No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Senate Democrats get rare good news
Episode Date: May 14, 2026Senate Democrats get some good news in an unlikely state. Brian interviews LA mayor Karen Bass about her mayoral campaign.Pre-order The Day After: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/thedayaf...terWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Senate Democrats have some good news in an unlikely state,
and I interview L.A. Mayor Karen Bass about her mayoral campaign.
I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.
So we've got a rare strategic win in a very unlikely state.
That's the state of Nebraska.
So here's the deal.
There are two top candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in Nebraska.
One candidate is a guy named William Forbes.
He is anti-abortion, voted for Donald Trump,
and attended conservative candidate trainings.
So if it sounds like he's a plant,
intended to ultimately boost incumbent Republican Senator Pete Rickett's chances, that sounds about right.
But the other candidate is Cindy Burbank.
She's a pharmacy technician, community college instructor from Omaha.
But Cindy's race is interesting because she has indicated that she would drop out of the general
election to allow independent candidate Dan Osborne a head-to-head race against Ricketts.
And the numbers, by the way, would suggest that that's a good idea.
According to a brand new poll, if Democrat Cindy Burbank ran against Pete Ricketts,
she would trail him 49 to 38.
But if independent Dan Osborne ran against Ricketts,
he actually leads him 46 to 42.
So that would suggest that it would be very beneficial
to have Dan Osborne run and basically consolidate
all support from the left, all support from the middle.
However, that only happens if Cindy Burbank is able to defeat
this Republican plant William Forbes.
So the good news, Tuesday night, that is exactly what happened.
Cindy Burbank won the Democratic nomination
with more than 90% of the vote, meaning she's the Democratic nominee,
and now she's widely expected to immediately step down
so that the Democratic voters and independent voters
can all consolidate behind one candidate who is not a Republican.
So right now, we have the ideal situation playing out in Nebraska,
where polling suggests that the guy who now has a glide path
among Democratic voters would win the race if it were held today.
But here's the even better news.
Nebraska isn't even the best prospect for the Senate right now.
Maine, North Carolina, and Alaska all have Democratic candidates polling ahead of the Republican incumbents,
and then Democrats would only need to win one of the following, Iowa, Ohio, Nebraska, or Texas,
which is to say it is certainly possible that Democrats can take the Senate after midterms.
Now comes the buzzkill part.
The notion that Republicans will sit idly by while any of this happens is effectively zero.
This is a Republican Party that waited 60 fucking years to gut the Voting Rights Act,
and it took them one day to start eliminating virtually all-black representation when the Voting Rights Act was struck down.
A Republican Party that is sitting by and watching his Trump signs executive orders,
revoking mail-in voting, and trying to get the voter rolls,
and sending his henchmen to take ballots from past elections.
This guy incited a fucking insurrection, pardoned everybody involved,
and the rest of his party can't even bring themselves to say that he lost the 2020 election.
These people are fundamentally anti-democracy.
They'll continue to attack voting rights, they'll close precincts in majority minority districts,
they'll kick people off the rolls who are eligible to vote, they'll send mass to ICE agents to the polls.
They will do whatever they possibly can because they know that if they control Congress,
it gives them a lot of power to allow Trump to continue consolidating power for himself
and acting corruptly with impunity, and it allows the Republicans to have a leg up to be able to interfere
in the upcoming general election in 2008 if they're a majority in Congress.
and I know that it feels hopeless to hear everything that we're up against.
I think that's by design.
But in fact, I would argue that it should inspire you.
Because while the window is closing, it's not closed yet.
We can take control of the entirety of Congress.
We can see some accountability for the first time in years.
And we're close to seeing it happen.
So that means we work from now until November.
Donate where you can, door knock and canvas where you can.
Make sure that your circles of people are engaged and registered and have a plan
to vote and that you're speaking out in your digital spaces and your professional spaces and your
personal spaces. Trump and Republicans would not be so desperate if there wasn't a reason for them to
be desperate. They're not acting from a place of strength. They are acting from a place of weakness.
