The Brief

When the dam of discontented Democrats calling upon President Joe Biden to suspend his flagging presidential campaign finally broke last week, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was standing at the floodgates.

Pelosi stepped down from being speaker of the House in 2022. Technically, that makes her a mere congressional backbencher from San Francisco, just one member, well into her 80s, among 212 other Democrats in the House of Representatives. That she has played such a pivotal role, mostly out of the spotlight, in convincing, badgering and pressuring Biden to end his campaign — a decision he announced in a letter today — may surprise some.

Longtime allies and observers of the former House speaker say it shouldn’t. This, they say, is who Pelosi has always been.

“She is very much a behind-the scenes vote-counting tactician. That’s what she’s good at. She knows how to win,” said Marc Sandalow, the former Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Chronicle whose Pelosi biography “Madam Speaker” debuted shortly after she was elected to lead the House in 2006.

Pelosi voiced doubts early

Pelosi was early to publicly voice concerns about the viability of Biden’s campaign after a disastrous late June debate performance. When Biden attempted to slam the door shut on that discussion, it was Pelosi who subtly, but very publicly, nudged the door back open. When vulnerable congressional Democrats began fretting that a flagging Biden would drag them down come November, Pelosi reportedly offered to be a sounding board and repository of their complaints. When Rep. Adam Schiff came out last week as the most high-profile Democrat yet to call on Biden to exit for the sake of the party and country, many saw in it the handiwork — or at least, the tacit approval — of Pelosi, Schiff’s mentor and political benefactor. And when it came time to deliver the unwelcome pitch and tell Biden that his hopes for reelection were faint, it was Pelosi who reportedly gave him a dispassionate analysis of the polls, even as she remained evasive in her public statements.

For a storied political strategist, this may be the last play in a career of gambits. In triggering a risky and entirely unprecedented electoral reset for the Democratic Party so close to a presidential election that many voters believe is pivotal for the future of American democracy, it also may be her most consequential.

Sandalow is now a faculty member at the University of California Washington Center and stressed that he has no specific knowledge of Pelosi’s activities over the last month. But he sees a familiar character in the speaker emerita working the phones and guiding Biden to the exit based on an unsentimental reading of the electoral environment.

“By all accounts, she has great affection for Joe Biden,” said Sandalow. “But for her, it’s all about winning.”

Cold-blooded focus on winning election

“Cold-blooded,” or some synonym of the term, comes up a lot when discussing Pelosi’s political reputation. It’s usually meant as a compliment. It’s a term that Pelosi has proudly applied to herself. That, or a synonym.

“I’m more reptilian,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last year, describing the 2022 midterms. “Cold-blooded. To win the election.”

For Pelosi, any consideration of ideology is always tempered by electability. That’s sharply at odds with the caricature that Republicans and conservative media constructed around her during her years as speaker: the embodiment of San Francisco’s lefty politics and out-of-touch elitism. Pelosi’s personal views do tend to run progressive, but her leadership was never rooted in her policy preferences, said John Lawrence, her former chief of staff who now also works at the UC Washington Center.

“People have this mistaken notion of her as some sort of a zealous ideological warrior,” he said. “Her power, her strength, her reputation comes from the fact that she has a cold-blooded way of analyzing the facts, of taking her personal ideology or her personal aspirations out of the equation, and making decisions based on what is feasible.”

The backstory

Many who know Pelosi’s life story attribute that to her upbringing.

Her father, Tommy D’Alesandro Jr., was a state legislator turned congressman turned Baltimore mayor — a committed New Deal liberal. Growing up in the city’s Little Italy, Pelosi’s childhood home also served as a community meeting place, campaign headquarters and constituent services center. When her older brother was elected mayor of Baltimore, few were surprised.

But coming of age as a woman in the 1960s, Pelosi’s political career was much less of a sure thing. All the more so when she married Paul Pelosi, losing her politically prized last name, and then moved with him to San Francisco, a town where “D’Alesandro” didn’t open many doors anyway.

President Biden delivers his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, as Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., watch, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Washington.

