Where Do Politics Stand After The Fires?

Karen Bass was at a cocktail party while the Palisades burned. https://t.co/xjk1BcncKd pic.twitter.com/qgeulSklac

— Eric Spiegelman (@ericspiegelman) January 15, 2025

Efforts to recall or defeat political figures like Gov Newsom, Mayor Bass, or others have been generally feckless in recent years. Los Angeles County voters failed twice to secure enough signatures to recall soft-on-crime district attorney George Gascon before they ultimately did vote him out in his reelection bid last year. A 2021 effort to recall Gov Newsom failed, and he was reelected in 2022:

Gov. Gavin Newsom sailed to reelection Tuesday night, easily defeating Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle in an outcome seen as so inevitable that he barely campaigned for reelection.

He's term limited now, and he has to find a new job, possibly running for president in 2028, if he wants to continue his career. Mayor Karen Bass won her first mayoral election against developer Rick Caruso in 2022 by about 10%. Two years later, even before the fires, Caruso was flirting with the ides of running against her again:

Real estate developer Rick Caruso made it clear two years ago that he wouldn’t run again for Los Angeles mayor if he lost to Karen Bass.

But lately, Caruso has been behaving a bit like a candidate.

He's shown more energy since the fires:

Amid a flurry of largely right-wing backlash of California public officials’ handling of the deadly wildfires near Los Angeles, the billionaire Rick Caruso, who unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for Los Angeles mayor, emerged as the most notable critic, tearing into his former opponent in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and earning the support of the world’s richest man and GOP megadonor Elon Musk.

. . . Caruso, whose criticism differed from the likes of President-elect Donald Trump, who swiped at California Gov. Gavin Newsom for not greenlighting a fictitious “water restoration declaration,” led a band of local politicians critical of the city, including Traci Park, the city council member representing the neighborhoods worst hit by the fires, who told the Los Angeles Times she has “more questions than answers” on how what she called the “chronic under-investment” in infrastructure contributed to the fire’s severity.

But whether Caruso will actually run again or even back a recall effort is still unclear. Other efforts to recall Bass or somehow force her resignation are so far just wishful thinking:

More than 86,000 outraged Los Angeles residents demand the ouster of lefty Mayor Karen Bass in a new petition, ripping her “gross mismanagement” in her disastrous response to the devastating wildfires ravaging the city.

“We . . . urgently call for the immediate recall of [Bass] due to her gross mismanagement and failure to effectively respond to the devastating 2025 fires in and around the city,” reads the Change.org petition created Wednesday, which had amassed more than 65,000 signatures by Saturday morning.

Bass was 7,400 miles away in Africa, at the inauguration of Ghana’s president, as flames began engulfing the City of Angels.

However, a Change.org petition is nothing but a Change.org petition. In California, a recall petition must be formally filed as part of a legal process, and it must have the verified signatuires of at least 10% of the voters. As of last year, Los Angeles City had 2,130,581 registered voters, which means a successful recall petition would need at least 213,058 verified signatures. The two unsuccessful recall petitions against George Gascon were thrown out by machine judges who rejected tens of thousands of signatures, and we may assume any such petition against Mayor Bass would have the same result.

At least there's a slightly less Quixotic effort against Gov Newsom:

A recall attempt to knock California Gov. Gavin Newsom out of office is underway as he faces sharp criticism for his handling of the Los Angeles wildfires — with opponents labeling his leadership a “series of catastrophic failures.”

Organizers against Newsom vowed to file papers in the next two weeks in hopes of jumpstarting the process that could lead to the Democrat’s ouster in the middle of his second term in the governor’s mansion.

. . . A notice of intent needs to be filed first and then recall supporters must collect about 1.3 million signatures in five months, according to the outlet.

. . . Newsom, 57, easily survived the 2021 recall vote in a state where Democrats hold a clear advantage in voter registration over Republicans.

A spokesperson for Newsom dismissed the latest attempt to throw the Dem out of office, insisting to Newsweek that the governor is “100 percent focused on the fires, ongoing rescue efforts and the recovery process — not politics.”

