fire

June 20 (UPI) — An Italian woman was killed, nine injured and more than 1,700 evacuated from a massive fire at a beachfront resort in the Dominican Republic Friday.

Francesca Valentino, 46, of Italy, died in the fire that broke out around 11 a.m. AST at the Viva Wyndham Dominicus Beach, a four-star resort in Bayahibe in the La Altagracia province, officials said. Three people were taken to medical facilities and six others were treated on site, Juan Manuel Mendez, head of the Dominican Republic’s Emergency Operations Center, said in a press conference.

No cause of the fire has been reported, but the Emergency Operations Center said a preliminary investigation found that portions of the resort’s buildings were made of cane roofs, which are combustible, and windy conditions contributed to the fire’s spread.

The Italian ambassador to the Dominican Republic met the dead woman’s husband at the hospital, the Italian news agency Ansa reported. There were about 285 Italian tourists staying at the resort or nearby, and the embassy in Santo Domingo was working to help them get new passports and arrange flights home.

Wyndham Hotels and Resorts franchises some 8,400 hotels worldwide.

“At this time, we are actively gathering the facts regarding the incident and coordinating with the appropriate authorities and on-site teams,” a spokesperson for Viva Resorts by Wyndham told CBS News. “As this process is ongoing, we will not be providing comment at this time.”

The Emergency Operations Center said in a statement that the about 1,690 guests at the resort were evacuated to other hotels and nearby housing facilities, CBS News reported. It also said that Viva Wyndham’s Dominicus Palace, which is nearby, was not damaged and was operating as normal.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg and Melissa Gomez, giving you the latest on city and county government.

It’s long been the Holy Grail for the reform crowd that tracks L.A. city government: expanding the size of the City Council.

The idea of giving L.A. more council members was endorsed by the city’s redistricting commission in 2021. Two years later, the concept was debated at length by a council committee focused on reform. After that panel failed to reach a decision, the idea was assigned to the city’s Charter Reform Commission, which endorsed the change, saying the council should have 25 members, up from 15.

Yet even after that five-year journey, the council voted Wednesday to push a proposed ballot measure on that topic off to the future, sending the idea to a new reform committee for more deliberations.

So what happened this time around?

For one thing, the 13-member citizens commission that recommended the idea didn’t offer a lot of specifics on how the change would work.

The commission recommended 10 additional council members, a move that would cause each district to shed more than 100,000 residents, leaving each member with about 159,000 constituents.

But it never explained whether that decrease should be accompanied by a similar reduction in a council member’s salary, now nearly $245,000 a year.

“That’s one of the reasons why [council expansion] is slated for further study,” Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said in an interview. “While the commission might have had a nice discussion and a negotiation among themselves, what we need to have in front of us to vote responsibly is context and information.”

A councilmember’s pay could be a major sticking point for voters during a campaign over council expansion — especially if an opposition campaign arose to defeat it.

Blumenfield said the commission failed to vet other issues, including the number of council aides needed for each district if a district is smaller.

Councilmember Tim McOsker expressed a similar view.

“I think there were gaps in what the commission proposed — substantive gaps,” he said.

Backers of council expansion have argued that an increase in the number of districts would make the council more responsive and more diverse. Opponents said bigger does not necessarily mean better representation.

Raymond Meza, who chaired the Charter Reform Commission, acknowledged that pay, staffing and the cost of each council office didn’t come up during his panel’s deliberations. Those questions should have fallen to the council, which reviews and approves the city budget each year, he said.

“They would need to figure this out through the budget process, like they figure out most other things in the city,” he said.

Meza said he believes that, in the end, council members didn’t want to dilute their own power. Former City Councilmember Mike Bonin offered a similar take, saying elected officials generally don’t want to risk changing the system that got them into office.

“They are in power because of the way the system is structured,” said Bonin, who now runs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State LA.

Before sidelining the expansion proposal, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said a larger council would shift the balance of power at City Hall, giving the mayor greater authority and the council less of it.

In the end, none of these delays may end up mattering. No one at City Hall expected council expansion to happen until 2032 anyway, since the change would require a new round of redistricting — the process of drawing new boundaries for each council district. Redistricting won’t happen until after the release of results from the 2030 U.S. Census.

In other words, there’s still time for voters to act.

What happened to the City Hall misconduct measure?

Here’s another proposal that got shunted to the sidelines during the council’s eight-hour marathon meeting: what to do about city elected officials who are charged with serious crimes.

Charter reform was, in part, a reaction to a string of corruption scandals. Among them: three sitting council members who were charged with felonies between 2020 and 2023.

In each case, council members had to decide whether to use their power, spelled out in the City Charter, to suspend colleagues accused of wrongdoing — stripping away their duties until their criminal cases were resolved.

The council moved swiftly to suspend then-Councilmember Jose Huizar in 2020, taking action the day he was arrested, before he even pleaded “not guilty” to racketeering and other charges. The council suspended then-Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas in 2021 after a lengthy floor debate, with some saying he was being denied his due process rights. (Ridley-Thomas, who was found guilty of seven felonies, is fighting his conviction.)

A few years later, the council decided not to suspend Councilmember Curren Price, allowing him to step off of his council committees but preserving his other council duties as he contests charges of embezzlement, perjury and conflict-of-interest violations.

Although the case is still ongoing, Price is back on various city committees.

Each of those cases put the council in a bind. Voting in favor of suspension can mean depriving a council member’s constituents of representation. It also runs counter to the idea that a colleague is innocent until proven guilty.

Voting against suspension has its own set of dangers, such as undermining trust in city government. It could also allow an elected official accused of wrongdoing to continue taking part in decisions about contracts, real estate development and other matters where the potential for corruption exists.

Under the current system, a council member can be suspended with just eight votes. Harris-Dawson, who supported the suspension of Huizar but opposed it for Ridley-Thomas, said early on that he wanted the Charter Reform Commission to look at the process for disciplining elected officials accused of wrongdoing.

The Charter Reform Commission offered its answer two months ago, recommending that the council retain the power to suspend, but only with a three-fourths vote — 12 out of 15. That safeguard was meant to guard against potential abuses of power, said Meza, the former commission chair.

The council declined to put that idea on the ballot, saying it needs more study.

Asked about that decision, Harris-Dawson said he has long had serious problems with the idea that “one set of elected officials could suspend another set of elected officials.” He suggested that a third party in another branch of government — not the council — determine whether a member merits suspension.

Under that arrangement, the council could initiate the process but leave it to a judge or other party to make the final call, he said.

“I personally think that we have checks and balances in government that should be respected,” Harris-Dawson said.

A last-minute union threat

One ballot proposal that did survive this week’s gauntlet of votes was a plan to increase, not decrease, the council’s power. That proposal, backed by Councilmember Hugo Soto–Martínez, would give the council the authority to set policy at the Los Angeles Police Department.

But even that proposal may be in danger, thanks to a dispute that has erupted between the city’s labor negotiators and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file officers.

Union leadership said this week that the league was not formally asked by management to meet and confer over various charter proposals dealing with the LAPD, including the one focused on policy. That step is legally required before such measures can be sent to voters, the union said.

City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, the city’s chief labor negotiator, told council members on Monday that his office sent three emails to various employee units asking if they wanted to confer over the charter changes. He said his office received no response from the police union.

A day later, after learning of Szabo’s remarks, the league fired back.

In a letter to council members, the union said it only received emails about charter reform that had nothing to do with policing. Those emails did not constitute a formal invitation to meet and confer about potential changes at the LAPD, the union said.

The city “did not follow the law and did not formally contact us,” union President Ricky Mendoza said in a statement.

The council voted to draft the change in LAPD policy making, pending a confidential report from the city attorney on whether the city first has to bargain with the police union. Council members cast that vote even after the union demanded that they suspend any further consideration of the proposal for the Nov. 3 ballot.

If the city attorney concludes that the LAPD ballot proposal does not require further talks, the Police Protective League will file a lawsuit to protect its members’ legal rights, union officials said.

On Wednesday, Szabo said the proposal to give the council power over LAPD policy decisions doesn’t require collective bargaining.

The proposal to give council say over policy at the LAPD wasn’t the only one focused on that department. Another measure discussed by the council would have given the police chief power to terminate alleged problem officers.

The council sent it to a committee for more study. The union said that proposal also would have required a meet and confer process.

State of play

— CITY CHARTER GRAB BAG: As noted earlier, the council voted to draft an assortment of charter amendments for the Nov. 3 ballot, including one to allow the council to give noncitizen residents the right to vote in local elections. The council also ordered up a measure doubling the amount of money allocated for the Department of Recreation and Parks, discarding an alternative plan that would have increased it by 50%. Other measures would switch the city to a two-year budget process and require a five-year plan for maintaining and upgrading city infrastructure.

— KNOWING ME, KNOWING ULA: Looking to boost apartment construction, the council backed a surprise plan to rewrite Measure ULA, the tax on high-end property sales passed by voters in 2022 and sometimes called the mansion tax. The council voted 9-5 to instruct the city’s lawyers to draft a measure exempting apartment buildings sold within 10 years of construction from having to pay the tax. Another vote will be needed to get it on the ballot.

— ZOO STORY: Membership at the Los Angeles Zoo has fallen by 23% over the past year, dropping from 36,914 in April 2025 to 28,440 in February, according to a report issued by the Los Angeles County civil grand jury. That report urged the city to create a new public-private partnership to run the facility, saying such a move will be critical for the zoo’s long-term survival.

