Alex Padilla

Monday

Marisela Ramirez

What’s next for LA’s Mexican-American community?

In 1976, the Ramirez Pharmacy opened in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles. Appropriately located on the corner of East Cesar Chavez Ave, the pharmacy is the crowning achievement of my grandfather, Eddie Ramirez, and is in many ways physical evidence of the American dream.  But in today’s Los Angeles, we’ve seen citizens and non-citizens waving Mexican flags while torching cars, attacking police and burning US flags in protest of the Trump administration's immigration raids in the state. Protesters have looted businesses downtown and lit fires, leading to full blocks of the LA commercial district nailing plywood to their storefronts.  “Lately, since all this ruckus started with a protest, we have seen a drop in the business.

los angeles mexican ramirez pharmacy

Friday

Cockburn

Inside the April Ryan-John Fredericks Briefing Room brouhaha

Radio Ga Ga That’s it, yes, it’s war! Forget Israel and Iran’s back and forth, ignore the tanks on Constitution Avenue: the real conflict of the week was the heated Briefing Room scrap between two titans of radio, John Fredericks and April Ryan. It all kicked off on Wednesday afternoon ahead of the press briefing, when Trump-supporting call-in host Fredericks sidled in and started airing his grievances about how the briefings used to work under the previous Trump administration. He was moaning about how he never got to ask questions due to the focus-pulling antics of CNN’s Jim Acosta and April Ryan, who, sources tell Cockburn, he referred to as the “woman from urban radio.” Fredericks said this... while directly next to Ryan.

april ryan

Tuesday

Cockburn

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s foreign reporter crackdown

The British aren’t coming Congresswoman requires US ID to cover her panel Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene chaired a meeting of the House DoGE committee this morning, with the express purpose of cracking down on unused government buildings. “Federal agencies shouldn’t be maintaining empires at taxpayers’ expense,” she said in her opening statement. But Cockburn’s curiosity was piqued by the new wording at the bottom of her office’s media advisory ahead of the event, which specified that journalists seeking to cover it required American documentation: “Media and the public entering the building will need a valid U.S. passport or driver’s license and will need to be escorted to the auditorium.

marjorie

Thursday

Juan P. Villasmil

Bessent, Burgum, Turner and Zeldin face confirmation hearings

Four days away from inauguration, the Senate is moving quickly with confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet. The saga began with defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s contentious hearing Tuesday and quickly moved to half-a-dozen other hearings the next day, including that of secretary of state nominee, Senator Marco Rubio.  This morning, Congress continued with more hearings for top Trump nominees, including one with treasury secretary pick Scott Bessent, as well as with former representative Lee Zeldin, former governor Doug Burgum and former NFL player Scott Turner — who were nominated to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Interior and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, respectively.

hearings