“Readers still should have the context that the same group of far-right Trump acolytes have launched six different recall attempts against the governor since he’s taken office, each of which have failed spectacularly,” spokesperson Nathan Click said in a statement.

The only hope for a new recall attempt, if Newsom repeats his 2021 strategy to characterize the organizers as Trump supporters, would be to rely on a general shift in opinion about Trump and hope it rubs off in the local context. Last November, Trump was able to benefit from a view that electing Biden in 2020 was a mistake. Now we have people like Dr Soon-Shiong saying endorsing Bass for mayor was an equivalent mistake. But for such a movement to succeed, it will need much more than Change.og petitoins and wishful thinking.

Has Dr Pat Soon-Shiong Been Redpilled?

“Competence matters”: LA Times owner says that it was a “mistake” for his paper to endorse Karen Bass for Mayor in 2022pic.twitter.com/Y6btIn2dW7

— Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) January 13, 2025

Mark Halperin had Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, currently best known as the owner of the Los Angeles Times, on his Morning Meeting 2WAY show yesterday morning for an extended interview, along with his co-hosts Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine. For all rhe hoopla, there wasn't much to it: Dr Soon-Shiong is best known for vetoing the Times editorial board's decision to endorse Kamala for president last November, then asking CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings to join the same editorial board.

More recently, as we see above, he's said it was a “mistake” for his paper to endorse Karen Bass for Mayor in 2022, which he repeated in the Halperin interview. And that's just about it. What's the big deal? Wikipedia says Jennings "worked in the George W. Bush administration and has been described as an adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell." The man is hardly a firebrand.

Beyond that, Soon-Shiong has owned the LA Times since 2018. Why is he making these changes only now? Beyond that, according to the link,

In 2020, Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial board from making any endorsement in the Democratic presidential primaries, overruling its intended endorsement of Elizabeth Warren; the paper did endorse Biden in the general election.

During Soon-Shiong's ownership of the Los Angeles Times, his daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, became interested in the newspaper and sought to influence coverage, in both the newsroom and opinion pages. Many Times staffers expressed alarm at the younger Soon-Shiong's activity, which they viewed as meddling, including privately and publicly contacting staffers to advocate her views.

As it happens, Nika Soon-Shiong has her own Wikipedia entry.

Nika Soon-Shiong (born February 26, 1993) is an American politician and activist who served as a Public Safety Commissioner of West Hollywood from 2021 to 2022. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income and was also part of the Compton Pledge and Long Beach Pledge guaranteed income programs.

Guaranteed income? Sounds a little woozy to me. During her time as a Public Safety Commissioner of West Hollywood,

As a commissioner representing concerns of the citizens, she questioned policing in the city. Soon-Shiong was met with backlash for this, with [West Hollywood council member Lindsey] Horvath responding to the backlash against Soon-Shiong saying it was "rooted in racism". In June 2022, the West Hollywood City Council voted to reduce the number of sheriffs in the city and replace them with unarmed security guards, a move which Soon-Shiong called "pragmatic and fiscally responsible", but said it "could have gone further."

It's worth noting that the questioning from Halperin, Spicer, and Turrentine was generally fawning and didn't mention his daughter's far-left politics or her own meddling at the Times.

While I mentioned an LA Times story favorably in last Saturday's post because, unlike any other media coverage, it gave a timeline and hard specifics of the so-called "Sunset Fire" that threw into question the other sensationalist coverage, the Times itself hasn't provided general coverage of the fires that even its own opinion writer wished it would:

Once we reached our destination I began what would turn into a 24-hour obsession with fire maps — on The Times website, the Watch Duty app, protect.genasys.com. None of which told me what I wanted to know: How fast was the fire moving toward my home and those of my friends and neighbors?

In fact, it took Fox News a week finally to put up the sort of map people had been wanting to see, not the Times (click in the image for a larger view; there's also more info at the link):

In fact, the Halperin interview had me scratching my head. When the Chandler family owned the Times, especially during the Norman Chandler era, there was a sense of community responsibility that went with publishing a regional paper. Indeed, there was something of a consensus among influential figures, certainly the Chandlers, but others like H F Ahmanson, the Disneys, the Gettys, and Leo S Bing, on what was good for the region -- and this would have included a reliable water supply and effective fire protection.

