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Afew hours after California voters approved his Proposition 13 tax-cut measure on June 6, 1978, a bibulous and exultant Howard Jarvis dropped his pants for the benefit of a few reporters gathered in his suite at the L.A. Biltmore Hotel.

A reporter had asked Jarvis why he was limping, so his ostensible reason was to show a large, ugly bruise, which he’d suffered in a fall a few days before, on his ample, boxer-clad behind. The surprise gesture, however, also afforded the earthy and profane Jarvis a chance to display his contempt for the press and, by extension, the political class that had mocked him and opposed his cherished measure.

Thirty years later, the ghost of Jarvis and his legacy initiative still aim antipathy, scorn and disdain at California’s government and its leaders. Proposition 13 was the first, and most far-reaching, in a cascade of political decisions over the last three decades that have shaped the dysfunctional structure of governance in the state.

Simply put, California today is ungovernable.

As state and local officials struggle to weather the state’s fiscal crisis, they wield power with the damaged machinery of a patchwork government system that lacks accountability, encourages stalemate and drifts but cannot be steered.

In this system, elected leaders carry responsibility, but not authority, for far-reaching policies about public revenues and resources. That’s not governance — it’s reactive management of a deeply flawed status quo.

Here is a look at six key factors that have made California impossible to govern. Proposition 13: The fiscal effect of Proposition 13 itself is only part of the damage the initiative did to California. Even worse have been the methods Capitol politicians devised to try to lessen the measure’s financial impact. After Proposition 13 passed, then-Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrat-dominated Legislature realigned — “tangled” would be more accurate — the relationship between state and local governments by effectively shifting control of remaining property tax revenue to Sacramento. In a crisis atmosphere, they radically transformed California’s political landscape, taking power and responsibility for health, welfare, schools and other local services away from city councils, boards of supervisors and school boards, thereby establishing today’s chaotic maze of overlapping jurisdiction, which defies efforts at accountability.

Budget initiatives: Proposition 13 also ushered in an era of ballot-box budgeting, as fiscal initiatives became a favored special-interest tool to take control of public fund expenditures. A series of post-13 initiatives — including measures creating the lottery, financing public schools by mathematical formula and earmarking revenues for special programs, from mental health to medical care — established an exquisitely complex state budget calculus that has hamstrung the rational operations of government.

Gerrymandering: The once-a-decade process of redrawing political maps based on the census has created an increasingly partisan Capitol atmosphere. Reapportionment has become essentially an incumbent protection effort, as lawmakers craft districts that are either safely Democratic or safely Republican. In this way, the crucial contests are party primaries, not the general elections. Because primaries draw the most partisan voters, the most conservative Republicans and the most liberal Democrats tend to win the nominations that guarantee election in November. The dynamic locks in ideological polarization in Sacramento, where lawmakers have little motivation to compromise.

Term limits: Despite the claims of backers, the 1990 term-limits initiative did not get rid of career politicians — it simply changed the arc of their careers. Instead of spending decades in the same Assembly or Senate district seat, legislators position themselves for the next office — or job as a lobbyist — as soon as they arrive in Sacramento. The up-or-out system rewards short-term, self-interested political thinking more than long-term policymaking in the public interest. Term limits also make lobbyists, not the Legislature, the repository of Capitol expertise; that lobbyists are useful in raising campaign cash adds an overlay of soft corruption to the process.

Boom-and-bust taxation: Since Proposition 13, state government has become increasingly dependent on volatile sources of revenue — the sales, corporation and progressive personal income taxes — that generate annual shifts in tax collections corresponding closely to the business cycle. When economic times are good, as during the dot-com and housing bubbles, money pours in and there’s little political incentive — in fact, term limits create a perverse disincentive — for long-term financial planning. When revenues contract, the Capitol has rarely made real spending reductions, preferring to wait for the next boom.

The two-thirds vote: California is one of only three states requiring a two-thirds legislative vote to pass a budget, one of 16 requiring a two-thirds vote to raise taxes — and the only state to require both. The budget requirement has been in the Constitution since the New Deal; the tax restriction began with Proposition 13. In the polarized atmosphere of Sacramento, the two-thirds rules effectively hand a veto to the minority party. Under these conditions, stalemate and deadlock on key fiscal issues have become the political norm.

So what can be done about the dysfunction? In the next few weeks, a blue-ribbon commission is set to recommend sweeping changes in the tax system to stabilize revenue collections. Voters last fall approved Proposition 11, which takes away the Legislature’s power to draw its own districts in favor of an independent commission. Next year, as they elect a new governor, Californians also will vote on a system of “open primary” elections aimed at aiding moderates, and they also will probably decide on one or more initiatives to dump the two-thirds budget vote requirement.

California Forward, a bipartisan good government group financed by major foundations, is crafting proposals to conform government systems and processes to modern management methods. And the business-oriented Bay Area Council is pushing initiatives for a state constitutional convention, the first since 1879, to wipe the slate clean and build a new, rational structure for state government.

“The seriousness of the problem has reached a crescendo,” said Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council. “The public is making a statement, loud and clear, that they expect action.”

As the nation’s attention reluctantly turns to the political parties’ conventions, with their scripted suspense and stage-managed sentiment, it is important to keep in mind that these are phony representations of American political life. But the slick video profiles, the teary appearance of a beloved party elder — these are not what is most phony about the conventions.

This gathering of America’s civic tribes — and the reporters who love them — in separate cities for days of synchronized cheering and jeering is the embodiment of a great American myth: that the nation is divided into “two Americas,” polarized between “red” and “blue” camps that have fundamentally different values and moral outlooks. Each of the nominees will tell our allegedly divided country that he, and he alone, can manage to unite America for the next four years.

The idea that there is vast war over the moral and spiritual compass of the nation is a dramatic narrative, and it has dominated popular political analysis for nearly two decades. It makes for potent, inflammatory political commercials. It just doesn’t have the added virtue of being true.

In 1991, a scholar at the University of Virginia named James Davison Hunter coined a term that has haunted us ever since in his provocative book, “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America.” His argument was that America’s history of religious pluralism had devolved into two antagonistic movements, one progressive and the other orthodox or fundamental. But Hunter also noted, “In truth, most Americans occupy a vast middle ground between the polarizing impulses of American culture.” That was and remains the case.

But at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, Pat Buchanan fired the phony war’s first shot in anger. “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America,” declared Buchanan in prime time. “It is a cultural war.” The assembled press corps loved it. And red and blue bruises have distorted the American body politic ever since.

Poll after poll, focus group after focus group show that the vast majority of Americans — the Silent Majority, perhaps? — are pragmatic, independent and un-partisan in their basic views. They are eclectic: “liberal” on some matters, “conservative” on others. They are not slaves to that hobgoblin of small minds, consistency. On fundamental matters such as belief in equality for women and minorities, or how large a role religion and family play in individuals’ lives, the consensus among voters is broad. Unlike other times in U.S. history, there simply are no issues such as slavery, Prohibition or Vietnam that inspire violent protest or social disruption.

In his 2005 book, “Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America,” Stanford University political scientist Morris P. Fiorina showed that when you examine the actual views of Americans, “voters are not deeply or bitterly divided.” This held true even on the issues that are supposedly the most contentious: abortion, immigration and gun control. To analyze the most polarized recent presidential election, that of 2000, Fiorina divided the nation into Democratic-voting “blue” states and Republican-backing “red” ones — and found that voters in these supposedly warring camps had much in common. On immigration, for example, he found 41% of blue-state voters wanted it reduced, as did 43% of red-state voters; 43% of blue-state voters believed protecting the environment should trump protecting jobs, as did 42% of red-state voters. And 62% of voters in red and blue states believed that Americans should tolerate each other’s moral views. Fiorina also has found that these patterns held through the 2004 election.

In fact, it’s because we agree on so much that our elections are so close. Fiorina’s “sorting” theory of voter behavior explains it with a certain simple elegance: Voters dislike both parties equally. And since the widespread disenchantment of Watergate, they trust neither party with great power. So in election after election in which most voters face only two choices, both unpopular, their votes understandably get sorted into two roughly equal halves.

Extremists, however rare, are becoming more common and, importantly, more rabid. Analyzing survey data from the National Opinion Research Center, political scientist Arthur Brooks discovered that the percentage of people who described themselves as either “extreme liberals” or “extreme conservatives” grew a stunning 35% from 1972 to 2004. Still, as a percentage of the total population, the extremist factions — right and left combined — remain a small slice, 6.6%. These civic slivers obsess disproportionately on whatever issues are most divisive at the moment, while the majority of voters stick with basic economic and national security concerns.

Extremists, Brooks also found, have grown more intolerant and prone to “personal demonization.” Pollsters use something called “feeling thermometers” to gauge how people react to others. Extreme liberals and extreme conservatives are now essentially dead to one another, as Tony Soprano might have put it. That is new.

The political elite and the politically engaged are, of course, much more likely to be on the extreme wings than the majority. These also happen to be the people who not only go to conventions, but whom the cable news bookers corral to argue about politics on their shows. Increasingly, they are also the people who host television and radio talk shows, who publish blogs and who make civic noise.

But they are not us. Despite the stories we will read, hear and see this week and next, Americans are a much more pragmatic, moderate and independent crowd. But we do need to be careful not to pick up the intolerance and bad manners of those who seek our votes.

Dick Meyer is the editorial director of Digital Media for National Public Radio and the author of “Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium.”

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices, hearing arguments on school integration, signaled Monday that they are likely to bar the use of race when assigning students to public schools.

Such a ruling could deal a blow to hundreds of school systems across the nation that use racial guidelines to maintain a semblance of classroom integration in cities where neighborhoods are divided along racial lines.

However, it would be a major victory for those who have called for “colorblind” decision-making by public officials.

Monday’s argument also may well mark the emergence of a five-member majority determined to outlaw the official use of race in schools, colleges and public agencies.

“The purpose of the Equal Protection clause is to ensure that people are treated as individuals rather than based on the color of their skin,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Jr. said.

Three years ago, the court upheld affirmative action at colleges and universities. But that 5-4 decision depended on now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Since then, President Bush’s two appointees — Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. — have joined the court, and the tenor of Monday’s debate suggested a new majority would frown on race-based affirmative action if the issue were to return.

At issue Monday were the racial-integration guidelines adopted by school boards in Seattle and Louisville, Ky.

Seattle had allowed its students to choose which high school they wanted to attend, but tried to maintain a racial balance within 10 percentage points of the district’s overall enrollment. Before the program was suspended in 2001, 210 white students and 90 minorities were denied their first choice of a high school.

The Louisville schools seek to keep black enrollment between 15% and 50%.

Both policies were challenged by parents of a small number of students, most of them white, who were denied their first-choice school because of their race. Bush administration lawyers joined the cases on the side of the parents.

Officials could not say how many districts use racial guidelines that might be affected by the court’s ruling. But a ruling against such policies could jeopardize many magnet-school programs nationwide that use race as an admissions factor, including the one in Los Angeles Unified School District.

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Outlook for LAUSD

About 54,000 LAUSD students are enrolled in magnet schools, and the district says “openings are determined by the need to maintain a racially balanced enrollment.” The district’s lawyers concede that a high court ruling striking down integration guidelines in Seattle and Louisville would put the Los Angeles program “at risk.”

The justices who spoke during Monday’s argument all agreed racial integration is a laudable goal. But a narrow majority of them — in comments, questions and past decisions — made clear their belief that the Constitution forbids shifting children from one school to another based on race.

Until Monday, civil rights lawyers held out the faint hope that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a centrist, might vote to uphold local school integration plans, even though he had regularly opposed race-based affirmative action in the past.

But Kennedy quickly dashed those hopes.

He told a lawyer for the Seattle school board that “outright racial balancing … is patently unconstitutional. And that seems to be what you have here.” Agreeing with Kennedy, Roberts noted that the districts were making decisions on assigning students to schools “based on skin color and not any other factor.”

