Staff Reports
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass finds herself in more smoke than the wildfires that raged through her city in January. Those blazes, which many are dubbing the costliest natural disaster in American history, are estimated to have wreaked havoc to the tune of $164 to over $250 billion. But Bass was nowhere near the fire; she had decided it was a perfect time to be sipping drinks in Ghana, celebrating the inauguration of the West African nation’s new president, on the taxpayer’s dime. Nothing says “I care about my city” quite like abandoning it during a disaster for a taxpayer-sponsored holiday, right?
While Los Angeles residents were battling flames, Bass was aligning herself with a foreign leader and enjoying life away from the chaos. She had promised voters she would never leave the country while in office, yet she evidently feels that promises are best kept from the comfort of an airplane seat. Once the fires erupted, she claimed to be in constant contact with her staff—though the evidence supporting that assertion seemed to evaporate as quickly as the flames she was supposedly managing from thousands of miles away.
Initially, Bass’s team claimed that records of her vital communication had been lost due to an alleged malfunction in her phone, suggesting that she wasn’t setting it up to retain text messages. Talk about a convenient excuse. This little mystery raised eyebrows about whether she violated public records laws by failing to preserve communications during a crisis. It’s a fairly ludicrous situation: a city mayor unable to keep track of her own messages while the city burns, quite literally.
THM News: Karen Bass' Destroyed Text Messages Have Miraculously Reappeared https://t.co/EoL0lDD0gx
— David Ryan (@djryan7_ryan) March 28, 2025
However, just when it seemed like the charred reputation of her administration couldn’t get any worse, those supposedly “destroyed” texts came crawling back from the ashes like an uninvited guest at a barbecue. The released messages revealed a mayor scrambling to secure communication with her staff while airborne. On January 7, the day of the fire, she struggled to connect over the phone with her department heads. At that point, her text message was practically a cry for help: “I’m listening. Don’t know why you can’t hear me.” A classic case of communication breakdown or simply the consequences of not being where she should have been?
In the aftermath, Bass attempted to reach out to school officials about the damage to local facilities while still en route to Los Angeles. Her urgency, while commendable, would have been more appreciated if it hadn’t coincided with her lavish trip. One almost wonders if Bass thought she could “phone it in” like a bad sitcom attempt at humor. Even after returning home, she insisted that her management from afar was effective. According to Bass, she was in touch with officials throughout the ordeal, as if bluster and a bright phone screen could make up for her physical absence.
Amidst the backlash, Bass conceded that her trip was a mistake as it bore no relevance to city business. One can’t help but wonder how a trip to Ghana during a wildfire season ever seemed like an “appropriate” decision in the first place. The fire may be out, but the heat is very much on for Karen Bass. It remains to be seen if she can regain the trust of her constituents, but one thing is crystal clear: her leadership skills are currently under more scrutiny than a Hollywood script during awards season.
