A Palisades survivor loses her new home to fire

Leaving California doesn’t make you safe from fire – or other disasters related to climate change. 

Consider the double tragedy experienced by Lisa Kaas Boyle, who lost her home in the Palisades fire. In January, she wrote about helping her former community in Los Angeles rebuild even after returning to her native Nashville. Later that month, Boyle lost her new home to fire.

When a deep freeze hit much of the country (including Tennessee), Boyle tried to use her new home’s fireplaces. She had been in the house only two weeks and hadn’t lit them before, but the power was out and modern heating systems – even gas-powered ones – do not work without electricity. Boyle said ice was forming on windows inside her home.

“We finally gave up on being survivalists and went to a hotel,” she wrote in an email. Boyle and her son put out the fires before leaving.

Golden State is a member-supported publication. No billionaires tell us what to do. If you enjoy what you're reading, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription and support independent, home-grown journalism.

Upgrade to paid

At 3 a.m., Boyle got a call at her hotel: Her home was burning. “The fireplace was found to be defective and the source of the fire,” Boyle said. “We are rebuilding.” According to an article in the Nashville Scene, a trapped ember stayed lit near the roof, and her home burned from the top down.

Now, she’s using the loss of both homes to raise the alarm over the dangers of climate change. Her piece in Golden State highlighted the precariousness of living in coastal areas prone to wildfire; the Nashville Scene article notes her concern that climate destabilization means cold Arctic air can now more frequently spill over much of North America, including her native Tennessee.

Fighting fire with fire, or burning it all down?

Plenty of people welcome Gov. Gavin Newsom’s viral parodies of President Trump as fighting fire with fire. David L. Ulin sees them as capitulation.

Ulin – a prolific author, professor at USC and former L.A. Times book editor – confesses he found Newsom’s barrage of all-caps tweets and AI-generated images amusing at first. Now, with gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter’s “Fuck Trump” pitch to California Democratic Party convention goers last month, Ulin worries that the bipartisan coarsening of dialog has become a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

>MORE

California’s bullet train is over budget and overdue — but still very necessary

High-speed rail from the Bay Area to Southern California will help mitigate the climate-wrecking infrastructure we’ve already built. It’s worth the wait and cost.

Golden StatePaul Thornton

Harris vs. Newsom

Former Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom rose in power as part of the mighty San Francisco political machine, but their career paths never crossed each other. 

In a column first published in the Boston Globe, Mariel Garza says the two California political heavyweights now appear to be on a collision course in a battle for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

>MORE

Noted, with comment

A race for women: The L.A. Marathon, which took place Sunday, isn’t in the same bucket-list category as races in New York and Chicago. Greater participation by women, and the proliferation of running groups to support them, can change that, writes RUNHER Magazine founder Ashley Mateo in the L.A. Times.

Olympic death march: It was hot Sunday, so L.A. Marathon organizers let runners bail out early and still get a finisher medal. Olympic marathoners won’t have the same option in 2028, notes Alissa Walker at Torched LA, so the 26.2-mile route will probably have to cling to the “cool, and hopefully overcast, coast.”

Of course Californians are pissed off. The largest and richest state has been kicked to the political curb

But they don’t have to take it. Here’s how Golden Staters can use their collective influence to push for transformational reforms, some once unthinkable, before another would-be king crowns himself.

Golden StateJulie Marquis

An evening with Tom Steyer: Cautious on Gaza, bold but nonspecific on clean energy, aware that voters don’t trust billionaires like him: These are among Sacramento Bee editorial writer LeBron Antonio Hill’s impressions of Democratic governor candidate Tom Steyer after a voter town hall.

Cautiously hopeful: Physician Mohsen Malekinejad says in the San Francisco Chronicle that Iranian Americans cheering the supreme leader’s death are not celebrating war, but the possibility of a different future.

Should Los Angeles’ City Council get bigger for better representation? Let voters decide

The size of L.A.’s council was set in 1925, when the city was much smaller and less diverse. Voters deserve the chance to decide if Los Angeles has outgrown its 15 districts.

Golden StateJim Newton

Big (rig) election issue? The Washington Post editorial board thinks rules on driverless truck deliveries (hello Amazon, the biggest source of WaPo owner Jeff Bezos’ wealth) are a union “litmus test” for California’s Democratic governor candidates.

Substack shoutouts

A dying breed: Jim Boren, who teaches journalism at Fresno State University, worries that shrunken staffs and newsrooms that value speed over depth mean the demise of source-driven, long-term beat reporting. 

Presidential branding: Political strategist Jon Fleischman writes at So, Does it Matter? that a new, taxpayer-funded PR “California brand” campaign seems to be really really about polishing the governor’s reputation as he prepares a presidential bid.