Politics
With her city in flames, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass' political future hangs in the balance
Apocalyptic fires had been ravaging Los Angeles for more than 24 hours when Mayor Karen Bass stepped off a plane and into a now-viral encounter that may come to define her mayoralty.
As an Irish reporter who happened to be on her flight hurled questions at her, the mayor of the nation’s second-largest metropolis stood silent and seemingly paralyzed.
“Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?” No answer.
“Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars, Madame Mayor?” No answer.
“Have you nothing to say today?”
Bass stared forward, then down at her feet, before pushing her way down the sky bridge and out toward her smoldering city.
She had left Los Angeles on Jan. 4, as the National Weather Service intensified warnings about a coming windstorm, to attend the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama. She remained out of the country as the Palisades fire ignited, then exploded, with other fires soon erupting in and around the city.
She returned Wednesday to public outrage about her whereabouts and questions about empty hydrants, an empty reservoir and, according to some, insufficient resources at the Fire Department. Her handling of questions in the days that followed has only intensified some of that criticism.
Bass has also battled extraordinary dissension in her own ranks, with Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley in interviews Friday characterizing the department as understaffed and underfunded and implying that Bass had failed her. False rumors that night that Bass had fired Crowley added to the chaos and sense that Bass was not entirely in control.
Now — while Bass navigates a calamity that will redefine the city — her political future also hangs in the balance.
In a moment of anguish where people desperately want heroes and villains to make sense of their own pain, Bass has undoubtedly become a punching bag for portions of the city.
Her absence, combined with an unsteady early performance and the unprecedented attack from her fire chief, have only intensified her vulnerabilities. And on X, she has become a much-maligned conservative meme.
But only time will reveal the severity of the political fallout. There will be investigations into whether fire and water officials failed and whether City Hall missed opportunities to make communities more fire resilient. Such answers will take months, if not years, to sort out.
In a belligerent California landscape only provisionally tamed by human hands, fire is an inevitability. Many of the seeds for destruction were sown long before Bass took office — rising temperatures that left hillsides dry and poised to explode with intense winds, planning decisions from generations ago that placed homes inside vulnerable, brush-covered canyons.
Even before last week’s unprecedented firestorms, climate change was reshaping California in terrifying ways, with fire leveling entire communities in places like Santa Rosa and Paradise.
And the hard work of rebuilding is just beginning.
“For all Angelenos, we are hurting, grieving, still in shock and angry. And I am too,” Bass said during a briefing Saturday morning. “The devastation our city has faced. But in spite of the grief, in spite of the anger, in spite of the shock, we have got to stay focused until this time passes, until the fires are out.”
Bass, who declined to be interviewed, pledged a “a full accounting of what worked and especially what did not” once the flames have receded.
Elected in November 2022, the first-term mayor has spent her initial years in office focused on the city’s sprawling and complex homelessness emergency. She has made some incremental progress on homelessness, but had also faced few external crises until last week.
Before the fires, even as Angelenos expressed frustration with the direction of the city, residents still largely approved of her job performance.
But that goodwill is dissipating.
In recent days, the hits have come from all sides, with her 2022 challenger, billionaire mall mogul Rick Caruso, castigating Bass in the media for her absence and handling of the fire.
Caruso, whose Palisades mall survived the conflagration with the help of private firefighters, told The Times last week that Bass’ “terrible” leadership had resulted in “billions of dollars in damage because she wasn’t here and didn’t know what she was doing.”
A Change.org petition demanding her resignation has received more than 120,000 signatures.
Bass, 71, has also been blasted over cutbacks in Fire Department operations, with those attacks coming from both the right and the left. Kenneth Mejia, the city controller and progressive darling, has been particularly critical on social media.
Bass and the city’s budget analysts have pushed back on that budget cut narrative, pointing out the department was projected to grow significantly this year — well before the fires broke out, thanks in large part to a package of firefighter raises.
On Monday morning, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of The Times, said it was “a mistake” for the paper to have endorsed Bass in 2022 in an interview on “The Morning Meeting,” a YouTube-based politics show. (Endorsements are made by The Times’ editorial board, which operates separately from the newsroom.)
Critics have also harped on Bass’ lack of visibility outside of official briefings, saying the former six-term congresswoman has appeared more like a legislator than a chief executive during a moment when residents desperately want to feel reassurance from their leader.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, several members of the county Board of Supervisors and City Councilmember Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades, have been more visibly present than the mayor in affected communities and on local news.
