Southern California air quality regulators are reneging on their promise to enact long-delayed rules to curb health-damaging and planet-warming pollution from the ports of L.A. and Long Beach by the end of this year.
In doing nothing once again, the South Coast Air Quality Management District has failed to do its only job, cowering in the face of opposition from organized labor and powerful business interests that have worked together on a campaign to kill the proposal meant to clean up the region’s biggest single source of smog-forming pollution.
It is clear the opposition has succeeded. The air-quality agency and its 13-member governing board has backed down, breaking the pledge of its chair, Vanessa Delgado, who in May committed to adopting a rule by the end of the year.
Instead, the district is now floating a far weaker alternative: Requiring the ports to plan for zero-emission infrastructure, a toothless approach that includes no emissions reductions and isn’t expected to be considered until later next year.
This is no way for regulators to respond to the serious and ongoing health threat from port pollution. A heavy concentration of soot-spewing diesel trucks, ships, trains and cargo-handling equipment worsens smog across the region and contributes to elevated cancer risk in harbor-area communities. Southern California cannot clean its air to federal health standards without drastic pollution cuts at the ports, and the failure to meet those standards is responsible for at least 1,500 early deaths a year, according to the air district, as well as thousands of excess hospital and emergency room visits for asthma, heart attacks and other health crises.
There is no question air quality officials are up against formidable adversaries, including the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn., the International Longshoreand Warehouse Union and other labor and business interests that have been working together to kill the clean-air rules on the nation’s busiest port complex. Union workers have joined freight industry lobbyists, showing up at public meetings as part of a coordinated opposition campaign to stoke fears of “devastating impacts” to California’s supply chain and economy.
There was “strong sentiment,” Air Quality Management District spokesperson Nahal Mogharabi said, “some in support and much in opposition to any effort to regulate the ports.”
While some opponents have valid concerns about new regulations (effects on jobs would be analyzed and addressed in the rulemaking process), others clearly have a profit motive to obstruct and delay.
The terminal operators, shipping companies and other industries dependent on the movement of cargo argue, spuriously, that these port pollution rules are actually just limits on economic activity. They claim there is no way to accelerate emissions reductions at the ports without reducing the movement of cargo and diverting shipments to other less environmentally friendly ports, despite reams of evidence to the contrary.
We don’t buy it. California has for decades relied on tough air quality standards to force and accelerate technological change across many industries. We have cleaned the air and grown the economy at the same time, as demonstrated by the ports’ own data showing decreasing emissions over time, even as cargo volumes rise.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson are also to blame. While they came out in favor of a zero-emission infrastructure plan, neither Bass nor Richardson would say whether they support an air district rule that would actually cut port pollution. Everything suggests they don’t. The city-owned ports, which Bass and Richardson control, have long opposed local air quality rules for them, even those as modest as holding the ports to their own clean-air plans and zero-emission pledges.
Gabby Maarse, a spokesperson for Bass, said the mayor “is committed to improving the lives of Angelenos living near the port, especially when it comes to prioritizing the improvement of public health.” Richardson said his commitment to reducing port emissions had not wavered.
Most concerning of all is the unending and craven abdication by the Air Quality Management District board, made up of local elected and appointed officials from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, whose only job is cleaning the air to protect public health.
If the board’s members lack the courage to stand up to labor and business interests and regulate the biggest polluter in the nation’s smoggiest region, what hope is there that they will do so under the more challenging landscape ahead? Soon they will be operating under another Trump administration that’s expected to try again to take away the state’s authority to clean the air. Local leaders need to step up and do more.
Next time you look out on the horizon and see the brown haze that pollutes the L.A. air for much of the year, remember that Southern California could be experiencing clearer skies, fewer cancer cases, less asthma and longer lives. These are benefits that people in other parts of the country already enjoy, but we don’t, because those with the power to fix it are too afraid to act.
SACRAMENTO — Kamala Harris could make history as the first woman and person of color to be elected California governor. But she’d need to really want the job.
She couldn’t see it as merely a consolation prize after losing the presidential election to Donald Trump. Nor could she view it as a stepping stone back to the White House.
California voters would sense those feelings and perhaps not elect her. Anyway, she’d probably be miserable in her work.
Rather, Harris would need to view the job as a probable career-capper, taking pride in solving complex problems that are eating away at her native state.
She’d have to be eager to deal with homelessness, the housing shortage, street crime, overregulation, a perpetual water shortage and the annual hassle of balancing a volatile state budget fed by an outdated tax system that should have been modernized years ago.
These black eyes on California are critical dilemmas. But absent a dedicated desire to solve them, they could be viewed as tediously boring compared to leading the nation on sweeping national issues and global diplomacy.
There’d be no playing of Hail to the Chief, no “president’s own” U.S. Marine band performing at state dinners, no private cabin aboard Air Force One -– in fact, no gubernatorial plane at all.
And unlike residing in the majestic White House with all expenses paid, there’d be no housing benefit whatsoever — unless she moved into the creaky old Victorian governor’s mansion that Gov. Gavin Newsom soon fled after being elected, buying his own large estate in the Sacramento suburbs.
Win or lose, if Harris ran to succeed the termed-out Newsom in 2026 -– as is widely speculated — her window to become president would likely be closed.
Wrong, some argue. They point to Richard Nixon, another California native.
Nixon was vice president and lost the top job to John F. Kennedy in 1960. Then he ran for California governor two years later — as Harris could — and was beaten by Democratic incumbent Pat Brown.
“Just think how much you’re going to be missing,” the bitter loser famously told reporters the morning after his embarrassing defeat. “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. Because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
Not quite.
Six years later, Nixon ran for president again and narrowly won. Some cite this comeback story as historic proof that a Harris race for governor could be a step back to the White House.
Here’s the fallacy in that scenario:
Nixon had six years to regroup and plan a campaign. Harris would have no grace period.
If Harris became governor in January 2027, she’d almost immediately need to begin running for president in the 2028 election. How opportunistic would that look? She’d be seen by voters everywhere as two-faced.
Harris could wait until her second gubernatorial term and run for president in 2032. But by then the political landscape will have changed. Unlike 2028, an incumbent president undoubtedly will be seeking reelection in 2032 — possibly a Democrat.
In 1968, Republican Nixon benefited greatly from a Democratic Party fractured by the Vietnam War. And if Democrat Robert F. Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated on election night after his California primary victory, I’m convinced he would have beaten Nixon in November.
Age also is a factor. Harris will be 68 in 2032. Nixon was only 55 when he won the presidency.
