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I took a week’s holiday, relaxed, cleaned my head, and stopped being obsessed with the gloomy news.
I hear often from people who say they’ve tried it for a few days, as they’re fully adjusting the news for peace of mind. I opened the book. I walked the dog.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times since 2001. He has won over 12 National Journalism Awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
But I was in the news business and felt like a hypocrite, so I kept peeking. After all, it wasn’t healthy.
You can’t follow one 24-hour news cycle without questioning your own sanity.
Do we really live in a country where the president posts fake videos of his predecessors who have been arrested?
Has the dead man’s sex trafficking crimes ruled White House news for days?
Which of the following has made the federal government prioritized arresting Tamale vendors and fire meteorologists?
President Trump holds a small gavel after signing “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” at the White House in Washington, DC on July 4th.
(Brendan Smialowski / Pool / AFP Getty Images)
Social Security Bureau faws the president and sends emails making false claims, the White House will cause a trolling war with jokes and memes about immigration attacks and the Department of Homeland Security’s social media posts about a version of national heritage?
I have a weekly goal of avoiding alcoholic beverages on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but what opportunities are there in this political culture?
I’d picked up a guitar if I had a lot of time to practice, but the events over the last few weeks have kept me troubling.
The “big beautiful bill,” Trump signed the law on July 4th, adds trillions to national debt, adds tax credits to those who don’t need it the most, tearing health care compensation from the poorest. As a result, LA County Health Services hopes for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal cuts.
“We can’t survive this big cut,” LA County Public Health Director Barbara Feller told The Times for a story by Rebecca Ellis and Niam Ordner. She added:
Dr. Jonathan Lopresty, who worked at the County/USC for decades, is an associate professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at USC’s School of Medicine and is wary. He sent me a copy of the opinion article he was writing. This includes warnings that county hospitals can again overrun with poor people and homeless people. This leads to further overcrowding of hospitals and ERs, delayed emissions, and reduced daily health maintenance.
He added this:
“How many public deaths are people trying to accept?”
Judging from the crystal clear signal from Washington, there are no restrictions.
I think we can all agree that historic storms, hurricanes and wildfires in the United States and elsewhere in the world will continue to kill thousands of people.
Here’s a summary of Trump’s response:
The US climate change website has been closed.
Protesters will gather at the National Mall on April 5th to protest “hands-off” against President Trump’s administration.
(Dominic Gwinn/Middle East/AFP via Getty Images)
The administration says the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be eliminated, and the city’s search and rescue manager has resigned citing the confusion and delays in dangerous disaster response.
Layoffs and shopping have reduced the National Weather Service rank by 14% despite warning of disastrous consequences.
So I swim around the lap thinking I might bow my head, but that only made me feel drowned.
Hundreds of probation workers from the National Maritime and Atmospheric Administration have been fired, cutting 2,000 full-time staff.
These reductions, and the elimination of federal support for scientific research, are damaging in obvious ways. But when he asked Professor Alex Hall, UCLA, what was most unsettling, here’s what the director of the Climate Science Center had to say:
“I feel that the coldest thing is how the word “climate” has become a foul language. ”
In other words, the politicization of the subject – Trump and his supporters argue that human-focused climate change is either exaggeration or hoax – has created a form of censorship.
“That’s where we’re really starting to face danger — when people can’t talk about something,” said Hall, who studies the link between climate change and California’s wildfires.
I might be a bit biased towards this topic. My daughter has just graduated from university with a degree in Earth Sciences. What she and thousands of people are said essentially are, “It’s good for you, but planetary health is not a concern or a priority. If you’re looking for a job, the Border Patrol employs and cryptocurrency may be a good career path.”
So you have it. That’s how I spent my summer vacation and failed miserably in the opposite way.
But everything was not lost.
I played pickle balls several times at Glendale and Ross Ferris, and there were no major injuries. I took Beagle Philly to Rosie’s Dog Beach in Long Beach and saw him race like the happiest hound in the world. And borrowing from his preference for Trump’s cuts, I cut my list of no-alcohol days from 3 to 2.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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