Greetings and welcome to this 88th performance of the Carnival of Fools! We gather here in mid-May as the flood tide of news washes over us all; the U.K. Labour Party got utterly spatchcocked in their local elections, and I won’t even be able to get to my take on their dismemberment by angry hordes of Brit voters this week. Instead, we’re busy as always mopping up all the wastewater from our own overflowing domestic cesspool.

Which naturally takes us first — as it has in so many recent weeks — to California.

Spencer Pratt Deserves Your Support

It was difficult at first to take Spencer Pratt’s outsider candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles seriously, and I think for somewhat obvious reasons. Pratt is a former star of a reality TV show — remember that baby-faced bad boy on MTV’s The Hills, kids? In fact, remember MTV? — and he’s now running for mayor against incumbent incompetent Karen Bass and city councilwoman Nithya Raman. In other words, in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, he is standing as an independent against both the city’s establishment and its far-left activist flank — a heavy lift, to say the least. If the modern era has taught me any one thing, it’s to be skeptical of television celebrity candidates, and that informed my initial approach to Pratt: The city is in desperate trouble and needs reform, but only serious people need apply, please.

That was until I heard him speak. I watched last week’s mayoral debate, and I am now convinced of two things in equal measure: (1) Spencer Pratt is a serious candidate; (2) Spencer Pratt is the only serious candidate in this race, and the only one telling the truth about how dangerous and degraded Los Angeles has become. He is also witty, charmingly frank, and speaks with the deep feeling of a lifelong Californian desperate to save a sinking city. Los Angelenos have the chance to set partisanship aside and vote for sanity on the ballot this June with Pratt, and they should take it.

When we talk about the basket case that California has turned into over the last quarter century, we typically focus on San Francisco. It’s a better “story” for national headlines, certainly a more viscerally resonant one. But Los Angeles has been creaking along with the same tale of decline — on a larger scale and geographical footprint — for decades now. Even as San Francisco has seen a mild rebound in safety and policing under its new mayor, the City of Angels continues its slide downward under Karen Bass.

Bass is a former communist radical turned urban politico (it’s a more common journey than you might think) who seems to treat her job as a ceremonial position, an excuse to enable her global travel schedule. She was in Ghana for a presidential ceremony at the time the Pacific Palisades fire broke out in January 2025, and her negligent handling of the fire — including earlier budget cuts to the LAFD and a failure to keep local reservoirs filled during fire season — would have doomed any other incumbent.

Unfortunately, Bass is seen as the moderate Democrat in this race, when compared with Democratic Socialist city councilwoman Nithya Raman, who is running from her left. (Sample: Raman contended in 2023 that the responsible party for catalytic-converter theft in Los Angeles is Toyota — for making them too easy to steal — as opposed to the thieves themselves.)

That brings us to Spencer Pratt. In 2024, Pratt was a former reality-show guy, boringly and bucolicly married to his co-star Heidi Montag. Then both his and his parents’ houses burned down during the Palisades fire. (It is worth noting, as an aside, that we have now learned that this fire was set by a man inspired by Luigi Mangione.) His parents decided to sell their property rather than deal with the legal and financial hardship of rebuilding, but Pratt instead decided to go to war for the city where he was born and made his fame.

I’ve heard all the arguments against him: “He has no governing experience, he’s a celebrity candidate, you’re a fool to even think he has a chance in Los Angeles.” All true, perhaps, but I have seen the politicians who are currently running the city — they were up there on that stage for debate night — and I would exchange Pratt’s clear-eyed sobriety about the reality facing Los Angeles for all of their fantasies.

When Bass wasn’t dodging accountability for her handling of the Los Angeles wildfires, she at least acknowledged the severe deterioration of public safety in the city over the past several years. She even said she would end the city’s “safe smoking,” free fentanyl-pipe program. But Nithya Raman objected and said that the homeless criminal contingent needed more outreach, more public funding — which would require more taxation. Pratt shot back:

The reality is, no matter how many beds you give these people, they are on super meth. They are on fentanyl. The DEA statistic says 93 percent of this is a drug-addiction problem. I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her [Raman], and we can find some of these people she’s going to offer treatment for. She’s going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super meth.

Los Angeles is a glorious city — one of America’s truly great metropolises, home to our flagship cultural industry and eternally part of our national mythos — and to see its decline is heartbreaking. I grew up thinking of L.A. as a myth from the movies — a glamorous and gritty place that I’d never be rich enough to afford; nowadays I think of it a place I’m grateful I can avoid. Pratt was the only person on stage willing to talk about its decline, a decline driven by bad policy choices from the top down.

It was a choice to let MacArthur Park devolve into a drug den so notorious that the DEA and LAPD had to conduct a joint raid on it last week. It was a choice to reduce the fire department’s budget, to subject the LAPD to force reductions, and let the city become mobbed with homeless drug addicts who endanger working residents every bit as much as themselves. Maintenance of public order and safety are among the fundamental civic acts of a functioning city. You just have to elect people who actually care about doing those things, rather than pleasing various activist constituencies.

