California is underwriting its grand progressive experiment with money produced by the very private-sector dynamism its politicians so often scold. The cash is pouring out of an artificial-intelligence boom centered in Silicon Valley, and Sacramento appears tempted to treat the windfall as proof that its governing model works. It does not.
California still offers the nation’s most visible homelessness crisis, crumbling infrastructure, scarce and ruinously expensive housing, high taxes, and a regulatory maze that sends businesses and residents looking for the exits. I voted with my feet and moved to Nevada a decade ago. Yet California can govern badly and remain rich because AI may create enough private wealth to keep financing public failure.
That is the paradox: AI is not vindicating progressive governance. It is bailing it out.
I spent more than three decades in Silicon Valley investing in technology and life-sciences companies. When a transformative technology arrives, the wealth it creates can swamp the assumptions that came before it. AI looks like one of those moments, and the wealth is already piling up in California.
In 2025, California companies captured 63% of all U.S. startup funding, according to Crunchbase. New York, the runner-up, received 11%. Among AI companies, California’s share of U.S. seed-through-growth funding was about 80%.
The San Francisco Bay Area alone raised roughly $122 billion in AI funding in 2025, more than three-quarters of the U.S. total. Bay Area companies also captured 45% of all U.S. seed funding, up from 33% in 2024 and 28% in 2023. People and businesses may be leaving California, but the capital financing America’s next technological revolution is somehow still moving toward the state that keeps warning capitalism to behave.
The fiscal payoff is simple. AI companies create equity value. Founders, employees, and investors realize capital gains. Engineers and researchers receive large compensation packages. Successful companies hire workers and buy goods and services. California taxes nearly every step, then calls the proceeds foresight.
The tax code makes the dependency worse. Sacramento leans heavily on personal-income taxes, and a disproportionate share of that revenue comes from high earners whose income includes stock compensation and capital gains. When Silicon Valley booms, the treasury fills fast — allowing politicians to mistake a cyclical jackpot for moral affirmation.
California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has already pointed to AI enthusiasm, rising technology stocks, and higher tech-sector compensation as important sources of recent income-tax strength. In its May 2026 fiscal update, the office raised its forecast for the state’s three largest taxes by roughly $25 billion across the budget window. Almost all of that improvement came from stronger personal-income-tax expectations — not from a sudden outbreak of competence in Sacramento.
This cycle is still young. Many AI companies will fail, but venture capital does not need every investment to work. A handful of exceptional companies can pay for a long list of disappointments. California needs only enough winners to generate extraordinary taxable wealth — and enough political restraint not to spend it as if the laws of markets have been repealed.
Silicon Valley’s advantage is not easy to copy. Northern California has the technical talent, universities, venture capital, experienced founders, lawyers, executives, investment bankers, and institutional memory needed to build and finance technology companies. Those networks took decades to develop, not one legislative session and a press conference.
But a technology boom is not a governing philosophy. AI will not clear homeless encampments, build housing, repair roads, or make public agencies competent. It may simply generate enough revenue to let California avoid those choices while expanding the government that failed to solve them.
The money will not arrive in a straight line. I lived through several technology and investment cycles. Markets overshoot. Valuations collapse. Capital moves. The internet changed the world; it did not repeal gravity.
California’s tax system magnifies both sides of the cycle. When technology stocks rise and high earners realize gains, revenue surges. When markets fall, the money vanishes quickly. Sacramento would be reckless to turn an AI windfall into permanent spending obligations, though recklessness has rarely needed much of an invitation.
The state should treat this moment as a narrow opportunity to repair its foundations. AI-generated revenue should go toward basic infrastructure, housing reform, public safety, and homelessness programs with measurable outcomes. California should also remove the regulatory barriers that punish the entrepreneurs, companies, and capital producing the windfall in the first place — a radical notion in a state that often treats wealth creation as suspicious until the tax bill arrives.
More money is not better government. Capital creates options; it does not guarantee results. Leadership, strategy, execution, and accountability still matter. Government deserves the same scrutiny investors apply to a management team entrusted with scarce resources — especially when the management team has already misplaced the basics.
California may be rich enough to survive bad government. That is not an argument for the California model. It is a measure of how much private ingenuity the model can squander and still demand applause.
The private sector is creating the wealth. Sacramento’s test is whether it can stop confusing a boom with competence and turn a temporary windfall into durable public results. If it cannot, California’s AI miracle will become the strangest of monuments: private genius underwriting public fantasy while the state’s most basic failures remain in plain sight.
***
Guy Paul Nohra is co-founder of Alta Partners, a leading Venture Capital firm in life sciences, funding over 150 companies in the healthcare/life sciences sector since 1996 through eight Venture Capital funds.

