FREE
OC releases annual spending plan for fiscal year 2024-25
Long Beach grants over $800,000 for health equity programs
INDEPENDENT
PG 02
PG 28
VISIT BURBANKINDEPENDENT.COM
MONDAY, MAY 27- JUNE 02, 2024
Scenes from a MAGA meltdown: Inside the ‘America First’ movement’s war over democracy
VOL. 12,
NO. 173
LA County nighttime recreation program finds success, UCLA study finds
By Andy Kroll, ProPublica
By City News Service
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Foam party at a Parks After Dark event. | Photo courtesy of County of Los Angeles Department of Parks & Recreation
Breach at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. | Photo courtesy of Brett Davis/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
S
tanding in a cafe decorated with tiny American flags and antique cabinets as big as bodyguards, Peter Meijer paused as he considered what to say to the man in the “Stand for God” shirt who had just called for his bodily harm. It was a snowy morning in February. Meijer was the keynote speaker at a coffee-and-donuts meeting hosted by the Republican Party chapter in Kent County, Michigan, the most populous county on the west side of the state. Dressed in a candidate-casual uniform of jeans, a flannel shirt and an outdoorsy blazer, Meijer was seeking the Republican nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat, a race that could determine control of Congress’s upper chamber, in a state that could decide the presidential election. If
Republicans wanted to win in November, Meijer told the 40-odd people in attendance, they needed to move on from the past and focus on their shared enemy. “Is there anyone who thought that Jan. 6th was good for the Republican Party?” he asked. “Did it help us win in 2022?” “We weren’t gonna win,” someone yelled. “It was rigged.” “The election was stolen,” another person said. “It doesn’t matter.” I watched this exchange from a table near the back of the room. Until that moment, the crowd met Meijer’s stump speech with polite nods and gentle applause. But when he brought up elections and Jan. 6th, the mood turned from Midwest nice to hostile.
Not long ago, this setting was friendly terrain for Meijer. For decades, voters here rewarded sensible, probusiness, avowedly conservative politicians. Meijer fit the archetype of a West Michigan Republican when he first ran for Congress in 2020. He was also basically Michigan royalty as an heir to the Meijer grocery store fortune. In one of the state’s most competitive districts, he won his debut congressional race by a comfortable 6-point margin. At the Kent County event, however, many attendees seemed to feel nothing but scorn for him. That anger flowed from a single decision Meijer had made in Congress: He voted to impeach then-President See MAGA meltdown Page 14
Donald Trump. In response, he faced a far-right primary challenger who had served in the Trump administration and said Biden’s 2020 victory was “simply mathematically impossible.” Meijer narrowly lost. Now, as a Senate candidate, he was trying to make amends, even pledging to vote for Trump — whom he had once called “unfit for office” — if the former president won the Republican nomination. But to some, he was still a traitor. “How did you vote to impeach Trump when he said in his [Jan. 6] speech, ‘I want a peaceful demonstration,’” a man angrily asked. “You don’t have to go any further than that to know that he was right and
A
free Los Angeles County program that provides a safe space for people during evening hours has achieved its goals by fostering stronger feelings of community and closer connections, according to a report released Wednesday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. According to the report, 96% of people surveyed said the Parks After Dark program provides a sense of belonging within their communities, and 94% said the program helped them get to know their neighbors better. “Research shows that parks and public green spaces are crucial for health because they provide places for outdoor recreation and exercise,” Nadereh Pourat, director of the UCLA CHPR’s Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program, said in a statement. “Parks After Dark is designed to increase safety of parks and provide programs that everyone can enjoy.” Overall, the program had more than 405,000 unique visits throughout its eight-week run in summer 2023, and the most popular activities were movie nights, concerts, and sports clinics and games, according to the report. The Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation introduced Parks After Dark in 2010 in neighborhoods that had higher-than-average rates of crime, See Nighttime program Page 27