What puzzled me most about the Soon-Shiong interview was Patrick's apparent shallowness about the continuing need for this kind of leadership. Instead, he just makes glib statements on how “competence matters”. Where does he fit in? Where does the Times fit in? If our current leaders aren't competent, what are influential citizens going to do about it? I'm getting no sense of direction.

Instead he hears people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg making noises, and he thinks maybe he should look like he's making the same sort of noises -- but there's no there there.

The Empty Reservoir

The current news about the Los Angrles fires carries a remarkable echo of the great LA noir film Chinatown (1974). The MacGuffin of that film involves the suspicion of Hollis Mulwray, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Departmnent of Water and Power, that huge quantities of water are being diverted from a city reservoir every night despite a drought. Mulwray is murdered as he tries to investigate, which leaves private detective Jake Gittes to unravel the mystery.

Much of this year's story involves Janisse Quiñones, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and why a city reservoir intended to store water for the Pacific Palisades area was empty and unable to provide water to fight fires in that part of the city, which resulted in local hydrants going dry at a critical time.

On Mayor Karen Bass's orders, the city maxed out its budget to 'attract private-sector talent', hiring Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones on a $750,000 salary in May – almost double that of her predecessor.

Now, Quiñones is being blamed by LA Fire Department (LAFD) insiders for leaving a nearby reservoir disconnected and fire hydrants broken for months, DailyMail.com can reveal, leading to firefighters running out of water as they battled the devastating Palisades Fire this week.

. . .The Santa Ynez Reservoir is designed to hold 117 million gallons of drinking water. But it was taken offline in recent months to repair a tear in its cover that exposed the water and potentially impacted its drinkability.

. . . Former DWP general manager Martin Adams told the paper that having the Santa Ynez reservoir would have helped fight the Palisades Fire that wiped out most of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood this week.

'Would Santa Ynez have helped? Yes, to some extent. Would it have saved the day? I don't think so,' Adams said.

He said the crucial reservoir had been offline 'for a while' before the fires, but didn't know the precise date.

But a source in the LA Fire Department (LAFD) told DailyMail.com that DWP officials told them 'had it not been closed they probably would have been ok and had enough water for the fire.'

It's hard to think Martin Adams isn't being intentionally vague about the whole issue. The reservoir had been "closed for a while" indeed:

This reservoir would have saved the Pacific Palisades. https://t.co/IklSey11YW

— Jacob Shell (@JacobAShell) January 11, 2025

In other words, it was closed on his own watch, too. Prior to his 2023 retirement, he had been with DWP for 39 years, rising to the position of Chief Engineer and General Manager in 2019. If the Santa Ynez reservoir had been empty since 2009, he must certainly have known about it and been in a position to do something about it as well.

So what's the story? DWP documentation says the reservoir was taken out of service on July 23, 2009 as a result of requirements by the US Environmental Protection Agency to implement a number of improvements, but especially to cover the reservoir. The report says, among other things, that the reservoir was drained twice to accomplish this, first from October 1, 2009 to May 1, 2010, and then from October 1, 2010 to May 1, 2011, with a floating cover finally installed in January 2011. The project was supposedly complete on December 19, 2012. However, the X thread raises the question of whether the reservoir cover was ever effective, with images showing periodic draining and repair, but it's definitely been empty since 2022:

I read a story yesterday about the damaged cover from a while back, and the picture that accompanied it was a coverless, empty reservoir dated September 9, 2022

— GlobalTrvlr (@GlobalTrlr) January 11, 2025

Former DWP Chief Engineer Adams minimized the potential role the Santa Ynez reservoir may have had in fighting the fires, but even he acknowledged that it would have helped:

"It could have made some difference in supporting the pressure loss early on, but it would not have lasted the whole fire," Martin Adams, who recently retired after 40 years of working at LADWP, most recently as General Manager, told ABC News.

"It might have helped for a little bit, but it wouldn't have been the be-all end-all," Adams said.