Harris could skip a gubernatorial bid and run again for president in 2028 when Trump is termed out. But I can’t see Democrats turning to her a second time after she lost to such a flawed human being as Trump.
Sure, the loss wasn’t all her fault. President Biden stubbornly refused to drop out of the race until it was too late for the vice president to build a strong national support base. But still she lost. And the Nixon fluke aside, parties don’t normally double down on losers.
So if she wants “to stay in the fight,” as she says, becoming governor seems her best option.
But she should expect a race, not a trot.
She’d need to raise at least $50 million — maybe $100 million-plus. And she could do that with her access to hefty donors. But it would require energy, time and an earnest sales pitch.
Harris would need a strong message — something a lot more appealing than the “we’re not going back” yawner she used against Trump.
Because, face it, she didn’t run as well in California this year as Biden did in 2020. Harris trounced Trump by 20 percentage points, but Biden walloped him by 29.
And, despite being a U.S. senator, former California attorney general and ex-San Francisco district attorney, she was running far back in the polls in her home state before dropping out of the 2020 presidential primaries.
But because of her familiarity to voters, long elective resume and fundraising ability, Harris would be the undisputed front-runner for governor.
She’d practically clear the field immediately — prompting many current Democratic candidates to drop out and several others contemplating the run to forget it. Most couldn’t raise enough bucks to compete against her. That’s unfortunately the curse of contemporary politics.
But some strong competitor would probably emerge. Maybe a moderate Democrat with barrels of money.
Harris shouldn’t linger long in deciding. If she runs, it’d be best to start erecting the campaign machinery and selling herself around the state by spring.
Should she run? Definitely — if deep down she’d love to be the powerful governor of her native state, the world’s fifth-largest economy. If she truly wants to “stay in the fight.”
SACRAMENTO — Democrats have a growing problem with union members and working-class voters, a building block that’s been foundational to their political success.
Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation, thinks she has at least a partial solution.
“We’ve got to listen to them,” she said, “and not talk about things that do not play in their life, or that they don’t identify with.”
That may seem as straightforward as a palm-slap to the forehead. (Well, duh!) But it’s not necessarily something union leaders have done in the past. Often, Gonzalez said, the top-down instruction to labor’s political troops has been, “This is our message. Go sell it.”
Vote Harris. Elect a Democratic Congress. Stop Trump.
But none of that, she said, resonated with the large number of Republican and conservative-leaning California voters who also happen to be union members in proud standing. So the Labor Federation tried something different this election, avoiding words such as “Democrat” and “Republican,” “Biden,” “Harris” and “Trump” in its political pitch.
“The usual go-to, the top-of-the-ticket discussion with our union members, wasn’t going to get us anywhere,” Gonzalez said last week in a lengthy conversation at the Labor Federation’s downtown Sacramento headquarters. “And it would just shut them down for everything else.”
California was an oasis this November in a largely barren Democratic landscape. Even as they lost the White House and Senate, the party flipped three House seats in the state, helping Democrats to an overall gain of a single seat and holding Republicans to the barest majority in decades.
Several of those California races were very close, so the Democratic success can be attributed to any number of factors. But at least some credit goes to the Labor Federation and its speak-no-partisanship strategy, which helped yield a significant number of crossover votes in a several closely fought congressional contests.
As Democrats spend the next few years soul-searching and wilderness-wandering, it’s an approach to winning union members and working-class voters that, Gonzalez suggested, is worth studying across the country.
As recently as 2012, Democratic presidential candidates could count on the support of about 6 in 10 voters from union households. (That’s how exit pollsters typically measure the sentiment of union members; they ask whether a voter or someone they are living with belongs to a union.)
That percentage has fallen in every election Donald Trump has been on the ballot, to just about 5 in 10 voters. The decline may not seem like a lot, but even a small shift matters in close elections — especially in battleground states with large union memberships, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The California strategy grew out of a series of focus groups undertaken soon after Gonzalez, a former state lawmaker, became head of the Labor Federation in July 2022. “What did I want to do?” she asked, as the clang of a trolley car rang from the K Street Mall below. “Not talk to our members, but listen to them.”
Discussions were held throughout the state, in the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, Orange County and the L.A. region — home to the half-dozen most competitive congressional races in California. The groups were split among men and women, Democrats and Republicans; the separation was intended, Gonzalez said, to avoid turning conversations into political arguments.
The survey found that in virtually every district there were more self-identified Republican union members than Democrats — which didn’t necessarily match up with members’ voter registration. “Take back the House,” the national Democratic rallying cry, was obviously “not gonna fly,” Gonzalez said, nor would a message built around keeping a Democrat in the White House — even if both were seen as being to the greater advantage of union members.
Instead, strategists drew on something that emerged from those focus groups: a fundamental belief in the value of diligent labor. “We would ask questions like, ‘What do you like about your union?’ ” Gonzalez recollected. The oft-heard response: “My union fights for me because I work hard.”
That, in turn, led to a campaign focused on the failings of the 118th Congress, historically one of the least productive in history. The message was simple. If you performed as poorly on the job as your representative in Washington, you’d be fired.
Variations on that theme were repeated to tens of thousands of union members in each of the six competitive districts. In mailers. In discussions on front porches. On refrigerator magnets sent to their homes. “If I got as little done at my job,” the magnets read, “this refrigerator would be empty.”
A refrigerator magnet mailed to union members by the California Federation of Labor suggested they would be fired if they performed as poorly as their congressional representative. This one targeted Rep. Ken Calvert
(California Federation of Labor Unions)
Care was taken to include documentation from the likes of CNN and Fox News, lest attacks on the do-nothing Congress came across as a one-sided attack.
(It was a somewhat tougher sell in the open-seat contest to replace Democrat Katie Porter, but union strategists counted on Republican Scott Baugh being tainted by association with the Republican-led House. Democrat Dave Min narrowly won the Orange County contest.)
Rather than telling union members who they should vote for — the usual approach — “we left them to come to their own conclusion,” Gonzalez said. Not by making a partisan argument, but appealing to their work ethic.
It seemed to work. Not perfectly. Democrats knocked off Reps. Mike Garcia in northern L.A. County, Michelle Steel in Orange County and John Duarte in the Central Valley. (The latter two by not much). They failed to oust Republicans David Valadao in the Valley and Ken Calvert in the Inland Empire.
But the strategy was successful enough that Gonzalez plans to sit down with national labor leaders for a debriefing.
It was admittedly difficult for the self-described “bleeding-heart liberal” not to press the hair-on-fire argument about the dangers of Trump and the need for a Democratic check on his authoritarian impulses. Typically, Gonzalez said, “That’s how we talk.”
