Good morning. Here’s what you need to know to start your day. I’m metro columnist Gustavo Arellano, writing from Orange County, California — not the one in Florida, New York or North Carolina.
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A grandfather of Trumpism started out as a California commie
If there were a Mt. Rushmore of people who exemplified the California art of reinvention, author and commentator David Horowitz would be the face furthest on the right.
The son of bona fide communists died last week at 86 as one of the most consequential figures in the modern-day conservative movement.
He supported the Iraq war, accused Muslim activists of supporting a second Holocaust against Jews and claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump — and that’s just a piece of lint on the ball of whine that was Horowitz’s career (I’m a columnist, so I’m allowed to have opinions). The raspy-voiced provocateur reveled in demonizing his opponents. He perfected the politics of grievance and victimization — ironic, since that was the cudgel Horowitz accused opponents of employing — and relied on straw man arguments so much that I’m sure the Scarecrow from “The Wizard of Oz” is wondering where his royalties are.
He perfected his craft in the Golden State.
His 1996 autobiography “Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey” tracked the evolution of a red-diaper baby from working as an editor for the pioneering progressive magazine Ramparts and palling around with the Black Panthers to identifying himself as a “Lefty for Reagan” to waging well-funded wars through his Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now called the David Horowitz Freedom Center) against anything with the slightest patina of liberalism.
Long before the likes of Andrew Breitbart and my fellow former Daily Bruin columnist Ben Shapiro figured out that politics is downstream from culture, Horowitz was busy trying to conquer that realm.
He assailed Hollywood while also offering salons for conservatives in the industry. He was a prolific writer of books and articles, and someone who lectured across the country with the zest of a circus barker. He especially tried to change the hearts and minds of young adults — or at least troll them.
One of Horowitz’s favored fronts was university campuses.
He defended fraternities at Cal State Northridge and Occidental College accused of racism and sexism in the name of free speech. That’s how I first heard of his work: As a student activist at Chapman University in the early 1990s, I wondered why so many of my friends loathed the guy who used to do the “Fight Back!” consumer-fraud show my parents so enjoyed when I was a kid (their David Horowitz wasn’t mine, alas).
I was a senior in 2001 when Horowitz pulled off one of his most notorious collegiate projects. That spring, he approached student newspapers across the country and offered to buy full-page ads attacking reparations for Black Americans. Those who didn’t take his money were accused by his supporters of squelching free speech; those who did were attacked by progressives for platforming a person they felt was a racist and inevitably apologized. The move made national headlines and allowed Horowitz to harrumph about wokeness before wokeness was even a term.
“I see the left as being at war with human nature,” he told The Times in a 1997 profile. “The left thinks you can change people profoundly.”
That same piece said opponents dismissed Horowitz as a “bitter graybeard loon,” with legendary Times columnist and fellow Ramparts alum Robert Scheer sneering that Horowitz was “fighting battles that most people don’t care about anymore.”
Well, we live in Horowitz’s world now.
His motto of “begin every confrontation by punching progressives in the mouth” is gospel in the Trump White House. And his most famous acolyte has the president’s ear: Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
The teenage Miller invited Horowitz to speak at Santa Monica High School in the early aughts, entranced by his bromides against multiculturalism. Horowitz returned the favor by publishing Miller’s essay “How I Changed My Left-Wing High School” in his FrontPage Magazine. Miller then started a chapter of Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom at Duke as an undergrad.
This ping-pong of flattery culminated with Horowitz connecting Miller to jobs on Capitol Hill before he joined Trump’s 2016 campaign — and here we are.
Today’s top stories
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
New polling has some bad news for Newsom
The Real ID deadline is finally here
The LAPD is investigating killings that went undiscovered
Botched California State Bar tests
L.A.’s $1-billion budget deficit
National Endowment for the Arts cuts
- Facing an existential threat from President Trump, the NEA canceled grants for L.A. Theatre Works, L.A. Chamber Orchestra and other groups.
- The grant cancellations marked the latest salvo in Trump’s battle to claim the landscape of American arts and culture, including his takeover of the Kennedy Center.
What else is going on
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This morning’s must-reads
After the Eaton fire, they didn’t think prom would happen. Now these teens are ready to dance. About 175 students from John Muir High School in Pasadena lost their homes in the January fire. For many, prom night offered a rare sense of normalcy.
Other must reads
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.
For your downtime
Pan-Pacific Auditorium, exterior detail (Wurdeman & Becket, 1935) ,formerly at 7600 Beverly Blvd., photographed in 1988.
(Robert Landau)
Going out
Staying in
A question for you: What’s the best career advice you ever received?
Lisa says: “To work walking distance from where I live.”
RW says: “People won’t believe a problem until they can see it.”
Eve says: “If everyone likes you, you aren’t doing your job.”
Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
And finally … your photo of the day
Show us your favorite place in California! Send us photos you have taken of spots in California that are special — natural or human-made — and tell us why they’re important to you.
(Evan Agostini / Invision/Associated Press)
Today’s great photo is from Getty Images’ Evan Agostini of Janelle Monae at Monday night’s Met gala.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Gustavo Arellano, California columnist
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
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