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From her perch in the city’s ritzy Presidio Terrace neighborhood, she still managed to start climbing the rungs of California Democratic political power — first as a fundraiser, then a city party leader, then chair of the California Democratic Party. All the while, she raised five kids.

“She had the disadvantage in some ways of being a very attractive, wealthy San Franciscan,” said Lawrence, which some in the city’s male-dominated political class took to mean that she was a lightweight. “I don’t think that lasted very long,” he said.

Nothing about Pelosi suggested that she would be a strong campaigner of the handshaking, baby-kissing variety. She regularly described herself as shy. Her gender remained a liability. But when Rep. Sala Burton, the wife of the late Rep. Phillip Burton, lay on her deathbed, it was “Nancy” she named as her hoped-for successor.

The Burton political machine that had dominated local politics for 24 years. Reporter John Jacobs described the made-for-TV-movie scene in his Phillip Burton biography, “A Rage for Justice”:

An independently wealthy resident of Pacific Heights who was at home in some circles where it was impolite to mention Phillip’s name, Pelosi seemed an odd choice. But this daughter of one congressman from Baltimore and sister of another was a partisan, liberal Democrat to her core.From her sickbed, Sala questioned Pelosi closely on whether she was truly interested in the job. She would be 2,500 miles from her husband and five children; the hours would be long and grueling. Was Nancy Pelosi fully committed to serve? She looked at the dying woman and said, “I expect you to get well. If you do not, I would be honored to succeed you.”John Burton, the last member of the Burton dynasty, saw another reason why Pelosi would be a smart pick. She was, in his words, “operational,” someone who could get things done (the notoriously profane Burton would not have used the word “things.”)

What her political victories taught her

With him running her campaign, Pelosi won her first seat in 1987, her first and only close election. In the primary, she narrowly edged out Harry Britt, a socialist and political successor to Harvey Milk, who had the backing of organized labor, environmental activists and much of the gay community. But Pelosi had the San Francisco machine on her side, including then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. The Los Angeles Times reported that Pelosi spent more than her 13 opponents combined. Her role as political insider had its perks once she arrived in D.C. too. She already knew roughly half of the members of the Democratic delegation by name. Many had been at her home for fundraisers.

She would go on to become the first and only female House speaker and shepherd through landmark legislation, including the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare. Along the way, she nurtured the political careers of younger Democrats. Among them are two Californians who’ve been prominently mentioned as potential Biden replacements: Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — both of whom remained publicly loyal to Biden until the bitter end.

This month, as Pelosi worked with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and her successor, minority leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries cajoled Biden to close out his campaign, her personal and political connections to the rest of the House Democratic caucus were the source of her credibility and power, he said.

“She’s very much in the tradition of the smoke-filled backroom politician,” Sandalow said — minus the smoke. “There are still scores of House Democrats who owe their success to her…So the idea that she has enormous influence shouldn’t surprise anybody.”

L.A. city leaders will discuss on Wednesday whether to pull hundreds of millions of dollars out of the regional homelessness agency and assign different oversight.

L.A. County supervisors voted to withdraw funding for the L.A. Homeless Services Authority last April, citing ongoing problems with the agency's oversight of homelessness funds.

Now 10 months later, City Council members are planning to talk about whether to pull the city’s funds from LAHSA — which amount to just under $300 million this fiscal year.

It’s one of the most consequential decisions on homelessness city officials have faced in years. In deciding the future of LAHSA, the City Council will be deciding who will be entrusted with taxpayer funds meant to address the nation’s largest unsheltered homeless population.

What the council will discuss

On Wednesday, the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee is scheduled to discuss a range of options that include:

• not changing anything major
• keeping the city money at LAHSA, but beefing up city oversight
• shifting the funding from LAHSA to direct city control
• shifting the city’s funding from LAHSA to the county homelessness department to administer it

The committee also is scheduled to discuss whether to pursue shifting the city’s federal homelessness funding from LAHSA to more direct city control.

The options were first laid out in a staff report to delivered last April, two years after it was requested by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez.