No students are excluded from school because of their race, responded Michael F. Madden, the school board’s lawyer. They may be assigned to a “different [but] basically a comparable school.”

“How is that different from the ‘separate-but-equal’ argument? … Everyone got a seat in Brown as well,” replied Roberts. “But because they were assigned to those seats on the basis of race, it violated equal protection.”

Roberts was referring to the landmark 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that rejected the “separate but equal” doctrine and struck down racial segregation.

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‘Segregation is harmful’

Madden disputed the comparison between forced segregation and voluntary integration. “Segregation is harmful” to students, while diversity and integration “have benefits” for black and white children, he said.

But the conservative justices did not seem swayed by the argument that the ends justified the means.

Achieving racial diversity “is certainly an admirable goal,” said Justice Antonin Scalia. But he added, “Even if the objective is OK, you cannot achieve it by any means whatsoever…. I thought one of the absolute restrictions [in the Constitution] is that you cannot judge and classify people on the basis of their race.”

Alito also skeptically questioned the school lawyers, and Justice Clarence Thomas, though he said nothing Monday, has always insisted public officials may not treat individuals differently because of their race.

If there was one hopeful sign Monday for the proponents of the schools’ programs, it came when Kennedy said school officials were free to pursue racial integration as a goal. For example, a school system could locate a new school between a white and black neighborhood so as to achieve diversity, he said. School officials also could use special programs or magnet schools to draw a mix of black and white students, he said.

By contrast, “you’re characterizing each student by reason of the color of his or her skin,” Kennedy told one of the school board lawyers. “That is quite a different means. And it seems to be that should only be, if ever allowed, as a last resort.”

The court’s four liberal justices, sounding frustrated by their colleagues, defended the school integration policies. They wondered how the Supreme Court could reverse course from demanding desegregation in decades past to now, possibly, blocking it.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer noted that, in 1957, federal troops were sent to Little Rock, Ark., to desegregate the schools over the objections of local officials.

“The society was divided. Here we have a society, black and white, who elect school board members who together have voted to have this form of integration,” Breyer said. “Given that change in society, which is a good one, how can the Constitution be interpreted in a way that would require us, the judges, to go in and make them take the children out of the school?”

U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement was unmoved. “I think the answer is that the lesson of history in this area is that racial classifications are not one where we should just let local school board officials do what they think is right,” he said.

The court will issue a ruling in several months on Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith vs. Jefferson County Board of Education.

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When it comes to making travel plans for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, you may still be crouched at the starting blocks. But the race for flights, hotel reservations and event tickets will begin in 2026, long before the Games commence.

The Los Angeles Times is your guide to the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics. Follow us for expert coverage of every aspect of the LA28 Games.

If you’re planning to visit Southern California for LA28, preparation will be crucial. And a little positive thinking wouldn’t hurt. As Winnipeg-based sports tour operator Dave Guenther of Roadtrips says, the Olympic cycle often feels like “two or three years of cynicism followed by two weeks of unbridled joy.”

As the days tick down to the L.A. Olympics (July 14-30, 2028) and Paralympics (Aug. 15-27, 2008), we’ll be answering the most important travel questions. We’ll be adding updates as new information comes in, so be sure to bookmark this guide.

Getting tickets to the Games

The Coliseum during the opening ceremonies for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

(Los Angeles Times)

When will tickets for the Olympic Games go on sale?

Beginning in January, fans can register to enter the lottery for Olympic tickets at the organizing committee’s website, la28.org. If selected in the random draw, organizers say, fans will receive a purchase time and date for when ticket drops begin in spring 2026. Organizers say those in communities near Games venues will get early access. See a broader outline of LA28’s ticket schedule here.

Also in early 2026, LA28 will start offering hospitality packages that combine event tickets with overnight accommodations, transportation and/or special events. Tickets for the Paralympic Games will go on sale in 2027.

More details are expected later this year. Anyone interested can sign up to receive announcements through the LA28 newsletter.

What will tickets cost?

Organizers say Olympic and Paralympic competition tickets will start at $28, about $2 more than they did in Paris in 2024. We don’t know the high end yet. If Paris is a fair guide, most-coveted seats for the most popular events could be as high as $800 or more. The official vendors are also expected to manage a channel for resales of tickets, as they did in Paris.

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The two most costly events are likely to be the opening and closing ceremonies. In Paris, per-ticket prices reached more than $2,900 for the opening, and more than $1,700 for the closing. In Los Angeles — for the first time — the opening ceremonies will be split between two venues, the L.A. Coliseum and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Some of the toughest tickets, Guenther said, are gymnastics, swimming, track and field, and beach volleyball. “If you are super keen on seeing the women’s gymnastics finals, you might be on a path to disappointment,” Guenther said. “But if you’re flexible, there are a lot of things that are going to be options.”

The finish of the 400-meter hurdles at the 1932 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

(Associated Press)

Can I volunteer at the Games?

You can try. Recent Summer Olympics have relied upon tens of thousands of volunteers, who must meet language and training requirements. (Not every aspiring volunteer in Paris got assigned.) To stay in touch with volunteer opportunities, sign up for the LA28 newsletter.

Where will the Games happen?

The 2028 festivities will include 36 Olympic sports and 23 Paralympic sports, spread over about 40 venues. The lion’s share of Olympic events will take place in downtown L.A. and Exposition Park (which together have 10 venues); Long Beach (seven venues); Carson; Inglewood; the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

But events are also scheduled in San Clemente, Venice, Anaheim, Pacific Palisades, Pomona and the City of Industry. The Paralympics will use many of the same venues. Indeed, this could be a learning experience for out-of-towners who don’t realize just how broadly Greater Los Angeles sprawls.

The softball and canoe slalom events will be held in Oklahoma City.

Flights, hotels and Airbnbs

The $300-million Kali Hotel across from SoFi Stadium is expected to be completed before the 2028 L.A. Games.

(William Liang / For The Times)

How far ahead can I book flights?

Most airlines usually start accepting bookings 330 days (or 11 months) before the flight date. At Southwest Airlines, lead time can be eight to 10 months.

How far ahead can I book a hotel?

Ordinarily, hotels start accepting bookings 365 days ahead, so if you’re just looking for a room (and not a ticket-and-hotel package), set a reminder for around July 2027. Many hotels in Greater Los Angeles — especially those unaffiliated with global brands — are likely to follow their usual timetables. If you’re interested in a hotel-ticket combo deal, those will be offered in early 2026, as previously mentioned.

Industry veterans say most major hotels around Los Angeles have probably already made deals allotting blocks of 2028 rooms to organizers of the Games or independent tour operators like Roadtrips. For example, the Queen Mary in Long Beach already has 300 rooms and suites under contract with LA28, according to managing director Steve Caloca.

Another opportunity may arise even later: Typically, organizers and tour operators often return unsold room-nights to hotel control 60 or 90 days ahead of the event, which may give consumers a chance to book those “leftovers” directly, perhaps at a lower cost.

What will hotel rooms cost?

Nothing boosts hotel prices like the Olympics, and experts say the most luxurious hotels tend to hike their prices the most. Analyzing figures from Paris, hotel industry consultants CoStar found that average hotel rates — $342-$393 in the summer of 2023 — more than doubled to $731-$939 for the 2024 Games.

L.A.’s starting hotel rates are lower than those in Paris were. CoStar found that average daily hotel rates for greater L.A. from July 14-30, 2024, were $193-$231.

What about short-term rentals?

Again, expect prices to soar. Airbnb reported a 40% jump in accommodations inventory and a 400% jump in Paris-area bookings during the 2024 Games. On the eve of the Games, property management website Hostify.com reported that asking prices for short-term rentals in Paris had quintupled from $154 nightly to $772.

Do note that at every Games, it seems, there are reports of astronomical prices, followed by later reports of 11th-hour discounts because some people got too greedy earlier on.

Los Angeles seems to be starting out with higher short-term rental rates than those in Paris. The vacation rental website Airroi.com estimates the average Airbnb rate in greater Los Angeles for the year ended August 2025 was $283.

But of course, you can spend plenty more. One broker told The Times he has already rented out an L.A. mansion for $300,000 a month in 2028.

How far ahead can I book a short-term rental?

Airbnb allows bookings up to two years in advance, which is also VRBO’s default setting.

Will tensions between major L.A. hotels and union workers surface during the Olympics?

Hard to say. The L.A. City Council in May approved a measure requiring many hotels to raise their minimum wage to $30 hourly by July 2028. A business group started a petition drive seeking to undo the measure but fell short earlier this month.

Could President Trump’s immigration policies affect the Games?

That’s anybody’s guess. Heads of state in host countries usually play a ceremonial role, standing mostly in the background. Trump may have other ideas. In early August, he announced that he would chair a task force in charge of Olympic safety, border security and transportation.

Some foreign sports fans might stay away to signal opposition to the Trump Administration, as many Canadian travelers have been doing this year. But domestic travelers, not foreign visitors, fill most seats at the Olympics. Paris tourism statistics show U.S. visitors to that city during the 2024 “Olympic fortnight” were up a relatively modest 13% over the previous year.

Why do people go through so much trouble to see the Games?

“There is a tremendous magic,” Guenther said. “It really is quite something how people enjoy the time together with people from all over the world. … You find yourself welling up for an athlete in a sport you’ve never thought about.”

Times staff writer Thuc Nhi Nguyen contributed to this report.

Comics have long been on the front lines of democracy, the canary in the cat’s mouth, Looney Tunes style, when it comes to free speech being swallowed by regressive politics.

So Jimmy Kimmel is in good company, though he may not like this particular historical party: Zero Mostel; Philip Loeb; even Lenny Bruce, who claimed, after being watched by the FBI and backroom blacklisted, that he was less a comic and more “the surgeon with the scalpel for false values.”

During that era of McCarthyism in the 1950s (yes, I know Bruce’s troubles came later), America endured an attack on our 1st Amendment right to make fun of who we want, how we want — and survived — though careers and even lives were lost.

Maybe we aren’t yet at the point of a new House Un-American Activities Committee, but the moment is feeling grim.

Wake up, Los Angeles. This isn’t a Jimmy Kimmel problem. This is a Los Angeles problem.

This is about punishing people who speak out. It’s about silencing dissent. It’s about misusing government power to go after enemies. You don’t need to agree with Kimmel’s politics to see where this is going.

For a while, during Trump 2.0, the ire of the right was aimed at California in general and San Francisco in particular, that historical lefty bastion that, with its drug culture, openly LBGTQ+ ethos and Pelosi-Newsom political dynasty, seemed to make it the perfect example of what some consider society’s failures.

But really, the difficulty with hating San Francisco is that it doesn’t care. It’s a city that has long acknowledged, even flaunted, America’s discomfort with it. That’s why the infamous newspaper columnist Herb Caen dubbed it “Baghdad by the Bay” more than 80 years ago, when the town had already fully embraced its outsider status.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, has never considered itself a problem. Mostly, we’re too caught up in our own lives, through survival or striving, to think about what others think of our messy, vibrant, complicated city. Add to that, Angelenos don’t often think of themselves as a singular identity. There are a million different L.A.s for the more than 9 million people who live in our sprawling county.

But to the rest of America, L.A. is increasingly a specific reality, a place that, like San Francisco once did, embodies all that is wrong for a certain slice of the American right.

It was not happenstance that President Trump chose L.A. as the first stop for his National Guard tour, or that ICE’s roving patrols are on our streets. It’s not bad luck or even bad decisions that is driving the push to destroy UCLA as we know it.

And it’s really not what Kimmel said about Charlie Kirk that got him pulled, because it truth, his statements were far from the most offensive that have been uttered on either side of the political spectrum.

In fact, he wasn’t talking about Kirk, but about his alleged killer and how in the immediate aftermath, there was endless speculation about his political beliefs. Turns out that Kimmel wrongly insinuated the suspect was conservative, though all of us will likely have to wait until the trial to gain a full understanding of the evidence.

