The Brief

While Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ team released text messages about the January wildfires days ago to the Los Angeles Times, NBC Los Angeles and ABC7 Eyewitness News, a request filed Jan. 15 by LAist remains outstanding. After repeated follow-up inquiries, the mayor’s office did release records sent earlier to other media outlets.

The backstory

Bass was in Ghana when the January fires erupted, as a member of a federal delegation for the inauguration of the country’s new president. Her journey home would take 24 hours, during which the city and region experienced the most devastating firestorm in the L.A.’s history. In all, 30 people died in the Palisades and Eaton fires, 12 in the city of L.A. Thousands of homes and buildings were destroyed.

Here’s where things stand

Bass’ team initially said they needed until May 1 to respond to LAist’s records request, which went beyond the scope of texts released to the L.A. Times and other news organizations.

LAist originally requested the following texts and other communication:

• Text messages sent and received from the city cellphone(s) issued to Mayor Karen Bass, from Jan. 1, 2025, to Jan.  8, 2025, containing any of the following words and phrases in their body text: red flag warning, strong winds, winds, fire, Pacific Palisades, Pacific Palisades Fire, Eaton Fire, Pasadena, Altadena, response and Hurst Fire.
• Emails sent and received by Mayor Karen Bass from Jan. 1, 2025, to Jan. 8, 2025, containing any of the following words and phrases in their body text: red flag warning, strong winds, winds, fire, Pacific Palisades, Pacific Palisades Fire, Eaton Fire, Pasadena, Altadena, response and Hurst Fire.
• Email communications between Mayor Karen Bass and LAFD Fire Chief Kristin Crowley from Jan. 1, 2025 to Jan. 8, 2025.

LAist is still waiting for this request to be fulfilled.

Following the release of text messages to other media organizations, LAist requested to review the available records.

Bass’ team did not respond to an LAist email asking to review the records already released and for an explanation for the delay. LAist obtained the records after calling Bass’ spokesperson for comment on a story reporting on the delay.

David Loy with the First Amendment Coalition said Bass’ office has “no basis to withhold” records already released to other outlets.

“Once a public agency releases public records to one requester, voluntarily and intentionally, it is required to release the same records to anyone else who requests them,” he said.

Bass’ office could have simply made a mix up or overlooked sending the records to LAist, he said, but “ if a public agency is playing favorites, that is a serious problem under the Public Records Act, because they're obligated under the law. ... If they release records to one, they must release records to all.”

Asked about the disparity, Bass’ office said that LAist should have called the communications team for the records, even though the procedure for prior requests was followed.

Note: The L.A. Times reported that officials initially said Bass’ text message records around fire response no longer existed because those messages auto-deleted after 30 days. Then the mayor’s team said they were able to use “specialized technology” to recover the messages that were released to the Times.

Here are some notable exchanges in the texts:

• The fires began Jan 7. That morning, forecasters had issued a rare warning about damaging, life threatening winds. In the text exchanges released from that day, as of 10:30 a.m., there was no discussion about wind danger prior to the start of the Palisades Fire. Before Bass was alerted to the first fires starting, she had been in communication with her team with a request to send flowers to Monica Rodriguez, presumably the L.A. City Council member. 
• Councilmember Bob Blumenfield told Bass in one text that he had “a warehouse full of supplies outside of regular channels that we maintain year round for emergencies and am providing shelters etc — long story, but literal tons of supplies.” Bass did not reply.
• “KYY,” presumably Los Angeles Councilmember Katy Young Yaroslavsky, told Bass that “Traci and my sense is that we don’t have nearly enough bodies on the ground helping folks get out and/or around. If national guard is an option it would probably be really helpful.” Traci Park serves on the Los Angeles City Council; her district includes the Palisades. Bass did not reply.
• Other texts show Bass first learned of the Palisades Fire from her deputy chief of staff, Celine Cordero, while attending a party at the U.S. Embassy in Ghana. Following the party, texts show a concerned Bass rushing home — a journey that would take around 24 hours — while trying to lead from afar as she dealt with communication interruptions. She would also be inundated by texts from city, state and federal leaders offering their support. 
• Cordero texted Bass — not even 24 hours after the Palisades Fire broke out — that fire crews were “essentially in life-saving mode, and structures are a secondary concern at this point.” At that point, Cordero said there were “multiple civilian victims injured (# TBD)” and “unofficial estimate is 200 homes burned.”