It's our job to remember that. Next up is my interview with Karen Bass.
No lie is sponsored by BetterHelp. So May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a reminder that
whatever you're going through, you don't have to go through it alone. Whatever's keeping you up at night,
it's easy to feel like you have to figure it out all by yourself.
But the truth is, nobody has all the answers and no journey should be alone.
Having someone with you to listen, to understand, to support you can make all the difference.
Therapy's helped me immensely.
I'm somebody who's generally against seeking out any help for anything.
I generally just want to keep my head down and just figure it out.
But there is an easier way.
And BetterHelp is there for this exact reason.
So why BetterHelp?
Because of their quality therapists.
Better Helps therapists work according to a strict code of conduct.
and are fully licensed in the United States.
Better Helps therapist match commitment
means that they do the initial matching work for you
so that you can focus in your therapy goals.
A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences,
and their more than 12 years of experience
and industry-leading match fulfillment rate
means they typically get it right the first time.
If you aren't happy with your match,
switch to a different therapist at any time
from their tailored recommendations.
And with over 30,000 therapists,
BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform,
having served over 6 million people globally.
And it works.
With an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews.
You don't have to be on this journey alone.
Find some support and have someone with you in therapy.
Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash no lie.
That's betterhelp.com slash no lie.
I'm joined now by the mayor of Los Angeles.
Karen Bass, thanks for joining me.
Thanks for having me on.
So I want to ask first and foremost because this has gotten a lot of national attention about Spencer Pratt,
rise in this race.
There are many folks on the left who say that his rise mirrors Donald Trump's rise in 2016
because of the way that he's been able to kind of game the media, garner attention,
be politically incorrect.
Can you speak about your reaction to Spencer Pratt's rise in this race and what do you attribute it to?
Sure.
Well, I attributed to social media and all of the artificial intelligence that has gone in.
I mean, I think he has done a blitzkrieg on social media.
But I also attribute it to him tapping into the anger that we see going on nationally.
Of course, tapping into his own personal anger and the tragedy of the Palisades.
I absolutely do not want to minimize that.
But obviously, his anger about the Palisades has gone national
because I think he's tapping into national anger and frustration with politics, period.
And I think it's sad because when those kind of things happen, it discourages people from participating, from believing in their government, and also from voting.
Well, you know, Spencer has been very outspoken about this idea that you and California Democrats, current leadership, are responsible basically for the tragedy that befell him.
And so what would your reaction to that be?
Well, you know, what I have felt about Spencer all along because I've watched this very closely in the palisades is I understand, obviously, his personal tragedy and all of that.
But I think that it is really, really sad to play on people's grief and to create an atmosphere of nothing is happening and hostility.
There were absolutely mistakes.
The city really was not prepared for a disaster of that magnitude.
with a weather event that we had never experienced before.
And so hindsight is everything.
But this also was not just the city of Los Angeles,
the county as well.
And when I talked to the fire department afterwards,
their response was we are very used to Santa Ana Wins,
but we have never had anything like this.
And so I think that the lesson for me and for Angelinos is,
is that now, given climate change, we have to expect things.
I mean, I'm born and raised here.
So this is the climate I know.
And we now have to expect things that we would have never imagined.
But that's just one.
I mean, I can go down a list of problems that happen.
But it's time to help inspire people to get back home.
And we've issued over 2,600 permits for about 1,100 properties.
400 homes are currently under construction now.
and people are slowly preparing to move back home.
You know, in terms of the list of issues in Los Angeles,
is it not fair to say that that is a referendum on, in part,
the fact that you have been mayor for the last several years?
And so when somebody like Spencer Pratt comes forward
and taps into the anger that people might feel about the issues
that are presenting themselves in Los Angeles,
how would you respond to people saying,
well, this is a referendum on you?
