As wind-swept fires ravage Southern California, the winds of political change could snuff out the state’s hopes for recovering quickly from future natural disasters.
While President Joe Biden moved swiftly this week to deliver federal aid for areas hit by the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and other fires in Los Angeles County, there’s no guarantee Donald Trump will do the same for wildfires that are all but certain to ignite at some point after he’s inaugurated Monday, Jan. 20.
The president-elect has repeatedly threatened to withhold disaster relief money from California amid an ongoing feud with Gov. Gavin Newsom. Unlike his goals of annexing Greenland and Canada or re-taking the Panama Canal, withholding disaster relief is something Trump can easily do, according to an expert.
He “absolutely can deny aid” to California, said Matt Sedlar, climate analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. “It’s completely up to the president whether federal aid gets distributed for disasters.”
Federal disaster declarations triggering the flow of money to disaster-stricken states are normally a nonpartisan and routine act.
But Trump considered denying wildfire relief to California — a blue state he’s lost every time he’s run for president — in 2018, relenting only after being shown pro-Trump voter registration data from Orange County, one of the areas affected by wildfires that year, according to Matt Harvey, who served as a special assistant to the president for matters related to domestic crisis.
In October, POLITICO reported that Trump, a Republican, denied a $37 million wildfire relief request to Washington state in 2020 “because of a bitter personal dispute” with Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee.
“Trump sat on Inslee’s request for the final four months of his presidency, delaying recovery and leaving communities unsure about rebuilding because nobody knew if they would get federal help,” according to POLITICO, which added that Biden granted the request after taking office.
Trump took to social media this week to blame Newsom, a Democrat rumored to be in the mix to run for president in 2028, for the wildfires.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump posted on his Truth Social media platform.
“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California,” continued the post, one of several he wrote on the California fires.
“Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”
Local officials blamed infrastructure for hydrant failures, and Newsom’s office quickly pushed back on the facts in Trump’s posts. The water declaration Trump said Newsom wouldn’t sign doesn’t exist, according to the Newsom administration.
“The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need,” said Izzy Gardon, Newsom’s director of communications.
Trump also threatened to withhold disaster aid during a campaign rally outside Coachella in the Riverside County desert in October.
“We’re going to take care of your (water) situation, and will force it down his throat,” Trump was quoted as saying at the rally. “And we’ll say, ‘Gavin, if you don’t do it, we’re not giving any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have.’ It’s not hard to do.”
Republicans blame Newsom for the wildfires, saying his policies made the state vulnerable to infernos. Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Corona, called on the governor to convene a special session on wildfires, noting the ongoing special session to gird California for legal fights with the Trump administration.
“Now is not the time for political posturing or spending millions to ‘Trump-proof’ California,” Essayli, who is known for his high-profile clashes with Democrats, wrote in a Wednesday, Jan. 9, letter to Newsom. “Instead, it’s time to take significant action to fireproof our state.”
In an emailed statement responding to Essayli, Gardon repeated his statement that Newsom is focused not on politics but on protecting people.
Factoring in the poverty rate and the number of uninsured people in a disaster area, the Federal Emergency Management Agency makes recommendations on disaster relief to the president, who “can just say yes or no,” Sedlar said.
Federal dollars are vital to disaster recovery, Sedlar said.
“There’s so much that needs to be done after a disaster and so not having the federal aid really hurts the state and how … the state can recover and how fast it can recover.”
There are federal funding sources, such as Small Business Administration loans, that aren’t tied to FEMA that could be accessible to residents of disaster zones, Sedlar said.
“There are a lot of different ways for the state to get money,” he said. “I can’t say whether those can be denied.”
Depending where a fire starts, states might have other options to seek federal relief if the president cuts off aid, Sedlar said.
For example, he said, if the fire ignites on U.S. Forest Service land, a state could potentially sue the federal government for relief on the grounds that forest service mismanagement contributed to the blaze. But “we can’t predict which way those cases are going to go,” Sedlar said.
Another challenge, Sedlar said, is that the scope and severity of wildfires, hurricanes and other disasters worsened by climate change might overwhelm FEMA’s pot of money for disaster relief.
“At a certain point, there’s really a threat of not … enough money and more disasters than the disaster relief fund can keep up with,” he said. “And I think that’s the dangerous area where someone like Trump can come in and basically portion the money out” to states that he likes.
California is fortunate that Biden is president during this week’s wildfires, Sedlar said.
“If we had this conversation in February, I wouldn’t really know how to respond because we don’t know what (Trump’s) going to do.”
The Bay Area News Group contributed to this report.