Politics
Abcarian: Inglewood knitting store that's all about emotional support
She had me at “emotional support chickens.”
My friend Susan Kaufman was telling me about a yarn store in Inglewood where a multiracial, multigenerational crowd gathers twice a week to commune and knit. The store’s owner has created do-it-yourself knitting kits for overstuffed chickens with fanciful names like Baraaawk Obama, Hennifer Lopez and Paulina Poultryskova.
Opinion Columnist
Robin Abcarian
When you hug one of the chickens, Susan assured me, you would forget, at least for a moment, that a convicted felon, racist and fraudster might retake the White House in November.
“It sounds weird, but they really work,” said Susan, a therapist who knows about emotional support.
When she first invited me to tag along with her to the Knitting Tree, President Biden had not yet announced he was dropping out of the presidential race. Vice President Kamala Harris had not yet exploded into the national spotlight. And former President Trump was campaigning as if he had already won.
I needed some poultry therapy.
By the time I walked into the Knitting Tree a few weeks later, however, the depressing political landscape had seismically shifted, and so had the mood inside the store, said the store’s owner, Annette Corsino.
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1. Chris Parker of Los Angeles works her needles through yarn for a sweater at the Knitting Tree LA. 2. The store’s owner, Annette Corsino, works on a “BRAT” hat that makes a political statement. 3. Emotional support chickens line the shelves.
“Before this, the mood was pretty grim,” said Corsino, 62, whose lavender curls and plethora of tattoos telegraph the ascendance of a hipper knitting generation. “But people are feeling much better now. They’re smiling more. There’s hope.”
I hugged Baraaawk Obama to my chest. It felt good, really good.
Corsino nodded approvingly. “Our motto is: ‘Life is hard. We all need a chicken to make it better.’ ”
The Knitting Tree is located in a drab low-slung office park sandwiched between a car rental place and a golf apparel outlet on Manchester Boulevard. It looks super boring on the outside.
Entering the shop, though, is like walking into a Technicolor Oz. Brilliant spools of yarn line the walls, and therapy chickens perch on high shelves. Walter and Carmen, Corsino’s wire-haired dachshunds, wander about. Carmen barks at everyone; Walter climbs into laps and perches his long nose on the huge wood table that is the heart of the store. The table is where knitters and crocheters — young, middle-aged, elderly, Black, white, Asian and Latino — work and talk and laugh. And sometimes cry. Two of the knitters are nursing ailing husbands.
This place seemed like a multiracial version of a traditional Black barbershop.
“Actually, no,” said Jacqueline Camacho, 70, who worked for 46 years as an airline customer service agent at LAX. “It’s more of a family affair.” Camacho lives in Valencia and comes to Inglewood as often as she can.
“More like ‘Cheers,’ ” added Ana Petrova, 83, who fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution was crushed by the Soviet army and ended up in Venice, where she and her husband, Peter, operated a business on Lincoln Boulevard, selling and repairing British cars.
“At the barbershop,” said Camacho, “they just gossip and gossip, and we don’t do that here.”
“Everybody knows your name,” said Petrova. “And sometimes we do drink.” (During Wednesday evening potlucks, mostly, although sometimes on Sundays, too. I spied a bottle of Champagne on the nearby food table.)
Camacho was asking Petrova what to do about a stitch she dropped while knitting a sweater.
Creations at the Knitting Tree LA with a political theme.
(Robin Abcarian / Los Angeles Times)
“Where is it?” asked Petrova.
“Under the armpit,” Camacho replied.
“Live with it.”
Later, I heard Petrova give a knitter advice that could apply to almost any of life’s challenges: “The slower you go, the faster you’ll finish.”
Toward the front of the store, a class was working on a felted tote bag with the blue-and-white “Greek key” design familiar to anyone who has ever bought a cup of coffee in Manhattan.
“It’s fun to nerd out about Greek mythology,” said knitting teacher Theresa Havton, a mother of four adult sons, including triplets. I guessed that her singleton was the first born. “It would not have happened any other way,” said Havton, a former computer engineer, whose husband is a spinal cord surgeon who practices in New York.
“We have a brain trust here,” Corsino told me. “We have doctors, lawyers, nurses, scientists, lots of engineers. During the strike, we had a lot of film industry people. I never see anybody outside of here. This is my social life.”
At the big table, Anjeanette Bumatai, 54, was working on a blanket. She wore a blue baseball cap pulled low over her forehead and a “Babes Ride Out” T-shirt. Bumatai owns an insurance agency, rides a Harley and had just returned from a gathering of female bikers in Deadwood, S.D. During her two weeks on the road, she said, she rode through Nevada, Idaho and Wyoming.