Well, I mean, I can understand people saying that, but I also think that Angelinos in general will look at the overall progress that has happened in my administration. The first time we've had a reduction of homelessness, period, 17 and a half percent while it's going up nationally, crime that is down to 1960 levels, 42,000 homes that are been fast-tracked with,
for affordable housing, 43,000 that are potential with adaptive reuse of policy I made now citywide,
which means you can change office buildings into housing. So I think that there have been
tremendous accomplishments. But you know pretty well, I am sure, is that a lot of the problems
that we face in Los Angeles are 30, 40-year-old problems. So if the charges is that in three and a half
years, I've not changed 30 to 40 year problems. That's correct. But we have made headway in some
very significant ways. And I would hate to leave now before I am able to finish my job. And there's a lot of
areas where I think we have made a difference, are definitely put the policies in place to make a
difference. And now it's a question of pushing them and evaluating them along the way.
Okay, so I want to dig into a few of those issues, and these are the same issues that I spoke with Nithia Raman a couple of days ago about, and those issues are homelessness, housing, and Hollywood.
So in terms of homelessness, yeah, that's right. In terms of homelessness here, you said that there has been a 17% reduction.
I think Nithia Raman mentioned that the spending in the last year has been, if I'm not mistaken, $700 million on homelessness. Is that correct?
Yeah, more or less. That's correct. That is not different than previous years.
And how many people has that impacted? How many people were taken off the street off of that $700 million?
Well, there's thousands of people that were taken off the street. But let me just say that there are 46,000 people that are unhoused within our city. And so do we have the resources to clear all of those individuals and put them in?
to housing. You know, New York City made a different decision about 20 years ago, which is why they
don't have the level of street homelessness that we do. Our decision here was we were going to build
housing, and until we built housing, we were going to leave people on the street. So we could have
removed far more people than that, but I have been in battle, again, with a system that has been
in existence for over 30 years that has been dysfunctional from day one.
And my mission in coming in was to get people off the streets.
That was my mission.
That was my focus.
I didn't want to spend a year studying the system.
I wanted to act while looking at it at the same time, building the plane while flying it.
But we have much, much more work to do.
But again, this is a system that has been dysfunctional for a very, very long time.
And so what does the next four years look like, recognizing that you've got,
You've got one term under your belt already.
And the reason that I ask this more broadly is, you know, if we've spent $700 million
to tackle homelessness in just the last year, and yes, thousands of people have been taken
off the streets, and that is objectively a good thing.
But if you look at the amount of money that's spent per person, I mean, that's what upsets
people, I think, in large part.
When you divide the total number of spending by the amount of people who've been impacted
here. And so what does what does success look like over the next four years if you're reelected? What is the
plan to take it from 17% to a 50 or 100% reduction? Right, right, right. Well, first of all,
you know, we started coming up with models to reduce the cost of housing and to reduce the cost
of interim housing. And we have been moving forward with that. We need to catapult that. The other thing is,
is that, you know, we're in this situation with the county right now, and that needs to be resolved.
But what I have found is that it is easy to get people off the street. When we get them off
the street, we turn them over to a community-based organization, but they're not provided with
adequate services. So when you ask me, what does it look like in a second term, now I know from
acting and studying, I'm very clear about what needs to happen to change this entire situation.
but one of the keys that people consistently do not address is the needs of the individual.
You know, I used to work in the emergency room. My patients were unhoused. And I have found over the
years that people have a lot of academic and theoretical knowledge about this problem.
But they have very, and they're also experts in housing, but they have very little knowledge
about the people, the people, why somebody winds up homeless, how to improve their lives,
so that they become stable.
That's why when L.A. made that decision 20, 25 years ago,
not to focus on getting people off the street,
just to focus on building.
We have the problem that we do now.
So what I would do in a next term is basically to end all of the major encampments that you see.
