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Atlanta hosts its final FIFA World Cup match as tournament’s impact continues to grow

By CNN

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    ATLANTA (WUPA) — Atlanta hosts its final FIFA World Cup match today as England and Argentina face off in a highly anticipated semifinal at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

While thousands of fans are expected to pack the stadium in downtown Atlanta once again, local leaders say the tournament’s impact is already being felt far beyond the pitch.

Before the World Cup began, the Metro Atlanta Chamber projected the tournament could generate more than $503 million in economic activity across Georgia. An Emory University study also estimated Decatur’s month-long WatchFest could contribute up to $142 million to the local economy.

Officials across metro Atlanta are still compiling final attendance and economic data, but early signs point to a busy tournament.

Visitors from around the world have spent weeks exploring Atlanta attractions, dining at local restaurants and attending the FIFA Fan Festival.

“It’s better than I anticipated,” said one visitor from Lagos, Nigeria. “Everyone is super nice, very friendly. The energy is … I feel like I could bottle it. I don’t want it to end.”

The tournament has also created lasting memories for local families.

Former professional baseball player Paul Byrd attended the World Cup with his son, Colby, whose passion for soccer inspired the outing.

“First of all, I’m a baseball player,” Byrd said. “Put my son in left field, he’s talking to the rabbits. He said baseball’s boring. He loves soccer. That’s why we’re here. The World Cup in Atlanta, we’re showing out. It feels like a World Series for me.”

While today’s semifinal marks Atlanta’s final match of the tournament, local leaders say the World Cup’s full impact will take time to measure as communities continue calculating attendance, tourism, and business activity generated over the past several weeks.

England and Argentina kick off Wednesday afternoon at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with the winner advancing to the FIFA World Cup.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Trump’s vaccine order is counterproductive and ‘wrong on so many levels,’ GOP lawmaker says

By CNN
(CNN) — Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, an increasingly sharp critic of President Donald Trump, on Sunday called the president’s vaccine order to separate injections for measles, mumps and rubella “wrong on so many levels” because, among other things, it would require children to receive more shots.“Let’s just take it from the perspective of the parent,” Cassidy, a doctor who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” show. “Now, instead of going to the doctor twice to get their child vaccinated, they have to go six times … Instead of mom or dad missing work twice, you know, coming out of their pocket, if you will, to take their child to the doctor, they have to miss work or take vacation or personal leave six times. This is inconvenient. It’s going to contribute to an increased loss of income.”“The president’s proposal is going to end up with more children being sick. And so who wants that? No one should want that,” Cassidy said.During a later appearance on ABC News’ “This Week,” the Louisiana senator said: “This is why the president’s poll numbers are down, because you’ve lost sight of affordability for the parent, you’ve lost sight of the convenience for the American family, you’ve lost sight of that which is driving higher costs in health care.”CNN has reached out the White House for a reaction to Cassidy’s criticism.Trump’s order says the combination vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella, called MMR, “should be administered in three separate single-disease shots,” and all childhood immunizations should be given at separate medical visits.Immunologists and vaccine experts say there’s no valid reason to do that.“Nothing bad can happen from what we are doing,” Trump said while speaking in the Oval Office on Monday. “The worst thing that could happen would be nothing happens. We’re not going to lose anything.”The executive order marked the latest blow for Cassidy, who cast a deciding vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary despite deep concerns about his anti-vaccine views.Ahead of that confirmation vote, Cassidy secured a series of commitments from Kennedy — including that the two would have an “unprecedentedly close collaborative working relationship” and Kennedy would not seek to undermine the government’s vaccine policies.But Kennedy began testing that pact within months, overhauling the government’s main vaccine advisory panel and amplifying skepticism of key vaccine policies — all while downplaying what has grown into the worst measles outbreak in the country in decades.Their already-frosty relationship hit a breaking point late last year, after the abrupt firing of the then-head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kennedy’s subsequent push to revamp the nation’s childhood vaccine schedule.Kennedy’s allies later joined Trump in openly backing a primary challenge to Cassidy that successfully denied him renomination earlier this spring.Since then, Cassidy has shown far greater willingness to criticize Trump and Kennedy, opposing the president on key issues such as the Iran war and his effort to establish an “anti-weaponization” fund. Cassidy and Kennedy’s relationship is effectively non-existent, people close to the two men said, and the two have rarely spoken in the last several months.Still, Cassidy has stressed that despite feeling freer to express his views, his final months in the Senate are not meant to serve as a revenge tour.That did not prevent him on Sunday from lashing out at the president’s latest policy, which he has also done in a series of social media posts.“If it wasn’t so potentially tragic, you would break out laughing at a comment like that,” Cassidy, told CNN’s Jake Tapper about Trump’s claim that nothing would happen as a result of what experts say is a dramatic reshaping of US vaccine policy.“As a physician who has seen people either die or get seriously ill from diseases that can be prevented by vaccines, this has the potential to decrease the protection that a child would receive against diseases which can be deadly,” Cassidy said.He added that if Trump is looking to improve children’s health while helping parents with costs, “this is the wrong thing to do.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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