embattled

Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore has taken over an agency under intense scrutiny — and he’s getting paid handsomely to do it.

Moore, who was appointed by Mayor Karen Bass in October, will earn $473,600 a year, the City Council decided Tuesday — $18,000 more than his predecessor, Kristin Crowley, made when she was ousted by Bass in February 2025 for her handling of the Palisades fire.

The LAFD and the mayor continue to face intense scrutiny over their handling of the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes in January of last year, as well as the watering down of the LAFD after-action report on the fire.

When Crowley started as fire chief in 2022, her annual salary was $367,100.

Soon after that, the city amended its salary ranges for department heads to keep up with inflation, said Matt Szabo, the city’s top budget analyst.

Crowley, the city’s first female and first LGBTQ fire chief, received annual merit raises, according to Szabo.

On Monday, Crowley filed a whistleblower lawsuit claiming that Bass “orchestrated a campaign of retaliation” to protect her own political future and paper over her failures during the Palisades fire.

The LAFD did not immediately comment on Moore’s salary, which was recommended by the mayor and the City Council’s Executive Employee Relations Committee before going to the full council on Tuesday.

“Investing in strong and experienced leadership fortifies public safety for residents,” said a spokesperson for council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who chairs the employee relations committee.

Moore’s salary is fairly comparable to that of other city and county public safety leaders.

The chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Anthony Marrone, made $475,000 in base pay in 2024, according to county data.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell was sworn in at a $450,000 salary in 2024 — less than the $507,500 the Board of Police Commissioners had initially recommended. McDonnell’s salary as of Tuesday was still about $450,000.

McDonnell’s salary was a significant jump over the initial pay of his predecessor, Michel Moore, who earned $350,000 when he first assumed the position in 2018.

The LAFD has about 3,200 uniformed fire personnel, while the LAPD has about 8,700 sworn officers.

Both McDonnell and the new fire chief make far less than Janisse Quiñones, general manager of the Department of Water and Power, who was sworn in at $750,000 a year. Salaries for DWP executives must remain competitive with those of utility company execs to retain top talent, according to the city’s Office of Public Accountability, which recommended Quiñones’ salary.

She makes much more than Marty Adams, the previous department head, who earned about $447,000 a year when he departed.

Moore, a 30-year LAFD veteran, has spent his first months as chief dealing with persistent questions about the department’s management of the Palisades fire.

A week after the fire, a Times investigation found that top LAFD officials did not fully staff up and pre-deploy all available engines and firefighters to the Palisades and other high-risk areas, despite a forecast of dangerously high winds.

Bass cited the failure to keep firefighters on duty for a second shift as one reason she dismissed Crowley.

The new chief has swerved between candid reflection over the department’s failures during the Palisades fire and lashing out at the media over what he has called a “smear” campaign against firefighters who bravely worked to put out the catastrophic blaze.

Moore appeared to be referencing a Times report that a battalion chief ordered crews to roll up their hoses and leave the area of the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, even though firefighters had complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch. Days later, the Lachman fire reignited into the Palisades fire.

Moore has also tried to walk a fine line on the LAFD’s after-action report, which was meant to spell out mistakes and suggest measures to avoid repeating them.

The author of the report, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, declined to endorse the final version because of changes that altered his findings and made the report, in his words, “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”

The most significant change to the report involved downplaying LAFD officials’ pre-deployment mistakes.

Moore has admitted that the report was watered down to “soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership,” while saying he would not look into who directed the watering down. But Moore has also said that he will not allow similar edits to future after-action reports.

Bass has repeatedly denied that she was involved in any effort to water down the report. But two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office have said that Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened.

Bass has called The Times’ reporting “dangerous and irresponsible.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump will deliver his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night at a moment of unusual upheaval, confronting a cascade of crises that have left Washington unsettled and his own political standing diminished early in his second term.