At the end of four years,
what I want the city to look like on this particular issue
is that Angelinos would see an individual tent here.
and there. But encampments would be a way of the past, and it's very easy to resolve a tent here or a
tent there. It's much more difficult to resolve an entire encampment because what we have done
different, which is the reason it has worked, and the reason street homelessness has gone down,
is that we get rid of the entire encampment by housing everybody at once. What had been done in
the past, why it looked like nothing ever changed, was they would pluck a person here and a
person there and the encampments never went away. So we do absolutely still have encampments,
that's for sure, but we have far fewer encampments than we did three and a half years ago.
Last question on this point. What happens if there are people within the encampment that don't
want to be housed? So, you know, that we, that is a very, very rare experience for us, but usually
those are two types of folks. One who are immersed in the criminal element, and that exists, and they
should be dealt with. The other are people who are so profoundly ill that half the time they're not
even sure that they're homeless. So there's good news on that front that I'm very excited about
because this is more consistent with who I am. We are finally building and getting ready to open
up mental health facilities. The next thing that needs to happen, though, is state policy that allows
for involuntary hospitalization. And I'm a big proponent of that, and I realize a lot of people think
that's a civil liberties abuse, but the same people who might feel that that's a civil
liberties abuse don't seem to object to incarcerating people, because that's exactly what we do now.
I'm sure you know that, that Twin Towers is the nation's most expensive mental health institution,
and it is a jail. And so I want to see us open up these facilities and begin to house people,
while I will be working on the state policy. Being in this job, it has served me tremendously,
that I served in the state legislature and in Congress.
I know how those areas work, those institutions work.
And by the way, one of the things I've had to do on my journey over these last three and a half years,
I've had to get federal policy changed and I had to get state policy change.
Because I know those two institutions, I've been able to do that.
No Lie is brought to you by Ridge.
So if you still have a giant, crusty leather brick of a wallet that's falling apart,
I think it's time to upgrade.
I probably had the same wallet for more than a debt.
And I actually wasn't looking for a new wallet until I saw Ridge.
And what sold me was the RFID blocking technology in those wallets, meaning that digital pickpocketers won't be able to read any of your credit cards.
But beyond that, the wallets themselves are awesome.
Ridge wallets have a unique, slim, modern design that holds up the 12 cards plus cash made with premium materials like aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber, and over 50 colors and styles to choose from.
Plus new colorways in the 90s capsule collection featuring Hot Rod, Lone Wolf, and Thunderbird.
Mine is black carbon fiber. I love it.
All Ridge products have a lifetime warranty.
This is literally the last wallet that you'll ever have to buy.
And with over 100,000 five-star reviews, that checks out.
And with Father's Day right around the corner, this makes for the perfect Father's Day gift.
Consider, too, Ridge isn't just about wallets.
They create premium everyday carry essentials like power banks, key cases.
I have one of those.
Suitcases and rings all built with the same sleek, durable design.
And no matter what you pick, Ridge has free shipping, a 99-day risk-free trial, and a lifetime warranty on all of their products.
For a limited time, Ridge is running their huge Father's Day sale where you can get up to 40% off their best gear.
Just head to ridge.com slash BTC and don't miss out on one of their biggest discounts all year.
That's ridge.com slash BTC for up to 40% off.
After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them.
Please show some support for this show and tell them I sent you.
Okay, so as we speak about the homeless pop.
and creating housing, that does bring us to the next topic, which is housing more broadly in
Los Angeles. Something that obviously this city is contending with. It's no secret that it is
difficult to build housing here. Even from an anecdotal perspective, I'm building a house. I can't
put a shovel in the ground for, I think, 18 months because of the sheer amount of permits that I
have to go through. And there is a whole system built into that process. I'm sure a lot of
people don't know this, that like if you want to expedite the process to make it, you know,
mildly reasonable, you can pay.
But that's that's 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50,000 or $50,000 in additional cost that you have to
shoulder just so that the system can work in a reasonable amount of time.
That's how the system should work regardless.