“The MAGA gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said, before making fun of Trump’s response to the horrific killing.

You can support what Kimmel said or be deeply offended by it. But it is rich for the people who just a few years ago were saying liberal “cancel culture” was ruining America to adopt the same tactics.

If you need proof that this is more about control than content, look no further than Trump’s social media post on the issue, which directly encourages NBC to fire its own late-night hosts, who have made their share of digs at the president as well.

“Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!” Trump wrote.

This is about making an example of America’s most vibrant and inclusive city, and the celebrity icons who dare to diss — the place that exemplifies better than any other what freedom looks like, lives like, jokes like.

If a Kimmel can fall so easily, what does that mean the career of Hannah Einbinder, who shouted out a “free Palestine” at the Emmys? Will there be a quiet fear of hiring her?

What does it mean for a union leader like David Huerta, who is still facing charges after being detained at an immigration protest? Will people think twice before joining a demonstration?

What does it mean for you? The yous who live lives of expansiveness and inclusion. The yous who have forged your own path, made your own way, broken the boundaries of traditional society whether through your choices on who to love, what country to call your own, how to think of your identity or nurture your soul.

You, Los Angeles, with your California dreams and anything-goes attitude, are the living embodiment of everything that needs to be crushed.

I am not trying to send you into an anxiety spiral, but it’s important to understand what we stand to lose if civil rights continue to erode.

Kimmel having his speech censored is in league with our immigrant neighbors being rounded up and detained; the federal government financially pressuring doctors into dropping care for transgender patients, and the University of California being forced to turn over the names of staff and students it may have a beef with.

Being swept up by ICE may seem vastly different than a millionaire celebrity losing his show, but they are all the weaponization of government against its people.

It was Disney, not Donald Trump, who took action against Kimmel. But Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatening to “take action” if ABC did not sounds a lot like the way the White House talks about Washington, Oakland and so many other blue cities, L.A. at the top of the list.

Our Black mayor. Our Latino senator and representatives. Our 1 million undocumented residents. Our nearly 10% of the adult population identifies as LGBTQ+. Our comics, musicians, actors and writers who have long pushed us to see the world in new, often difficult, ways.

Many of us are here because other places didn’t want us, didn’t understand us, tried to hold us back. (I am in Sacramento now, but remain an Angeleno at heart.) We came here, to California and Los Angeles, for the protection this state and city offers.

But now it needs our protection.

However this assault on democracy comes, we are all Jimmy Kimmel — we are all at risk. The very nature of this place is under siege, and standing together across the many fronts of these attacks is our best defense.

Seeing that they are all one attack — whether it is against a celebrity, a car wash worker or our entire city — is critical.

“Our democracy is not self-executing,” former President Obama said recently. “It depends on us all as citizens, regardless of our political affiliations, to stand up and fight for the core values that have made this country the envy of the world.”

So here we are, L.A., in a moment that requires fortitude, requires insight, requires us to stand up and say the most ridiculous thing that has every been said in a town full of absurdity:

I am Jimmy Kimmel, and I will not be silent.

Since 2000, California voters have trudged to the polls to decide policy issues so frequently that they have practically worn paths to the voting booths. They have been faced with a record 86 ballot propositions and, in approving 46 of them, have established a new milestone in direct democracy in the state. With three statewide ballot elections next year, and the Legislature increasingly unable to achieve consensus on the big issues facing the state, the policymaking burden will continue to fall on voters. Indeed, healthcare reform and new waterworks investments, the subjects of a special legislative session, look likely to become ballot measures in 2008.

But creating or changing laws at the ballot box has its flaws. Because voters aren’t policy analysts or constitutional lawyers, the initiatives they back sometimes don’t work in practice. For instance, Proposition 187, which would have banned government services to illegal immigrants, easily won at the polls but was subsequently gutted by the courts. And in 1996, voters passed Proposition 198, which would have created an open-primary system, only to watch the state Supreme Court throw it out.

Rather that depend on either the Legislature or the initiative process to resolve the big issues facing California, there’s a third way. It’s called “hybrid democracy.”

The rise of direct democracy this decade stems in large part from the Legislature’s increasing inability to govern. The reasons are fairly familiar. One is partisan gridlock caused by gerrymandered districts that favor political extremes, conservative and liberal. Another is term limits, which have deprived the Legislature of experienced members with an institutional memory. Add the two-thirds vote requirement in the Assembly and Senate for budget and tax matters, and you have a Legislature with its hands largely tied, leaving more of the big decisions to voters.

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has also greatly contributed to this trend of government by ballot measure. No other governor in California history has gone to the voters to accomplish his legislative agenda as frequently as he has. Although the record is mixed on this tactic — all his reform initiatives were rejected in a 2005 special election, but more than $50 billion in fiscal-recovery and infrastructure bonds passed in 2004 and 2006 — it is clear that it resonates with Californians.

Deciding public policy at the ballot box appeals to Californians’ populism, their distrust of government and their concerns about the influence of special-interest groups (though, ironically, many initiatives are the handiwork of special interests). For instance, a statewide survey done by the Public Policy Institute of California in August 2006 showed that six in 10 Californians said they think that voters make better policy decisions than elected leaders, and seven in 10 said it is a “good thing” that voters can make policy and change laws at the ballot box. These attitudes have been on the rise this decade.

Trust in state government, meanwhile, is falling. The institute’s September survey found that only three in 10 adults said they trust the government in Sacramento to do what is right always or most of the time, which is close to the low point reached just before the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in 2003. Solid majorities said they believe that state government is run mainly by special interests and that a lot of taxpayer money is wasted. Only one in three today approve of the way the Legislature is doing its job.

Is there a fix that could restore Californians’ confidence in their Legislature? One suggested solution, Proposition 56, would have lowered the two-thirds vote requirement to a 55% majority. But voters soundly rejected it in 2004, and the concept continues to be unpopular among the state’s distrustful voters.

Extending politicians’ tenures in office also seems an unlikely answer. A term-limits reform initiative on the Feb. 5 primary ballot would lengthen the amount of time a legislator can serve in one chamber. Currently, legislators are limited to three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year terms in the Senate. The initiative would allow lawmakers to spend a total of 12 years either in the Assembly, Senate or a combination of both. A majority of voters favors the measure, but they support it only because of its provision that total time lawmakers could serve would drop from 14 to 12 years, according to Public Policy Institute of California surveys. As for reforming the way California draws its electoral districts, voters spurned Schwarzenegger’s 2005 plan, which would have handed the job over to a panel of retired judges.

So ballot initiatives are going to be with us for a while — with all their advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes voters will pass them, only to see them thrown out by the courts. Sometimes (as in 2005) the governor will want them approved, but the voters will say no. Sometimes, bad new laws will be approved at the ballot box.

What works best is “hybrid democracy” — the Legislature and the voters working together. The truth is that voters don’t like to be asked to decide complicated public policy issues that legislators can’t settle. For instance, Schwarzenegger went around the Legislature in 2005 to qualify his reform initiatives, and all of them failed. But when elected leaders can reach a bipartisan consensus on these kinds of issues before placing them on the ballot, voters tend to follow their lead. For instance, in 2004 and 2006, the Legislature and the governor reached bipartisan agreement in placing the fiscal-recovery and public works bonds on the ballot, and the voters passed them.

It’s not always possible to reach bipartisan consensus. Some issues are still going to stymie the Legislature. But where possible, the lesson to legislators should be clear: Work the issues through wherever possible before putting them to voters. Healthcare reform and new water-delivery systems will probably end up on the ballot in one form or another, so lawmakers and the affected interests have every incentive to find common ground on the legislation before it gets there. If they succeed, voters are more likely to approve the measures. Only with this kind of partnership between elected leaders and voters can California move forward.

A look at the top 25 high school football teams in the Southland:

Rk. School (record) result; Next game; last week ranking

1. St. John Bosco (4-0) def. San Mateo Serra, 42-0; vs. Honolulu St. Louis, Friday; 2

2. Sierra Canyon (4-0) def. Downey, 49-7; vs. Orange Lutheran at Orange Coast College, Thursday; 3

3. Mission Viejo (4-0) def. San Diego Lincoln, 34-24; at Chattanooga (Tenn.) McCallie, Friday; 4

4. Corona Centennial (3-1) def. Mater Dei, 43-36; at Rancho Cucamonga, Friday; 7

5. Mater Dei (3-1) lost to Corona Centennial, 43-36; at Las Vegas Bishop Gorman, Friday; 1

6. Santa Margarita (3-1) def. Oaks Christian, 44-14; vs. Bishop Gorman, Sept. 27; 5

7. Orange Lutheran (3-1) def. Gardena Serra, 35-14; vs. Sierra Canyon at Orange Coast College, Thursday; 6

8. Los Alamitos (5-0) def. St. Paul, 48-14; vs. El Cajon Granite Hills, Friday; 8

9. Vista Murrieta (3-0) def. Bishop Amat, 29-10; vs. Beaumont, Friday; 9

10. Yorba Linda (4-0) def. Esperanza, 35-7; vs. Tustin, Friday; 10

11. Servite (3-1) def. Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, 29-23; at St. Paul, Sept. 26; 12

12. Damien (4-0) def. Tustin, 24-7; at Salesian, Friday; 14

13. Edison (3-1) def. Palos Verdes, 21-20; at Fountain Valley, Friday; 15

14. Beaumont (4-0) def. Chaminade, 27-14; at Vista Murrieta, Friday; 16

15. San Juan Hills (2-1) lost to Rockwall (Texas) Rockwall-Heath, 36-24; at Mira Costa, Friday; 11

16. Gardena Serra (2-2) lost to Orange Lutheran, 35-14; vs. Oaks Christian, Friday; 13

17. Downey (3-1) lost to Sierra Canyon, 49-7; vs. Inglewood, Friday; 17

18. Corona del Mar (4-0) def. Charter Oak, 28-21; at Trabuco Hills, Sept. 26; 18

19. JSerra (2-2) def. Oak Hills, 24-21; vs. Leuzinger, Friday; 19

20. Oxnard Pacifica (4-0) def. Rio Mesa, 56-6; vs. Oaks Christian, Oct. 3; 20

21. Leuzinger (3-0) idle; at JSerra, Friday; 21

22. Murrieta Valley (2-1) def. King, 56-6; vs. Riverside King, Friday; 23

23. Palos Verdes (2-2) lost to Edison, 21-20; vs. Wilmington Banning, Friday; 22

24. Crean Lutheran (4-0) def. El Modena, 34-0; vs. La Serna, Friday; NR

25. Mira Costa (3-0) def. La Habra, 35-33; vs. San Juan Hills, Friday; NR

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The football jock from Wyoming. The prom king–an observant Jew. The silver-spoon legacy kid. Could one Ivy League institution have hosted three more different men?

As students, about all Richard Cheney, Joseph I. Lieberman and George W. Bush had in common was Yale University, where all three studied in the 1960s. Now the trio and their boola-boola background dominate the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets–thought to be the first time three candidates have come from any single institution of higher learning.

Presidents Taft and Bush went to Yale, and the school also likes to lay claim to Presidents Ford and Clinton, both graduates of Yale Law School. Six U.S. presidents, meanwhile, may have gone to Harvard College, but in this election, Harvard alum Al Gore is the academic oddball.

Whether weird, unprecedented coincidence or, as Yale president Richard Levin quipped, “the natural and expected course of events,” the phenomenon reflects a sense present for almost 300 years at this Gothic-towered campus that a Yale diploma is a passport to stewardship. The rhetoric of leadership flows through the air and water here. Its flip side is a powerful streak of entitlement, and no small measure of elitism, despite an increasingly heterogeneous student population. If Yalies past and present have been leaders, they’ll tell you it’s because they were meant to be.

Levin himself calls the institution “a laboratory for future leaders.” Before the school went coed in 1969, one of Levin’s recent predecessors, the late Kingman Brewster, made a habit of reminding his flock that his job was to create “1,000 male leaders.”