image_fb6b77c9

California Is Funding Its Wildest Dreams On Shaky Fiscal Ground

artificial intelligence

california

homelessness

opinion

silicon valley

state budget

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is blaming President Donald Trump for a recent surge in homelessness that has left thousands more people living on the streets of the so-called City of Angels.
<a href="https://www.foxla.com/news/los-angeles-homelessness-expected-rise-3-5-sources-say-ahead-lahsa-count">FOX11 reported</a> that homelessness in America&#8217;s second-largest city is expected to rise by about 3.5% when the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority releases new data Friday.
Ahead of Friday&#8217;s official release, FOX11 reported that the city estimates roughly 45,000 people are living on its streets—an 8% increase from last year—underscoring Los Angeles&#8217; ongoing struggles with homelessness and quality-of-life issues.
The looming report also undercuts Bass&#8217; campaign narrative that homelessness has significantly dropped under her rocky tenure. Her signature Inside Safe initiative has spent <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-04-05/under-la-mayors-300-million-homeless-program-40-have-returned-to-street">more than $300 million</a> to move roughly 5,800 people into interim housing, mostly hotels and motels, but about 40% have since returned to the streets, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/could-spencer-pratt-be-l-a-s-outsider-hero">The Daily Wire</a> reported. Just one in four participants has reached permanent housing, at a cost of more than $200,000 per permanent placement.
To explain the recent surge, Bass turned to her party’s favorite political punching bag: President Trump. 
&#8220;For two years straight, we drove down homelessness by historic margins — but as expected, last year our efforts ultimately couldn’t keep up with policies and funding cuts on the federal and state levels,&#8221; Bass said, according to FOX11. &#8220;The Trump administration has driven up the cost of gas, groceries, and rent — pushing more families to the edge — and slashed critical safety net funding.”
The embattled mayor, who is facing a stronger-than-expected challenge from her left flank, also took aim at Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom&#8217;s handling of the state budget.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
WATCH: Inside sources tell me L.A.’s homeless count is expected to rise… ending two straight years of reported declines.
The official numbers won’t be released until Friday, but multiple sources familiar with LAHSA’s latest count say homelessness is trending upward in Los… <a href="https://t.co/sUYPMVcN54">pic.twitter.com/sUYPMVcN54</a>
— Matthew Seedorff (@MattSeedorff) <a href="https://x.com/MattSeedorff/status/2080162994324144515?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 23, 2026</a></blockquote>
“And, last year’s state cut of over $70 million severely impacted our work to keep people housed and get more Angelenos off the streets,” she said in a <a href="https://x.com/MattSeedorff/status/2080161071936221606?s=20">statement</a>. “The lack of adequate services continues to be a real problem and a contributing factor to people cycling in and out of homelessness, and these services are controlled by LA County.” 
The latest figures come as little surprise to many Los Angeles residents, including billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, who unsuccessfully challenged Bass in the 2022 mayoral race. “I doubt anyone living in LA is surprised,” he <a href="https://x.com/RickCarusoLA/status/2080334679530758318?s=20">said.</a>  
Some residents questioned the city&#8217;s count, arguing the actual homeless population is far higher than reported.
“I don’t listen to the numbers, my eyes are better than numbers,” one man <a href="https://x.com/RickCarusoLA/status/2080334679530758318?s=20">told FOX11</a>, in a report showing littered streets, vandalized buildings, and open drug use. 
Leftist L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman will face off against Bass in the November mayoral election after <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/spencer-pratts-race-has-been-called-see-the-results">troves of late-arriving ballots</a> locked Republican Spencer Pratt out of the race.
Pratt’s viral campaign ads tapped into the reality TV star’s savvy social media background to push a message of change in a city plagued by chronic challenges. His platform captivated nationwide attention but ultimately fell flat in a deep-blue city dominated by leftists. 
His election defeat, however, has not stopped the Palisades wildfire victim from speaking out against the city’s leadership.  
“SHOCKER&#8230;the LA homeless count is going UP!” Pratt <a href="https://x.com/spencerpratt/status/2080284771846918154?s=20">said</a> Thursday. “I warned you guys: the more homeless people, the more money Nithya Raman and Karen Bass can launder through their corrupt NGOs. You will NEVER fix this problem by electing people who profit off it.”

US-HOMELESS-CENSUS-LOSANGELES

L.A. Mayor Blames Trump For City’s Homelessness Surge

Democrats

donald trump

gavin newsom

Housing

Housing Crisis

inflation

karen bass

los angeles

News

nithya raman

politics

President Trump

Rick Caruso

spencer pratt

The man who breached security and confronted “Today” show host Craig Melvin in the studio on Thursday was supposed to be behind bars on felony charges.
NBC News confirmed in a statement on Thursday that Andrew Truelove, 41, “entered an unauthorized area in a vestibule near Studio 1A” at Rockefeller Center Plaza around 9 A.M. and approached Melvin, allegedly using racial slurs and asking for TV host Al Roker. He was quickly detained by security.
“An individual entered an unauthorized area in a vestibule near Studio 1A. The person approached anchor Craig Melvin, who alerted security,” the statement says. “The individual was detained and taken into custody by law enforcement without further incident. There was no altercation, and no one was injured.”
“Today is cooperating fully with law enforcement as they investigate the matter. NBC and Today take the safety and security of our employees, talent, staff and guests extremely seriously,” the statement continued. “We are reviewing the incident and our security protocols and remain committed to providing a safe and secure environment for everyone who works at and visits our studios.”
Court records obtained by <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2026/07/16/today-show-alleged-intruder-andrew-truelove-has-criminal-history/">TMZ</a> show that Truelove shouldn’t have been walking free in the first place. The “Today” show trespasser recently pleaded guilty to felony criminal mischief after being accused of damaging multiple vehicles, the outlet noted. He was sentenced in June to six months in jail and five years of probation. 
Truelove is a repeat offender with three pending criminal cases in New York, including charges of misdemeanor assault, reckless endangerment, criminal trespassing, and trespassing. He pleaded not guilty in all those cases.
The Los Angeles Times did a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-23/from-a-one-way-flight-to-sleeping-in-a-parking-lot-diary-of-a-california-dream-gone-sour">lengthy profile</a> in 2023 about Truelove being homeless shortly after arriving in Los Angeles. The piece details how he moved from Virginia to California after getting off probation and serving time in prison on the East Coast, noting how he has PTSD and bipolar disorder. The outlet also mentioned one of Truelove’s previous crimes, which involved stealing memorial signs erected for Sandy Hook school shooting victims. LA Times reported that Truelove believed the event was a hoax.  
For his latest trespassing incident, Truelove was charged with hate crime-burglary, hate crime-menacing, hate crime-criminal trespass, and harassment at an arraignment on Friday. The judge set bail at $10,000.
Roker addressed the incident on social media, writing, “A really heartfelt thank you to all who reached out over the last 24 hours to check in on my brother, @craigmelvinnbc. We are both okay. It’s moments like these that serve to pull us together. You all, like Craig, said: &#8216;You come after one of us, you come after all of us.&#8217; We’ll talk about it this morning on @todayshow.”

