After the election of Donald Trump as president, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is the Democrat leader in the failed never-Trump movement, immediately convened a special session to ask for $25 million to fight the Trump Administration.
Newsom has made a name for himself as the head of the resistance against Trump and although many thought he should replace Joe Biden this year as president, his political hands were tied. He has been a strong possibility to run for president in 2028.
Newsom said in November he needed the money to protect “California values,” which include being a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants and the child gender mutilation industry.
Newsom is now battling to preserve his political future, but he has not been helped by the slow federal government.
It wasn’t until late Wednesday that the Biden Administration announced it would send additional firefighting personnel and capabilities to California to assist in battling the series of out-of-control wildfires. When those assets will arrive is uncertain, but wind-driven fire weather is expected to remain until Friday in Southern California, where the footprint of the fires are small, but are many and are in urban areas that now look like war zones.
Newsom is being blamed for focusing on the wrong things, and not being ready for the fires, which have destroyed hundreds of homes and killed five people in the past week.
“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,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform he started after the old Twitter management kicked him off of that platform.
Newsom says Trump mischaracterizes the complex water system in California. But as the leader of the anti-Trump movement, he and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appear to be ineffective leaders and are fighting battles on two fronts: The disaster response and the political fallout for them both.
“Fire is spreading rapidly for 3 days — ZERO CONTAINMENT. Nobody has ever seen such failed numbers before! Gross incompetence by Gavin Newscum and Karen Bass….And Biden’s FEMA has no money — all wasted on the Green New Scam! L.A. is a total wipeout!!!” Trump posted on Thursday morning on Truth Social.
The left-leaning Los Angeles Times categorizes that as false, but in fact, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 authorized the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Recovery and Emergency Act to provide financial assistance for costs associated with low-carbon construction materials and net-zero energy projects. FEMA’s 2022-2026 Strategic Plan includes “whole of community in climate resilience” and encourages states to build climate-resilient communities. This is a vast expansion of the original Stafford Act, signed into law in 1988 and designed to provide a framework for the federal government to offer financial assistance to state and local governments when dealing with major disasters. It allows the president to declare emergencies and major disasters and to provide federal aid in situations like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fires, and other natural events, essentially supplementing state and local efforts to save lives and protect property.
Hundreds if not thousands of structures have burned and over 100,000 Los Angeles residents have been ordered to evacuate while their neighborhoods burn out of control. Opportunistic looters have snuck into the burned-out wealthier neighborhoods to take advantage of the evacuation, and only two have been arrested for looting.
With entire communities in the Los Angeles County area burned to the ground, Mayor Bass and Gov. Newsom have just watched as their political futures were also torched by the city and state governments’ inability to prioritize what is the first role of government: To protect citizens.
It’s a cautionary tale for the leaders in Anchorage, where hillside residents face some of the same conditions, with dry weather and high winds combining at times to create wildfire conditions. While the mayor and Assembly of the city focus on equity and diversity, crime has spun out of control in the city and never discuss hardening the hillside surrounding Anchorage against fires, which are increasingly started in homeless encampments that migrate from one greenbelt to another.
Just as in Pacific Palisades, the canyon neighborhood that burned in greater Los Angeles, many areas of the hillside in Anchorage have winding and narrow roads with limited access and no fire hydrants. The mayor and the Assembly of Anchorage, meanwhile, have made it their priority to remove the dam on the Eklutna River that serves as a reservoir for Anchorage’s water supply.
