Newsletter: Does MAGA have DEI derangement syndrome?

Good morning. It is Saturday, Feb. 1. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

When Donald Trump stood behind the presidential seal Thursday and, in one breath, said what you’d expect from a leader when bodies are still being pulled out of a river after a plane crash, and in another railed against diversity hiring and his predecessors as possibly having something to do with the accident, I thought of Robin Abcarian’s column Sunday saying his election doesn’t make him right about everything.

Those who point out the heinousness of pardoning more than 1,500 Jan. 6 convicts or the petty malevolence of pulling the security details of political rivals hear this a lot nowadays: Trump won, stop criticizing him. That admonition brings me back to the poster in my ninth-grade Bible class at the evangelical Christian high school I attended in the San Fernando Valley: It said, “It isn’t about who is right, it’s about what is right.”

And what Trump did here was wrong. Put aside the political point-making, apparent bigotry and lack of evidence that seemed to animate the impulse to talk about diversity hiring less than 24 hours after a plane crash; immediately theorizing about an accident’s cause is what online knownothings do, not serious investigators, and certainly not the president.

The playbook for any president here is quite simple: Comfort those grieving the loss, praise the first responders and put into place a full investigation. Getting this wrong can be quite traumatic for people who need reassurance and safety more than anything else — we saw this in L.A., when the fires were still advancing, people were still being evacuated, and prominent right-wing commentators moaned over the fact that the Los Angeles Fire Department had a lesbian chief. It’s as if these people, and our president, have DEI derangement syndrome.

Presidents aren’t right just because of who they are — the idea sounds a little DEI-ish, doesn’t it?

Love letters from Angelenos after the fires. Among the moving tributes to our humble metropolis by writers connected to the fires, this lamentation by Altadena resident Jinghuan Liu Tervalon hit hard: “What I miss most is the mundanity of our lives in Altadena. An easy run around the block or to the trailhead on a Friday. Buying a pack of AAA batteries at Altadena Hardware. Participating in block parties our neighbors organize for Easter and Halloween. Meeting friends at Unincorporated Coffee. The idea of belonging simply becomes part of you, no matter how long you’ve lived in a place, no matter what mixed history you’ve had with it. Altadena is where I found a home.”

Trump’s order to freeze spending is patently unconstitutional. “Every day seems to bring more blatantly unconstitutional acts by President Trump,” writes UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “On Monday, the most egregious was his announcement that he is freezing the spending on all federal grants and loans beginning at 5 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday.”

Fires aggravated L.A.’s housing crisis. We need to build homes much faster. Los Angeles County already had a shortage of 500,000 housing units before the fires destroyed thousands of homes. Now the crisis is worse, and there are already reports of price gouging as many locals have been forced to look for new homes. The Times’ editorial board writes, “Now more than ever, the city and county must fast-track affordable housing projects in the works, bring other projects into development as quickly as possible and aggressively shut down price gouging.”

No one should need the Watch Duty app. As fires near, officials should communicate better. I found Watch Duty a few years ago when I was looking for real-time updates on a fire burning close to my wife’s old family cabin in Big Bear. Hundreds of thousands of other Angelenos found it when a freak Santa Ana wind storm kicked off the Eaton and Palisades fires. App founder John Mills writes, “Watch Duty’s success as a lifeline for Americans in peril isn’t something to celebrate. It’s actually a reflection of a disturbing failure: Our government does not properly alert people about disasters, with life-and-death consequences.”

More from opinion

From our columnists

• Robin Abcarian: No one polices men’s bodies the way we police women’s bodies
• Jackie Calmes: Trump’s focus on retribution distracts from the nation’s real domestic enemies
• President Trump demands GOP unity. Here’s why he might not get it

From guest contributors

• Make Los Angeles great again
• Trump’s healthcare disruption could pay off — if he pushes real reform
• Let’s not worsen L.A.’s inequality when recovering from the fires

Letters to the editor

• Bishop Mariann Budde did her duty as a Christian. She owes no one an apology
• Don’t think you benefited from birthright citizenship? Think again
• Readers across the world write to L.A.: You’re not alone, you will rise up