Today show

Records Reveal ‘Today Show’ Trespasser Should Not Have Been Out On The Streets

crime

new york city

TODAY Show

Our nation is preparing to return to the moon, but not for another one-off flag-planting mission. It is part of a long-term strategy to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/science/nasa-awards-astrobotic-firefly-intuitive-machines-lunar-lander-contracts-moon-2026-06-30/">build the infrastructure</a> needed for humans to live, work, and eventually establish a permanent presence in one of the most hostile environments imaginable.
Just last week, NASA awarded nearly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/science/nasa-awards-astrobotic-firefly-intuitive-machines-lunar-lander-contracts-moon-2026-06-30/">$600 million</a> to advance that mission, while <a href="https://spacenews.com/musk-says-spacex-focus-is-on-the-moon-rather-than-mars/">Elon Musk announced</a> that SpaceX&#8217;s near-term focus has shifted from Mars to the moon. Both share the same objective of building the infrastructure necessary for a permanent human presence there.
America understands that preparation determines success. We instinctively apply that principle when sending astronauts into space, yet abandon it when preparing America&#8217;s homeless veterans for life after military service. It doesn&#8217;t take a rocket scientist to understand something NASA and SpaceX both know: success doesn&#8217;t begin with the launch; it begins with careful planning.
Long before astronauts ever leave Earth, engineers build the training, logistics, communications, supply chains, contingency plans, and eventually, base camps that make the mission possible. They aren&#8217;t launching astronauts with hope as a strategy; they&#8217;re building the infrastructure for success before the missions even launch. Whether it&#8217;s NASA or SpaceX, the principle is the same: sustainable success requires building systems that make success possible.
Now, extend this principle to our veterans. In the fall of 2024, after I <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/EYsTdqyJlCk?si=yuj4kIyEoKHpNWD7">discussed America&#8217;s homeless veterans crisis</a> on Fox News, Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859601923453722936">responded on X</a> with a simple observation: &#8220;Wow, this is messed up.&#8221; Millions of Americans would likely agree. The injustice is obvious. The challenge is having the vision and resolve to build a system that fixes it.
So why do we treat our homeless veterans any differently than a mission to the moon? We should show the same forethought when preparing America&#8217;s veterans for success as they transition to their next mission after completing one of the nation&#8217;s most demanding jobs — military service.
Many vets come home carrying invisible wounds: trauma, addiction, mental health struggles, and the sudden loss of the structure and purpose the military provided. California is <a href="https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2025/01/hud-pit-count-2024/">home to roughly 28% of America&#8217;s homeless veterans</a>, making it the epicenter of a crisis that demands a new approach. Yet instead of building the comprehensive support infrastructure they need to thrive, we too often launch them into society with nothing but temporary shelters and unreliable services. “Housing first” sounds compassionate until you realize you cannot house your way out of addiction or untreated trauma.
As I detail in my book, &#8220;The Race to Save California,&#8221; the Golden State’s homelessness crisis proves that this isn’t primarily a housing shortage, nor is it a funding shortage — it’s a failure of diagnosis, accountability, and incentives. “Compassion” policies that tolerate open drug use and disorderly encampments are just abandonment dressed up as empathy. We warehouse people in misery instead of providing the structure and infrastructure they desperately need.
We’ve spent tens of billions with results <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-california-spending-24-billion-it-2019-homelessness-increased-what-happened">visibly worsening</a> because the system rewards the haphazard management of the crisis, not the ending of it, celebrating meaningless metrics of so-called “success,” like the number of beds constructed. Can you imagine if the space exploration industry treated these lunar projects the same way? Imagine NASA endlessly funding new thermal protection tiles that keep burning up on faulty spacecraft that never reach the moon, then proudly touting the huge number of new tiles produced for those perpetually faulty rockets, as though it’s some impressive metric of success. It’s absurd, and serious people recognize that.
California carries the heaviest burden of homeless veterans in the nation. These are disciplined, mission-focused Americans who once operated with clear rules, camaraderie, and purpose. Leaving them on the streets isn’t just a tragedy — it’s a colossal waste of talent and a moral failure.
The solution isn’t more of the same expensive, ineffective housing programs. It’s Basecamps — structured, secure environments modeled on the very discipline that made these veterans successful in the first place, and costing a fraction of the failed programs currently preferred by greedy politicians and NGOs.
Envision drug-free stability with clear rules, accountability, treatment programs, and an atmosphere of community, camaraderie, and contribution. This would provide essential social and psychological infrastructure. Meanwhile, cafeterias, laundry, chapels, life skills training, and workforce pathways would offer physical and occupational infrastructure. And within this Basecamp community, residents — especially veterans — can take advantage of the opportunity to mentor others and pay it forward as they accomplish their own successful transitions back into society.
This blueprint isn’t glamorous, lucrative, or politically correct, but it works. It treats the whole person: addiction, mental health, lack of purpose, and the need for both structure and community. Transition into taxpayer-funded housing without personal transformation is just another revolving door back onto the streets.
NASA and SpaceX understand that lasting success in the most unforgiving environments doesn&#8217;t happen by accident. If we can meticulously plan basecamps and support systems for the Moon, then we can certainly do the same for the heroes who defended this country here on Earth.
No more warehousing misery. No more accepting expensive failure as the status quo. It’s time to apply the same foresight, discipline, and results-oriented mindset to our homeless veterans that we apply to space exploration.
America is building the infrastructure to sustain life on the Moon. It&#8217;s time we built the infrastructure to restore the lives of those who defended ours.
***
Kate Monroe is the CEO of VetComm, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, and author of The Race to Save California and The Race to Save America.

Veteran Homeless Encampment in Westwood

We Prepare Astronauts For Space, Why Not Veterans For Civilian Life?

DW Opinion

Veterans

The final FIFA World Cup game hosted in Seattle ended in the disappointing loss of the United States to Belgium. But for Seattle, a city so overcome by drug addiction, mental illness, and street-level homelessness, the weeks-long event was a smashing success.
Downtown sparkled as it welcomed visitors from around the world for the six games it hosted at Lumen Field, rebranded Seattle Stadium for the tournament. In addition to exciting games, soccer fans enjoyed a city with noticeably cleaner streets and few visible signs of homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness that are familiar to residents.
But this is not what long-term success looks like.
Mayor Katie Wilson and her team did not clean up the city. They simply moved the problem elsewhere, like a child shoving his toys under the bed when told to clean his room.
Under Wilson’s direction, the homeless were swept out of downtown and pushed into surrounding neighborhoods and minority communities already struggling with crime and disorder.
Journalist Jonathan Choe <a href="https://fixhomelessness.org/?s=chinatown&amp;from=&amp;to=&amp;author=&amp;orderby=relevance&amp;site-current-site=1">regularly reports</a> on the plight of Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, an Asian American community overwhelmed by open-air drug use and stolen-goods markets. Here, many businesses are boarded up, and those that have survived are quickly losing money. Merchants <a href="https://fixhomelessness.org/2026/henrys-taiwan-kitchen-the-real-cost-local-business-owners-pay-for-seattle-homelessness-policies/">report</a> ongoing theft and crime. Parks meant for children and families are instead filled with drug users and paraphernalia. Residents have <a href="https://fixhomelessness.org/2025/seattle-mayor-makes-moves-to-improve-public-safety-in-chinatown/">pleaded</a> with city officials for help, but there has been little response. Choe calls it “the city’s human dumping ground.”
Seattle is not the first to engage in these deceptive city-cleaning tactics. Hiding the homeless is a common occurrence in cities across the nation when they host large events or important national and international figures. The Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-homelessness-housing-503d6dd10b274ab1bc5e63782d5e6f0e">noted</a> such instances in New Orleans ahead of the 2025 Super Bowl, Chicago ahead of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and Atlanta ahead of the 1996 Olympics. The most notorious might be the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/san-francisco-cleans-up-for-xi-why-not-for-thee-242c67e3">cleanup</a> of San Francisco in preparation for Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
These cities appear more concerned with making a good impression on visiting tourists, dignitaries, and soccer fans than with the experiences of residents who live with these conditions year-round.
Those who live and work in downtown Seattle know the reality. Daily commutes often involve navigating not only traffic, but discarded needles, human waste, and individuals who shout, scream, and curse at random. The Emerald City has the third-highest number of individuals experiencing homelessness in the nation, outranked only by Los Angeles and New York City. Despite the city spending millions over the years, the crisis has only worsened.
Seattle is like this because its leaders allow it. One homeless man <a href="https://fixhomelessness.org/2026/homeless-man-says-he-came-to-seattle-because-nowhere-else-tolerates-street-life/">explained</a> that he left his home in Whatcom County, two hours north of Seattle, because the residents there wouldn’t tolerate his lifestyle. He came to Seattle because, in his words, he and his friends can “live how we want to live.”
Under the faulty belief that housing is the solution for this crisis, Seattle and many other cities have poured millions of taxpayer dollars into housing projects that often fail to materialize. For instance, Wilson promised 500 new shelter units ahead of the FIFA World Cup. She <a href="https://www.thecentersquare.com/washington/article_eacfc5fa-73e2-45ee-b471-82e48c81dd0c.html">delivered</a> 75 at a cost of $3.95 million — and those units <a href="https://x.com/weheartseattle/status/2066358855794364539">appeared</a> to remain empty 24 hours before the first game. Not a promising start for her larger campaign promise to open 4,000 shelter beds during her first term as mayor.
Even when they finally open, these projects fail to meaningfully change lives. Addicts continue to use illicit drugs, the mentally ill go untreated, and many end up back on the streets. <a href="https://fixhomelessness.org/2024/whistleblower-dies-inside-low-barrier-plymouth-housing-building/">Some die</a>.
Homelessness is not an economic problem. The people living on our streets are not primarily suffering from a lack of housing, but from addiction, untreated mental illness, and broken relationships. This requires a different response than just housing; they need detox, treatment, and help restoring their lives. Hopefully, <a href="https://fixhomelessness.org/2026/hud-re-issues-new-homeless-grant-criteria-freeing-cities-to-ditch-housing-first-pursue-real-solutions/">recent federal reforms</a> will encourage cities in a better direction.
When the World Cup ends, and the visitors return to their home cities, states, and countries, the homeless who were pushed to the outskirts will return, still addicted, still mentally ill, still desperately in need of help. Until these cities take the needs of these individuals seriously and enforce the laws against prostitution, theft, and violence, the homelessness crisis will continue to grow.
The best way to showcase our country’s cities to the world is not to stage a clean downtown for a few weeks. It is to create clean, safe, and thriving cities for their own residents every day.
***
Caitlin Cory writes about homelessness at <a href="https://www.discovery.org/">Discovery Institute</a>. She has been published in The Federalist and the Puget Sound Business Journal. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in Maryland.