— SHERIFF SUBPOENAS: L.A. County’s Civilian Oversight Commission is suing the Sheriff’s Department, asking a judge to order the release of records on three use-of-force incidents involving its deputies. The commission issued three subpoenas to the agency in February 2025, but according to the suit, the department has declined to fully comply.

— UNION DUES AND DON’TS: A former high-level officer with L.A.’s firefighter union has been accused of stealing more than $82,000 from a charity for injured firefighters to pay for his online gambling, his mortgage and other personal expenses. Adam Walker, former secretary of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, was charged with one count each of grand theft and forgery, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

— DOG DISASTER: The Los Angeles Police Department is facing a public outcry after its officers shot and killed the dog of a woman celebrating the New York Knicks’ NBA championship in Canoga Park. Video on social media showed the dog’s owner sobbing and hugging her dog, who was wearing a Knicks T-shirt, as several LAPD officers stood nearby.

— BASS WEIGHS IN: The Canoga Park incident prompted Mayor Karen Bass to issue a statement promising a thorough and transparent investigation into the death of Jameson, the dog killed by the LAPD. “Every life lost to violence is a tragedy, and we know that the devastating loss of Jameson will be felt by his family forever,” she said. “I have spoken directly to the Chief to ensure a full investigation and accountability for any wrongdoing.”

— OFFICE FIRE: A fire broke out at a building in Pacific Palisades where former mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt maintained an office for his crystals company. Pratt, whose home burned in the 2025 Palisades fire, called the latest blaze “very suspicious.” The fire department said it’s investigating.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to a stretch of Silver Lake Boulevard that passes under the 101 Freeway. That area is represented by Soto-Martínez.
• On the docket next week: The council meets Wednesday to take up the massive 4th & Central project, which calls for offices, retail space and nearly 1,600 units of housing on a 7.6-acre site in downtown.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Israeli settlers have vandalised and burned a mosque in the occupied West Bank village of Jaljulia, north of Ramallah. Racist slogans were scrawled on the walls by the settlers.

Last January, Spencer Pratt’s house in Pacific Palisades was razed by the raging flames of the Palisades Fire. Now, there has been what he called a “very suspicious fire” in a building in the neighborhood’s tony Highlands where he maintained an office for his crystals company.

Pratt, a former reality TV star who ran a high-profile campaign for Los Angeles mayor that he appeared to concede on Friday, talked to the California Post about the incident, which was first reported by the Palisadian-Post. According to the company’s website, the business sells precious and semi-precious crystal pendants, carvings and chains.

“I want to be careful to not compromise an arson investigation, but this incident is very suspicious,” Pratt told the California Post.

“I will wait for the investigators to make public the details, but this was no accident, and the timing of this … on the heels of all of the contentious election tomfoolery of the last two weeks, it is very suspect, indeed.”

Fire officials have not determined what sparked the blaze, and, in an interview with the Palisadian-Post, the building superintendent said he doesn’t believe the fire is related to Pratt’s campaign for mayor.

A spokesperson for Pratt did not immediately respond to phone calls and a text message seeking comment Saturday afternoon. Pratt suggested in his remarks to the California Post that he believes the fire may have been a politically motivated arson.

“This fire was not an accident, and it would not surprise me in the least if this were a reprisal for my work in opposing Karen Bass and Nithya Raman,” he said.

LAFD Public Service Officer Jamie Stewart told The Times in a phone interview Saturday afternoon that the department received a call at 6:09 p.m. Thursday reporting “a two-story commercial building with light smoke showing.” Stewart added that “arson was notified” and that LAFD arson personnel “did respond and they were on scene” of what he said was a one-alarm fire.

According to the Palisadian-Post, on Thursday, “Multiple firefighting units, including two ladder trucks, were dispatched by LAFD from Fire Stations 23 and 69 in the Palisades and Station 92 in Cheviot Hills to respond to the fire.”

The complex’s superintendent, Oscar Chang, told the local publication that the building was being remediated while waiting for a permit for work on its roof. Eyewitnesses, he told the Palisadian-Post, “saw two guys exiting the building shortly before the fire was reported.”

Chang added that he did not believe the fire was related to Pratt’s political campaign.

“One of the tenants shared a video with me of a homeless person right around the corner,” Chang told the publication, but “no one was living in the building.”

On Saturday morning, Pratt posted on social media about the Thursday fire, which tore through the Highlands Circle commercial complex at 1515 Palisades Drive. The complex was best known as the longtime home of the beloved Italian eatery Casa Nostra Ristorante, which closed a week before the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades Fire and never reopened.

In the social media posting, he referred to the Los Angeles Times as the El Segundo Times — a derisive moniker referring to the location of its building in the coastal city near LAX Airport — and his repeated allegation that the newspaper “doxxed” him by reporting in April that he was staying in Santa Barbara County, not L.A.

“The El Segundo Times were very eager to dox where my children sleep; they thought that was newsworthy,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Have they reported on the arsonists who set fire to my office in the middle of my election?”

Overhead video footage of the fire posted on the Palisadian-Post’s YouTube channel showed smoke rising from the building as firefighters stood on the roof.

A filing in February with the L.A. City Department of Buildings and Safety proposed work for “change of use from commercial to retail, 2-story” at the property. In September, the department issued a code enforcement violation for “ABANDONED OR VACANT BUILDING LEFT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.”

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser and Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Los Angeles voters have finally gotten some closure on the outstanding contests in the June 2 primary election, with City Councilmember Nithya Raman qualifying for the runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, and Measure ER, the countywide sales tax hike, prevailing after a week of ballot counting.

With nearly all the votes counted, Angelenos are now getting a more granular understanding of the strongholds built up by each of the top three mayoral candidates.

Districts that went big for Bass, Raman and Pratt

Early on in the vote-counting process, it looked like Raman might not win her Hollywood Hills-based district, which stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda. In the end, she pulled out a first-place finish, securing nearly 34% of the vote compared to Bass’ 31%, according to Paul Mitchell, vice president of the voter data firm Political Data Inc, who aggregated county precinct data into council districts. Spencer Pratt, the former reality TV personality, trailed at 27%.

Still, Raman’s strongest support came from three districts on the eastern end of the city.

Mitchell’s analysis showed Raman with 45% of the vote in Council District 13, which includes all or parts of Echo Park, Hollywood and Atwater Village. She got nearly 40% in Council District 1, which takes in parts of Highland Park, Mt. Washington and Angeleno Heights. And she scored nearly 38% of the vote in Council District 14, which includes downtown, Boyle Heights and El Sereno.

Those districts are represented by Hugo Soto–Martínez, Eunisses Hernandez and Ysabel Jurado, respectively — all members of Democratic Socialists of America, who all endorsed Bass instead of Raman, a DSA member herself. Raman placed first in all three.

Bass found her greatest strength in the three districts that cover South L.A., coming in first in all three. Her best performance was in District 8, represented by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, where she led with nearly 62% of the vote.

The mayor received 45% of the vote in Council District 10, which stretches from Koreatown to the Crenshaw Corridor, and 42% in Council District 9, which stretches from the southern edge of downtown south to 95th Street.

Pratt performed the strongest in the west San Fernando Valley. He was the top vote-getter in District 12, which is represented by Councilmember John Lee and includes Chatsworth, Granada Hills and Porter Ranch. In that district, he received 39% of the vote, Mitchell’s assessment showed.

Pratt got nearly 37% of the vote in District 3, which is represented by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield and includes Woodland Hills, Warner Center and Canoga Park.

Pratt also led the pack in the 5th District, which takes up much of the Westside and is represented by Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky. He had 30.7% of the vote, compared to Raman’s 30.6%, according to Mitchell’s analysis.

Nithya Raman attacks the L.A. ‘political machine’

It was one of tougher attacks of the mayoral primary: Raman accused Bass of engaging in “pay to play” — making decisions that benefited certain interest groups, who then spent big on her reeelection.

At her first post-election press conference Wednesday, Raman revisited that line of attack, criticizing Bass over her push to upgrade the city’s Convention Center. That $2.6 billion project was approved in the middle of the city’s financial crisis, when the council was contemplating major job cuts, Raman said.

“Downtown business groups then spent over a million dollars supporting her in her reelection. Meanwhile, the city went back to voters asking them to pay more to fix their streetlights. That is the political machine at work,” she said.

Pay to play was a potent issue in the 2005 election, when Mayor James Hahn was defeated by Councilmember Antonio Villaraigosa. At the time, federal agencies had opened corruption investigations into decisions at the city’s harbor and airports, as well as the Department of Water and Power. That year, the phrase “pay to play” was synonymous with criminal wrongdoing.

In a video acknowledging his primary defeat, Pratt said he got into the mayor’s race to “expose this corrupt machine.”

Raman stopped short of such a framing.

“It’s not corruption,” Raman told reporters at Vista Hermosa Park. “But it is evidence that the system, and how it works, particularly the influence of money in politics, has led to some very broken priorities here in the city.”

Last year, policy analysts warned the Convention Center project would be a financial drag from the moment it opens, consuming more than $100 million per year throughout the 2030s. Business groups and labor organizations pushed back, saying the project would help revitalize downtown while creating much needed construction jobs.