“I was in Trump country,” she told me. “It’s amazing how much people adore him. It’s a cult of personality. I would talk to someone and say, ‘What has he done for you?’ They can’t name anything. As a person of color, I think the majority of Black people do not care for him.”
She sounded suspiciously like a childless cat lady, the infamous insult lobbed at Harris, stepmother of two, by Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
“I guess I am!” she said, laughing. “I guess my husband’s kids don’t matter.”
Corsino, who has sold more than 3,000 emotional support chicken kits — at $39.50 a pop — and 25,000 chicken patterns, told me she is working on a new pattern, based on a popular Harris campaign meme inspired by the British pop star Charli XCX.
Borrowing the shape of the celebrated pink pussy hat popularized during the anti-Trump Women’s March of January 2017, this one will be lime green. Black lettering will spell out the word “BRAT.”
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Fox News host Sean Hannity reports the Supreme Court unanimously limits a federal gun law, ruling habitual marijuana users cannot be banned from owning guns. Legal Analyst Gregg Jarrett explains the 9-0 decision, distinguishing between recreational use and serious addiction, contrasting it with Hunter Biden’s crack cocaine and gun charges.
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FIRST ON FOX: A powerful House committee is escalating its probe into the Biden administration for alleged collusion with gun control activists.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is demanding that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the federal agency responsible for enforcing gun laws, hand over documents detailing Biden aides’ communications with Everytown for Gun Safety, an influential gun control group founded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
Comer’s panel has argued that a now-defunct Biden office may have collaborated with Everytown to help facilitate its lawsuit with the city of Chicago against the gunmaker Glock Inc.
“These records will inform the Committee as to whether the Biden Administration and Everytown colluded to attack private gun manufacturing companies through lawfare to circumvent Second Amendment rights,” Comer wrote in a letter Wednesday to the ATF that was reviewed by Fox News Digital.
Rep. James Comer arrives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 10, 2026. (Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
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Chicago’s lawsuit, listing Everytown’s legal arm as the plaintiff’s counsel, was filed in March 2024 and alleges Glock sold pistols that the firearms manufacturer knew could be easily modified to fire like machine guns.
“Glock knows that it takes little effort to convert its pistols into illegal machine guns and that criminals frequently do so,” the lawsuit alleged. “Glock also knows it could fix the problem, but has chosen not to, putting profits over public safety and violating the law.”
In the letter, Comer cited a 2023 meeting between the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention (WHOGVP) and representatives from Glock, during which Biden officials pressed the gun manufacturer to modify its pistol designs.
When Chicago sued Glock three months later, John Feinblatt, president of Everytown, wrote on X, “Federal officials recently contacted Glock to discuss implementing new ways to modify Glock pistols to make it harder for Glock switches to be installed. Rather than help, Glock has falsely insisted there is nothing they can do.”
Comer argues Feinblatt “appears to have had insider information regarding the WHOGVP’s private meeting with Glock, which raises questions about whether the Biden Administration colluded with Everytown to initiate their lawsuit against Glock,” according to the letter.
The lawsuit is still moving through the court system, with a Cook County judge denying Glock’s motion to dismiss the case in September 2025.
Members of Everytown for Gun Safety rally outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on May 26, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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The Kentucky lawmaker has also highlighted close ties between the Biden White House and Everytown. The letter notes that Biden aide Rob Wilcox worked at Everytown for eight years prior to his employment with the WHOGVP.
Biden also headlined Everytown action fund’s annual training conference, known as Gun Sense University, in June 2024, during which he reiterated his support for a nationwide ban on so-called assault weapons.
Wednesday’s letter comes after the GOP-led panel asked the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in April for communications between the Biden White House and Everytown.
House Oversight Republicans previously subpoenaed the Biden ATF and Everytown for all communications related to their “potential collaboration efforts,” but neither party complied with the request.
President Joe Biden speaks about gun safety at Everytown’s Gun Sense University at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., on June 11, 2024. (Saul Loeb/AFP)
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Comer has also argued that the committee’s probe will help lawmakers evaluate whether new legislation is needed to combat officials violating recordkeeping requirements or using their roles to leak private information to politically aligned third parties.
A spokesperson for the ATF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The June 16 appearance by Vance gave the program its most-watched episode since November 2024.
The first appearance by Vice President JD Vance on ABC’s “The View” delivered the most-watched edition of the talk show since November 2024.