Coronavirus Pandemic 2022 – Homelessness in America

The Cities Hiding Homelessness For The World Cup

FIFA

katie wilson

seattle

The old &#8220;Baywatch&#8221; featured lifeguards in signature red bathing suits rescuing beachgoers in the ocean, but in 2026, the lifeguards are rescuing beachgoers on land. 
L.A.&#8217;s homelessness crisis made its way into the &#8220;Baywatch&#8221; reboot as filming featured a homeless man attempting to attack one of its lifeguards, The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/06/24/entertainment/baywatch-scene-shows-the-scary-realities-of-visiting-venice-beach/?utm_campaign=capost&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter">reported</a>. The scene takes place on Venice Beach when a homeless man approaches Hassie Harrison’s character with a knife. Stephen Amell’s character rushes in to intervene and fights the homeless before Amell knocks him to the ground and paramedics aid the fallen attacker. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
A video of the cast filming a scene for the new “Baywatch” reboot blurred the lines between the fantasy and reality of living in modern-day Venice Beach. <a href="https://t.co/O0Y9eBFyo3">https://t.co/O0Y9eBFyo3</a> <a href="https://t.co/GzZVkHsqni">pic.twitter.com/GzZVkHsqni</a>
— California Post (@californiapost) <a href="https://x.com/californiapost/status/2070086205044085188?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The fictitious scene is grounded in reality as L.A.&#8217;s large homeless encampments continue to plague residents, including near Venice Beach, where encampments have grown this year and attracted drug users, KTLA <a href="https://ktla.com/news/local-news/large-homeless-encampment-in-venice-continues-expanding-attracting-crime-drug-activity/">reported</a>. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass cleared out the encampments in 2023, but residents of the area claim the homeless residents stayed in the area after their tents were cleared and eventually expanded their encampment. 
Venice resident Craig Riveiro told KTLA 5, “Mothers and babies cannot walk on the sidewalks. It hurts the mom-and-pop businesses. It hurts the residents. It caused mayhem.” Other residents say the area has become a hotspot for crime, drug activity, and safety hazards. 
Bass, who declared 2026 as her goal to end street homelessness in L.A., blames government bureaucracy for the failure. 
“We haven’t ended it,” she <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/karen-bass-grilled-over-broken-homelessness-promise-blames-bureaucracy-slowed-progress">said</a> in May. “Basically when I said that, it was at the beginning of my term. I am very committed to achieving that goal. I didn’t anticipate some of the bureaucratic barriers that I would experience, but I am prepared to take those on now.” 
Bass, who advanced to the mayoral general election over outsider Spencer Pratt, also claimed people who work in the government are reluctant to end homelessness. &#8220;The city and the county never made that commitment before, and I found something that surprised me. I found a lot of people who work internally in the system who were very resistant to ending street homelessness.&#8221;
While homeless individuals represent a small percentage of the population, the R Street Institute estimates that they are responsible for about roughly <a href="https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/the-crime-and-safety-blindspot-do-homeless-populations-pose-an-increased-risk-to-public-safety/">15%</a> of violent crimes in the city. 
Earlier this month, the federal government halted all funds going to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) after the city failed to deliver results after nearly $1 billion in the last five years. 
The Trump administration will keep the suspension in place until the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) completes its investigation into the LAHSA. “Under President Trump’s leadership, HUD will fund results, not corrupt failure or the homeless industrial complex,” <a href="https://www.hud.gov/news/hud-no-26-048">said</a> HUD Secretary Scott Turner.
“Year after year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were funneled to LAHSA with little accountability. Meanwhile, homelessness skyrocketed,&#8221; Turner added. &#8220;Taxpayers will no longer bankroll an organization that puts its own self-interests ahead of the Americans it was created to serve.”

