Someone remarked the Latte Left is turning on Karen Bass in order to save the incompetent they have their 2028 hopes pinned on, Gavin Newsom. So the left is scapegoating a Strong Empowered Black Woman to boost the Privileged White Straight (?) Man.

But while that is probably true, a lot more people are just sick of the endless incompetence of the Democrat Party and its prioritization of culture war provocations over providing the actual government services they're supposed to provide.

Joel Kotkin in his Unheard substack: Even Hollywood is Turning on LA Mayor Karen Bass.

After her election as mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, Karen Bass was a heroine of California's Left. A former backer of Fidel Castro, she decisively defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso, who spent more than $100 million to try and defeat her. With a struggling economy, rising crime, and a high cost of living, Bass's election seemed to confirm LA's final transition from a place of political diversity to a single-party city dominated by a well-organised Left and funders from the public unions.

Now, though, Bass "is a dead woman walking", as a union organiser friend told me this week. The revelations of incompetence, poor planning, and awful communication, combined with the fact that the LA mayor was partying in Ghana when wildfires started in her city, have worked against her, and yesterday angry protestors gathered outside her home. Some charges made by Donald Trump and Elon Musk tying the disaster to DEI and climate policies are exaggerated. But Bass's lack of interest in public safety mirrors the new progressive script which prioritises "social justice" over actual justice, racial quotas over merit, and climate alarmism over common sense.

Naturally, Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom and their media supporters reject conservatives' accusations of incompetence. They say opponents are using the fires as a political "piñata", and blame the damage on climate change. Yet Steven Koonin, a respected physicist and advisor in the Obama administration, has argued that the real responsibility lies with a slew of bad policies which left the city unprepared for the scale of the disaster. Fires have been a regular feature of life here in Southern California for at least 20 million years. Given recent weather conditions, the city should have known what was coming.

Rather than help save our piece of the planet, proponents of the green movement have been consistent barriers to effective fire management. As far back as 2018, the Little Hoover Commission found that controlled burns and brush clearance were necessary to avoid catastrophic wildfires, yet not enough was done. Even as the state reacted to major fires in 2020, attempts at controlled fires have been hampered by environmental lawsuits that delay implementation, as well as fire management budget cuts. Bass also cut the fire budget.

California has been running huge deficits in recent years, but not enough of those funds have gone towards fire preparedness. Those in charge never made sure that fire engines were in place beforehand, that there was sufficient water pressure in hydrants, and that reservoirs were filled. To her credit, the LA council member who represents the Palisades, Traci Park, has consistently made these arguments.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a groundswell against Bass and the city's bureaucrats. Some Hollywood stars -- a group which has historically been the bulwark of the progressive movement -- have even joined in. Celebrities including Maria Shriver, Justine Bateman and Dennis Quaid have now called on Bass to resign, as have the 150,000 signatories of a petition launched last week. As the journalist Michael Shellenberger notes: "They didn't imagine their vote would result in their homes burning down."

I don't think you can count Justine Bateman and Dennis Quaid as the usual Democrat-partisan celebrities. But I guess Maria Shriver is a very minor "get."

Despite the obsessive pounding about climate change, less than one in three Californians approve of Newsom's handling of the fires. Demands from Republicans in Congress could force the city and state to reverse the policies that exacerbated the fires. Perhaps the worst thing that could happen would be to follow a Bidenesque approach of handing out billions without reforming anything or imposing performance benchmarks.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says that any aid to California will have strings attached, so we're not writing another trillion dollar check to these entitled communist morons next year.

In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson doubled down on saying lawmakers are talking about placing conditions on aid given to California after the Los Angeles area experienced massive wildfires that firefighters are still battling.

"Are you saying that California, if they continue to aid and abet lawbreaking and harbor illegal immigrants, money from DC gets cut off?" Hannity asked. Johnson replied, "Yeah. We're talking about conditions to this disaster aid. Look, there are natural disasters, but there are manmade disasters as well, and they've made terrible decisions. You know, they knew exactly what they were doing."

"That reservoir outside the Pacific Palisades, 117 million gallons, it was empty for a year. Why? They were trying to save a smelt fish or something. I mean, their policies are upside down, they made decisions that made that disaster exponentially worse, and this is what the American taxpayer is demanding of us everywhere else in the country." Since January 7, when the Palisades and Eaton fires began, over 40,000 acres have burned and over 15,000 structures have been destroyed. At least 28 people have died as a result, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention. On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an order requiring California to reapportion their water resources to benefit humans, not endangered fish.