The approach to California union members — more a nudge than a shove — also had to be sold to skeptics. There has long been a sense within the labor movement that if “we just … ‘educate’ them enough,” she said, “they’ll be good Democrats.”
But that bespeaks an arrogance the party will have to overcome if it’s going to stanch the bleeding among union and working-class voters. Only then will Democrats end their exile in Washington.
Patrick Soon-Shiong had become accustomed to making the news.
He was the doctor and medical technology innovator who built a fortune, the striving South African immigrant who bought a piece of the Lakers and the L.A. billionaire who brought the Los Angeles Times back under local control when he purchased it in 2018.
But none of that created the public tempest like the one that has surrounded Soon-Shiong’s recent actions: First when he blocked the Times editorial board, which he oversees, from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Then he suggested the newspaper had become an “echo chamber” for the political left. And, this month, he announced The Times would create a digital “bias meter” to alert readers about the ideological tilt of the paper’s content.
An estimated 20,000 subscribers dropped The Times after the non-endorsement in the presidential race and its aftermath. Soon-Shiong’s pledges of a more “fair and balanced” approach triggered more dismay from many and charges of a capitulation to President-elect Donald Trump. But the new stance also brought praise from others for what they saw as a long-overdue recalibration of coverage in the West’s most prominent newspaper.
In his first extended interview about the furor, Soon-Shiong depicted himself as an unflinching protector of journalistic balance, one who is betting that a moderate, nonideological viewpoint is the best path forward. He also spoke at length about his hopes for the future of the paper.
The Times significantly increased its number of paying digital subscribers after Soon-Shiong purchased the paper. He added more than 150 people to a newsroom that had been slashed for two decades, making The Times a bright spot in an industry beset by massive downsizing as revenues cratered, following the flight of advertising to digital giants like Facebook and Google.
Soon-Shiong in the lobby of the old L.A. Times building downtown shortly after he bought the newspaper in 2018.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
For The Times and virtually every other paper in America, incremental increases in online subscriptions have not been enough to fill gaping budget holes. The Times has been losing tens of millions of dollars a year and went through two rounds of painful layoffs — erasing most of the staffing gains that followed the Soon-Shiong acquisition.
‘I’m extremely proud’
In last week’s interview with The Times, the medical doctor and former transplant surgeon expressed pride in much of the journalism in the newspaper. He vowed to protect the independence of the newsroom, even as he pledged to become more involved in the outlet’s editorial and opinion pages.
“I’m extremely proud of work we’ve done right,” he said, “and we’ve done a lot right,” he said, pointing to six Pulitzer Prizes the paper has won during his ownership, among other honors.
But he said it was essential to build a bigger audience, which he described as key to securing the 143-year-old newspaper’s future.
“I think that’s our goal,” Soon-Shiong said. “The only way you can survive is to not be an echo chamber of one side.”
He said he intends on introducing more moderate and conservative commentators on the newspaper’s opinion pages, where liberal writers have been dominant for years.
Soon-Shiong made it clear he also wants editors and reporters who produce news stories to be alert for ideological imbalance and fairness, though he said he has no intention of meddling in decisions made by The Times’ newsroom leaders about how to cover the news.
Soon-Shiong acknowledged he had paid less attention to The Times for much of the first 6½ years of his ownership as he focused on several other businesses, with particular attention to an immunotherapy treatment that won FDA approval this spring.
With the demands of his biomedical career slightly reduced, the entrepreneur said that he “emphatically” intends to become more involved in finding a sustainable path forward for The Times.
“Staying strong and resolute to transform the paper and drive a rebirth @LATimes,” he recently declared on X. “We laid out the path for the LA Times to report just the facts when we publish ‘news.’ “
Big investment, big losses
Many civic leaders and everyday readers hailed Soon-Shiong when he bought the newspaper in 2018, rescuing it from a cost-cutting owner and a possible sale to chains known for operating bare-bones news operations. Since that initial $500-million investment to buy The Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, Soon-Shiong said he has set aside $250 million to renovate the El Segundo headquarters and to build a museum and auditorium, which are under construction.
But, like other media outlets, The Times saw already floundering ad revenue take another big hit with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The owner said he provided his newspaper with operating capital of “another $40 [million], $50 million a year,” declining slightly last year, when he said he paid $30 million to fill the gap between revenue and expenditures.
With total outlays of about $1 billion, Soon-Shiong has made one of the largest investments in local journalism in America. He said he has not wavered in his commitment, but made clear that he expects more progress in building the audience, particularly online.
“Unless we build a paper that can engage and increase the readership, what are we doing?” he said.
The Times has about 650,000 paid readers, combining print, digital and other third-party platforms. About 275,000 of those are direct digital subscribers.
The owner sounded incredulous when he noted that the L.A. Times has fewer subscribers in California than the New York Times. “We need to ask ourselves, very honestly, why is that?” he said. He suggested that a reasonable starting point was to get 1% of California’s 40 million residents, or 400,000, to pay for direct digital subscriptions, which go for $60 a year.
When he bought The Times, Soon-Shiong suggested he had a “100-year plan” and wanted ownership of the news outlet to be part of his family’s legacy.
“And as long as I can see progress” in readership, “I’ll continue to fund it, yes,” he says now. “But something has to change if all this is [being] considered a philanthropic trust. It’s not. A sustainable business has to occur.”
The Times owner nixed an editorial board plan to endorse Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the presidential election. It was the first time since 2008 the paper did not endorse in a presidential race.
(Associated Press)
Non-endorsement roiled newspaper
He believes that presenting a greater diversity of views will be a key to success.
Throughout his ownership, most of the newspaper’s opinion columnists have been politically liberal. The unsigned editorials that represent the views of The Times, as an institution, have also leaned left, with sharp criticism of Trump routine.
As owner, Soon-Shiong has been a member of the internal board that produced those editorials, and it’s understood that he can exercise his privilege to make the final decision on what is published, a common role for American newspaper owners. In the past, he infrequently attended the board’s meetings and did little to influence the content of editorials, he acknowledged.
That changed dramatically in the final weeks of this year’s presidential race. As The Times prepared to endorse Harris, and run a series of other editorials on the downsides of a second Trump presidency, Soon-Shiong said he wanted to take a different course.
He asked the editorial page leaders to create a feature enumerating the records of Trump and Harris during their respective four years as president and vice president. Soon-Shiong said that such an approach would have given readers more information, without recommending either candidate. He described that as the fairest approach.