SEE IT: ‘Baywatch’ Is The Latest Victim Of California’s Homeless Crisis

Baywatch

Imagine it&#8217;s 75 degrees and sunny, you&#8217;re outside with friends, <a href="https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/l-r-martin-rowe-jr-130317651.jpg?resize=1200,800&amp;quality=75&amp;strip=all">gumbo</a> sizzlin’ on the cooker, cold Modelo in hand. Not a care, not a job, not a clue. You just registered to vote by scratching a few signatures on a pamphlet, cast a ballot for God-knows-who, and, for your devout civic duty, you are rewarded with a cigarette.
Inhale, exhale. The smoke blows across the pavement and eventually dissolves into the view of ethereal skies and the rolling, smoggy silhouette of the Hollywood Hills.
That, folks, is a typical Monday for a homeless crack junkie in Los Angeles.
Last week, the L.A. mayoral race was officially called, and to voters&#8217; consternation, Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman will advance to the November 3 runoff, as neither candidate cleared 50% of the vote. Spencer Pratt, the Angeleno whose house burned down during the Palisades Fire, who was running as an independent to prevent further destruction from devastating the city he cares so deeply for, was edged out of the race a week after Election Day.
<a href="https://nypost.com/2026/06/08/us-news/nithya-raman-widens-lead-over-spencer-pratt-in-la-mayor-race/">Monday&#8217;s count </a>added another 33,378 votes to Raman&#8217;s total overnight, while Pratt gained only 14,672 and Bass added a further 25,121. Raman now sits at 28.5%, Pratt at 26.7%, and Bass at 34.7%, with 93% of votes counted. Pratt lost by a whisker. And he lost it to a ballot-harvesting machine that has been humming along, legally, for years.
This is enraging for a plethora of reasons. The two victorious candidates are radicals who would each continue grinding the once-angelic city to a sadistic pulp.<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/los-angeles-county-measure-er-election-day/"> A tax-increase measure</a> on the ballot also passed. And the entire election process looked about as legitimate as a three-dollar bill, corroding what little public trust remained in California&#8217;s voting systems.
But the cherry on top of this feces-pie? The homeless. The thousands of homeless people plaguing the streets of L.A. voted in bulk for the communists and to raise your taxes.
Yes. The drug addicts who cannot make salient life decisions, and as a result are unhoused, as the idiots say, are playing a consequential role in how California is governed.
It’s a simple and ingenious scheme, if you&#8217;re into large-scale <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DZYOe76v7PI/">legalized fraud</a>.
Candidates like Nithya Raman funnel money, reportedly in the form of <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/06/08/us-news/nithya-raman-widens-lead-over-spencer-pratt-in-la-mayor-race/">$60,000 checks</a>, into homeless shelters where hundreds of people are registered to vote. Democratic NGOs host voter registration drives at those same centers, coerce the residents into signing up, help them fill out the paperwork, and cast ballots on the Democrats&#8217; behalf. Then a useful idiot collects the stack and drops them off at a ballot drop box on behalf of the coke zombies.
This isn&#8217;t speculation. The California Post reported that 1,160 voters were registered to vote at the Midnight Mission in Skid Row, a shelter whose website lists a capacity for just 84 men and 36 women. One homeless man living on that skidmark street told reporters that voter registration efforts have been active in the area for years, and that in the past, he helped out in exchange for cigarettes.
Inhale. Exhale. Democracy.
These people have no idea who is even on the ballot. They are doing, ingesting, saying anything for drugs and a little cash. They have no idea they just propelled a Cuban Marxist-trained communist and her even further Left friend into the next round of the mayoral race.
They also have no idea their ballots helped push through the Essential Services Restoration Act, a countywide general sales tax measure that is now passing with 50.35% of the vote. It raises the sales tax rate from 9.75% to 10.25%, stacked on top of whatever cities are already picking from your pocket. The billion dollars expected to be grabbed go into the general fund.
Great. So they can spend more of your money &#8220;generally&#8221; transing the kids and &#8220;generally&#8221; handing out heroin needles to crack addicts.
The measure was losing. Then, a week after election day, just enough tax-enthused mail-in ballots materialized to flip it. Funny how that keeps happening.
For those more confused than Gavin Newsom trying to read a book, here is the legal fraud playbook, written a long time ago in California, and only now getting the outrage it deserves.
In 2016, ballot harvesting was expanded and made fully legal. So John Democrat Doe from down the street can walk into a homeless shelter, scoop up a couple of hundred ballots from willing methheads, and dump them at the polls on their behalf.
In 2021, universal vote-by-mail was permanently enshrined, mandating that every active registered voter receive a ballot by mail automatically. You fill it out, sit on it, and drop it off whenever you feel like it. And as Steve Hilton pointed out, you fill in the date yourself. So if you&#8217;re a day or two past election day and need to backdate things a little, well, who&#8217;s really gonna know?
In 2024, Newsom signed Senate Bill 1174, banning local municipalities from enacting their own voter ID requirements.
Hilarious. They literally banned voter ID. They don&#8217;t want to know who you are or what you are. Only that you are welcome here, rainbow sunshine, as you are.
Maybe they&#8217;d warm up to the idea if we just mandated everyone to put their pronouns next to their name.
And to top it all off, California refuses to clean its voter rolls. People are casting ballots on behalf of folks like <a href="https://x.com/nickshirleyy/status/2063731800334021085/video/1">Dorris</a>, who is registered as a 126-year-old and has apparently voted in 51 elections without her knowledge. There’s a good chance that a portion of Raman’s voters weren’t alive to see her win. Bummer.
By 2024, upwards of 87% of voters were casting their ballots by mail.
This is the environment. And into that environment, unions and nonprofits like the Democratic Socialists of America have sent their organizers armed with <a href="https://x.com/mottsmith/status/2064032442043043862/photo/1">explicit instructions</a> on how to harvest as many Democratic votes as possible. The operation generates thousands upon thousands of ballots for their preferred candidates, systematically, election cycle after election cycle.
But showing up to a voting booth in a MAGA hat? That would be insane.
This is legalized corruption, unfolding in plain sight. It is resulting in homeless zombies unknowingly making decisions that affect your tax dollars, your family, your safety, and your governance. It is resulting in increasingly radical, far-left candidates seizing the levers of power in one of America&#8217;s largest cities.
Democrats love to hurl the &#8220;undemocratic!&#8221; stone from their glass Marxist mansions.
The ballots are being harvested. The rolls are rotting. The shelters are stuffed with registered voters who couldn&#8217;t pick Nithya Raman out of a lineup. And every cycle, the machine gets a little more efficient, a little more brazen, and a little harder to stop.
It&#8217;s time we did something about it. Starting by demanding the basic election-integrity safeguards that every other functioning democracy on earth takes for granted. Voter ID. Clean rolls. An end to ballot harvesting. California doesn&#8217;t want those things, and now you know exactly why.