But the real crucible for the mayor is only just beginning to take shape, with her political prospects inextricably tied to the almost unfathomably knotty recovery ahead.
In a place long circumscribed by disaster, Bass is facing a catastrophe with financial and logistical burdens that will likely dwarf the combined fallout from the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 1992 civil unrest. She will also be responsible for a mammoth environmental cleanup effort and the challenge of housing thousands of newly homeless Angelenos in an already supercharged housing market. All of this will have to happen as she prepares for the massive footprint and operational challenges of the coming 2028 Olympics.
Before swaths of the city immolated, the Democratic mayor of an overwhelmingly Democratic city was widely expected to sail into a second term with no serious opponents in the 2026 election.
Potential challengers may now “smell blood in the water,” as one local political consultant put it, and reassess the viability of mounting their own campaigns amid a rapidly shifting political landscape.
A representative for Caruso, a Republican-turned-Democrat who spent more than $100 million of his personal fortune on his 2022 campaign, did not respond when asked if he planned to run again. Jane Nguyen, a spokesperson for Mejia, said the city controller was “focused on the job right now” and had not made any decisions about future races.
“I don’t think this is a fatal situation yet for her reelection chances,” said Ange-Marie Hancock, a former USC political science and international relations department chair, who now leads Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.
There is still time for the former South L.A. community organizer to pivot back to the political brand she is known for, defined by “a deep sense of care for the community,” Hancock said.
But it won’t be easy.
Even some political allies have looked askance at the mayor’s handling of the snowballing critiques last week, with several expressing disbelief at the viral airport interview and her tone on followup questions in the days following.
The mayor, who has long brushed off questions she casts as politically motivated with an air of annoyance, was combative and defensive in news conferences when pressed about her trip. It took days for her to publicly acknowledge the level of raw fury being expressed about the city’s fire response.
Only a portion of the lethal conflagrations are within city boundaries, though Bass has also battled blame for the response to the Eaton fire, which is well outside her purview.
Others have condemned Bass’ critics as political vultures who are only hurting the city in an already perilous moment.
“It is not warranted,” Steve Soboroff, a former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission and longtime supporter of the mayor, said of the criticism. “It’s just convenient and easy for people who want to spend their time pointing fingers instead of looking forward. This was an act of God. This was a force majeure. This was beyond anybody’s control.”
Bass obviously does not control the wind, nor can she see the future. And an obliteration of this magnitude required a perfect storm of factors that few would have predicted several days ahead of time.
Still, before Bass left town, the regional branch of the National Weather Service was predicting critical fire conditions, verbiage that shifted to “extreme fire weather conditions” on Jan. 5. By late last Monday morning, they had issued an urgent warning for a “life-threatening & destructive windstorm,” raising nagging questions about the mayor’s priorities and why she did not leave Ghana sooner.
“I don’t understand how they did not cancel her trip,” a senior staffer for another local elected official said, explaining that their office had begun viewing the coming wind event as a grave threat during the preceding weekend. “It was political malpractice.”
The staffer, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said it was common practice for Los Angeles politicians to cancel, or prepare to cancel, prearranged events during severe weather events.
Still, Bass is not the first California political leader to lead in absentia during a moment of exigent crisis.
Former Mayor James Hahn was on a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001, and unable to return to the city for several days with air travel suspended. When the Watts riots erupted in 1965, then-Gov. Pat Brown was famously vacationing in Greece; his absence helped cement his ouster by challenger Ronald Reagan the next year.
In a city of more than 4 million people, TMZ happened to find two prominent Bass supporters — actors Kym Whitley and Yvette Nicole Brown — exiting a San Fernando Valley grocery store on Saturday. They fervently defended Bass in a seemingly impromptu interview.
They implied that Bass was being held to a higher standard as a Black woman and unfairly blamed for a natural disaster.
“When smear campaigns begin against her with a political motive, she’s not the kind to fly her own flag,” Brown said Sunday of the mayor, who typically eschews public political fights. “And more importantly, this is not the time for anyone to be trying to position themselves for the next election.”
The mayor’s quiet style and penchant for soft power, which some have found lacking in this moment of roaring catastrophe, could also be a strength in the months to come.
