JOEL KOTKIN: Can Los Angeles be saved?

LA is currently hosting the World Cup, and two years from now, it will host the Olympics. The city should be ready for its closeup — but it isn’t.

This is a painful change for anyone who, like me, came to the City of Angels 50 years ago and embraced its eclectic mix of cultures and businesses. In the 1980s, LA was what the conservative historian Fred Siegel called “the entrepreneurial dynamo.” Unlike New York or the Bay Area, where academic pedigree and family ties were the keys to success, LA was an everyman city, a place where you could afford to start a business and live in a house like Galicia’s, all within the perimeter of a great metropolis.

Aesthetes long preferred New York or San Francisco, but the masses headed to LA. Between 1900 and 1940, the city’s population surged to 1.5 million from barely 100,000. After the war, LA expanded again, enriched by its huge oil and defense sectors, and by 2020, hit its peak population of 3.8 million, with another 6 million living in surrounding Los Angeles County. These areas once domiciled 13 Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, Northrop Grumman, Security Pacific Bank, First Interstate, Union Oil, Getty Oil, and Arco, and a long list of successful growing businesses, as well.

Since then, the Fortune 500 locals have dwindled to seven, with just one, Farmers Insurance, inside city limits, and that just barely, on the furthest fringes of the San Fernando Valley. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times, once a critical part of the city establishment, has abandoned Downtown for El Segundo, amid severe financial strains and a paid circulation that’s a fraction of its once vast readership.

Most critically, Los Angeles County now suffers the highest poverty rates in the state, and among the worst in the country.

Read the whole thing. It left me wondering, alongside the recent election, whether Los Angeles even wants to be saved.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

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— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 6, 2026

HE’S RIGHT:

The Times won’t tell you this but I will: Yale Law has been violating federal law in its admissions policies well before SFFA, literally for decades. Despite Dean Rodriguez’s remonstrations, the law school is in no position to resist a settlement with the government. pic.twitter.com/xvRL3Wo0Qt

— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) July 8, 2026

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Brown University professor bans take-home exams after mass cheating.

SAME ONE AS USUAL:

Platner drops out. Now Maine is going to let 600 Democrat party insiders pick the new candidate, replacing the guy that 156,000 people voted for. Just like the party kicked Biden to the curb and replaced him with Kamala. Tell me again which party is a threat to democracy.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 9, 2026

When European voters don’t do as they’re told, Europe keeps holding votes until they get it right. When Democrat primary voters pick the wrong candidate, Democrat insiders are happy to pick a new one for them.

Either way, that’s Muh Democracy™.

RIP: Bonnie Tyler, ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ singer, dead at 75.

WATCH: Trump Humiliates MS NOW Reporter During Ankara Presser.

PEOPLE HAVE FIGURED OUT THAT IT MAKES YOU UNEMPLOYABLE OUTSIDE THE BLOB: North Carolina university gender studies minor sees enrollment decline.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin reportedly raising $10B at $130B valuation.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space rocket company Blue Origin is raising $10 billion at a $130 billion pre-money valuation from Coatue Asset Management, Bezos himself, and other large investors, The New York Times reported.

Coatue is expected to invest about $4 billion in the round, which would be Blue Origin’s first external fundraise. Bezos is said to be committing $2 billion, and the other investors will account for the remaining funds, according to the report.

Hardly SpaceX figures, but not bad for a company whose only orbital-lift rocket is grounded and whose only launch pad is blown up.

GIFFORDS.ORG TURNED OFF REPLIES TO THIS POST:

Yeah, the illegal that’s living in a nicer home than the average American citizen just tried to murder an ICE agent.

Weird how you left that part out. https://t.co/WUvkIxuq8i

— The Dank Knight 🦇 (@capeandcowell) July 9, 2026

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: OK, I’ll Bite — Bernie 2028? “Sure, Sanders is old, but it seems like he’s been old forever. He’s not senile, he’s just commie crazy. He’s got some kind of Energizer bunny vibe going on. He can probably handle one more election.”

MORE CAPACITY IS GOOD: Trump Says US Will Let Ukraine Build Patriot Systems: ‘We’ll Show Them How to Make Them.’

“I’ve got a little bird telling me that we’re going to give them the right to make Patriots. We’ll show them how to make them,” Trump said during a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.