As it waas, the Palisades fire crews could rely only on three tanks holding 1 million gallons each, which were quickly exhausted. Another 117 million gallons from the reservoir would definitely have helped -- this would be more than 30 times the amount the crews had available. The reservoir was emptied most recently on Adams's watch and never repaired. Sounds like he has some 'splaining to do, whatever Janisse Quiñones may have to say.

Crisis Management? What's That?

sd1002055

Nation Gets Preview Of Gavin Newsom Presidency https://t.co/b0iygizkHt pic.twitter.com/Hqmnt2STLs

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 10, 2025

As I seem to keep pointing out here, I've worked in the disaster recovery and crisis management fields, and what puzzles me about the state and local response to the LA fires is the total ignorance by anyone in leadership, either at the political or operational level, of basic principles. For instance, there needs to be a central figure who can deliver regular and credible reports on what's being done, like the FBI's James Kallstrom with the TWA 800 explosion.

With no one competent available to fill this role, it's fallen to Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass. Both of them, rather than being available to answer questions, have hidden from the press and stonewalled or ducked obvious questions about the dry fire hydrants or the empty reservoir. A competent Kallstrom type would acknowledge the situation and go on to point out what's being tone to correct it. If necessary, he'd have the pull within the orgnization to insist that something in fact be done.

It isn't just me who's noticing this. Via the LA Times, which has been turnng itself around in recent weeks, Mary McNamara, an op=ed writer, details her frustration at trying to find any specific information on what was burning where:

I began what would turn into a 24-hour obsession with fire maps — on The Times website, the Watch Duty app, protect.genasys.com. None of which told me what I wanted to know: How fast was the fire moving toward my home and those of my friends and neighbors?

. . . But as evening approached and my fingers began to spasm from working my phone, I relented and turned on the television.

It was a huge mistake.

. . . The images were horrific, but they offered no information beyond what had already been provided by many news outlets, including and especially The Times, as well as hundreds of residents posting on social media. The anchors made the appropriate comments of shock and grief while I writhed in my seat wondering where all the various fire lines actually were at that moment.

Coverage was then interrupted by a press conference headed by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, ostensibly to provide updates on the various fires — including, presumably, Eaton. This crisis has not, by any measure, been Bass’ finest hour. She left the country despite warnings of upcoming high wind and fire risk conditions and returned to find the city ablaze. She has refused to answer questions and criticism about her departure, the city’s apparent lack of preparedness, reports of lag time between the eruption of the Palisades fire and a coordinated response and the clear under-staffing of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

I did not expect her to address any of these things at this press conference — she was in a crisis situation and this was not the time for that. I did, however, expect her to provide updates. You know, to tell us exactly what was going on. Maybe pull out some maps that revealed not just evacuation areas but some sense of actual fire lines. Discuss how much water and fire retardant had been dropped when and where, and whether it was proving effective. Something.

This didn't happen, and it's continued not to happen. After a couple of quiet days with no updates and the media starting to pull out, the Palisades fire begsnm to spread again Friday night, with new mandatory evacuations in Brentwood, another highly affluent area adjacent to Pacific Palisades. Again, there are no fire maps, no discussion of what's being done and whether anything is working.

What's remarkable is that Pacific Palisades and Brentwood are loci for the wealthy Democrat donors who virtue-signal their luxury beliefs. In fact, if the fire spreads to Brentwood, it could threaten to leap the 405 freeway, and if it does, it will spread to Beverly Hills and Bel Air. If you think there are expensive homes in Pacific Palisades and Brentwood, you ain't seen nothing. There are truly powerful people in Beverly Hills and Bel Air. I suspect they will not tolerate the fire spreading that far.

Petition · Demand the Immediate Resignation of Mayor Karen Bass - Los Angeles, United States · https://t.co/OE7YKlXuna https://t.co/M8U9mtFnAI

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 10, 2025

Remember it was these same donors who lost patience with Biden and demanded he drop out of the presidential race. Nancy Pelosi was just their catspaw. This appears to be the current situation:

Last night, the fire shifted eastward, threatening areas closer to the 405 freeway, including Mandeville Canyon, Brentwood, and potentially putting UCLA in its crosshairs. Firefighting efforts have been redirected to combat the eastward progression, with additional aircraft and strike teams deployed.