But editorials editor Mariel Garza and her staff noted that The Times had endorsed a presidential candidate in every election since 2008. After writing for several years that Trump was unfit and a danger to democracy — as a convicted felon who attempted to overturn his 2020 election defeat — the editorial writers said that a non-endorsement would amount to an abdication of their responsibility, and a tacit approval of the Republican.
News of the internal dispute became public in late October, and Garza (calling the non-endorsement “craven and hypocritical”) and two of her fellow board members resigned. Two others later joined the exodus from the board. Even after the editorial board departures, the dispute continued to simmer, with one regular opinion contributor departing and some union members sending a letter of protest.
While Soon-Shiong received praise on the right, he soon learned that thousands of Times readers were canceling their subscriptions in protest.
“I knew this would be disruptive, and it took courage to do that,” he said, adding that he believes that in the long run the move will win over readers in a nation that has become too polarized. He rejected claims that the late decision was “so that I could support President Trump, so I could appease him, because I was scared of him, which was the furthest from the truth.”
Those “who cancel [their] subscription should respect the fact that there may be two views on a certain point, and nobody has 100% the right view,” Soon-Shiong said. “And it’s really important for us [to] heal the nation. We’ve got to stop being so polarized.”
The owner took heart from a commentator, writing for The Times of India, who said the non-endorsement had been the right call.
“Democracy depends on maintaining the trust and participation of all citizens, and endorsements risk deepening existing divisions,” wrote the columnist. “When distrust already runs high, even well-intended endorsements can appear partisan, eroding the media’s role as a space for diverse perspectives.”
Soon-Shiong says he plans to revamp the Times editorial board, adding more moderate and conservative writers to provide ideological balance. He said he intends to lay out details of the new opinion operation in January.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
Rethinking opinion pages
Soon-Shiong soon announced on social media and in interviews that he planned to revamp the Times editorial board, adding more moderate and conservative writers to provide ideological balance. He said he intends to lay out details of the new opinion operation in January. But some of the outlines of the proposal came out during the Times interview and in talks with Times management.
Soon-Shiong has described what would amount to two distinct editorial panels.
One would operate something like The Times’ traditional editorial board, though it would focus primarily on local and California issues and candidates. That board would be made up of full-time employees, who would write the unsigned opinion pieces and endorsements that have been a tradition for decades.
With the board currently reduced to just one full-time writer, The Times is seeking to hire an unknown number of others to rebuild the group. The owner has made clear he wants writers with a variety of ideological perspectives to be on the remade editorial board.
A second group of writers, now being assembled by Soon-Shiong, will focus on national and international affairs. Those opinion columnists are expected to be freelancers. Soon-Shiong has suggested that besides writing signed pieces for The Times, the columnists — representing an array of professions, industries and personal backgrounds — might be featured in videos produced by L.A. Times Studios or at conferences sponsored by the newspaper.
Late last month, the Times owner announced that veteran Republican political operative Scott Jennings — a regular CNN panelist and frequent Trump defender — will be a part of the new initiative. (Even before the announcement, Jennings was a regular contributor to The Times — writing nearly three dozen columns over the last five years.)
“His reasoned, fact-based approach perfectly aligns with our commitment to inclusivity,” Soon-Shiong wrote on X. Jennings called the Times owner’s emphasis on ideological diversity “groundbreaking.”
Soon-Shiong vows ‘more active role’
While details remain to be worked out, Soon-Shiong said he would “have a direct and more active role,” adding that he would leave certain topics to his opinion writers, while having more to say about “issues that are dear to my heart, [such as] cancer, climate change, energy issues and issues of national importance.”
His increased involvement became apparent again recently. The paper was on the verge of publishing an editorial saying that Trump’s Cabinet appointments should be subject to the full Senate confirmation process — rather than being seated via recess appointments. Soon-Shiong said that the editorial could be published only if the paper accompanied it with a companion piece with the opposing view, which would defend a president’s right to make some recess appointments. With the print deadline fast approaching, the editors didn’t have time to produce a companion piece, so they replaced it with commentary on another subject.
Soon-Shiong suggested in a Fox News interview last month that he also had concerns about opinion leaking into The Times’ news operation, which operates independently of the opinion staff.
“I knew that people don’t like change,” Soon-Shiong said in a podcast interview this month. “And I knew I had to actually address even the newsroom by saying, ‘Look, are you sure your news is news? Or is your news really [your] opinion of . . . news?’ ”
Many Times reporters and editors rejected the notion that they inject opinion into their news reporting, saying they long labored to be impartial arbiters. Some noted how Times reporting, with no ideological tilt, helped expose scandals at USC and the racist railings of L.A. political leaders (all Democrats) in a closed-door meeting.
“Journalists of the Los Angeles Times are committed to shining a light on injustice, exposing wrongdoing, and seeking the facts,” the union representing most Times journalists responded in a statement. “We speak truth to power, regardless of which party is in power.”
During the Times interview, Soon-Shiong made clear his skepticism about the “journalistic integrity” of some journalists who had spoken about his actions anonymously, while he has made his views on the record. He has also complained about how various outlets reported on him.
He recently has expressed particular gall about how some media depicted the departure in January of Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida, suggesting that coverage contributed to his skeptical view of journalists.
At the time of the exit, The Times reported that Soon-Shiong called his veteran editor’s departure “mutually agreed,” and the description was not challenged. Merida, a former managing editor at the Washington Post, told the newspaper that he made the decision to leave, “in consultation with Patrick.”
But in last week’s interview, Soon-Shiong expressed consternation that some accounts of the Merida departure left the impression he had resigned under protest about staff cuts and other disagreements with the owner. In fact, the owner said, he fired the top editor.
“My great disappointment . . . was for him to go around and provide misinformation…that he resigned under protest,” Soon-Shiong said.
Merida responded with an email statement. “I have said all I want to say about my decision to leave the L.A. Times 11 months ago. I’ve moved on,” it said. “But I continue to root for The Times and for all of the tremendous journalists who are still there.”
Though newspaper operations seem opaque to many readers, there is a tradition of the journalists who write for the editorial and opinion pages operating with almost complete independence from those who write news stories. The Times has followed that model for decades. While Soon-Shiong oversees the editorial board, the Times newsroom is led independently by the executive editor, Terry Tang, a former opinion and news editor for the New York Times who was raised in Southern California.
Soon-Shiong expressed confidence in Tang, who oversees both the news and opinion operations and was promoted to the top post early this year, succeeding Merida. He noted that she had helped increase staff productivity since taking over.
