Brickbat: Up in Smoke

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been deleting her text messages, including those from Jan. 7-8, 2025, when she was flying back from a trip to Ghana while wildfires burned in Los Angeles. City policy says records should be kept for at least two years. And state law considers texts about government business as public records that must be saved. But a lawyer for the city says the rules don't apply to text messages, and Bass' phone is set to automatically delete them.