An evacuation warning has been issued for an area bordering UCLA’s campus, reaching the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Veteran Avenue, an intersection that directly borders the UCLA campus. While there is no immediate fire danger to the campus, the university is on high alert.

I don't think the powers that be will tolerate the fire spreading that far.

Back Online

As the title of this blog implies, we live in Hollywood, which is a considerable distance from either the Palisades Fire or the Eaton Fire. and thanks be to the Almighty, we were neither burned out nor ordered to evacuate. On the other hand, the powerful wind gusts that fed the fires also brought down trees across the whole region, which in turn took down power lines and left several million households without electricity. Our own neighborhood was out from Wednesday morning to noon yesterday, so although we and our neighbors were safe, we were incommunicado.

The emerging consensus seems to be that the fires cmnstitute the worst disaster in Los Angeles history, which would put it above the previous top, the 1938 Los Angeles floods. Other lesser disasters include the 1933 Long Beach eartrhquake, the 1961 Bel Air fire, the 1965 Watts riots, the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, the 1992 Rodney King riots, and the 1994 Northridgw earthquake. But there were also strong reminders of the 1942 Battle of Los Angeles:

shortly after 2 a.m. on February 25, military radar picked up what appeared to be an enemy contact some 120 miles west of Los Angeles. Air raid sirens sounded and a citywide blackout was put into effect. Within minutes, troops had manned anti-aircraft guns and begun sweeping the skies with searchlights.

It was just after 3 a.m. when the shooting started. Following reports of an unidentified object in the skies, troops in Santa Monica unleashed a barrage of anti-aircraft and .50 caliber machine gun fire. Before long, many of the city’s other coastal defense weapons had joined in.

On top of the non-feasance by local and state leadership in managing the crisis, the performance of media across the board, both legacy and alt, was disgraceful. A good example was the so-called "Sunset Fire" on Wednesday evening:

The Sunset fire was reported at 2350 N. Solar Drive in the Hollywood Hills shortly after 5:30 p.m. and spread to 60 acres by 9:25 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Fire Department and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The fire created massive traffic jams as residents rushed to evacuate the densely populated area below Runyon Canyon.

But by the time the message was sent for a good part of Hollywood to evacuate, things were nevertheless under control:

The eastern perimeter of the fire was “holding well” at around 8:30 p.m. thanks to a fire road and the work of ground crews, according to a statement from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. And active flames were extinguished at the heel of the fire, while smoldering continued within the interior.

But the evacuiation order created a mass panic:

Traffic was bumper to bumper as people tried to flee the area, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced that the Police Department was being deployed to help manage the traffic. “We are working urgently to close roads, redirect traffic and expand access for LAFD vehicles to respond to the growing fire,” she said in a post on X.

The evacuation order was mostly lifted by midnight, entirely by early Thursday morning.

The acreage burned in the fire was also updated to 43 acres.

“Fortunately, the Sunset Fire is under control,” LAFD spokesperson Margaret Stewart said while announcing the evacuation update Thursday morning.

No structures at all were destroyed. In other words, it was a small brush fire thst was put out by routine measures, but panicked local officials overreacted, ordered a general evacuation of a good part of Hollywood, and set off a media frenzy. According to the BBC, of all outlets,

Much of the heart of Hollywood is blanketed in thick smoke. You can barely see the tops of the towering palm trees that line streets here.

It is utter chaos on the streets near the fire. People are using sweatshirts to cover their faces so they can breathe. Many are carrying bags and suitcases looking for a place to go.

Some are wearing pyjamas, clearly taken by surprise.

According to the Toronto Star,

As the Hollywood Hill fire raged Wednesday evening, several nearby landmarks like the Hollywood Bowl, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the TCL Chinese Theatre fell under evacuation orders. Other landmarks, like the Hollywood sign and beaches in Santa Monica were photographed with plumes of thick black smoke rising in the background throughout Wednesday.

