Meanwhile, we are getting rid of medical researchers and weather forecasters, even as extreme and deadly weather events become more common.<\/p>\n
Steve Lopez<\/p>\n Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.<\/p>\n You would think \u2014 based on the priorities in President Trump\u2019s budget, tax and policy bill approved last week \u2014 that immigration is the greatest threat to our health and security.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not.<\/p>\n But billions of dollars have been added for border and ICE agents while billions more have been trimmed from medical, climate and weather-related resources.<\/p>\n On Monday morning, federal agents on horseback and in armored vehicles descended on MacArthur Park in a show of force. Children playing in the park were ushered to safer ground, Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference.<\/p>\n \u201cFrankly it is outrageous and un-American that we have federal armed vehicles in our parks when nothing is going on in our parks,\u201d Bass said, adding that she didn\u2019t know if anyone was even detained.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a political agenda of provoking fear and terror,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The event \u201clooked like a staging for a TikTok video,\u201d said City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.<\/p>\n MacArthur Park has a sizable undocumented immigrant population, and a lot of big problems to tackle \u2014 homelessness, a wide-open drug trade and gang activity. On some days areas of the park were unusable for families. First responders rolled out on overdose calls, addicts took over an alley, and merchants struggled to stay open amid all the mayhem. <\/p>\n In December, people sit at the corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, an area known for illegal drug use in the Westlake neighborhood. <\/p>\n (Genaro Molina \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n As I found last year over the course of several months on the ground<\/a>, local officials waited too long and moved too slowly in response to the long-festering crisis.<\/p>\n But a silly military parade isn\u2019t going to help, unless they actually were going after undocumented drug lords \u2014 but there was no immediate evidence of that. <\/p>\n If the federal government wanted to help, L.A. could use more support for housing, drug interdiction and treatment. It could use a more stable and equitable economy that\u2019s not undermined by tariff uncertainties and the president\u2019s taunts of trading partners.<\/p>\n As we know in California, countless industries rely on undocumented laborers. It\u2019s an open secret, and has been for decades, not just in the Golden State but across the nation, and yet Washington has been unable to put together a sensible immigration reform package over the years.<\/p>\n Congress got close last fall<\/a>, but do I need to remind you what happened?<\/p>\n That\u2019s right. Trump threatened lackey GOP Congressman, ordering the spineless ninnies to pull their support.<\/p>\n Every time I see a helicopter now in L.A. \u2014 and as we know, they\u2019re like mosquitoes up there \u2014 I wonder if Trump has sent in the Air Force, with bombers coming in behind them.<\/p>\n My colleague Rachel Uranga recently reported that \u201cICE has not released data on criminal records of detainees booked into its custody.\u201d But nonpublic data from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, \u201cshowed about 9 out of 10 had never been convicted of a violent or property crime, and 30% have no criminal record. The most frequent crimes are immigration and traffic offenses.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s nothing to warrant the terrorizing of neighborhoods and communities, nothing to warrant armed, masked agents of unknown identities and agencies roaming our streets and nabbing workers at car washes, Home Depots and restaurants.<\/p>\n Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area on Monday.<\/p>\n (Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost as terrifying as several other real and existential threats:<\/p>\n An anti-vax crackpot is in charge of the nation\u2019s healthcare and medical research system.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s Big Bonehead Bill calls for an $18-billion cut for the National Institutes of Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some of the leading researchers in medicine and science are leaving the country in a trend that could end up being a catastrophic brain drain.<\/p>\n I got an email the other day from the Social Security Administration informing me the \u201c(SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill.\u201d I thought it was a joke at first \u2014 a satirical take on the rise of an authoritarian regime.<\/p>\n But it was real, and so are the cuts to the National Weather Service, to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,<\/a> to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n
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