Bass’ dexterity as a coalition builder and the deep federal relationships that she used as a selling point during her campaign make her particularly well poised to succeed in leading the city’s recovery, Soboroff said.
As other state and local leaders took showboating shots at President-elect Donald Trump, Bass publicly sought to defuse the friction, saying she had been in conversation with representatives of the incoming administration and was not worried about any alleged lack of communication.
“During disasters, we look for someone to blame. But it’s also that our politics have become polarized and nationalized, so this gets used as an excuse to bash on California for a variety of reasons,” said Manuel Pastor, director of the USC Equity Research Institute.
Pastor, who served on Bass’ transition team, cited the echo chamber of disinformation on X and right-wing political actors seizing on the crisis for their own ends.
“She will be judged on the rebuilding, and she will be judged on whether or not the city can get itself in shape for the Olympics,” Pastor said.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
Politics
Less than half of DOGE-terminated contracts can be publicly tracked, only about a quarter of grants: watchdog
With Elon Musk’s departure from the agency, there’s debate roiling over how effective the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE), has been in its mission.
In a report released just two days prior to Musk stepping down, financial watchdog Open The Books published a report finding it is likely impossible for the average American taxpayer to track the savings associated with the contracts and grants that were terminated by the DOGE team.
According to Open The Books’ analysis, which mined all the data published on DOGE’s official website, the average American taxpayer would likely only be able to confirm 42% of contracts and 27% of grants through an independent review of public federal spending databases.
“This doesn’t mean these targets aren’t real, it simply means it’s very hard for taxpayers who want to see additional savings to find proof and evidence of savings,” Open The Books points out in its analysis, shared in a report the group released Tuesday.
‘BUREAUCRATIC AND WASTEFUL’: DOGE SNIFFS OUT EYE-POPPING SPENDING ON BIDEN DEI EFFORTS IN KEY AGENCY
Elon Musk (LEFT) has been a controversial figure in the Trump administration, with many of his critics arguing he has wielded too much power in the Trump administration. (Getty)
“Because taxpayers don’t have access to real-time transparency and a real-time look at the Treasury Payment System, it’s still too difficult for even a highly motivated Joe Taxpayer to confirm the savings claims DOGE is making,” the analysis, released ahead of Elon Musk stepping down from running the agency, continued. “It’s also far too easy for critics to sew [sic] doubt and confusion.”
DOGE says on its website that the group’s work up to this point has provided the American taxpayer with $175 billion in “estimated” savings from the elimination of contracts, grants and leases, as well as through renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion and other mechanisms.
However, DOGE’s estimated savings have been contested by watchdog groups and budget experts. Such critics have posited that the inclusion of already canceled contracts, double-counting or misrepresentation of contract values, and the unaccounted cost burden that could be imposed on the government when it has to re-hire folks down the line, or revamp its productivity, due to DOGE cuts, have led to inflated savings estimates.
Nate Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, has accused DOGE of “overestimating contracts by a factor of two,” according to CBS News.
ELON MUSK ‘DISAPPOINTED’ BY TRUMP’S SPENDING BILL, SAYS IT UNDERMINES WHAT DOGE IS DOING
But White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told Fox News Digital that DOGE has produced “historic savings” for the American people.
“DOGE is working at record speed to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, producing historic savings for the American people,” Fields said. “The DOGE Wall of Receipts provides the latest and most accurate information following a thorough assessment, which takes time. Updates to the DOGE savings page will continue to be made promptly, and departments and agencies will keep highlighting the massive savings DOGE is achieving.”
“DOGE’s job is to identify, not enact, savings targets. It’s up to Congress to do the heavy lifting,” Open The Books said in their analysis about DOGE savings. (Fox News Digital)
“DOGE and Elon Musk have done the country an incredible service by identifying savings targets,” added Open The Books CEO John Hart. “Having worked on the last major deficit commission with the late Senator Tom Coburn, we would have been elated to have had Musk in our corner. Now it’s up to Congress to not only turn DOGE’s recommendations into durable savings but to go beyond DOGE’s scope and truly tackle our long-term debt and deficit crisis.”
Open The Books highlighted two “common sense” standards to help establish an “intellectually honest” approach to understanding the true impact of government cuts, such as those being recommended by DOGE.
The first is the “durable standard,” which asks whether a proposed cut can be easily reversed.