Over the centuries, Yale students have learned to think big. Senior Eliza Park, 21, said she knows six people on campus who plan to be president of the United States, and one who expects a seat on the Supreme Court. Park herself intends to become surgeon general.

“People here have a feeling that they can run the world with their Yale degree,” agreed sophomore Molly Lindsay, 19. “I feel like you get told that when you come to school here, like you’re going to be a kingpin of power.”

Much the same mandate was at work in 1959, when Natrona County High School football star Richard Cheney packed up his scholarship and headed to Yale. New Haven and Yale were worlds away from Casper, Wyo., and by all accounts he was miserably homesick and pined for his girlfriend.

The school won’t release Cheney’s academic records, and Levin purports to know nothing more about the Republican vice presidential candidate’s tenure at Yale than “what I’ve read in the papers.” Levin presumably is referring to media accounts that Cheney was out of his academic league, that he left Yale once, then returned, then withdrew a second, final time in 1960.

Cheney ultimately finished at the University of Wyoming. But cheering briefly for the Bulldogs is apparently almost as good as graduating, and even without a diploma, Cheney has been known to show up at Yale alumni functions.

Lieberman, by contrast, arrived from a large public high school in nearby Stamford, Conn., in 1960, when Yale still enforced a quota on Jewish students. A big man at his own big-city high school, Lieberman unpacked his bags at a university where about half the student body came from prep schools, already a badge of elitism. Students wore coats and ties to class, and the school was so blindingly WASP, said Boston public radio host Christopher Lydon (Yale ‘62) that although there were no quotas for his creed, as a Catholic, he felt like a token, too.

Yale had a definite ladder of class distinctions, Lydon said. “The top of the Yale class system was all tied up in the word ‘Shoe,’ ” he said. “It was code for white shoe. We’d say, That’s a really Shoe guy, a really Shoe way to dress, a Shoe way to carry yourself. More than we wanted to admit, there was the ideal of being Shoe.”

Shoe or not, Lieberman swept into prominence, earning what was then Yale’s most coveted elected position, chair–or editor–of the daily newspaper. He wrote editorials railing against boxing as barbaric on the one hand, and favoring the admission of women to the all-male university, on another. His political aspirations were so unconcealed that one friend, Al Sharp, took to calling him “Senator.”

One day, Lieberman approached him, said Sharp, who now lives in Chicago. “You’re not wrong,” Lieberman told Sharp. “But not so loud.”

After distinguishing himself as head cheerleader at the exclusive Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., George W. Bush entered the college of his forefathers in 1964, where he was well-known as a prankster and was arrested for disorderly conduct. Reborn now as a man of the people, Bush seldom dwells publicly on his days at this elite institution. Yet Yale classmates number among his closest friends.

In his book, “First Son,” Dallas Morning News reporter Bill Minutaglio quotes Bush speaking of his time at Yale years after graduation: “What angered me was the way such people at Yale felt so intellectually superior and so righteous. They thought they had all the answers. They thought they could create a government that could solve all our problems for us. These are the ones who felt so guilty that they had been given so many blessings in life.”

In 1964, the late Mario Savio stood on a police car in Sproul Plaza to launch the free speech movement at UC Berkeley. Soon protests over civil rights, free speech and Vietnam were rattling many other universities. With sit-ins and love-ins, it was a turbulent time at many campuses. But at the Yale of George W. Bush, the ‘60s barely showed up before he graduated in 1968. The cultural revolution of the mid-’60s, Levin observed, “didn’t really hit Yale.”

William Sloane Coffin was Yale’s chaplain from 1958 through 1976. At Coffin’s urging, Lieberman organized a small group of Yale students who traveled to Mississippi to do civil rights work. But as the decade wore on, Coffin expressed despair over a sense of complacency on campus.

“The social concerns of the minority were very great in the ‘60s,” Coffin recalled. “Lieberman was in the minority. George W. Bush was in the majority.”

Insulated and Isolated

An hour and a half’s train ride from New York, Yale nonetheless seemed both insulated and isolated at that time, graduates say. As it is today, New Haven was a gritty city, and Yale an island of privilege within it. The school was so white that when Sharp, Lieberman’s successor as chair of the Yale Daily News, sent his staff out to do a story on “Negroes at Yale,” he could decree, “Go out and interview all six of them.” Such a comment seems ridiculous today on a campus where 30% of the students identify themselves as belonging to a minority.

Clearly, said Boston pediatrician Eli Newberger, Yale ‘62, “It was a very narrow band of citizens. It was a place where the elite sent their sons, ultimately for positions in the leadership class.”

Amid the stone towers and courtyards, between the seminars and the master’s teas, Yale also was fond of a good party. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll may have taken awhile to hit the campus, but fraternities and other campus clubs did their best to make up for the loss.

Several years before Bush proudly assumed the post, John Adams was president of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the national fraternity known as Deke. “We had our wild and crazy parties–yes, we did,” said Adams, now a businessman in Raleigh, N.C.

Of course, the most important organizations of all at Yale always have been the secret senior societies, clubs that rely on tradition to “tap” their members. Lieberman joined Elihu, not the most famous, but a club then considered the thinking man’s secret society. Bush followed his father, grandfather, uncle and cousins by joining Skull and Bones, the most mythic of them all.

Though it inspired the movie “Skulls,” the organization is known to cognoscenti as “Bones.” It occupies a dark, dingy “tomb” dead in the center of campus. When tapped, Bones members receive secret names. Usually they are assigned, but Bush was allowed to choose his own. Until he could come up with one, he was known as Temporary. He never bothered to change it, so Temporary is what Bonesmen call him still.

The New Millennium

Imagine more than 200 years of male-only tradition at Yale. Bonesmen of generations past must be spinning in their own tombs to think of new-millennium members such as 20-year-old Sarah Maserati of Palo Alto. Fiercely conservative, Maserati is an active debater with Yale’s feisty political union, the only organization of its kind at any Ivy League school. A top student, Maserati arrived at Yale with plans to become Secretary of State.

Maserati makes a firm distinction between today’s campus and the old Yale, “a bunch of men, a bunch of WASP men, who got there because they were rich.” When they visit today’s more diverse, more meritocratic campus, she said, old Yalies say, “Wow, you guys do so much work!”

They also do their share of political analysis. At the Yale Daily News, former editorials editor Milan Milenkovic said the presence of three presidential and vice presidential candidates from his alma mater was a subject of great pride.

“The men of Yale such as Joe Lieberman and George W. Bush were the kind of men Yale strived to produce to lead and better this country,” said Milenkovic, a senior majoring in political science. “In our time we will see Yale and other Ivy League schools produce a new breed of leaders to head corporations, the U.S. Congress and perhaps the White House.”

Yale, said Maserati, retains mystique. “Everyone knows that intellectually, Harvard is the best,” she said. “But there is a kind of cachet about Yale. Yale is where the cool people go.”

Gaddis Smith, a Yale history professor emeritus who is at work on a history of the school, said a further distinction between Harvard and Yale is that “for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the emphasis at Yale was on working together in groups. There was the ideal of an undefeated football team, a charity drive, the junior prom committee–a huge emphasis on leadership in groups. Harvard’s spirit was much more conducive to the individual intellectual achievement. You could be a hermit and hide in the library.”

Smith said that the changing demography of the last 30 years has brought less unity to the campus. With so many organizations, “today you have people identifying themselves in groups, and each group has an agenda,” Smith said.

With tuition, room and board now costing nearly $33,000 per year, and 40% of students receiving some financial aid, Smith said he also sees rising careerism among Yalies. Before he retired in July, Smith said he received more and more complaints about grades. “It wasn’t complaints about Cs,” he said. “It was about A-minuses that weren’t A’s.”

But Alexandra Robbins (Yale, 1998) found that many young Yalies are still thinking about politics when she wrote two major magazine articles about her school, in the Atlantic and the New Yorker. One talked about George W. Bush’s mediocre academic record, and one was about Skull and Bones.

Robbins, who works in the New Yorker magazine’s Washington office, was deluged with letters, e-mails and calls from Yalies. “What they said was, ‘When I run for office, I hope no one digs into my past like you did.’ They didn’t say if, they said when.” Robbins said.

The reaction, she said, reflects the aura of entitlement that penetrates the environment at Yale. “It’s in the air,” Robbins said. “You feel it in your interactions with other students, you hear it in class and you see it in the grandiose plans of the organizations. It just permeates the atmosphere.”

One of the 5,000 students inhaling that atmosphere this fall is Barbara Bush of Austin, Tex. Yale has 12 residential colleges, and as a freshman, the Republican presidential candidate’s daughter has taken up residence in Davenport, her father’s college. Along with Ms. Bush came two male security guards, disguised to look like college boys. Normally, fellow Davenporters say, she introduces herself only as “Barbara.”

But by no means is she Yale’s resident celebrity. At the Yale Women’s Center, a chorus supplied that name:

“CLAIRE DANES!!!”

I was so tired of being hot, and my patience for city life was wearing thin. I needed to find a place with a cool breeze and without the groan of my wall air conditioner and without honking, sirens or tailpipes that sound like unhinged bumblebees.

After an hour’s drive, I pulled into the Islip Saddle trailhead parking lot, and I was alone with birdsong and a chilly breeze. I had arrived!

A view of the Antelope Valley from the segment of the Pacific Crest Trail from Islip Saddle to Little Jimmy Trail Camp.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

But as I faffed around preparing my hiking bag, a roaring construction truck pulled into the parking lot, blessing me with the smell of diesel. And then another. And then a road-paving machine that looked so advanced and alien, I wondered whether it could pave the moon.

Did these Caltrans workers miss the memo that this was a place of peace and solitude? How could they do this to me?

A bit huffy, I crossed Angeles Crest Highway and started the 2.1-mile trail — which is part of both the Pacific Crest Trail and the Silver Moccasin Trail — from Islip Saddle to Little Jimmy Trail Camp. I’d chosen this hike because it includes a north-facing slope, which means it gets less direct sunlight, and it starts at about 6,600 feet, climbing to 7,500 feet at the campground, which also helps ensure a cooler temperature.

Thick bunches of rabbitbrush grow along the trail from Islip Saddle to Little Jimmy Trail Camp.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Ambling up and through native plants, though, I kept grumbling to myself about the noise, clearly unable to appreciate the first views of the surrounding mountains.

And then I asked myself: “What in the world are you doing here?” I started laughing. Was I really going to let perfection be the enemy of the good? Had the heat cooked my brain?

Soon, I was pausing to appreciate the yellow rabbitbrush covering both sides of the trail. I spotted a molting lizard, looking haggard, and hoped I could make a similar transformation of my mood.

As chipmunks darted across the path, though, I was brought down, again, by the seemingly endless number of burned trees killed by the 2020 Bobcat fire. Would they ever grow back? Were they dead now?

Then I realized I was literally missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there were so many burned, and presumably dead, pine trees. But the forest floor was alive! The ground was covered in manzanita, Grinnell’s beardtongue and purple-pink Parish’s wild buckwheat.

A chipmunk darts around the detritus near Islip Saddle in Angeles National Forest.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I heard the tap, tap, tap of a nearby woodpecker, perhaps in search of its next meal. Curious little mountain chickadees flitted past. And the chipmunks, as always, made me laugh as they hopped from rock to rock, unsure of whether they wanted to eat a snack or hide.

A molting lizard scurries across a rock pile near the trail to Little Jimmy Trail Camp.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

All I could initially see was what we’d lost to the fire, and I was missing what had returned. Amid the blackened trunks, pine saplings dotted the forest floor.

About 1.4 miles in, I spotted living, breathing green trees, the survivors. I kept trudging along, feeling a newfound sense of awe at nature’s resilience.

Soon, I reached Little Jimmy, a 16-site backcountry trail camp. There were no campers, just me and the hulking pine trees. Sweaty, I felt a little cold as the wind blew past me. I had arrived.

I hope regardless of which of these three hikes you take, nature helps you free yourself from what’s weighing you down.