Both the owner and top editors at The Times noted that Soon-Shiong occasionally has suggested news stories, particularly in his biomedical field, but most often did not result in stories.
The owner also said in the interview that he had no intention of blocking stories to protect friends, family or political figures he has praised, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he recently lauded in social media posts.
Said Soon-Shiong: “If somebody has had a conflict of interest or done something bad, and it’s factually true, we should report it.”
Digital news is a tough business, delivering a fraction of the income of print papers, which are in rapid decline.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The struggle for future of local news
This is not the first time Soon-Shiong has spoken out publicly about major national and international affairs. He often shares his experience growing up as a man of Chinese heritage under South Africa’s racist apartheid regime.
In the racial reckoning in this country that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, he wrote that The Times for much of its history had “ignored large swaths of the city and its diverse population, or covered them in one-dimensional, sometimes racist ways,” and thereby “contributed to social and economic inequity.”
He is also not alone in wrestling with how to approach opinion journalism.
Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos also killed his paper’s editorial endorsing Harris in the presidential election, and faced a similar backlash. The Post reportedly lost 250,000 subscribers. In a column explaining his actions, Bezos noted that trust in the media was in major decline and he felt one reason was that some readers considered news organizations biased.
A Pew Research Center survey last month found that 59% of adults in the U.S. had some, or a lot of, trust in the information presented by national news organizations. That was down from 76% who trusted national news sources eight years ago. Trust among Republicans over that time period dropped much more precipitously, from 70% to 40%, while roughly 80% of Democrats expressed trust in national news sources.
But it is far from clear that more ideological diversity on opinion pages alone will bring readers back or fill revenue holes. Digital news is a tough business, delivering a fraction of the income of print papers, which are in rapid decline. As Google and other sites dominate digital advertising, a recent effort in the California Legislature to force the tech companies to compensate news organizations stalled.
America’s two largest newspaper chains operate with dramatically reduced staffing. Even Bezos’ Post — resurgent in the billionaire’s early tenure — ordered staff buyouts as revenue declined.
The New York Times’ success has been a notable exception, with the venerable newspaper recently reporting it had nearly 10.5 million digital subscribers. It has fueled revenue gains with games, recipes and consumer recommendations. Its gains have come while most of its editorials and opinion columns continued to lean left.
Soon-Shiong believes a wider array of viewpoints can lure more readers back to the L.A. Times. He hopes to bring in other revenue with events, such as the Times’ popular Festival of Books and its food events. He also plans to create more shows with L.A. Times Studios. He spoke proudly about the paper’s Fast Break team, which produces breaking and developing news and draws an outsize share of reader page views.
Bill Grueskin, a former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor who teaches at the Columbia University journalism school, said he did not think that changing the ideological leaning of editorials and columns would save newspapers, including the L.A. Times.
“The declines have much more to do with the advertising market cratering, the elimination of a lot of the reporting jobs, the huge number of competitors, most of them illegitimate sources of real news, many of them free, which, unfortunately, a lot of our fellow citizens feel are a perfectly adequate substitute,” Grueskin said.
Still, traditional views of the kind of media that will draw paid consumers and advertising is evolving. Just a few years ago, no one could have predicted that podcaster Joe Rogan would draw more than 40 million viewers for his extended interview with Trump shortly before the November election.
Explaining the ‘bias meter’
The furor over the newspaper’s non-endorsement was dying down this month when Soon-Shiong again became a trending topic on social media. This time, it was after the Times owner told Jennings during a podcast interview that he planed to unveil a “bias meter” to let readers know the ideological bent of his newspaper’s content.
He said in the interview with The Times that the meter would use an “augmented intelligence” patent (dubbed the “Reasoning Engine”) that he created in his biomedical endeavors. The meter will be displayed atop a piece of writing to tell readers where it ranks on a scale that will range from “far left” to “far right.”
Although he told Jennings the meter would appear on both news and opinion content, Soon-Shiong clarified last week that he intends it only to be an additional label on Times editorials and opinion columns, not news stories.
He said he intends to have the AI technology also parse 50 years of Times editorials and columns, to determine the ideological bent of every Times editorial and opinion piece published over five decades. He says he will publish the results of that analysis.
The feature also will allow readers to click on a button to obtain an AI-compiled story or stories, offering alternative viewpoints, Soon-Shiong said.
A variety of experts from mainstream journalism questioned the value and reliability of a machine-driven analysis. One Times reader captured some of the concern when he said via email: “I find it kind of insulting to the reader. I think I and most readers can judge the varying perspectives of the people who are writing opinion pieces.”
Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — who has occasionally written articles for The Times — also gave the “bias meter” a thumbs-down. “Another blow to journalism — and democracy,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote on his blog last week, “by another billionaire with a conservative agenda that serves his wealth.”
Soon-Shiong, who said he is a political independent, believes the device will help show readers The Times is offering a variety of opinions.
“It’s exhausting to turn on Fox and turn on CNN and turn on MSNBC,” he said. “We need to be that middle-of-the-road, trustworthy source. … I think that’s our goal. The only way you can survive is not be an echo chamber of one side.”
As the public battle over Times content has raged, the owner and his newsroom employees have been locked in a prolonged contract dispute.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
Inside the newsroom
As the very public battle over Times content has raged, the owner and his newsroom employees have been locked in a prolonged contract dispute. Negotiations between management and the union representing most Times journalists have limped along for nearly three years, with the sides far apart on pay and other issues.
Soon-Shiong became particularly animated during the interview in declaring his determination to loosen seniority protections now written into the contract. He said the rules forced him to lay off staff members with less tenure at the company, many of them hired to help improve digital operations and growth.
“The contract is structured that, no matter how good this young person is, you have to fire him, and all you will do then is, we’ll take this down into an existential spiral of death,” Soon-Shiong said.
The council representing Times guild members disagreed, saying that seniority protection “promotes stability, expertise and talent retention,” adding: “Seniority gives our journalists a bulwark to speak truth to power. And seniority is a recognition that a superior product comes from time, deep community ties, and experience.”
The Times management and workers have also been locked in a fight over whether employees should return to the office or remain working at home, as most Times staffers have been doing since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. This practice has continued as many other workplaces have returned to the office at least part time.
The Times has ordered its journalists to return to the office two days a week, now that the health emergency is over, while the union has argued that the directive amounts to a change in working conditions that must be negotiated.
The owner said a collective working environment is crucial to fostering collegiality, collaboration and productivity. Many workers say they get more done working at home, while not wasting time and money commuting, a more daunting cost given that they have gone without an across-the-board cost-of-living increase for more than three years.