The June 16 program averaged 3.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen data. The figure was well above the average of 2.6 million viewers for “The View” in the 2025-26 season.
Vance appeared on the liberal-leaning program to promote his new book on his decision to become a Catholic. While the co-hosts mostly questioned him on the Trump administration’s policies on immigration and race, the discussion was cordial.
The panel of co-hosts — Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin — did not ask Vance to address the program’s ongoing tension with the Federal Communications Commission.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has questioned whether “The View” should have the status of news programs, which are exempt from giving equal time to the opponents of political candidates who appear as guests.
ABC has asked the FCC to rule on the status of “The View,” which received an exemption from the rarely enforced equal time provision in 2002. ABC has maintained that “The View” books politicians based on newsworthiness and not partisanship.
The FCC is currently taking comments from the public on the matter. ABC is running on-air spots urging viewers to support the program.
“‘The View’ has welcomed your favorite guests and covered the issues you care about for nearly 30 years,” the spot says. “Now the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee submitted comments Monday, asserting that “The View” takes advantage of its exemption and favors Democratic candidates and permits “only rare appearances by Republican-aligned figures.”
ABC has told the FCC that “The View” has invited politicians from both sides of the aisle to appear on “The View,” including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of State Marco Rubio and entrepreneur Elon Musk. They have declined the invitation as did Vance before his appearance last week.
The letter from the GOP committees also cited the ideological leanings of the co-hosts, saying they are “not selected for their journalistic talent or excellence in commentary, but for their partisan tilt.”
Over the last two decades, “The View” has used five liberal hosts and filled one seat designated for a conservative voice. The right-leaning co-host role has had the most turnover.
“The View” has been the most-watched daytime program for the last nine years. As a live, topical program, it has remained an important media platform while the rest of the talk show genre has largely faded due to diminishing audiences.
Carr’s targeting of “The View” is part of his ongoing criticism of broadcast platforms that annoy President Trump, who has urged that TV station licenses be pulled when he’s been unhappy with coverage.
Politics
Trump to kick off Great American State Fair as 250th anniversary celebrations take over National Mall
Washington DC to host Great American State Fair for America250
Ambassador Monica Crowley discusses the Great American State Fair, set to transform the National Mall in Washington D.C. from June 25 to July 10. Celebrating America’s 250th anniversary, the 16-day event will feature pavilions from all 50 states and six territories, a 110-foot Ferris wheel, traditional games, and rodeo competitions, aiming to unite the country.
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President Donald Trump will kick off the Great American State Fair Wednesday evening as part of celebrations surrounding the nation’s 250th anniversary.
“President Trump promised the greatest 250th birthday celebration in American history, and Freedom 250 is proud to help deliver it for the American people,” Freedom 250 CEO Keith Kranch told Fox News Digital.
“This celebration is about what makes America exceptional—our freedom, our faith, our optimism, and our people. We are honored to welcome President Trump as he helps kick off these historic festivities tomorrow and begin a nationwide celebration of our Nation’s 250th birthday,” Krach added.
The fair brings together all 50 states and six U.S. territories for a national celebration stretching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument featuring military flyovers, musical performances and civic programming. Trump announced he will deliver remarks after a handful of musical artists pulled out of their musical performances, turning the bash into a “Make America Great Again Rally.”
TRUMP FLOATS REPLACING 250TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT WITH MASSIVE MAGA RALLY AFTER ARTISTS PULL OUT
Organizers describe the Great American State Fair as a modern-day World’s Fair celebrating America’s 250th anniversary. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The event is scheduled to run from June 25 through July 10, 2026, celebrating patriotism to bring together the nation for a celebration of unity.
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U.S. President Donald J. Trump watches the UFC lightweight championship fight during the UFC Freedom 250 event on the South Lawn at the White House on June 14, 2026 in Washington, DC (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
Trump’s anticipated remarks follow his signature last week on a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, launching a 60-day negotiating period aimed at preventing Tehran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons capability.
The world’s fair-scale event will have pavilions touching on five national themes: Made in America, American Heartland, American Innovates, The American Canvas, and Faith & Family.
There will also be a 110-foot Ferris wheel and the refurbished Smithsonian carousel for families to enjoy.
Rending of 110-foot ferris wheel coming to National Mall for “Great American State Fair.” (Freedom250)
The U.S. has hosted over two dozen variations of the world’s fair since first hosted in Philadelphia in 1876, according to the State Department.
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Freedom250, the nonpartisan group helping coordinate the broader America250 effort, said the fair will feature food, games, exhibits and themed attractions designed to showcase the country’s culture, history and innovation.
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