At a City Council meeting in January, Rodriguez criticized housing and homelessness committee chair Nithya Raman for not scheduling a committee discussion on the options.

“It's been sitting [for] 280 days, a report in your committee that you won't hear,” Rodriguez said at the January meeting. “So let's stop playing this false notion of the arsonists showing up as the firefighters.”

Asked for a response Monday, Raman’s spokesperson Stella Stahl told LAist the item is on Wednesday's agenda.

In a statement, Raman said she expects to hold two meetings to discuss all the city’s options before the council makes a decision.

Raman and Mayor Karen Bass urged the county not to pull funding from LAHSA last spring, saying the agency was making progress on homelessness.

The supervisors went ahead last April with their decision to withdraw the more than $300 million in annual county funding from the agency.

The vast majority of county funds will be shifted from LAHSA starting July 1.

Raman recently announced she’s running in the June primary against Bass, whom she previously endorsed for re-election.

LAHSA is in ‘crisis,’ its CEO says

LAHSA was created by the city and county in 1993 to oversee homeless services. It’s governed by a CEO who reports to a commission of 10 members. Half of the members are appointed by the L.A. mayor, and the other half by each of the five county supervisors. Bass also serves on the commission, having appointed herself in fall 2023.

While it’s long faced criticism, it’s been under particularly close scrutiny for more than a year.

An audit and court-ordered review found it failed to properly track its spending and whether services were being provided.

LAHSA also has been facing criticism more recently for months-long delays in paying tens of millions of dollars to reimburse service providers — a problem officials vowed to fix nearly two years ago. Several providers recently told LAist they've had had to dip into reserves or take on debt.

While addressing the commission that oversees the organization on Friday, CEO O’Neill said LAHSA was “in crisis. And I say this not as a criticism to any of our really hardworking staff. They've built what they were asked to build.”

LAHSA’s staff report to “essentially 21 elected bosses, all of whom have different, sometimes conflicting agendas,” O’Neill said. “This creates a structure that is unstable.”

“LAHSA has been structured for decades as the entity that takes the blame,” she added. “Political incentive…has been to point at LAHSA rather than to address structural issues.”

“Morale is very low,” O’Neill said of LAHSA staff.

Fifteen years ago, when modern electric vehicles were just hitting the road, no one knew exactly what to expect from their giant, expensive lithium-ion batteries.

As batteries age, they hold less and less energy. Anyone who's ever had a dying smartphone, or had to replace a vehicle's 12-volt starter battery, knows this painfully well.

EV batteries were intended to last longer than those smaller, cheaper batteries. But how much longer?

The predictions were not soothing. In 2010, the New York Times wrote that "estimates of [EV] battery packs' lifespan — no one knows for sure — range upward from seven years." The average car on the road is more than 12 years old. And that discrepancy made some would-be EV buyers nervous.

Batteries come with warranties, but they don't last as long as the car. If a high-voltage battery chokes out midway through a car's life, it needs replacing — at a price tag that can run in the ballpark of $5,000 to $20,000.

But there's good news.

As the fleet of EVs on the road ages, new data pooled from tens of thousands of vehicles is showing those batteries are lasting longer than expected.

How a battery ages 

Lithium-ion batteries undergo two kinds of aging. First, there's calendar aging: They degrade as time goes on, holding less juice, even if they just sit in storage.

Then there's cyclical aging, which is how much a battery degrades based on its use — being charged and discharged, over and over again.

That means there's no way to dodge degradation. Whether you use a vehicle a lot or a little, eventually, the battery will hold less energy.

But the trajectory of aging isn't a straight line. Recurrent, a research firm that pulls in data from over 30,000 EV drivers, describes it as an "S curve." There's a rapid decline at the beginning, a long leveling off, and then a more rapid decline at the end.

"It's very much like breaking in a pair of shoes," says Liz Najman, the director of market insights at Recurrent. The shoes start out stiff, but quickly get a little more give. "And then your shoes just last you," she says, until at some point, "It's all over, it's a rapid decline."

And when it comes to EV batteries, two things are becoming clear. The initial drop-off is not as severe as some people had worried. And the sharp end-of-life decline is taking a long, long time to materialize.

