Michael Hiltzik
Michael Hiltzik is a business columnist at the Los Angeles Times who uses his beat to examine how politics, corporate strategy and public policy intersect and shape everyday economic life. His columns treat business stories as evidence of larger systems of power, tracking how decisions in Washington and in corporate suites alter the terrain for science, healthcare, social insurance and civil liberties. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times for more than four decades, he brings investigative reporting, financial and political writing and historical analysis to his business coverage. His work appears regularly in print and online as commentary and “Voices” columns, giving him room for argument-driven reporting grounded in documents, data and expert sources. He is also an author of nonfiction books on business, technology and public policy, which reinforces the historical depth of his journalism.
Trump, business and the cost of politics
Hiltzik’s through-line is the economic and institutional cost of Trump-era politics, and he returns to this theme across corporate, scientific and social policy beats. In his business and DEI coverage, he has documented how firms that maintained diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the face of pressure from President Trump performed just as well as those that complied with anti-DEI directives, drawing on academic research from UC Berkeley and Stanford to underscore that resistance carried no financial penalty.
He has written about Trump’s broader campaign against scientific research funding, detailing how partisan filters and “DEI” keyword screens were used to cancel thousands of grants at agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, with billions of dollars in damage to farmers, ranchers and scientific freedom. His columns on attacks on science link those grant cancellations to a larger pattern of replacing evidence-based policy with ideological litmus tests, describing this as Trump’s effort to “kill U.S. science research” and charting how that shift harms the economy and innovation. On the political front, he has chronicled Republican efforts to smear Anthony Fauci over COVID, framing congressional hearings as a “clown show” aimed at discrediting public health rather than understanding the pandemic response.
Across this work, including commentary on disappointing U.S. World Cup hotel bookings tied to Trump’s impact on international perceptions, he treats Trump not just as a political figure but as a recurring risk factor for business, science and institutional stability.
Attack on science and public institutions
Beyond the immediate Trump lens, Hiltzik has developed a sustained strand of coverage on the right-wing attack on science and the weakening of public institutions. In a series of columns, he traces how federal agencies used non-scientific criteria, AI screens and unconstitutional considerations to terminate grants, including targeting projects in states that backed the administration’s political opponents, and shows how this undermines the integrity of science funding and democratic norms. He has written about a declassified government report that offers no support for the lab-leak theory of COVID’s origin, using that assessment to challenge the narrative pushed by conspiracy-minded politicians and commentators and to defend the role of formal intelligence reviews. His Fauci coverage dissects smear tactics in House and Senate hearings, noting how accusations of criminality are leveled “without a speck of substantiation” and situating those attacks within a broader effort to delegitimize expert advice.
When he writes about the “right-wing attack on science” reaching a nadir, he ties together grant cancellations, assaults on scientists’ speech and damage to agricultural and environmental programs to show cumulative harm rather than isolated incidents. He extends this institutional focus to media ownership, questioning whether an “independent” editorial board can truly protect CNN and CBS News from political meddling when the owner retains control over newsroom staffing and the board’s authority is narrowly defined.
Across these pieces he consistently tests institutional promises against governance structures and incentives, looking for where editorial independence, scientific integrity and public missions are structurally at risk.
Technology tycoons, AI and privacy
Hiltzik devotes substantial reporting to technology companies, framing them as both economic actors and political forces whose products reshape privacy, speech and regulation. In his coverage of Meta’s Muse AI bot, he warns that using a personal assistant that can reach into email, calendars and shopping accounts effectively hands Mark Zuckerberg unprecedented access to users’ secrets, arguing that convenience is not worth the privacy and security risks. He connects Muse to Meta’s history of privacy violations and repeated apologies, stressing that the company has not earned trust as a custodian of highly sensitive personal information.
His profiles of “today’s tycoons” follow technology entrepreneurs from “pedestal to dock,” describing how public esteem for rich tech founders sours as revelations about addiction, harm to children and privacy abuses come to light, including a multibillion-dollar settlement over social media’s impact on young users. He has also examined a porn firm labeled a “copyright troll” that has targeted Meta, using that dispute to explore how aggressive intellectual property tactics intersect with platform liability and user rights. Elsewhere, he challenges apocalyptic narratives about AI itself, arguing that bots are unlikely to extinguish humanity on their own but that the danger lies in the humans and corporations deploying them without adequate safeguards.
Taken together, his tech columns focus less on product launches and more on governance, accountability and the long arc of public sentiment toward dominant platforms and their billionaire leaders.
Social Security, inequality and public programs
Another distinctive cluster in Hiltzik’s work is his attention to social insurance and the distributional impact of fiscal policy, especially around Social Security and federal debt. In his political farewell to Rep.
John Larson, whom he calls one of Social Security’s best friends in Congress, he examines how a generational shift in Democratic leadership could affect the program’s protection and questions whether younger successors will match Larson’s commitment. He scrutinizes proposals to cap Social Security benefits at $50,000 per person, explaining how such caps would hit upper-middle-income retirees while sparing the wealthy from tax increases, and uses that analysis to highlight tensions between austerity rhetoric and progressive goals.
In a column on the U.S. national debt reaching $40 trillion, he asks whether readers should care and breaks down myths about federal borrowing, distinguishing between alarmist narratives and the actual mechanics of bond markets and fiscal capacity.
His reporting on the LAX people mover project characterizes it as a construction fiasco marked by legal disputes and financial chaos, noting that the system is nearly complete yet still not operational and raising questions about governance and accountability ahead of major events such as the Olympics. He extends his inequality lens to child health, describing how Republicans wage “war on children’s health” by weakening vaccination policy, cutting nutrition assistance like WIC benefits and narrowing access to healthcare, and ties those choices to broader budget decisions signed by Trump. In coverage of Justice Department attacks on UCLA and other medical schools over admissions, he argues that the government’s analysis is fundamentally racist and situates the case within the larger campaign against DEI programs, emphasizing how these moves reshape who becomes a doctor and who receives care.
Across these topics, his business beat is a vehicle for explaining who gains and who loses from fiscal, infrastructure and social policy decisions, with particular attention to working-class and vulnerable populations.
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Adrienne Roberts
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Alex Bronzini-Vender
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Alex DeMarban
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