Aryn Braun

Los Angeles

Correspondent at The Economist

Roaming around California and the West for @TheEconomist.

Articles

Los Angeles is burning

Jan 8, 2025 | economist.com | Aryn Braun

Always vulnerable, the city is increasingly susceptible to fireTHE SCENES kept getting worse. People abandoned their cars and fled on foot as the flames approached. Firefighters then bulldozed their vehicles to reach the blaze. Workers evacuated patients in wheelchairs from a nursing home. The sky above the Pacific Coast Highway turned orange and thickened with smoke. Palm fronds smoldered. A man walked his horses down the street as embers flew around them.
Donald Trump will try to upend America’s immigration system

Nov 20, 2024 | economist.com | Aryn Braun

In some ways he will succeedBy Aryn Braun, West Coast correspondent, The Economist NO ISSUE IS more tied to Donald Trump than immigration. While announcing his first run for president in 2015, Mr Trump called Mexicans criminals and rapists. Over the following nine years “Build the wall!” and “Mass deportation now!” became rallying cries for his campaigns. On the heels of his quick and decisive victory over Kamala Harris, Mr Trump will again try to curb legal immigration and deter the illegal kind.
California’s population is growing again

Apr 30, 2024 | economist.com | Aryn Braun

IT WAS THE end of an era. In 2020 California’s population shrunk for the first time since it joined the union in 1850. People had flocked to the state for its farmland, beaches and stellar industries. When falling birthrates, lower immigration, out-migration to cheaper states and the covid-19 pandemic reversed that trend, California had a bit of an identity crisis. Chart: The Economist
How one California beach town became Gavin Newsom’s nemesis

Apr 9, 2024 | economist.com | Aryn Braun

Huntington Beach’s hard-right turn is typical of modern California Republicanism Apr 9th 2024|Huntington BeachAN IDYLLIC CITY in swanky Orange County, California, is not where you would expect to encounter a self-professed champion of the proletariat. Huntington Beach was first known for oil (the high school’s mascot is still the Oilers), then for surfing. Yet that is how Gracey Van Der Mark, its Republican mayor, sees herself and her city.