Nothing of the sort occurred; within a few hours of the evacuation order, the brush fire was out, and the authorities said mever mind. My own view was that the "Sunset fire" fiasco was the factor that led the media to back off on coverager, and they seem to have decided that having David Muir or Anderson Cooper going blah blah in front of raging flames was maybe overdoing things, and by Friday morning, they'd moved on to President Trump and Judge Merchan. The big story of Hollywood itself burning down wasn't going to happen, much as the BBC and Toronto Star wanted it to.

For now, the real issues are only startring to trickle out. I'll cover them in the next several days. But just looking at the "Sunset fire" episode, it was so quickly put out by routine firefighting tactics simply because the Hollywood water lines had adequate pressure, and a full reservoir was nearby from which helicopters could quickly draw water. Had these resources been available in Pacific Palisades, the outcome there might well have been the same as in Hollywood.

Archbishop Garcia-Siller In Context

As I reflected further on Archbishop Garcia-Siller's history of intemperate posts -- oddly reminiscent of Trump's own back in the day -- I thought about the timeline of his tenure as Archbishop of San Antonio. He was named to that post in 2010. I first learned about him when he removed Fr Christopher Phillips as pastor of the Our Lady of the Atonement parish in early 2017, and my editorial position on the old Cold Case File blog was that Phillips was overrated and something of a charlatan, and the archbishop's move was fully justified. I still think this way.

Oddly, the archbishop's current pattern of making posts on X that he's had to delete, walk back, and apologize for, didn't begin until 2019. But then he stayed away from open controversy until this past year, when in May he had to delete, walk back, and apologize for two posts critical of Israel and the Jews in general. Then, following the New Orleans Bourbon Street attack, he indirectly blamed "trump (sic)". He deleted the post, but so far, he hasn't felt the need to apologize. What's going on?

I'm starting to get the impression that times are catching up with received opinions among the Catholic hierarchy. As far as I can tell, up to now, there's been a tacit agreement among the US bishops quietly to agree to disagree and avoid public debate on key issues that could potentially be divisive. It's been clear enough that Catholic laity has been moving toward support for Trump and away from boutique issues like transgenderism, over which some bishops have been squishy, and they've been hesitant to weigh in on a losing side.

Trump's election may be changing this. Recent remarks from Chicago's Cardinal Cupich, prominent among the squishy bishops, suggest the cease-fire may be ending:

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich has warned of “prophetic” denunciation by the U.S. bishops if President-elect Donald Trump tries to deport illegal immigrants.

In an interview this weekend with the Argentinian daily La Nación, Cardinal Cupich said that the bishops “are going to have to be prophetic and denounce any abuse of human dignity that may occur” during the Trump presidency, especially regarding immigrants.

. . . Cupich said that he and the bishops conference have “expressed our concern regarding the issue of the deportation of undocumented persons, something that could divide families and make many see the newcomers as enemies.”

. . . Cardinal Cupich has made a name for himself by suggesting moral equivalency among diverse social issues, such as immigration, abortion, capital punishment, and joblessness, provoking a sharp response from his brother bishops.

The problem is that Cathoic Social Teaching makes it clear that countries have the right to resrict immigration and control their borders:

Because there seems to be no end to poverty, war, and misery in the world, developed nations will continue to experience pressure from many peoples who desire to resettle in their lands. Catholic social teaching is realistic: While people have the right to move, no country has the duty to receive so many immigrants that its social and economic life are jeopardized.

For this reason, Catholics should not view the work of the federal government and its immigration control as negative or evil. Those who work to enforce our nation's immigration laws often do so out of a sense of loyalty to the common good and compassion for poor people seeking a better life. In an ideal world, there would be no need for immigration control. The Church recognizes that this ideal world has not yet been achieved.

Trump and those who support his policies have been successfully making the point that in fact, under Biden's open-border policies, the US has been receiving "so many immigrants that its social and economic life are jeopardized". This is evident when the native-born poor complain that new immigrants are taking the housing, food, and educatonal benefits they had previously received, or that the numbers of convicted criminals and mental patients in current unrestrricted immigration waves are creating an increased public safety problem.