Hollywood Blvd

How Homeless Drug Addicts Just Voted To Raise Your Taxes

California Elections

Election Fraud

Fifteen cameras. Two German Shepherds. Three legal guns.
That’s not a man preparing for the apocalypse. That’s a Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles.
Doug Ellin, the creator of Entourage — the show that made L.A. look like the greatest party on Earth, that made a generation of young men throw their belongings in a truck and chase the dream West — had his home invaded by masked intruders. His response wasn&#8217;t a therapy session or a sternly worded letter to his city councilman. It was a small arsenal, a <a href="https://x.com/Jules31415/status/2061337093247283455">viral</a> meltdown, and the kind of raw honesty that makes comfortable people deeply uncomfortable.
&#8220;I meet people all the time that moved here because of the show that I f*cking created,&#8221; Ellin said, &#8220;and they hate it here now. HATE.&#8221;
He&#8217;s not talking about traffic. He&#8217;s not talking about high rent. He&#8217;s talking about the specific, suffocating dread of a city that has turned on its own people.
Picture the L.A. Ellin once sold to the world: rooftop pools, warm nights, the electric possibility that the next party could change your life. Now picture the Los Angeles his neighbors actually inhabit: floodlights burning at 3 AM, Ring cameras covering every blind spot, security guards on rotating shifts because the police — defunded, demoralized, and politically neutered — aren&#8217;t coming fast enough. Or at all.
&#8220;Everyone in my neighborhood has got the same problem: they&#8217;re f*cking all putting cameras and high-end security guards because we&#8217;re all getting broken into,&#8221; Ellin said. &#8220;This city has collapsed in the last 5 years. There is no f*cking denying it unless you have an agenda.”
Unfortunately, they all do. This is the agenda: remain as politically braindead as the heroin addicts terrorizing the city, vote blue until they&#8217;re bluer in the face than the zombie coke heads sleeping next to the ballot boxes, and endure the deteriorating quality of life in the name of social justice and pro-socialist &#8220;lesser evil&#8221; voting.
To discover where that agenda leads to, try walking down streets that once hosted Oscar parties. The tent cities stretch for blocks. Fentanyl zombies sway at intersections while dashcam footage of daylight smash-and-grabs floods social media. Film production, the oxygen of L.A.’s economy, the industry that built the dream, has ditched the city of angels and moved to Georgia and New Zealand. The lots are quieter. The crews are gone.
<a href="https://x.com/i/status/2052981973409513626">Six to seven people overdose and die</a> in Los Angeles <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2057564330158387374">every single day.</a> This isn’t a war zone. This isn’t a developing nation. This is the city with the most expensive real estate on the continent. A city whose mayor just spent billions to solve homelessness and produced nothing but a $1 billion deficit and a <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2060469288474210420">metastasizing crisis</a>.
Karen Bass, the incumbent mayor, promised to end those very street encampments. She failed. Then, she <a href="https://x.com/FilmThePoliceLA/status/2061108205636522046">presided</a> over the most destructive wildfire in the city&#8217;s history. She <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/sb-79-housing-bill-newsom-los-angeles-oppose-karen-bass/3789876/">opposed</a> housing bills. She oversaw an exodus of film production that gutted the middle class of her own creative economy. She claims crime is down. It&#8217;s not. The <a href="https://x.com/zarathustra5150/status/2057807103834591247">reporting</a> of crime is down because victims don&#8217;t bother calling a defunded police force, and because officers are quietly pressured to reclassify felonies into misdemeanors.
The LA Times recently ran the <a href="https://x.com/latimes/status/2058565710159216840">headline</a>: &#8220;L.A. is safer than it&#8217;s been in decades.&#8221; Doug Ellin read that from behind his 16th security camera.
The paper of record and the people on the ground are living in different cities. Only one of them is real.
But journalists, politicians, and their eager ballot beavers can&#8217;t run on ideas and empty promises forever. Eventually reality catches up, far later than it does for the citizens they&#8217;ve already hurt, but eventually nonetheless.
Take Nithya Raman, the socialist third-wheel of this race. She spent years cheerfully <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2048915656385744911">telling</a> other people, smaller people, less connected people, that homeless encampments within 10 feet of their child&#8217;s school were perfectly acceptable. The progressive vanguard demands sacrifice, and she was very comfortable demanding it from everyone but herself. Until the encampments moved near her two-million-dollar gated home and her children. Then, suddenly, she found the concept of proximity unacceptable.
The word for this is cowardice. The political word for it is Democrat.
Doug Ellin was perfectly willing to bypass President Donald Trump and vote for the soft-on-crime candidate until his home was robbed. Now he has two frightening watchdogs, security cameras out the wazoo, and a shotgun at the ready.
Apparently, all it takes is a masked intruder, a drug zombie in the front yard, a slap in the face by reality, and one good dose of common sense to wake people up to the horrors of progressive policy. Otherwise, they sit idly behind the fences of their compounds, quite content to let the city rot around them.
Unfortunately, Spencer Pratt still has an uphill battle ahead of him. Though he’s simply promising cleaner streets, safer neighborhoods, and a better quality of life, L.A. progressives aren’t smart enough to see through the fog of woke war. When asked simple questions about Bass’s basura (trash) policies, they go mute, but she is black! So … #blackpride, according to <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2060385677485744469">this</a> young woman.
The same way people are ardent supporters of Graham Platner, the Nazi tattoo guy, Zohran Mamdani, the terror-sympathizer, and Bernie Sanders, the useless leech on the (B)ass of society, they will show up for Karen Bass, a Marxist-style leader who will undoubtedly Make LA Worse Forevermore.
The Left isn&#8217;t voting for a person or a policy. They&#8217;re voting for whoever imbibes from the grievance well, ignorantly abides by collectivist ideology, and cozies up to the soft Marxism that has made every city it touches worse. And they can do so while living behind gates and op-ed pages.
But for most Angelenos, the Entourage reality no longer exists in the City of Demons.
Tuesday will be telling. Los Angeles will discover whether it wants to change that or is content to watch the dream it once sold to the world collapse, one camera at a time.

Street scene of a homeless on the walkway on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Democrats Made A Living Hell Out Of The City Of Angels

