Senate Democrats get rare good news

0:01Brian Tyler Cohen:Senate Democrats have some good news in an unlikely state. And I interview L.A. Mayor Karen Bass about her mayoral campaign. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So we've got a rare strategic win in a very unlikely state. That's the state of Nebraska. So here's the deal. There are two top candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in Nebraska. One candidate is a guy named William Forbes. He is anti-abortion, voted for Donald Trump and attended conservative candidate trainings. So if it sounds like he's a plant intended to ultimately boost incumbent Republican Senator Pete Ricketts chances, that sounds about right.

0:37Brian Tyler Cohen:But the other candidate is Cindy Burbank. She's a pharmacy technician, community college instructor from Omaha. But Cindy's race is interesting because she has indicated that she would drop out of the general election to allow independent candidate Dan Osborne a head to head race against Ricketts. And the numbers, by the way, would suggest that that's a good idea. According to a brand new poll, if Democrat Cindy Burbank ran against Pete Ricketts, she would trail him 49 to 38. But if independent Dan Osborne ran against Ricketts, he actually leads him 46 to 42. So that would suggest that it would be very beneficial to have Dan Osborne run and basically consolidate all support from the left, all support from the middle.

1:19Brian Tyler Cohen:However, that only happens if Cindy Burbank is able to defeat this Republican plant, William Forbes. So the good news, Tuesday night, that is exactly what happened. Cindy Burbank won the Democratic nomination with more than 90 % of the vote, meaning she's the Democratic nominee, and now she's widely expected to immediately step down so that the Democratic voters and independent voters can all consolidate behind one candidate who is not a Republican. So right now, we have the ideal situation playing out in Nebraska, where polling suggests that the guy who now has a glide path among Democratic voters would win the race if it were held today.

1:54Brian Tyler Cohen:But here's the even better news. Nebraska isn't even the best prospect for the Senate right now. Maine, North Carolina, and Alaska all have Democratic candidates polling ahead of the Republican incumbents. And then Democrats would only need to win one of the following. Iowa, Ohio, Nebraska, or Texas. Which is to say, it is certainly possible that Democrats can take the Senate after midterms. Now comes the buzzkill part. The notion that Republicans will sit idly by while any of this happens is effectively zero. This is a Republican Party that waited 60 fucking years to gut the Voting Rights Act, and it took them one day to start eliminating virtually all Black representation when the Voting Rights Act was struck down.

2:33Brian Tyler Cohen:A Republican Party that is sitting by and watching as Trump signs executive orders, revoking mail-in voting, and trying to get the voter rolls, and sending his henchmen to take ballots from past elections. This guy incited a fucking insurrection, pardoned everybody involved, and the rest of his party can't even bring themselves to say that he lost the 2020 election. These people are fundamentally anti-democracy. They'll continue to attack voting rights. They'll close precincts in majority-minority districts. They'll kick people off the rolls who are eligible to vote. They'll send massed ICE agents to the polls.

3:05Brian Tyler Cohen:They will do whatever they possibly can because they know that if they control Congress, it gives them a lot of power to allow Trump to continue consolidating power for himself and acting corruptly with impunity. And it allows the Republicans to have a leg up to be able to interfere in the upcoming general election in 2028 if they're a majority in Congress. And I know that it feels hopeless to hear everything that we're up against. I think that's by design. But in fact, I would argue that it should inspire you because while the window is closing, it's not closed yet. We can take control of the entirety of Congress.

3:39Brian Tyler Cohen:We can see some accountability for the first time in years. And we're close to seeing it happen. So that means we work from now until November. Donate where you can, doorknock and canvas where you can. Make sure that your circles of people are engaged and registered and have a plan to vote and that you're speaking out in your digital spaces and your professional spaces and your personal spaces. Trump and Republicans would not be so desperate if there wasn't a reason for them to be desperate. They're not acting from a place of strength. They are acting from a place of weakness. It's our job to remember that.