Calling the Patriot system “elite equipment,” Trump added that the arrangement would allow Ukraine to produce the systems itself.

“One of the things we’re going to be talking about is we’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool, right? This way you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough. It’s a make-them-yourself,” he said.

I don’t know if Kyiv can get production up in time for this war, but it sure feels like there’ll be another one.

TRANSLATION: CORRECT.

"As long as I am Governor, you will not be able to have a job unless you pay your dues to the unions that then give me millions of dollars every year." https://t.co/R83AD1Culp

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 9, 2026

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Tinder activity surges by 34% in NYC, NJ during World Cup — and most lovebirds are international.

LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE:

The Children’s Hospital of Colorado has admitted to medically transitioning 800+ kids per year in 2024 and 2025.

Insurance data in the five prior years showed 22 per year.

They were no doubt committing fraud and used alternate insurance codes to show lower figures, but current… https://t.co/0QG442VG6P

— Billboard Chris 🌎 (@BillboardChris) July 8, 2026

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: How to Turn $750,000 into $400 Million With This 1 Weird Trick. “Yes, I’m talking about Obsession, the low-budget horror flick that gushing critics point out isn’t based on an established intellectual property, has no superheroes, no CGI, hardly any marketing worth mentioning, and a budget that likely wouldn’t cover the catering for Avengers: Doomsday due out later this year.”

STACY MCCAIN: The Politics of Unquestioned Assumptions: Democrats made the wrong bet with Graham Platner, and can’t understand why. “Did everyone really make mistakes about Platner? Or by that sweeping categorical statement, did Litman mean just the Democratic campaign operative class of which she is a member? Because I am pretty sure there weren’t many Republicans who were mistaken about what a complete dirtbag Platner is. Certainly I was not.”

SUICIDAL EMPATHY:

Why do Israelis always do this? It has never helped them in the long run — ever. They save the enemy and the enemy tries to destroy them. Their enemies aren’t normal people who feel a sense of gratitude yet they keep pretending. Leftism is dangerous. https://t.co/eIQH0ocJiE

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) July 8, 2026

FASTER, PLEASE: Vance announces investigation into alleged H-1B visa fraud.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: HP OmniBook 5 16 inch Next Gen AI PC, 2K Display. #CommissionEarned

ADHERING TO OUR ENEMIES, GIVING THEM AID AND COMFORT:

This is treason and they should be dealt with accordingly. https://t.co/IfqYfxSo6i

— Ned Ryun (@nedryun) July 8, 2026

ANTISEMITISM FOR FUN AND PROFIT:

Rama Duwaji, wife of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is co-hosting an expensive spiritual retreat in Corsica, honoring Jesus' mother Mary as a "Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation".

Tickets range from around $3,000 to $5,000 for a trip of prayer, lectures, and food, all to… pic.twitter.com/Wfr6rVwUI3

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) July 8, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE BUNKER: Graham Platner and the death of ‘The Resistance.’

I, for one, am shocked that the dude with the Nazi tattoo turned out to be a bad person. Normally blokes who go around with an SS-style cross-and-bones inked on their chests are such lovely people. Not Graham Platner. The Democratic candidate for the Maine Senate, famed sporter of a Nazi-like Totenkopf, appears to be a rotter. There are now allegations that he sexually assaulted an old girlfriend. Who could have seen that coming?

Forgive the sarcasm. The answer is that everyone could have seen it coming. Everyone, that is, whose moral sensibilities have not been turned to mush by their slavish devotion to the flagging cause of the Democrats. To understand the depth of the moral rot at the top of Democrats, to see what a thin, gutless pantomime their ‘Resistance’ always was, look no further than the Platner storm. For it indicts more than one dodgy bloke – it indicts an entire political machine.

Does this mean that the Oystergruppenfuhrer won’t be running for president in 2028?

GOING OUT REMINDING US WHY THEY DESERVED BETTER:  TCW’s 12 of the best: Jordan Peterson gives Tommy Robinson the fair hearing he deserves.

WEIRDLY, THIS COINCIDES PERFECTLY WITH THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT’S PRIORITIES: “AI Is the Democratic Party’s Next Villain:” “We analyze roughly 280,000 candidate fundraising emails to trace the rise of anti-billionaire populism in the Democratic party and see how it is slowly merging with a new kind of anti-AI populism.”