FIRE AND FURY: With the incoming presidency of Donald Trump - and his well-documented hostility toward California’s political class - looming, tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles County were displaced by a series of deadly and rapidly spreading blazes.
Indeed, the second President Trump and his (Grand Old Party) GOP allies noticed the fires, they immediately jumped at the opportunity to fault Gov. Gavin Newsom, and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass on the reduction of water supplies and infrastructure issues. But much more worrisome for leaders in urgent need of federal assistance, is Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass
FEMA funding
Trump’s claim is false. While FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund was exhausted in 2020 because of several large natural disasters, in December last year, Biden approved the bill that restocked the fund.
“The current balance of the Disaster Relief Fund is approximately $27 billion,” FEMA said in an email to CNN on Wednesday. Which may well prove insufficient to address needs arising out of every calamity that occurs this year but is not “no money!”
The December bill signed also included $29 billion of new money for the Disaster Relief Fund – President Biden has requested $40 billion of it – as well as billions of dollars of other new disaster spending.
“Thanks to Congress’s recent passage of a disaster supplemental, FEMA has the funding and resources needed to respond to the needs of California,”
Trump made similar false statements regarding FEMA being out of money after Hurricane Helene hit this fall.
California water policy
Trump went on in the same social media post to claim that Newsom never signed what Trump called the ‘declaration’ because the governor ‘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.’
Trump continued: “Now the final price is being paid.” I shall require that this inept governor permit clean, fresh, and clear water to FLOW TO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes.”
Other Trump inaccuracies
Aside from the issues of facts considered above, there are various other factual issues with Trump’s claims in the post.
Picking a fact from Trump’s mouthpiece, one can state that his statement that “There are no firefighting planes” is a sheer lie. Helitack helicopters were back in the air over Los Angeles County Wednesday with water, following their suspension early Tuesday night because of powerful winds.
As much as the statement ‘there is no water for fire hydrants may sound a little ring an alarm it might be a little exaggerated. Hydrants in another area of Los Angeles County did contain water while hydrants in the Pacific Palisades went dry.
Those who defend the creation of Delta smelt also have greed for more water, not “less,” for the Delta region that is home to the fish. However, contrary to Trump’s statement, Newsom has not even blocked the water from coming into the state at all.
Gusty wind-driven fires have now taken at least five lives, damaged thousands of buildings, and resulted in tens of thousands of evacuations across the home to over 9.6 million residents where nearly a quarter of Californians reside.
During Biden’s visit to the area today the President promised more help via funding, as per our correspondent Melanie Mason. However, Trump - who has previously vowed to cut off federal disaster funding to California during his first term - was quick to accuse Newsom of incompetence over the fires.
That is not good news for the governor who will likely have to work with Trump again on further federal assistance which is certain to be required for years for fire recovery.
The two largest fires, the Palisades Fire in the west LA district of the county and the Eaton Fire in Altadena and Pasadena are both over 10,000 acres in size.
The fires have at least five human casualties and have engulfed more than 1100 homes, stores, and other buildings as stated in the LA Times.
Multiple fast-moving wildfires burning throughout Los Angeles County have killed at least five people.
According to the Associated Press, approximately 70,000 reside, hundreds of thousands of power customers are without electricity.
Firefighters watch flames burning home during a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025, in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles.
California lawmakers in Sacramento returned to Los Angeles-area districts scorched by wind-driven wildfires. | AP
DISASTER DISINFO: Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal is irked over the Trump-driven firestorm of false statements about the fires ravaging Southern California - much so, that resulted in a potential new legislation.
Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal thinks social media platforms should be held accountable when disinformation that’s “created negligently” on their sites causes harm. | AP
The Long Beach Democrat told Playbook today that he thinks social media must share responsibility for the harm that results from disinformation that is ‘created negligently,’ when it is posted on its site. He said he would discuss the possibility of legislation to address the problem, but it “isn’t being discussed at the moment” due to the ongoing wildfires in the Los Angeles region.
“The tragedy points to why the information that circulates must be true since the opposite is a matter of life and death,” he said. “If there are these for-profit entities that do things that are impeding that, then we have to deal with it.”
Lowenthal’s comments follow Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the social media platform Meta and its subsidiaries Facebook, Instagram, and Threads announced that the social media company would remove third-party fact-checkers from its pages in favour of user-created notes, a move that conservatives celebrated as free speech, while liberals condemned as detrimental to society that would increase the spread of fake news.
Lowenthal was concerned that Meta’s new policy would mean the posts of local authorities are “at par with crackpot conspiracy theories” in life-endangering situations. He added:
“There is no other way to define it as a horrible, horrible strategic decision. We are all going to pay a price for it.”
FIRE POLITICS: California Democrats dismissed their Republican counterparts’ focus on disaster management – claiming that their biggest worry is evacuations, air quality, and blackouts in their fire-ravaged districts.
“If I wanted to listen to a few Republican operatives seek to score political points on X during a humanitarian crisis I’d tune into the GOP’s official X account,” Gabriel stated.
The state lawmaker said most of the reactions are coming from well-wishers and most people are not out to ‘play politics on social media.’
“There are always lessons to be learned,” Schultz said. In that sense, we can always do things better. However, there is certainly a time and a place for a very honest retrospective look at what has happened and how we could it better what is most helpful right now, however, is assistance.”
With inputs from agencies
Image Source: Multiple agencies
*The views expressed are personal to the author and do not reflect the platform's opinion of the same.
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About the author
Manish Kumar pursued a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Amity University, Haryana. He is an enthusiastic and dedicated writer, who has worked with several ministries of the Government of India and contributed his voice to major campaigns and programmes. Being devoted to practicing significant journalism, Manish does his best to become a voice of change in society. Not only does he tell but also persuades, which is indicative of his strong conviction in the perspective of media.