OBAMA-NOMINATED JUDGE ALLOWS LAWSUIT TARGETING MUSK’S ROLE WITH DOGE TO PROCEED, DROPS CLAIMS AGAINST TRUMP
“Describing something as ‘durable’ does not mean it is permanent or irreversible; it simply means it is hard to reverse,” the Open The Books’ analysis stated. “The most durable budget cut in our constitutional system would be passed by Congress, signed into law by the president and be clearly constitutional, or unassailable in a court challenge. Budget cuts become less durable when they lack any of these three elements.”
The second is called a “duty standard,” which illuminates the power behind certain cuts based on who is trying to impose them.
“In our constitutional system, the founders gave the job of budget savings to three branches but primarily to Congress,” Open The Books points out. “DOGE’s job is to identify, not enact, savings targets. It’s up to Congress to do the heavy lifting. And We the People have a responsibility to be informed and hold our elected officials accountable.”
WHITE HOUSE SENDING $9.4B DOGE CUTS PACKAGE TO CONGRESS NEXT WEEK
White House Senior Advisor Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) on Mar. 9, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Open The Books ultimately concluded that due to various limitations associated with publicly available data on government spending and revenue, in particular a lack of real-time access to the government’s Treasury Payment System, it is still too difficult for even the most motivated average American citizen to either confirm, or deny, the savings claimed by DOGE.
Elon Musk officially stepped down from his role as DOGE chief Thursday evening, as his position of “special government employee” in the Trump administration was limited by law to a few months. Amid the transition, Musk criticized Republicans’ spending bill that was passed ahead of Memorial Day in the House, indicating he was “disappointed” it would increase the federal deficit.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told CBS News in an interview that will air in full on June 1.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply limited the reach of environmental impact statements in a victory for developers.
The justices said these claims of the potential impact on the environment have been used too often to delay or block new projects.
“A 1970 legislative acorn has grown over the years into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development under the guise of just a little more process. A course correction of sorts is appropriate,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, speaking for the court.
He said procedural law has given judges and environmentalists too much authority to hinder or prevent development, he said.
“Fewer projects make it to the finish line. Indeed, fewer projects make it to the starting line. Those that survive often end up costing much more than is anticipated or necessary,” he said. “And that in turn means fewer and more expensive railroads, airports, wind turbines, transmission lines, dams, housing developments, highways, bridges, subways, stadiums, arenas, data centers, and the like. And that also means fewer jobs, as new projects become difficult to finance and build in a timely fashion.”
The decision could loom large in California and the West because the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has taken a broad view of environmental protection and the scope of impact statements.
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970s was the first of a series of landmark environmental laws. It required federal agencies to prepare a report assessing the likely impact of projects that will be funded or approved by the government.
“The goal of the law is to inform agency decision-making, not to paralyze it,” Kavanaugh said.
In a unanimous decision, the high court ruled for the developers of a proposed 88-mile railroad in northeastern Utah, a spur line which could carry crude oil that would be refined along the Gulf Coast.
The project needed the approval of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board which produced 3,600 pages of analysis on the potential impact.
In blocking the proposal, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals cited its potential to spur more drilling for oil in Utah and more pollution along the Gulf Coast. The judges said these “upstream” and “downstream” impacts of the railroad must be considered before the new rail line is approved.
Seven counties that favored the development appealed to the Supreme Court and argued that the potential environment impact should be limited to the building of the railroad itself.
Kavanaugh and the court agreed. “The board did not need to evaluate potential environmental impacts of the separate upstream and downstream projects,” he said.
The court’s three liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — concurred in the decision but did not sign on to Kavanaugh’s opinion.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a Colorado native who is friends with some of the leading developers, did not participate in the decision.
Elon Musk is beginning the process of stepping down from his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO posted on X on Wednesday night that his time as a special government employee is coming to an end and thanked President Donald Trump for the opportunity to cut down on wasteful spending.
“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” Musk wrote in his post. The White House confirmed to FOX that Musk’s post is accurate and offboarding will begin Wednesday night.
Musk has been the public face of DOGE since Trump signed an executive order establishing the office on Jan. 20. DOGE has since ripped through federal government agencies in a quest to identify and end government overspending, corruption and fraud.
ELON MUSK SAYS HE ‘FULLY ENDORSES’ TRUMP AFTER GUNFIRE AT PENNSYLVANIA RALLY
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has officially stepped down from his role helping lead DOGE, which had long been the plan as a special government employee. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
He was officially hired as a “special government employee,” which is a role Congress created in 1962 that allows the executive or legislative branch to hire temporary employees for specific short-term initiatives.