And so the question more broadly is, what is being done to expedite construction here in Los
Angeles so that this isn't one of the most expensive cities in the country to build in?
Yes, and let me just tell you something, you know, because I'm born and raised here, I remember when the city was very affordable.
But that was one of the problems I started tackling from day one.
I declared a state of emergency to get people off the street.
And about a week later, I did Executive Directive 1, which expedited building.
It was focused on just affordable housing, but we have taken the lessons learned from that.
We've actually applied a lot of those lessons in the palisades to expedite to continue to further expedite.
In the palisades, we are learning with artificial intelligence and self-certification of architects so that things could go faster.
The DWP, which is one of the biggest headaches that everybody talks about, is beginning to establish a concierge service because people were getting buildings finished and they would have to wait a year with an empty building, waiting for the DWP.
These kind of things make me crazy.
Development process goes through all these different hands and God forbid somebody goes on vacation because then they hand your file over to someone completely new who then starts over.
So all of that, all that I described is in the midst of changing.
I did another executive directive based on these lessons.
And now we are beginning to change the entire development process.
So it's more centralized.
It's more transparent so that development can go through.
And by the way, the way I believe in doing policy is I bring together the people who are hands-on in the field.
Not the professors, not the academics.
the people who are actually doing the work.
And I've worked together with them to troubleshoot what the problems are,
but to build policy around changing those problems.
But once again, these things take a while.
And so this is about correcting or blowing up a process
that has been in existence for many, many years.
You get resistance on all levels.
I've gotten a lot of resistance from departments,
and I've had to change the leadership
because it's like either you're going to move past this stuff
or you have to move on.
But what I have not done is I'm not a flashy person.
I'm a workhorse.
I'm not a show horse.
So I don't run and have press conferences
every time I ask somebody to retire.
I believe in letting them retire with dignity.
I have no reason to destroy their reputation.
But it does not mean that I have made changes
and I've made plenty of them and more to come.
In terms of the people who've pushed back,
who needed to be replaced.
What is the point of pushing back against the reform of a process that makes building easier
and simpler in Los Angeles, which is notoriously difficult to build in?
Like, why would somebody take a position where they don't want the process to be expedited
in some way?
Well, you know what?
After a while, I call it a virus.
But after a while, you work in a bureaucracy and you begin to adopt a lot of this.
So with me, they'll tell me what we have to do it this way because we've always done that.
That's like fingers on a chalkboard.
Then it's like, well, the rules say we can't blah, blah, blah, blah.
Show me the rule in writing.
Well, that's going to take a while.
Show me the rule in writing.
Oh, I can't find it.
There's no rule.
My line is, is it a felony?
If it's not a felony, get it done.
But I think the culture of City Hall is slow and no.
And most politicians come through and they don't really try.
that hard to make the changes. This is it for me. I mean, I have viewed the positions I've done
over the years as, you know, I'm not, I didn't have ambition to say, well, I'm doing this,
and now I'm going to do that. I have been driven by issues. I certainly never planned to leave
Congress. I didn't leave Congress because I was tired of it. I left Congress because I was terrified
of what was happening here, and because I had worked so hard in the 90s against what led, what became
mass incarceration, and I was having flashbacks seeing it happen all over again, except for instead
of wanting to lock up every young black and brown young person, this backlash was going to be
against people in the streets and the push to just round them up and I don't know to do what with them,
but I didn't want to see that happen. I want to switch over to the last topic here, which is the
entertainment industry, Hollywood. This has been a personal focus of mine. I moved here 15 years
because I love the entertainment industry.
I'm not in it anymore, but I still want to see it thrive.
All of my friends are part of the entertainment industry.
And I've watched as people have left this city and left this state.
And in some cases, left the country to seek work elsewhere where the industry has thrived.
And I'm talking, you know, the UK, Canada, New Jersey, Atlanta, New Orleans, I mean, New Mexico, you name it.
What is being done?
Okay.
Let me ask this first question.
