The Brief

The smog appeared out of nowhere on July 8, 1943, blinding drivers and causing car crashes. Mothers grabbed their children and ran inside hotels to escape unwanted fumes. Some thought it was chemical warfare by a foreign country. But no, it was smog.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron said he would get rid of the "vexing fumes" within four months. The problem persisted for more than four decades.

L.A. has made progress on the stuffy air, which was once so thick it burned lungs and eyes and caused nausea. But the fight for clean air is far from over as Los Angeles still remains one of the worst-air-polluted cities in the country.

What brought the smog?

People initially blamed the smog on a gas company plant that made artificial rubber. Then, they blamed sulfur.

Chip Jacobs is a co-author of Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles. He said it was almost like L.A. was in a state of denial.

"Some people started suspecting it's cars, it's hydrocarbons from cars reacting in sunlight," he said in an interview with LAist's daily news program AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM. "That was not appreciated and embraced until a little scientist at Caltech took a chance."

That scientist was Arie Haagen-Smit, who escaped Holland to avoid World War II. According to Jacobs, he didn't want to be a scientist. But he was angry at the weak science around investigating smog. Lab work revealed tailpipe emissions were the smog culprit. Still, not a lot of people wanted to believe him.

"He was going up against the coolest product you could buy, a car," Jacobs said.

Feeling the burn

The smog ruined the great outdoors for many people in the decades to follow. AirTalk caller Joanne grew up in L.A. during the 1950s. She told host Larry Mantle that when she came home from college she asked her mom, "How can you live here?"

"It felt like the entire world was peeling onions," she said. "That's the only way I can describe it."

Other callers chimed in and remembered schools closing in the 1960s because the air pollution was so bad.

Mantle remembered burning lungs as a child.

"I just remember my lungs burning and wondering, wow, why is that? What's causing this?" Mantle said. "You don't really know what's going on because you take the smog for granted."

Jacobs also said it ruined a lot of fun for him in the 70s. He recalled canceled baseball games.

"You start with a blue sky, and it seemed like a fog rolled in. All of a sudden your asthmatic friends were running for the primatene mist," Jacobs said.

What changed? 

Ed Avol is a professor emeritus at the Keck School of Medicine at USC in the population and public health science department. He said cleaning up the air has been a huge success story in understanding improvement in Los Angeles.

He pointed to technology and policies through the state and regional agencies on refineries, power plants, and chemical and manufacturing.

Avol also credited regulations on trains, planes, ships and cars. Those included smog checks for cars, lead removal from gasoline, and catalytic converters that helped clear some of the air.

"The problem is really so vast here, and so many millions of sources here, that really one has to do a sort of full court approach to try and address everything we can to try and reduce that,” Avol said.

Listen to the conversation

In the first week of Black History Month, President Donald Trump posted a racist depiction of former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama on social media — a video clip showing the Obamas' faces on apes. The post was later deleted, and the White House blamed a staffer for "erroneously" posting it. On Friday evening, Trump refused to apologize for the post: "I didn't make a mistake," he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The post was one of dozens Trump shared in the middle of the night on his platform Truth Social and came at the end of a minute-long video promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the clip before it was deleted, saying, "Please stop the fake outrage."

Leavitt said it was from an "internet meme" that depicted Trump as king of the jungle while Democrats were shown as characters from The Lion King. Trump's clip did not include any of the longer video Leavitt referred to, which also includes other Democrats, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, depicted as animals.

The racist trope depicting Black people as apes or animals has historically been used to dehumanize Black people and to justify slavery.

Criticism of Trump and his post came swiftly, including from some otherwise allied with Trump.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican, said he was "praying it was fake."

"It's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. The president should remove it," said Scott, who is Black.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Friday evening that he had spoken to Scott, adding, "He's a great guy. He understood that 100 percent."

Asked if the post had hurt Republican support amongst Black voters Trump said no.

"We did criminal justice reform. I did the historically Black colleges and universities — I get them funded. Nobody has been — and that's why I got a tremendous, the highest vote with male Black voters that they've seen in many, many decades.

Trump went on to insist that he was the "least racist president you've had in a long time."

Trump has a history of making racist remarks toward Black people and other people of color.

For years, he pushed the false narrative that Obama was not born in the U.S., and he has previously used derogatory language to describe African countries.

