Good morning. It is Saturday, Dec. 21. Here’s what’s happening in Opinion.
Does anyone else like we’re fighting the same ideological battles over and over, even more so after the election? Autism-related vaccine disinformation feels so 2012; pandemic fears remind us of 2020.
Yet here we are, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and another Trump administration poised to take over amid bird flu fears, just after 1.2 million Americans died in the last pandemic.
In an op-ed column, Robin Abcarian raises alarm over an effort by RFK Jr.’s close advisor two years ago to cancel the polio vaccine and speaks with a survivor of the illness that, prior to the 1950s, often killed or disabled children. In another op-ed piece, writer Susan Hall tells of her son’s productive, “enriched” life with autism, a condition Kennedy has caricatured to make the case against vaccination (even though the link between autism and childhood vaccination has been thoroughly debunked).
Finally, in an op-ed piece that chillingly reads like a warning from four years ago, infectious disease specialist Peter Chin-Hong warns that the H5N1 influenza virus could soon wreak havoc for humanity. If the next four years go badly for us, you can’t say we weren’t warned.
Here’s what is so unusual about the Wisconsin school shooting — and what isn’t. At Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., a teenage girl killed a teacher, another student and apparently herself. “Although female school shooters are exceedingly rare, the patterns that lead to such tragedies are painfully familiar,” write gun violence researchers James Densley, Jillian Peterson and David Riedman.
Gov. Newsom, no more delays in shutting Aliso Canyon down. The risks of continuing to rely on fossil fuels became sickeningly clear in late 2015, when a massive methane leak from the Aliso Canyon gas storage field upended the lives of thousands of residents of the northern San Fernando Valley. Soon after Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, he promised to accelerate the closure of Aliso Canyon; Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University, encourages Newsom to follow through on that promise.
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Why travel and suffer through LAX, flights, lost luggage? Here’s one good reason. Travel writer Lisa Niver recounts nearly missing a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Mexico in 2023. She says it was but one of the myriad complications she’s faced on a trip: “What keeps me going — even more than opportunities to, say, swim with stingless jellyfish in Kakaban Island, Indonesia, or see a 380-foot Buddha statue near Monywa, Myanmar — is that nothing quite compares to the magic of unexpected connections that travel can bring.”
Even in L.A. County’s solidly middle-class towns, home prices are soaring out of reach. In a dispatch from the suburban wilderness of Alhambra, I tell the story of fellow parents at the local public school driven out of town — more precisely, out of L.A. County — by catastrophically high housing prices. The replacement of longtime residents with newcomers who spend more than $1 million on modest bungalows is hollowing out local institutions such as public schools.
More from opinion
From our columnists
- Jonah Goldberg: The U.S. economy is doing very well. But don’t give too much credit to Biden — or Trump
- Jackie Calmes: A peaceful transfer of power — you can thank Harris and Biden
- Robin Abcarian: What the sexual assault charges against Sean Combs, the Alexander brothers and others reveal
From guest contributors
- What will the military do if Trump gives unconstitutional orders?
- This tale starts with Agatha Christie vibes, but slips ever closer to Poe
- As Christmas and Hanukkah coincide, is it time for everyone to let there be holiday lights?
From the Editorial Board
- Another year, another broken promise to curb air pollution from L.A. ports
- Let’s stop killing animals in shelters and get more of them adopted out
Letters to the Editor
- Righting a Social Security wrong — but for how long?
- I’m from L.A.’s Jewish community. This is why Pico-Robertson backed Trump
- A bad first move by new Councilmember Ysabel Jurado
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