What would you like to see in terms of a tax credit to revitalize the industry here in L.A.?
So let me just say, well, let me, I'll answer that, but I also want to tell you my background,
because this has been an issue that has been near and dear to me for many, many, many years.
So we can't do a local tax credit right now.
I mean, we just can't.
We can't afford to do that.
Big advocate for what happened at the state level.
But again, I established an entertainment industry cabinet.
I have worked with them through my three and a half years.
They've helped me develop policy that they feel will be helpful to the industry.
And so I've done that.
They wanted the permit fees reduce.
They wanted the permits expedited.
They wanted a person, one or two individuals, with deep knowledge of the city,
to work as our films are.
I even opened it up to them and said,
give me resumes of who you want.
And they grappled with it and thought about it
and argued about it for a long time.
And anyway, they decided they didn't want somebody
from the industry.
They wanted somebody that was immersed in the city.
And that could expedite the city process.
So we have two people that are dedicated
to providing concierge service.
I reduced the amount of money
you have to pay to film here.
So, for example, at the Griffith Park Observatory, it was $100,000 to shoot.
We've reduced it by 70%.
It's 30,000 now.
We've opened up a lot of the city's iconic buildings for filming, like our central library,
which is magnificent structure.
And then also reduce the number of staff that need to be on location.
All of those are things that the industry-specific.
specifically requested.
And basically, that's now been in place for maybe eight or nine months.
But I don't believe in just doing policy and then walking away.
I want to know, let's see if it's working.
Let's see, is it helping?
And then we evaluated and figure out what more we can do.
But the industry has been near and dear to me.
I'm third generation.
My grandmother, who I never met because she died young, worked at what is now the
Sony studios.
She worked there in 1932.
That was during segregation, and she took care of the black actors.
She wasn't entertainer, too.
But, you know, the movies that black people were in were not the best movies.
Those were the Tarzan plantation scenes.
My mother was involved.
My brothers are also involved in ancillary businesses.
And years before I ever thought of being an elected official, I was on the board of an
organization where there's community representation and studio representation, and we were building
out the below-the-line crafts so young people the next generation could learn those crafts.
I made a commitment that if I ran, if I was going to win in office, because I started running
then, that I would work on tax credits in Sacramento. It was fortunate that in my last term,
I was speaker of the house, so I was able to do the first tax credit that the state of California
had when Arnold was governor. It was a little tiny bit because we were in the middle of a recession,
the worst recession since the Great Depression. But the idea was that it was going to increase over
time. Those were back in the days when people were just worried about Toronto. And I watched
the explosion of all of the states that you mentioned and then the international side. When I went
on to Congress, I served on the Judiciary Committee on the intellectual property side. So I was
dealing with all of those issues, copyright and wage theft and all that.
And so what would you like to see on the state side in Sacramento?
You know, we have obviously a gubernatorial race happening right now.
The candidates are vying for support.
For those like myself for whom the resurrection of the entertainment industry is a major
issue, what would you like them to put forward?
Well, well, one, continue, if not expand the tax.
credits, no cap. I think that there's other things, you know, that they could do statewide.
What I really want to see is federal, as federal tax credits. And that's something that,
you know, is potential with him. That was potential with Arnold because Arnold was an actor.
Arnold just didn't want to do it himself because he said if he did it, it would look self-serving.
So he wanted us to do it. So we did it like at two in the morning. We slipped it in. But a
focus on the industry and a promotion of the industry in the states. The challenge that we had with
tax credits the first time, again, we got it done, but most of the state does not know about the
industry. They think it's all Brad Pitt and it's all L.A. And they don't realize that every single
city in the, well, maybe not every city, but every county in the state has entertainment industry
business going on that they never even knew was happening. So back when I was there, we spent a lot of
time educating the legislators. So if we have a governor who champions it from day one, that will go a long
way in getting the cooperation of the legislators. But what I do know from working up there is that
whenever you do a big bill, it's always messy. It's like a Christmas tree. After it's passed and signed,
then you spend the next three or four years cleaning up, correcting mistakes or knowledge that you didn't have, that you didn't have.