The Central City Assn., a downtown-based business group that supported the Convention Center upgrade, spent about $1.6 million on efforts to reelect Bass.

“Nithya Raman doesn’t think we need more jobs or visitors to our hotels and restaurants that produce the tax revenues downtown generates for the entire city, so it’s hard to support her,” said Central City Assn. President and Chief Executive Officer Nella McOsker in a statement.

Bass spokesperson Alex Stack also pushed back on Raman’s criticism, saying the mayor has been with “every group and industry to deliver results for Angelenos.”

“Nithya Raman can’t get anything done and then attacks the same groups she sought to endorse her campaign,” he said.

Pratt trailed Trump among L.A. voters

As a mayoral candidate, Pratt was dogged by questions about whether he was MAGA — shorthand for the movement that first powered President Trump into office in 2016. The Republican had received fulsome praise from Trump-aligned figures, including podcast host Joe Rogan and Greg Gutfield of Fox News.

Pratt downplayed his GOP ties. Still, there’s one area where he definitely had some similarity with Trump: His performance with L.A. voters.

Trump and Pratt both picked up roughly one out of every four votes in L.A. during their respective campaigns.

Pratt, former star of MTV’s “The Hills,” had 25.5% of the vote in L.A., according to results posted Friday. In November 2024, Trump did a little better, receiving 26.5%, county election results show.

Trump had 369,319 votes in L.A. two years ago, compared to 976,781 for then-Vice President Kamala Harris. By Friday, Pratt had 217,638 votes, compared to 247,242 for Raman and 292,115 for Bass.

It might not be fair to compare Pratt and Trump, given that there were key differences between the elections. Pratt was competing in a primary campaign, while Trump was in a general election. The candidate pool was different as well.

Trump was running in a six-way contest where Harris was his main rival. Pratt, on the other hand, was in a race featuring 13 other candidates.

Although two-thirds of those candidates were complete unknowns, four of Pratt’s rivals ran serious campaigns, amassing endorsements and spending significant amounts of money.

State of play

— TRUMP VS. LAHSA: The Trump Administration moved Thursday to block the embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority from receiving federal funds, saying the agency was badly managed and engaged in fraud. Elected officials across the city denounced the move, while nonprofit groups also voiced alarm. “This is intended to create chaos,” said Jerry Jones, the head of the Greater LA Coalition on Homelessness, which represents groups that serve the region’s unhoused.

— PAYOUT PROBE: Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said Wednesday that he believes four out of every five claims in the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history — one that resulted in a $4 billion payout by Los Angeles County— may be fake. Hochman has asked a judge to pause the sex abuse payments while he continues his criminal investigation into the plaintiffs, lawyers and therapists involved in filing the claims.

— GET READY TO RUMBLE: The showdown between Bass and Raman is going to get ugly, political experts said this week, in part because they agree on a number of big-picture political issues. Both will need to court at least some of the disaffected voters who picked Pratt in the primary.

— A SCATHING SENDOFF: As we mentioned higher up, Pratt released a video Friday that was both an acknowledgment of his primary election defeat and a vitriolic screed against Bass and Raman, his former rivals. Pratt called them “morons,” “commie animals” and “corrupt communists,” and made clear he intends to ramp up his attacks in the coming months. “I don’t have campaign laws hamstringing me now. It’s war,” he said.

— WOOING LATINOS: Bass carried far more Latino-majority neighborhoods than her rivals in last week’s primary, a Times analysis found. She carried 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods, including Boyle Heights, Pacoima and Historic South-Central. That was a 46% increase from 2022, when she won 24 Latino-majority neighborhoods in her primary against Rick Caruso and Kevin de León, the analysis found.

— EKING OUT A WIN: The countywide sales tax hike known as Measure ER prevailed this week, with late-arriving ballots pushing the number of ‘yes’ votes just above 50%. “It’s a lifesaver to carry us through the storm we’re all in,” said County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who led the push among her colleagues to get the measure on the ballot.

— AN EXPENSIVE FEE-FA: Bass was set to attend the U.S. opening game of the World Cup Friday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood after being invited by FIFA, her office said. Still, Bass wasn’t exempt from the high ticket prices she criticized earlier this year. She paid $2,735 out of pocket for her ticket, a spokesperson said. On a related note, the mayor announced more than 100 “Kick it in the Park” events where Angelenos can watch World Cup games for free.

— MORE OF THE SAME: In a break with recent history, every council member who ran for reelection this year won their race. “People see what we’re doing, and they want us to keep fighting for them,” said Councilmember Tim McOsker, who won nearly three out of every four votes in his San Pedro-to-Watts district.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to the area around 54th Street and Western Avenue, in the South L.A. district represented by Harris-Dawson.
• On the docket next week: The City Council meets Wednesday to take up a sprawling package of charter reform proposals, including a move to ranked-choice voting and a larger number of council members. Will the council send those ideas to voters or punt them for another two years? Stay tuned!

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Earth Wind & Fire’s “September,” with its nonsensical phrase “ba-dee-ya,” has been streamed more than 2.3 billion times on Spotify, more than the band’s next five songs combined (including “Let’s Groove,” “Boogie Wonderland” and “Shining Star”).

In his visually and sonically vibrant film “Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World),” drummer, DJ and director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (“Summer of Soul”) shows how the funky but aspirational band was much more than its biggest hit musically.

But he also explores, in depth, the complexities of the band’s central figure, Maurice White. A self-affirming visionary who wanted to bring hope to people, White mixed journaling with talk of spaceships and metaphysics. However, he was also traumatized by a childhood in which his mother moved to Chicago for more opportunities, leaving White in Memphis, where he was once brutally beaten by white policemen. Those scars created a man who was a distant father and equally remote with his band members at the peak, mistreating them with casual disdain until everything fell apart.

Questlove recently spoke by video call about the film, now streaming on HBO Max, which features interviews with family, surviving band members, childhood friend Booker T. Jones and a couple of fans named Barack and Michelle Obama. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What drew you to this story?

In 2020, I was DJing on the internet, live streaming and I was DJing to calm people down from thinking they’re going to die in the apocalypse. One day I did an Earth, Wind & Fire set and when I got to the fourth hour, I thought, “Yo, is this one of the most relentlessly positive groups of all time?”

I started researching the lyrics and realized this band tricked us into positivity, like getting us to eat our vegetables. I started wondering how a band like that got past the velvet rope and realized that none of it was by accident, it was all by design. Their music was so good and you start singing the lyrics and there’s an osmosis effect of positivity that gets you.

When I started this in 2023, I had a spooky feeling that the turmoil of 2020 was going to visit us again, so I thought people would want something to watch that will help them plant seeds of what to do.

Maurice White, the band’s central figure.

(Henry Diltz / HBO)

You save “September” to the end. Was it so people would see the band was more than their biggest hit or to send audiences off humming and happy?

It’s an unlikely legacy song. They have so many meaningful songs like “Shining Star,” while “September” is a leftover that was a filler song from a greatest hits album that became a career-defining song.

Initially, I was coming out the gate with “September,” just, “Let’s get this out the way.”

It took a while. Early on the Obamas weren’t part of the project. I interviewed them the morning after the 2024 elections; they were so professional and so in the moment and also helped us process the day.

We’d never gotten to see them sit next to each other and be playful and dance. And I didn’t say, “OK, let’s see how you move, dance for 12 seconds,” I was just playing something and they started dancing and the camera happened to be running.

But they put the song in context. In 2009, they said, “What’s the statement we want to make to America to show this is a new era at the White House?” And Earth, Wind & Fire was chosen to be one of the bands at the inauguration and it was that song. So my producer said, “Now we can treat ‘September’ like an encore.” We used that story to show how that song grew on its own organically.

White is a complicated guy. Was it challenging to balance everything in your narrative?

Oftentimes Black artists are seen as caricatures or one-dimensional. It’s easy to do the gotcha of “You’re so positive and metaphysical, what about this or that?” My goal is always to find a human element that you see yourself in. In Maurice’s case with his career, he did drink the Kool-Aid. But his personal life stemmed from not ever forgiving his mother for leaving him behind when he was little. When we hold anger and other emotions in, when we refuse to talk to our partners or friends — and you want people to read your minds — that’s when it becomes a problem. But I wanted to show that in a way where I don’t spell it all out. Hopefully people will make the connection of the importance of dreaming and planning and affirmations but also the importance of letting things go, like forgiving people.

New surveillance footage and other evidence from Southern California Edison confirms that a century-old, idle transmission line that the utility failed to remove ignited last year’s deadly Eaton wildfire, lawyers for insurers said in a court filing.

Video obtained from a surveillance camera at Gerrish Swim & Tennis Club in Pasadena shows two bright flashes occurring in the location of the tower holding the idle line at 6:11 p.m. on Jan. 7, 2025.

The flashes correspond to the time that Edison recorded two faults, three seconds apart, on another transmission line more than five miles away, the lawyers said in the filing, citing new data provided by the utility.

Soon after the faults, residents nearby recorded videos of a fire burning at the base of the tower, which is known as M16T1.

“Southern California Edison has spent the last sixteen months attempting to forestall the inevitable legal consequences of razing a large swath of the communities of Altadena and Pasadena to the ground,” the lawyers wrote in the filing.