4:12Brian Tyler Cohen:Next up is my interview with Karen Bass. No Lie is sponsored by BetterHelp. So May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a reminder that whatever you're going through, you don't have to go through it alone. Whatever's keeping you up at night, it's easy to feel like you have to figure it out all by yourself. But the truth is, nobody has all the answers and no journey should be alone. Having someone with you to listen, to understand, to support you can make all the difference. Therapy's helped me immensely. and I'm somebody who's generally against seeking out any help for anything. I generally just want to keep my head down and just figure it out.

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5:15Brian Tyler Cohen:And with over 30 ,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally. And it works, with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find some support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10 % off at BetterHelp.com slash nolie. That's BetterHelp.com slash nolie. I'm joined now by the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me on. So I want to ask first and foremost, because this has gotten a lot of national attention, about Spencer Pratt's rise in this race.

5:56Brian Tyler Cohen:There are many folks on the left who say that his rise mirrors Donald Trump's rise in 2016 because of the way that he's been able to kind of game the media, garner attention, be politically incorrect. Can you speak about your reaction to Spencer Pratt's rise in this race and what do you attribute it to? Sure. Well, I attribute it to social media and all of the artificial intelligence that has gone in. And I mean, I think he has done a blitzkrieg on social media. But I also attribute it to him tapping into the anger that we see going on nationally. Of course, tapping into his own personal anger and the tragedy of the Palisades.

6:37I absolutely do not want to minimize that. But obviously, his anger about the Palisades has gone national because I think he's tapping into national anger and frustration with politics, period. And I think it's sad because when those kind of things happen, it discourages people from participating, from believing in their government and also from voting.

7:02Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, you know, Spencer has been very outspoken about this idea that you and California Democrats' current leadership are responsible basically for the tragedy that befell him. And so what would your reaction to that be? Well, you know, what I have felt about Spencer all along, because I've watched this very closely in the Palisades, is I understand, obviously, his personal tragedy and all of that. But I think that it is really, really sad to play on people's grief and to create an atmosphere of nothing is happening and hostility. There were absolutely mistakes. The city really was not prepared for a disaster of that magnitude with a weather event that we had never experienced before.

7:49And so hindsight is everything. But this also was not just the city of Los Angeles, the county as well. And when I talked to the fire department afterwards, their response was, we are very used to Santa Ana winds, but we have never had anything like this. And so I think that the lesson for me and for Angelino's is, is that now given climate change, we have to expect things. I mean, I'm born and raised here. So this is the climate I know. And we now have to expect things that we would have never imagined. But that's just one. I mean, I can go down a list of problems that happened. But but it's time to help inspire people to get back home.

8:36And we've issued over 2 ,600 permits for about 1 ,100 properties. 400 homes are currently under construction now, and people are slowly preparing to move back home.

8:47Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, in terms of the list of issues in Los Angeles, is it not fair to say that that is a referendum on, in part, the fact that you have been mayor for the last several years? And so when somebody like Spencer Pratt comes forward and taps into the anger that people might feel about the issues that are presenting themselves in Los Angeles, how would you respond to people saying, well, this is a referendum on you? Well, I mean, I can understand people saying that, but I also think that Angelenos in general will look at the overall progress that has happened in my administration. The first time we've had a reduction of homelessness, period, 17.5 % while it's going up nationally.

9:33Crime that is down to 1960 levels. 42 ,000 homes that have been fast-tracked for affordable housing. 43 ,000 that are potential with adaptive reuse, a policy I made now citywide, which means you can change office buildings into housing. So I think that there have been tremendous accomplishments. But you know, pretty well, I am sure, is that a lot of the problems that we face in Los Angeles are 30, 40 year old problems. So if the charges is that in three and a half years, I've not changed 30 to 40 year problems. That's correct. But we have made headway in some very significant ways. And I would hate to leave now before I am able to finish my job.

10:25And there's a lot of areas where I think we have made a difference or definitely put the policies in place to make a difference. And now it's a question of pushing them and evaluating them along the way.