Special government employees are permitted to work for the federal government for “no more than 130 days in a 365-day period,” according to data from the Office of Government Ethics. Musk’s 130-day timeframe, beginning on Inauguration Day, was set to run dry on May 30.
DOGE is a temporary cross-departmental organization that was established to slim down and streamline the federal government. The group itself will be dissolved on July 4, 2026, according to Trump’s executive order.
Musk and Trump have both previously previewed that Musk’s role was temporary and would end in the spring.
“You, technically, are a special government employee and you’re supposed to be 130 days,” Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Musk during an exclusive interview with Musk and DOGE team members in April. “Are you going to continue past that or do you think that’s what you’re going to do?”
MUSK NOT LEAVING YET, WRAPPING UP WORK ON SCHEDULE ONCE ‘INCREDIBLE WORK AT DOGE IS COMPLETE’: WHITE HOUSE
Elon Musk was hired as a special government employee, which only permits 130 days of employment, when he was chosen to lead DOGE. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that timeframe,” Musk responded.
Trump hinted at Musk’s departure in comments to reporters on March 31 when he was asked if he wants Musk to remain in a government role for longer than the predetermined 130 days.
“I think he’s amazing. But I also think he’s got a big company to run,” Trump said in March. “And so at some point he’s going to be going back.”
“I’d keep him as long as I can keep him,” Trump said. “He’s a very talented guy. You know, I love very smart people. He’s very smart. And he’s done a good job,” the president added. “DOGE is, we’ve found numbers that nobody can even believe.”
More recently, Musk said during a Tesla earnings call on April 22 that he will take a step back from his work as DOGE’s leader.
DOGE CHAIN OF COMMAND REVEALED IN COURT FILING, SHOWING MUSK IS NOT THE BOSS
“I think starting probably in next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said during Tesla’s earnings conference call. “I’ll have to continue doing it for, I think, the remainder of the president’s term just to make sure the waste and fraud that we stopped does not come roaring back, which it will do if it has the chance. So I think I’ll continue to spend, you know, a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful.”
Elon Musk jumps on state as he joins former president Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
“But starting next month,” he added, “I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done.”
Amid Musk’s work with DOGE, Democrats and activists have staged protests against the tech billionaire and his companies, including working to tank Tesla stocks.
Musk has been the public face of DOGE for months, but is not an employee of the United States DOGE Service and does not report to the acting DOGE chief, according to a court filing in March that shed additional light on the internal workings of the office.
WHO IS DOGE’S NEWLY IDENTIFIED ADMINISTRATOR AMY GLEASON? ‘WORLD-CLASS TALENT’
“Elon Musk does not work at USDS. I do not report to him, and he does not report to me. To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House,” Amy Gleason, the acting administrator of DOGE, wrote in a declaration included in a court filing.
President Trump has spoken highly of Elon Musk’s work with DOGE since he was chosen to lead the new agency on Jan. 20. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Gleason previously worked for the United States Digital Service, which was founded in 2014 by former President Barack Obama as a technology office within the Executive Office of the President. Trump signed an executive order in January that renamed the office to the United States DOGE Service, establishing DOGE.
Though Musk has been the public face of DOGE, he “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself” and is working as a senior advisor to the president, a White House official said in a separate court filing back in February.
SENATE REPUBLICAN DOGE LEADER JONI ERNST FACES FIRST DEMOCRATIC CHALLENGER IN 2026 RACE
Musk emerged as an ardent supporter of Trump at the height of the election cycle over the summer, officially endorsing Trump after the first assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
President Trump survived an assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania in July. (Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images)
“I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk posted to X shortly after the attempt, accompanied by footage of Trump raising a fist and shouting “Fight, fight, fight!” after he was left bloodied by the assassination attempt.
Musk hosted Trump on X for an expansive interview while on the campaign trail
Across Musk’s tenure as a special government employee, Trump has praised the tech billionaire for his efforts to streamline the government and cut it of overspending, including during his first address to a joint session of Congress since his second inauguration.
“Thank you, Elon. He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Everybody here, even this side, appreciates it, I believe. They just don’t want to admit that,” Trump said in March during his address, quipping that Democrats were even grateful for Musk’s work at DOGE.
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