Former MTV reality television star Spencer Pratt is the first to admit that he has no political experience — but he says he does have a plan to help the homeless in Los Angeles if he&#8217;s elected mayor, and it&#8217;s modeled on a veteran training center in Arkansas.
Pratt, speaking with CNN&#8217;s Elex Michaelson, said that he wanted to build a rehabilitation center for homeless addicts — a move that he argues would swiftly and dramatically cut down the number of homeless in L.A. — similar to a training center for military veterans operating in Bentonville, Arkansas.
&#8220;You don’t get off these drugs with beds,&#8221; Pratt said, digging at incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, whose plan was to throw more money, clean needles, and shelters at the problem. &#8220;You need support. You need a real solution. And what’s happening? We’ve done it now, what, for 10 years. Their plan does not work. Their experience is complete failure. This is not Spencer saying this. This is every single person with eyeballs driving around L.A.&#8221;
Instead, Pratt argues that the treatment should be mandatory and that those in treatment should be pushed not just toward recovery but toward the skills and discipline that will help them succeed.
&#8220;If they want to come back to the city, we have a job for them — not just a bed off Skid Row,” Pratt explained. “They’re sober off fentanyl for two days, they go into a bed, they come out right back on to where all the drugs [are]. We need to actually help these people and get that back into society.&#8221;
The model is the <a href="https://uhp.com">University of Health and Performance (UHP)</a>, a 19-day immersive training program designed to help veterans transition from military to civilian life. Tuition, meals, health and fitness instruction, and lodging are all free — and veterans leave with the confidence and skills to build a new civilian life.
Pratt told Michaelson he was eyeing property in &#8220;beautiful nature&#8221; and had already approached several people about helping fund the project. In addition, he said he wanted to bring in &#8220;top doctors&#8221; to make sure he was doing things the right way, because he wanted the center to become &#8220;a shining light of hope.&#8221;
&#8220;You need to offer people a chance,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s going to be somewhere where people will go, and they will say, &#8216;Thank God for Spencer.'&#8221;
Pratt <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/reality-tv-star-spencer-pratt-obliterates-leftist-policies-in-heated-l-a-mayoral-debate">squared off</a> with his opponents during a recent televised debate, arguing that Bass had done little to solve the problem and that Democratic socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman&#8217;s offer of help was likely to be met by violence from addicts just looking for another fix.
WATCH:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lJVQeeeFJck?si=khDoAVcVTwRoHHBz&amp;start=945" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

me-spencer-pratt-south-la

Spencer Pratt Thinks He Found The Fix For L.A.’s Homeless Disaster

Spencer Pratt's Plan To Help Homeless Is Modeled After Red State Veteran Training Center

Drugs

Los Ángeles Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt vowed to bring in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) if elected, saying it would be necessary to rid the streets of &#8220;medieval diseases.&#8221;
Pratt, speaking with David Friedberg on &#8220;The All In&#8221; podcast, said that he&#8217;d give the lawless in L.A.&#8217;s streets &#8220;three weeks, or maybe we&#8217;ll even do two weeks, maybe people will want it faster&#8221; before he set to work cleaning things up.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 JUST IN: LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt announces Los Angeles criminals and homeless degenerates will have 2-3 WEEKS after he gets into office before MASS ARRESTS ensue
&#8220;First 3 weeks: signups, no nakedness, no drug use, no robbing, no dog abuse.&#8221;
Love this guy MORE AND… <a href="https://t.co/exoqW3j28e">pic.twitter.com/exoqW3j28e</a>
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2053600568938291544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 10, 2026</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;First three weeks, signs up across the city: &#8216;No more nakedness, no more drug use, no more robbing, no more —'&#8221; Pratt began.
&#8220;No more burning dogs in the street,&#8221; Friedberg interjected, referencing reports that dogs had been abused in the streets.
&#8220;— No more dog abuse,&#8221; Pratt agreed. &#8220;Very — on every sign, everywhere, so that — and we&#8217;re going to go around, we&#8217;re going to warn everybody, &#8216;you got three more weeks of this, clock&#8217;s ticking,&#8217; just keep telling — so that people are aware that, oh wow, there&#8217;s a new mayor in town.&#8221;
&#8220;They may start leaving,&#8221; he added with a shrug. &#8220;And then when the three weeks, or maybe we&#8217;ll even do two weeks, maybe people will want it faster. And then once we start enforcing the laws, BOOM! Streets will be back.&#8221;
&#8220;You know how else I&#8217;m going to bring in? The CDC, because there&#8217;s medieval diseases in these encampments. They&#8217;re not swabbing these encampments, they&#8217;re not swabbing the streets! People are just living in feces and drug use and dogs burning, and body — we need these streets cleaned!&#8221;
Pratt sparred with current Democratic Mayor Karen Bass and Democratic socialist city council-member Nithya Raman over how to deal with the issue of homelessness, and both of them argued in favor of offering treatment and beds at city expense. Pratt <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/reality-tv-star-spencer-pratt-obliterates-leftist-policies-in-heated-l-a-mayoral-debate">pushed back</a>, citing statistics indicating that many of L.A.&#8217;s homeless were abusing drugs.
Speaking specifically to Raman, he volunteered to go with her to offer treatment to homeless people in the city, and warned they were likely to attack her rather than accept her help.

Spencer Pratt Visits “Fox & Friends”

Spencer Pratt Promises To Bring In CDC To Rid City Of ‘Medieval Diseases’

Spencer Pratt ripped into his far-Left opponents during the Los Angeles mayoral debate on Wednesday, hammering their policies on everything from homelessness to firefighting. 
Pratt faced off against Mayor Karen Bass and socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman on a stage where they clashed on how to best lead the city of 3.8 million. The former reality TV star said during the debate that he would crack down on crime, improve the city’s fire response readiness, and move away from the city’s ineffective efforts to combat homelessness. 
“The good news is when I enforce the law and clear the streets of the drug addicts that have taken over 40 blocks of downtown L.A., abandoned buildings that have drug addicts just lighting them on fire every other day, I will have potentially 20,000 units available to build,” Pratt said. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Spencer Pratt DESTROYS Los Angeles’s Communist mayoral candidates Karen Bass and Nithya Raman:
“The good news is, when I enforce the law and clear the street of the drug addicts that have taken over 40 blocks of downtown LA, abandoned buildings that have drug addicts just… <a href="https://t.co/FsXKD22lMC">pic.twitter.com/FsXKD22lMC</a>
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/2052201186577588367?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Pratt, whose home was burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire, accused Bass of denying money requested for fire engines just weeks before the blaze. He also accused her of using water reserves for fire fighting for drinking water. Bass claimed that Pratt was spreading &#8220;inaccurate&#8221; details of her response to the L.A. fires and said the reservoirs in question &#8220;have been for drinking water&#8221; for decades. The mayor also accused Pratt of spreading false information on the wind speeds during the fire outbreak, which L.A. authorities said were too high for firefighting aircraft to respond to the fires.
&#8220;She&#8217;s an incredible liar,&#8221; Pratt responded, urging the audience to research what weather stations reported on the wind speeds in the early days of the blaze. The debate moderators cut him off and told him he could not engage in &#8220;name-calling.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
NEW: Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt fires back after the debate moderator accused him of &#8220;name-calling.&#8221;
Pratt: &#8220;[Karen Bass] an incredible liar&#8230;&#8221;
Moderator: &#8220;I have to interrupt you for a minute. I have to interrupt you. No name-calling.&#8221;
Pratt: &#8220;She just… <a href="https://t.co/Z3L5gFPfmi">pic.twitter.com/Z3L5gFPfmi</a>
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) <a href="https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/2052195002659569843?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
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During a different exchange, Pratt criticized Raman over her approach to homelessness and said she would get stabbed if she tried to implement her drug treatment plan for the homeless. 
“Councilwoman Raman acts like she doesn&#8217;t have any authority with this homelessness. She was the third most powerful person in city council,” he said. “She runs the homeless housing thing. She acts like this is just Mayor Bass.”
“The reality is, no matter how many beds you give these people, they are on super-meth. They are on fentanyl. The DEA statistics says 93% of this is a drug addiction problem,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Councilwoman Raman’s plan for treatment first — I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her, and we can find some of these people she&#8217;s going to offer treatment for.  She&#8217;s going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super-meth. These ideas cost us over $400 million.”
Pratt also accused Raman of favoring squatters over tenants, saying she would sue landlords who try to get squatters out of their properties. 
Moderators also asked the candidates if they would support letting noncitizens vote in elections. 
Pratt said no, while both Bass and Raman said it “depends.” 
“They could have green cards, they could be here perfectly legal, and there&#8217;s a lot of states and cities that do that on very, very local elections,” Bass said. 
Raman accused Pratt of having a “MAGA” vision for Los Angeles and said he was working with Bass to attack her campaign. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Best part of the debate tonight! <a href="https://t.co/HLkwprBcEr">https://t.co/HLkwprBcEr</a> <a href="https://t.co/1qiTGsPA21">pic.twitter.com/1qiTGsPA21</a>
— Barefoot Broadcast (@BarefootBC) <a href="https://twitter.com/BarefootBC/status/2052211109617090952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
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“Mayor Bass and I are definitely not working together. I blame this person for burning down my house and my parents&#8217; house and my town, and all my neighbors down,” Pratt responded. “You think it&#8217;s easier to run against the incumbent mayor with all the unions or a random city council member who&#8217;s been a failure for six years? I would much rather run against Councilwoman Raman.” 
The Los Angeles mayoral race is slated for June 2, 2026. If no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two candidates will move on to a runoff in November.

