As several fires spread across Southern California, President-elect Donald Trump is pointing fingers, blaming policies from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Joe Biden for causing the outbreak.
“He is the blame for this,” Trump wrote about Newsom on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” he added.
Trump’s administration in his first term signed a memorandum that redirected millions of gallons of water to farmers living in the Central Valley and Southern California, pumping it out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which Newsom quickly condemned at the time.
However, new federal and state regulations limit the amount of water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in order to protect the endangered smelt fish, which Trump claimed would have prevented the wildfires.
In a statement posted on X by his press office, Newsom rebuked Trump’s claim that he had faulted on signing a “water restoration declaration” that would have freed up gallons of water for the state.
“There is no such document as the water restoration declaration — that is pure fiction,” the post said. “The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”
Trump and Newsom had long sparred on the issue during Trump’s first administration, and the president-elect even criticized the policy while on the 2024 campaign trail.
“The water is cut off upstate, up in the north, you know that, and the water in order to protect a certain little tiny fish called a smelt. They send millions and millions of gallons of water out to the Pacific Ocean way up north — never even gets close to here,” Trump said during a press conference at his golf course in Los Angeles in September.
“You have no water down here. And the reason you have no water, you have the canals — the reason you have no water is because Gavin Newsom didn’t want to do it,” he added.
Throughout the day, Trump continued to criticize Newsom and Biden, pushing unfounded statements about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency does not have money to provide assistance to Californians.
However, the congressional funding legislation passed in late December to avert a government shutdown included $100 billion for disaster aid, specifically $29 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund, which the federal government turns to in emergencies to help reimburse state and local governments during and after disasters.
Biden also approved a major disaster declaration for California, allowing victims of the fire to “immediately access funds and resources to jumpstart their recovery,” according to a White House fact sheet.
As of Wednesday evening, the four fires spreading throughout Southern California haven’t been able to be contained, and hundreds of thousands of Californians remain without power.
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