At auto auctions, a lot of healthy batteries

Adam George is a vehicle services director at Cox Automotive, which runs used car auctions around the country. In recent years, the number of used EVs for sale has increased enormously — reflecting the sharp rise in production a few years ago.

That's given Cox Automotive a growing pool of used EVs to evaluate before they're re-sold.

"We were expecting battery health to be experiencing mass degradation over the first one to three years of owning a vehicle," George says. "What we have seen, though, is that these 2, 3, 4-year-old off-lease cars that are coming back have battery health scores well upwards of 95%."

Recurrent's data also shows that cars from most major brands retain 95% or more of their expected range after 3 years, thanks in part to software and battery management systems that are designed to correct for the battery's early degradation, and give drivers consistent range.

So the initial drop-off in that S curve is in the range of 5% or so, give or take. After that? Well, Cox Automotive has tested nearly 80,000 EVs, and found an average battery health of 92%.

Decade-old EVs are overwhelmingly on their original batteries 

That data set is naturally skewed toward younger vehicles, because the vast majority of EVs on the road today are fairly new. There were only a million EVs sold between 2010 and 2018, and now there are more than a million sold each year.

So what about the oldest EVs, specifically?

Recurrent's data can help answer this question. Najman, a data scientist, notes a few caveats: It's a fairly small dataset, just because there weren't many EVs built more than a decade ago. And some of the oldest EVs use technology that can't connect to Recurrent's opt-in network.

But based on their community, among EVs that are 10 years old or older, only 8.5% have ever had a battery replacement. More than 90% of them are still on their original battery.

"EV batteries are holding up phenomenally well," Najman says.  

Recurrent has also looked at EVs of any age that have more than 150,000 miles on them, which provides a closer look at the effects of that cyclical aging. There, too, the batteries outperformed expectations.

"Cars with 150,000 miles or more, and that have not had battery replacements, are getting at least 83% of their original range," Najman says.

Now, there is one common reason why EV batteries will be replaced very early on: a defect. There have been multiple large-scale battery recalls, and any individual battery might have a flaw that requires replacement. But because all new EVs come with warranties, that kind of replacement isn't a financial blow to owners.

"That would be something that would be synonymous with, like, your engine or a transmission going bad," says Adam George, of Cox Automotive. "That's what warranties are for."

EV battery warranties typically cover at least 8 years and 100,000 miles, and automakers will replace the battery in the case of catastrophic failure, or a reduction in capacity (usually to 70% of the original or less).

A robotic arm displays the dual engine chassis of a Model S electric sedan at the Hawthorne Airport in Los Angeles on October 9, 2014.

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The tale of one Model S 

What do all these stats look like in real life? Consider Norman Hajjar's Model S.

Hajjar was an early adopter of electric vehicles. He kind of had to be: In 2013 he became an executive at the electric vehicle drivers' app Plugshare.

His 2012 Model S is one of the first that Tesla ever built. When he got it, he was well aware of the question mark about battery lifespan. "There was really no way of knowing what the future held for it because there was zero track record," Hajjar says.

In his case, the future held a battery defect: a loud noise followed by his car coming to an abrupt stop. He recalls Tesla replacing the battery — free of charge and under warranty — in 2014.

Since then, he's spent 12 years on that second battery. He's put around 200,000 miles on the car overall. And it's driving great, thank you very much.

"This vehicle still is a monster," Hajjar says, affectionately. "It is extremely fast, quick off the line."

The vehicle was originally rated to have 265 miles of range. Now it has about 220. Do the math, and it's at 83% of its original capacity. "The amount of degradation is pretty minor," Hajjar says.

Hajjar has moved on to a newer vehicle for his daily driver, mostly to enjoy higher-tech features. (His newer Model Y has Tesla's advanced driver-assistance software.) His son uses the Model S these days for his commute to college. "It's just sort of a backup vehicle now," Hajjar says. But he plans to hang on to it. He's sentimental about it, he says.

Why are batteries outlasting expectations? 