When he gave a tour of the El Segundo headquarters Monday to a couple of guests, Soon-Shiong reported finding a newsroom that was almost entirely empty.
“So this idea of making an investment is a two-way street, where you would think we are all in this together,” he said. “I’m working to make this a success. And I was extremely disappointed to see an empty building.”
Told that more journalists come into the office on Thursdays, the owner responded: “So should I just fund you for Thursdays? … There’s a sense of entitlement that cannot be tolerated.”
The guild replied in a statement that it had not denied that workers might return to the office more regularly, but only wanted to negotiate the point. “Stalling tactics in bargaining, years without a contract, and statements that inaccurately demean the entire newsroom all drain morale,” the statement said.
The owner said his remarks should not be construed as a blanket judgment of “the quality and strength of the newsroom.”
“The paper sets its culture,” Soon-Shiong said. “I’m trying to set our culture as a middle-of-the-road, trustworthy news source.
“I believe that public support for journalism is completely vital, so that we can have a free and independent press, which I believe is the foundation of a healthy democracy. Without it, I think we lose our ability to hold the powerful accountable. Without it, we lose our ability to make informed decisions.”
Jamie Foxx required medical attention after getting hit in the face with a glass while celebrating his birthday at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills on Friday night.
“Someone from another table threw a glass that hit him in the mouth,” a spokesperson for the actor said in a statement to The Times. “He had to get stitches and is recovering. The police were called and the matter is now in law enforcement’s hands.”
The Beverly Hills Police Department said that it responded to a reported possible assault with a deadly weapon at the celebrity hot spot at 10:06 p.m. and determined it was unfounded.
“Instead, the incident involved a physical altercation between parties,” a department news release said. “The BHPD conducted a preliminary investigation and completed a report documenting the battery. No arrests were made.”
It was unclear what prompted the incident. A call to Mr. Chow was not immediately returned.
On Saturday afternoon, a spokesperson for the Beverly Hills Police Department said officers had reached out to Foxx’s camp to get more details from the actor.
A first-ever tornado warning was issued for San Francisco County early Saturday as thunderstorms and wind gusts of up to 60 mph swept through the region, officials said.
“Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building,” a National Weather Service advisory warned on social media. Parts of San Mateo County were also included in the warning.
More than 1 million people were under the brief warning, which went out at 5:51 a.m. and was lifted by 6:15 a.m., said Lamont Bain, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Bay Area.
The advisory was the first time the agency had ever issued a tornado warning for San Francisco County, he said. San Mateo County was last issued a tornado warning on March 18, 2011.
“It’s certainly unusual. We don’t see the ingredients come together all the time for tornadoes,” Bain said.
In addition to moisture, “you need the combination of lift, you need some instability and you need some wind shear. We saw all of those things come together for a brief period of time this morning.”
He said the tornado alert was “a good reminder for people to always have multiple means” to receive weather and warning information. That includes signing up for text alerts, checking news reports and tuning in to weather radio.
Rain showers are forecast for the rest of the day in San Francisco, with wind gusts of 30 to 35 miles per hour through at least noon. The rain is expected to end tonight, with dry conditions on Sunday before another dose of rain on Monday.
WASHINGTON — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had hip replacement surgery Saturday at a U.S. military hospital in Germany after falling while at an event in Luxembourg with other members of Congress.
Pelosi, 84, “is well on the mend,” said Ian Krager, a spokesman for the San Francisco Democrat, in a statement.
Pelosi thanked the staff at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and the hospital in Luxembourg, where she was also treated, for “their excellent care and kindness.”
She was in Europe with a bipartisan congressional delegation to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
Pelosi tripped and fell while at an event and fractured her hip, according to people familiar with her injury who were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Among those on the trip was Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who posted on social media Friday that he was “praying for a speedy recovery” for Pelosi. The two lawmakers were captured holding hands in a group photo that day at the U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg.
Pelosi was first elected in 1987. She served as speaker twice, stepped down from her leadership post two years ago but remained in Congress and was reelected to represent her San Francisco district in November.
Jalonick and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. Writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — The day after a masked gunman killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in New York City, police in San Francisco gave the FBI a potentially valuable tip about the identity of the suspect: He looked like a man who had been reported missing to them the previous month, Luigi Mangione.
San Francisco police provided Mangione’s name to the FBI on Dec. 5, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
That was the day the NYPD released surveillance images showing the face of the suspected shooter as he checked into a Manhattan hostel.
“Among multiple tips received by FBI New York from the public and law enforcement regarding the homicide in Midtown Manhattan on December 4, 2024, a tip was received from the San Francisco Police Department regarding the possible identity of the suspect,” the FBI confirmed in a statement Friday.
The FBI statement didn’t provide further detail about the nature of the tip or say when it was received but said agents in New York had “conducted routine investigative activity and referred this and other leads to the New York City Police Department.”
Mangione was arrested Monday, Dec. 9, after an employee at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., phoned police saying that there was a person eating breakfast in the restaurant who looked like the person being sought as the gunman.
The NYPD’s chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, said at the time that the department’s investigators didn’t have Mangione’s name until he turned up in that McDonald’s.
A message seeking comment was left with the NYPD Friday.
The San Francisco department’s tip to the FBI was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was ambushed and fatally shot outside a hotel where his company was holding its annual investor conference.
The leader of the insurer’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, described Thompson as kind and brilliant Friday in a guest essay published in the New York Times.
UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty conceded that the patchwork U.S. health system “does not work as well as it should” but said Thompson cared about customers and was working to make it better.
The killing has been viewed as a violent expression of widespread anger at the insurance industry. Witty said people in the company were struggling to make sense of the killing, as well as the vitriol and threats directed at colleagues.
Police have said that Mangione was found with a gun that matched shell casings found at the scene of the shooting and a three-page letter in which he lamented the high cost of health care in the U.S. and singled out UnitedHealthcare for its profits and size. The company, a division of UnitedHealth Group, is the largest U.S. health insurer. Mangione is being held in Pennsylvania and intends to plead not guilty to a murder charge in New York, his lawyer has said.
Witty said he understood people’s frustration but described Thompson as part of the solution.
Thompson never forgot growing up in his family’s farmhouse in Iowa and focused on improving the experiences of consumers.
“His dad spent more than 40 years unloading trucks at grain elevators. B.T., as we knew him, worked farm jobs as a kid and fished at a gravel pit with his brother. He never forgot where he came from, because it was the needs of people who live in places like Jewell, Iowa, that he considered first in finding ways to improve care,” Witty wrote.
