Dallas prepares for Trump midterm convention — and protests — on a shorter timeline

Triple-digit heat greeted delegates arriving for Dallas’ first major-party presidential nominating convention in August 1984. And in a dry stretch of Trinity River bottom, protesters from across the country pitched a city of tents in rebuke of President Ronald Reagan.

The encampment was among the concessions activists won as Dallas carried out a complex security operation more than a year in the making. A national organizing group sued for access to public land so protesters could stake out nearby. A separate local coalition persuaded a federal judge to move fencing encircling the convention center, allowing demonstrators to gather within shouting distance.

Authorities were tasked with securing thousands of visitors, including many VIPs, the vice president and the president, who had survived an assassination attempt three years earlier — all in the city where another sitting president had been assassinated nearly 21 years earlier

Now, more than 40 years later, Republicans are returning to Dallas. 

President Donald Trump is expected to headline an unusual midterm convention Sept. 9 and 10 at the American Airlines Center, dubbed “Trumpapalooza” by the national Republican party chairman. Announced just over two months in advance, the gathering gives authorities less time to prepare than a traditional four-year convention.

The gathering will test Dallas’ ability to ensure public safety without restricting the right to protest as thousands descend upon the city — all under the watch of local, state and federal law enforcement.

Back in 1984, as Reagan prepared to accept the Republican nomination at the convention center, a makeshift stage made of plywood sheets on folding frames sat outside. Longtime Dallas organizer John Fullinwider remembers climbing onto it to speak, high enough to be heard over the crowd.

He did not visit the riverbed campsite, dubbed “Reagan Ranch” by organizers, but he saw its location as an effort to marginalize protesters

“They were trying to make sure the protesters were effectively nowhere,” Fullinwider, 74, recalled recently in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. “It was probably the hottest place in Dallas.”

The Secret Service’s Dallas Field Office and Dallas police said planning for the midterm convention is underway but declined to discuss specifics. Part of a good security plan involves keeping some details secret.

Two former Secret Service agents turned security consultants who spoke with The News said a shorter runway should not, by itself, cause concern.

Dallas police Chief Daniel Comeaux called the convention an “all-hands-on-deck” event and said ongoing preparations include deciding where demonstrators will be allowed to gather.

“We’re going to keep everyone safe,” Comeaux said in a recent interview.

The Republican and Democratic chairs of Dallas County said this week they want September’s convention to remain peaceful, with room for celebration and dissent. Both also see the gathering as a chance to mobilize their parties before November.

One group has already received a city permit to demonstrate outside the convention. The Next Generation Action Network, a Dallas-based organization, plans to host a public gathering and an event.

“We look forward to welcoming organizations and community members from across the country for a weekend focused on peaceful civic engagement and community dialogue,” Dominique Alexander, the group’s founder, said in a social media post.

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Authorities have not publicly said when security planning began. Trump first floated a pre-midterm convention nearly a year ago in an August 2025 post on social media.

Representatives of the Republican National Committee toured American Airlines Center the following February. The RNC had laid the groundwork in the month before the tour, voting to allow its chairman to call a “special ceremonial convention” with 60 days’ notice. The rule says “no business shall be conducted” at such a convention.

About four months after the tour, Trump announced June 30 that the convention would be held in Dallas. 

“A RALLY like none other,” he wrote of the event in a social media post announcing it, in “one of my favorite places in the World.”

Locke Neely, a retired North Texas security consultant and former Secret Service agent, said a compressed timeline alone is no cause for concern. He cited an April incident in which a man carrying a shotgun breached a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner attended by Trump.

“It’ll be easier to get into Fort Knox than it will be to get in there trying to do something nefarious,” Neely said in an interview.

The preparations come after Trump faced two assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign. A gunman wounded him at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pa., in an attack that exposed breakdowns in communication and coordination among the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies.

The prior assassination attempts and the ongoing U.S. military campaign against Iran could bring additional security considerations, said Joseph LaSorsa, a former Secret Service agent who served on President Reagan’s protective detail and now runs a security consulting firm.

Federal prosecutors have described two plots tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that included Trump as a target. In one, an alleged Iranian asset was charged after authorities said he had been ordered to devise a plan to kill Trump. In the other, a federal jury convicted an IRGC operative in a foiled political assassination plot that prosecutors said included Trump. Neither resulted in an attack.

“I’m sure they’ll tighten up security even more,” LaSorsa said in an interview.

Details about accommodations for demonstrators have not been announced. Asked about expected protests, Dallas police spokesperson Corbin Rubinson said the department is “committed to protecting the First Amendment right to free speech and public demonstration and welcomes those who wish to do so peacefully.”

Trump has held two campaign rallies at American Airlines Center, first in 2015 as a Republican presidential candidate and again in 2019 during his reelection campaign.

The midterm convention comes as Republicans seek to preserve their dominance in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton faces state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, in a closely watched U.S. Senate race.

For Republicans, the convention is both a major fundraiser and a chance to energize the party before November. Monty Montanez, who leads the Dallas County GOP, said candidates, political clubs and other groups are planning satellite events around the main program, creating what he described as a broader gathering place for Republicans to organize and align ahead of the election.

Dallas County Democrats are preparing their own response. Kardal Coleman, the county party chair, said organizers began planning a rally after the convention was formally announced, though they had not selected a location as of Thursday. He said the event would also become part of the party’s fall push to contact voters and drive turnout.

The two chairs offered sharply different views of what the convention represents, but both said they hoped demonstrations would remain peaceful.

Coleman said Democrats intend to engage in “nonviolent resistance,” invoking a term central to Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of protest. He called for heightened security to protect demonstrators and said he worried the gathering could attract members of the Proud Boys and people prosecuted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol who have since  received clemency from Trump.

Montanez said safety and security should be one of the convention’s priorities, with enough space for supporters to gather and protesters to demonstrate — all without either group impeding the other.

“It’s OK to disagree, but can we do it in a peaceful way?” he said in an interview. “That should be the focus.”

The 1984 convention saw a number of arrests. On its third day, police arrested Gregory Lee Johnson and several other demonstrators after Johnson burned an American flag outside Dallas City Hall. His conviction later became the basis of the landmark Supreme Court case Texas v. Johnson, in which the court ruled that burning the American flag as political protest is protected by the First Amendment.

Fullinwider, the longtime Dallas organizer, opposed President Reagan. But when he heard Republicans were bringing their national convention to Dallas in 1984, he saw an opportunity.

The gathering offered a chance, he said, to show that Dallas was changing, that it was more than the politics associated with the John Birch Society, the conservative anti-communist group that had a prominent local following in the 1960s.

Fullinwider said he felt none of that excitement when he recently learned Republicans were returning for the midterm convention.

He said he plans to support and join demonstrations come September, though he is content at 74 to leave the planning to younger generations of organizers. He still believes there is value in showing up and being heard.

“Anytime you can get out there and show there’s an alternative to Trumpism, it’s a good opportunity,” he said. “We should take it.”

The convention will once again bring the national political spotlight to Dallas, along with a test of how the city accommodates dissent.