Newsletter: Today: Trump Inc. and the West Wing. The Question Everyone Will Eventually Face.
I’m Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I don’t want you to miss today.
TOP STORIES
Trump Inc. and the West Wing
When Donald Trump wasn’t tweeting about settling the Trump University lawsuit for $25 million or about “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, he was meeting with prospective Cabinet picks, high-profile figures — and three investors from India who are partners with him in a luxury complex outside Mumbai. Merely a courtesy call, a Trump spokesperson said. Trump will “create the proper separation” to avoid conflicts of interest, Mike Pence assured. Yet questions are mounting over how that would be done.
More Politics
-- Asked about a Muslim registry, Reince Priebus says: “I’m not going to rule out anything. But, but I wouldn’t — we’re not going to have a registry based on a religion.”
-- President Obama’s final foreign trip was his last chance to warn the world about Trump, and to warn Trump about the world.
-- Democrats ask themselves: Now what? Who will lead the party from the wilderness, and how?
Breitbart: The ‘Nationalist’ Site Now Has Global Ambitions
You might think left-leaning L.A. is the last place you’d find the headquarters for the Breitbart News Network, which has been called extremist, xenophobic, sexist and a platform for hate speech. But the website operates out of a nondescript office building on the Westside. Now that it’s riding high on the election of Trump, it has plans to go global. “We are a nationalist website. How the word ‘white’ got tacked on is part of a coordinated media smear campaign,” says Larry Solov, the company’s president and chief executive officer.
3 Doctors, 63 Patients and 48 Hours to Save Them
The wounded come in waves: children cut up by car bomb shrapnel, an elderly woman vomiting blood, soldiers hit by sniper fire. Sixty three of them in all, over two days, at a tiny Iraqi Army field clinic set up in a house outside Mosul. For the three doctors on staff, the work to save these lives is exhausting — and filled with the fear that the enemy could come in at any time. That’s why the physicians all tuck pistols into their belts. Reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske and photographer Carolyn Cole file a report from Iraq that will move you.
The Question Everyone Will Eventually Face
It’s a question that few are prepared to deal with: What to do when you or a family member moves closer to the twilight of life? As Steve Lopez writes in a candid column about his mother, it’s a question the healthcare system isn’t prepared to handle either. That leaves people to do their best when it comes to hard choices about medical care, living arrangements and finances.
That Giant Sucking Sound? L.A.’s Money Going to Pensions
L.A. officials have long touted the city as a nationwide leader in public pension reform. Yet a Times analysis shows that L.A.’s retirement benefits are among the most generous in the country. They come with a high cost: Last year, pensions and retiree healthcare ate up 20% of the city’s general fund revenue, money that otherwise could have been used to house 25,000 homeless people or fix all the city’s broken sidewalks. The latest installment of our pension crisis series — a partnership of The Times, CALmattters and Capital Public Radio — lays out how we got here.
T-Minus 3 Days to T-Day
Have you started preparing your Thanksgiving feast? We have plenty of tips to get you going, including our turkey basics guide, recipes (with meatless options, of course) and table setting ideas. And if you’d rather get started on holiday shopping, check out our gift guide, with more then 200 ideas to cover everyone on your list, pets included.
OUR MUST-READS FROM THE WEEKEND
-- Meet the new think tank in town: “Alt-right” comes to Washington to influence Trump.
-- Trump won by rejecting the political rules. Will the GOP Senate give him more leeway with Cabinet nominees?
-- Texas was Obama’s chief antagonist. In the Trump administration, California is eager for the part.
-- An unparalleled ecological disaster: The number of dead trees in California’s drought-stricken forests has risen dramatically to more than 102 million.
-- This Nigerian man cannot stop giving: food, money, cars, shops, even houses.
-- Disney got a big government grant to make a “Pirates of the Caribbean” film in Queensland, Australia, but nobody will say how much.
-- From a pile of index cards to the rebirth of Stars Hollow: Inside “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.”
-- Children’s book author Jon Klassen and the morally ambiguous universe of hats.
CALIFORNIA
-- Sick of traffic? A Times analysis of voting data on Measure M found a surge of voter support for transit spending across L.A. County, not just in the urban core.
-- Could Trump’s education policy change schools in California and nationwide?
-- A lawsuit alleges that an investment firm forced out mentally ill and Latino families from buildings in Koreatown so it could rent them out for more money.
-- George Skelton: Colin Kaepernick chose not to vote. He should stop complaining about the system.
HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS
-- Sharon Jones, the singer who died last week at age 60, was an old soul in a changing world.
-- Theater critic Charles McNulty: Let the power of “Hamilton” speak louder than a Twitter feud.
-- Green Day got political at the AMAs: “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist U.S.A.”
-- Dance review: Mikhail Baryshnikov captures Nijinsky’s madness in the near-perfect “Letter to a Man.”
-- The “Harry Potter” prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” took the top spot at the box office.
-- Kanye West cut short a Sacramento tour stop with a rant about Beyonce and Jay Z, then canceled a show at the Forum at the last minute. By the way, he plans to run for president in 2020.
NATION-WORLD
-- An economic “experiment” in Kansas has created a gaping budget hole and hard times for its schools.
-- A passenger train in northern India derailed and killed more than 100 people, and the death toll is expected to rise.
-- Days of heavy airstrikes have knocked out hospitals and claimed scores of lives in Aleppo.
-- Filipino fishermen are once again able to work in disputed waters in the South China Sea, but they’re wary of the deal that got them there.
-- German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she will seek a fourth term next year, which could provide a counterpoint to anti-globalist, anti-immigrant sentiments.
BUSINESS
-- Men not at work: Experts are trying to figure out why 7 million men ages 25 to 54 are neither employed nor “available for work” in the U.S.
-- Our top seven picks from the L.A. Auto Show.
SPORTS
-- Bill Plaschke: USC’s rout of UCLA is a display of two football programs headed in different directions.
-- It turned out the Rams’ offense didn’t improve with highly touted rookie Jared Goff as quarterback.
OPINION
-- If you’re worried about Trump, don’t push all your panic buttons at once. Here’s one way to prioritize them.
-- “I had a health crisis in France. I’m here to tell you that ‘socialized medicine’ is terrific.”
WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING
-- Californians, take heart! Secession or not, the state is going its own way. (New York Times)
-- Foreign diplomats heard a sales pitch to stay at the new Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., and some said they planned to do so as a friendly gesture toward the new president. (Washington Post)
-- Two brothers in Guinea invented a new alphabet for their native language when they were kids. Now they’re trying to get it on smartphones. (The Atlantic)
ONLY IN CALIFORNIA
Lynea Lattanzio doesn’t live in the 4,200-square-foot, five-bedroom home she bought on the banks of the Kings River southeast of Fresno. Instead, she stays in a trailer, while hundreds of cats roam her house and the 12 acres upon which it sits. Welcome to the Cat House on the Kings, which goes through 1,350 pounds of dry food, 1,000 cans of wet food and 600 pounds of kitty litter in one week. Columnist Robin Abcarian takes us on a tour, and you won’t need a lint roller afterward.
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