Witty said his company shares some responsibility for lack of understanding of coverage decisions.
“We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it. No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades,” Witty wrote. “Our mission is to help make it work better.”
He said it was unfair that the company’s workers had been barraged with threats, even as they grieved the loss of a colleague.
“No employees — be they the people who answer customer calls or nurses who visit patients in their homes — should have to fear for their and their loved ones’ safety,” he wrote.
A woman in Lakeland, Fla., was charged this week with threatening a worker at her own health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, during a phone call. Police said she cited words Thompson’s killer wrote on shell casings and said “you people are next” during the recorded call.
Police say the shooter waited outside the hotel, where the health insurer was holding its investor conference, early on the morning of Dec. 4. He approached Thompson from behind and shot him before fleeing on a bicycle.
Mangione is fighting attempts to extradite him to New York so he can face a murder charge in Thompson’s killing.
Everyone wanted to come to California — that was the generational backdrop of my parents and grandparents. Then, in the 1950s, housing was so abundant that a family of rural Norwegian immigrants could scrape together $8,500 to buy (yes, buy, not rent) the bungalow in Glendale where I spent much of my childhood.
Now, according to Zillow, that house would probably fetch $1.5 million.
For 1,800 square feet. In Glendale.
This is insane, so people are leaving — for other states, yes, but also just far enough inland within California to find affordable housing. This migration might not draw the “Mass exodus from California!” headlines, but it involves a similar amount of upheaval and angst for families forced to uproot themselves from their communities.
I see it at my kids’ school in Alhambra, where many parents talk about looking for homes not in Nevada or Texas, but in places like Glendora or Pomona.
Or Ontario, which is where one family with a son at my kids’ school recently settled.
Well, “settled” may overstate their move; they still send their son to the school in Alhambra, which used to be a mile or two from their home but is now 35. They still work at their jobs nearby. You could even say they still live in Alhambra, but they sleep in Ontario.
That’s because they never wanted to leave the city where their lives are deeply rooted. Both parents grew up here, went to school here, met and married here and had a son here. But when they had to leave their duplex recently and find a new home, one parent told me living in Alhambra made no financial sense. She said her family applied to a down-payment-assistance program to buy a place here, but with two incomes they failed to qualify.
Paradoxically, they make too much money to qualify for help, too little to afford a home in the working-class suburb where they grew up. Welcome to middle-class life in L.A.
She said their daily round-trip commute of about three hours helps teach their fourth-grade son the importance of time management. They also try to think of the hours they spend crawling along the 10 Freeway in rush-hour traffic as family time.
Still, she said, it can feel like they are trying to hang onto a life they can no longer truly live.
When they first moved away from Alhambra, she said she became depressed, adjusting to the reality that she and her husband would not be able to raise their son where they intended.
This isn’t Santa Monica or West Hollywood; it’s not even Hollywood or Eagle Rock, both ideally situated neighborhoods long seen as having “potential” before the full force of gentrification hit in the early 2000s.
This is Alhambra, whose most famous resident lived in a hilltop faux-castle mansion until he was sentenced to prison in 2009 for murder (though more boosterish residents will tell you Betty White lived here as a child, Hillary Clinton’s mother graduated from our eponymous high school, and the food here is amazing).
That infamy aside (and what community doesn’t have a bit of dark, hyperlocal lore?), ours is a safe, diverse, dense suburb with nice neighborhoods — a middle-class holdout abutting some of the most affluentcities in L.A. County. More than half of all students enrolled in the local school district come from low-income households.
But as one family’s ordeal shows, the scarce supply of affordable housing means Alhambra is outgrowing its middle class, even among those with deep roots in the community.
That has serious consequences, especially for the most critical of all community resources: public education. Enrollment in the Alhambra Unified School District is steadily declining, from nearly 18,000 across 18 campuses just before the COVID-19 pandemic, to fewer than 15,000 today.
Much of this decline can be attributed to an overall population drop in Alhambra (matching the trend in much of California). But I’ve suspected something else is at play since I started sending my kids to the local public school seven years ago: If you can afford to pay $900,000 for a home (roughly the average in Alhambra, according to Zillow), you can probably afford to send your kids to private school.
A similar story has played out in nearby Pasadena, where average home prices have almost doubled since 2016 but public school enrollment is collapsing. There, the district has closed four campuses since 2019, prompting a discrimination lawsuit.
Arguably, then, the family that moved away is doing Alhambra a favor by keeping their son in public school here. They show more dedication to their hometown than the wealthier newcomers who engage in bidding wars over modest bungalows and send their kids out of the neighborhood to private schools.
Too bad it’s becoming financially impossible for middle-class families like them to live in the community they enrich.
A red glow illuminated the valley behind the Brunel family’s Malibu home around 11 p.m. Monday. The fierce Santa Ana winds blowing dry desert air over the mountains and out to sea had already triggered public safety power shutoffs.
The family, whose previous home was destroyed by the 2018 Woolsey fire, knew it was a bad sign. They started packing and turned on their water sprinklers.
By 1 a.m. they were driving to Pepperdine University as flames raced along Malibu Canyon and up toward their home. Pepperdine buzzed with life as some students evacuated and others hunkered down in the school’s library.
The fire quickly blew through the Brunels’ neighborhood and reached campus.
Two hours later, it had all passed.
Fires have always been part of life in the Santa Monica Mountains, but in recent decades, they’ve exploded in frequency and ferocity. Humans introduced fire-loving invasive species (that happen to make for pretty landscaping) and built roads and homes protruding into the wildlands, creating ample opportunities for human-sparked fires.
Today, the hills above Malibu are locked in a dangerous feedback loop, experts say. More-frequent fires choke out native vegetation and open more land for invasive, tinder-like grasses that provide ready fuel for more blazes.
For conservationists, the ferocious Franklin fire and other recent blazes raise a burning question: Is it possible to break this feedback loop and turn the clock back on an increasingly flammable ecosystem?
“The grass-fire cycle is probably nowhere more apparent than it is in the Malibu Canyon of the Santa Monica Mountains,” said Alexandra Syphard, senior research scientist at the Conservation Biology Institute.
California State Parks and the National Park Service — which manage over half of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area that encompasses areas of Malibu and much of the mountainous wilderness — believe they have a potential solution: the coast live oak, a native keystone species known for its ability to impede fire and quash embers.
Luke Benson searches for spots at Topanga State Park to plant acorns, part of a multi-agency effort to replace fire-prone invasive grass with fire-resilient live oak trees.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains — a community nonprofit dedicated to stewarding the land and creating harmony between the ecosystem and the people living in it — has been monitoring oaks in the mountains for decades.