10:40Brian Tyler Cohen:Okay, so I want to dig into a few of those issues. And these are the same issues that I spoke with Nithya Raman a couple of days ago about. And those issues are homelessness, housing and Hollywood. So in terms of homelessness, yeah, that's right. In terms of homelessness here, you said that there has been a 17 % reduction. I think Nithya Raman mentioned that the spending in the last year has been, if I'm not mistaken,$700 million on homelessness. Is that correct? Yeah, more or less. That's correct. That is not different than previous years. And how many people has that impacted? How many people were taken off the street off of that$700 million?

11:20Well, there's thousands of people that were taken off the street. But let me just say that there are 46 ,000 people that are unhoused within our city. And so do we have the resources to clear all of those individuals and put them into housing? You know, New York City made a different decision about 20 years ago, which is why they don't have the level of street homelessness that we do. Our decision here was we were going to build housing. And until we built housing, we were going to leave people on the street. So we could have removed far more people than that. But I have been in battle again with a system that has been in existence for over 30 years that has been dysfunctional from day one.

12:07and my mission in coming in was to get people off the streets. That was my mission. That was my focus. I didn't want to spend a year studying the system. I wanted to act while looking at it at the same time, building the plane while flying it. But we have much, much more work to do. But again, this is a system that has been dysfunctional for a very, very long time.

12:33Brian Tyler Cohen:And so what does the next four years look like, recognizing that you've got one term under your belt already. And the reason that I ask this more broadly is, if we've spent$700 million to tackle homelessness in just the last year, and yes, thousands of people have been taken off the streets, and that is objectively a good thing, but if you look at the amount of money that's spent per person, I mean, that's what upsets people, I think, in large part. When you divide the total number of spending by the amount of people who've been impacted here. And so what does success look like over the next four years if you're reelected?

13:12Brian Tyler Cohen:What is the plan to take it from 17 % to a 50 % or 100 % reduction? Right, right, right. Well, first of all, we started coming up with models to reduce the cost of housing and to reduce the cost of interim housing. And we have been moving forward with that. We need to catapult that. The other thing is, is that, you know, we're in this situation with the county right now and that needs to be resolved. But what I have found is, is that it is easy to get people off the street. When we get them off the street, we turn them over to a community based organization, but they're not provided with adequate services.

13:53So when you ask me, what does it look like in a second term? Now I know from acting and studying, I'm very clear about what needs to happen to change this entire situation. But one of the keys that people consistently do not address is the needs of the individual. You know, I used to work in the emergency room. My patients were unhoused. And I have found over the years that people have a lot of academic and theoretical knowledge about this problem. But they have very and they're also experts in housing, but they have very little knowledge about the people, the people, why somebody winds up homeless, how to improve their lives so that they become stable.

14:37That's why when L.A. made that decision 20, 25 years ago, not to focus on getting people off the street, just to focus on building. we have the problem that we do now. So what I would do in a next term is basically to end all of the major encampments that you see. At the end of four years, what I want the city to look like on this particular issue is that Angelenos would see an individual tent here and there, but encampments would be a way of the pass. And it's very easy to resolve a tent here or a tent there. It's much more difficult to resolve an entire encampment because what we have done different, which is the reason it has worked and the reason street homelessness has gone down, is that we get rid of the entire encampment by housing everybody at once.

15:29What had been done in the past, why it looked like nothing ever changed, was they would pluck a person here and a person there and the encampments never went away. So we do absolutely still have encampments, that's for sure. But we have far fewer encampments than we did three and a half years ago.

15:47Brian Tyler Cohen:Last question on this point. What happens if there are people within the encampment that don't want to be housed? So, you know, that we that is a very, very rare experience for us. But usually those are two types of folks, one who are immersed in the criminal element and that exists and they should be dealt with. The other are people who are so profoundly ill that half the time, they're not even sure that they're homeless. So there's good news on that front that I'm very excited about because this is more consistent with who I am. We are finally building and getting ready to open up mental health facilities.

