President Donald Trump has repeatedly railed against California’s governor as “Newscum,” spread misinformation about the causes of the Los Angeles fires and suggested that California will not receive typical federal aid unless it changes its water policy. Or its forestry policy. Or its immigration sanctuary policy.
On Friday morning, as he prepared to fly to the fire zone, he added a new one: voter ID.
“I just want voter ID as a start, and I want the water to be released,” Trump told reporters on the tarmac during a stop in North Carolina. “After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen.”
The demand further politicized a fragile situation that has left Gov. Gavin Newsom scrambling to respond to the whims of the president — or even to speak with him at all — to secure billions of dollars from the federal government to help Los Angeles fight an ongoing firestorm and rebuild. For days after Trump announced his intent to travel to Los Angeles to survey fire damage, it was unclear whether the president would invite Newsom to join him.
Yet by the time he arrived in California, Trump seemed to have found his West Coast chill. Newsom was indeed waiting for the president on the tarmac at LAX this afternoon and Trump greeted him warmly, shaking his hand, embracing him and repeatedly patting him on the arm as he promised to “take care of things.”
“We’re going to get it fixed — though we’ll get it permanently fixed so it can’t happen again,” Trump told reporters. He expressed awe at the scale of the damage, which he compared to the destruction of World War II: “It’s like you got hit by a bomb.”
“We’re going to need a lot of federal help,” Newsom said, before brushing off a question about Trump’s voter ID demand. “I have all the confidence in the world we’ll work that out.”
The whiplash reflects the complicated balancing act for Newsom as he tries to advocate for his state while simultaneously appeasing a president for whom California has served as a frequent political foil. While the White House did ultimately confirm, a few hours before Trump’s arrival, that Newsom could greet him at the airport, the governor was not included in a tour of Pacific Palisades where Trump met first responders and residents who lost their homes.
And when Trump later hosted a televised roundtable discussion with local officials such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and selected members of California’s congressional delegation, he kept Newsom — a vigorous would-be debater — out of the room and off TV. That left the president free to attack the state’s environmental policies largely unchallenged, vowing “to override the Coastal Commission. I’m not going to let them get away with their antics.”
Tension between the newly reinstalled Republican president and California’s Democratic governor — longtime political nemeses who nevertheless routinely worked together on disaster recovery during Trump’s first term — exploded alongside the fires that have burned through Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other swaths of the Los Angeles region over the past two weeks.
The governor had quickly extended an invitation to Trump to visit Los Angeles, an effort to lower the temperature as partisan demands soared to punish California for supposedly mismanaging the disaster. But Newsom acknowledged late Thursday afternoon that he had still not heard back from the president, less than a day before his expected touchdown in California.
The governor remained outwardly optimistic about the strength of their relationship as he spoke with reporters Thursday, after approving $2.5 billion in fire recovery funds that he hopes will eventually be reimbursed by the federal government.
“I’m glad he’s coming out here. I’m grateful that the president’s taking the time,” Newsom said. “And I hope he comes with a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. That’s the spirit to which we welcome him.”
‘More delicate under this president’
It’s common for presidents and governors of opposing political parties to do battle on policy differences and then come together when natural disasters strike, said state Sen. Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat whose district has been badly damaged by the Palisades fire.
“It would be a delicate balance under any president and certainly, it’s more delicate under this president,” he told CalMatters. “It may appear a little messy, and perhaps it is, but it’s also an integral part of our federal system.”
Trump reportedly invited California’s two Democratic U.S. senators — Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, whom he dubbed “Shifty Schiff” for investigating him during his first term — to join him in the fire zone, but they stayed in Washington, D.C., for floor votes.
“While his continued comments threatening conditions on federal aid and to eliminate FEMA are deeply concerning, we remain hopeful this visit moves the President and Congress closer to focus on relief over partisanship,” they said in a joint statement. “Americans should be able to count on our support to recover and rebuild in the wake of these tragedies, no matter what state they call home.”
As for Newsom, he’s at a precarious moment in his relationship with the president. While he initially positioned California at the forefront of a renewed resistance after Trump won a second term in November, even calling a special session to fund litigation against the incoming administration, Newsom now finds himself dependent on the goodwill of a federal government almost fully under the sway of Trump.
It’s unclear how forthcoming federal assistance will be. Since the outbreak of the Los Angeles fires more than two weeks ago, Trump has continued to inaccurately claim that Los Angeles lacked water to fight these fires because the state does not send enough water south from Northern California. He has depicted them as Newsom’s fault and even demanded that he resign, although fire and climate experts have repeatedly attributed the blazes to off-the-charts dry conditions in the face of ferocious Santa Ana winds.
Nonetheless, with the support of many congressional Republicans, the president has threatened to withhold or condition disaster aid.
Trump’s interest in voter ID goes back to at least 2016, when he began insisting, without any evidence, that he failed to win the deep blue state of California because people who aren’t citizens participated in the presidential election. A new California law that took effect this year prohibits local governments from requiring voters to present identification to cast their ballots in an election.
In a post on social media, Newsom’s press office pointed out that California requires people to present identification when they register to vote and wrote, “Conditioning aid for American citizens is wrong.”
Newsom has substantially, though not entirely, pulled his punches against Trump in recent weeks. He largely kept a low profile leading up to the president’s visit, working on fire response from Los Angeles. After the president erroneously complained in Monday’s inauguration speech that the fires were burning “without even a token of defense,” Newsom issued a gentle statement that emphasized “finding common ground and striving toward shared goals” with the Trump administration.
“In the face of one of the worst natural disasters in America’s history, this moment underscores the critical need for partnership, a shared commitment to facts, and mutual respect,” Newsom said.
This story originally appeared in CalMatters.
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