"A Leftist Wave Is Cresting Across the Country"

"After the last month, Democratic leadership should be seriously taking stock of their position. The energy is on their left. The people are on their left. Democrats want fighters, and they want a politics rooted in the collective struggles of the masses, not decided in smoke-filled rooms. We still need moderate Democrats to win those pesky median voters, for now. But the party's leadership is deeply out of touch with its base."

Ben Davis at The Guardian considers the results of recent primary elections.

As does George Chidi.

"This Was Supposed to Be a Change Revolution, but Voters Clearly Said No to the Revolution"

"'I think the Democrats' prospects are very bright in 2026 given the California Republicans' dysfunctionality and a complete backlash against Donald Trump,' Adams said. 'But I have much bigger concerns about the California Democrats long term, because it seems to me they're setting a record for most consecutive years of failing to fix the state's problems while getting reelected anyway.'"

Jenny Jarvie at the Los Angeles Times reports reactions to the results of California's primary elections.

And Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect explains "How California Politics Became So Blah."

Attention Politics

"'Politicians are recruited in lots of different ways, but let's say that now we have reached an era in which part of the recruitment process is based on their ability to engage with new social media platforms,' says Stuart Soroka, a professor in the departments of communication and political science at UCLA." 

While discussing the Los Angeles mayoral race, Lorraine Ali at the Los Angeles Times writes about "reality TV- and social media-made politicians who've moved into politics."

"Talent Still Calls California Home"

"Recent comparisons to Detroit misunderstand what makes each city remarkable. The Motor City's decline was largely due to companies offshoring innovation to cheaper factories abroad. Los Angeles' challenge is the opposite: an overabundance of innovation that is decentralizing faster than anyone expected. The industry is not dying; it is diversifying."

In a 2025 Los Angeles Times article, Rachel Zaslansky Sheer and Lori Zuker Briller discuss Hollywood as a place and as an industry.

"The Predictable Result of Public Policy"

"Until then, the term 'homeless' most often referred to people who had lost their homes in natural disasters or wars. But things were beginning to change in the 1970s, when a sequence of seemingly unrelated events conspired to drive people into the streets."

Mitchell Landsberg and Gale Holland at the Los Angeles Times present "[t]he real story of how L.A. became the epicenter of America’s homeless crisis."

"They Saw Fires as Freak Events"

"'It was a period of almost zero environmental consciousness,' said Philip Ethington, a professor of history, political science and spatial sciences at USC. 'They had a poor understanding of the long, long history of fires, and the long ecological necessity of them. The developers didn't want to dwell on the hazards.'"

Jenny Jarvie at the Los Angeles Times tells the "story of how Los Angeles developed itself for disaster."

Even the Stars Are Ill at Ease

"The more complicated answer is that these fires are an especially acute example of something climate scientists have been warning about for decades: compound climate disasters that, when they occur simultaneously, produce much more damage than they would individually. As the climate crisis escalates, the interdependent atmospheric, oceanic and ecological systems that constrain human civilization will lead to compounding and regime-shifting changes that are difficult to predict in advance. That idea formed a guiding theme of the Biden administration's 2023 national climate assessment."

Eric Holthaus at The Guardian writes that "[c]onditions for a January firestorm in Los Angeles have never existed in all of known history, until they now do."

Also at The Guardian, Oliver Wainwright argues that "[t]he city needs greater urban density, not more firebelt bungalows." (At CalMatters, Ben Christopher also questions how L.A. should or should not rebuild, as does Jerusalem Demsas at The Atlantic.)

And Adrian Daub looks to earlier L.A. writers like Mike Davis.

Dan Walters at the Ventura County Star considers the criticism of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass.

And Mark Z. Barabak at the Los Angeles Times criticizes the critics.

"Using Art to Explain Cultural History, Rather Than the Other Way Around"

"Wonderful art objects get demoted to the status of illustrations. Both exhibitions are a big jumble of things brought to bear on cultural history, a subject better handled through texts. That's what illustrations are for--as adjuncts to writing.
"And, yes, both shows tuck some contemporary works into their historical displays, downgrading them as well. The artists will survive, and who can blame them for taking the opportunity? But it's a waste."

Christopher Knight at the Los Angeles Times reviews exhibits at the Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

At The Reading Experience, Daniel Green offers a similar view regarding literature.

"Homeowners, She Said, Are Concerned About Property Values and Are Resistant to Policies They Believe Might Adversely Affect Them"

"'There are a lot of homeowners in L.A. who lean left, are sympathetic to the problem of homelessness and are generally supportive of these solutions,' Thomas said. 'But on a neighborhood block, they're incentivized quite differently.'"

Liam Dillon in the Los Angeles Times reports on a survey of homeowners and renters about housing.

"Collectively the Busiest Shipping Hub in the Western Hemisphere"

"The consequences will play out in the months ahead as pocketbook issues quite likely decide the presidential election. But regardless of the election’s outcome, we should understand that Southern California is never a place apart from U.S. politics and its dilemmas. Instead, these have deep roots in the region. And today, the region continues to invest in imports and real estate as vehicles for prosperity — even as the adverse costs accumulate in national politics."

James Tejani at the Los Angeles Times connects economic past and present via the San Pedro Bay.

"Whose Venice?"