A related problem has been the willingness of the squishy faction in the hierarchy to ally itself with secular leftist anti-Semitism. Alan Dershowitz makes the point,

In an act that flies in the face of the Christian Bible, the Vatican recently featured a nativity scene which laid the baby Jesus on a keffiyeh, thus accepting the false Palestinian narrative that Jesus was a Palestinian and not a Jew.

The bible of the Catholic Church expressly states that Jesus was born a Jew in the Judean city with the Hebrew name of Beth Lechem ("House of Bread," Bethlehem in English). He was born there on what has now become Christmas, around the time of the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. He was circumcised as a Jew on New Years Day. He preached as a Jewish rabbi in the Jewish area called the Galil (Galilee in English). He was crucified as a Jewish enemy of the Romans in Jerusalem. During his lifetime, he never heard the word Christian. He lived as a Jew and died as a Jew. He did not wear a keffiyeh. The Muslim faith only began 600 years after his death. It would have been more appropriate for the Vatican to lay the baby on a Jewish tallit (prayer shawl) and wearing a Magen David (star of David). The Vatican willfully violated their own teachings by falsely trying to present him as a Palestinian.

The problem for the hierarchy is that the bishops -- many of whom are aging -- who've adopted a fashionable leftism of earlier decades are being left behind, and in fact, they've never been in step with actual Catholic teaching. At this point, even liberal bishops like Cardinal Gregory are calling the avatars of that old Catholicism like President Biden "cafeteria Catholics". The world is changing.

The old consensus held that immigration was an absolute good, with multiculturalism the end goal. Arguments contrary to progressive social attitudes was “disinformation” that must be combated by robust online censorship. People would quickly adjust to massive changes in social attitudes around sex and gender because objections would be seen as bigoted. And anyone who said anything that questioned the consensus would become a pariah.

This consensus is being rejected across the West. Donald Trump won the presidency by building a multiracial, working-class coalition that had little affection for the progressive activists who supposedly spoke for them.

It looks like the squishy bishops, in an end-phase desperate move, want to restart the old debates on the old terms. This isn't going to work, and newer bishops recognize this.

"Archbishop Garcia-Siller Apologizes. . ."

Roman Catholic Archishoop of San Antonio Gustavo Garcia-Siller became a prominent figure at my old Cold Case File blog when he removed Fr Christopher Phillips as pastor of the Our Lady of the Atonement "Anglican use" parish in that diocese. Phillips was highly popular in some traditionalist Catholic circles, especially those that favored a hybrid Anglican-Catholic liturgy that was anything but traditional.

At the time of that controversy, I was on the archbishop's side. A vocal minority at the Atonement parish objected to Phillips's cult-like leadership, and as matters developed, it appeared that he had tolerated highly questionable conduct by his deacon with teen boys. There were also allegations of financial mismanagement. In that circumstance, as I got reports from parishioners, former parishioners, and other San Antonio Catholics, the archbishop struck me as a solid, even courageous, figure.

Over the weekend, a visitor sent me links to a new controversy involving the archbishop:

San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller has again taken to social media, issuing a series of infelicitous posts that characterize president-elect Donald Trump as a “tyrant” while laying blame for violent tragedies on Trump’s rhetoric.

In a now-deleted post on X, García-Siller nonsensically proclaimed, “Thanks be to God that trump (sic) is not God. Thanks be God for ever!”

. . . Following the news that the New Year’s celebration in New Orleans’ French Quarter had become a scene of human carnage after a terrorist deemed by the FBI to be a radical Islamist plowed into crowded Bourbon Street, killing 15 and injuring many more, the archbishop wrote on X: “The killing today is the result of words and actions that leaders have demonstrated in our recent history. We should not blame others. We need to take responsibility. We need civil discourse and lots of humility and charity.”

Many saw the prelate’s words – often delivered in error-prone English – as blaming the victim rather than the evil terrorist perpetrator.