Is an uncapped tax credit something that you would advocate for for the next governor?
Yeah.
No lie is brought to you by ethos.
So one life lesson that I've sadly learned the hard way is that we can't control what we can't control.
And that often includes the health of our loved ones.
But what we can control is making sure that we're prepared for that moment when it comes, which is why life insurance is so important.
Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy 100% online.
You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and get same-day coverage.
There's no medical exam, you just answer a few simple health questions.
You can get up to $3 million in coverage.
Some policies are as low as $30 a month, and you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers.
Ethos also has 4.8 out of five stars on Trust Pilot with over 4,000 reviews.
So take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through ethos.
Get your free quote at ethos.com slash BTC.
That is ethos.com slash BTC.
Application times may vary.
Rates may vary.
And finally, the last question here.
What would you like to see different in terms of local reforms that hasn't been implemented yet?
I know that you mentioned, you know, lowering some costs, but lowering the amount of people who are required to be on set, and that includes police officers, for example.
Yes.
What does four years from now, what does success look like?
in terms of what you've been able to do.
And I ask this because I want to stress that it's not just, you know,
kind of tinkering around the edges that's going to take this industry back from other cities
who are offering, you know, the sun and the moon.
I mean, when Atlanta had a better tax credit than Los Angeles,
the whole industry moved there,
and even the UK offered something that was more attractive than Atlanta was offering.
And so Marvel, for example, moved from Atlanta over to the UK.
And so, you know, there are not only other states, but entire countries who are vying for this business because it's lucrative, it's sexy.
And so with that in mind, like it's going to take not just some, you know, incremental changes.
It's going to take some pretty sweeping changes to grab that industry back from entire countries that are advocating for it.
Well, again, you know, everything that I have been doing and will continue to do is with the industry.
So the industry is guiding it.
Now, I think that what would be very helpful is expanding that in terms of making sure that all parts of the industry are represented.
But I do believe, and when I say the industry, I'm talking about people at all level in terms of
the unions. I'm talking about individual producers. I am talking about major studios too. So I'm not
talking about one side. You know, I do think, though, that the way our city functions and the way
our budget is, there are a lot of constraints on that. And I have to make sure that the city continues
to provide basic city services. And so that is absolutely essential. So again, what we have done so far
has been guided by the industry. I intend to continue taking their guidance. But when you look at
states like Georgia, you also have to look at how they provide services because they don't. And a lot of
what we do here is because we're a liberal state that focuses on a social safety net,
needs to do it much, much more. But it's a tradeoff. And I know in the state of Georgia and
the southern states, their concern about their people is qualitatively different than it is here.
For those who are looking to help your campaign, where can they go?
Oh, they can go to Karen Bass.com. They can go to Karen Bass for mayor. By the way, we have a very
vibrant youth component of high school students and college students, youth for Bass. We had a
component of that four years ago. Now they're grown up. Now this is another wave of young people.
so people of all ages can come.
They can come down to the headquarters and do phone banking.
Of course, you can do phone banking virtually,
but, you know, it's fun in a campaign
to be physically in a location.
We walk every weekend.
We do have people walking every day, too.
So there's a lot of ways for people to participate.
And I would just remind everybody who's watching and listening right now
that the election here,
the primary election here in Los Angeles is going to be June 2nd.
So if you've gotten your ballot,
but please make sure to fill them out, send them in,
or make sure to head to the polls on or before June 2nd.
Mayor Bass, I appreciate taking the time.
Thank you. Thanks for having me on again.
Thanks again to Karen Bass.
That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Sunday.
You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen.
Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie,
and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera.
If you want to support the show,
please subscribe on your preferred podcast app
and leave a five-star rating and a review.
And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to bryantylercoen.com to learn more.