“The Eaton Fire could not have occurred if SCE had simply disassembled and removed Structure M16T1,” the lawyers added.

The lawyers filing the May 18 motion represent property insurers that paid tens of millions of dollars to residents who lost their homes. Their motion asks the judge to order a judgment in the insurers’ favor that would make Edison liable for the damage under inverse condemnation, a legal doctrine in the state constitution.

Courts have ruled that the doctrine requires private utilities such as Edison to pay for property they destroy, even if they haven’t been found to have acted negligently.

Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Edison, said the company did not learn about the existence of the swim club video until the lawyers submitted it in court with their filing.

“It’s very disappointing and inappropriate that this video was not produced in discovery,” she said. “We hope that video has been turned over to the appropriate authorities.”

Dunleavy said the company believes the lawyers’ motion “is wrong on the facts and the law.”

“We’ll respond more fully in our own court filing,” she said.

Attorneys for the insurers did not respond to requests for comment.

In a February 2025 letter to state regulators, Edison said it had detected a single fault on a line more than five miles away from Altadena about 6:11 p.m. on the night the fire ignited. It said the fault caused a brief surge of electricity on its four live transmission lines in Eaton Canyon.

The company said in the letter that it was looking into whether the power surge could have caused electricity to jump to the idle line that runs parallel to the live wires through a process called induction.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, later said that a leading theory of the fire’s ignition was that the idle line became energized briefly through induction, sparking the fire.

At the same time, the company has not accepted blame for the fire, saying repeatedly that its own confidential investigation into the cause, as well as a separate inquiry by Los Angeles County and state fire officials, is continuing.

According to the court filing, evidence obtained by the lawyers shows that the company stopped using the transmission line in 1971 and designated it as “out-of-service.”

“The declaration of Out of Service shall only be used when the line … or piece of equipment is expected to remain permanently out of service,” Edison stated in an internal document known as a system operating bulletin, according to the filing.

Edison executives told The Times last year that they left the line in place because they believed it might be needed in the future.

“We have these inactive lines still available because there is a reasonable chance we’re going to use them in the future,” Shinjini Menon, Edison’s senior vice president of system planning and engineering, said then.

Dunleavy said Friday that the idle lines are kept in place for a variety of reasons, including to preserve the right of way Edison had obtained to construct them and to support future needs for more electricity as the state aims to meet its clean energy goals.

Last year, The Times reported that state regulators, knowing old electric lines posed hazards, proposed a rule in 2001 that would have forced Edison and other utilities to remove idle lines unless they could prove they would use them in the future.

Under pressure from Edison and the other companies, the rule was weakened to allow utilities to keep the unused lines in place until executives decided they were “permanently abandoned.”

In their May 18 filing, the lawyers said Edison executives had known about the risk of induction for more than 100 years. They cited a 1923 contract between Edison and Pacific Electric Railway Co. that said that “leakage of electricity or induction from or between” conductors was an inherent risk of operating multiple electrical circuits in proximity.

“That’s why SCE grounds idle lines and inspects them,” Dunleavy said of the risk.

Copies of Edison’s fault records from that night, its operating bulletin and thousands of other documents, including depositions, are sealed from public view under a protective order that Edison and lawyers for the victims asked the judge to approve last year.

The L.A. County district attorney is investigating whether Edison should be criminally prosecuted for its actions in the fire, the company said in an investor filing this year.

The fire killed at least 19 people and left thousands of families homeless.

A hearing on the lawyers’ motion is scheduled for Aug. 11 in L.A. County Superior Court.

Edison has offered to compensate victims of the fire who give up their right to sue the utility.

The company said last week that it had so far received more than 3,500 claims from about 10,000 people. It said it had extended nearly 1,900 offers to those people, totaling more than $650 million.

Many victims have refused the offers, saying they don’t fully cover their losses from the devastating blaze.

Edison has told its investors it expects to actually pay little or nothing for the fire because of a 2019 state law. The company anticipates that it will be reimbursed for its payments to victims by a $21-billion fund created by the law known as
Assembly Bill 1054.

The law shields utilities from the damages of fires sparked by their equipment as long as they follow certain requirements, including submitting a plan to state regulators for reducing the risk that their equipment sparks fires. Regulators review the plan and track whether the utilities are making progress in reducing the fire risk.

Since 2019, Edison has spent billions of dollars on making its lines safer, including by undergrounding them and installing insulated wires. Those costs continue to raise customer electric bills.

In the last 10 years, Edison’s rates increased by 101%, according to an April report by the public advocates office at the California Public Utilities Commission.

Despite the spending, Edison’s electric lines sparked more fires in 2024 than in 2019. The company blamed the increase on erratic weather that created more dried vegetation.

Proud boy expelled from Pratt’s party

Spencer Pratt’s election night party at Don Antonio’s Mexican restaurant in West Los Angeles included a few uninvited guests, and it wasn’t just members of the news media.

As Pratt spoke to reporters relegated to the sidewalk, a Virginia man convicted of joining in the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol hovered behind him, trying to horn his way into the candidate’s frame as Pratt spoke to the news cameras.

A member of Pratt’s security team grabbed the man, Jon Mellis, by the shoulders, dragged him past the TV cameras and pushed him down onto the pavement of Pico Boulevard as cars whizzed by.

Mellis — a member of the far-right Proud Boys who was pardoned by President Trump along with the other Jan. 6 rioters — wasn’t thrilled. He attempted to interrupt multiple news broadcasts to air his grievances.

“They can’t assault me like that,” Mellis said.

“They hate MAGA,” someone else in his group chimed in.

Earlier Tuesday evening, Mellis had happily mugged for one news camera after another, expressing his fealty for Pratt.

Mellis described himself as “ultra-MAGA” to The Times and, pre-shove, said he didn’t mind that Pratt was distancing himself from the MAGA movement as he campaigns for votes in the Democratic stronghold of Los Angeles.

Recent polling showed most Democrats were less likely to vote for Pratt when perceiving the candidate as tied to MAGA and Trump. Given that, it’s hardly surprising that Pratt’s security team gave Mellis and his friends the bum’s rush.

“Those guys are paid ops,” a member of Pratt’s campaign wrote on X. “They crash every single event.”

Airbnb’s election night sweep

It was a good election night for short-term rental giant Airbnb, which infused numerous city races with cash and didn’t take a single loss.

The company teamed up with the Central City Assn., a group representing downtown Los Angeles businesses, to fund ads in support of Karen Bass, city attorney candidate John McKinney and five City Council candidates.

The business group said its PAC, which received funding from Airbnb and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, spent nearly $5 million during the primary election cycle, up from $1 million during the 2024 primary and general elections.

“We have been intentional about supporting candidates and causes focused on building more housing; investing in public safety, transportation, and infrastructure; and supporting the diverse businesses that provide jobs and put paychecks in Angelenos’ pockets,” said Nella McOsker, president of the Central City Assn.

“The results speak for themselves,” said Justin Wesson, Airbnb senior manager of public policy in California. “Airbnb has arrived in L.A. politics — not as a guest, but as a permanent resident.”

In council, CCA and Airbnb supported Traci Park, who declared victory and had a big lead over her opponent; Jose Ugarte, who will probably advance to a November runoff; and Timothy Gaspar, who was leading in his primary as well, though votes are still being tallied and it wasn’t clear if he would make the majority threshold needed for an outright victory. CCA also supported Monica Rodriguez, who ran unopposed and Tim McOsker (Nella McOsker’s father), who coasted to a big lead in the primary.

Betting on whims and vibes

This is Los Angeles’ first mayoral election in the age of prediction markets, and two giants of the field, Kalshi and Polymarket, have been actively promoting betting on who will be the next mayor — and even sub-bets within the election, such as which candidate will come in second place in the primary or which two candidates will advance to the runoff.

On election night, as Spencer Pratt led Nithya Raman for second place by about 9 percentage points, both Kalshi and Polymarket had Pratt favored to move on to the runoff.

But overnight, the market shifted, with a Bass versus Raman runoff now considered more likely by bettors, probably due to a widely held belief that the remaining votes to be counted will lean more Democratic as the county tallies late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots.

Although Kalshi promotes its markets as the “odds” that a certain candidate will win, experts warn it merely represents the beliefs of bettors, who are not always the best-informed.

“This is people’s whims and vibes. You might have better luck in Vegas; at least when you bet in Vegas there’s math involved,” said Democratic consultant Mike Trujillo.

A spokesperson for Kalshi said “sharp traders on Kalshi are experts at pricing likelihoods in real time.”

Eric Zitzewitz, a professor of economics and expert on prediction markets at Dartmouth College, said that sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket are pretty accurate, and that smart money usually corrects the market.

“Historically that movement in Pratt’s price would reflect a movement in his odds,” Zitzewitz said.

As of Friday, Polymarket had a Bass-Raman runoff at 80%, and a Bass-Pratt runoff around 22%. Kalshi gave Bass and Raman a 78% chance of advancing and Bass and Pratt 22%.

Pratt currently leads Raman, but Los Angeles County is still tallying ballots and Raman has gained some ground following initial results Tuesday.

State of play

— BASS VERSUS?: Mayor Bass will advance to a runoff against either Pratt or Raman after a bruising primary campaign during which the incumbent was attacked from the left and the right.

