What are the biggest problems facing voters in Los Angeles? Some might say high taxes and insufficient delivery of services. Others might point to chronic housing shortages, exacerbated by the massive wildfires a year ago, and by state and local bureaucracies that have prevented owners from rebuilding. The rampant homelessness and refusal of the progressive leadership at all levels of California to deal with it effectively would rank high on most people's lists, too.
However, mayoral candidate and city councilwoman Nithya Raman has finally identified the most pressing issue for the pursuit of happiness in Los Angeles ... the backyard barbecue. Raman wants to impose tighter regulations on grilling that would force families – and some restaurants – to shut down at the most inconvenient times:
Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman wanted to ban backyard barbecues for residents during certain high fire danger days across the city.
Raman introduced a motion Wednesday directing city officials to examine emergency restrictions on grilling during Red Flag Warning days, when high winds and dry conditions significantly increase wildfire danger across Los Angeles.
The proposal specifically asks officials to consider possible limits on backyard barbecues, fire pits and other open flames in residential neighborhoods during those high-risk weather events.
Let us reflect on this for a moment. The massive wildfires in Los Angeles last year resulted from a lack of preparation by the city during this very type of weather pattern, both in refusing to remove brush and in neglecting to have reservoirs filled to deal with fires that might break out. Mayor Karen Bass received the warning that the conditions could create a catastrophe, and she still opted to fly to Africa for a diplomatic event that had nothing to do with the city of Los Angeles. Her deputy mayor in nominal charge of emergency services had already been suspended. The emergency response broke down and thousands of Angelenos lost their homes, and the city has responded by obstructing their ability to rebuild.
And the big problem is backyard barbecues.
Also, this regulation will impact restaurants, who will have to shut down partially or fully when the city declares Red Flag Warning days, even though neither they nor family grills have been responsible for wildfires:
The same motion would have also had a major impact on restaurants that cook with open flames. [Council member Monica] Rodriguez said she started hearing concerns from restaurant owners when the motion was being passed around.
“You had restaurant owners calling it out saying, ‘This is going to affect our business,’” she said.
Rodriguez had the good sense to kill the proposal. That doesn't let Raman and the leftists supporting her campaign off the hook for it. As Bonchie put it on Twitter:
Spencer Pratt: “We need to clean up homeless camps, get rid of the drug addicted everywhere, prepare for fires better, and lower taxes.”
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 15, 2026
Nithya Raman: “We need to ban the normals from cooking hamburgers.”
The right vs. left paradigm perfectly illustrated. https://t.co/MyroYSR76X
If the city council wants to deal with wildfire threats, it should stop looking at backyard grills and instead focus on outdoor encampments. Raman's authoritarian impulse overlooks not just the larger potential threat, but the larger actual threat. A week ago, yet another major blaze erupted from a homeless encampment, blocking a vital artery of traffic through the city:
A fire that broke out in a suspected homeless encampment under the 110 Freeway forced the busy roadway to close in both directions
The blaze started in a tunnel beneath the freeway in the Wilmington area Monday night, closing all lanes in both directions, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. ...
The blaze was initially reported as “rubbish fire,” according to fire officials. Investigator believe it was sparked by homeless people, Fox 11 reported.
LAFD Public Service Officer Lyndsey Lantz told The Post that “There are encampment materials inside and around that access portal. There’s a tent and tons of debris.”
“While firefighters have removed a large amount of debris from the space, burning construction timber and other unmovable materials will require sustained suppression,” the LAFD said.
Wouldn't it make more sense for the city council to demand enforcement of vagrancy laws and the immediate dismantling of these encampments? Which is the greatest danger on Red Flag Warning days -- contained grills in backyards, or firetraps under overpasses all over the Los Angeles area?
It's this disconnect from reality by the progressive establishment in Los Angeles that has vaulted newcomer Spencer Pratt into real contention in the mayoral race. Puck's Peter Hamby reports on that disconnect, starting with a long-delayed expansion of the city's subway line and the delusions of progress that Bass et al attempt to sell:
For Karen Bass, though, the subway opening was a sign of something else: plodding but tangible progress for the city of Los Angeles—a theme that happens to rhyme with that of her troubled reelection campaign this year. “This is the kind of infrastructure that shapes a city’s future,” Bass said of the opening.
Spencer Pratt, one of Bass’s opponents in the mayor’s race, visited the D Line the same day and saw something different: Poop. “Transportation is a beautiful idea when there is no human urine, human poop on there. A drug addict’s butt hanging out!” Pratt said on the All In podcast this week, one of his many stops on the anti-woke audioverse circuit. “Who cares how many Metro lines it connects to? It could connect to the moon right now. But if drug addicts are smoking fentanyl next to your kid, you aren’t going to the moon on it.” Pratt said he can’t even open his phone anymore because “every single person in L.A.” now sends him photos of drug addicts, fentanyl “zombies,” human feces on the street, homeless people sleeping next to school entrances. “I’m like 311 now,” Pratt said. “It’s crazy.”
Harsh? Amusing? Trumpy? Sure. All of the above. But this is precisely the kind of unvarnished real talk about L.A.’s visible squalor that has propelled Pratt—the former MTV reality show villain turned hummingbird influencer turned Palisades fire victim—into unlikely contention in the mayoral race this spring. An attention hustler with instinctive Millennial social media talents, he has broken through with straight-to-camera rants and statistics about the city’s most visible pain points—and the failure of polite progressive politicians to do anything about them. For all the talk in Washington about new media tactics, Pratt has arrived on the scene as the country’s most fully formed influencer candidate, running in a political moment when authentic, off-the-cuff content creation has become the coin of the realm.
Pratt's not pretending that suburban family get-togethers are the danger facing Angelenos. That should be enough for voters to give the entrenched establishment the boot. Pratt at least sees the problems and wants to fix them. Bass and Raman want to keep pretending that the problems don't exist, except to the extent that the voters themselves are the problem. Let's hope common-sense Angelenos fulfill that prophecy by making themselves the obstacle to the ambitions of these progressives in the election.
Update: This is both on point and hilarious, especially for fans of The Lego Movie.
This
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) May 15, 2026
is
AMAZING pic.twitter.com/f5Gj1TAgP8
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