Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is in the hot seat again, almost two months after the deadly Palisades Fire ripped through the City of Angels. Per a city Ethics Commission filing cited by the Los Angeles Times, detractors of Bass, who was slammed for traveling overseas as the wildfire raged in January, have set up a fundraising committee to support a recall campaign against her. The move gives Bass' foes the green light to start collecting money to get a recall on the ballot. To trigger a recall election, Bass' foes would need to gather signatures from 15% of the city's registered voters (around 330,000 of them) within four months of filing.
Per FOX 11, a Change.org petition started circulating in January calling for Bass to resign, citing her "gross mismanagement and failure to effectively respond to the devastating 2025 fires in and around the city of Los Angeles." That complaint had more than 176,000 signatures as of Tuesday morning. Bass' team is already pushing back, with one of her political strategists noting in a statement that the recall move is "nothing more than another extreme right-wing political stunt designed to divide Los Angeles when we need to move forward," per the Times.
There's been just one successful recall ever of an LA mayor—in 1938, when Frank Shaw was booted. What could dampen a recall in Bass' case is the fact that multiple people who are pushing for her ouster appear to be Republicans, "a fact that could limit its appeal in a heavily Democratic city," notes the Times. Politico has more on California's history with political recalls, including the 2003 ouster of Democrat Gray Davis that welcomed the GOP's Arnold Schwarzenegger to the governor's mansion. (More Karen Bass stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
