Thursday, January 20, 2022, Michelle Kenney, Jeff Chen
This looks like a first for Michelle Kenney in the LA Times. But she has been mentored by Jeff Chen, one of the best in the business. For a snapshot of how she came to be here check this link at XWord Info. Today's theme seems multi-leveled. At the simplest level the themers and the reveal are concerned with some common state changes in water , one of the most abundant substances on the planet. At a deeper level they seem to hint at state changes to our body politic , something that constructors don't normally deal with in these grids. But we reviewers have to tread lightly on such matters, so to stay out of trouble I'll try to stick to literal, rather than historic-metaphoric, treatments of the themers and the reveal. 17A. Ended corruption: DRAINED THE SWAMP . The first attempt to do this was a long, long time ago, and we don't seem to have made much progress: 27A. Vented: BLEW OFF ...