About the records LAist is still waiting for

Loy said the California Public Records Act “does not impose any particular record retention requirements on public agencies. It simply says agencies must disclose what they have in their possession at the time of the request.”

However, he said, the city’s administrative code requires records to be preserved for a minimum of two years.

“ This particular provision of Los Angeles administrative code, I believe, does apply to things like emails and texts of the mayor,” he said. “And so if the mayor was auto-deleting text messages that pertain to public business and not retaining them for up to two years as required by the city's own administrative code, that could be a significant problem.”

LAist also has reached out to City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office for comment.

The Democratic National Committee on Wednesday sued President Donald Trump’s administration for recent television advertisements that promoted his political message while costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda and accuses Trump of personally directing them. It asks the court to declare the ads illegal and stop the use of federal funds to pay for them.

Trump has faced bipartisan backlash for the ads, which glorify him and echo his campaign pitch as voters cast early ballots with the midterm elections less than a month away.

The spots, which began airing in September, already have cost more than $12 million to run, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, and a total of $20 million in Homeland Security Department funding has been tapped to pay for them.

Responding Monday to the criticism, Trump defended the ads as “positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.” but said he’d pay for them using his MAGA Inc. super PAC going forward.

But on Tuesday, the fifth ad in the campaign began airing with the notice “paid for by the U.S. Government,” promoting Trump’s military actions in Venezuela earlier this year. The same day, Trump made it clear he hasn’t committed to reimbursing any money that has already been spent, telling reporters “we’ll decide.”

DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement that Trump is misusing taxpayer dollars in “a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans in November.”

“Americans deserve better than to have their hard-earned tax dollars used for Trump’s illegal schemes,” he added.

Legal experts have suggested the ads run afoul of a federal statute against congressionally appropriated money being used for “publicity or propaganda,” and potentially other federal laws. The Homeland Security money tapped for the ads comes from a $175 million package Congress gave to the department as part of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.

The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements akin to what past administrations have done to promote various policies. Legal experts have said the recent ads differ from many past public service announcements because they aren’t aimed at helping members of the public benefit from specific government programs.

The defendants in the lawsuit — Trump, the White House, DHS and the Office of Management and Budget — didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Fall has only just begun, but it's already time to start thinking about the quintessential winter bug: the flu.

The annual flu season usually starts in October or November. But this year, it looks like the flu started to pick up in early September.

"There are enough signs pointing in the same direction to make me think, 'OK, yes. This is the start of flu season,'" says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The percentage of people testing positive for the flu in the West has been rising steadily since around the beginning of September, she says. And the number of people showing up in emergency departments because of the flu has also been rising for weeks, she adds.

"It's very uncommon to see flu activity rising this early. It's activity that we might normally see more like November or December," she says.

The timing of the flu season isn't the only thing that's odd. It's also unusual that flu activity seems to have started in Western states, such as California, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska.

"It typically starts in the South and then expands from there," Rivers says. "So two uncommon developments there."

Rivers stresses that the amount of flu activity is still very low in most parts of the country. But that's starting to change as the flu picks up nationwide.

It's unclear why flu activity would have started so early, and in such an unusual part of the country. But one clue might be a new variant that evolved a mutation, which appears to make it better at evading existing immunity, especially among teenagers.

"That's our best argument for what's going on right now in terms of this early flu season," says Dr. Alex Greninger, a virologist who heads infectious disease diagnostics at the University of Washington. Doctors there are seeing as much flu right now as they usually would around Christmas, and the mutated variant appears to be common, he says.

So Greninger, Rivers and others are urging people to think about getting their flu shot earlier than usual.

"It's crucial that people get an influenza vaccine," says Scott Hensley, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania. "And this might be a year that people might want to get a vaccine early."

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn't been promoting flu shots as it usually does. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the CDC, is a long-time vaccine skeptic.

"It is disappointing that CDC is quiet given that flu kills of hundreds of kids a year and can result in tens of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths," says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned last year as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protest what he called political interference at the agency.

The CDC declined to make an official available to NPR for this story. In a statement, a CDC spokesperson said, "CDC is developing a communications strategy to provide clear, accessible information about influenza vaccination and other critical steps people can take to protect themselves during respiratory virus season. This includes information about the benefits and risks of vaccination to support informed decision-making."
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