Withhold Disaster Aid

Will Trump Withhold Disaster Aid to California?

Gov. Gavin Newsom says he fears Trump will reverse President Biden’s commitment to federal aid for the state in the wake of the devastating LA wildfires.

Julianne McShane

While Donald Trump rages on Truth Social—sharing memes and baselessly blaming Democratic politicians in California for the devastating LA wildfires—Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) fears he will withhold disaster aid from the state in a bid to score political points.

In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Newsom told NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff that he is worried about Trump revoking the federal disaster aid that President Biden has promised California for the next 6 months—a threat that Trump, in fact, has made and carried out multiple times in the past.

“He’s done it in Utah. He’s done it in Michigan, did it in Puerto Rico. He did it to California back before I was even governor in 2018, until he found out folks in Orange County voted for him and then he decided to give the money,” Newsom said. “So he’s been at this for years and years and years. It transcends the states, including, by the way, Georgia he threatened similarly. So that’s his style.”

Trump does not appear to have explicitly made such threats in the wake of the LA wildfires, which have killed at least 16 people and damaged at least 10,000 structures, according to officials. But Trump has spent the past several days blaming local Democratic politicians for the fires, including LA Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom, who he calls “Newscum” and has blasted as “incompetent.”

“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “This is all his fault!!!”

President Biden said Friday he’s “praying” the Trump administration will continue providing aid to California.

Newsom also said on Meet the Press that Trump has yet to respond to an invitation he sent to the president-elect on Friday to visit LA and “meet with the Americans affected by these fires, see the devastation firsthand, and join me and others in thanking the heroic firefighters and first responders who are putting their lives on the line,” according to a copy of the letter Newsom posted on X.

“I called for him to come out, take a look for himself. We want to do it in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist. He’s the president-elect. I respect the office,” Newsom told Soboroff.

Spokespeople for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday.

Vice President-elect JD Vance said on Fox News Sunday that Trump “would love to visit California,” but did not directly answer whether or not he would withhold federal aid to the state, saying only: “President Trump cares about all Americans. He is the president for all Americans, and I think that he intends to have FEMA and other federal responses much, much better and much more clued into what’s going on there on the ground.”

Newsom also addressed Trump’s misguided statements about California’s water supply, saying, “That mis- and disinformation I don’t think advantages or aids any of us. Responding to Donald Trump’s insults, we would spend another month. I’m very familiar with them. Every elected official that he disagrees with is very familiar with them.”

Meanwhile, in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told Jake Tapper in response to a question about Trump’s attacks on Newsom: “We need to make sure that they are never politicized. It doesn’t matter if you are Democrat or Republican—these types of weather events, they do not discriminate.”

With just over a week until Inauguration Day, it feels like we’re getting a preview—or, perhaps, a reminder—of what it’s like to live under a Trump presidency: Petty insults abound, and those most in need of the government’s support are forgotten.