Now, the district is working with the state parks agency to identify strategic areas that are both prone to fire and able to sustain the oaks in a warming and increasingly drought-stricken climate, and to plant hundreds of new trees.
The nonprofit hopes the new trees can rejuvenate the struggling population of existing oaks and slow fires by creating a natural buffer and fending off the invasive grasses that have replaced the native chaparral ecosystem.
But with more than 80,000 fire-prone acres of wildland under the national and state parks’ purview, it’s no small challenge.
“I applaud those efforts — I think it’s going to be extraordinarily hard,” Syphard said. “Chaparral is extraordinarily species-rich. It provides many ecosystem services like carbon storage, reduction of soil erosion, water quality. But once it’s gone, it’s really hard to get back.”
Long before Europeans settled in Los Angeles — and even before the Chumash tribes inhabited the land and engaged in controlled burning — the Santa Monica Mountains and its landscapes of chaparral, oak woodlands and coastal sage scrub were no strangers to fire.
Lightning from rare coastal thunderstorms that rolled over the rugged, unsettled land would strike mountaintops, sometimes igniting a fire. Many were small, but if the thunderstorm coincided with Santa Ana winds, the gusts could blow embers into the canyons, spreading the conflagration rapidly.
Isaac Yelchin, left, and Luke Benson, biologists with the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, plant acorns from coast live oaks at Topanga State Park.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Decades — sometimes a century — would pass before fire struck the same land again. During these quieter times, the native chaparral and vegetation would slowly recover over the course of years.
Then the Spanish arrived — then the Mexicans and the Americans. The invasive species they brought — like black mustard, tree tobacco and castor bean — slowly crept into the ecosystem.
As humans filled the canyons and mountain ridges with homes and roads, they occasionally created sparks and fire, whether by a chain dragging behind a car, an engine backfire, a faulty power line or an uncontrolled campfire.
The rate of fire ignition began to rise. Fires started tearing through parts of the mountains faster than native species had adapted to recover, while the invasive plants could regrow within a single year.
“Many of the fire-adapted species in Southern California require 10 to 30 years to be able to establish after a fire,” Syphard said. “If a fire comes through within that window of time, the species can’t recover.”
The frequency of fires rose from once every 30 to 130 years to roughly once every eight years in Malibu Canyon. Lightning went from causing virtually 100% of wildfires to fewer than 5%.
Is it possible to turn the clock back on the cycle of invasive species growth and blazes like the ferocious Franklin fire? Conservationists are trying.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The coast live oaks, one of the most effective lines of natural fire defense in the mountains, started struggling too. Fires charred their bark, droughts forced them to ration water, and invasive beetles — some brought to Southern California via firewood — bored into them.
The result is an ecosystem that frequently burns at breakneck speed. On Monday, that scenario played out again in the Franklin fire.
“It was exponential growth,” said Jonathan Torres, an engineer and public information officer with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, noting that the blaze had caught hold in “a matter of moments. Not hours.”
Within minutes, a strike team that was stationed nearby due to the high potential for fire sprang into action. While the exact cause of the fire remains under investigation, the canyon’s thick vegetation and difficult topography didn’t help matters.
“That canyon was just rich and full of vegetation — everything from small and taller grasses to full-on trees,” Torres said. “It’s fuel. If it’s not there, it doesn’t burn.”
By Wednesday, the canyon was yet again transformed.
The Brunels’ home avoided devastation this time. Pacome Brunel, in his senior year of high school, spent the evening biking down the canyon corridor, which was lined with towering mountains of bronzed dirt and black and gray ash. He watched firefighting helicopters and airplanes make laps past thick red streaks of fire retardant splattered on mountainsides.
The next morning, just a few miles away, Isaac Yelchin and Luke Benson drove up a Topanga State Park fire road in a Resource Conservation District pickup.
Isaac Yelchin fills buckets with water for newly planted acorns at Topanga State Park.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The two Topanga natives pulled up to a grove with over a dozen Home Depot buckets of water, chicken wire, and a plastic bag of coast live oak seeds that had impatiently begun sprouting in their supervisor’s fridge.
The oaks have waxy, cup-shaped leaves — not only do they rarely go up in flame, but they can catch embers out of the sky and extinguish them, Yelchin said.
“My home in Topanga, we’re surrounded by oak trees, and I used to be really worried,” he said. But “looking into the research, they really slow fire down. It’s great to have them. … They kind of act as a shield.”
The trees can also communicate with one another through networks of fungi and share resources, while outcompeting invasive species for sunlight, water and nutrients.
Acorns planted strategically at Topanga State Park recently had already begun to germinate.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In two hours, the duo planted seeds for 17 oak trees, enclosed them in mesh chicken wire to deter hungry fauna and tagged each one. The day’s efforts are another drop in the bucket toward the Resource Conservation District’s goal of establishing nearly 350 healthy new oaks in Topanga and Leo Carrillo state parks over the next two years — on top of their more than 450 trees already growing in the mountains.
The National Park Service is also planting oaks and native grasses, and the nonprofit TreePeople has its own oak tree program, but conservationists say the coordinated effort is still in its infancy.
And with a daunting number of acres to manage, the park agencies and conservation groups are focusing on strategic locations that provide ecosystem benefits and can act as a fuel buffer or prevent flammable brush from growing in common ignition areas, like along busy roadways.
“Most people really don’t like to hear there’s nothing you can do — which is why people want to go out and manage things,” Syphard said. “But one thing you could do is prevent human activities in those areas, if you have a large expanse of uninterrupted chaparral vegetation.”
Whether it’s done by shutting off electricity, closing roads and trails or preventing new home construction along the wildland-urban interface, such efforts can limit opportunities for humans to generate a spark.
Without suppression in the wildlands, residents’ last line of defense is to harden against wildfires by ensuring that flammable materials don’t collect on their houses and that there are no holes where embers can enter the home. The Resource Conservation District runs a free program to inspect community member’s homes and offer advice (with the promise that they won’t report any issues to insurance companies).
Yet, despite the formidable task, Benson continues to put in the work and even helps run a volunteer program almost every other Saturday that helps locals give back to the ecosystem in their backyard by collecting acorns, planting them and caring for the oak saplings.
“Conservation, in some ways, is an uphill battle, but it’s one step at a time, one project at a time,” he said. “You’re working against a pretty massive force, but I think that’s why it’s really important in this line of work — or even just as a human being existing now — to try to not let the pessimism take over.”
