What Are ‘California Values’?
4th June 2026
What are California values? Are they sprawling homeless encampments, public intoxication and drug use, and naked people walking through the streets? Are they rising crime rates, small businesses closing, families being driven out of their communities, and parents who cannot safely take their children to a park?
Those were the questions the Daily Signal’s senior national security and legal analyst Mehek Cooke raised during ABC News’ coverage of California’s primary elections Tuesday night.
The answers are already visible on the streets, she noted. The Daily Signal recently sent reporters into Skid Row, a Los Angeles neighborhood known for having one of the highest homeless populations in the United States. Residents described a city in crisis and demanded accountability from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. One military veteran who spent 26 years in Skid Row told the Daily Signal, “The whole city of LA is now Skid Row.” Another resident called the city’s homelessness spending scandal the “biggest rip-off in history.”