16:25The next thing that needs to happen, though, is state policy that allows for involuntary hospitalization. And I'm a big proponent of that. And I realize a lot of people think that's a civil liberties abuse, but the same people who might feel that that's a civil liberties abuse don't seem to object to incarcerating people, because that's exactly what we do now. I'm sure you know that, that Twin Towers is the nation's most expensive mental health institution, and it is a jail. And so I want to see us open up these facilities and begin to house people while I will be working on the state policy. Being in this job, it has served me tremendously that I served in the state legislature and in Congress.

17:08I know how those areas work, those institutions work. And by the way, one of the things I've had to do on my journey over these last three and a half years, I've had to get federal policy changed and I had to get state policy changed. Because I know those two institutions, I've been able to do that.

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19:10Brian Tyler Cohen:Something that obviously this city is contending with. It's no secret that it is difficult to build housing here. Even from an anecdotal perspective, I'm building a house. I can't put a shovel in the ground for, I think, 18 months because of the sheer amount of permits that I have to go through. And there is a whole system built into that process. And I'm sure a lot of people don't know this, that like if you want to expedite the process to make it, you know, mildly reasonable, you can pay. But that's that's 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 thousand dollars in additional costs that you have to shoulder just so that the system can work in a reasonable amount of time.

19:48Brian Tyler Cohen:That's how the system should work regardless. And so the question more broadly is, what is being done to expedite construction here in Los Angeles so that this isn't one of the most expensive cities in the country to build in? Yes. And let me just tell you something, you know, because I'm born and raised here, I remember when the city was very affordable. But that was one of the problems I started tackling from day one. I declared a state of emergency to get people off the street. And about a week later, I did executive directive one, which expedited building. It was focused on just affordable housing, but we have taken the lessons learned from that.

20:26We've actually applied a lot of those lessons in the Palisades to expedite, to continue to further expedite. In the Palisades, we are learning with artificial intelligence and self-certification of architects so that things could go faster. The DWP, which is one of the biggest headaches that everybody talks about, is beginning to establish a concierge service because people were getting buildings finished and they would have to wait a year with an empty building waiting for the DWP. These kind of things make me crazy. Development process goes through all these different hands. And God forbid somebody goes on vacation because then they handle your hand, your file over to someone completely new who then starts over.

21:12So all of that, all that I described is in the midst of changing. I did another executive directive based on these lessons. And now we are beginning to change the entire development process. So it's more centralized. It's more transparent so that development can go through. And by the way, the way I believe in doing policy is I bring together the people who are hands on in the field, not the professors, not the academics, the people who are actually doing the work. And I've worked together with them to troubleshoot what the problems are, but to build policy around changing those those problems.

21:54But once again, these things take a while. And so this is about correcting or blowing up a process that has been in existence for many, many years. You get resistance on all levels. I've gotten a lot of resistance from departments and I've had to change the leadership because it's like either you're going to move past this stuff or you have to move on. But what I have not done is I'm not a flashy person. I'm a workhorse. I'm not a show horse. So I don't run and have press conferences every time I ask somebody to retire. I believe in letting them retire with dignity. I have no reason to destroy their reputation.

22:33But it does not mean that I have made changes and I've made plenty of them and more to come.

22:37Brian Tyler Cohen:In terms of the people who've pushed back, who needed to be replaced, What is the point of pushing back against the reform of a process that makes building easier and simpler in Los Angeles, which is notoriously difficult to build in? Like, why would somebody take a position where they don't want the process to be expedited in some way? Well, you know what? After a while, I call it a virus. But after a while, you work in a bureaucracy and you begin to adopt a lot of this. So with me, they'll tell me, well, we have to do it this way because we've always done that. That's like fingers on a chalkboard.

23:16Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. Then it's like, well, the rules say we can't blah, blah, blah. Show me the rule in writing. Well, that's going to take a while. Show me the rule in writing. Oh, I can't find it. There's no rule. My line is, is it a felony? If it's not a felony, get it done. But I think the culture of City Hall is slow and no. and most politicians come through and they don't really try that hard to make the changes. This is it for me. I mean, I have viewed the positions I've done over the years as, you know, I'm not, I didn't have ambition to say, well, I'm doing this and now I'm going to do that. I have been driven by issues.