The engineers who developed modern EVs knew that prolonging battery life would be crucial. They designed systems to actively manage temperatures to improve battery lifespan, and software to constantly check battery health. Years have shown those efforts paid off.

But there's another reason EV batteries have out-performed expectations. It turns out that testing batteries is harder on them than the real world. Their lifespan was underestimated.

Simona Onori's lab at Stanford University has done research into the longevity of lithium-ion batteries, including a 2024 paper in Nature Energy showing that traditional methods for testing battery life are very stressful, and don't match the way batteries are actually used.

In most lab tests, researchers repeatedly cycle them from a very high state of charge to a very low one.

Real-world driving is gentler, with stops and starts — each start draws a bit of the battery's energy down, while each stop gives it a little time to recharge. A driver would never slam the accelerator to the floor and keep it there until the battery is dead.

"We accelerate, we decelerate," Onori says. "The battery will be charged, and discharged, some rest if you're at a traffic light."

Her lab's findings suggest that the traditional tests for battery life were unrealistically challenging, and Onori says ongoing work with real-world data is now confirming that. When they're actually driven, she says, EV batteries "age gracefully. Very gracefully."

Just like humans, she notes: "When we live a life with less stress, we live longer."

A decade plus … and counting 

So how long do EV batteries last? It's still too soon to put a precise number on it, because — as a group — the cars already on the road haven't yet reached the end of the S-curve, the point when they will start to show massive performance declines. In other words, they're not dead yet.

Meanwhile, battery technology keeps improving. The oldest EVs, like Hajjar's Model S, may not be the best indicator of how long newer EVs will last. Software systems to manage batteries have gotten more sophisticated. A lot of new EVs use a different battery chemistry — lithium iron phosphate or LFP — which lasts even longer than other lithium-ion batteries.

As Stephanie Valdez-Streaty, who follows EV trends for Cox Automotive, puts it: "These batteries are built to outlast the cars."

And there's one more wrinkle when it comes to figuring out the end of life for a normally-aging EV battery. They don't die abruptly, like an old engine cutting out. It's more that their range shrinks; they can only hold enough energy for shorter and shorter trips. Instead of shelling out for an expensive battery replacement, some EV owners might just put up with that limitation.

Thomas McVeigh, of Ontario, Canada, drives a 2014 BMW i3. That vehicle didn't have an impressive range even when it was new, and now it can only manage about 55 miles on a single charge in the winter. But it still looks great. It's pleasant to drive. It saves him on gas. Maintenance is wildly cheap for a 12-year-old vehicle, and especially for a BMW; his only real cost is new tires.

He's fine with its diminished range. And he's not inclined to put what he estimates would be a $6,000 battery into an aging car. Instead, maybe he'll pass it on to his kid. "Teenagers generally aren't going for long drives," he says.

Or maybe he'll keep it for himself, after all. "I mean," he says, "I love that car."

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This week the Getty Villa Museum will begin offering a rare look at scrolls from its ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead” collection.

The collection of 19 manuscripts written on scrolls of papyrus and linen fragments are fragile, with one of them dating back nearly 3,500 years. Because of that, the materials are not usually on display to the public and the gallery will be carefully lit, temperature and humidity-controlled.

Sara Cole, associate curator of antiquities, told LAist that a lot of the language in the spells is written in first person speech for the deceased spirit to say while navigating the afterlife.

“One of my favorite phrases that I have on a wall of the gallery is ‘May I join with the stars that call out to me in the night boat,’” Cole said.

Cole explained that the manuscripts have been in the Getty’s collection since 1983, when they were donated by a bookseller in New York, who got them from the private collection of a British rare manuscript collector.

Egyptian mummy wrapping of Petosiris, Son of Tetosiris, from around 332–100 BCE.

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A years-long project is underway to translate the spells and rituals immortalized in the Getty's “Book of the Dead” scrolls and fragments, with a “large publication” in the works, Cole said.

The exhibition will feature four papyri belonging to women named Webennesre, Ankhesenaset, and Aset. Cole said “Book of the Dead” materials belonging to women are rare, because most were reserved for men.

