As wildfires ravaged Los Angeles throughout the first weeks of 2025, the transfer of power from Joe Biden to Donald Trump brought a sharp change in government rhetoric as well. With 28 fatalities reported as of January 26th and multiple major fires still raging, the response from the Trump administration and its allies has been a departure from the federal government’s typical attitude in a time of crisis. With politicians and pundits discussing the prospect of withholding disaster aid based on policy differences and overhauling the way our government responds to disasters in general, the new administration’s response to the Los Angeles fires is a microcosm of our increasingly partisan and fractured political climate.
Several Republican politicians at the federal level, along with Trump allies like Elon Musk, have become increasingly vocal throughout the past few weeks about their view on the fires. Many have falsely attributed their spread to forest mismanagement by the California government, while some have made more outlandish claims that the Los Angeles Fire Department has prioritized “DEI” and “wokeness” over fighting fires.
However, this is not the first time that Trump and his Republican allies have stirred up conflict with California and its Democratic governor Gavin Newsom over wildfires. During Trump’s first term, he repeatedly criticized Newsom over the governor’s handling of fires throughout the state, blaming the fires on poor forest management and Newsom’s failure to open a water valve in Northern California that Trump claims could provide more water to Los Angeles. Trump has also directed personal attacks at Newsom, referring to him as “Governor Gavin Newscum” in a recent post on his social media network Truth Social.
Perhaps the most incendiary moment of this back-and-forth, at least to some Democrats, came from House Speaker Mike Johnson, who, on January 13, floated the idea of attaching ‘conditions’ to federal disaster relief. Johnson is trying to back up Trump here and stand up to what both see as California’s failed liberal policies. It is the federal government’s responsibility to help Americans when disaster strikes, yet Johnson seems to be using the opportunity to promote his and Trump’s ideology. For a lot of their rhetoric, it is difficult to know what Johnson and other Republicans actually believe and what they are just saying to win political points. Because this kind of narrative does win political points- in the eyes of many who voted for Trump this past November as well as many Republicans in government, this crusade against what they see as the failed liberal policies of California is welcome. But the battle of conservative versus liberal governance is usually waged on the floor of Congress and in interviews on Fox and CNN, not in the process of a major American city fighting raging wildfires.
It is an ongoing example of the partisan fracturing that has overtaken our political system over the past decade. What one would hope is an impartial process- the federal government providing funds to support its citizens in a time of crisis- has become a series of bickering matches between California’s Democratic state government and the new Trump administration.
Less than a week after he was inaugurated, the new President has expressed his desire for a more sweeping approach to the way disaster relief is managed. On a visit to Asheville, North Carolina, to assess remaining damage from last year’s Hurricane Helene, Trump announced plans to “sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) or maybe even getting rid of FEMA.” However, FEMA is the primary agency which controls the federal government’s disaster response strategy and allocates resources to a disaster site, and it falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. The agency also has its budget and disaster relief funds controlled by Congress, making it legally difficult to change or dismantle. Trump’s rhetoric regarding FEMA is very broad and gives little thought to the details of changing the agency, but he has spoken more specifically about the federal government’s response to the California fires as well.
After leaving North Carolina, Trump traveled to Los Angeles on Friday, January 24 to meet with Governor Newsom and assess fire damage. But his language after arriving in California was not that of a president attempting to protect citizens; it seemed instead like an attempt to use a disaster to gain political leverage. “I want to see voter ID, so that the people have a chance to vote […] After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen,” Trump said in a conversation with local news media. It appears here as though the President is implying that fire relief resources will only come to California from the federal government once the state enacts stricter voter ID laws, a set of policies supported by many on the right.
For Trump to say this in the context of a damage assessment press conference is unusual. Even if there have been no official conditions placed on any aid, a President saying that the federal government will hold back on helping people it is meant to serve unless their state implements a certain policy is a departure from the typically country-over-party attitude that comes from the White House in a time of crisis. It is already surprising to hear this type of rhetoric coming from the Speaker of the House, but to hear it from the President is a reminder that the politicization of a major incident such as a wildfire is now the norm, not the exception.
Adding to this new normal, Mike Johnson has continued to echo Trump’s sentiments. His reasoning for placing conditions on fire relief is that “there’s been water resource mismanagement, forest management mistakes, all sorts of problems […] it does come down to leadership.” If Johnson and other Republican leaders continue to promote ideology-dependent disaster aid, it sets a precedent that playing politics with FEMA money is normal. Even at times when the federal government’s response to a crisis was criticized, such as Hurricane Katrina in Johnson’s own home state of Louisiana, there was no question about giving state and local officials all of the resources that they needed. When Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans in 2005, President George W. Bush and his administration were scrutinized for what was widely seen as a lackluster response to the disaster. However, there were no calls from members of Congress for disaster aid to be withheld because of Louisiana’s state politics. The type of public proclamation coming from Johnson is just the opposite, implying that federal aid could be dependent on a particular state’s way of governing. Even if it is just something that lawmakers are “considering” it is a definite change. But there is an aspect of this that is not new.
Andrew Reeves, a political scientist and professor at Washington University, argues that federal attention to disasters is often influenced by the electoral importance of the affected state. Whether it’s the number of electoral votes a state holds or its significance in an upcoming election, Reeves suggests that politics, rather than principle, frequently drives these decisions and influences how the federal government directs its resources in a time of crisis. It’s similar to what we are currently seeing with Trump and Johnson. The way that our federal disaster response protocol is set up fosters the type of presidential behavior that Reeves describes.
When the government responds to a disaster, it comes from the top down. Only the President has the power to declare an event to be a major disaster or emergency, and that declaration allows FEMA to begin coordinating with state and local governments in the area of the event to provide relief. Crucially, though, the governor of that state has to request that declaration from the President first if they want federal help. Theoretically, every President would be committed to providing as much help from the federal government as possible to citizens regardless of location, but Reeves argues that personal and political differences can get in the way. If a governor of a disaster-stricken state is in disagreement with the President over a certain issue or policy, the President could possibly refuse to issue a disaster declaration, depriving the affected area of federal help.
For these current fires in Los Angeles, President Biden did issue a disaster declaration before he left office on January 20. That means that FEMA relief aid and resources are being provided to Southern California now, but it is unclear if or how that will change after Trump, Mike Johnson, and other top Republicans have mused about withholding federal resources from California over ideological disagreements. The power of the President to dole out the money and resources of the all-powerful federal government has always been up for political grabs, but the rhetoric surrounding the Los Angeles fires are just another example of the increased polarization that continues to infiltrate our political system.
