them to the 2020 NBA championship. He became the NBA’s all-time points leader while wearing a Lakers uniform and surpassed a slew of other records while in purple and gold.

He spent the first seven years of his career in Cleveland, then left for four years in Miami where he won the first two of his four championships. That was followed by another four-year stint with the Cavaliers, and in 2018 he joined the Lakers.

James is the NBA’s oldest active player; he turns 42 in December. He was the first player in league history to log 23 seasons; he’ll add at least one more to that this season. He also became the first player in the league to have a son as a teammate, with Bronny James playing alongside him with the Lakers.

The list of James’ accolades to this point are beyond comparison.

He’s a 22-time All-Star, a 21-time All-NBA selection, a four-time Most Valuable Player, a four-time NBA Finals MVP, a three-time All-Star Game MVP, and was part of the NBA’s 75th anniversary team. He’s coming off a season where he averaged 20.9 points, 6.1 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game, and for his career, he’s averaged 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 7.4 assists in more than 1,600 games.

After more than a decade teaching in special education settings, Lisa Just was well-practiced at managing her Carver Elementary classroom in a way that kept students safe. She stayed alert to behavioral cues, and when students started getting upset, she stepped in to talk with them, adjust their environment or even move them to designated areas to calm down.

“Building that relationship where they feel safe and they trust you is huge,” she said of her kindergartners who would climb up on her lap and hug her like “sticky bugs.”

Yet, in a class with some acute behavioral needs, students sometimes became so dysregulated they hurt her. Often, she left school with “major purple marks,” the result of students who hit, pinched, bit and scratched her, she said, even if they weren’t intending harm.

On a hot day in September, one of her students grew increasingly agitated, the heat a known trigger for him. Just and other aides attempted to calm him — without success. Finally, as he lashed out at classroom staff, she tried to restrain him — the last resort when a child becomes so dysregulated — but he kept slipping out of her grip.

In an “explosive moment,” the child headbutted Just so hard that part of her vision went dark, she said. She went to the emergency room and learned she had an eye injury that has permanently changed her eyesight, causing floating dots and flashing lights.

Just is among the rising number of Long Beach Unified educators who have been seriously hurt during interactions with students in recent years. It’s a trend that’s alarmed classroom staff.

In February, Peder Larsen, vice president of the local teachers union, told his membership he was “a bit in shock” at the rate of injuries he was witnessing. “I’ve known teachers are getting injured, but I’m seeing it basically every single visit I make. I see teachers with bruises. I see people on the verge of tears.”

Seventy-two LBUSD workers reported being severely hurt by a child in the 2024-25 school year, according to an analysis by the Long Beach Post, a notable spike from 49 three years earlier.

Over that same period, the median cost of student-related claims jumped by $500. The total medical costs incurred by student-related claims increased markedly, too.

To determine this, the Long Beach Post obtained and reviewed data on 800 workers’ compensation claims documenting incidents involving students since the 2021-22 school year. To qualify as “severe,” we counted only claims that reported injuries serious enough to cause employees to miss work or incur significant medical expenses — more than $2,577, representing the top 20% most expensive claims. This scheme captured incidents where students bit, kicked or hit employees, as well as injuries sustained while educators chased eloping students, broke up fights and calmed students down.

Long Beach Unified did not make someone available for an interview about the increase, but the district “is committed to providing a safe learning and working environment for students and staff,” said Elvia Cano, a spokesperson for LBUSD, including through training to “recognize, prevent and manage crisis behaviors.”

Complete workers’ compensation data were not available for the recently concluded 2025-26 school year, but in interviews with the Long Beach Post, many LBUSD teachers said they’re continuing to see more students acting out. One elementary school teacher, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation for speaking up, said that in her last two years of teaching, “student behaviors were off the charts.” On a daily basis, she was bit and pinched, had her hair pulled and was spat on.

“A behavior is a form of communication,” she said, underscoring that she reacts compassionately and tries to address students’ underlying needs. Yet it doesn’t change the fact that “we’re also getting beaten up all day,” she said.

These experiences are consistent with data from a recent national survey of public school educators, in which 76% of survey respondents said the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected student behavior and development. As Long Beach schools reopened after pandemic closures, the total number of workers’ compensation claims involving students spiked. That total fell the following year, before climbing again to reach a slightly lower peak in 2024-25, the most recent year of complete data.

“Students are struggling,” said Milton Duena, assistant executive director of the teachers union, who helps oversee grievances, including those related to teacher injuries. Students may be facing food and housing insecurity or may need medical or mental health care they’re not getting, he said.

The rise in challenging behaviors has coincided with reduced classroom support, teachers told the Post.

Just requested more help for the child who injured her, including a thorough assessment to identify how to support him when he got upset. Instead, emails she provided show that her principal suggested she add visual schedules to the classroom, hold morning meetings and better communicate with staff — all of which Just said were already part of her approach. The response left her frustrated: “No one’s supporting us, keeping us safe,” Just said. “No one’s helping this child who needs help.”

Cano, the LBUSD spokesperson, said that each time a workplace injury occurs, the district examines the circumstances to determine necessary next steps and supports.

