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Five Questions with Los Angeles City Mayor Karen Bass

Joyce Vance

Mar 2

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Mayor Karen Bass was elected to lead the nation’s second-largest city in 2022. Before that, she served in Congress, the California State Legislature, and was a community organizer on the streets of Los Angeles. She has a deep understanding of politics at the retail level, but she also has a pragmatic understanding of how politics work in Washington, D.C. Tonight we are fortunate to have her share her insight with us as we watch the Trump administration try to reset the federal government’s relationship with cities and states.

Rather than the traditional pro-states’ rights stance of conservatives and the Republican Party, the Trump administration seems intent on overriding federalism and putting mayors and their resources at the federal government’s disposal.

Before entering politics, Mayor Bass was a front-line healthcare provider—a nurse and a physician’s assistant. That experience led her to found a community coalition that organized predominantly Black and Latino residents of South L.A. against substance abuse, poverty, and crime. Now she represents all residents of the city and has prioritized issues like homelessness, crime, climate sustainability, and emergency preparedness. Her background informs her approach and her understanding of the power local officials possess.

As the fight to keep Donald Trump from doing more damage to democracy continues to pick up steam, mayors like Bass face the very real dilemma of how and on what issues they engage. Do you focus on kitchen table issues? Do you take on civil rights protections as the federal government rolls them back? And what about immigration, education, and, of course, rebuilding from the devastating fires that ripped through Los Angeles earlier this year? I had about a hundred questions for Mayor Bass, so I snuck in one extra one. Tonight we’re actually six questions, not five. Hearing Mayor Bass assess the landscape is helpful for understanding the difficult position America’s mayors find themselves in today.

“Five Questions” is a feature for paid subscribers, my way of thanking people who are able to support this work so that I can devote the necessary time and resources to it. I appreciate everyone who reads the newsletter and works to stay informed, so free subscriptions, with access to all of the other posts, will always be available.