I took a week off to escape the steady hum of grim news. It didn't go as planned

Los Angeles Times

24-07-2025

I took a week of vacation to relax, clear my head and stop obsessing over depressing news.
I hear frequently from people who say that, for their peace of mind, they're tuning out the news altogether, so I tried it for a couple of days. Opened a book. Walked the dog.
But I'm in the news business, and I felt like a hypocrite, so I kept sneaking peeks. As it turns out, that wasn't healthy.
You can't follow a single 24-hour news cycle without questioning your own sanity.
Do we really live in a country in which the president posts fake videos of a predecessor being arrested?
In which a dead man's sex trafficking crimes dominate White House news for days on end?
In which the federal government has made it a priority to arrest tamale vendors and fire meteorologists?
In which the Social Security Administration sends us emails fawning over the president and making false claims, the White House jokes and memes about immigration raids and the Department of Homeland Security triggers a trolling war with social media posts about its version of national heritage?
I have a weekly goal of avoiding alcoholic beverages on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but in this political culture, what chance do I have?
With lots of time to practice, I picked up my guitar, but events of the last few weeks continued to haunt me.
The 'Big Beautiful Bill' that Trump signed into law on July 4 will add trillions to the national debt, heap tax breaks on those who need them least and rip healthcare coverage away from the neediest. As a result, L.A. County's health services are anticipating federal cutbacks in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
'We can't survive this big a cut,' Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County's head of public health, told the Times for a story by Rebecca Ellis and Niamh Ordner. She added: 'I've been around a long time. I've never actually seen this much disdain for public health.'
Dr. Jonathan LoPresti, who worked at County/USC for decades and is an associate professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, is alarmed. He sent me an a copy of an opinion piece he's writing, which includes a warning that county hospitals could 'again be overrun with the poor … and homeless, leading to further hospital and ER overcrowding, delayed discharges and reduction in routine health maintenance … That could lead to an increase in community TB cases and more serious complications of treatable disease, as well as deaths.'
He added this:
'How many public deaths are people willing to accept?'
There is no limit, judging by crystal clear signals from Washington.
I think we can all agree that historic rainstorms, hurricanes and wildfires in the United States and the rest of the world will continue to kill thousands.
Here's a synopsis of the Trump response:
The U.S. climate change website has been shut down.
The administration says the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be eliminated, and the urban search and rescue chief has resigned, citing chaos and dangerous disaster response delays.
Layoffs and buyouts have reduced National Weather Service ranks by 14% despite warnings of dire consequences.
So I swam laps, thinking that having my head under might help, but it only made me feeling like I was drowning.
Hundreds of probationary workers at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have been fired, and the fulltime staff will be trimmed by 2,000.
These cuts, and the elimination of federal support for scientific research, are damaging in obvious ways. But when I asked UCLA professor Alex Hall what's most disturbing, here's what the director of the Center for Climate Science had to say:
'I feel like the thing that's most chilling is the way the word 'climate' has become a dirty word.'
In other words, the politicization of the subject — Trump and supporters insist human-caused climate change is either exaggerated or a hoax — has created a form of censorship.
'That's where we really start to face dangers — when people can't talk about something,' said Hall, who has been studying the link between climate change and California wildfires.
I may be a little biased on this topic. My daughter just graduated from college with a degree in earth science. What she and thousands like her are being told, essentially, is, 'Good for you, but the planet's health is neither a concern nor a priority. If you're looking for work, the Border Patrol is hiring, and cryptocurrency might be a good career path.'
So there you have it. That's how I spent my summer vacation, failing miserably in my attempt to look the other way.
But all was not lost.
I played pickleball a couple of times, in Glendale and Los Feliz, and suffered no major injuries. I took my beagle Philly to Rosie's Dog Beach in Long Beach and watched him race around like the happiest hound in the world. And, borrowing from Trump's penchant for cutbacks, I've trimmed my list of no-alcohol days from three to two.
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