When Long Beach, like other districts, saw increased needs after the pandemic, it expanded training and student supports, aided by state and federal funds, Cano said. Many of these temporary relief dollars have since expired, prompting the district to scale back student mental health resources.

Jola Lao, who teaches kindergarten and first grade in a special education classroom at Barton Elementary, said she made numerous appeals for more aides to manage behavior in her class, as well as better training and equipment — like doors that prevent students from leaving or running away from class, called eloping.

Emails reviewed by the Post show Lao kept careful records of student behavior to support her requests for additional trained adults to help with everything from toileting assistance to supervision of students who left campus and wandered into the street. Nevertheless, she said, her requests were denied. Soon after, Lao went on leave due to intense stress and burnout, she said.

Part of the problem is a chronically underfunded public education system, said Duena of the teachers union. In a 2025-26 budget memo, the district wrote that “costs associated with behavior intervention support for students, especially at the elementary level, have increased fourfold since 2021-22.” The average cost of a 1:1 behavior aide is approximately $70,000, the district said.

These positions are notoriously hard to fill and have a high turnover, in part because of the nature of the work, said Claudia Sosa-Valderrama at a March school board meeting. The district outsources some of these jobs to agencies, but LBUSD teachers who spoke with the Post said sometimes agency aides arrive without adequate training. Just, the teacher who sustained an eye injury, said many of her aides don’t know how to safely restrain students, leaving Just as the only one who can step in at a crucial moment.

Less support in the classroom means student behaviors escalate, said Kecia Woods, who taught third and fourth grade in a special education classroom at Madison Elementary until she retired this year because “I didn’t want to go out hurt,” she said.

In the 2025-26 year alone, she said she filed four or five workers’ compensation claims. Not all of them were for serious injuries, she said, but in the past, she was flattened by a student’s punch and sustained a wrist injury from students that took a year to heal, she said.

Getting injured is assumed to be part of teachers’ jobs, Woods said, adding, “And it’s not. It shouldn’t be.”

The Department of Motor Vehicles is on track to share driver’s license and identification data with an outside network despite concerns from immigrant advocates that the information could expose people to deportation.

The California Legislature authorized that sharing in the state budget it passed on Monday, along with a separate transportation measure that laid out some special oversight procedures to protect the data.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the budget and is expected to approve the companion measure, which his administration negotiated with lawmakers.

Lawmakers earlier had refused to approve the data sharing plan until protections were put in place late last week.

The stakes are high for the more than 1 million immigrants who have driver’s licenses. The system records the last five digits of a driver’s Social Security number and uses the placeholder “99999” for people without one. Advocates fear that feeding that information into a national database could expose undocumented Californians to federal immigration enforcement and told CalMatters in April that such a plan amounts to “a betrayal.”

Earlier this year, the governor's office told CalMatters that reporting on the dispute amounted to "manufacturing fear and panic with lies."

The new state budget includes $55 million, which the DMV will use to enable the sharing of California records with the State-to-State Verification Service and SPEX database run by the nonprofit American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).

State officials have argued that the data sharing is needed to comply with the federal REAL ID Act, warning that if California does not participate, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security could refuse to accept California IDs at airports. They say the system can only be queried for one record at a time using information supplied by an applicant and that bulk searches are not possible.

The new legislation includes additional measures to protect immigrants from the database being misused for federal immigration enforcement. They include asking the attorney general to sue the nonprofit that runs the national database or participating states if they do not stick to the terms of the data sharing; requiring annual public reporting on data requests and any unusual patterns in usage; and directing the DMV to write a monitoring plan, due in draft by February 2027 and in final form by July 2027. It also directs the state auditor to assess compliance with data sharing guardrails starting in 2030.

“The established safeguards limit the information shared to the minimum necessary,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for Newsom’s Department of Finance.

What critics say

But some advocates say the oversight protections do not go far enough.

“The guardrails will not prevent federal or other state law enforcement from obtaining an order requiring (the state-to-state system) to retrieve and disclose data, including in bulk, and requiring (the system) not to disclose that fact,” said Ed Hasbrouck with the civil liberties group the Identity Project.

Ronald Coleman Baeza, on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, thanked state lawmakers Monday for "ensuring there are guardrails" around the data sharing program but also urged lawmakers to require an audit before 2030.

"We are disappointed that Social Security numbers will continue to be shared, but we appreciate that there will be a monitoring plan, a stakeholder process in place, and also enforcement and an audit," he said. "There's definitely going to be more work to do to make sure that we do protect the information from Californians in the driver's license database system."

Representatives of the ACLU Cal Action and California Immigrant Policy Center similarly thanked lawmakers for adopting additional protections but expressed concern about the potential impact on the lives of undocumented immigrants of sharing sensitive data with an out-of-state entity.

Sen. Laura Richardson is a Democrat from Inglewood who questioned the data sharing plan earlier this year. In a Senate budget hearing Monday she voiced support for the data protections in the transportation bill. She also urged the state auditor to evaluate data sharing activity before 2030 “given our vulnerability of having that data out there.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters — sign up for their newsletters — and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.