But digging into the episode a little deeper, I found that the archbishop has a a history of intemperate language on social media. On May 9, 2024,

The Archdiocese of San Antonio says Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller “deeply regrets” that some recent social media posts on the war in Gaza, several of which were deleted Thursday, have “caused confusion and misunderstanding.”

In a series of posts on X on Tuesday, García-Sillar expressed solidarity with Palestinians while also appearing to conflate the Jewish people with the state of Israel.

“Jewish brothers and sisters stop killing Palestinians. STOP!” the archbishop wrote in one now-deleted post.

A few weeks later, on May 30,

In a series of four posts on X (formerly Twitter) that have been seen by thousands of users, San Antonio's Catholic leader apologized for what he called a "very poor choice of words" in relation to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller said he was offering "my most heartfelt apology for a series of posts on X which have been seen by many as being solely a condemnation of the government of Israel and the people of that nation concerning the war in Gaza." Earlier this month, García-Siller condemned the conflict with urgent, pointed language in posts that have since been deleted, at one point appearing to directly address Jews when he wrote: "Jewish brothers and sisters stop killing Palestinians. STOP!"

On August 7, 2019,

Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller released a statement Tuesday evening apologizing for singling out President Donald Trump, but remaining steadfast that racism and violence must be rooted out of society.

"I regret that my recent Tweet remarks were not focused on the issues but on an individual," he wrote in a two-page statement sent to KSAT.com and posted on several of the San Antonio Archdioceses online platforms.

Hours before the statement, the archbishop had deleted the tweets that directly referenced the president. The string of messages were posted Monday night, two days after the killing of 22 people in an El Paso Walmart by a racist gunman who targeted Hispanics.

In his statement, the archbishop added that it is his ministry to serve spiritual needs and "express myself in ways that convey compassion, civility and build up unity."

It's worth noting that the Roman Catholic hierarchy has gradually been reconciling with Trump's resurgence. New York Cardinal Archbishop Dolan said just before Christimas,

“I’ve had talks with him before in the past where he’s pretty blunt about, you know, he can’t say that he was raised as a, as a very zealous Christian, but he takes his Christian faith seriously,” Dolan told host Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Dolan said he recently talked with Trump at the Notre Dame Cathedral, telling Trump it was “nice to see” him “somewhere besides Fifth Avenue.”

Trump and first lady Jill Biden attended the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral earlier this month. The cathedral endured a devastating fire in spring 2019 that resulted in the collapse of its spire and wooden latticework of its roof.

This comes in the wake of Cardinal Wilton Gregory calling President Biden a "cafeteria Catholic" this past Easter. Catholics in geneal supported Trump in 2024:

In 2020, the Catholic electorate — one the biggest religious blocs in the nation — was almost evenly split, with 50% backing Trump and 49% favoring Biden, a longtime member of the faith.

This year, according to VoteCast, 54% of Catholic voters supported Trump and 44% backed Harris — a shift that was particularly notable in North Carolina, Florida and Texas.

Trump improved his 2020 performance with Latins:

Donald Trump may have broken a Latino voting record for a Republican candidate in his 2024 presidential victory. With 42 percent of this bloc’s vote according to AP projections, Trump bested George W. Bush’s 2004 performance among this demographic, which today accounts for about 15 percent of the total U.S. voting population.

With 56 percent of the Latino vote, Kamala Harris continued the trend of Democratic majorities. However, Trump’s share of the Latino vote is a major improvement from his first presidential campaign in 2016 where he only captured 28 percent of the bloc’s votes and in 2020 when he captured 32 percent.

In Texas, the shift of Latin voters toward Trump was significant:

Latinos, long considered a foundational component of the Democratic Party's prospects in the Lone Star State, abandoned the progressive ship in mass during the 2024 election.

Overall, Republicans saw a 28 percent gain among Texas Latinos from 2020 to 2024.

Times are changing even among Abp Garcia-Siller's own flock. At 68, he's fairly young for an archishop, and he isn't reguired to submit a resignation letter until he's 75, but the pope isn't required to accept his resignation at that time. I think, though, that his style is increasingly out of date. The other US Catholic archbishop with a background in Mexico, Los Angeles's Jose Gómez, seems to be much more focused and careful.