— COALITION KAREN: A broad coalition of supporters assembled by the mayor helped her secure a spot in the Nov. 3 runoff. On her side was organized labor, including the powerful police officers’ union; business leaders, working closely with Airbnb; the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, including key elected officials; and immigrant rights groups that applauded Bass for her condemnation of federal ICE raids.

— COMEBACK COUNCILMEMBER?: Raman is still running behind Pratt, but experts say the remaining ballots to be counted should favor Democrats. “Don’t count [Councilmember] Nithya Raman out yet,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin.

— INCUMBENTS IN CONTROL: The mood was celebratory in Los Angeles City Council chambers Wednesday, as incumbents up for reelection held wide leads over their challengers as vote counting from Tuesday’s primary continued.

— FELDSTEIN SOTO OUT, MEJIA IN: Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto all but conceded that her reelection bid had failed Wednesday morning, as she lagged far behind her two well-funded challengers based on early returns. Her incumbent colleague, City Controller Kenneth Mejia, appeared to be faring better in his bid to stay in office, holding a double-digit lead over finance executive Zach Sokoloff.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program moved 20 people inside from Skid Row in Council District 14.
• On the docket next week: Proposals from the Charter Reform Commission are still being reviewed by the Rules, Elections, and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, with the next meeting scheduled for June 12.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Arsenal will celebrate their Premier League title win on Sunday in front of their supporters in north London.

“If you’d offered them at the start of the season – that they would win the Premier League title and lose the Champions League final by a penalty kick, then it is not a bad season, it is a great season and I mean a really great season,” Pat Nevin told BBC Sport.

“Let’s remember they have lost tonight but they are the Premier League winners,” Onouha added.

“They have got their parade to look forward to and I don’t think there will be any fewer people turning up tomorrow just because they have lost the Champions League final.

“I think the club is in a great position, the manager has been there for many years now and he has a bunch of players who are still very very hungry, even though they have been successful.”

The review of the Arsenal squad will come in the summer but this team has progressed so much from the one that Arteta took over in 2019.

Bukayo Saka is the last player left from that squad and Arteta said it has been a “joy” to share this season with his players and staff.

Arsenal have looked at how they could generate money in the coming transfer window by potential player sales.

There is also a group of exciting youngsters, including 19-year-old Myles Lewis-Skelly – who started in Budapest – Ethan Nwaneri, 19, and 16-year-olds Max Dowman and Marli Salmon who could emerge as first-team regulars in the coming seasons.

“It is cruel for Arsenal fans, but it is inevitable that this club win the Champions League,” European football expert Julien Laurens said on 5 Live.

“Mikel Arteta will see the positives because that is the kind of guy he is. Arsenal are getting closer and closer.”

And for Arteta, despite the pain, says he is ready to celebrate what has been a big step for his Arsenal side.

“I already know how they [the fans] feel about the team. I want to thank them for everything they’ve done for us throughout the season.”

“Difficult moments like this, they’ve been with us. It’s been a joy to see the reaction they’ve had when we’ve been able to win a league after 22 years.

“It hurts a lot for them not to win it today because I can’t even imagine what would have happened.

“We all had a huge desire to win it and tomorrow we’ll have a great day, I’m sure.”

There have been 18 winners of BGT so far – seven music acts, two dog acts, two magicians, three comedians and four dancers/dance groups.

The first winner was crowned in 2007, when opera singer Paul Potts impressed with his rendition of Nessun Dorma. The following year, 14 year-old George Sampson won after showing off his break dancing skills.

The third winner was Diversity, who are perhaps one the best known BGT acts. Their leader, Ashley Banjo, has gone on to become a TV presenter. Dancing seemed to be a big hitter with audiences, as dance group Spellbound won the following year.

In 2011, singer Jai McDowall broke the dancers’ winning streak, and the next year, the crown went to Ashleigh Baker and her dog Pudsey. But, in 2013, the winners were once again dancers, as Attraction, a dance troupe that used movement to create images and tell a story came first.

2014 saw singing group Collabro win with their musical theatre performances. Jules and Matisse, another dog act, won the next year’s series. The first magician to win was Richard Jones, who won in 2016, while in 2017, pianist Tokio Myers won next.

Comedian Lee Ridley, who went by Lost Voice Guy, won in 2018. Singer Colin Thackery won in 2019. Comedy singer Jon Courtenay won in 2020 and comedy continued to be winner in 2022 and 2023, when Axel Blake and Viggo Venn were announced as the winner.

2024’swinner was musical theatre singer Sydnie Christmas and the most recent winner was musician Harry Moulding.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg, Melissa Gomez and Sandra McDonald, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has had some pretty tough words over the years for Mayor Karen Bass and her administration.

Rodriguez, who is running unopposed in Tuesday’s election, repeatedly criticized Bass’ Inside Safe program, which moves homeless people indoors, saying it lacked financial oversight. She voted against the mayor’s budget last year, saying too much was going to Inside Safe. She was especially harsh in the wake of the Palisades fire, saying that Bass’ team botched the first few months of the recovery.

That might make her an ideal person to endorse Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running to unseat Bass in Tuesday’s primary and has leveled similar critiques. Instead, Rodriguez has emerged as an unexpected ally of the incumbent.

During the campaign, Rodriguez has appeared with Bass at events in Eagle Rock, Pacoima and even Sherman Oaks, located in Raman’s district. She popped up in a campaign flier from Latinos Por Karen Bass. And she’s been dinging Raman over everything from economic development to policies around outdoor barbecues.

Rodriguez explained her decision to support Bass in an interview, saying she views the incumbent as being far more willing to entertain opposing views than Raman — and understands that “not everyone thinks the same way.” Bass also is more consistent on the issues, Rodriguez said.

Raman, by contrast, has shifted her positions on police spending, the tax hike known as Measure ULA and even who should be the next mayor, jumping into the race after she endorsed Bass, Rodriguez said.

“I don’t know what she stands for,” she said.

Raman’s campaign declined to comment on Rodriguez’s remarks. But former former Deputy Mayor Rick Cole, a Raman supporter, said he is surprised to see Rodriguez line up behind Bass, given how critical she has been over the years.

“Monica is a self-described maverick, so it’s ironic that she’s thrown in with the establishment on this. But sometimes personalities play a role,” he said.

Rodriguez had been talked up at one point as a possible opponent of Bass in this year’s election. If Bass wins a second and final term, the mayor’s race would be wide open in 2030.

Pratt accuses Bass of electioneering

It was a small yet upbeat event staged by Bass’ reelection campaign: The mayor, accompanied by supporters chanting “four more years,” walking up to an official drop box and putting in her ballot.

That miniature rally, staged last weekend near the city’s Memorial Branch Library, was captured on video and circulated by Bass’ campaign. But it has drawn a complaint from mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, who accused the mayor of violating a state law prohibiting electioneering near a polling place or voter drop box.

In a complaint filed with the city clerk, Pratt attorney Peter McNulty said Bass and her supporters improperly solicited votes, waved campaigns signs and “engaged in blatant electioneering” near a voting location.

“Such clear violations of electioneering restrictions show a reckless disregard for the rule of law and an apparent belief that she need not comply with relevant restrictions that apply to all other candidates,” he wrote.

The Bass campaign pushed back on those allegations, saying the video features footage from two locations near the drop box. The portion that featured the Bass campaign signs was filmed 200 feet away — twice the distance required by law, said Alex Stack, a Bass spokesperson.

“Spencer is just mad that his supporters are AI cartoons and we have real Angelenos,” he said. “We follow the rules.”

Pratt’s lawyer said in his letter that he wants the city to investigate. He also filed a complaint with the state, citing the state election law that prohibits the dissemination of “visible or audible electioneering information” near a polling place or drop box.

Feldstein Soto flames Airbnb

City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto has been getting hit from both directions over the last few weeks.

On one side, a committee with at least $450,000 in funding from the Consumer Attorneys of California has been pumping out campaign ads promoting her opponent, Deputy Atty. Gen. Marissa Roy. On the other, a campaign committee heavily bankrolled by Airbnb is running ads for Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, another opponent in the race.

Feldstein Soto has countered with a television ad that highlights her office’s lawsuit against Airbnb, which accuses the company of engaging in price gouging after the Palisades fire. Staring into the camera, Feldstein Soto said Airbnb and other special interests “are spending millions to try and get rid of me.”

“They think L.A. belongs to them,” she says. “I know it belongs to you.”

Feldstein Soto had raised about $860,000 for her campaign through May 16, compared with about $680,000 for Roy and about $122,000 for McKinney. But those fundraising efforts, which face strict limits under the city’s ethics laws, have been overshadowed by the unlimited spending from Airbnb and the others.

Angelenos for Progress, a pro-McKinney committee sponsored by the Central City Assn., received at least $2.1 million from Airbnb over the last month, pouring that money into campaign videos and television ads.

Justin Wesson, senior public policy manager for Airbnb in California, said in a statement that McKinney’s campaign platform is “focused on keeping Los Angeles communities safe and vibrant, including for Angelenos who share their home and their guests that contribute to the local economy.”

In recent weeks, Airbnb has been pushing the city’s elected officials to loosen L.A.’s home-sharing regulations, by allowing owners of second homes to lease their properties on short-term rental platforms.

Airbnb has put big money into other committees, including those that support Tim Gaspar, who is running to replace Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, and Jose Ugarte, who is running to replace Councilmember Curren Price.

