Councilmember Rick Caruso, Stephen Miller grows hair and extra 2026 predictions

Among the many many geniuses we misplaced in 2025 was satirist Tom Lehrer, who scandalized America within the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties together with his biting political songs, then left that profession within the early Nineteen Seventies to show math.

“Political satire grew to become out of date,” he famously quipped, “when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

That thought crossed my thoughts as I deliberated whether or not to proceed my annual Gustradamus columna, the place I provide predictions for the approaching yr. How might I presumably discover mirth after a 2025 in Los Angeles that began with infernos, continued with a blizzard of immigration raids worthy of the White Walkers in “Sport of Thrones” and is ending with file Christmas rainfall and a fuel line rupture that threatened to show Castaic into an enormous bonfire?

However hope and humor are what make life price dwelling, and President Trump makes Kissinger appear as inoffensive as Bluey. So behold my 2026 forecast, which is able to completely come true, as a result of my monitor file is extra good than an order of taquitos at Cielito Lindo washed down with horchata.

• Rick Caruso decides to not run for California governor or mayor of Los Angeles when he realizes JD Vance has a greater likelihood of successful than he does. As an alternative, the developer challenges L.A. Metropolis Councilmember Traci Park and simply beats her by spending $538 million. He then shocks everybody by siding with the progressives on the council, citing his Catholic religion and the truth that Jesus made the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter appear as woke as, properly, Park, a Democrat who’s about as blue on the political spectrum as a firetruck. Caruso makes use of his riches, deep connections and billion-dollar smile to resolve homelessness, housing affordability and get from the Westside to the Eastside in 20 minutes throughout Friday rush hour.
• Talking of will-he-or-won’t-he, Gov. Gavin Newsom decides to not run for president in 2028. He retreats to his predecessor Jerry Brown’s rural ranch in Northern California, shaves his head and proclaims he’s taking a vow of silence till the primary leg of California’s high-speed rail mission is completed. Newsom by no means speaks once more.
• UCLA soccer breaks its contract with the Rose Bowl and relocates to a venue nearer to campus the place it’s supposedly simpler to fill the stands: The Dangerous Information Bear Subject on the Westwood Recreation Middle. The bleachers stay half-filled all season even because the Bruins end with an undefeated file, as a result of who desires to see UCLA play soccer?

• Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s scorched earth deportation coverage, by chance applies Rogaine to his bald pate and sprouts an Edgar reduce inside seconds. Seems he’s a modern-day Samson: His lack of hair was the explanation he was such a soulless ghoul. He shortly grows a coronary heart and urges the president not solely to cease all deportations however to go a full-scale amnesty and open the borders. For a era, Latinos title their first-born sons Esteban in his honor.
• For a whole hour, no political scandals hit the cities of southeast L.A. County.
• The Angels make the playoffs for the primary time since 2014, ending an 11-year drought that was the longest in Main League Baseball. They get swept quicker than downtown streets after a Dodgers World Collection victory parade.
• NASA proclaims {that a} meteor is headed towards Los Angeles, main Mayor Karen Bass to efficiently order the evacuation of town for everybody besides her. L.A.’s horrible air high quality shrinks the next meteorite into the scale of a Chihuahua’s head because it lands on the steps of Metropolis Corridor, takes the elevator to Bass’ workplace and proceeds to criticize her for taking that journey to Ghana whereas the Palisades burned.
• Invoice Essayli is determined to show to the world he’s an excellent authorized thoughts, after a choose dominated he was “not lawfully serving” as performing U.S lawyer in Los Angeles, his prosecutors known as him imply nicknames behind his again and federal public defenders persistently beat him in circumstances involving protesters at immigrant rights rallies. He volunteers to prosecute Hamburglar at a kindergarten mock trial — and he loses.

• Everybody operating for California governor will get the very same vote depend within the June major, which means all of them transfer on to the final election. The identical factor occurs in November, resulting in a runoff determined by a communal recreation of rock, paper, scissors. The ultimate two candidates are former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and British and American political commentator Steve Hilton. Hilton agrees to concede defeat when Villaraigosa guarantees to make him the marquis of Huntington Seashore.
• San Clemente buys all of the sand in Saudi Arabia to replenish its quickly declining coast and builds a 500-foot-tall seawall to maintain the waves from the shoreline. The town nonetheless sinks into the ocean as a result of Mom Nature stays undefeated.
• Border Patrol sector chief at massive Gregory Bovino returns to MacArthur Park, which he invaded final summer time, on the identical day MS-13 holds its first worldwide conference. He ignores the transnational cholos and instructions his migra to gang-tackle a mango girl, then justifies the extreme power by claiming she squinted at him.

Modesto Nuts mascots Al the Almond and Wally the Walnut, together with particular visitor Woody from Disney’s Toy Story, work together with followers earlier than a California League recreation in opposition to the Lake Elsinore Storm at John Thurman Subject in 2018 in Modesto. Modesto defeated Lake Elsinore 3-1.

(Zachary Lucy/4 Seam Photos by way of Related Press)

• L.A. County Chief Govt Fesia Davenport, who’s presently on go away, returns the $2-million payout the Board of Supervisors awarded her after voters handed a measure to make her place an elected one, which Davenport claimed harm her repute. Her change of coronary heart occurs after discovering her disgrace in a Louis Vuitton bag left behind within the girls’ room of the Kenneth Hahn Corridor of Administration.
• Extra low-level tornadoes descend on communities alongside Whittier Boulevard, the place twisters struck Boyle Heights and Pico Rivera in 2025 and Montebello two years earlier than. Scientists do emergency research earlier than realizing the phenomenon solely happens when former L.A. Metropolis Councilman Kevin de León is speaking.
• AI takes over Disney, proving that computer systems are able to creating slop solely by ordering a fifth “Toy Story,” a reset of Marvel Studios’ Avengers franchise, a Child Yoda film, one other crappy live-action remake of a Disney animated basic. … Wait, that’s Disney’s precise 2026 slate? Instructed y’all I’m a prophet!