The view from Little Jimmy Trail Camp if one chooses to lie down and meditate on a picnic table.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

1. Islip Saddle to Little Jimmy Trail Camp
Distance: 4.2 miles (with an option to extend to Mt. Islip)
Elevation gained: About 850 feet
Difficulty: Moderate
Dogs allowed? Yes
Accessible alternative: Paved paths through Buckhorn Campground

A stingray swims in the Colorado Lagoon, which was once part of a wetlands ecosystem that encompassed most of east Long Beach. The lagoon is now part of a 29-acre park in Long Beach.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

2. Colorado Lagoon path
Distance: 1.4 miles
Elevation gained: Minimal
Difficulty: Easy
Dogs allowed: Yes
Accessible alternative: This is an accessible hike!

This 1.4-mile accessible urban hike through a 29-acre marine wetland in Long Beach includes walking along the sidewalk, crossing over the lagoon’s causeway and taking a wide dirt path shaded by native plants and trees. And as a bonus, when you’re finished, you can go swimming at the lagoon’s sandy beach.

As I traversed the path, I paused on the bridge to look around the lagoon. I saw motion in the water and realized I’d spotted a sting ray! I watched the sand ray swim along for a bit, amazed at my luck. That said, if you do choose to go swimming in the lagoon, make sure to practice the sting ray shuffle.

Because of a large construction project, you cannot complete the full loop around the lagoon. You can either start at the eastern corner of the beach on the paved path and take the path in a northwesterly direction or start near Monrovia Avenue and East 6th Street, and take the sidewalk toward the lagoon.

Also, if you visit this weekend, look for the Friends of the Colorado Lagoon, who will host an educational talk from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday where visitors will learn about the lagoon’s history and ecology and then participate in a hands-on activity helping clean up the lagoon. Learn more at the group’s website.

Upper portions of the Rising Sun Trail afford elevated ocean views from Solstice Canyon in Malibu.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

3. Solstice Canyon Trail
Distance: 3 miles
Elevation gained: About 400 feet
Difficulty: Moderate
Dogs allowed: Yes
Accessible alternative: Legacy Park loop

Even when its seasonal waterfall is dry, Solstice Canyon is a lush landscape of coastal sage scrub (with the occasional black-hooded parakeet). This moderate hike takes you through the canyon, along its creek where black walnut and oak trees offer shade as lizards dash across the path. You can either take this more moderate route 1.5 miles in and turn around. Or if you’re thirsty for ocean views, make a loop by taking the Rising Sun Trail, a 1.4-mile more challenging route.

Regardless of where you go, please make sure to check the weather beforehand and go early in the day to avoid the hottest parts of the day. Thankfully, autumn is coming!

3 things to do

Churchgoers pass out water to cyclists at a previous CicLAvia event.

(CicLAvia Los Angeles)

1. Bike through Historic South–Central and Watts
Nonprofit CicLAvia will host a free open streets festival from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday where participants can traverse a 6.25-mile route through Historic South-Central and Watts. Visitors can walk and bike the route or choose any other people-powered means of transport. The route will include music, local food vendors and more. Learn more at ciclavia.org.

2. Bare it all on bikes in L.A.
L.A.’s World Naked Bike Ride will start at 10 a.m. Saturday downtown. Riders can choose from a more challenging ride at 10 a.m. or an easier 9-mile ride at 2 p.m. Participants can skate, scoot, jog or bike in their birthday suits along the ride. Body paint optional! Learn more at the group’s Instagram page.

3. Star gaze in Malibu
The Malibu Creek State Park docents will host a night of stargazing and astronomy from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday at the park’s amphitheater. Guests are encouraged to bring blankets and their curiosity. Learn more at the park’s Instagram page.

The must-read

(Photo illustration by Avery Fox / Los Angeles Times; photos by Tiana Molony)

Whenever you visit Santa Barbara, a two-hour jaunt northwest of L.A., your trip most likely includes a visit to one of the city’s gorgeous beaches. But as Times contributor Tiana Molony points out, “Santa Barbara is a place of dual delights.” Molony outlines the best places to hike in the region, where you’ll have views of both the Pacific Ocean and the mountains. Saddle Rock Trail, for instance, offers a sweeping panoramic view. Or if you want to take a dip in freshwater, check out Rattlesnake Canyon. Any of the eight hikes she writes about sound like a worthy side quest on a trip along the Santa Barbara coast.

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

Dear Wilders, we have an important task at hand this fall. The California State Parks Foundation is asking nature lovers to report sightings of western monarch butterflies as they overwinter along the Pacific coast from October through March(ish). You can do so by downloading iNaturalist, a free community science app, and register for an account. You will use the app to upload photographs of monarchs you spot, noting the location where you saw them. I spotted a monarch last week near my apartment complex’s dumpster and immediately uploaded the blurry but helpful image. For those with extra time, you can register to volunteer to help count monarchs in overwintering sites near you. Let’s help document these important pollinators and do our part to ensure their survival.

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

Pancakes are not something you eat in a rush. They’re for taking a moment to slow down, to be present. There’s a ritual to them — watching butter melt into the crevices, drizzling on generous amounts of syrup, maple or otherwise. They pair well with other things on the menu — bacon, eggs, hashbrowns — but are also just as satisfying on their own.

Pancakes, always comforting and filling, are the ideal breakfast food (and great at lunch and dinner too). They also happen to be endlessly customizable: whether you prefer a base of buttermilk or ricotta, or buckwheat or cornmeal, fillings like blueberries or bananas, and toppings like maple syrup, butter or whipped cream. There’s a pancake out there for everyone. Even if you’re not a sweets-in-the-morning person — you still want a bite. There are few things more enjoyable than at least one stack for the table.

Thankfully, Los Angeles is a city filled with incredible pancake options, whether you’re looking for a classic buttermilk stack with crispy edges, a soft and fluffy diner pancake rippling with fresh fruit, or pancakes made with alternative, flavor-packed grains like rye and oatmeal. Here are 11 of the best pancakes in the city:

CNN has hired veteran California political reporter and anchor Elex Michaelson to lead a new late-night newscast based in the Los Angeles area.

The network announced Thursday that Michaelson, who left Fox’s L.A. station KTTV last month, will helm a nightly two-hour live broadcast from CNN’s studios on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank starting in mid-October.

The program will air from 9 to 11 p.m. on the West Coast and midnight to 2 a.m. in the east. It will also be carried on CNN International in Europe and Asia.

Michaelson told The Times in an interview that he first pitched the idea of live program for West Coast prime-time viewers to CNN executives 4½ years ago. They passed.

“Sometimes good things happen to those who wait,” Michaelson said.

The timing may be advantageous this time around as California Gov. Gavin Newsom has become an increasingly prominent national political figure with his direct challenges to and social media mockery of President Trump.

Newsom is seen as a potential leading candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Eyes will also be on L.A.-based former Vice President Kamala Harris, who could also make another run for the White House.

Fox 11 anchor Elex Michaelson and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eating Michaelson’s mom’s baked good at a prior event.

(Elex Michaelson)

Michaelson believes he has interviewed Newsom more than any other TV journalist in the state. Along with his duties as anchor of KTTV’s evening and late-night newscasts, he hosted “The Issue Is,” a weekly program devoted mostly to California issues that aired on several Fox-owned TV stations in the state.

Michaelson’s CNN program, which does not yet have a title, will be the only live cable news show in the post-midnight time slot. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all currently run repeats in those hours because the number of homes watching television drops off dramatically after 11 p.m. Eastern.

Michaelson’s program will be the first CNN show to be based in Los Angeles since “Larry King Live” ended its run in 2010. “Fox News @ Night,” the nightly newscast anchored by Trace Gallagher that airs at 11 p.m. Eastern and 8 p.m. Pacific, is the only other national cable news show produced in the city.

Earlier this year, CNN offered the after-midnight shift to Washington-based anchor Jim Acosta, who was a high-profile antagonist of President Trump during his tenure as White House correspondent.

Acosta was holding down a midday hour at the time, and the proposed move to midnight was largely viewed as a demotion and a capitulation to Trump in his second term. The plan was presented after Warner Bros. Discovery executives signaled that CNN needed to increase its appeal to Republican viewers.

Acosta chose to leave the network in January instead of taking the role and has been reporting for his own Substack newsletter.

The appointment of Michaelson gives the late-night CNN program a clearer editorial rationale. A native of Agoura Hills, Michaelson has spent his entire journalism career in Southern California, where he is a well-known figure.

Michaelson said his presence in Los Angeles will enable to him to book “West Coast thought leaders in politics, entertainment, technology, sports and more.”

Michaelson’s program will launch a few weeks before Californians vote on a proposal to redraw the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts.

“The showdown on Nov. 4 over the issue of redistricting could determine who controls the U.S. House next year and whether there is actually a check and balance on the Trump administration,” Michaelson said. “Although it’s a fight in California, the impact will be felt not just around the country but around the world.”

Michaelson is known for thanking guests who appeared on “The Issue Is” with fresh baked goods from his mother’s kitchen.

He acknowledged that the tradition will be difficult to maintain with a nightly two-hour program featuring multiple guests. “We may need to revise that,” he said.

SEC Candidate Out of the Running: Consuela Washington, believed to be a top candidate to become chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been officially informed that she is no longer in the running for the post, congressional sources say. Washington, a top aide to Rep. John Dingell, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, could not be reached for comment. But the move apparently strengthens the prospects that businessman Arthur Levitt Jr. will become the next SEC chairman.

Those who bewail the state of American politics in the late 20th century–and particularly critics prone to see modern leaders as badly diminished reflections of the titans who presided in the era of our nation’s founding–might well contemplate the events of July 11, 1804. Shortly after dawn, on the Jersey shore opposite Manhattan, the vice president of the United States fired a high-caliber bullet into the body of a political adversary, then fled.

Alexander Hamilton, the author of most of the Federalist Papers, George Washington’s closest advisor and the first secretary of the Treasury, died in agony 36 hours later. Aaron Burr headed off on a tour of the Southern states, where his friends welcomed him enthusiastically; he returned to preside over the Senate in November. Dueling was a felony in New York and New Jersey, and to kill a man in a duel a capital crime, but Burr was never tried for shooting Hamilton.

The Burr-Hamilton duel is the kind of incident history professors love to employ as a means of disabusing students of the impression that people in the past were like us, except that they dressed funnier. Indeed, nothing more accurately measures the cultural gulf that divides the early republic from our own day than the impossibility of imagining that Newt Gingrich could so offend Al Gore that the vice president would pump a slug into his abdomen as a means of defending his honor. But the duel remains no more than a historical curiosity unless we can answer two questions: Why did it happen? And so what?

Arnold Rogow, a distinguished political scientist, boldly addresses both questions in “A Fatal Friendship.” Previous writers have tended to cast the eminent patriot Hamilton as the victim of an amoral, ambitious Burr–which is unsurprising given that Burr’s next major career move was to organize a conspiracy in 1805 to detach the western territories from the United States, conquer Mexico and set himself up as ruler of both. Rogow by contrast maintains that Burr was no more of a political loose cannon, and less of a psychological one, than his victim; that Burr has had a worse reputation than the facts warrant and that Hamilton has enjoyed a better one than he deserves. Rogow paints the two as morally equivalent and equally flawed characters: arrogant, vain, impecunious, sexually voracious, power-hungry and insatiably ambitious. Hamilton knew how to antagonize Burr because he saw Burr as his own mirror image. Because Hamilton knew exactly what he was doing, Rogow concludes, he bears equal blame for his death.

