{"id":101862,"date":"2026-04-13T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T09:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=101862"},"modified":"2026-04-12T18:42:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T22:42:23","slug":"trump-is-behind-the-falling-population-of-la-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/04\/13\/trump-is-behind-the-falling-population-of-la-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump is behind the falling population of LA County!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbray.substack.com\/p\/giant-impenetrable-mystery-about\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Bray<\/a> walks us through the tortured logic that leads the venerable <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> to attribute the demographic slide evident in Los Angeles County to the Bad Orange Man:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Los Angeles County is bleeding people, sliding into population decline faster than anywhere else in the country. But don&#8217;t worry, the local newspaper is <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/7ukOt#selection-2947.0-2963.454\" target=\"_blank\">on the case<\/a>!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_101863\" style=\"width: 863px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LA-population-is-shrinking-2026-04.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-101863\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LA-population-is-shrinking-2026-04-853x356.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"853\" height=\"356\" class=\"size-large wp-image-101863\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LA-population-is-shrinking-2026-04-853x356.jpg 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LA-population-is-shrinking-2026-04-480x200.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LA-population-is-shrinking-2026-04-150x63.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LA-population-is-shrinking-2026-04-768x321.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LA-population-is-shrinking-2026-04.jpg 1284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-101863\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot<\/p><\/div>\n<p>After a careful examination of the matter, the <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> is able to assign blame to \u2014 wait for it! \u2014 a certain VERY BAD ORANGE MAN.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>While conservative critics of L.A. have rushed to <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/o\/7ukOt\/https:\/\/www.foxbusiness.com\/economy\/los-angeles-leads-nation-massive-population-exodus-breaking-point-hits-golden-state\" target=\"_blank\">frame the population loss<\/a> as a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/o\/7ukOt\/https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/30\/us-news\/los-angeles-suffered-a-massive-population-drop-last-year\/\" target=\"_blank\">mass exodus<\/a>&#8221; of people fleeing rampant crime, high taxes and inadequate services, the reality is more complex.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Los Angeles is by far the nation&#8217;s largest county, with 9.7 million people \u2014 nearly double the next largest, Cook County, Ill. In that sense, it&#8217;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.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you read the story, you&#8217;ll see the name Trump several times, like a coven chanting the name of an enemy around the caldron. But definitely for sure don&#8217;t listen to those bizarre right-wing conspiracy theories about &#8220;high taxes and inadequate services&#8221;, noooooooo, that&#8217;s a huge lie, trust the wisdom of the local newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>After a large and historic neighborhood ceased to exist because of a wildfire that rekindled after the Los Angeles Fire Department <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/i\/broadcasts\/1DGleEeqNkEJL\" target=\"_blank\">didn&#8217;t fully extinguish<\/a> an earlier fire in dense, dry hillside brush, CNN produced a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2025\/01\/14\/us\/la-fire-department-resourses-understaffed-invs\" target=\"_blank\">long story<\/a> on the disaster of the city&#8217;s firefighter staffing. Small sample, describing a memorandum from then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley: &#8220;In the memo, which the city has since removed from its website, Crowley wrote that the city&#8217;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A little less than a year and a half after that fire, the Los Angeles Police Department <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/lapd-shrinks-9000-officers-fewest-cops-generation-rcna98672\" target=\"_blank\">looks like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LAPD-has-fewest-in-a-generation-2026-04.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LAPD-has-fewest-in-a-generation-2026-04-853x135.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"853\" height=\"135\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-101864\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LAPD-has-fewest-in-a-generation-2026-04-853x135.png 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LAPD-has-fewest-in-a-generation-2026-04-480x76.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LAPD-has-fewest-in-a-generation-2026-04-150x24.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LAPD-has-fewest-in-a-generation-2026-04-768x122.png 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LAPD-has-fewest-in-a-generation-2026-04-1536x244.png 1536w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LA-Times-LAPD-has-fewest-in-a-generation-2026-04.png 1726w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The last time a mean old white male Republican was the mayor, which is very bad and hateful, the city <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/archives\/la-xpm-1993-07-15-me-13253-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">built up the police department<\/a>, with a goal of having 10,000 officers. They actually <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/la-xpm-2013-jan-08-la-me-lapd-size-20130108-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">hit that number<\/a> in 2013, during the opening moments of the reign of <a href=\"https:\/\/kfiam640.iheart.com\/content\/2021-03-26-where-was-mayor-yoga-pants-\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mayor Yogapants<\/a>, then began shrinking soon after. Now we have very wise and progressive leaders, so the city is good.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>So <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/news\/business\/article312759318.html\" target=\"_blank\">taxes are soaring<\/a>, 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 <em>claim<\/em> that people are leaving Los Angeles because they pay high taxes for increasingly poor services. My goodness, these people will just believe <em>anything<\/em>! OBVIOUSLY WHAT\u2019S REALLY HAPPENING IS THAT DONALD TRUMP IS VERY BAD, the professional journalists explained.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;t worry, the local newspaper is on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[84,28,53,13],"tags":[35,319,1037,750,213],"class_list":["post-101862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-california","tag-demographics","tag-donaldtrump","tag-losangeles","tag-newspapers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-quW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101865,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101862\/revisions\/101865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}