Which is why Pratt’s campaign resonates personally with me, in a way difficult to explain unless you too love and treasure America’s big cities like I do. As my readers know, I am not an Angeleno myself, but the story Pratt is telling — a plaintive cry of frustration from watching your beautiful city decay into danger and disrepair, first slowly and then suddenly, as all as those with elected responsibility smile and tell you it’s somebody else’s fault – is one that strikes at my heart like an arrow shot. Here in Chicago, it’s my story as well. If we had a Pratt running for office here, I wouldn’t just be voting for him, I’d be campaigning for him personally.

Donald Trump Isn’t Getting That Birthright Citizenship Ruling He Wants

On Sunday night, the president took to Truth Social to once more share his thoughts about a random subject with the American people:

I “Love” Justice Neil Gorsuch! He’s a really smart and good man, but he voted against me, and our Country, on Tariffs, a devastating move. How do I reconcile this? So bad, and hurtful to our Country. I have, likewise, always liked and respected Amy Coney Barrett, but the same thing with her. They were appointed by me, and yet have hurt our Country so badly! I do not believe they meant to do so, but their decision on Tariffs cost the United States 159 Billion Dollars that we have to pay back to enemies, and people, companies, and Countries, that have been ripping us off for years. It’s hardly believable! They could have solved that situation with a “tiny” sentence, “Any money paid by others to the United States does not have to be paid back.” Why wouldn’t they have done so? With certain Republican Nominated Justices that we have on the Supreme Court, the Democrats don’t really need to “PACK THE COURT” any longer. In fact, I should be the one wanting to PACK THE COURT! I’m working so hard to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and then people that I appointed have shown so little respect to our Country, and its people. What is the reason for this? They have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to “almost” the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Democrat Justices always remain true to the people that honored them for that very special Nomination. They don’t waver, no matter how good or bad a case may be, but Republican Justices often go out of their way to oppose me, because they want to show how “independent” or, “above it all,” they are. I got elected in a Landslide, including winning the Popular Vote, all seven Swing States, an Electoral College “clobbering,” and all U.S. Counties, by 86%, 2,750 to 525. I choose people to help our Country, not to hurt it, and now, based on what I witnessed recently by being the first President in History to attend a Supreme Court session (Which fact was not even recognized or acknowledged, out of respect for the position of President, by the Court — Something which did not go unnoticed by the Fake News Media!), they will be ruling against us on Birthright Citizenship, making us the only Country in the World that practices this unsustainable, unsafe, and incredibly costly DISASTER. I don’t want loyalty, but I do want and expect it for our Country. Yes, I have another way of doing Tariffs, but it is far slower, and more laborious than what was just determined, in a close decision, to be “illegal” or “unconstitutional,” with three powerful, and highly accurate, dissents! Well, maybe Neil, and Amy, just had a really bad day, but our Country can only handle so many decisions of that magnitude before it breaks down, and cracks!!! Sometimes decisions have to be allowed to use Good, Strong, Common Sense as a guide. A negative ruling on Birthright Citizenship, on top of the recent Supreme Court Tariff catastrophe, is not Economically sustainable for the United States of America! President DONALD J. TRUMP

I didn’t read all of that, and neither should you. (I know your eyes skipped down here to the bottom, and congratulations on figuring out a cheat code for modern politics — you too have now learned a very important lesson about interpreting Trump’s bloviations on Truth Social.) In fact, I’m not even sure Donald Trump wrote that tweet himself, as opposed to one of his paid staff imitators. The real Trump doesn’t punctuate and phrase this way, which in some ways is a good thing, since I’m not sure America would have enjoyed hearing his less filtered thoughts about Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

Donald Trump’s frustration is understandable enough: He hates that Republican-appointed justices swear fealty to the U.S. Constitution rather than him personally. Blinded by their delusions of a higher calling, they fail to realize that “it’s really OK to be loyal to the person that appointed them.” Nearly 500 words of this run-on bleat are devoted to how frustrated he is that “Republican” justices have this pesky habit of ruling on the merits of the law, rather than the desires of the politician who appointed them — the sort of thing that endears them to judicial conservatives, in other words. But I can reduce this entire block of text to one sentence: The ruling in the Trump v. Barbara “birthright citizenship” case ain’t going to go the way Trump wants it to.

At least he apparently has an aide to filter his words for him in that case.

Ceci n’est pas un veau d’or.

There was a big unveiling last week at the Trump National Doral golf club at Miami — a 22-foot golden statue honoring none other than the glorious benefactor himself. And the images from the ceremony were quite the sight: A solid gold Trump casually hoists his fist aloft, his other hand rakishly draped at his side, as a small circle of MAGA “faith and community leaders” gathers to pray and commemorate the ribbon-cutting. Pastor Mark Burns, who oversaw the entire affair, thanked Donald Trump for letting him take the lead on the project, and — for those who might look at those images and get the wrong idea — offered the following disclaimer: “Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone.”

Glad you cleared that up, because for a moment there I was wondering. Meanwhile, somewhere far away, Magritte’s corpse is blushing.

Until next week.