Elements of this interpretation have been around for a long time. In 1889, Henry Adams surmised in his “History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison” that Hamilton, depressed at the death of his son and the decline of the Federalist party, deliberately provoked a duel to end his life without the taint of suicide. Claude Bowers concluded in 1925, on the basis of detailed comparisons, that “no other two men in the America of their day were so much alike” as Burr and Hamilton. Four decades ago Douglass Adair argued that the qualities Hamilton detested in Burr were his own, projected in “the process by which a man identifies in an antagonist his own secret desires.” Rogow goes further, suggesting that Hamilton’s obsession with Burr grew out of a repressed homoerotic attraction, “experienced as unacceptable in terms of prevailing social and introjected models of masculinity.” Hamilton so loathed Burr–and himself–that he sacrificed his life in order to destroy Burr’s future in politics.

Rogow explains the duel in psychologically compelling terms, and it would be hard to find more compelling ones than those he proposes. Yet the highly interior quality of his argument–its reliance on motives that can only be inferred from the elliptical and fragmentary writings of the participants–imposes enormous demands on the evidence. Rogow tries to prove his case indirectly by demonstrating the parallels between Burr’s and Hamilton’s lives and characters at every point from childhood to their post-revolutionary careers.

The result is a narrative so thick with ifs and maybes that even Rogow loses his way. For example, early in the book, he argues that Hamilton had a long adulterous relationship with his wife’s sister, qualifying his assertions by noting that “the evidence that they had an affair, while circumstantial, is persuasive.” Fair enough: Like lawyers, historians are free to extrapolate from circumstantial evidence, so long as they make clear what they’re doing. Unfortunately, over the next hundred pages the distinction between probability and fact vanishes. In the midst of hypothesizing that Hamilton believed that Burr engaged in incest with his daughter–a speculation based on the rumor that Hamilton’s daughter Angelica knew Theodosia Burr and that Angelica “may have reported to her father incidents she [may have] observed”–Rogow reminds the reader that Hamilton had “for some years carried on a love affair with his sister-in-law.” What was previously conjecture thus mutates into fact, and a casual reader might well miss the transformation.

And so it goes throughout “A Fatal Friendship,” a book that exasperates as it informs, infuriates as it intrigues. Rogow suggests that the remark that made Burr challenge Hamilton, an insult that neither Hamilton nor any witness revealed, was the accusation of incest. Rogow shares this belief with Gore Vidal, who implanted the incest motif in his novel “Burr” because he “couldn’t think of anything [else] . . . that would drive AB to so drastic an action.”

Well, maybe. By this point the narrative has wandered so deep into the psychosexual wilderness that the reader has likely lost all sense of direction, and this may seem as plausible as any other explanation. Rogow strives to convince the reader of its likelihood by closely analyzing a letter Hamilton wrote 12 years before the duel in which he called Burr “Savius,” the name of a Roman citizen who had seduced his own child. Yet when he writes that no one can “be certain that the relationship, whatever its nature, between Burr and his daughter was not believed by Hamilton and others to be incestuous,” Rogow sounds mostly like he’s trying to convince himself.

Oddly, for an author who has done so much research, Rogow seems not to have considered a less rebarbative explanation: that Hamilton accused Burr not of incest but of plotting treason. What this explanation has going for it, above all, is that Hamilton knew it was true.

Every fifth-grader knows that the pivotal event of 1803 was President Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon. Fewer modern Americans realize that this aroused enormous anxiety among conservative Federalists in New England. For the anti-Jefferson Francophobic fanatics known as the Essex Junto, the Louisiana Purchase heralded the end of New England’s political influence. Their solution was for the New England states along with New York and New Jersey to secede from the union. To that end, they had urged Hamilton to run for the governorship of New York in 1804. Once elected, he would lead the region’s Federalist majority in forming a seven-state Northern Confederacy.

Hamilton turned them down. America’s problem, he said, was not Louisiana but democracy, and destroying the union would do nothing to stop the advance of majoritarian rule. Rebuffed, the Junto approached New York’s other leading politician, Burr. Never one to shrink from grasping the nettle of power, he seized the role Hamilton had spurned. Hamilton dedicated himself to Burr’s defeat, meeting with the state’s leading Federalists at Albany in February to denounce Burr as “a dangerous man . . . not to be trusted with the reins of government.” He went on to express “a still more despicable opinion” of Burr which no one ever detailed or, for that matter, even characterized. On the basis of a letter that reported these remarks, Burr invited Hamilton to choose his weapons.

Rogow believes that Hamilton’s “despicable opinion” concerned Burr’s possible incest, but for Hamilton to accuse him of accepting the Essex Junto’s offer would have been provocation enough. Burr had sworn as vice president to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” By plotting secession, he would have trampled underfoot both the Constitution and the oath he took before God. To violate one’s sacred word would have been despicable enough, in the view of any 18th century gentleman, and would have disqualified Burr from office. An accusation of treason would have forced him to demand that Hamilton state his remark publicly–in which case Burr could sue him for slander–or apologize for it. If Hamilton refused, Burr could defend his honor only by demanding satisfaction.

Yet Hamilton could not disclose publicly what he had said to the Federalist leaders at Albany because to accuse Burr of conspiring with the Essex Junto would have been to hand Jefferson the only issue he would have needed to crush the Federalists in the 1804 general election. Jefferson hated Burr and would happily have denounced him as a traitor. He would have been overjoyed to prove that the Federalists were the party of treason.

Hamilton and his friends had no similar reason to remain silent if the charge against Burr had been incest, for politicians in the early republic seldom scrupled to make such allegations public. The Federalists had indeed done it already against a far more notable figure than Burr. Their charge in the election of 1800 that Jefferson had fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings was not only, or even principally, aimed at tarring him with the brush of miscegenation. Eighteenth century American law (and, until the 20th century, English law) criminalized intercourse not only between blood relations more closely related than first cousins but also between a man and his wife’s sister, even after his wife had died. Since Hemings was the half-sister of Martha Wayles Jefferson, the Federalists had accused the Sage of Monticello not only of race-mixing and fornication but also of incest.

Allegations of heinous sexual conduct did not necessarily make Burr kill Hamilton. The charge that he had been faithless both to his country and to his own solemn oath would have been motive enough for a man concerned to avoid the shame of being thought less than a patriot and gentleman. Nothing could more clearly illustrate the difference between ourselves and our ancestors than just that exquisite sensitivity. What politician today would risk everything, even life itself, to defend so ephemeral a quality as reputation, so slight an asset as honor?

SAN FRANCISCO — John Burton walks through North Beach, five cappuccinos under his belt, a swing in his step. It’s a fine sunny morning in the city.

An old buddy lumbers up. “John!” A thump on the back, a hearty embrace. “Congratulations! I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!”

Who can?

Shortly before noon today, John Lowell Burton–recovered drug addict, merry prankster of the state Legislature, high-voltage champion of all things liberal–will take the helm of the stuffy California Senate.

The moment is pure personal triumph, the crest of an extraordinary comeback. Sixteen years ago, Burton departed the world of politics and was pronounced washed up. A cocaine abuser, he was one binge away from death.

Now Burton is a clean and sober 65. And, while he still seems more court jester than king, more iconoclast than esteemed leader, here he is, proud owner of what has become the most powerful job in the Legislature.

There are many reasons. Term limits are toppling the current sultan, Hayward Democrat Bill Lockyer, and Burton–a streetwise politician and masterful fund-raiser–seems a savvy choice as heir in an election year that will once again put the Senate’s modest Democratic majority to the test.

But mostly, colleagues say, Burton got to the top on the strength of his word. Although he’s a fiery partisan who will gladly holler and bully to win a point, Burton is also regarded as loyal, fair, straightforward and trustworthy to the core.

“He’s a committed liberal, but his word is his bond,” said the conservative Sen. Ross Johnson of Irvine, one of many Republicans who call the Democratic leader a friend.

Burton is happy to hear such praise, but seems somewhat perplexed by his astonishing climb. “It’s amazing, really,” he muses. “It’s a little bit serendipity. But I guess it also proves you should never underestimate a guy.”

*

John Burton is not for the faint of heart.

Tall, fit and perpetually frowning, he has a fondness for expletives and a demeanor that veers from blunt to volcanic. Last year, his staff summed him up in a personalized T-shirt, which now hangs on his office wall. “I Yell Because I Care,” it says.

Ever restless, the bespectacled Burton roars through life at warp speed. He prefers stairs to elevators and loves to roam the Capitol’s corridors, blowing kisses to women and feeding his coffee habit in the sixth-floor cafeteria. When the Senate is in session, he rarely sits at his desk, opting instead to circulate, to talk.

“My second wife called me Frenetic Freddie,” he says. “I guess it fits.”

Burton is also great company–a wisecracking but tender character in a legislative cast that seems to grow more bland by the year.

He is a walking sports almanac–unrivaled, especially, in his mastery of basketball trivia from the 1940s and ‘50s–and a movie buff extraordinaire.

When the spirit moves him–which it does, often–he recites poetry or bursts into song. He watches so much TV–”More than old people on Thorazine”–that he has carpal tunnel syndrome from working the remote control.

Home is a modest flat atop San Francisco’s eclectic Potrero Hill, a place that is pure bachelor, with plastic plants and five lonely items in the refrigerator–milk, cereal, Saltines, diet soda and coffee. Lots of coffee. His favorite room: the rooftop deck, where he pursues one of his primary hobbies–tanning–when the fog’s not in town.

Photographs of his only child, daughter Kimiko, 33, are scattered about. Divorced twice, Burton says the odds are he won’t marry again.

It’s Friday, an off day in the Legislature, and Burton sits for a haircut and mustache trim near Union Square. His stylist, JoAnn Puccini, clips and shaves and chats, a routine they’ve shared for a decade and a half.

Burton is captive, so it seems a good time to ask what about him has changed since he was first elected to the Legislature 34 years ago. “My hair,” Burton replies. “Grayer. Less of it.”

And his politics?

“No change there,” he says, admitting that he’s among the last of California’s true liberals. “I mean, I don’t get this ‘New Democrat’ s—. There are only so many ways you can feed people, get jobs for the unemployed, give kids a good education.”

Moments later, Burton is blow-dried and back in his Buick, barking into his cellular phone, heading for a luncheon across town. Parking is tight, but the senator cares not. He slides into a red zone, checks his watch: “You gotta know the meter maid schedules,” he says.

Edging into the luncheon, Burton shakes hands and accepts congratulations, his haunted hazel eyes scanning the room. Then he’s corralled by former San Francisco 49er tackle Bob St. Clair, who bends his ear about the new ban on smoking in California bars.

“Gimme a break, John,” St. Clair bellows, red-faced. “No smoking in bars? You gotta get rid of that!”

“Oh yeah? What about the guy who’s tending bar, Bob? You heard of f—— secondhand smoke? You heard of f—— lung cancer?”

Burton doesn’t stay for lunch. Instead, he motors down to the bay for a hot dog at Red’s Java House, a snack bar swirling with construction workers and sea gulls.

“The dogs are decent, the view’s great,” Burton says, washing down his meal with a Diet Coke.

Next stop–another cappuccino, decaf this time, and then racquetball, which he plays with gusto despite a shot to the face that left him nearly blind in one eye.

*

Except for a six-year break after his treatment for drug addiction, Burton has been in office nonstop since 1965. Given the path charted by his big brother, Phillip, the legendary congressman, the career choice was a natural.

“It’s a noble calling; it’s about helping people,” says Burton, a lawyer who estimates his net worth at $600,000 to $1 million. And after you taste politics, everything else seems “kind of a bore.”

The youngest of three boys, Burton was raised in San Francisco’s Sunset district, where he remembers eating “a lot of macaroni and franks and beans.” His father–a doctor and one of the few whites who made house calls in black neighborhoods–passed to his sons a sense of compassion for those less fortunate.

“We were taught about giving,” Burton recalls, “that you put a dime in a blind man’s cup.”

Burton’s mother taught her son something else–the value of work. When she wanted a mink coat and her husband said no, she took a second job and bought it herself.

When he wasn’t chasing rebounds on the basketball court, young John was hustling shoeshines in the city’s Tenderloin district, mixing with “hookers and con men and pimps and thieves.” It was there that he learned the importance of keeping one’s word.