Lucky’s Montecito 25th Anniversary

Reality TV Star Spencer Pratt Obliterates Leftist Policies In Heated L.A. Mayoral Debate

Palisades Fire

Blue America is best for families. For years, America’s elites have insisted that <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32782">blue states</a> — with their higher incomes, better-<a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32782">educated residents</a>, and expansive public services — are the best places to raise a family. Progressive policies such as paid family leave, childcare subsidies, and gender-neutral bathroom mandates, we were told, would draw parents in droves. Such policies prove “that one major party cares about children and families, and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/30/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies/?itid=lk_inline_manual_27">the other does not</a>,” according to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/30/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies/?itid=lk_inline_manual_27">liberal journalist</a> Catherine Rampell. 
But the data tell a different tale. Across the country, families are packing up and leaving blue states for red states. They are also more likely to have children in red states to begin with. 
The <a href="https://familystructureindex.org/">2026 Family Structure Index</a>, just released by the Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies, tracks family health across all 50 states. It focuses on three measures: marriage rates, fertility rates, and the share of children raised by married parents. These factors shape everything from child poverty to the health of the American Dream. 
What it reveals is a growing divide in where families are choosing to live — and where they are choosing to start a family.
Call it the Great American Family Sort.
Married couples with children are increasingly moving to red and purple states. From 2019 to 2024, 840,000 married families with children moved from blue states to red ones, while 470,000 moved in the opposite direction — a net gain of 370,000 such families for red states. 
Red states also enjoy higher fertility rates, all of which helps explain why red states have <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-lefts-family-problem-marriage-and-kids-cratering-among-liberal-young-adults">seen</a> a 7.3% increase in their child population since 2000, while blue states have seen a 7.1% decline. That shift is another indicator that Red America is proving more hospitable to family life.
In other words, <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-blue-state-family-exodus-families-are-migrating-to-red-and-purple-states">blue states</a> long seen as the best places to raise children by liberal elites — states like California, Massachusetts, and New York — are steadily losing them.
Why? Start with what families actually need: jobs, homes, and safe neighborhoods. On each of these fronts, many red states are delivering. Over the past decade, states like Texas, Florida, and South Carolina have seen strong job growth, especially in sectors that support middle-class life. When young adults can find steady, well-paying work, they are more likely to marry and start families.
Housing is just as critical. Affordable single-family homes provide the space and stability families <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/homes-for-young-families-a-pro-family-housing-agenda">want</a>. Yet in many blue states, especially on the coasts, restrictive zoning and high costs have pushed homeownership out of reach for young families. In much of red America, that dream remains attainable.
Taxes also shape family <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/americans-moving-to-states/">migration</a>. Lower tax burdens in many red states leave families with more room in their budgets, whether for childcare, a good private school, or saving for the future.
<div id="attachment_1073407" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1073407" class="size-large wp-image-1073407" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-864x576.jpg" alt="San Francisco, CA, USA - August 17, 2020. Image of a moving truck parked in San Francisco's Nob Hill neighborhood." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />James Rice. Getty Images.</div>
Safety matters as well. Parents want to raise children in communities where they feel <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/homes-for-young-families-a-pro-family-housing-agenda">secure</a>. States and cities that keep crime and public disorder low have a clear advantage in attracting and retaining families, even as many blue states are “plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction,” all of which are turnoffs to families, as even the liberal columnist Nick Kristof has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/opinion/progressives-california-portland.html">admitted</a>.
Still, economics alone does not explain what is happening. Family culture also matters. In many red states, there remains a stronger expectation around marriage and family formation, often stemming from deeply held religious beliefs. Social norms shaped by churches, civic life, and local leadership still influence how people live. Faith remains a powerful driver of American family life.
The <a href="https://familystructureindex.org/">Family Structure Index</a> underscores this point. Frequent religious attendance accounts for 57% of the variance in fertility rates across states. States with high religious attendance, such as Utah and Mississippi, have far higher birth rates than states like Vermont or Massachusetts, where churchgoing is rare.
None of this suggests that red states have solved every problem. Marriage and fertility are down nationwide, and no region is immune. But the trend is clear: families seem more likely to thrive in some states rather than others. That should tell policymakers something important. If states want to attract and keep families, the formula is straightforward: make housing attainable, foster job growth, keep communities safe, and support a culture that encourages marriage and child-rearing. 
The deeper lesson is harder to accept. For too long, liberal elites have assumed that higher incomes and more government spending automatically lead to better outcomes for families. The evidence suggests otherwise. Public safety, good jobs, affordable homes, and culture matter just as much, if not more.
The Great American Family Sort is more than a demographic shift. It is a signal. Families are making their priorities clear through where they choose to live and have children. The question is whether the rest of the country is paying attention.
* * *
Aaron Baer is president of the Center for Christian Virtue. 
Brad Wilcox is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.

Asheville and Johnson City exit sign on highway in Tennessee on interstate 81 road

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