Former President George H.W. Bush in intensive care

Matt Pearce was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times from 2012 to 2024. He previously covered the covering internet culture and podcasting, the 2020 presidential election and spent six years on The Times’ national desk, where he wrote stories about violence, disasters, social movements and civil liberties. Pearce was one of the first national reporters to arrive in Ferguson, Mo., during the uprising in 2014, and he chased Hurricane Harvey across Texas as the storm ravaged the Lone Star State in 2017. A University of Missouri graduate, he hails from a small town outside Kansas City, Mo.