Local Issues

It's depressing to admit, but let's do it anyway: there are few politicians in the world more skilled at manipulating Twitter than President Trump.

So over the past few months, 48-year-old Congressman Ted Lieu (D-California) has decided to try and master the platform, slowly emerging as the President's most adept social media opponent. It might seem like an embarrassing game to play — after all, world leaders don't historically conduct foreign policy in 140 characters or less.

In the packed auditorium at the Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles, a vortex of entertainment industry power and current progressive political woe, comedian Kathy Griffin — tiny, insistently red-tressed — erupts in full-throttle rasp at the man in the boxy gray suit as he finishes up on stage.

"I saw you on the Joy Reid show on MSNBC," Griffin says, coming up from the audience to address Rep. Ted Lieu, a second-term Democrat from the South Bay who was speaking at the CAA Foundation's Take Action Day. "You're giving us hope!"

In the packed auditorium at the Creative Artists Agency, a vortex of entertainment-industry power and current progressive political woe, comedian Kathy Griffin, tiny, insistently red-tressed, erupts in full-throttle rasp at the man in the boxy gray suit as he finishes up onstage.

"I saw you on the Joy Reid show on MSNBC," Griffin says, coming up from the audience to address Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat speaking at the CAA Foundation's Take Action Day. "You're giving us hope!"

With each passing Torrance refinery blast, fire, hydrofluoric acid leak, crane collapse, power outage or smoke-belching emergency flare, calls have grown for measures to make the plant safer.