Team Raman woos Huang, without success

We mentioned a few weeks back that Raman supporters have been noisily demanding that mayoral candidate Rae Huang drop out of the race, saying she was siphoning left-of-center votes away Raman. Turns out Raman’s campaign was trying to persuade her to pull the plug as well.

Raman campaign strategist Jeff Millman reached out to Huang advisor Bill Przylucki earlier this month about getting the community organizer to drop her mayoral bid, according to Huang spokesperson Emel Shaikh.

The overture from the Raman camp, first reported by LA Material, took place after the May 6 NBC LA debate but before a Fox debate planned for the next week, Shaikh said.

“She never really entertained the idea,” Shaikh said.

Raman, speaking with reporters on Friday, said she knew that people from both campaigns were conferring.

“I’m sure [Huang] was aware of it as well,” she said. “And I think we were really talking about how to achieve a bold, progressive vision for Los Angeles. Both of us got into this race because we felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo.”

Millman, a veteran of L.A. politics, worked for former Mayor Eric Garcetti and was a spokesperson for Austin Beutner’s mayoral bid before his campaign ended in January. After Beutner dropped out, he moved to the Raman campaign. Przylucki is the former executive director of the progressive nonprofit Ground Game LA.

Supporters of Raman contend that Huang doesn’t have a path to victory — and could deprive Raman of a chance to compete in the Nov. 3 runoff. Asked whether she feels the same way, Raman said she is focused on getting her voters to the polls.

At this point, Raman is neck and neck with Bass and slightly ahead of Pratt, according to a poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which was co-sponsored by The Times.

State of play

— A THREE-WAY RACE: Bass, Raman and Pratt are locked in a tight three-way contest, with the mayor holding a statistically insignificant lead in the run-up to Tuesday, the latest UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll found. Bass had 26% support from likely voters, followed by Raman with 25% support and Pratt at 22%.

Bass, appearing at City Hall Thursday, said she’s not worried about failing to make the top two, telling an audience there are many polls that show different results. “I feel confident about Tuesday,” she said.

— AN EMBATTLED MAYOR: The Times took a look at Bass’ first term and the events that have put her political future in peril. Although some point to the city’s handling of the massively destructive Palisades fire, others say her troubles go much deeper.

— READING THE ROOM: While Bass has had difficulty managing the city, Raman faces a different issue: her struggle to forge working relationships with colleagues and allies. No one on the council, including those backed by the DSA, have endorsed her. Raman allies downplayed the issue, saying her strength is her independence.

— CUTTING CRIME: Even with L.A. experiencing fewer murders than at any point in 60 years, crime remains a potent issue in the mayor’s race. Pratt has been portraying the city as a lethal hellscape. Meanwhile, even some of Bass’ supporters have been shocked by how “aggressively pro-police she has been,” said former Councilmember Mike Bonin, who heads the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State, LA.

— DOWNTOWN IN THE DUMPS: Meanwhile, downtown business owners say they are struggling with crime, homelessness and aging infrastructure — all issues that have become central to the mayor’s race.

— LOVE, MOM: The mother of city controller candidate Zach Sokoloff has pumped at least $7.5 million into an independent expenditure campaign supporting him as he seeks to unseat City Controller Kenneth Mejia. The incumbent has accused the Sokoloff family of trying to buy the seat. Sheryl Sokoloff has declined to comment.

— SHERIFF SHOWDOWN: Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna is in a rematch against former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, while also facing six other opponents. (Villanueva was unseated by Luna in 2022.) The top two vote getters will head to the Nov. 3 runoff.

— WAITING FOR THE WAGE: The council finalized its plan to delay a series of minimum wage hikes for hotel and airport workers this week, ensuring that the wage won’t reach $30 until January 2030 instead of July 2028.

— D&D AND DSA: Democratic Socialists of America, whose L.A. chapter is campaigning for five candidates in the city election, took in $30,000 at a Dungeons & Dragons-themed fundraiser. The candidates took part in the action, playing fantasy characters who still keep one foot in the political world.

— CALLING THE COPS: Looking to prevent copper wire theft, the Department of Water and Power is seeking to create its own police force.

— OUT OF THE FRYING PAN: The council on Wednesday confirmed Gabrielle Amster as the latest general manager for the animal services department, which oversees the city’s network of animal shelters. Amster had been serving as vice president of shelter engagement for DocuPet, a national pet registration business, according to her resume.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? Bass’ signature initiative to tackle homelessness did not launch any new encampment operations this week.
• On the docket next week: The election, obviously! If you haven’t cast a ballot by mail, make sure you show up at a voting center!

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Five Palestinians, including three members of the same family, were killed and five others injured in fresh Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip on Sunday amid daily violations of an ongoing ceasefire, medical sources said.

One of the Palestinians was killed by Israeli gunfire in the center of Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza and his body was transferred to Al-Shifa Hospital in western Gaza City, the sources told Anadolu.

A couple and their child were also killed, and three others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the sources added.

In a separate incident, the sources said a child died from injuries sustained in an Israeli strike that targeted a police headquarters in northwestern Gaza on Saturday.

In northern Gaza, a Palestinian fisherman was moderately injured after Israeli naval forces fired shells and machine-gun fire at fishing boats off the coast of Gaza City, according to the sources.

READ: France bans Israeli Cabinet Minister Ben-Gvir over treatment of Gaza flotilla activists

Another Palestinian was injured by shrapnel from a shell fired by Israeli forces on the beach in the Al-Sudaniya area, northwest of the enclave.

In a related development, the Israeli army carried out demolition operations targeting buildings and facilities in northern Gaza. Local sources reported hearing a large explosion resulting from the demolitions.

In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Israeli forces also carried out similar demolition operations east of the city, accompanied by gunfire and artillery shelling near Bani Suheila roundabout, according to the local sources.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, over 880 people have been killed and more than 2,645 others injured in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire was announced on Oct. 10, 2025.

The agreement was meant to halt Israel’s two-year war that killed more than 72,000 people, most of them women and children, injured over 172,000 since October 2023, and caused massive destruction affecting 90% of civilian infrastructure.

READ: Israel pounds Gaza, Lebanon in daily breaches of ceasefires

With California facing increasingly destructive wildfires, experts and officials have long urged the strategic removal of dense, flammable vegetation that can erupt into particularly destructive flames from a lightning bolt or the spark of a power line.

But after years of record investment by the state in such wildfire risk mitigation, two key money sources are drying up, potentially reducing the state’s annual budget for vegetation removal by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Wildfire resiliency advocates are warning that the loss of these funds will leave the state vulnerable to devastation, and are calling on California’s next governor to take that threat seriously.

Currently, California relies heavily on two funding sources for wildfire mitigation work: A state program that charges polluters for their emissions and a climate bond approved by voters in 2024.

Late Friday, however, state officials adopted a new structure for the emissions program, called cap-and-invest, that analysts say will likely reduce wildfire mitigation funding by $200 million per year. At the same time, the governor’s latest budget proposal puts the state on track to allocate the majority of the climate bond’s $1.5 billion in wildfire prevention money within just three years.

As a result, California could go from routinely pulling more than $600 million a year from these sources, to just $150 million, according to an estimate from the Wildfire Solutions Coalition — a group of more than 80 organizations representing conservationists, business owners, fire officials and tribal leaders.

The coalition is urging the state to find new sources of funding for the work.

“We have the scientists, we have the technicians, we have the advocates,” said Michelle Decker, who is on the coalition’s executive committee and serves as president and CEO of the Inland Empire Community Foundation. “We see this problem. We can get ahead of this problem. It is a revenue issue.”

California wildfires have become increasingly costly. The 2025 L.A. fires alone caused an estimated $250 billion in damage and economic loss. Insurance companies have already paid out $22.4 billion.

In attempt to reduce the risk of damage to communities and ecosystems, the state has employed a wide range of tactics. These includes fortifying homes against wildfires, replanting fire-ravaged forests and thinning out vegetation with prescribed burns, goat grazing and manual thinning with heavy machinery to reduce the intensity of potential fires.

Research suggests wildfire mitigation work pays off. A recent analysis of 285 fires in the western U.S. found that every dollar spent on landscape projects saved about $3.75 in wildfire damage.

But as funding from cap-and-invest and the climate bond dwindle, the state must increasingly turn to Cal Fire, which devotes only a small portion of its budget to mitigation work.

“This is not an issue that can be pushed off to a timeline based solely on politics,” said Steve Frisch, a founding member of the coalition and president of the Sierra Business Council. “Fire happens whether we want it to or not.”

After a series of destructive wildfires in Northern California and the 2017 Thomas fire in Southern California, the state legislature began to explicitly focus on funding wildfire mitigation.

In 2018, lawmakers directed $200 million per year of cap-and-invest funds to wildfire mitigation projects.

As the Woolsey fire in Southern California and the Camp fire in Paradise raged later that fall, Trump accused the state of “gross mismanagement” of forest lands and threatened to cut off federal funds unless it was corrected.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the legislature, with a significant budget surplus, began earmarking even more funds, leading to a peak of $1.1 billion in wildfire mitigation investments during the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

After the surplus dwindled, the legislature opted in 2024 to put a $10-billion climate bond in front of voters — $1.5 billion of which was dedicated specifically for wildfire mitigation work.

Newsom has since pointed to this high state funding to call on the federal government to step up its own investments into forest management work.