Twelve of the manuscripts in the exhibition are written on fragments of linen that were used to wrap the mummified remains of the people they belonged to. Cole said she hopes visitors will understand that the material was very intimately associated with peoples’ burials.

Cole said her goal is to foreground the identities of the people who owned the scrolls, including two women who were ritual singers for the god Amun in the ancient city of Thebes.

“We see in these manuscripts the ancient Egyptians really grappling with this question and thinking about what might happen when we die... And I think that’s something we can all connect with and understand,” she said.

Cole recommends visiting the Getty’s website for a calendar of curator tours and special events related to the exhibition, including an upcoming talk by an Egyptologist.

The “The Egyptian Book of the Dead” at the Getty Villa runs from March 4 to Nov. 30.

The Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in an important gun case that has united an array of strange bedfellows, from conservative gun rights groups to liberal civil liberties groups. At issue is a federal law making it a crime for drug users to possess a firearm. It's the same law that was used to prosecute then-President Joe Biden's son for illegal gun possession — only this case involves marijuana use and gun ownership.

The briefs in the case present diametrically different versions of the facts. On one side, the Trump administration portrays Ali Danial Hemani as a drug dealer and someone with terrorist ties and a marijuana habit. Importantly, he is not being prosecuted for any of those offenses, however. Rather, the government has charged Hemani with violating a federal gun law that bars people with drug addiction from possession of firearms, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the indictment, declaring that the federal law violates Hemani's Second Amendment right to own a gun.

The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that because Hemani admitted to FBI agents that he used marijuana several times a week, he is a "persistent" drug user, thus rendering illegal the possession of the gun he bought legally and keeps securely in his home.

Hemani's lawyer, law professor Naz Ahmad of the City University of New York, paints a very different picture of her client. Hemani, she notes, was born and raised in Texas, "attended high school there, played on the high school football team, attended the University of Texas at Arlington, was an honor student there" and is "a really valued member of his local religious community."

"The Second Amendment doesn't support disarming and prosecuting somebody for mere possession of a firearm if they happen to have used marijuana occasionally," she says.

"That's a mismatch," she adds, especially at a time when 40 states, to one degree or another, have legalized marijuana use.
 
If the court rules against Hemani, she says, "the statute could apply to anybody. It could apply to somebody who uses like a marijuana sleep gummy."

The Trump administration's advocate, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, acknowledges that under the Supreme Court's landmark gun decision four years ago, the government has a heavy burden to show that modern-day gun laws are analogous to laws in place at the nation's founding. But he contends that the statute used to prosecute Hemani is both justified and analogous to founding-era laws and practices.

Specifically, in his Supreme Court brief, Sauer points to the harsh punishments imposed during the founding era on "habitual drunkards." And he contends that both Congress and the states have restricted firearm possession by illegal drug users "for as long as that social evil has plagued America."

That said, for the most part, the case seems to have united groups from left to right, from civil liberties groups to gun rights advocates.

"It's outrageous that they tried to get him on a marijuana gun charge," says Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America. He contends that the government is seeking to criminalize conduct that was widely tolerated at the founding.

"It was the universal custom of founding-era militias to imbibe," he notes, adding that Thomas Jefferson and other famous Americans "possessed firearms while being users of drugs ranging from opium to cocaine."

At the opposite end of the ideological spectrum are a variety of gun-safety groups that fear that if Hemani wins his case, it could gouge a hole in the existing system of national background checks.

Under the current system, dealers are required to first clear the sale by submitting the buyer's name to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The hitch is that there is a very small window in which to complete the check — just three days. And gun-safety groups say that anything that makes the rules more complicated and unclear could really screw up the system.

"We're saying" to the court, "whatever you do, it's essential that you keep the rules clear so that in that short window, federal agencies can give a quick answer to the dealers," says Douglas Letter of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. 

An adverse ruling, he says, would mess up the criminal background check process. That, in turn, would result in "so many, particularly women and children, who will die if that kind of a system is not in place."

A decision in the case is expected by summer.
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