He also falsely claimed former Vice President Kamala Harris "turned Black" during the presidential campaign. Harris identifies as Black and Indian American.

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The noon deadline to file papers to run for L.A. mayor is just hours away, and the field of challengers to Mayor Karen Bass is becoming clear.

L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman has just announced she is running, reports the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

The news comes as the field of high-profile candidates has thinned in recent days and weeks. Last night, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath announced she will not run for mayor, ending months of speculation.

Horvath said she was skipping the race to focus on her reelection bid.

" I am choosing not to run for mayor and instead to focus on my reelection for Los Angeles County supervisor, not because I'm stepping away from a challenge. I'm stepping even more into the one we've already started," Horvath said.

Days ago, former LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner dropped out after the death of his daughter.

Developer Rick Caruso said last month he would not make another bid after running in 2022.

Other challengers to Bass include reality TV star Spencer Pratt and community organizer Rae Huang.

Voters will head to the polls June 2 for the primary.

Singer-songwriter Dwight Yoakam has lived in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. But coming up during the 1980s in the clubs of L.A. and the San Fernando Valley, you might say his style is more California Country than anything.

Yoakam recently sold out The Roxy for a concert benefitting Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles. The 69-year-old musician and actor had a lot of backup from a younger generation of country acts.

He was joined on stage by Grammy-nominated people like Lukas Nelson — as in Willie’s son — guitar prodigy Marcus King and others.

Dwight Yoakam and Lukas Nelson (center) take the stage at The Roxy.

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Brian Bowen Smith

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“It’s flattering on a personal level that five artists of that generation would come and collaborate with me to do this. But more importantly it was gratifying to hear their response to the charitable cause of Children’s Hospital,” Yoakam said.

Yoakam and wife, Emily Joyce, had a very personal inspiration for organizing the benefit concert. In 2020, during the peak of COVID, their own infant son was seen at Children’s Hospital. They were relieved it was nothing, but an experience Emily relayed to Yoakam changed him.

“She heard the little boy behind in another recovery bed come to. Five or six. And his eyes opened — I guess his father was there with him at his bedside. And he said ‘Was I brave daddy?’ And I said: ‘Wow, it puts everything in life in quick perspective.’"

Yoakam said the experience stuck with Joyce so much that she was determined to put a benefit show together. And it was heartening having so many of his friends back him up for the "Rockin’ for the Kids" concert, Yoakam said. The night even had a surprise on-stage FaceTime call from actor Billy Bob Thornton. The actor and director — who cast Yoakam in his 1996 film Sling Blade — was originally scheduled to help emcee the event, but was stuck at an iced out movie shoot in New Jersey.

Los Angeles calling

Yoakam came out to the warm California sun in the late 70s, and it wasn’t long before he was gigging hard at long gone honky-tonks like The Palomino and The Corral in the San Fernando Valley.

“[I] spent a year of my life on the off nights [at The Corral] — let me tell you — that’s the real world,” Yoakam recalled. “The time I was out there doing, you know, five sets a night. You’d start at nine and end at two in the morning... And you know I really made my bones there.”

It wasn’t long before Yoakam’s California Country music was mixing and merging with a new scene in L.A. One that blended the punk rock ethos with the twang of country.

“The crossroads of time and place happened again in the early 80s with the quote ‘Cowpunk’ movement. A lot of them were punk rock bands. Like The Dills became Rank and File. The Plugz — with a Z — became Los Cruzados,” Yoakam said.

He would go on to share the bill with bands like X and The Blasters. And Yoakam was embraced by crowds of punk rockers too.

“I said, ‘You know what? We don’t have to play The Roundup out in the Valley, we don’t have to play just The Palomino. I said ‘We can go over the hill,’” he said.

Yoakam remembered it was Bill Bentley, a former music editor for the LA Weekly, who saw him performing at The Palomino and then invited him to play Club Lingerie on Sunset Blvd.

“That introduced me to a different audience. And then we started playing... the rock n’ roll side of the hill,” Yoakam said.

By 1986, Yoakam was playing at The Roxy for the record release party for “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc.” The live performance was recorded and included on later releases of the album.

“We did the record release party, 40 years ago in March, at The Roxy. It was kind of a full-circle moment. Interesting book-end, if you will, from 1986 to now,” Yoakam said.

Yoakam will play Ontario’s ONT Field on March 21, right before heading out on tour with ZZ Top.

Tickets are available via Ticketmaster.