"It's a bit heavy-handed, but I like it because Venice is the kind of place where a lot of myths are true but also where many truths are just well-established myths. It is the cradle of skate and surf culture built on the ruins of an aspirationally European entertainment district. Some also consider it the slum by the sea, a home to everything experimental, creative and countercultural. Equal parts hip hop, punk, soul and rock 'n' roll."

At the Los Angeles Times, Frank Shyong visits the Venice Heritage Museum.

"When the Public Distrusts Police Officers, Criminal Defendants Benefit"

"Whatever one thinks about Simpson's guilt or innocence in the double murder, it's easy to understand why jurors in the case would have questions—even doubts—about a case investigated by officers whose colleagues had beaten Rodney King and by a detective whose racism was something he bragged about. The LAPD had forfeited its presumption of honesty."

Jim Newton at the Los Angeles Times discusses the most significant aspect of O.J. Simpson's trial during the 1990s.

"Wasn't Just Read, However. It Was Devoured"

"'When you judge the work of somebody, it's what the work itself did, the ways it makes us think differently,' said historian William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. 'Equally important: How many ships did it launch? And "City of Quartz" launched so many ships—whether it's dissertations or conferences or articles.'"

Carolina A. Miranda at the Los Angeles Times writes an obituary for Mike Davis.

"Nation Time!"

"Some 26 acts hit the two stages set up on the football field that afternoon, and legend has it way more than that were ready to go on. The great songwriter and singer William Bell (no relation to Al Bell) remembers the long runway to the stage, wire mesh barely keeping the crowd back and how he had to race a block and a half from the dressing room to the stage, so vast was the Coliseum. And when he peeked out, it was 'both frightening and exhilarating, that many people listening to a show that we were very proud of.' Bell sang his aching ballad 'I Forgot to Be Your Lover,' participated in a gospel number and emceed throughout the day. All of it, he says with amazement, whipping by as if it was just a minute."

R.J. Smith at the Los Angeles Times marks the fiftieth anniversary of Wattstax.

"The General Sense of Disarray and Dysfunction That Is Permeating Everything"

"The parallel to national politics is the potential for a seismic backlash in November among voters unsettled by all the disruptions to daily life--from inflation to Covid-19 to crime--that have persisted through Joe Biden's presidency. That continued turbulence has undermined the implicit promise of his candidacy: to return the nation to something approaching normalcy after all the turmoil of the Donald Trump presidency."

Ronald Brownstein at CNN looks at political trends in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

"A Fight L.A. Has Picked and Won for 150 Years"

"Climate was what L.A. sold, and really, for years, that's all it had to sell. Far into the 19th century, L.A. was a scruffy village of dust and mayhem—but just look up, the new Angelenos insisted. Look at our fine mountains, breathe our air, fragrant (eventually) with citrus blossoms. Look at us—in shirtsleeves, in the winter!"

In the Los Angeles Times, Patt Morrison writes that Los Angeles "made its first fortune by selling winter."

"'Freedom of Choice,' Blazoned by Realtors on L.A. Freeway Billboards Half a Century Ago, Divides America Today"

"White Californians overwhelmingly voted for the Realtors' proposition in November 1964, on the same ballot that Lyndon Johnson crushed Goldwater in the presidential race. The victory was so sweeping that even after Proposition 14 was ruled unconstitutional, Reagan adopted the Realtors' message as his own. The Realtors' use of the libertarian language of individual freedom to maintain social conformity has unified conservatives ever since."

Gene Slater at the Los Angeles Times writes that "[o]nly strong government action could have overcome the Realtors' legacy of racially exclusive suburbs and organized prejudice."

"The Once and Future King"

"It was Bobby's America, and Harrington couldn't keep from staring. 'Every time I did, I began to cry. The sorrowing faces along the way were a mirror of my own feelings,' said the author whose writings helped launch the War on Poverty and who saw Bobby as 'the man who actually could have changed the course of American history.' As for those with him inside the rail cars—politicians of the old school and new, intellectuals and trade unionists, Black, Irish, Chicano, and Jewish citizens—they were, said Harrington, 'the administration of Robert Kennedy that was never going to be.'"

Larry Tye at Politico asks if Robert F. Kennedy was in position to become President in 1968.

"Still Making These Great Records That No One Paid Any Attention To"

"'Radio program directors were like, "I don't care how good the music is, I'm not playing these has-beens any more than I'm gonna be playing Jan & Dean,"' Linett says."

Mikael Wood at the Los Angeles Times revisits the Beach Boys' early-1970s albums.

And at Variety, Chris Willman interviews the archivists of the new Beach Boys box set.

"All About True Amour—a Man's Mostly Unstated Love of His Fellow Man, and Also, Sure, a Man's Love of 'Mannix'"

"The end result is not so much like reliving the movie on the page—although the book does have a few scenes in which the dialogue and descriptive beats are transcribed note-for-note from the screenplay—as much as a catalog of constant diversions that's like being locked inside the New Beverly for a week with Pauline Kael, Harry Knowles and Leonard Maltin. Let that intrigue or daunt you as it may, as you decide whether or not to plunk down $7.48 (the very reasonable Amazon going rate, at press time) for a book that's been deliberately designed to resemble something that would have sat on a rusting metal rack in a drugstore in the '70s. It's definitely not for everybody… not even everybody who loved the film. '"

Chris Willman at Variety reviews Quentin Tarantino's novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.