“If you did stuff straight–if you said what you meant and meant what you said–you had a better chance of staying out of trouble,” he recalls. The same goes for politics. “Your word–your trustworthiness–that’s a very strong currency in this business.”

Burton’s first campaign for the Assembly was a cruise–”never in doubt,” he recalls of the 1964 race. He has served two tours in the Legislature, distinguishing himself as an impassioned defender of the poor and disabled, a friend of women, labor, consumers and the environment. He is anti-gun and supports abortion rights. Despite serving two years as an MP in the Army, he was one of the first legislators to openly oppose the Vietnam War.

Burton has played the maverick in other ways as well, refusing in his first year to vote for the powerful Jesse Unruh for Assembly speaker. Unruh won anyway, and punished him with a seat on the Agriculture Committee, where the issues had little relevance to his urban district. Some may have pouted, but Burton used the opportunity to befriend Republicans, a strategy that serves him well to this day.

In 1974, Burton went off to Congress, where he earned a reputation as a gifted lawmaker but a bit of a nut. One day, he’d be all business, leading hearings into aviation safety or establishing a marine sanctuary off the California coast. The next, he’d rage against pay toilets in airports or spout off in Pig Latin during a committee hearing.

More erratic behavior was to come. When Burton’s brother narrowly lost his bid to become House majority leader in 1976, Burton grew disillusioned, feeling that the family had been betrayed by their liberal friends.

Two years later, Burton’s best chum since boyhood–San Francisco Mayor George Moscone–was gunned down by Supervisor Dan White. Nine days after that, Rep. Leo Ryan, another old friend, was shot to death in Guyana while investigating Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones.

Gradually, Burton began missing votes on the House floor, even disappearing for days at a time. A longtime drinker, he sought refuge from his grief in booze and drugs.

Addled by a diet of cocaine, alcohol, tranquilizers, nitrous oxide and whatever else was around, Burton believed one of three things had to happen to spring him from his trap. One, he would die. Two, he’d have a nervous breakdown. Or three, he’d be arrested.

Instead, he ran out of money. “If I’d had another $10,000,” he figures, “I’d probably be dead.”

Burton lived, but his well-publicized addiction had drained his savings and helped sink his second marriage. He said farewell to Congress, checked into an Arizona hospital for intensive treatment and returned home to practice law, declaring himself finished with political life.

Six years later, his old friend and ally Willie Brown invited him back into the game. He mulled it over, mulled some more, then ran for his old Assembly seat. And won, no sweat.

*

Burton is walking through Capitol Park in Sacramento, talking movies, when he suddenly stops by a mob of squirrels eating nuts from a tourist’s hand. “I love squirrels,” he says. “I mean, look at that. That’s great. They’re such social animals.”

It takes one to know one.

In pursuing the Senate leadership job, Burton did what he’s done time and again throughout his life–he campaigned, “went right out and hustled the votes.”

Lining up friends and wooing the wary, Burton turned on the Irish charm. He invited skeptics to lunch. He explained himself, reminded people “that I’m good at what I do, that I ain’t no goddamn kid.”

In the end, he got the nod, beating a cautious, moderate former Roman Catholic seminarian, Sen. Patrick Johnston of Stockton. But he didn’t convert everyone.

Take Sen. Ruben Ayala, for instance, a conservative Democrat from Chino who is just plain uncomfortable with Burton’s profane, blustery style.

“He’s visited my office six times. He is trying real hard,” says Ayala, who has declined to endorse Burton and threatened to resign from the powerful Rules Committee. “If I can work with him, fine, no problem. But judging by his past behavior, I don’t think I can.”

Burton knows he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But while he plans to tone down his confrontational side a bit, and acknowledges that being in charge carries certain behavioral obligations, he won’t promise fundamental change. “I am who I am,” he says. “People knew what they were getting with me.”

So what kind of leader will he be? Will his new post, which Lockyer made the state’s second most powerful political job–right after the governor–remain so?

Sen. Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, a former GOP leader of the Assembly, predicts that Burton will abandon his “rebel, bomb-thrower” ways and do a good job.

“[Leadership] has a very maturing effect on you. He is absolutely up to it.”

*

The big day is drawing near, and Burton is talking clothes, a rare topic for someone whose sartorial signature has been wrinkles, athletic shoes and disdain for ties. But he’s about to become the new czar of the Senate, and he’s got to look the part–for today’s ceremony, at least.

And so, Burton is asked, what will it be?

“I think I’ll wear the Zegna,” he says, referring to a pricey Italian number, one of the few suits he owns. “It’s blue. Single-breasted. Double vents.”

And the shirt? “Plum.”

And the shoes? “Black. Lace-ups.”

When Burton takes the oath today, few in the gallery will be prouder than his daughter, Kimiko. She has seen her father surf the heady swells and deep troughs of politics. She knows just what this pinnacle means.

Critics, she says, “never gave him credit as a good legislator,” discounting him as a has-been who had “run out of gas.” This achievement, declares the daughter, is “like a vindication.”

The father wouldn’t disagree:

“Unruh used to say there is no greater honor than being selected by your peers. Well, it’s happened. And you know, it’s really true.”

Indeed, out of respect for the moment, Burton may skip his Thursday racquetball match.

Then again, he may not.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: John L. Burton

A veteran state legislator who also served eight years in Congress, Burton will be elected president pro tem of the California Senate today. The blustery liberal Democrat is known for his wit, political savvy and unlikely friendships with Republicans. He will succeed Sen. Bill Lockyer, who is stepping aside because of term limits.

* Born: Dec. 15, 1932

* Residence: San Francisco

* Education: Undergraduate degree from San Francisco State, where he was an all-league guard on the basketball team; law degree, University of San Francisco

* Career highlights: Pushed legislation to increase benefits for the aged, blind and disabled, expand open meeting laws and require that criminal suspects be convicted before government can seize their assets; led the only successful effort to overturn the veto of a bill by former Gov. Ronald Reagan (which would have closed mental hospitals); in Congress, established the Point Reyes Wilderness Area.

* Interests: Racquetball, movies, sports trivia

* Family: Divorced twice; has an adult daughter, Kimiko

* Quote: “I say what I mean and I mean what I say.”

I have a common refrain, almost a mantra at this point, whenever I — still excitedly — spot a large black bird soaring above me on a hike: It’s always a turkey vulture.

After hiking around Southern California for almost a decade, I have yet to spot a California condor, the vulture’s much-larger majestic cousin. I recently decided to stop simply hoping and actually dedicate myself to observing the largest land bird in North America. We are quite lucky, after all, to have such a large dinosaur living within an hour’s drive of L.A.!

And thankfully to me, and you, dear Wilder, the L.A. Times newsroom is home to a passionate birder who has made it his mission over the past five years to spot as many condors as he can. Raul Roa is a Times photojournalist and avid birder.

Roa has been birding for 30 years, but started actively looking for condors about five years ago. He documented his first condor on June 1, 2019, at Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge. Since then, he has documented 54 condors, each of which he can identify by its wing tag. What started his interest?

“They’re one of the rarest birds in the world. … And they’re endemic to our area — they’re local here,” Roa said. “To have a bird like this accessible in a relatively close [drive], I think it’s one of the birds people should want to see in their lifetime because they’re just majestic.”

Here are the condor-spotting tips I gleaned from our conversation.

Identify condor hot spots

In California, the condor’s range extends from Los Padres National Forest (which is northwest of L.A.), Angeles National Forest and a portion of San Bernardino National Forest, all the way north to San José and Sequoia National Forest. Under the right weather conditions, the birds can fly up to 250 miles in search of food — that would be like driving to San Diego and back in one day in search of tacos (which is reasonable if they’re really good tacos).

Magic Mountain Wilderness in Angeles National Forest is an area condors are known to frequent (and can be a nice area to hike in cooler temperatures).

Four California condors take a break on the roof of a home in Stallions Springs in 2021. The bird with the pink No. 5 tag is now a 10-year-old male.

(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)

Roa told me that the spots nearest to L.A. where he’s spotted condors include:

Other spots farther away, but worth the drive, Roa said, are:

And, as a bonus, “if you go to the same spot, you’ll see the same birds,” Roa said.

Learn how to identify them

Here are some key differences between condors and turkey vultures.

• Turkey vultures, with wingspans of about 5½ feet, are much smaller than condors, which have wingspans of almost 10 feet. (By comparison, the Cessna Skyhawk, a popular single-engine plane, has a wingspan of 36 feet and one inch, so a condor is just under a third as large!)
• Condors fly with their wings straight out while turkey vultures typically fly in a V-shape.
• Turkey vultures have white gray-ish feathers on the trailing edge of the underside of their feathers — what a non-birder might call the bottom of their wings — while a condor has a white patch across the upper underside of their wings (the leading edge, as the birders say) that, as an Okie, I think resembles a Texas longhorn.
• A condor will generally have a wing tag.

A California condor warms up in the sun next to some turkey vultures south of Carmel near Big Sur in 2010.

(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)

Roa has been lucky enough to have condors fly just feet above his car.

“I’ve been close to a condor, within 10 feet, and when they take off, their wings make a sound like nothing else,” he said. “It’s like a big swoosh in slow motion. I’ve never heard anything like that from another bird.”

Look at dawn and dusk

Roa said he’s had the best luck spotting the birds early in the morning or in the evening. During the day, they’re usually out hunting for fresh carrion, also known as dead stuff.

Be patient

“Wild animals will do what they want,” Roa said. “If you’re patient, you’ll see them. You might have to wait a few hours. You might see them right away. You might not see them, but that’s what I do. I go out there where they’re expected to be seen. … I get lucky a lot of times from being patient and watching the skies.”

And don’t forget your binoculars and long camera lens!

California condor green No. 84 (784) is a male named Eeuukey. He was photographed flying in Stallions Springs in 2021. Part of the Southern California flock, he hatched at the L.A. Zoo in 2015 and is now 10.

(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)

Roa learned where to find condors by using apps like iBird. iNaturalist is also a good resource, and any condors you document can be used to help scientists understand their range.

There are also Facebook groups and great nonprofits where you can volunteer to help efforts to save the condor, including Friends of California Condors Wild and Free and the Ventana Wildlife Society, which hosts a monthly chat about the birds.

Be respectful

Despite herculean efforts to rescue them from the brink of extinction, condors remain critically endangered. If you’re lucky enough to see one in the wild, do not get close. Don’t be loud. Just respectfully observe them and count yourself among the lucky few.

A California condor rests near a dirt road in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary during an escorted trip through Hopper Mountain in 2019.

(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)

“Expect to see nothing, but if you see something, you’re really lucky. Feel grateful,” Roa said.

And, if you happen to see a turkey vulture instead, look closely for other birds near it. Roa sees them and condors together “all the time.”

Maybe I will see a condor someday after all.

3 things to do

Rainbow trout, only two inches in length, swim in the Arroyo Seco.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

1. Hike, bird and learn across L.A.
Several events are scheduled across L.A. County for California Biodiversity Day, which runs Saturday through Sept. 14. You can hike from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Black Star Canyon or at nearby Gypsum Canyon the following week. You can go birding from 8 to 11 a.m. Sunday at Debs Park to spot feathered neighbirds and then head to the Arroyo Seco at 3 p.m. to learn about the river’s biodiversity. Learn more about these and other events at californianature.ca.gov.

2. Bike along rivers in the San Gabriel Valley
ActiveSGV and Amigos de los Rios will co-host a 12-mile bike ride from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday starting at the Jeff Seymour Family Center (10900 Mulhall St., El Monte). The ride will take city streets and bike paths as cyclists explore the Rio Hondo and San Gabriel River. Register at eventbrite.com.

3. Paddle with pals in Long Beach
Kayakers and paddle boarders will meet for a sunset paddle at 6 p.m. today at Alamitos Bay in Long Beach. All skill levels are welcome, although participants should be comfortable paddling at dusk. Along with a vessel, guests should bring a headlamp or other light and a life vest or belt with leash. Register at eventbrite.com.