The federal government manages 57% of all forests in the state. While the U.S. Forest Service spent $3.1 billion mitigating wildfire conditions in the state over the last few years, California spent $4.3 billion, according to the California Forest Resilience and Wildfire Task Force.

However, the state has already allocated about $600 million of the climate bond’s wildfire mitigation pot for the 2024-2025 and current fiscal years. The latest budget proposal would allocate more than $300 million for this upcoming fiscal year. While many advocates support allocating the money quickly, it leaves little for future years.

Once that money is spent, California has to pay off the $10 billion bond with interest. The result is an estimated price tag of $16 billion, paid in roughly $400 million increments every year, for 40 years, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.

As for the cap-and-invest funds, a fraught months-long debate at the California Air Resources Board on how to extend the program beyond 2030 resulted in a compromise that will cut the revenue it generates in half, the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates.

Since other projects get priority — including $1 billion every year for California’s high-speed rail project — the new proposal would “likely leave no funding” for the wildfire and forest resilience line item, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found.

Cal Fire still holds a modest annual budget for wildfire mitigation work. In the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the agency had $500 million for forest management and fire prevention that was not directly tied to cap-and-invest or the bond — up from about $65 million two decades prior.

As for the federal government, independent analyses by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and NPR found that Forest Service wildfire mitigation work is on the decline amid federal staffing cuts. The Forest Service claims the decrease in work was primarily due to poor weather conditions for activities like prescribed burns and staff being occupied with firefighting.

Both the state and federal government’s investments pale in comparison to the spending of California’s investor-owned utilities. In 2025 alone, the utilities planned to spend more than $9.2 billion on preventing their equipment from sparking the next devastating wildfire, primarily funded by Californians’ electricity bills.

Times staff writer Hayley Smith contributed to this report.

There’s been speculation for years when club sports, travel ball and showcases might make education-based high school sports obsolete or irrelevant.

The showdown is finally happening.

Ganesha High’s baseball team qualified to play in the Southern Section Division 2 championship game on Saturday against Loyola in Rancho Cucamonga, but the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported that several players and possibly their head coach, Jared Sandler, might not show up if they participate in a baseball camp in Mississippi.

Bring it on. No more playing around. Let everyone know the expectations of being part of the California Interscholastic Federation. When you agree to play in the playoffs, you can’t just decide to leave without notice. Teams and players have dreamed of playing in a championship game. Then one team wants to make a mockery of the final, Ganesha, by using backups.

The YULA and Shalhavet baseball teams were banned from participating in this year’s Southern Section playoffs and placed on probation for pulling out in the middle of the 2025 playoffs to participate in a Jewish baseball tournament in Ohio.

The Southern Section has many options on how to proceed if Ganesha goes through with its decision to violate its commitment to the playoffs, from a postseason ban to removing the school from CIF membership.

In Northern California when a tennis team decided to send its JV team for the regional playoffs, sanctions were imposed. The same penalties might be applied by the Southern Section if it happens in the section championship game.

Ron Nocetti, the executive director of the CIF, said Friday, “We were made aware of this and any decision the Southern Section makes in this matter we support.”

Let’s have this showdown. Let’s see if the Pomona Unified School District, which pays thousands of dollars to support its schools’ athletic program, is going to act and stop this nonsense. Ganesha previously was in the news because many of its players live outside the district and participate through online classes, making the baseball team as close to a travel-ball team as you can get.

As of late Friday afternoon, a Ganesha representative said that most of the players and coach were expected to participate in the championship game.

Ronald Gonzales-Lawrence, director, governmental relations for the Pomona Unified School District, released the following statement:

“At this time, circumstances surrounding Saturday’s CIF Southern Section championship game have been resolved, and Ganesha High School will participate in the championship game as scheduled.

“Questions regarding CIF bylaws, eligibility requirements, championship scheduling decisions are best directed to the CIF Southern Section.

“We are aware of questions regarding travel-related expenses associated with this matter. The district is providing transportation and support for student participation in the CIF Southern Section championship game consistent with its normal practices for student activities and athletic competition. The district is not funding flights, hotel accommodations, or any other expenses associated with the separate out-of-state event.

“The district remains committed to supporting our student-athletes and ensuring compliance with all applicable CIF, district, and school requirements.”

A large fire destroyed an apartment complex in Dallas after crews responded to reports of a gas leak. Authorities say at least three people, including a child, were killed. Other residents are unaccounted for.

At least 16 students were killed and dozens injured after a fire tore through the dormitory of a girls’ boarding school in Kenya’s Rift Valley early Thursday. Panicked parents gathered outside the school searching for their children hours after the blaze was extinguished.

May 28 (UPI) — At least 16 students were killed and 74 were injured after fire tore through a girls’ boarding school in Kenya in the early hours of Thursday.

The blaze broke out as students were sleeping, engulfing the dorm block at the school in Gilgil, 77 miles northwest of the capital Nairobi, police and the Kenya Red Cross said.

A rescue and recovery operation was still underway amid efforts to account for all the students who were in the accommodation building — thought to be about 220.

“It is a sad and distressing situation. As we speak, our officers are combing the area because some students fled in shock and fear during the night,” said police commander Masoud Mwinyi.

Mwinyi said the police department had launched an investigation and that criminal investigators and forensics officers had been dispatched to the scene.

A parent told Kenya’s NTV News that most of the students in the hospital had been injured as they tried to escape by jumping from the upper level of the dorm block because one of the doors was closed.

President William Ruto and First Lady Rachel Ruto extended their condolences to the victims’ families and friends, as well as teachers and staff at the school.

“Our hearts and prayers are with the families who have lost their beloved daughters in the tragic fire at Utumishi Girls Academy in Gilgil. No words can truly ease the pain of losing young lives filled with promise, hope, and dreams for the future. As a nation, we mourn with the parents, guardians, teachers and fellow students who are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,” Ruto wrote on X.

Education Secretary Julius Ogamba ordered the immediate closure of the school but urged the public and media to refrain from speculating on the cause of the fire until the investigation was complete.

Ogamba said the Education Ministry was in the midst of a health and safety code audit of schools that had already seen the shuttering of almost 350 boarding schools that did not meet government standards.

The crackdown was launched 18 months ago in the wake of the deaths of 21 people in a blaze in a dorm of the Hillside Endarasha Academy, a boarding school in Nyeri, 100 miles north of Nairobi, in September 2024.

The country’s boarding schools have a poor safety record with a series of deadly blazes blamed on overcrowding and breaches of basic safety measures such as keeping exits clear and windows and exits unlocked.

Some have been deliberately set, with the finger pointed at students disaffected by tough discipline regimes and living conditions.

Responding to a parliamentary committee’s request in 2021 for school arson data, the Ministry of Education reported 126 arson attacks in the first 11 months of 2020 alone.

We’re really almost there.

There is just over one week remaining before the June 2 primary for Los Angeles mayor, city attorney, city controller and eight of the 15 City Council seats.

As of Friday morning, 333,000 mail-in ballots had been cast in the race, up from 321,000 at the same time in 2022, according to the L.A. County Registrar/Recorder.

The Trump card

Spencer Pratt’s foes in the Los Angeles mayor’s race like to say that the former reality television star lacks the experience needed to run a big city.

But Pratt might have an even bigger liability — any sense that he may be aligned with President Trump.

Cygnal, a national polling group that has worked for Republican candidates, found that tying Pratt to Trump and the MAGA movement is a bigger turnoff to Democrats than his reality television past.

According to its poll of 500 likely Los Angeles voters, Pratt’s reality TV resume made 59% of overall Democrats less likely to vote for him. By comparison, tying Pratt to MAGA and Trump made 65% of Democrats less likely to vote for him, Cygnal said.

Pratt is a registered Republican and on Wednesday, Trump signaled support for Pratt in the mayoral race. On Thursday, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said the president didn’t formally endorse Pratt out of fears it would hurt Pratt’s chances in Democrat-dominant Los Angeles.

Spencer Pratt at a recent campaign block party in South Los Angeles.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Overall, including Democrats and Republicans, 24% of voters said tying Pratt to Trump made them more likely to vote for him while 50% of voters were less likely to vote for him because of it.

“Karen Bass is a fairly reserved individual, but you have to believe that backstage she was doing a happy dance after she heard Donald Trump’s comments,” said Dan Schnur, a professor of politics at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University.

The strongest pro-Pratt argument is a public safety argument that Pratt will reject “defund the police” policies and hold repeat offenders accountable.

The poll showed Bass at 25% support, Pratt at 22% and Councilmember Nithya Raman at 18%.

Big money for Blumenfield seat

It hasn’t had the same sizzle as the mayor’s race, or been as pricey as the acrimonious campaign for city controller. But the battle to replace City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield in the west San Fernando Valley is turning into yet another high-stakes, big-money contest.

In that three-way race, a handful of special interests have now put more than $1 million into various efforts to elect businessman Tim Gaspar.

The Central City Assn., a downtown-based business group, has spent the most so far, pouring more than $400,000 into mail pieces, web videos and other campaign expenses, according to Ethics Commission filings. Most of its money has been coming from Airbnb, which is looking to loosen the city’s rules on homesharing platforms, by allowing second homes to be used as short-term rentals in the run-up to the 2028 Olympic Games.

