Politics

Ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger made top of the heap in this laid-back government city, European tour operators have suddenly begun calling about “sightseeing” packages for busloads of fans from Britain and Germany. Out-of-town TV stations are suddenly interested in opening Capitol bureaus. Municipal bean counters are suddenly concerned about the cost of ancillary crowd control … Read more

The day he took office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commanded popularity enough to persuade California’s voters to swallow the harshest fiscal medicine. The tragedy of his governorship is that he never used it. The roots of the state’s dysfunction were well known in Sacramento in 2003, when Schwarzenegger took office, and still are today: It’s too … Read more

With Senate Republicans struggling to find votes for sweeping legislation to roll back the Affordable Care Act, several GOP lawmakers have raised the prospect of a more limited bill — passed with help from Democrats — to stabilize health insurance markets around the country. That may be heresy for conservative Republicans who’ve spent seven years … Read more

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) leading a congressional hearing in 2019. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a decades-long fixture in San Fernando Valley politics who rose to national prominence as a top Democratic foe to then-President Trump, announced Thursday that he is joining a contest for U.S. Senate that is … Read more

LAST WEEK, I wrote that conservatives think they have “won the war of ideas” when, in fact, they have simply reduced their ideas to a few simple bromides. There’s also another reason why conservatives have such misplaced confidence in the superiority of their beliefs: They refuse to ever question them. Liberal writer Rick Pearlstein explained … Read more

The California Senate approved legislation Wednesday allowing certain drug felons to receive food stamps, in an effort to reverse a nearly eight-year ban enacted when the state overhauled the welfare system. Although the food stamp program is funded entirely by the federal government, the state has the right to set certain rules for people using … Read more

John Lewis in the Civil Rights Room in the Nashville Public Library in Tennessee in 2016. (Mark Humphrey / Associated Press) Rep. John Lewis, an iconic pioneer of the civil rights movement who famously shed his blood at the foot of a Selma, Ala., bridge in the fight for Black voting rights and went on … Read more

Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) took this photo of Times staff writer Sarah Wire in the House gallery during Wednesday’s riots and tweeted to let her bosses know she was safe. (Rep. Norma Torres) I love to be in the House or Senate chambers on big days. There’s just something about being in the room where … Read more

Bill Clinton is keenly interested in how history will judge him. He began his administration with John F. Kennedy as a model and now compares himself to Theodore Roosevelt, a president who made a great mark on the White House and the country, though there was no war during his administration. However, it is a … Read more

A construction worker on the roof of new homes being built in Irvine in September. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) The breeze was tinged with smoke from the fires that burned through Pacific Palisades as dozens of workers finished up the brick facade of a sprawling home in the tony Brentwood Park neighborhood. … Read more