Wildfires Blow Trump’s Way
Terry H. Schwadron
Jan. 13, 2025
Ironically, the devastating wildfires in California could make Donald Trump’s agenda another unintended victim.
Trump repeated yesterday that California officials are “incompetent” to handle the disaster, continuing to lobby political grenades from afar, but in two weeks, he will own it. Political anti-California hot air doesn’t solve either firefighting issues or the recovery from this scale of disaster any more than the high-speed desert winds that are fueling it. While there is plenty to investigate, many of Trump’s criticisms are simply incorrect.
Even as Trump’s team is preparing a reported 100 executive orders for his first day in office — a “shock and awe” approach to governing, his people say — the prospects for dealing with ramifications of tens of thousands in Los Angeles suddenly facing months or more of ruin is bound to throw a monkey wrench into plans for serious budget-cutting, reassignment of federal employees, elimination of agencies altogether, tax cuts and more.
If government has any agreed-upon, shared purpose, it is to respond in emergency for public protection. Providing shelter and sustenance on the scale needed could well become a fulltime job for an incoming Trump.
The very fact of climate-related disaster on the scale that Southern California is experiencing could well force heightened concern about Trump’s desire to ignore climate change as a “hoax.”
Just as Trump departed in 2021 amid the twin problems raised by Jan. 6 and Covid failures, the unforeseen arrival of a major human tragedy and governmental challenge could well prove to be the marker by which his administration responds. Trump has been repeatedly said incorrectly that the Biden administration has diverted emergency funds to migrant support, but he did much the same in office, taking FEMA money for unauthorized border wall construction.
Already, we’re hearing voices from the Right to leap on perceived partisan distaste for all-things-California. A Fox News host is promoting declarations of martial law and a federal takeover for what Trump sees as wrong-headed Democratic local political leadership. And at the same time, Trump faces an avalanche of criticism for evident lack of empathy or even understandable policy reaction for having jumped on irrelevant disputes over preservation of a Sacramento River Delta smelt as a prime cause for insufficient water pressure 400 miles away to douse multiple, simultaneous wildfires pushed by 100-mile-per-hour Santa Ana winds.
Promises Made
Last week, the outgoing Joe Biden promised six-months’ worth of 100 percent federal underwriting of firefighting-related costs in Southern California as well as FEMA emergency housing response. That commits Trump or puts him in a position of reneging on the pledge.
Before the fires are even over, we can see that at least 10,000 structures have been ruined and that damages will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. We have no assessment of the destruction, and obviously no idea of the cost of emergency response or rebuilding.
For openers, any Trump program costing new money, whether to underwrite the billions needed for mass deportations or the trillions that result from promised tax cuts will need another look to be anything but talk. The promises to unleash billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on ripping away a third of annual federal spending will make no sense if they are starting with the idea of avoiding Trump priorities and the needs of Southern California, to say nothing of other areas hard-hit by climate-fueled hurricanes and floods.
Given the enormity of the disaster, expect that the insurance industry will be appealing to Trump for an industry bailout, whether through tax cuts, cash bailout, loan guaranties or other financial instruments. Even before these Southern California fires, the home insurance industry was claiming it could not provide affordable coverage policies across the country, but particularly in California, where wildfires in more rural areas have wiped out towns.
Beyond Money
Beyond direct financial issues, however, are the issues raised by rebuilding wide swaths of Los Angeles and deciding and dividing city, state and federal responsibilities, settling private and public ownership of the issues, and the need to address whatever comes of the inevitable investigations as to cause and the ability to withstand a repeat.
Rather than talking about raking forest floors and overlooking environmental impact reports about smelt in Northern California, the obvious question is how Trump will be considering climate-related changes in the rebuilding effort and overall. Climate change is not the cause, but its effects certainly intensified the effects of these fires with unpredictable cycles of drought conditions. Trump’s pro-development views are exactly what has led to building on properties that disappear in hurricanes and in the very path of mapped wildfire dangers. His disdain for science getting in the way of new luxury housing just feeds the problem, just as he has turned away from alternate energy sources or limits on release of methane and other greenhouse gasses.
It is easy to throw political stones at members of the other political party over perceived and real failures in preparation policy, but the simple truth of this disaster is that there was no possible preparation for multiple, out-of-control wildfires driven by hurricane-force winds in an urban environment. The hard part of governing, of course, is the actual governance, and that’s not Trump’s forte.
So, at best, the timing of this disaster as Trump enters office virtually guarantees that it will hang, albatross-like, from his neck from Day One. He may have had nothing to do with its arrival, but he will have everything to do with what follows.
Apart from all else, members of his team already are noting that Los Angeles is the site of the next summer Olympics in 2028. Unless there is a change of venue, the world’s attention will be on what Trump has managed to do to respond in Los Angeles in the same years as his term runs.
The infrastructure week that never arrived in Trump’s first term has raised its head anew in Southern California. Our developer president may find a little trouble trying to take over Greenland and Panama while Southern California remains without adequate attention.
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