The must-read

Steven Gutierrez, national business representative with the National Federation of Federal Employees, in Turnbull Canyon.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Amid staffing cuts, housing safety issues and stagnant wages, more than 600 employees at Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks have unionized. Times staff writer Lila Seidman reported that more than 97% of employees who cast ballots voted to unionize during an election held from July 22 to Aug. 19. The workers are represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees, which also represents park employees in Yellowstone, and staff at the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. “Culture is hard to change,” said Steven Gutierrez, a national business representative for the union. “It takes something like this administration firing people to wake people up, to say, ‘Hey, I’m vulnerable here and I need to invest in my career.’”

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

Are you looking to up your outdoors game? Consider attending an information session about the Sierra Club’s Wilderness Travel Course at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Sports Basement Long Beach (2100 N. Bellflower Blvd.). This 10-week mountaineering and outdoor skills program, taught by the Angeles chapter in four locations across L.A., teaches participants about field navigation, scrambling, backpacking and more. The class aims to empower you to “travel, eat, and sleep more comfortably in any climate.” It also includes great field trips where you can test your knowledge. Registration for the next set of classes opens Sept. 15.

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration’s deployment of U.S. military troops to Los Angeles during immigration raids earlier this year was illegal.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer found the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limited the use of the military for law enforcement purposes. He stayed his ruling to give the administration a chance to appeal.

“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into service in other cities across the country … thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief,” Breyer wrote.

The ruling could have implications beyond Los Angeles.

Trump, who sent roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in June in a move that was opposed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, issued an executive order declaring a public safety emergency in D.C. The order invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that places the Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control.

In June, Breyer ruled that Trump broke the law when he mobilized thousands of California National Guard members against the state’s wishes.

In a 36-page decision, Breyer wrote that Trump’s actions “were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals paused that court order, allowing the troops to remain in Los Angeles while the case plays out in federal court. The appellate court found the president had broad, though not “unreviewable,” authority to deploy the military in American cities.

In his Tuesday ruling Breyer added: “The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”

For much of the country, September marks a transition to autumnal weather. While that’s technically true in L.A. too, Angelenos know that the month is also known for its cascade of back-to-back heat waves.

On L.A.’s heat map, you’ll often find the hottest temperatures concentrated in the San Fernando Valley. But despite this reputation, there are still plenty of places worth ducking into for more than a blast of cool AC. Home to roughly half of L.A.’s population and dozens of neighborhoods, the Valley boasts a parade of sushi restaurants along Ventura Boulevard, a thrilling Thai food scene, long-standing burger shacks and plenty of breweries, wine and cocktail bars. And arguably the best restaurant in the region just reopened its doors after remodeling its dining room.

Outside of the 818, there are plenty of bars across the city, from a Mexico City-inspired wine bar in Chinatown to a Parisian haunt in West Adams. And if you’re abstaining from the booze or looking for a daytime option, L.A. has a slew of stellar remote-work destinations, including a plant-filled bookstore in Silver Lake and a two-story bistro in downtown L.A.

On your quest to avoid the summer heat, consider heading to the coastal South Bay region, where you’ll find so many Japanese dining options, including an ice cream shop and daily-prepared tofu.

And if you’re in need of even more ideas for diving into L.A.’s food scene, consult this list of newcomers, including a Chinese bakery chain that’s landed in Beverly Hills and a vegetable-forward izakaya in Venice.

From Kevin Baxter: The Dodgers lost a game Wednesday. But it could have been worse.

They could have lost Shohei Ohtani.

The final score was 8-3 in favor of the Colorado Rockies, although the game was far more one-sided than that. And the result, combined with San Diego’s win over the Giants, cut the Dodgers’ lead in the National League West to just a game.

Yet the word the team used most often to describe the night was lucky because two hours after Ohtani took a line drive off his right leg, the reigning National League MVP said he had dodged serious injury when the ball missed his knee and struck him in the thigh.

“I think we avoided the worst-case scenario,” he said through an interpreter. “So I’m going to focus on the treatment.”

“It was in the thigh, fortunately, and not off the knee,” added manager Dave Roberts. “But it got him square.

“We’ll see how it comes out. But I’m hopeful, confident.”

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‘He looks much more confident.’ Hard-throwing Edgardo Henriquez settling in with Dodgers

Dodgers box score

MLB scores

MLB standings

ANGELS

Yusei Kikuchi threw seven strong innings, Luis Rengifo hit a tiebreaking RBI single in the eighth and the Angels beat the Cincinnati Reds 2-1 on Wednesday night.

Bryce Teodosio doubled off reliever Graham Ashcraft (7-5) to open the eighth and took third on a wild pitch. Oswald Peraza grounded out, with Teodosio holding, and Rengifo fisted an RBI single over third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes’ head for the lead.

Reid Detmers (4-3) struck out two in a scoreless eighth for the victory. With Angels closer Kenley Jansen unavailable because of a left rib-cage injury, Luis Garcia retired the side in order in the ninth for his first save.

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Angels box score

MLB scores

MLB standings

SPARKS

From Ira Gorawara: It was a night when defenders draped over Kelsey Plum, her path to the rim often crowded. And when she turned to the officials for relief, the whistles were elusive.

But when it mattered most — that being with 3.3 seconds to play and the Sparks trailing by one — Plum lowered her shoulder and slipped between swiping arms and lunging bodies.

One defender stumbled, another bit on a fake and Plum glided almost untouched into the lane, kissing a floater off the glass as the horn sounded in an 81-80 Sparks escape.

“Just a heck of a finish by her,” Sparks coach Lynne Roberts said.

Plum’s teammates mobbed her, embracing the veteran who appeared unsatisfied during her seven minutes on the bench and frustrated after Dallas defenders batted away her attempts at the rim. All of it faded, though, once she poured in 10 fourth-quarter points en route to 20 on the night.

“I feel like that’s what basketball is all about — putting on a show for [fans],” the Sparks’ Rickea Jackson said. “Both teams truly did that and everyone enjoyed themselves and got their money’s worth tonight.”

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Sparks box score

WNBA standings

BOXING

From Patrick J. McDonnell and Jad El Reda: Julio César Chávez Jr., whose high-profile boxing career was marred by substance abuse and other struggles and never approached the heights of his legendary father, was in Mexican custody Tuesday after being deported from the United States.

His expulsion had been expected since July, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him outside his Studio City home and accused him of making “fraudulent statements” on his application to become a U.S. permanent resident.

In Mexico, Chávez, 39, faces charges of organized crime affiliation and arms trafficking, Mexican authorities say.

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THIS DAY IN SPORTS HISTORY

1901 — William Larned wins the first of seven men’s singles titles in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championship.

1914 — Walter Hagen captures the U.S. Open golf title by edging Chick Evans.

1920 — Jock Hutchinson wins the PGA golf tournament with a 1-up victory over J. Douglass Edgar.

1932 — Helen Hull Jacobs beats Carolyn Babcock to win the women’s singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association.

1982 — Mystic Park becomes the first 3-year-old trotter to win the American Trotting Championship.

1985 — Mary Decker sets the world record in the mile run with a time of 4:16.71 in Zurich.

2003 — Paul Hamm puts together a near-perfect routine on the high bar to become the first American man to win the all-around gold medal at World Gymnastics Championships. Needing a 9.712 or better to beat China’s Yang Wei, Hamm strings together four straight release moves during his 60-second routine — one of the toughest feats in gymnastics — for a 9.975 and the gold.

2004 — American super-swimmer Michael Phelps wins his 6th gold medal of the Athens Olympics even though he doesn’t swim the final of men’s 4 x 100m medley relay; US wins in world record 3:30.68.

2008 — At the Summer Olympics in Beijing, Yukiko Ueno pitches 28 innings in two days, including seven to shut down the U.S. softball team, 3-1, and give Japan the gold medal. It was the first loss for the Americans since Sept. 21, 2000 — 22 straight games. LaShawn Merritt upsets defending champion Jeremy Wariner to lead a U.S. sweep of the 400 meters track event. David Neville gets the bronze. The U.S. men and women both drop the baton in the Olympic 400-meter relays and fail to advance out of the first round. Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown easily wins the 200 meters to cap the first sweep of all four men’s and women’s Olympic sprints in 20 years.

2010 — Kyle Busch makes NASCAR history with an unprecedented sweep of three national races in one week, completing the trifecta with a victory in the Sprint Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Busch, winner of the Nationwide race a day earlier and the Trucks race on Aug. 18, becomes the first driver to complete the sweep since NASCAR expanded to three national series in 1995.

2011 — The Sparks run off 16 straight points to overcome a 15-point, second-half deficit and hand the Tulsa Shock their WNBA-record 18th consecutive loss with a 73-67 victory. The Atlanta Dream lost 17 in a row in their inaugural season of 2008.

2016 — Kevin Durant scores 30 points and helps the Americans rout Serbia 96-66 for their third straight gold medal. That caps an Olympics in which the U.S. dominated the medal tables, both the gold (46) and overall totals (121). The 51-total-medal margin over second-place China the largest in a non-boycotted Olympics in nearly a century.

2018 — Liu Xiang of China sets a world record time of 26.98 seconds to win the women’s 50-meter backstroke gold medal at the Asian Games. Liu becomes the first woman to swim under 27 seconds in the event, breaking the mark of 27.06 set by fellow Chinese swimmer Zhao Jing at the 2009 world championships in Rome.

THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY

1926 — Ted Lyons of the Chicago White Sox pitched a no-hitter over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. The 6-0 victory was achieved in 1 hour, 7 minutes.

1930 — Chick Hafey of the St. Louis Cardinals hit for the cycle and drove in five runs in a 16-6 rout of the Philadelphia Phillies.

1931 — Babe Ruth hit his 600th home run as the Yankees beat the St. Louis Browns 11-7.

1947 — The first Little League World Series was at Williamsport, Pa. The Maynard Midgets of Williamsport won the series.

1972 — Steve Carlton of Philadelphia had his 15-game winning streak snapped when Phil Niekro and the Atlanta Braves beat the Phillies 2-1 in 11 innings.

1975 — Pitching brothers Rick and Paul Reuschel of the Chicago Cubs combined to throw a 7-0 shutout against the Dodgers. Rick went 6 1-3 innings and Paul finished the shutout for the first ever by two brothers.

1982 — Milwaukee pitcher Rollie Fingers became the first player to achieve 300 career saves as the Brewers beat the Seattle Mariners 3-2.

1986 — Spike Owen had four hits and became the first major league player in 40 years to score six runs in a game as the Boston Red Sox routed the Cleveland Indians 24-5 with a 24-hit attack.

2007 — Garret Anderson of the Angels drove in a team-record 10 runs in an 18-9 rout of the New York Yankees. Anderson hit a grand slam, a three-run homer, a two-run double and an RBI double to become the 12th player in major league history to have 10 RBIs in a game.

2007 — Arizona’s Mark Reynolds tied the major league record for consecutive strikeouts by a non-pitcher when he fanned in his ninth straight plate appearance in a 7-4 loss to Milwaukee. Reynolds struck out in his first two at-bats against Dave Bush to match the record. Bush hit Reynolds with a pitch in the sixth, ending the streak.

2011 — Johnny Damon lost a grand slam to a video review in the seventh inning, then hit a game-ending home run in the ninth that lifted the Tampa Bay Rays over the Seattle Mariners 8-7. Damon connected for a leadoff shot in the ninth on the first pitch from Dan Cortes. The Rays trailed 5-4 in the seventh when Damon launched a drive to right-center field. First ruled a home run, the umpires changed the call to a three-run double after a video review.

2015 — Mike Fiers pitched the second no-hitter in the major leagues in nine days, leading the Houston Astros to a 3-0 victory over the Dodgers. Having never thrown a complete game in his five-year career, Fiers was dominant. He struck out 10 and walked three, retiring the final 21 batters. Fiers struck out Justin Turner on his 134th pitch to end it.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.