Political aide Barri Worth Girvan, who is running to replace Blumenfield, criticized Gaspar over the influx of money, saying the “West Valley is not for sale.”

“Airbnb has destroyed countless neighborhoods around Los Angeles, and they clearly believe that my opponent will allow them to do that in the San Fernando Valley,” said Worth Girvan, who works for county Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. “Let me be clear — I will not allow that in our neighborhoods.”

Gaspar, in a statement, said he’s proud of the coalition supporting him.

“Like so many Angelenos, they are ready for change and new ideas that will actually get something done. Barri is offering nothing but the same tired excuses, empty promises, and failed ideas,” he said.

Under the city’s campaign finance rules, donors cannot give more than $1,000 to the campaign of a council candidate. However, independent expenditure groups can spend unlimited amounts, as long as they do not coordinate with the campaigns of their favored candidate.

Some of the other Gaspar backers who are spending large sums include the California Alliance of Family Owned Businesses, which represents McDonald’s franchisees, the California Apartment Assn. and Working Californians, a committee sponsored by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 18, which represents employees of the Department of Water and Power.

That committee is also partly funded by Airbnb, according to the Ethics Commission website.

Ethical supes

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted this week to establish its first ethics commission.

The creation of the new body aimed at preventing and eliminating corruption in county government was mandated by Measure G, which voters approved about 18 months ago.

That measure overhauled the county charter to create an elected county executive position and increase the number of supervisors from five to nine.

It also stipulated the establishment of an ethics commission and an office of ethics compliance, helmed by an ethics compliance officer.

Polling shows the effort has broad public support, according to Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College who served on a task force that made recommendations to the supervisors.

But there was still controversy before the Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 Tuesday to support to approve the plan.

Supervisor Janice Hahn said the ethics commission was intended to be an independent body whose members were not directly selected and appointed by elected officials.

She proposed an amendment that would have made it so commissioners were chosen from a list of qualified and interested people via a lottery system.

Hahn lost that battle and the county approved the plan without the change. The county assessor, the chair of the Board of Supervisors and starting in 2028, the newly minted county executive, will each appoint one ethics commissioner.

Those three commissioners will then select the other four members of the commission, who are subject to the approval of the supervisors.

State of play

— “THE HILLS” ARE ALIVE: The Times dived deep on Spencer Pratt’s history as well as his campaign, showing how he rose from reality television villain on “The Hills” to become a leading contender for L.A. mayor.

— TRUMP BUMP?: President Trump signaled support for Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt on Wednesday, wading into the local election less than two weeks before the primary.

— FRESH PRINCE: Spencer Pratt’s campaign for Los Angeles mayor has paid the Hotel Bel-Air more than $15,000 since April 7, according to Pratt’s latest campaign finance filings.

— PROGRESSIVE BLOCK: Three members of the L.A. City Council’s progressive bloc endorsed Mayor Bass for reelection, snubbing fellow progressive Nithya Raman in the June 2 primary. The endorsements from Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez underscore fractures on L.A.’s left. All three are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, as is Raman.

— HOLLYWOOD HOPEFULS: In campaign ads, interviews and the recent televised debate, the top three contenders: incumbent Mayor Bass, former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt and Raman, have made the ongoing production slump a pivotal topic, highlighting their plans to revitalize the industry while deploying the issue to undercut one another.

— WHITHER LATINOS?: Latinos make up nearly 37% of the L.A. electorate, making their votes crucial for anyone with mayoral ambitions. That has campaigns putting out ads and social media posts in Spanish, hitting the ground in Latino majority neighborhoods and rallying for key endorsements.

— HUNGRY FOR MORE: It’s the biggest slate of democratic socialists Los Angeles has ever seen. The L.A. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America is looking to push City Hall further left by backing candidates for city attorney and four City Council seats in the June 2 primary.

— OH, AND A BUDGET: The Los Angeles City Council signed off on a $15-billion budget for 2026-27 on Thursday, preserving Mayor Karen Bass’ police hiring plan while socking away more money for potential emergencies.

— AIRPORT DELAYS?: A $30 minimum wage for hotel and airport workers will be delayed after Los Angeles elected officials persuaded a group of business leaders to drop a ballot measure that would have devastated the city budget.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program moved 69 people indoors near Chinatown this week in Jurado and Hernandez’s council districts.
• On the docket next week: The City Council will vote to approve a formal letter to remove the gross tax repeal from the November ballot.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Spencer Pratt, please give me a call.

We should talk.

You say you want to be mayor of Los Angeles, but do you really?

I know that being a candidate has rescued you from anonymity after your career in reality TV went off a cliff. You’ve got CEOs backing you, and fans raving, and you’ve managed to milk social media attention.

But at some point you might have to answer questions from the reporters you’ve been avoiding.

And if you win, you’re going to have to drive to City Hall five, six, seven days a week, and I don’t know if you saw my column a few weeks ago, but the fountain on the south lawn hasn’t worked in about 60 years. If you get elected, you better put a wrench in your lunch box, because nobody has figured out how to fix it.

So that’s the reality, pretty much. And the unions will want what they want, and the socialists on the City Council will be lying in wait, especially after President Trump blew you a cross-country air kiss and certified your MAGA credentials.

More than 30,000 people are waiting for their broken sidewalks to get fixed (I’m not exaggerating) but there’s no money, and if you hire several thousand more police officers as you’ve pledged, the city would be bankrupt for the next decade or so and you’d need to take out a loan to buy a doughnut.

So call me, like I say, because I think there’s still time to change your mind.

If you choose to proceed, and if you actually win, it might feel like you’re in a sequel to that reality show you did called “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here,” and you may end up praying the show gets canceled. The mayor’s hours are long, and everywhere you go, someone will want you to fix this problem or that, and as you wander the halls of power you’ll think back on your campaign pledges and hear the constant echo of a line from H.L. Mencken:

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

Can I confess something?

I’m feeling guilty about all of this.

Not to sound presumptuous, but I feel partly responsible for the fact that you’re in contention for the job.

Like you, I’ve been calling out issues with the management of L.A., and I’ve been doing it for years. But I had the good sense not to run for mayor.

Why’s that?

Because unlike you, I know the fixes aren’t as easy as we’d like them to be.

When Karen Bass was running the first time, I had a long talk with her about her homelessness plan, among other things. At the end of the day, she asked for my input.

I reminded her that as much as people would like for the city’s top elected official to immediately clear the streets, a mayor is limited by shared power with the City Council.

By drug epidemics and untreated mental illness that are largely under county authority.

By uncertain funding from the nation’s capital.

By global forces that transformed the economy and created staggering levels of inequality that are made all the worse by the high cost of housing.

Bass was aware of all that, but said that having worked in Sacramento and D.C., and having built relationships with county supervisors, she’d be able to build better systems and get better outcomes.

So how has she done?

Not great. And then there’s the fire.

As I’ve said before, leaving the country despite forecasts of elevated wildfire risk was probably the worst mistake of her political career.

I don’t need to remind you of that. Having lost your house in the Palisades, you know that Bass badly underreacted, then stumbled on the rebuilding, and then had a hand in downplaying the Fire Department’s failure to adequately deploy and extinguish the fire that became an inferno.

To summarize, she’s left herself wide open to a challenge.

And she probably can’t believe how lucky she is that you might be her November competition, if the two of you bounce out Councilmember Nithya Raman and the other candidates in the June 2 primary.

I don’t hold it against you that you haven’t worked in government or politics before. These days, a lot of voters prefer outsiders. But it might have helped if you’d done something of purpose at some point in your life, like run a successful business or volunteer at a food bank. Were you junior high class president, or were you in the Boy Scouts? Anything could help.

Not that being the boyfriend and later the husband of someone on an MTV reality show called “The Hills,” which chronicled the work of a woman who went from “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” to an internship at Teen Vogue, can’t prepare a young man for statesmanship.

In this culture, you could ride that all the way to the White House.

But the flimsy resume could explain, Spencer, why you’ve been taking so many social media-fueled potshots at Bass without offering anything of substance.

Let’s arrest drug zombies.

OK, then what?

I’d advise you to study the primer by my colleagues Doug Smith and Andrew Khouri on what you can and can’t do about homelessness as a mayor in L.A. Clearly, you’ve got a lot of boning up to do. In fact, I’m reminded of a line by a Philadelphia columnist years ago, when he said of a politician who wasn’t up to the job: He’s been standing in shallow water for so long, he doesn’t realize he can’t swim.

If I were you, I’d consider the fact that President Trump made the mistake of promising easy fixes. He was going to deliver a massive infrastructure program. He was going to deliver healthcare reform that was better and cheaper for everyone. He was going to lower consumer prices on Day One, and here we are, with millions of people wondering how they’re going to pay their bills while Trump rigs it so he doesn’t have to pay the IRS.

All that being said, I’m glad you decided to run, because elected officials need constant reminders that their jobs are not secure, even when the challengers are way in over their heads. I’d almost like to see you win, because that’s one reality show I’d be sure to watch.

And I say this despite the fact that you once told your talk show buddy Alex Jones — who insisted that 9/11 was an inside job and that the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children was a hoax — that melting ice caps are overrated. Or, as you explained it to Jones, “we’ve all seen footage of the polar bears swimming to new pieces of ice.”

When the general election rolls around, and the ice begins to break, will you know how to swim?

steve.lopez@latimes.com