Trump threatens to withhold disaster aid to Los Angeles

President Donald Trump has threatened to withhold federal aid for the thousands of Los Angeles-area residents who lost their homes in this month’s historic wildfires.

The newly installed president, slated to appear in Los Angeles today to view the aftermath of the firestorms that destroyed more than 17,000 structures and killed 28 residents, has threatened to block federal disaster aid unless the state opens the water spigot to Southern California, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down” from the northern part of the state to the south, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview Wednesday.

Presidents have traditionally visited regions recovering from natural disasters to demonstrate support and assure local leaders that federal aid is headed their way.

Trump, however, has used a tit-for-tat approach to helping the region where fires still glow across the night horizon.

The Republican president has long sparred with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, while blasting California’s policies on forest management and water use.

Before his reelection, Trump had suggested that if he were president again, he’d withhold federal disaster aid to California from future wildfires if Newsom wouldn’t agree to divert more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Central Valley farmers.

Trump, in speaking with Hannity, repeated false claims that the state’s water issues point to conservation of the Delta smelt, an endangered fish.

On Monday, Trump directed the secretary of commerce and the secretary of the interior to start directing “more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.”

Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, told CalMatters that such a move “has the potential to harm Central Valley farms and Southern California communities that depend upon water delivered from the Delta, and it will do nothing to improve current water supplies in the Los Angeles basin.”

After the wildfires broke out on Jan. 7, Newsom invited Trump to California to see the devastation himself, while urging the president-elect not to politicize the catastrophe.

During his interview with Hannity, Trump said he wasn’t sure if he’d meet with Newsom. “I don’t know,” Trump said. “I haven’t even thought about it.”

During a news conference Thursday, Newsom expressed confidence that the Trump administration would still provide disaster-related funds to California, according to the New York Times.

The governor said he planned on being at the airport to greet the president, even though he didn’t know whether he’d be invited to join him during his tour of the Los Angeles ashes.

Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress representing Southern California have largely agreed that aid from the federal government should come with no strings.

“We cannot prioritize potential future political battles over supporting first responders battling those wildfires in our state,” said Rep. Young Kim, R-Anaheim Hills.

— Dana Bartholomew