Chris Bray walks us through the tortured logic that leads the venerable Los Angeles Times to attribute the demographic slide evident in Los Angeles County to the Bad Orange Man:
Los Angeles County is bleeding people, sliding into population decline faster than anywhere else in the country. But don’t worry, the local newspaper is on the case!
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After a careful examination of the matter, the Los Angeles Times is able to assign blame to — wait for it! — a certain VERY BAD ORANGE MAN.
While conservative critics of L.A. have rushed to frame the population loss as a “mass exodus” of people fleeing rampant crime, high taxes and inadequate services, the reality is more complex.
Los Angeles is by far the nation’s largest county, with 9.7 million people — nearly double the next largest, Cook County, Ill. In that sense, it’s not surprising that it saw a severe drop in population after the Trump administration rolled out a flurry of executive orders and new legislation aimed at restricting immigration. L.A. County is a historic hub for immigrants from Latin America and Asia, and a place where 1 in 3 residents is an immigrant.
If you read the story, you’ll see the name Trump several times, like a coven chanting the name of an enemy around the caldron. But definitely for sure don’t listen to those bizarre right-wing conspiracy theories about “high taxes and inadequate services”, noooooooo, that’s a huge lie, trust the wisdom of the local newspaper.
After a large and historic neighborhood ceased to exist because of a wildfire that rekindled after the Los Angeles Fire Department didn’t fully extinguish an earlier fire in dense, dry hillside brush, CNN produced a long story on the disaster of the city’s firefighter staffing. Small sample, describing a memorandum from then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley: “In the memo, which the city has since removed from its website, Crowley wrote that the city’s population had grown from about 2.5 million in 1960 to nearly 4 million in 2020. Yet the city has fewer fire stations today than it did back then, even as firefighters respond to a call volume that has quadrupled.”
A little less than a year and a half after that fire, the Los Angeles Police Department looks like this:
The last time a mean old white male Republican was the mayor, which is very bad and hateful, the city built up the police department, with a goal of having 10,000 officers. They actually hit that number in 2013, during the opening moments of the reign of Mayor Yogapants, then began shrinking soon after. Now we have very wise and progressive leaders, so the city is good.
[…]
So taxes are soaring, fire and police staffing are down, fat dumb communists want to crush basic city services a lot more to free up plenty of social justice cash, and some MEAN RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY THEORISTS bizarrely claim that people are leaving Los Angeles because they pay high taxes for increasingly poor services. My goodness, these people will just believe anything! OBVIOUSLY WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING IS THAT DONALD TRUMP IS VERY BAD, the professional journalists explained.
And at the same time, every vacant lot, every failed shopping center and every closed supermarket is being plowed under for the construction of cheaply built, three and four story high density crackerbox tenements, being sold as “condominium homes” for just a shade under a million bucks a pop. Former shopping malls are being turned into 15 minute cities with thousands of such dwellings. Near my house, a former nursery site occupying roughly three of the neighborhood lots has been converted into forty eight condominium homes (starting at 700K.) Traffic has always been bad here and now it’s a nightmare. It’s not uncommon to have to wait through two or three stop light cycles to get through every intersection on a cross town trip, even here in the suburbs. And this because there is a “housing shortage.” Meanwhile the vans keep leaving for the east.
JWM
Comment by jwm — April 13, 2026 @ 12:47
People outside California may wonder why every sensible person isn’t calling U-Haul and getting the heck out of there, but life is so much more complicated than glib social media posts and clever memes. I’m watching my beloved country heading quickly down the drain, but even if I had the financial wherewithal to escape, my life, my family, and my friends are (mostly) still here. If I were thirty years younger, I’d certainly be looking for job opportunities in the US and downsizing everything in anticipation of leaving while it’s still possible.
Comment by Nicholas — April 13, 2026 @ 14:08
I get that. A few years back my wife and I were considering a move up to a small town in central CA. We could have sold the home here, and bought up there with some left over. But we’re both in our 70’s. She has family, but I have only a nephew and niece here whom I rarely see. But we have friends and connections that go back for over fifty years, now. We’re both active in the local Art Association, and there was nothing of the kind up there. The thought of starting everything over from scratch with no friends, no connections was the deal breaker. So we stay. And we’ll finish out our days here. I complain (don’t we all), but the decline, and rot are inescapable. Part of this age and time. God Grant me the serenity, and all that.
JWM
Comment by jwm — April 13, 2026 @ 17:47