When lawmakers gather to hear the president’s agenda for the year ahead, the scene is expected to reflect an undeterred president under increasing political strain.

The president is facing a partial government shutdown triggered by his administration’s aggressive deportation campaign, rising tensions over the United States’ involvement in foreign conflicts and growing domestic dissent that is fracturing the president’s political alliances and aggravating his rivals.

Adding to the turbulent atmosphere is the economic unease in an election year. The president, who a year ago promised to bring down prices for consumers, insisted Monday that America has “the greatest economy we’ve ever had” even though public polling shows economic pressures are worrying a majority of Americans.

Trump said he plans to talk about the country’s economic successes in his speech, saying “it is going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about.”

Republicans have recently pushed Trump to focus on the push to lower costs, a message they see as crucial to help them keep control of Congress. What remains to be seen is how much of Trump’s economic message will be colored by a Supreme Court decision last week that struck down his use of tariffs, a key portion of his economic agenda. In recent days, the president has remained defiant on the issue, lashing out at the justices for delivering a legal setback on his tariffs, and looking to impose new global tariffs in a different way.

Trump said Monday he does not need to seek congressional approval to impose new levies, even though the nation’s highest court ruled his tariffs cannot stand without the approval of Congress.

“As president, I do not have to go back to Congress to get approval of Tariffs,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It has already been gotten, in many forms, a long time ago!”

Trump’s rebuke underscores the president’s increasingly combative posture toward both the judiciary and Congress, at a time when he is heavily relying on his executive authority to advance sweeping policies on immigration, trade and national security.

His willingness to wield executive authority has been seen in the last year as the president led U.S. forces to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, threatened to seize Greenland, considered an attack on Iran and eyed an armed conflict with drug cartels in Mexico.

At home, Trump has said he thinks the federal government should assert control over state elections as he continues to push false claims of a stolen 2020 election.

Whether that will happen remains to be seen as Republican leaders, and other conservative lawmakers, voice opposition to some of the president’s legislative pitches.

In recent months, Congress has tried to reassert its authority over the executive branch — in some cases led by small Republican defections by lawmakers who have grown concerned about the president’s involvement in foreign wars and his economic policies.

One of the most notable rebukes to Trump’s authority occurred late last year, when a bipartisan group of lawmakers secured legislation that forced the Trump administration to release investigative files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

While Trump maintains the release of those files cleared him of wrongdoing, the findings have so far ensnared key figures in Trump’s political orbit and reinforced a sense of scandal that continues to loom over his administration. Anger over the administration’s handling of the Epstein case has led to bipartisan backlash, even prompting some conservatives to call for U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to resign.

Another sign of the polarized moment Trump will face Tuesday night will be led by Democrats.

About a dozen Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives plan to boycott the president’s speech and participate in what they have dubbed the “People’s State of the Union.”

“I will not be attending the State of the Union,” U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a social media video over the weekend. “We cannot treat this as normal. This is not business as usual. I will not give him the audience he craves for the lies that he tells.”

In recent years, lawmakers who wished to disavow the president’s address would typically stand and shout in protest, disrupt the remarks or coordinate outfits to signal their opposition.

In 2020, for example, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) stood behind Trump at the podium as he delivered his remarks and then shredded a copy of his script. She later called it a “manifesto of mistruths.”

This year, even the president’s allies appear to be on notice.

While it is a long-standing custom for the Supreme Court justices to attend the president’s annual address, Trump told reporters on Friday that the six justices who voted against his tariffs policy were “barely” invited to the event.

“Three of them are invited,” he said.

Trump’s State of the Union remarks will be dissected to see how he intends to advance his agenda and to deal with a divided Congress that remains at a standstill over how to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The partial government shutdown was triggered by partisan tensions over Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents.

At a White House event Monday, Trump lamented that public polling shows waning support for federal immigration agents.

“It just amazes me that there is not more support out there,” Trump said. “We actually have a silent support, I think it is silent.”